Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

Wooo, hooo! We're coming up on a year of the Digest version, which means I still haven't got a life. ;')

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #48
Saturday, June 18, 2005

Oetzi the Iceman

'Iceman' (Oetzi) Might Be Contaminated

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/14/2005 12:05:33 PM PDT · 38 replies · 967+ views

MSNBC | 6-14-2005
A researcher inspects the 5,000-year-old mummy known as Oetzi in this file photo from 2000. Oetzi is kept in a sealed-off chamber which researchers now worry may have been penetrated. Updated: 10:02 p.m. ET June 13, 2005ROME - Researchers suspect the corpse of a 5,000-year-old mummy frozen in the Italian Alps might have been contaminated by bacteria since its discovery in 1991, a doctor who cares for the body said Monday.

DNA reveals how the Italian Iceman went down fighting

Posted by Pokey78
On News/Activism 08/12/2003 1:49:37 PM PDT · 27 replies · 83+ views

The Independent (U.K.) | 08/13/03 | Peter Popham
Italy's prehistoric Iceman was murdered by an arrow in the back, despite the efforts of a companion to save him. But although he apparently died fleeing from a skirmish, he did not give up without a fight. He bore traces of the blood of four other men on his weapons and clothes, three of whom he had killed or wounded. These are among the startling findings of Dr Tom Loy of Queensland University in Brisbane, Australia, published this week after analysis of blood traces found on the 5,300-year- old mummy, which was dug out of the Alpine ice 12 years...

Italy's 5,000-Year-Old Iceman Put Up a Fight [DNA of 4 foes, venison and ibex his final meal]

Posted by SJackson
On News/Activism 08/14/2003 6:39:27 PM PDT · 33 replies · 356+ views

Reuters/Yahoo | 8-11-03 | Shasta Darlington
ROME (Reuters) - A prehistoric Italian iceman nicknamed "Otzi" may have been shot in the back with an arrow, but he only died after prolonged combat with his foes, new DNA evidence has shown. Reuters Photo Missed Tech Tuesday? Check out the powerful new PDA crop, plus the best buys for any budget The 5,000-year-old corpse, dug out of a glacier in northern Italy more than a decade ago, had traces of blood from four different people on his clothes and weapons, molecular archeologist Tom Loy said Wednesday. He also had "defensive cut wounds" on his hands, wrists and rib...

Iceman's bones lead scientists to his home turf

Posted by inPhase
On News/Activism 10/31/2003 9:30:13 AM PST · 7 replies · 75+ views

The Age | Nov 1, 2003 | Lucy Beaumont
Iceman's bones lead scientists to his home turf By Lucy Beaumont November 1, 2003 Printer friendly version Print this article Email to a friend Email to a friend The Iceman lived and died in a small area of northern Italy, scientists have deduced from analysis of his tooth enamel and bone samples. The home turf of a man who died 5200 years ago has been located by a team of scientists, including Australians, who analysed his teeth, bones and intestines. Examination of the famed "Iceman", whose frozen remains were found in a glacier on the Italian-Austrian border in 1991, has...

Finder of Tyrol "Iceman" missing in Alps

Posted by 11th_VA
On News/Activism 10/18/2004 10:22:51 AM PDT · 33 replies · 992+ views

Reuters | Mon 18 October, 2004 12:00
VIENNA (Reuters) - The man who 13 years ago found the frozen remains of a prehistoric iceman in an Alpine glacier has disappeared in the snow-covered Alps with little hope of being found. A member of the mountain rescue team at Bad Hofgastein in Austria told Reuters on Monday that Helmut Simon, the German man who found the 5,300-year-old mummified body while hiking on the border of Austria and Italy in 1991 has been missing for three days. "There's a lot of snow up there," the rescuer, who did not want to be named, said about the 2,467-metre (8,000-ft) Garmskarkogel...

'Iceman' discoverer joins his find in Alpine grave

Posted by aculeus
On News/Activism 10/23/2004 7:26:02 PM PDT · 14 replies · 972+ views

The Observer (UK) | October 24, 2004 | Sophie Arie in Rome
For 13 years, mountaineer Helmut Simon had basked in the glory of his unique encounter with history. In 1991, the 67-year-old German discovered Otzi the Iceman, the perfectly preserved body of a Neolithic hunter, emerging from the Similaun glacier, 3,200m (10,500ft) up the Austrian Alps. Wherever he went in his beloved Alps, Simon wore a badge identifying himself as 'Discoverer of Otzi'. But yesterday, Simon's body was found in a stream in these same mountains. On 15 October, the pensioner departed alone from the village of Bad Hofgastein, near Salzburg, up the 2,134m (7,000ft) Gamskarkogel peak. His wife, Erika, who...

Secrets Of A Stone Age Rambo (Otzi, The Iceman)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 05/05/2003 5:29:12 PM PDT · 31 replies · 504+ views

The Observer (UK) | 5-4-2003 | Robim Mckie
Secrets of a Stone Age Rambo They thought they had found the corpse of an ancient shepherd, but the iceman from 5,300 years ago now turns out to have been a hi-tech warrior Robin McKie Sunday May 4, 2003 The Observer (UK) When hikers spotted a corpse poking from the Schnalstal glacier in the Austrian-Italian Alps in 1991, they thought they had found the body of a lost climber. Then researchers took a closer look and announced the iceman was an ancient shepherd, a primitive farm worker who had got lost in the mountains and had died of hypothermia. Yet...

Was Ancient Alpine "Iceman" Killed in Battle?

Posted by SteveH
On News/Activism 11/02/2003 8:24:38 PM PST · 14 replies · 184+ views

National Geographic | Sarah Ives
Was Ancient Alpine "Iceman" Killed in Battle? Sarah Ives for National Geographic News October 30, 2003 In 1991, two Germans hiking in the Alps of northern Italy discovered the 5,200-year-old remains of a Copper Age man frozen in a glacier. The well-preserved corpse, dubbed "÷tzi the Iceman," was found with tools, arrows, and a knife. Since then, scientists have speculated about how the 46-year-old male died, offering scenarios from hypothermia to ritual sacrifice. Now a team of researchers has added another theory to the mix, suggesting that the Iceman died in battle. The "Iceman" made a valiant effort to fight...

Ancient Egypt

King Tut's skin color a topic of controversy

Posted by optik_b
On News/Activism 06/16/2005 6:59:26 AM PDT · 119 replies · 1,805+ views

LA Life | Wednesday, June 15, 2005 | Evan Henerson
King Tut's skin color a topic of controversy By Evan Henerson Staff Writer Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - Nobody can be sure exactly what the boy king Tutankhamun looked like. But a group of African-American activists charting the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" exhibition are certain of one thing: He didn't look white. Following an appearance before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, activists from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Committee for the Elimination of Media Offensive to African People, and the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations plan...

Ancient Rome

Italians Discover Hoard Of Roman Statues (Libya)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/11/2005 12:26:46 PM PDT · 17 replies · 544+ views

The Art Newspaper | 6-11-2005 | Edek Osser
Italians discover hoard of Roman statuesThe works have been protected by a temple wall which collapsed during an earthquake 1,600 years ago By Edek Osser CYRENE. An Italian team of archaeologists has discovered 76 intact Roman statues at Cyrene in Libya. The discovery is remarkable because the site, once a thriving Greek and then Roman settlement, has been under excavation for the last 150 years. With a nearby coastal port, Apollonia, serving it, Cyrene was once a conurbation equivalent to Alexandria, Carthage and Leptis Magna. An important Dorian colony, founded by Greek settlers from the island of Thera in 631...

Chariot Races Bring Ancient Roman City Back to Life

Posted by wildbill
On News/Activism 06/15/2005 6:32:44 AM PDT · 11 replies · 195+ views

Yahoo News/UPI | 6/15/2005 | staff
JERASH, Jordan (AFP) - The sun bears down and dust swirls as Roman centurions, followed by armour-clad legionnaires and bruised gladiators, tramp out of the ancient hippodrome to the trailing sounds of a military march. [Blocked Ads]In the seats all around, 21st century spectators in modern-day Jordan cheer and applaud the spectacle before them -- a one-hour show held in honour of Julius Caesar, and part of Jordan's newest tourist attraction. Starting mid-July, visitors to Jordan can plunge into the past, reliving in a unique location just north of the capital Amman some of the high moments that made the...

Asia

Mysteries Of The Xiaohe Tombs In Xinjiang, China

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/11/2005 12:02:21 PM PDT · 13 replies · 389+ views

Epoch Times | 6-10-2005
Mysteries of the Xiaohe Tombs in Xinjiang, China The Epoch Times Jun 10, 2005 A bird's-eye view of the Xiaohe Tombs. (Zhang Hongchi) On April 17, 2004, the Xiaohe ("Small River") Tombs in Xinjiang Province, discovered in 1939 by Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman, were said to be among China's top 10 archaeological discoveries. According to a Guangming Daily report from April 23, public interest in the tombs was first sparked when Bergman published a detailed introduction to the Xiaohe basin archaeology called the Archaeological Researches in Xinjiang in Stockholm in 1939. However, when the tombs' landmark Xiaohe River dried up,...

Niah Ceramics To Shed Light On Borneo's History

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/12/2005 11:32:52 AM PDT · 16 replies · 175+ views

Bernama | 6-12-2005 | Carol Ann Jackson
Niah Ceramics To Shed Light On Borneo's History By Caroline Ann Jackson KUCHING, June 12 (Bernama) -- A team of world-renowned scientists led by British-based archaeologist Dr Patrick Daly is working to determine the nature of human activity in Southeast Asia as far back as 40,000 years ago. Daly, of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research of the University of Cambridge, and his team expect to have the answers documented and published in a book comprising two monographs in 18 months under the Niah Caves Project of the Sarawak Museum. But first the scientists have to put together and study...

Biology and Cryptobiology

DNA scholars hope to stock Siberia 'park' with mammoths

Posted by Korth
On News/Activism 08/22/2002 9:12:32 AM PDT · 23 replies · 143+ views

Japan Times | August 20, 2002 | JULIAN RYALL
"Jurassic Park" was a work of fiction. Pleistocene Park is in the process of becoming fact. A joint team of Japanese and Russian scientists arrived in the Siberian province of Yakutsk late last month to excavate a number of creatures that have been extinct for millennia -- including mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses. They plan to extract DNA from the frozen remains, cross-breed the retrieved nuclei with the creatures' modern-day counterparts and return the resurrected dinosaurs to a vast "safari park" in northern Siberia. "It probably sounds a little far-fetched, but it's absolutely possible to do this," said professor Akira Iritani,...

The Genographic Project (Have Your DNA Checked, Find Your Roots)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/15/2005 11:34:14 AM PDT · 171 replies · 2,668+ views

National Geographic - IBM | 6-15-2005
The Genographic ProjectPublic participation, including yours, is critical to the Genographic Project's success. Here's how you can get involved: Purchasing a Public Participation Kit will fund important research around the worldóand open the door to the ancient past of your own genetic background. With a simple and painless cheek swab you can sample your own DNA. You'll submit the sample through our secure, private, and completely anonymous system, then log on to the project Web site to track your personal results online. This is not a genealogy test and you won't learn about your great grandparents. You will learn,...

Catastrophism and Astronomy

Bright Idea: Ancient monster tsunami mixed fossils

Posted by K4Harty
On News/Activism 02/01/2005 6:37:34 PM PST · 10 replies · 397+ views

The Albuquerque Tribune | 01/31/05 | Sue Vorenberg
A 65 million year old tsunami is still wreaking havoc in the scientific community, a New Mexico State University professor says. The 300-foot-tall tsunami - an aftereffect of the giant meteor impact that some scientists think killed off the dinosaurs - scrambled fossils and rock and has made the event very hard to date, said Timothy Lawton, head of NMSU's geology department.

Creature Features: Fossil Hunting on Mars

Posted by LibWhacker
On News/Activism 03/16/2004 8:41:36 PM PST · 4 replies · 142+ views

Space.com | 3/16/04 | Leonard David
Those on-the-prowl Mars robots -- Spirit and Opportunity -- are sending back extraordinary images and science data about the red planet and its history of climate and water. Both rovers have found evidence of water at their respective landing sites. But the question remains open as to whether Mars was, or is today, a planet capable of supporting life. The tell-tale clues of water left behind hint that some spots on Mars did have a persistent wet look that might have been sociable to extraterrestrial creatures. While Mars scientists have their eyes focused on finding tiny microbes, the question remains:...

Climate

The Coming and Going of Glaciers: A New Alpine Melt Theory

Posted by aculeus
On News/Activism 06/18/2005 5:06:43 AM PDT · 16 replies · 421+ views

Der Spiegel | May 23, 2005 | By Hilmar Schmundt
The Alpine glaciers are shrinking, that much we know. But new research suggests that in the time of the Roman Empire, they were smaller than today. And 7,000 years ago they probably weren't around at all. A group of climatologists have come up with a controversial new theory on how the Alps must have looked over the ages. The Morteratsch glacier in Switzerland has retreated by 1.5 km since 1900. Some scientists believe that glacial fluctuation could be a more normal development than previously thought. He may not look like a revolutionary, but Ulrich Joerin, a wiry Swiss scientist in...

Elam, Media, Persia, Parthia, Iran

Cyrus the Great in Biblical Prophecy [Zoroastrian leader mentioned 23 times in Bible]

Posted by freedom44
On News/Activism 06/12/2005 9:42:09 PM PDT · 4 replies · 670+ views

Christian Coutier | 6/12/05 | Wayne Jackson
One of the truly astounding prophecies of the Bible is found in the last verse of Isaiah 44, together with chapter 45:1ff, (an unfortunate chapter break). It has to do with Cyrus, king of Persia. According to the historian Herodotus (i.46), Cyrus was the son of Cambyses I. He came to the Persian throne in 559 B.C. Nine years later he conquered the Medes, thus unifying the kingdoms of the Medes and the Persians. Cyrus is mentioned some 23 times in the literature of the Old Testament. Isaiah refers to Cyrus as Jehovah's "shepherd," the Lord's "anointed," who was providentially...

Let's Have Jerusalem

After a 2,000-Year Rest, a Seed Sprouts in Jerusalem

Posted by TheOtherOne
On News/Activism 06/11/2005 7:29:53 PM PDT · 66 replies · 1,660+ views

NY TIMES | JERUSALEM, June 11
JERUSALEM, June 11 - Israeli doctors and scientists have succeeded in germinating a date seed nearly 2,000 years old. The seed, nicknamed Methuselah, was taken from an excavation at Masada, the cliff fortress where, in A.D. 73, 960 Jewish zealots died by their own hand, rather than surrender to a Roman assault. The point is to find out what was so exceptional about the original date palm of Judea, much praised in the Bible and the Koran for its shade, food, beauty and medicinal qualities, but long ago destroyed by the crusaders.

BBC: Date palm buds after 2,000 years

Posted by Ernest_at_the_Beach
On News/Activism 06/12/2005 9:59:05 PM PDT · 17 replies · 615+ views

BBC | Monday, 13 June, 2005, 01:21 GMT 02:21 UK | staff
Date palm buds after 2,000 years Dates have symbolic importance in the Middle East Israeli researchers say they have succeeded in growing a date palm from a 2,000-year-old seed. The seed was one of several found during an excavation of the ancient mountain fortress of Masada. Scientists working on the project believe it is the oldest seed ever germinated. Researchers in Jerusalem have nicknamed the sapling Methuselah, after the biblical figure said to have lived for nearly 1,000 years. Future medicine? The palm is from a variety that became extinct in the Middle Ages and was reputed to have...

Prehistory and Origins

Temples Older Than Pyramids Found (In Europe)

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 06/11/2005 12:54:56 PM PDT · 62 replies · 1,552+ views

BBC | Saturday June 11 2005
A series of temples thought to be older than Stonehenge or the Pyramids have been uncovered by a team of archaeologists working in Europe. More than 150 monuments built between 4,800 BC and 4,600 BC have been found beneath the fields of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They are thought to represent Europe's oldest civilisation. The discoveries are so new that this temple building culture does not even have a name, The Independent reports. Click here to try our ancient civilisations quiz The temples were made of earth and wood, with the buildings stretching for up to half a mile....

Europe's oldest civilisation unearthed

Posted by wagglebee
On News/Activism 06/11/2005 2:02:58 PM PDT · 31 replies · 808+ views

theage.com | 6/11/05 | AFP
Europe's oldest civilisation has been discovered by archaeologists across the continent, it was reported yesterday. More than 150 large temples, constructed between 4800 BC and 4600 BC, have been unearthed in fields and cities in Germany, Austria and Slovakia, predating the pyramids in Egypt by some 2,000 years, The Independent newspaper revealed. The network of temples, made of earth and wood, were constructed by a religious people whose economy appears to have been based on livestock farming, The Independent reported. Excavations have taken place over the past three years but the discovery is so new that the civilisation has not...

Europe's oldest civilisation unearthed: report

Posted by STARWISE
On General/Chat 06/11/2005 9:38:16 PM PDT · 8 replies · 153+ views

Yahoo/AFP | 6-11-05
LONDON (AFP) - Europe's oldest civilisation has reportedly been discovered by archaelogists across the continent. More than 150 large temples, constructed between 4800 BC and 4600 BC, have been unearthed in fields and cities in Germany, Austria and Slovakia, predating the pyramids in Egypt by some 2,000 years, The Independent newspaper revealed. The network of temples, made of earth and wood, were constructed by a religious people whose economy appears to have been based on livestock farming, The Independent reported. (snip) The most complex centre discovered so far, beneath the city of Dresden in Saxony, eastern Germany, comprises a temple...

Faithful Ancestors

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/17/2005 8:33:25 AM PDT · 78 replies · 855+ views

Science News Magazine | 6-11-2005 | Bruce Bower
Faithful AncestorsResearchers debate claims of monogamy for Lucy and her ancient kin Bruce Bower A weird kind of creature strode across the eastern African landscape from around 4 million to 3 million years ago. Known today by the scientific label Australopithecus afarensis, these ancient ancestors of people may have taken the battle of the sexes in a strange direction, for primates at any rate. True, no one can re-create with certainty the court and spark that led to sexual unions between early hominids. Nothing short of a time machine full of scientifically trained paparazzi could manage that trick. All is...

Thoroughly Modern Miscellany

Curtis Pitts has "Gone West"

Posted by Dashing Dasher
On General/Chat 06/10/2005 2:37:24 PM PDT · 35 replies · 291+ views

usakrofolk.com | 06/10/05 | Dashing Dasher
Curtis Pitts, the legendary designer of the Pitts Special, has died today. A brief biography, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Pitts Special. The Pitts Special is part of American aviation history. An early Pitts Special airplane is in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Pitts Special airplanes are also in the Experimental Aviation Association Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin as well as the British Museum in London and many other aviation museums around the world. The Pitts Special was designed by Curtis Pitts and is acknowledged as the worlds leading competition aerobatic and airshow...

Scientists: Hunley Had Skylights

Posted by stainlessbanner
On News/Activism 06/16/2005 4:28:32 PM PDT · 37 replies · 800+ views

wltx | 6/15/2005
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) - Scientists excavating the Confederate submarine Hunley say they've found another unique feature of the boat. They say the Hunley had a series of skylights on top of the hull. Each had a cover which could be closed from inside. Charleston Senator Glenn McConnell chairs the Hunley Commission. He says the covers could have prevented light from escaping from the inside of the Hunley, revealing its position. McConnell says it appears the covers were designed to help seal the sub if one of the skylights broke. He says it's another indication the Hunley was a well-thought-out...

Are We Going the Way of Rome?

Posted by highlander_UW
On News/Activism 12/17/2003 5:07:31 PM PST · 121 replies · 394+ views

Mackinac Center for Public Policy | 9/1/01 | Lawrence Reed
Are We Going the Way of Rome? Download PDF There's an old story worth retelling about a band of wild hogs which lived along a river in a secluded area of Georgia. These hogs were a stubborn, ornery, independent bunch. They had survived floods, fires, freezes, droughts, hunters, dogs, and everything else. No one thought they could ever be captured. One day a stranger came into town not far from where the hogs lived and went into the general store. He asked the storekeeper, "Where can I find the hogs? I want to capture them." The storekeeper laughed at such...

Freed Slave's Life Uncovered

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 06/11/2005 10:47:07 PM PDT · 4 replies · 389+ views

Daily Progress | June 9, 2005 | Melanie Mayhew
Years before the Civil War, a free black washerwoman is believed to have made her living laundering the clothes of University of Virginia students and professors. Little of her story is known, but a new archeological discovery may help unearth her place in history. Archeologists have uncovered evidence of two additional graves on university grounds, a dozen years after archeologists found 12 other grave shafts nearby. The discovery could shed some light on the people who lived - and now rest - on UVa land, said Mary Hughes, university landscape architect. "We don't know fully what these explorations mean, but...

Now I know why Byrd is a proud member of the KKK

Posted by laissez- faire
On General/Chat 03/04/2005 1:05:53 PM PST · 3 replies · 207+ views

The Reader's Companion to American History | Allen W. Trelease
Klansmen were drawn from every walk of life, but the leaders often were from the landholding and professional elite. After a brief flurry of practical joking and pretending to be ghosts, the Klan emerged as a terrorist group dedicated to defeating the Republican party and keeping blacks in "their place" socially and economically. Most southern counties saw little of the Klan, but others were overrun by it for months or years at a time. It tended to thrive where the two parties or races were relatively evenly balanced; in such places, terrorism was most apt to change election results. In...

Moral Relativism in the Rainforest of Diversity

Posted by expatguy
On Bloggers & Personal 04/26/2005 1:55:24 PM PDT · 12 replies · 215+ views

An American Expat in Southeast Asia | 22 April 2005 | expatguy
My flight would touch down in Kuching, Sarawak on the island of Borneo early one morning less than fifty years after the last of the White Rajahs, Charles Vyner Brooke and his family had finally ceded the State to the British Crown. This would become the first of many trips to Sarawak for me where I would eventually gain a deep affection and understanding of the people there. The very first thing I noticed about Sarawak when I first arrived was how beautiful and green everything was and how fresh the air smelled. Both Malaysia and Island of Borneo are...

SADDAM DRAINED THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Posted by van_erwin
On News/Activism 04/07/2003 9:33:26 AM PDT · 67 replies · 677+ views

Boston Globe | 4/1/2003 | Fred Pearce
Saddam Hussein turned a thriving marshland into a poisoned desert. Can it be restored? The project, which has been discussed only in outline by scientists so far, would be the largest and most ambitious recovery of a wetland ever attempted. It might cost tens of millions of dollars or more, but could be a model for reviving many other natural water reservoirs as the world staves off growing water shortages.

Bodies of WWI soldiers found in glacier [ww1]

Posted by risk
On News/Activism 08/24/2004 5:12:58 AM PDT · 17 replies · 1,538+ views

Bodies of WWI soldiers found in glacier | Aug. 24, 2004, 6:37AM
Bodies of WWI soldiers found in glacier ROME - The bodies of three Austrian soldiers killed in World War One have been found frozen and almost perfectly preserved in an Italian Alpine glacier. Mountain rescue worker Maurizio Vicenzi discovered the mummified bodies on Friday, encased upside down in ice at 11,940 feet altitude on San Matteo mountain near the Swiss and Austrian borders. "Using binoculars, I saw what looked like a stain on the Forni glacier and went to look," Vicenzi, 46, from the northern Italian town of Peio told Reuters on Monday. "When I got close I discovered...

World War One Color Photos

Posted by Jinjelsnaps
On News/Activism 03/03/2005 2:25:44 PM PST · 179 replies · 6,222+ views

Big D & Bubba Show | 3/2/05 | Unknown
Found this on another message board, and thought my fellow Freepers would enjoy the history. From the site: "The color photo was invented in 1903 by the Lumiere brothers, and the French army was the only one taking color photos during the course of the war." http://www.bigdandbubba.com

end of digest #48 20050618

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #49 Saturday, June 25, 2005
Ancient Egypt
Glassmakers key to Egypt's status
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/24/2005 9:31:27 AM PDT · 1 reply · 60+ views BBC \| Friday, 17 June, 2005 \| staff Ancient Egypt was mass-producing its own glass objects more than 3,000 years ago, according to evidence from digs in the country's eastern Nile delta. The finding rejects a theory that the Egyptians simply got their glass from the Mesopotamians and reworked it... The earliest evidence of glass production comes from Mesopotamia in 1550 BC. It is generally accepted that the industry spread from here to Egypt, where it appeared by 1500 BC. The new findings come from studies carried out by Edgar Pusch and Thilo Rehren, from UCL, of archaeological debris from a 13th Century BC glass factory at the...
Ancient Greece
Archaeologists Unearth Part Of 3,500 Year-Old Gold Mask (Orpheus)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/24/2005 10:23:20 AM PDT · 7 replies · 450+ views Bulgarian News Network. (BBN) \| 6-24-2005 Archaeologists unearth part of 3, 500 year-old gold mask SOFIA (bnn)- Archaeologists in Southern Bulgaria, exploring what they believe to be the tomb of Orpheus, discovered fragments of a golden mask dating from the Trojan War, state TV reported. The expedition found the gold in a 3, 500 year-old temple that has survived untouched by treasure hunters. Archaeological team leader Nikolay Ovcharov said the mask was older than a 690-gram (24.3-ounce) Thracian gold mask that was unearthed a year ago in central Bulgaria. The Thracians were Bronze Age people, who lived in the Balkans between 4,000 B.C. and the seventh...

Search On For Secret Of Greek Sea Battle
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/21/2005 9:07:28 AM PDT · 33 replies · 1,018+ views The Guardian (UK) \| 6-20-2005 \| Helena Smith Search on for secret of Greek sea battle A team of experts are to trawl the Aegean for triremes, the ships that were crucial to the victory over Xerxes of Persia Helena Smith in Athens Monday June 20, 2005 The Guardian (UK) They were hopelessly outnumbered, but even then the Greeks knew it would be the battle that could change history. The Asian invaders had entered the Aegean. The "comeliest of boys" had been castrated; the throats of the "goodliest" soldiers ripped out. Mounted on his marble throne, Xerxes, Persia's formidable warrior king, looked over the bay of Salamis, confident...
Ancient Rome
Ancient Thermal City To Be Flooded In Turkey
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/24/2005 10:32:40 AM PDT · 17 replies · 382+ views SE European Times \| 6-23-2005 Ancient Thermal City to Be Flooded in Turkey 23/06/2005The 1,800-year-old city of Allianoi will be flooded in November by the Yortanli Dam. [File] Archeologists, environmentalists and international NGOs are joining together to try to find a way to save an 1,800-year-old archeological site, due to be flooded this November by the waters from a new dam. By Allan Cove for Southeast European Times – 23/06/05 The world's oldest known ancient thermal city, Allianoi, stands to be flooded when the Yortanli Dam begins operation this November. Located in the very centre of the planned dam lake, it will be submerged under...
Asia
Archaeologists Start Digging For Hun Settlements In Russia
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/23/2005 12:03:03 PM PDT · 17 replies · 276+ views RIA Novosti \| 6-22-2005 Archaeologists start digging for Hun settlements in Russia LIPETSK, June 22 (RIA Novosti) - Major archaeological excavation work has started in the Lipetsk region's Zadonsk and Khlevnoye districts (Central Russia), where Hun settlements used to be in ancient times. "Four archaeological expeditions, involving a hundred people each, have started excavation work on the banks of the Don and the Voronezh rivers on the sites of former settlements of the Huns," Mikhail Ryazantsev, an archaeologist at the State Department for Cultural Heritage Protection, told RIA Novosti. The Huns were nomadic tribes between the second and fourth centuries A.D. Experts of Lipetsk's...

Budda who went to the West....(became St. Josaphat)
	Posted by TigerLikesRooster On News/Activism 06/24/2005 9:33:39 AM PDT · 28 replies · 400+ views Chosun Ilbo \| 06/24/05 \| Lee Han-soo /begin my translation Budda who went to the West.... "Not as a religion, but as a legend, spreading from Persia to Greece to Spain"Institute for East-West Cultural Exchange: "revered as a saint in the Middle Age" Lee Han-soo hslee@chosun.com Date : 2005.06.24 Buddha went to the East as well as to the West, according to a new research. The life and teaching of Buddha born in India spread to China and Korea, eventually to Japan, while it spawned Tibetan Buddhism in the North. It was established as a 'religion' in the East. It spread to many S.E. Asian countries in the South,...

China: Remains of prehistoric plant found Shandong
	Posted by TigerLikesRooster On News/Activism 06/20/2005 7:34:51 AM PDT · 9 replies · 193+ views People's Daily \| 06/18/05 Remains of prehistoric plant found Shandong Chinese archaeologists said Tuesday that they found remains of 30 kinds of plants dating back 8,000 years in east China's Shandong province. The remains were found near the construction site of an international exposition center in the coastal city of Qingdao. Zhang Zhigang, expert with China Paleontology Society, said a team of archaeologists had been digging for ancient plant remains since the end of last year when they first found remains of a 10-cm-long reed at the site. He said the discovery is a breakthrough and will provide evidence for human evolution research. The...
Britain
Archaeologists Figure Out Mystery Of Stonehenge Bluestones
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/24/2005 10:14:46 AM PDT · 39 replies · 1,400+ views IC Wales \| 6-24-2005 \| Western Mail Archaeologists figure out mystery of Stonehenge bluestones Jun 24 2005 Staff Reporter, Western Mail ARCHAEOLOGISTS have solved one of the greatest mysteries of Stonehenge - the exact spot from where its huge stones were quarried. A team has pinpointed the precise place in Wales from where the bluestones were removed in about 2500 BC. It found the small crag-edged enclosure at one of the highest points of the 1,008ft high Carn Menyn mountain in Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills. The enclosure is just over one acre in size but, according to team leader Professor Tim Darvill, it provides a veritable "Aladdin's Cave"...

Stonehenge Druids 'Mark Wrong Solstice'
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/21/2005 2:52:07 PM PDT · 61 replies · 978+ views The Telegraph (UK) \| 6-21-2005 \| Charles Clover Stonehenge druids 'mark wrong solstice' By Charles Clover, Environment Editor (Filed: 21/06/2005) Modern-day druids, hippies and revellers who turn up at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice may not be marking an ancient festival as they believe. The latest archaeological findings add weight to growing evidence that our ancestors visited Stonehenge to celebrate the winter solstice. Analysis of pigs's teeth found at Durrington Walls, a ceremonial site of wooden post circles near Stonehenge on the River Avon, has shown that most pigs were less than a year old when slaughtered. Dr Umburto Albarella, an animal bone expert at the University...
Elam, Media, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Ancient fire temple found in Sabzevar
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/24/2005 9:40:29 AM PDT · 3 replies · 73+ views IranMania \| Tuesday, June 14, 2005 \| staff Recent archeological excavations in Sabzevar have led to the discovery of an ancient fire temple and a number of other edifices in the area... The discovery of quadric-arch known as ’Demon House’ in Reyvand village (in Bashtin) had earlier discarded the possibility that the fire temple was located in Sabzevar. Archeologists contended that this quadric-arch monument was an undecorated stone building, observed Mohammad Abdollah-Zadeh Sani, an archeologist based in Sabzevar... The ruins of a Zoroastrian temple have also been identified... Azar-Barzin Mehr is one of three important fire temples belonging to the Sassanid era and was used by farmers and...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Monks use hi-tech camera to read ancient texts
	Posted by NYer On News/Activism 06/19/2005 9:37:38 AM PDT · 31 replies · 596+ views Reuters \| June 19, 2005 \| Tom Perry MOUNT SINAI, Egypt (Reuters) - The world's oldest monastery plans to use hi-tech cameras to shed new light on ancient Christian texts preserved for centuries within its fortress walls in the Sinai Desert. Saint Catherine's Monastery hopes the technology will allow a fuller understanding of some of the world's earliest Christian texts, including pages from the Codex Sinaiticus -- the oldest surviving bible in the world. The technique, known as hyperspectral imaging, will use a camera to photograph the parchments at different wavelengths of light, highlighting faded texts obscured by time and later overwritings. It should allow scholars to understand...
Mesopotamia
'Detectives' unearth secrets of the past (Dilmun seals inscribed with Indus Valley inscription)
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/24/2005 9:49:38 AM PDT · 6 replies · 80+ views Daily News the Voice of Bahrain \| Monday 6th June 2005 \| Rebecca Torr Artefacts dating back 4,000 years, unearthed at a burial site in Janabiya, are shedding more light on merchant movements during the Dilmun era. Dilmun seals found at the site are inscribed with an Indus Valley inscription. Indus Valley was an ancient civilisation that thrived in an area between Pakistan and India between 2,800BC and 1,800BC... This is not the first time that Indus Valley inscriptions have been found on Dilmun seals, but it is rare, said archaeology and heritage acting director Khalid Al Sindi.
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Did Ancient Polynesians Visit California? Maybe So
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/20/2005 3:27:04 PM PDT · 170 replies · 2,021+ views SF Gate \| 6-20-2005 \| Keay Davidson Scientists are taking a new look at an old and controversial idea: that ancient Polynesians sailed to Southern California a millennium before Christopher Columbus landed on the East Coast. Key new evidence comes from two directions. The first involves revised carbon-dating of an ancient ceremonial headdress used by Southern California's Chumash Indians. The second involves research by two California scientists who suggest that a Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe" is derived from a Polynesian word for the wood used to construct the same boat.

Kansas Dig May Have Found Early Campsite
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/24/2005 9:13:55 AM PDT · 7 replies · 105+ views Yahoo \| Mon Jun 13,10:06 PM ET \| AP Radiocarbon dating results finished in February showed that mammoth and prehistoric camel bones found at a rural site near Kanorado, about a mile from the Colorado border, dated back to 12,200 years ago. That would mean people who once camped at the site may have arrived in the Great Plains 700 years before historians previously thought... Evidence of campsites for early plains people have already been found, the researchers said. Pieces of tools and a bead from the Clovis era — from about 10,800 years ago to 11,500 years ago — have been uncovered. Rolfe Mandel, an archaeological geologist with...

Kennewick Man To Be Studied In Seattle
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/20/2005 9:04:20 PM PDT · 32 replies · 533+ views TriCity Herald \| 6-20-2005 \| Anna King Kennewick Man to be studied in Seattle This story was published Monday, June 20th, 2005 By Anna King, Herald staff writer Scientists say they are wrapping up final arrangements to study Kennewick Man's remains in early July at University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle. The 9,400-year-old skeleton found along the banks of the Columbia River in 1996 has been the focus of a bitter nine-year court battle between the federal government, Mid-Columbia Native American tribes that claim the bones as their ancestor and the scientists who want to study the remains. Scientists from around the country plan to convene...
Prehistory and Origins
Mandible, Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain, Homo Antecessor, 800K years old
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/24/2005 9:23:35 AM PDT · 3 replies · 28+ views Reuters / Yahoo \| Tue Jun 21,10:36 AM ET \| Felix Ordoez An archaeologist holds a mandible bone attributed to Homo antecessor, dating from about 800,000 years ago, during a presentation of the latest discoveries and cataloguing at the site of the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain June 20, 2005. This mandible, which shows a primitive structural pattern shared with all African and Asian Homo species, adds to the hominin sample recovered from this site between 1994 and 1996. It is the left half of a gracile mandible belonging probably to a female adult with premolars and molars in place.

The origin of M1 mitochondrial DNA haplotype
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/23/2005 8:57:34 AM PDT · 11 replies · 193+ views University of Cambridge, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research \| Anne Holden
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
DNA Unable to Prove Bones in Savannah Are Revolutionary War Hero Pulaski - Circumstantial Case Made
	Posted by Pharmboy On News/Activism 06/21/2005 8:05:51 PM PDT · 20 replies · 250+ views Associated Press \| Jun 21, 2005 \| Russ Bynum SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - DNA tests on bones exhumed from a monument to Brig. Gen. Casimir Pulaski failed to prove the remains are those of the Revolutionary War hero killed in a 1779 battle to retake Savannah from the British. But a draft report on the investigation into Pulaski's disputed burial says historical records and skeletal injuries make a case that the remains are those of the Polish nobleman. "While the strong circumstantial evidence does suggest that the remains are Casimir Pulaski, the inability to obtain a DNA match leads to no viable conclusion," says the report obtained by The...

East Carolina team locates sunken Union ship in Roanoke River
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 06/24/2005 7:39:34 PM PDT · 5 replies · 283+ views Myrtles Beach Online \| Thu, Jun. 23, 2005 \| JERRY ALLEGOOD JAMESVILLE, N.C. - Lacking the fame of the iron-plated USS Monitor or the Confederate gunboat Albemarle, sunken remains of the Union warship Otsego became little more than a snag in the Roanoke River after the Civil War. Largely overlooked by local residents, the wreck might be mired in obscurity if not for researchers at East Carolina University. Students and faculty in ECU's Program in Maritime Studies recently confirmed the wreck's location in the Roanoke near Jamesville, about 110 miles east of Raleigh, and mapped it for study. Larry E. Babits, director of ECU's maritime program, said the Otsego was one...

Rome's Villa Medici and 'Mount Parnassus' recover their former glory
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/19/2005 8:09:56 PM PDT · 4 replies · 68+ views Yahoo! \| Thu Jun 16, 1:25 PM ET \| Agence France Presse For the last 200 years the Villa Medici, whose gardens are among the best preserved examples of formal Renaissance gardens, has been home to the Academy of France. Its pines have been famous, and the views across Rome matchless. Among its attractions is the 20-metre (66-feet) high artificial mound known as Parnassus but the passage of time has made access difficult and, according to the Villa's director Richard Pedruzzi, major restoration work had been required... The pavilion on Parnassus, the stairways, the slopes and the paths that ring it have been renovated, while the "Bosco" or wood which Ferdinand used...

The West rewrites history, too
	Posted by robowombat On News/Activism 06/10/2005 6:43:15 AM PDT · 67 replies · 700+ views Asia Times \| June 2, 2005 \| Alexander Bukh The West rewrites history, too By Alexander Bukh TOKYO - The issue of revisionist textbooks and what is perceived to be the "whitewashing" of history in Japan has received tremendous attention from regional and international media alike. As a result of numerous geopolitical and domestic factors, not only in Japan but also in its former colonies, the war over what is the correct view of 20th century history in Asia is far from over, as the regional powers present conflicting historical narratives, each one driven by emotional, political and strategic calculations. At the same time, the Western media, faithful to...
end of digest #49 20050625

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #50
Saturday, July 2, 2005

Underwater Archaeology

Archaeological wonders are under the sea (Shipwrecked 4th century BC vessel found in Greek waters)

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 06/27/2005 4:15:32 PM PDT · 16 replies · 493+ views

Yorkshire Divers/AFP | June 24 2005 | Eleni Colliopoulou
Athens - The recent discovery of the remains of a shipwrecked 4th century BC vessel, nicknamed Kythnos I after the Greek island near which it was found, is the latest testimony of the archaeological riches still submerged in Greek waters. It also demonstrates the technological advances that underwater archaeology has made in this country in recent years. Greece has no shortage of skilled archaeologists. But when it comes to underwater research, it is only recently that the Greek ministry of culture has begun mixing academic knowledge with hi-tech wizardry. Collaboration with the national centre for maritime research (Elkethe), and increased...

Police warn of 'dangerous treasure hunt' off coast (Scotland)

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 06/27/2005 1:21:46 PM PDT · 19 replies · 921+ views

Scotsman | SARAH BRUCE
POLICE have warned people not to endanger their lives treasure-hunting after ancient coins and gold were found off the Scottish coast. Four divers from Glasgow made the discovery earlier this month while exploring two wooden wrecks. They took ashore samples of gold and coins they had found on the floor of a cave in a sea cliff, believed to be in the Cullykhan bay area, near the Local Hero village of Pennan. Among the sample of goodies they took ashore were bottles of irregularly shaped granules of 23-carat gold and a box of coins. A spokesman for Grampian Police said:...

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptian Princess Head from 14th Century B.C. Listed on eBay

Posted by FairOpinion
On News/Activism 06/25/2005 11:59:09 PM PDT · 21 replies · 496+ views

Business Wire | June 25, 2005 | GazinAuctions
Amazing Ancient Egyptian Princess Head from 14th Century B.C. to be Listed on eBay; Head is That of King Tut's Sister - First Time on the Market in More Than 50 Years LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 23, 2005--A rare Mansoor portrait sculpture of an 18th dynasty Amarna Princess (ca 1363-1364 B.C.) goes live on eBay, the world's largest online marketplace, June 23rd at 10 AM P.S.T. Previews of the piece are now viewable at www.ebay.com/princess . The beautiful, delicately carved pink limestone head was last sold more than 50 years ago by the legendary M.A. Mansoor, to a private collector, who...

Microprobe Makeover For Museum's Mummy (Australia)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/28/2005 11:03:38 AM PDT · 4 replies · 108+ views

The Australian | 6-28-2005 | Selina Mitchell
Microprobe makeover for museum's mummy Selina Mitchell JUNE 28, 2005 THE CSIRO has teamed up with the National Gallery of Victoria to reconstruct and conserve the last resting place of a teenage Egyptian priestess who died around 700BC. The coffin lid, one of the first major Egyptian antiquities to arrive in Australia, is in a fragile state. About 60 per cent of the wood, and even more of its painted surface, are lost, but the original bright colours on the remaining pieces survive under layers of dirt -- gallery officials think. "It's good that it's in many pieces, because unlike...

Scientists May Soon Get Glimpse Of Mummy's Face

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/27/2005 11:57:56 AM PDT · 30 replies · 594+ views

AP | 6-26-2005
Scientists may soon get glimpse of mummy's face 6/26/2005, 5:49 p.m. ET The Associated Press NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. (AP) -- Pesed has called a western Pennsylvania college home for about 120 years, but her caretakers don't know what she looks like. But that might change now that researchers have a CT scan of the 2,300-year-old Egyptian mummy. Officials believe the scan will provide enough information to allow a forensic artist to construct a bust of Pesed, a mummy from the Nile River town of Akhmim, about 350 miles south of Cairo. Pesed has been the property of Westminster College, located...

Ancient Greece

After 2,600 Years, The World Gains Fourth Poem By Sappho

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/25/2005 6:38:31 PM PDT · 53 replies · 1,093+ views

The Guardian (UK) | 6-24-2005 | John Ezard
After 2,600 years, the world gains a fourth poem by Sappho John Ezard Friday June 24, 2005 The Guardian (UK) Plato believed Sappho should be honoured not merely as a poet but as a Muse. Photo: Getty A newly found poem by Sappho, acknowledged as one of the greatest poets of Greek classical antiquity and seen by some as the finest of any era, is published for the first time today. Written more than 2,600 years ago, the 101 words of verse deal with a theme timeless in both art and soap operas; the stirrings of an ageing body towards...

Ancient Rome

Major Excavation At Roman Forts (Wales)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/27/2005 11:43:56 AM PDT · 4 replies · 396+ views

The Telegraph (UK) | 6-27-2005
Major excavation at Roman forts The forts have been discovered at Dinefwr Park Three weeks of digging to excavate what could be the largest Roman garrison fort in Wales start on Monday. The site, which dates from the first century AD, was first found at Dinefwr Park, near Llandeilo, in 2003. Experts said the south Wales discovery could rewrite our understanding of the Roman conquest in the area. Recent surveys confirmed the site, which is invisible from the surface, is much larger than first thought and is made up of two overlapping forts. Emma Plunkett Dillon, archaeologist for the National...

Revealed: our friends the Romans did not invade Britain after all

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 06/29/2005 12:33:12 AM PDT · 34 replies · 1,089+ views

Wren's Nest | 26 June 2005
Astonishing new archaeological finds reveal they were already our countrymen 50 years before Claudius spun his way into the history books. reports The history of Britain will have to be rewritten. The AD43 Roman invasion never happened - and was simply a piece of sophisticated political spin by a weak Emperor Claudius. A series of astonishing archaeological findings of Roman military equipment, to be revealed this week, will prove that the Romans had already arrived decades earlier - and that they had been welcomed with open arms by ancient Britons. The discovery of swords, helmets and armour in Chichester, Sussex,...

Asia

Ancient bronze drum found in central province

Posted by FairOpinion
On News/Activism 06/29/2005 10:51:02 PM PDT · 6 replies · 189+ views

Vietnam News Agency | June 30, 2005 | VNA
Quang Tri, June 30 (VNA) - An ancient bronze drum believed to date back to the Dong Son culture, which existed 2,000-2,500 years ago, has been discovered in the central province of Quang Tri. The drum, 1m in diameter and 1.5m in height, was unearthed by some local people while looking for scrap iron along the Viet Nam-Laos borderline. However, the locals then sold the drum to a scrap store. Concerned provincial agencies are now looking for the antique. -Enditem

Ancient urban civilisation dug out in Anantnag (Kashmir)

Posted by FairOpinion
On News/Activism 06/29/2005 9:32:38 PM PDT · 9 replies · 207+ views

Express India | June 30, 2005 | ENS
Srinagar, June 29: THE State Archaeology Department has discovered remains of some hitherto unknown civilisation on plateau at Kutbal in south Kashmirís Anantnag district. In a statement, the department said that the remains of the civilisation were scattered over several kanals of land of this plateau. A portion of the land was given a trial dig and at depth of five feet, the first layer of the ancient settlement, probably of the Buddhist period, consisting of a tile pavement laid out in concentric circle with a full-blown lotus in the centre, was found. This pavement was laid in such a...

Cambodia beyond Angkor Wat

Posted by nickcarraway
On General/Chat 06/24/2005 10:48:17 PM PDT · 1 reply · 61+ views

The Straits Times | 2005-06-25 | Janice Wong
When they heard that I was going to Cambodia, my friends and family first worried about my safety, and then reminded me to take lots of pictures of Angkor Wat. They told me that whenever they read something about the country, the reports were more often than not about bombings and crime. But after my recent five-day holiday, I discovered that the country, which has been ravaged for years by civil war, is peaceful. Incidentally, the hostage drama in an international school in Siem Reap happened after I came back, but I know that it was just a one-off unfortunate...

Site of 6000-year-old ancient city discovered in Hubei

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 06/29/2005 12:15:36 AM PDT · 10 replies · 388+ views

People's Daily | June 27, 2005
The ancient city, covering 80,000 sq. meters, is surrounded by lakes in the east, west and south; to its north is a human-dug trench. The city is of an irregular round shape. The city wall is about 2 meters at the highest point and 1 meter the lowest. A great deal of fired red earth was used in buildings and utensils in the city. Stone implements, potteries and some jade articles are found in the city too. The discovery of the site is of paramount importance to study of formation and development of ancient cities in the middle and lower...

Prehistoric Europe

Bog Mummy Mistaken For Murder Victim (Germany)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/28/2005 10:10:18 AM PDT · 27 replies · 722+ views

The Discovery Channel | 6-27-2005 | Rossella Lorenzi
Bog Mummy Mistaken for Murder Victim By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News June 27, 2005 -- The body of a teenage girl thought to be the victim of foul play has turned out to be one of Germany's oldest and best-preserved mummies, German archaeologists announced at a press conference last week.Bog Mummy's Hand Found in September 2000 in a peat bog in the town of Uchte, in Lower Saxony, the corpse was first examined by the police homicide unit. Though it had been fragmented by the peat machine, the body appeared to belong to a teenage girl. Investigators thought it could be...

Elam, Media, Persia, Parthia, Iran

Zoroastrianism - Religion of the Persian Empire

Posted by freedom44
On News/Activism 06/25/2005 8:31:30 PM PDT · 29 replies · 737+ views

MB Faith | 6/25/05 | MB Faith
During the 7th and 6th centuries BC the ancient polytheistic religion of the Iranians was reformed and given new dimensions by the prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathusthra). Zoroaster's life dates have been traditionally given as (c. 628 - 551 BC), but many scholars argue for earlier dates. Linguistic evidence suggests that he was born in northeastern Iran, but the prophet's message was to spread throughout the Persian Empire. Adopted as the faith of the Persian kings, Zoroastrianism became the official religion of the Achaemenid empire and flourished under its successors, the Parthian and Sassanian empires. Its theology and cosmology may have...

Epigraphy and Language

Vanilla Ice: "Ice Ice Baby" translated into Latin

Posted by Constitution Day
On Bloggers & Personal 07/01/2005 6:54:33 AM PDT · 54 replies · 331+ views

Livejournal.com | 01/17/2005 | cataptromancer (Livejournal)
In the noble tradition of De clunibus magnis amandis oratio (Baby Got Back), I bring you: Gelu, O Gelu, CaraVANILL? GELUS doo doo doo, doo-doo-doo-doo doo doo doo, doo-doo-doo-doo... Etenim, siste, me iuva, auscultaque (Indeed: Halt, aid me, and take heed) Gelu redivit cum inventione novissima (Frost has returned with a very new invention) Nescioquid me constringit (Something constrains me) Fluo ceu hasta baleanarum necandarum noctu et quotidie (I flow in the manner of a whale-killing spear daily and by night) Umquam hoc desistetne? Ego dubito. (Shall this ever cease? I myself doubt it.) Lucernis restinctis luceam (When the lamps...

Mesopotamia

Study sheds fresh light on Dilmun

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 06/25/2005 11:30:22 PM PDT · 3 replies · 161+ views

Gulf Daily News | 20 June 2005 | REBECCA TORR
A SAUDI archaeologist is rounding up a group of experts to witness an annual phenomenon in Saar, which he claims sheds new light on the Dilmun civilisation. Dammam Regional Museum archaeologist Nabiel Al Shaikh has been visiting a temple at the 4,000-year-old Saar settlement for the last nine years in an attempt to prove his theory. The ancient temple has an oddly positioned triangular corner room, which Mr Al Shaikh claims was used as an astronomical device to measure the position of the sun. He believes that during the summer solstice, which falls on June 21, the sun would set...

PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis

Antiquity Unearthed Downtown (Tuscon - 2,000 Years Old)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/01/2005 3:18:22 PM PDT · 11 replies · 359+ views

Daily Star | 7-1-2005 | Lindsay A. Miller
Antiquity unearthed Downtown Lindsay A. Miller / Arizona Daily Star Desert Archaeology crew member Jennifer Sandretto fields a question from Tucson resident John Cushman about the excavation site at a triplex on Court Avenue Downtown. Lying beneath the triplex is a pit house dating back 2,000 years, which predates the Hohokam Indians by centuries. The triplex is destined to become a museum in the Presidio Historic Park, a Rio Nuevo project Downtown. The shallow trenches and holes in the dirt, roped off in the back yard of an old adobe row house Downtown, seem at first like nothing more than...

Did ancient Polynesians visit California? Maybe so. Scholars revive idea using linguistic ties...

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 06/25/2005 11:35:01 PM PDT · 15 replies · 361+ views

San Francisco Chronicle | June 20, 2005 | Keay Davidson
Scientists are taking a new look at an old and controversial idea: that ancient Polynesians sailed to Southern California a millennium before Christopher Columbus landed on the East Coast. Key new evidence comes from two directions. The first involves revised carbon-dating of an ancient ceremonial headdress used by Southern California's Chumash Indians. The second involves research by two California scientists who suggest that a Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe" is derived from a Polynesian word for the wood used to construct the same boat. The scientists, linguist Kathryn A. Klar of UC Berkeley and archaeologist Terry L. Jones of Cal...

Scientists to Begin Studying Kennewick Man

Posted by Pharmboy
On News/Activism 06/29/2005 5:49:30 AM PDT · 43 replies · 675+ views

Associated Press | WILLIAM McCALL
After nearly a decade of court battles, scientists plan to begin studying the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man next week. A team of scientists plans to examine the bones at the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle beginning July 6, according to their attorney, Alan Schneider. Four Northwest Indian tribes had opposed the study, claiming the skeleton could be an ancestor who should be buried. The Interior Department and the Army Corps of Engineers had sided with the tribes. But a federal judge in Portland, backed by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that the researchers...

Scientists To Begin Study Of Ancient Skeleton Over Indian Protest (Kennewick Man - Update)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/30/2005 4:50:47 PM PDT · 113 replies · 1,060+ views

Union - Tribune/AP | 6-28-2005 | William McCall
Scientists to begin study of ancient skeleton over Indian protest By William McCall ASSOCIATED PRESS 2:05 p.m. June 28, 2005 PORTLAND, Ore. -- After nearly a decade of court battles, scientists plan to begin studying the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man next week. A team of scientists plans to examine the bones at the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle beginning July 6, according to their attorney, Alan Schneider. Four Northwest Indian tribes had opposed the study, claiming the skeleton could be an ancestor who should be buried. The Interior Department and the Army Corps of Engineers had...

Thoroughly Modern Miscellany

UNESCO worried about pillage of Iraqi archaeological sites

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 06/29/2005 8:14:27 PM PDT · 7 replies · 124+ views

Middle East Times | June 23, 2005
PARIS -- UNESCO expressed concern on Wednesday about the pillage of archaeological sites in Iraq, part of the ancient region of Mesopotamia described as the cradle of civilization. "Illegal digs on archaeological sites unfortunately are continuing to destroy Iraq's heritage", said UNESCO director-general Koichiro Matsuura at a meeting of an international committee for the protection of Iraq's cultural heritage. "It is totally impossible to evaluate the number of objects illegally removed from archaeological sites, it is an inestimable loss for Iraq and for all of humanity," he said. Matsuura also warned that the installation of military bases on or near...

Workers discover old tombstone inside tree

Posted by QwertyKPH
On General/Chat 06/25/2005 3:08:35 PM PDT · 17 replies · 438+ views

The Telegraph | 25JUN05 | LINDA N. WELLER
ALTON -- To the surprise of tree-cutters in Alton Cemetery, a 150-year-old ash revealed a secret it had kept inside its "heart" for possibly more than a century. Jim Scroggins, 27, and Mark Brunetto, 31, both of Holiday Shores and owners of Holiday Tree and Landscape, discovered a limestone headstone dating to 1854 inside the 90-foot tree they were cutting down June 17. As it grew slowly over the years, the tree enclosed the grave marker in its middle, surrounding it with wood and bark and eventually reaching a diameter of 4 feet. The growth process of the tree also...

end of digest #50 20050702

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #51
Saturday, July 9, 2005

Underwater Archaeology

Archaeologists Make Major Find...Underwater (Belize)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/08/2005 2:31:59 PM PDT · 19 replies · 1,229+ views

News5 Belize ^ | 7-8-2005 | Janelle Chanona
Archaeologists make major discovery... underwater When most people think about Mayan archaeology they imagine excavations in royal tombs or trenches cut into tree covered mounds. Few of us would expect that a significant find could be made underwater... particularly in a swamp. But Belizean archaeology is a many-faceted field, as the presentations at this year's Archaeology Symposium, now underway in San Ignacio, amply reveal. Among the updates to last year's reports is a startling discovery made by a team from Louisiana State University. It is a find unlike any in all of the Meso-American world, and it was made right...

PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis

Footsteps in time that add 30,000 years to history of America

Posted by freedom44
On News/Activism 07/04/2005 9:59:36 PM PDT · 54 replies · 830+ views

Times Online UK ^ | 7/4/05 | Lewis Smith
THE discovery of human footprints, preserved by volcanic ash, have put back the likely date that the American continent was colonised by Man by almost 30,000 years, British scientists say. The prints, found by the scientists at the edge of a lake in Mexico, are thought to be about 40,000 years old. Their discovery upsets the widely accepted theory that Man first reached America across a land bridge, now covered by the Bering Sea, 11,500 years ago. Casts of the footprints reveal that a community of Homo sapiens lived in the Valsequillo Basin, near Puebla in central Mexico. Their feet...

Mexico offers up ancient footprints (40,000 year old footprints)

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/04/2005 11:15:36 PM PDT · 14 replies · 388+ views

Guardian (U.K.) ^ | Tuesday July 5, 2005 | Maev Kennedy
A group of British scientists claimed yesterday to have identified human footprints in central Mexico that are 40,000 years old, almost three times older than the most generally accepted evidence for human settlement in the Americas. The team from universities in Liverpool, Bournemouth, and Oxford are convinced that the footprints are human and represent several adults and children who walked in freshly fallen volcanic ash in the Valsequillo Basin, about 80 miles south-east of Mexico City. Working with international colleagues, they have applied dating techniques on the sediment itself and on finds including a land snail, a water snail and...

40,000-year-old footprint of first Americans

Posted by Renfield
On News/Activism 07/05/2005 3:38:09 AM PDT · 32 replies · 1,002+ views

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 5-07-2005 | Roger Highfield
A plastic replica of a 40,000-year-old, size eight foot has shattered previous theories of the identity of the first humans to walk in the Americas. Scientists made the foot from tracks left on the shore of an ancient volcanic lake in central Mexico. The traditional view is that the first settlers walked across the Bering Strait, from Russia to Alaska, at the end of the last ice age around 11,500 to 11,000 years ago. But the discovery of footprints in the Valsequillo Basin by a British-led team provides new evidence that humans settled in the Americas as early as 40,000...

Brightly Colored 1,000-Year-Old Fabrics From Peru With Indian Ritual Pictures on Exhibit

Posted by TheOtherOne
On News/Activism 07/08/2005 11:19:26 AM PDT · 9 replies · 327+ views

AP ^ | AP-ES-07-08-05 1305EDT
Brightly Colored 1,000-Year-Old Fabrics From Peru With Indian Ritual Pictures on Exhibit by Carl Hartman Associated Press Writer Published: Jul 8, 2005 WASHINGTON (AP) - A tapestry at least 1,000 years old shows a fierce-looking deity with rays coming out of his head. Other superhumans stare at the viewer through pupils divided by vertical lines that make them look cross-eyed. Big tunics are adorned with pictures of women beating drums, men playing pan-pipes and others who seem to be making a ritual fire with a kind of wooden drill. All are in a new display at the capital's Textile Museum, finely...

Excavation yields ax thousands of years old

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/07/2005 8:56:06 PM PDT · 62 replies · 1,044+ views

WLUC ^ | July 6, 2005
BRIDGEPORT TOWNSHIP, MICH. -- A Saginaw County man thought he was simply digging a basement for the house he would eventually build on Snowy Lane in Bridgeport Township. But the hole Arthur A. Shaft opened up in 2000 turned out to be an archaeological dig of sorts, too. The Saginaw County Historical Society last month confirmed that the object was a barbed stone ax head left behind by Indians 3,000 to 5,000 years ago. "I was amazed _ I thought it was just a couple hundred years old," Shaft, 52, a General Motors Corp. retiree, told The Saginaw News for...

Africa

Major discovery on eve of obelisk’s return (Ethiopia)

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/01/2005 11:39:44 PM PDT · 31 replies · 877+ views

The Art Newspaper ^ | Saturday, 2 July 2005 | Martin Bailey
An important discovery has been made by Unesco archaeologists who were sent to Ethiopia to prepare for the arrival of an ancient obelisk finally returned by Italy after years of delay. At the ancient site of Axum, underground chambers and arcades were found near the original position of the obelisk, beneath an area converted into a parking lot in 1963. The Unesco team, headed by Neapolitan archaeologist Rodolfo Fattovich, found that the site had been a royal necropolis for several dynasties before the kingdom adopted Christianity in around 325 AD. Unesco director-general Koïchiro Matsuura announced that some of the tombs...

Ancient Egypt

King Tut treasure back in U.S. as Egypt seeks gold -Bubba seeks exibit in Arkansas

Posted by Tumbleweed_Connection
On News/Activism 06/19/2005 7:42:26 AM PDT · 8 replies · 340+ views

Reuters ^ | 6/19/05 | Nigel Hunt
The gilded treasures of Tutankhamun have returned to the United States more than 25 years after the sensational success of their first visit, and this time Egypt intends to cash in on the enduring popularity of the boy king. The comeback museum tour has all of the trappings of a Hollywood blockbuster sequel: a "gold carpet" opening in Los Angeles, a high-powered marketing effort and the potential for a massive box office with tickets as high as $30 each. "I am not going to send any exhibit for free anymore. We took you for a free lunch and dinner a...

Outraged black activists protest that King Tut has been whitewashed

Posted by jasoncann
On News/Activism 06/16/2005 9:54:04 AM PDT · 124 replies · 2,377+ views

(AFP) ^ | 16 June 2005
LOS ANGELES - US black activists demanded Wednesday that a bust of Tutankhamun be removed from a landmark exhibition of artefacts from the Egyptian boy king’s tomb because the statue portrays him as white. The bust that activists object to is a central part of ”Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” the first US exhibition of relics from king Tut’s tomb in nearly 30 years, which opens here Thursday amid Hollywood fanfare. The face of the legendary pharaoh, who died around 3,300 years ago at the age of just 19, was reconstructed earlier this year through images collected...

VANITY -- King Tut Exhibit a waste of time (though not of money)

Posted by Jubal Harshaw
On News/Activism 06/27/2005 11:01:22 AM PDT · 69 replies · 1,451+ views

Just came back from the King Tut exhibit in LA. I saw the exhibit in '76, and have seen the Tut exhibit in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and have been to the Luxor Museum / Valley of Kings / Valley of Queens / Abu Simbel / etc. My girlfriend never saw any of the Tut exhibits before, so together we represent a wide range of pre-existing knowledge about Tut and about ancient Egypt. We both thought the LA exhibit, soon touring the USA, was a waste of time. The exhibit included no closely Tut-related paraphernalia bigger than a breadbox....

Who Killed King Tut?

Posted by afraidfortherepublic
On News/Activism 09/11/2002 3:08:55 PM PDT · 44 replies · 932+ views

Time.com ^ | 9-11-02 | JEFFREY KLUGER AND ANDREA DORFMAN
The boy King died young and was buried in haste. Now a pair of U.S. gumshoes, armed with modern forensics, is trying to crack an ancient case The tomb of the boy King Tutankhamen created a sensation from the moment it was uncovered in 1922. One of the few royal burial chambers that survived the centuries relatively intact, it was by far the richest — filled with gold, ivory and carved wooden treasures, including what may be the world's most famous funerary mask. But there was also something troubling about the way King Tut was buried — hints and omissions...

Ancient Greece

Archaeologists On The Uninhabited...

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/05/2005 8:26:52 PM PDT · 13 replies · 493+ views

Kathimerini ^ | 7-5-2005 | AFP
Archaeologists on the uninhabited... AFP Archaeologists on the uninhabited islet of Despotiko near the Cycladic island of Antiparos have uncovered the remnants of ancient dwellings dating back to the Archaic era, which they described as ‘exceptional.’ The Culture Ministry said yesterday that fragments of kouroi statues (photo) and pillars, dating from 750 to 500 BC, have been found at the site, which has been operating since May.

A precious remnant of Magna Graecia

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/08/2005 12:53:38 AM PDT · 12 replies · 254+ views

Kathimerini ^ | Antonis Karkayiannis
The Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies in Venice is the continuation of a Greek fraternity founded in 1498 The story began in 1498, a few decades after the fall of Constantinople, when the Greeks in Venice — la nazione greca (or the Greek nation) — gained permission from the Serene Republic to create a fraternity. Merchants and simple migrants from Western Greece, refugees from Constantinople, artists and others from Venetian-ruled Crete — all were Orthodox Christians who spoke Greek. The Most Serene Republic of Venice — the Serenissima — which ruled the Eastern Mediterranean, willingly offered them asylum; first,...

Helike, ancient Greek city swallowed by the sea

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/02/2005 9:06:29 PM PDT · 19 replies · 157+ views

Destruction of Helike ^ | October 17, 2000 | John Noble Wilford
In their reports, the researchers said these findings suggested that the pavement and wall stones were from the time of Helike's destruction and supported stories that the city ruins were for a long time submerged in the sea or a lagoon. The ruins were buried by silt, which, combined with a general uplifting of the land, had left the once-submerged site about half a mile inland from the present shore. A house built on the shore between the Selinous and Kerynites Rivers in the 1890's is now about 1,000 feet from the sea.

Thracian Gold Found At Tatul Temple

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/02/2005 4:24:31 PM PDT · 10 replies · 521+ views

Sofia News Agency ^ | 7-2-2005
Thracian Gold Found at Tatul Temple 23-carat Thracian gold has emerged from the Tatul sanctuary in the Rhodopes. Photo by sinia-planeta.com Lifestyle: 2 July 2005, Saturday. Archeologists have found a piece of 23-carat Thracian gold in south Bulgaria. The team was examining the Tatul sanctuary near Kardzhali when they picked the precious find. It was discovered in a layer from the Late Bronze Age. Experts believe that the piece was a part of a gold-trimmed stone mask. Tatul, an extremely rich archeological site, is expected to bring to the surface sensational finds, specialists say. They have already discovered a thin...

Ancient Rome

Roman shipwrecks From the wine-dark sea

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/02/2005 10:26:12 PM PDT · 7 replies · 120+ views

Hellenic Communication Service LLC ^ | October 17, 2001 | Anna Marguerite McCann
We returned again to the Skerki Bank site in 1997 with ROV Jason and also with the US Navy's NR-1 nuclear submarine. In all, eight shipwrecks were located in an area of about 210 square nautical miles at a depth of about 800 m. The NR-1 was particularly useful in identifying the shipwreck sites with its powerful forward looking sonar that could spot ancient amphoras at a distance of 1000 m. Five of the wrecks found are Roman with one medieval fishing vessel and two nineteenth century wooden sailing ships. The Roman shipwrecks span a period of time from about...

Remains of Roman Bathhouse Unearthed

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 04/28/2005 9:47:41 PM PDT · 16 replies · 600+ views

East Anglian Daily Times ^ | April 27, 2005 | Ted Jeory
THE rich Roman heritage of Britain's oldest recorded town has been enhanced by the discovery of a “beautifully preserved” room from a bathhouse. A single 2,000-year-old room was discovered beneath Colchester Sixth Form College during work to build a fire access road near the college's information technology block. A leading archaeologist said yesterday it was one of the finest finds of its kind. The room from the bathhouse may now be preserved as an attraction. Philip Crummy, of the Colchester Archaeological Trust, said he and colleagues had been on a “watching brief” as work at the college was carried out....

Pyromania (Roman Fort Excavated at Brougham)

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 04/29/2005 11:20:04 AM PDT · 7 replies · 529+ views

British Archaeology ^ | January/Febuary 2005 | Hilary Cool
Everyone who lived at the Roman fort at Brougham, Cumbria, was buried in a cemetery close by. Excavation of the graves revealed an astonishing world of pagan beliefs. Hilary Cool explainsSome sites are dug before their time. Such was the case with the cemetery at Brougham in Cumbria. Brougham was long ago identified with Brocavum, a place noted in the 3rd century AD road book known as the Antonine Itinerary. Antiquarian reports had recorded Roman tombstones from the area east of the fort and vicus, an attached civilian settlement, alongside the trans-Pennine road. So excavations were planned when it was...

Roman Chariots Unearthed in Thrace

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/02/2005 10:14:29 PM PDT · 3 replies · 97+ views

Hellenic Communication Service LLC ^ | unknown | Paris Agiomamitis
Meanwhile, archaeologists working at ancient Macedonia's spiritual center of Dion in Pieria announced the discovery of a 12-cornered wrestling arena within the confines of the new Roman marketplace. The second-century building, roughly 500 square metres, contains black and white mosaics depicting athletic events, scenes from the animal and plant kingdom and geometric designs.

Australia

'Fires wiped out' ancient mammals

Posted by LibWhacker
On News/Activism 07/08/2005 9:39:15 AM PDT · 31 replies · 640+ views

BBC ^ | 7/8/05 | Helen Briggs
The first humans to arrive in Australia destroyed the pristine landscape, probably by lighting huge fires, the latest research suggests.The evidence, published in Science magazine, comes from ancient eggshells. These show birds changed their diets drastically when humans came on the scene, switching from grass to the type of plants that thrive on scrubland. The study supports others that have blamed humans for mass extinctions across the world 10-50,000 years ago. Many scientists believe the causes are actually more complex and relate to climate changes during that period, but, according to Dr Marilyn Fogel, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington,...

Climate

Clues of climate and the Bible's seven lean years

Posted by Coleus
On News/Activism 07/03/2005 6:19:47 PM PDT · 20 replies · 788+ views

Raiders News ^ | 2005
Clues of climate and the Bible's seven lean years By Robert C. Cowen When archaeologists sift through the debris of a vanished culture, they should consider the ancient climate. It can shed light on the bygone habitat and give plausibility to old myths. It can also give a useful perspective on our own climatically uncertain times. Take the biblical tale of Joseph. The famous seven-year cycle of feast and famine appears to be one of Egypt's regular routines, according to Dmitri Kondrashov, Yizhak Feliks, and Michael Ghil at the University of California at Los Angeles. The scientists used new statistical...

Elam, Media, Persia, Parthia, Iran

Cyrus the Great: the decree of return for the Jews; 539 B.C.

Posted by freedom44
On News/Activism 07/03/2005 9:24:03 PM PDT · 14 replies · 463+ views

Iran Chamber ^ | 7/03/05 | Iran Chamber
I am Kurash [ "Cyrus" ], King of the World, Great King, Legitimate King, King of Babilani, King of Kiengir and Akkade, King of the four rims of the earth, Son of Kanbujiya, Great King, King of Hakhamanish, Grandson of Kurash, Great king, King of Hakhamanish, descendant of Chishpish, Great king, King of Hakhamanish, of a family which always exercised kingship; whose rule Bel and Nebo love, whom they want as king to please their hearts. When I entered Babilani as a friend and when I established the seat of the government in the palace of the ruler under jubilation...

Epigraphy and Language

Looters May Have Destroyed Priceless Cuneiform Archive

Posted by wideminded
On News/Activism 04/18/2003 2:10:35 AM PDT · 104 replies · 176+ views

The Washington Post ^ | April 18th, 2003 | Guy Gugliotta
Looters at Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities pillaged and, perhaps, destroyed an archive of more than 100,000 cuneiform clay tablets -- a unique and priceless trove of ancient Mesopotamian writings that included the "Sippar Library," the oldest library ever found intact on its original shelves. Experts described the archive as the world's least-studied large collection of cuneiform -- the oldest known writing on Earth -- a record that covers every aspect of Mesopotamian life over more than 3,000 years. The texts resided in numbered boxes each containing as many as 400 3-inch-by-2-inch tablets. The Sippar Library, discovered in 1986 at...

Persian Cuneiform Predating Darius

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/07/2005 7:38:29 PM PDT · 6 replies · 261+ views

CHN ^ | 7-6-2005
Persian Cuneiform Predating Darius It is widely believed that the invention of Persian cuneiform took place during the rign of Darius the great while now an Iranian professor insists on the hypothesis that Persian cuneiform predates Darius. Tehran, July 6, 2005, (CHN) -- All historians and experts in Iran, believe that the Persian Cuneiform was invented during Darius reign. It is widely believed that the invention of this script was due to the order of Darius the great, the third king in line from the beginning of the Dynasty. Most of Achaemenid historical texts support the same hypothesis as well...

Scholars catalog ancient manuscripts to preserve 4,000-year history of India

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/04/2005 9:17:01 PM PDT · 6 replies · 211+ views

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Sunday, June 26, 2005 | Rama Lakshmi
New Delhi -- In the walled quarters of the old city, a Sanskrit language scholar walks purposefully along the packed, narrow and twisting alleyways, jostling past rows of jewelry shoppers, cycle rickshaws, bullock carts and beggars. When he comes upon an old temple with an ornately carved doorway, he stops, sweating profusely in the sweltering sun. "Do you have any ancient handwritten manuscripts here?" Dilipkumar Rana, the scholar, asks in a whisper. The stunned temple manager nods. "The government is doing a survey of old manuscripts," Rana says. "But I have very few left now," temple manager Jaipal Jain says....

India

Academicians Claim Buddha Turned Into European Saint

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/04/2005 12:17:05 PM PDT · 16 replies · 324+ views

The Korea Times ^ | 7-4-2005 | Kim Ki-tae
Academicians Claim Buddha Turned Into European Saint By Kim Ki-tae Staff Reporter Greek drawings estimated to be from the 12th century show Ioasaph teaching Christianity to the public. A group of researchers claim the European saint is a derivation of the Buddha. Courtesy of AntiquusThe ancient tale of Gautama Siddhartha, the founder of Buddhism, spread from his homeland to Europe, where he became a Christian saint with the name of ``Iosaphat.¡± That¡¯s the conclusion of a group of Korean researchers who have conducted a multi-linguistic study of the westward spread of the story of the Buddha. ``It is apparent that...

Let's Have Jerusalem

Lot's Museum begins to take shape (Near where Lot fled to when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed)

Posted by wagglebee
On News/Activism 07/02/2005 2:21:41 PM PDT · 35 replies · 504+ views

Jordan Times ^ | 7/1/05 | Dalya Dajani
AMMAN — Engineers are making headway in the construction of a two-story historical museum in the Jordan Valley, with project officials estimating its completion in October. “Lot's Museum,” being built some 300 metres from the cave where Lot and his family sought refuge from the devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah, is set to showcase the area's dazzling topography and unique geological facets. Samir Jaradat, the project's contact engineer told The Jordan Times yesterday that the museum's structure is being finalised with plans under way to select the exhibits. Jaradat said a specialised committee comprising antiquity, tourism and geological experts...

Mesopotamia

Treasure of Nimrud Is Found In Iraq, and It's Spectacular

Posted by presidio9
On News/Activism 06/06/2003 9:38:04 AM PDT · 50 replies · 348+ views

WALL STREET JOURNAL ^ | Friday, June 6, 2003 | DAVID LUHNOW
The treasure of Nimrud survived 2,800 years buried near a dusty town in northern Iraq. It then spent 12 years tucked away in a vault. Until Thursday, it was uncertain whether it had survived Saddam Hussein's son, a U.S. missile strike, looters, a flood and a grenade attack. But it has been found intact in the dark, damp basement of a bombed out central bank building.

Prehistoric Europe

BSI: Bog Scene Investigation

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/04/2005 9:23:39 PM PDT · 8 replies · 248+ views

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ^ | Sunday, July 3, 2005 | Bob Karlovits
Working with the preserved bodies found in bogs throughout Europe has led to a branch of forensic research that could be on a TV show. "It's like 'B.S.I.,' really: Bog Scene Investigation," says archaeologist Sandra Olsen, making a parallel reference to the popular crime show, "C.S.I.," that deals with crime scene investigations. The curator of the section of anthropology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History will give two talks during the exhibit of "The Mysterious Bog People." Both will examine how modern scientific methods are enabling researchers to find out more about the bog people than they could have...

Prehistory and Origins

Blood Type History, Human Migrations (Blam Thread)

Posted by Little Bill
On News/Activism 07/03/2005 1:47:49 PM PDT · 91 replies · 1,866+ views

USC ^ | July 01, 05 | Dennis O'Neil
I have been interested in human migrations for many years. One of the markers of a population is the distribution of a blood type among a given population. I got interested in this because the blood type distribution in the UK is nearly 50/50 A/O, a small sample has other blood types. My dear old Ma is Black Irish and is A/B, not a common blood type in the part of Ireland where her family originated. Click on the link for distributions.

Could Asia Have Been The Cradle Of Humanity?

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/06/2005 1:12:13 PM PDT · 53 replies · 762+ views

The Boston Globe ^ | 7-5-2005 | David Ropeik
Could Asia have been the cradle of humanity? By David Ropeik, Globe Correspondent | July 5, 2005 Science continues to struggle with one of the most basic questions of all: Where did humans come from. There isn't much question that modern humans came out of Africa, probably in several waves of migration over the past 100,000 years. But it now appears that the ancient ancestors who gave rise to those African humans might have come from Asia. Until recently the only fossils of anthropoids -- the creatures at the base of the branch of the evolutionary tree that gave rise...

Gene study suggests Polynesians came from Taiwan

Posted by Pharmboy
On News/Activism 07/05/2005 6:34:19 AM PDT · 49 replies · 652+ views

Reuters ^ | Mon Jul 4, 2005 | Anon
A genetic study helps confirm the theory that Polynesians, who settled islands across a vast swathe of ocean, started out in Taiwan, researchers reported on Monday. Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along virtually unchanged from mothers to their children, provides a kind of genetic clock linking present-day Polynesians to the descendants of aboriginal residents of Taiwan. Samples taken from nine indigenous Taiwanese tribes -- who are different ethnically and genetically from the now-dominant Han Chinese -- show clear similarities between the Taiwan groups and ethnic Polynesians, Jean Trejaut and Marie Lin of Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei and colleagues reported....

Neanderthal Genome May Be Reconstructed

Posted by malakhi
On News/Activism 07/06/2005 10:10:07 AM PDT · 120 replies · 1,535+ views

AP via Yahoo! ^ | 7/6/05 | Not given
German and U.S. scientists have launched a project to reconstruct the Neanderthal genome, the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology said Wednesday. The project, which involves isolating genetic fragments from fossils of the prehistoric beings who originally inhabited Europe, is being carried out at the Leipzig-based institute. [snip] "Firstly, we will learn a lot about the Neanderthals. Secondly, we will learn a lot about the uniqueness of human beings. And thirdly, it's simply cool," Rubin said. [snip]

Scientists finally study Kennewick Man

Posted by aculeus
On News/Activism 07/06/2005 7:13:04 AM PDT · 15 replies · 592+ views

BBC News on line ^ | July 6, 2005 | By Melissa Lee Phillips
After a legal battle that lasted nearly eight years, scientists will finally get to study the ancient skeleton known as Kennewick Man. The remains were found in July 1996 along the shores of the Columbia River in Washington State. Estimated to be more than 9,000 years old, the Kennewick skeleton is one of the oldest, most complete specimens ever found in North America. Eight anthropologists sued to study the bones after the US government seized them on behalf of Native American tribal groups, who claim Kennewick Man as an ancestor and want to rebury his skeleton. Since early 2004, when...

New Insight Into Horse Evolution

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/03/2005 2:03:06 AM PDT · 32 replies · 983+ views

BBC ^ | Saturday, 2 July, 2005 | Helen Briggs
Genetic evidence is shedding new light on the origins of horses in the New World, during a particularly hazy period in their evolution. As the Great Ice Age came to an end, some 11,000 years ago, North America was thought to be home to as many as 50 species and subspecies of horse. But studies of ancient DNA tell a rather different story, suggesting the horses belonged to just two species. These are the stilt-legged horses, now extinct, and the caballines. The caballines are thought to be the ancestors of today's domestic horse. "It looks like, as far as we...

Thoroughly Modern Miscellany

MONKEY 'SPY' BONE THAT NEVER WAS - NOW ON SHOW AT CURIOSITY SHOP (Monkey Executed as French Spy)

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/08/2005 11:09:25 PM PDT · 6 replies · 184+ views

24 Hour Museum ^ | 07/07/2005 | Alastair Smith
A mysterious "monkey bone" which offers a link to Hartlepool's prehistoric past is now on show at a travelling museum of curiosities in the town. Rumours began to circulate that the bone found on the beach at Seaton Carew belonged to a monkey who, as legend has it, washed up in Hartlepool during the Napoleonic war and was executed as a French spy. Experts from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Durham and Tees Archaeology confirmed that the 30-cm long bone was in fact from a red deer. "We could tell straight away that the bone was ancient....

Rebel Yell Captured - Fiendish Effect Discounted

Posted by stainlessbanner
On News/Activism 06/28/2005 6:51:41 PM PDT · 79 replies · 2,217+ views

emediawire ^ | June 28, 2005 | PRWeb
Civil War mystery may be solved by modern technology. (PRWEB) June 28, 2005 -- One of the mysteries of American Civil War lore may have finally been solved. The famous rebel yell, long known to have an unnerving effect on Union soldiers in the American Civil War, has just been examined by the History Publishing Company. Using as its core base, the only known yell by a living Confederate soldier recorded early in the Twentieth Century, History Publishing Company, through the use of sound technology, has emulated the sound of a company of soldiers charging a Union line. “The effect...

Turin Shroud confirmed as fake

Posted by aculeus
On News/Activism 06/22/2005 9:55:20 AM PDT · 403 replies · 6,308+ views

The Daily Telegraph (Australia) ^ | June 22, 2005 | AFP
A FRENCH magazine has said it had carried out experiments that proved the Shroud of Turin, believed by some Christians to be their religion's holiest relic, was a fraud. "A mediaeval technique helped us to make a Shroud," Science & Vie (Science and Life) said in its July issue. The Shroud is claimed by its defenders to be the cloth in which the body of Jesus Christ was wrapped after his crucifixion. It bears the faint image of a blood-covered man with holes in his hand and wounds in his body and head, the apparent result of being crucified, stabbed...

end of digest #51 20050709

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #52
Saturday, July 16, 2005

Africa

Studies Prove People Of Madagascar Came From Borneo And Africa

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/10/2005 8:31:26 AM PDT · 19 replies · 255+ views

Mongabay | 7-10-2005 | MongaBay
Studies prove people of Madagascar came from Borneo and Africa mongabay.com July 8, 2005 Studies released earlier this year found the people of Madagascar have origins in Borneo and East Africa. Half of the genetic lineages of human inhabitants of Madagascar come from 4500 miles away in Borneo, while the other half derive from East Africa, according to a study published in May by a UK team. The island of Madagascar, the largest in the Indian Ocean, lies some 250 miles (400 km) from Africa and 4000 miles (6400 km) from Indonesia. Its isolation means that most of its mammals,...

Ancient Egypt

Archaeologists uncover 3700-year-old 'magical' birth brick in Egypt

Posted by vannrox
On News/Activism 07/28/2002 4:16:09 PM PDT · 32 replies · 378+ views

University of Pennsylvania via Eurek Alert! | Pam Kosty
Contact: Pam Kostypkosty@sas.upenn.edu 215-898-4045University of Pennsylvania Archaeologists uncover 3700-year-old 'magical' birth brick in Egypt PHILADELPHIA--University of Pennsylvania Museum archaeologists have discovered a 3700-year-old "magical" birth brick inside the palatial residence of a Middle Kingdom mayor's house just outside Abydos, in southern Egypt. The colorfully decorated mud birth brick--the first ever found--is one of a pair that would have been used to support a woman's feet while squatting during actual childbirth. The birth brick, which measures 14 by 7 inches, was discovered during summer 2001 excavations directed by Dr. Josef Wegner, Associate Curator, Egyptian section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum...

Great Pyramid may still contain Khufu's intact pharaonic tomb

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/13/2005 9:56:38 PM PDT · 20 replies · 297+ views

Daily Star (Lebanon) | Thursday, July 14, 2005 | Kyle Cassidy
Both shafts terminate somewhere within the structure as there are no holes in the outside of the pyramid. In the past, scholars have speculated that because of their alignment with the North Star and constellation Orion, these shafts could be symbolic exits for King Khufu's ka, or soul. Many archaeologists today find this unlikely because these small openings are unique to this pyramid. At the time of Khufu's reign, false doors served as symbolic gateways to the afterlife. As to whether the shafts terminate in larger rooms or not are still anybody's guess.

Ancient Greece

Unearthing the Treasures of the Mediterranean

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/09/2005 2:56:13 PM PDT · 8 replies · 162+ views

Skin Diver | February 2000 | Isabelle Croizeau

Ancient Rome

Romans' Brutal Crackdown on Celts

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/10/2005 12:04:17 AM PDT · 59 replies · 1,247+ views

EDP24 | 09 July 2005 | BEN KENDALL
Norfolk acted as a hub of resistance against Roman occupation, new analysis of archaeological finds has revealed. But the empire's military might eventually eclipsed native East Anglians in a brutal crackdown described as a "lost holocaust". A sprawling Celtic 'proto-city', as significant to its Iceni occupants as modern-day London, sprawled across eight square miles of West Norfolk, almost certainly providing a regular home to Boudicca. David Thorpe, from the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project (Sharp), is excavations director for the site - the exact location of which is not being disclosed. Speaking yesterday, he explained the team have discovered...

Asia

China: Archeologists shake up history (Jinsha Ruins, Sanxingdui Culture)

Posted by TigerLikesRooster
On News/Activism 07/13/2005 7:21:21 AM PDT · 69 replies · 991+ views

Taipei Times | 07/13/05
Archeologists shake up historyNEW EVIDENCE: Artifacts found at a building site and the subsequent discovery of a lost civilization have forced historians to rethink Chinese history as a wholeAFP , JINSHA, CHINA Wednesday, Jul 13, 2005,Page 4 A worker stands on a stack of bags of cement before a huge billboard featuring the famous ''bronze human head figure with gold mask,'' one of the treasures of the Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan, Sichuan Province in this photo from May. Recent archeological finds from previously unknown civilizations such as the Sanxingdui and the Jinsha are dealing shattering blows to traditional views of...

Biology and Cryptobiology

Fossilized bones may reveal complete specimen: Cal paleontologist, "find resembles ancient elephant"

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/14/2005 2:22:03 PM PDT · 12 replies · 286+ views

San Francisco Chronicle | Thursday, July 14, 2005 | Maria Alicia Gaura
UC Berkeley paleontologist Mark Goodwin said Wednesday the bones discovered Saturday by environmental watchdog Roger Castillo may be the femur, tusks and pelvic bones of a Columbian mammoth, a species of ancient elephant that roamed Silicon Valley tens of thousands of years ago. UC Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology has a mammoth pelvis and some assorted teeth and bones found at other South Bay sites, Goodwin said. But the generous scattering of bones atop the ground at the San Jose site Goodwin visited Wednesday may indicate a more complete specimen. "If these are tusks here, there's a good chance that there's...

Large Bones Found in Calif. Creek Bed

Posted by NormsRevenge
On News/Activism 07/12/2005 9:33:18 PM PDT · 23 replies · 474+ views

AP on Yahoo | 7/12/05 | AP
SAN JOSE, Calif. - The fossilized bones of a creature that might have been a mastodon were unearthed Tuesday in the creek bed of a suburban river being renovated for flood protection. The remains of what appears to be a massive pelvic bone, ribcage fragments and a tusk were uncovered along the Guadalupe River in San Jose. The river project has been cited as a model of how to integrate nature and development. The discovery prompted both wonder and frustration, as officials tried to determine the source of the remains but couldn't find experts to scour the site. "We've never...

Catastrophism and Astronomy

Native Lore Tells Tale: There's Been A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On (Seattle Area)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/13/2005 7:42:17 AM PDT · 11 replies · 386+ views

Eureka Alert | 7-13-2005 | VinceStricherz
Native lore tells the tale: There's been a whole lotta shakin' goin' onContact: Vince Stricherz vinces@u.washington.edu 206-543-2580 University of Washington This illustration depicts a late 19th century interior ceremonial screen from Port Alberni, on British Columbia's Vancouver Island. It shows Thunderbird carrying Whale in its talons, a common native depiction of seismic activity. The original screen is in the American Museum of Natural History. The image is taken from "Northwest Coast Painting – House Fronts and Interior Screens" by Edward Malin, ©1999, Timber Press, Portland, Ore. Stories of two-headed serpents and epic battles between Thunderbird and Whale, common among Northwest...

India

Lycian Influence To The Indian Cave Temples

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/11/2005 10:37:19 PM PDT · 15 replies · 130+ views

The Guide to the Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent | spring of 2000 | Takeo Kamiya
There are caves and sarcophagi with pointed arches in Lycia, moreover carved as if they were wooden structures. Many of them were made in the 4th century B.C. As to India, the first cave temples appeared in the middle of the 3rd century B.C. They are the caves at Barabar and Nagarjuni Hills built for Ajivikas by King Ashoka. If there is no connection between the two sites located so far apart, it might be considered only a strange coincidence. However, there exists historical evidence of the eastern expedition by Alexander the Great of Macedonia (reign 336 B.C. - 323...

Let's Have Jerusalem

Bedouin Wanders Across Biblical Manuscript

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/15/2005 9:24:34 AM PDT · 21 replies · 1,043+ views

ABC News Online | 7-15-2005
Bedouin wanders across Biblical manuscript Fragments of a Biblical manuscript dating back to the last Jewish revolt against Roman rule in 135 AD Judaea, have been uncovered near the Dead Sea. After four decades with a dearth of new finds, archaeologists had resigned themselves to believing the desert caves in the modern-day West Bank had already yielded all their secrets from the Roman era. "It's simply sensational, a dream come true," archaeology professor Hanan Eshel, a Biblical specialist at Israel's Bar Ilan University, said. For the past 20 years, he has scoured the Judaean desert around the Dead Sea, overturning...

Biblical scroll fragments found in Israel

Posted by DaveLoneRanger
On News/Activism 07/15/2005 8:29:23 PM PDT · 17 replies · 530+ views

AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer | Friday, July 15, 2005 | DANIELLE HAAS
JERUSALEM -- A secretive encounter with a Bedouin in a desert valley led to the discovery of two fragments from a nearly 2,000-year-old parchment scroll - the first such finding in decades, an Israeli archaeologist said Friday. The finding has given rise to hope that the Judean Desert may yield more treasures, said Professor Chanan Eshel, an archaeologist from Tel Aviv's Bar Ilan University. The two small pieces of brown animal skin, inscribed in Hebrew with verses from the Book of Leviticus, are from "refugee" caves in Nachal Arugot, a canyon near the Dead Sea where Jews hid from the...

Jewish Presence in the Land of Israel of Yesteryear

Posted by Alouette
On News/Activism 07/11/2005 11:49:42 AM PDT · 15 replies · 283+ views

Israel National News | July 11, 2005
Dramatic findings from the First and Second Temple periods have been uncovered of late in Antiquities Authority digs in the Nachal Toot area. Arutz-7’s Kobi Finkler reports that the digs, taking place near Yokne’am in the western Galilee, have revealed the existence of an impressive administrative center from the First Temple period, which ended some 2,500 years ago. In addition, remnants of dense housing in a Jewish village from the Second Temple period – 2,000 years ago – have been found. The Jewish village is thought to have been destroyed at the same time as the Temple, around the year...

The Pacific

New Lapita Find Re-dates Known Fiji Settlers (Jomon/Ainu)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/14/2005 10:29:09 AM PDT · 8 replies · 173+ views

Taipei Times | 7-14-2005
New Lapita find re-dates known Fiji settlers VITAL CLUE: The pottery shard, at least 200 years older than any other piece found in Fiji, is thought to be the work of the Lapita people that originated near Taiwan AFP , AUCKLAND Sunday, Oct 24, 2004 A biological anthropologist excavates a skeleton after archeologists discovered a 3,000-year-old cemetery in Vanuatu in August, holding secrets about the first humans to colonize the South Pacific. A shard of pottery showing a human face, pre-dating any other Lapita pottery in Fiji, has now been found and hailed a s a significant discovery. PHOTO: AFP...

Prehistoric Europe

Iron age settlement poses sinister mystery

Posted by vannrox
On General/Chat 07/27/2002 4:30:10 PM PDT · 4 replies · 75+ views

The Guardian | Friday July 26, 2002 | Martin Wainwright
Iron age settlement poses sinister mystery Martin Wainwright Friday July 26, 2002 The Guardian The most baffling settlement ever unearthed from iron age Britain was revealed by English Heritage archaeologists yesterday, inside a prehistoric fort on former marshes by the Humber estuary. Eerily spick and span, the rows of rectangular wooden buildings have yielded an almost complete lack of artefacts, remains or even litter, apart from one macabre find - fragments of crushed human skulls. Guarded by stone and wooden pallisade defences, the complex also had a ceremonial gateway, vast by the standards of 600-400BC when it was built by...

Underwater Archaeology

Archaeologists make major discovery... underwater(Belize; paddle find leads to Mayan 'white gold')

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/11/2005 1:36:30 PM PDT · 28 replies · 1,439+ views

Channel5Belize | Thursday, July 07, 2005
When most people think about Mayan archaeology they imagine excavations in royal tombs or trenches cut into tree covered mounds. Few of us would expect that a significant find could be made underwater... particularly in a swamp. But Belizean archaeology is a many-faceted field, as the presentations at this year's Archaeology Symposium, now underway in San Ignacio, amply reveal. Among the updates to last year's reports is a startling discovery made by a team from Louisiana State University. It is a find unlike any in all of the Meso-American world, and it was made right here in Belize. Janelle Chanona,...

Divers recover cannon from CSS Alabama in English Channel

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/14/2005 10:35:41 AM PDT · 76 replies · 1,073+ views

Columbus Ledger-Enquirer | Tue, Jul. 12, 2005
MOBILE, Ala. - The 7,000-pound main battery pivot gun of the Confederate sea raider CSS Alabama has been recovered from the bottom of the English Channel, where the vessel was sunk 141 years ago by a Union warship, a project spokesman said. The cannon was brought to the surface by the French naval vessel Elan, said Gordon Watts, an underwater archaeologist from North Carolina who is overseeing the project. Watts told the Mobile Register in a story Tuesday that French divers and American archaeologists recovered the cannon Saturday about 7 miles off the coast of Cherbourg, France, in 200 feet...

Thoroughly Modern Miscellany

Furness Dig May Have Found St Patrick's Birthplace

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/13/2005 4:00:07 PM PDT · 27 replies · 418+ views

NW Evening Mail | 7-12-2005
FURNESS DIG MAY HAVE FOUND ST PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE Published on 12/07/2005 ARCHAEOLOGISTS believe they have found the birthplace of St Patrick. A dig in Urswick has uncovered a Roman fort which may be the Banna Vernta Berniae, thought by scholars to be where Ireland’s patron saint was born. Excavations are being led by Steve Dickinson, from Ulverston, who tutors archaeology at Lancaster University. Evidence of the Romans in Furness is rare. But Mr Dickinson is convinced the finds at Urswick are Roman with their typical layout of foundations and ditches. Mr Dickinson said: “I can’t tell you how important it...

end of digest #52 20050716

Welcome to the first issue of the second year of the GGG digest!

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #53
Saturday, July 23, 2005

Underwater Archaeology

Seafloor survey buoys Atlantis claim: Earthquake debris shores up evidence for lost city

Posted by CHARLITE
On News/Activism 07/22/2005 8:56:42 PM PDT · 12 replies · 571+ views

NATURE.COM | JULY 22, 2005 | Andreas von Bubnoff
There occurred violent earthquakes and floods. And in a single day and night of misfortune... the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea." This account, written by Plato more than 2,300 years ago, set scientists on the trail of the lost city of Atlantis. Did it ever exist? And if so, where was it located, and when did it disappear? In a recent paper in Geology, Marc-Andre Gutscher of the European Institute for Marine Studies in PlouzanÈ gives details of one candidate for the lost city: the submerged island of Spartel, west of the Straits of Gibraltar....

Update on the Underwater City off the Coast of Cuba.

Posted by vannrox
On News/Activism 07/21/2005 8:49:27 PM PDT · 19 replies · 845+ views

Translated from Diario de Yucatan | Translated from Diario de Yucatan, July 10, 2005. | By Hern·n Casares Camera
New National Geographic/Zelitsky Expedition to Cuba "Underwater City" Site Planned-- Page 27 By Hern·n Casares Camera Thanks to: Donald Raab The Russian-Canadian oceanographer Paulina Zelitsky reveals that likely, next autumn, between October and November, she will lead a new expedition, from the Port of Progress, to finish the work that could not be concluded last year at the suspected site of a lost underwater city near Cuba; to map the area and to make a hi-resolution film of the location. National Geographic will finance most of the trip. For several months the team has been readying a specially equipped ship...

PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis

Bighorn Canyon sites at mercy of unlawful artifact hunters

Posted by Graybeard58
On General/Chat 07/17/2005 1:08:14 PM PDT · 10 replies · 95+ views

Billings Gazette | July 17, 2005 | Lorna Thackaray
Sometime in the past 200 to 400 years, an artist from an exclusive Crow religious society painted two sacred figures on the walls of a protected rock shelter on the edge of the Pryor Mountains. He had meticulously drawn a man and a woman adorned with sacred hats worn by Crow participants in Tobacco Society rituals. The artist probably created his intense red paint by combining blood and urine with ocher, a reddish clay that crops up occasionally in the ancient mountain range. Pieces of ocher that the artist would have crushed to a fine powder for mixing his paint...

Pre-Incas Kept Detailed Records Too

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/20/2005 6:29:53 PM PDT · 19 replies · 413+ views

ABC News | 7-20-2005 | Jude Webber
Pre-Incas kept detailed records too Jude Webber Wednesday, 20 July 2005 This inhabitant of the ancient Peruvian city of Caral would have used knotted string to communicate sophisticated concepts as long as 5000 years ago (Image: Reuters/ Pilar Olivares) A sophisticated arrangement of knots and strings, found on the site of the oldest city in the Americas, indicates ancient Peruvians were skilled at conveying detailed information much earlier than once thought. Archaeologists say the string arrangement, known as a quipu or khipu, indicates ancient Americans were expert communicators thousands of years earlier. Until now the oldest known quipus, often associated...

Adelanto developer's maps could rewrite history [china; menzies; 1421]

Posted by SteveH
On News/Activism 05/16/2005 3:19:24 AM PDT · 6 replies · 323+ views

Desert Dispatch | Sunday, May 15, 2005 | Leroy Standish
Adelanto developer's maps could rewrite history Sunday, May 15, 2005 Still-to-be-authenticated relics suggest Chinese explorers discovered America 4,200 years ago By LEROY STANDISH/Staff Writer ADELANTO -- For more than a decade, seven fragile map books sat under Hendon Harris' bed battling dust and darkness. Two years ago they were exhumed and could possibly prove the Chinese discovered the American land mass 4,200 years ago. "These maps were under my bed for 10-plus years, because we really didn't know what we had," said Hendon Harris, an Adelanto developer who owns several apartment buildings and is a prime sponsor of the Adelanto...

Were Chinese here first? (china; menzies; 1421)

Posted by SteveH
On News/Activism 05/16/2005 3:35:42 AM PDT · 58 replies · 1,283+ views

NewsAdvance.com | May 15, 2005 | Shannon Brennan
Were Chinese here first? Shannon Brennan / sbrennan@newsadvance.com May 15, 2005 Charlotte Rees is heiress to evidence that could turn world history upside down - if she can corroborate it. She and her six siblings inherited maps from their father, a third-generation missionary born in China, that she says may show the Chinese had discovered America - and the rest of the world - as early as 2200 B.C. ìIím ready for opposition,î said Rees, who lives in Forest. ìEven when Columbus was saying the world was round, he had opposition.î Rees, 59, will propound her theory Monday at a...

Ancient Egypt

Bubastis stone

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/18/2005 9:05:07 PM PDT · 10 replies · 162+ views

Egyptology Blogspot | Tuesday, April 20, 2004 | staff
It shows a royal decree, written in ancient Greek, Demotic and Hieroglyphs. The inscription consists of 67 lines of Greek text and 24 lines of Demotic along with traces of Hieroglyphs outlining the calendar reform and praising Ptolemy. It mentions King Ptolemy III Euergetes I along with the date 238 BC. There is an interesting reference to the king having imported grain from Syria, Phoenicia and Cyprus to alleviate famine in ancient Egypt and the mention a reform of the ancient Egyptian calendar which was not in fact actually implemented until some 250 years later under Julius Caesar.

Ancient Greece

Kommagene: The Forgotten Kingdom

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/17/2005 9:11:54 PM PDT · 6 replies · 162+ views

International Nemrud Foundation | 1990 | Maurice Crijns and Hedda Oledzky
Around 850 B.C. Kommagene appears for the first time in the annals of written history. According to the records of an Assyrian king, the population had to pay an annual tribute to him of gold, silver and the famous wood of the cedar trees. Apparently, the valuable cedar tree not only grew on the hillsides of the Lebanon in those days, but also in Kommagene. Kommagene became a satellite state of the Assyrians. Around 700 B.C. a Kommagenian king rebelled against the Assyrians... Around 300 B.C. one of the heirs of Alexander the Great came into possession of the land....

Ancient Rome

Christian Catacombs May Have Jewish Origin

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/22/2005 3:31:26 PM PDT · 12 replies · 289+ views

Yahoo News/Live Science | 7-20-2005 | Michael Schirber
Christian Catacombs May Have Jewish Origin Michael Schirber LiveScience Staff Writer Wed Jul 20, 1:43 PM ET The Roman catacombs are intricate labyrinths of burial chambers that were built roughly between the third and fifth century AD. They are considered among the most important relics of early Christianity. But a recent study of a Jewish catacomb in Rome finds that it was started a century before the oldest known Christian versions. In addition to the 60 Christian catacombs that have survived in Rome, there are two Jewish catacombs, which are distinguishable by the decorative artwork and inscriptions that were used....

Asia

Ancient Stone-Coffin Tombs Discovered In Sichuan

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/20/2005 6:51:20 PM PDT · 11 replies · 298+ views

Xinhunet/China View | 7-20-2005
Ancient stone-coffin tombs discovered in Sichuan www.chinaview.cn 2005-07-19 22:23:42 CHENGDU, July 19 (Xinhuanet) - Archaeologists discovered more than 20 ancient tombs with stone coffins dating back nearly 2,800 years ago in southwestern China's Sichuan province, local government announced Tuesday. The discovery of stone coffins, first of its kind found in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Garze, a major Tibetan habitat inwest Sichuan since ancient times, proved other ethnic groups also lived in the area before as Tibetan seldom use stone coffins for burial, said Chen Zujun, an expert from the provincial archaeological research institute. "Traditionally, Tibetan choose water burial, inhumation,...

AFGHANISTAN: ANCIENT FRESCOES DISCOVERED

Posted by WmShirerAdmirer
On News/Activism 07/21/2005 7:16:00 PM PDT · 29 replies · 630+ views

Adnkronos International | July 21, 2005 | Staff
AFGHANISTAN: ANCIENT FRESCOES DISCOVERED Tokyo, 21 July (AKI) - A Japanese research team has uncovered an ancient Buddhist fresco in the valley of Bamiyan, the site where the Taliban regime destroyed two gigantic statues of Buddha in March 2001. The fresco was found in a cave that was overlooked in the Taliban's destructive campaign against 'pagan symbols'. The cave is situated in the western part of the Bamiyan Valley, according to officials at Japan's National Institute for Research for Cultural Heritage. Even though some of the murals are covered in dust, initial exploration indicates that they cover both sides of...

Roots Of Rocketry (Chinese would-be rocketeer in 1500 AD)

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/22/2005 12:06:53 PM PDT · 4 replies · 66+ views

University of Oregon Department of Physics | prior to Oct 2004 (the date on the file) | Dr. James Schombert
According to Chinese folk tale, a man named Wan-Hoo made the first attempt to carry a man in a rocket propelled vehicle in around 1500. He reportedly took two large horizontal stakes and tied a seat between them. Under the primitive device were placed 47 rockets set to be lit all at the same time. When the rockets were ignited, they burned erratically and could not provide effective thrust to move the contraption. Wan-Hoo is said to have burned to death in the resulting fire.

Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran

Unusual Iron Age Steles Discovered In Ardebil Province (Iran)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/20/2005 6:38:22 PM PDT · 8 replies · 288+ views

Tehran Times | 7-20-2005
Unusual Iron Age steles discovered in Ardebil Province Tehran Times Culture Desk TEHRAN -- Over 500 stone steles bearing images of faces of men and women with no mouths were recently discovered at Shahr Yeri in Ardebil Province, the director of the team of archaeologists working at the site announced on Tuesday. Alireza Hojabri Nuri added that the steles are arranged one after another in the form of a wall and date back to the Iron Age. Shahr Yeri is located near Pirazmeyan village, 32 kilometers off of Meshkin Shahr in Ardebil Province. ìThe discovered steles enjoy unique characteristics, and...

Biology and Cryptobiology

Man Who Advanced Bird-Dinosaur Link Dies

Posted by BenLurkin
On News/Activism 07/20/2005 12:42:27 PM PDT · 21 replies · 400+ views

start.earthlink.net | July 20, 2005 1:58 PM EDT
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - John H. Ostrom, a Yale University paleontologist who advanced the theory that birds descended from dinosaurs and was credited for a discovery of a small carnivorous dinosaur in 1964, has died. He was 77. Ostrom died Saturday of complications from Alzheimer's disease at an assisted living center in Litchfield, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History said Tuesday. He was known for his discovery of Deinonychus, a two-legged dinosaur, in Montana and for his theory that it may have been a warm-blooded dinosaur. The theory, which was published in 1969, contradicts an earlier theory that dinosaur...

Australia

Aborigines' island life

Posted by Pharmboy
On News/Activism 07/16/2005 8:24:36 PM PDT · 4 replies · 289+ views

BBC News | Nick Squires
Unlike Aborigines on the mainland, the Tiwi Islanders did not know how to play the didgeridoo Nick Squires visits the Tiwi Islands, a pair of remote islands situated 80 km (50 miles) north of Darwin, Australia in the Arafura Sea and finds a very different way of Aboriginal life. From the outside, the church is perfectly ordinary looking. It was built in the 1930s and its white timber walls dazzle in the tropical sunshine. A cluster of palms and ancient mango trees provide shade at one end. At the top of a steep flight of wooden steps is the...

Let's Have Jerusalem

Biblical Scroll Found in Desert

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/16/2005 12:22:35 AM PDT · 213 replies · 3,740+ views

Guardian (U.K.) | Saturday July 16, 2005
An encounter with a Bedouin robber in a desert valley has led to what one Israeli archaeologist described as one of the most important biblical finds from the region in half a century. Professor Chanan Eshel, an archaeologist from Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, said yesterday that the discovery of two fragments of nearly 2,000-year-old parchment scroll from the Dead Sea area gave hope to biblical and archaeological scholars, frustrated by a dearth of material unearthed in the region in recent years, that the Judean desert could yet yield further artefacts. "No more scrolls have been found in the...

Thoroughly Modern Miscellany

King George's Madness Linked to Arsenic

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/22/2005 9:26:13 AM PDT · 11 replies · 185+ views

AP / Yahoo | Fri Jul 22 2005 | Emma Ross
...a study this week in The Lancet medical journal found high concentrations of arsenic in the king's hair and contends the severity and duration of his episodes of illness may have been caused by the toxic substance. The 18th-century king, under whose reign Britain mastered the oceans, defeated Napoleon and expanded its empire to superpower dimensions, was best remembered for the humiliating loss of the American colonies and for the periods when he lost his mind.

Napoleon was poisoned: toxicological study (arsenic)

Posted by NormsRevenge
On News/Activism 06/04/2005 11:06:03 PM PDT · 48 replies · 898+ views

AFP on Yahoo | 6/4/05 | AFP - Strasbourg
STRASBOURG (AFP) - Napoleon Bonaparte was murdered by arsenic poisoning and did not die naturally of a stomach cancer, according to a new toxicological study which attempts to end long running historical controversy. "The latest analysis suggests a criminal intent," said Dr Pascal Kintz, a toxicologist who regularly gives expert evidence in court cases, and who conducted a new study on Napoleon's hair. For International Napoleonic Society (INS) spokesman Jean-Claude Damamme the new study by Dr Kintz has produced "the definitive proof of the criminal poisoning of Napoleon". Napoleon died aged 51 in 1821, on the island of St Helena...

The Myth of the Irish -- Just Where Are Those Signs Warning "No Irish Need Apply"?

Posted by Chi-townChief
On News/Activism 07/17/2005 12:59:04 PM PDT · 124 replies · 2,211+ views

History News Network via Chicago Sun-Times | July 17, 2005 / March 18, 2005 | Richard Jensen
Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination against their menfolk, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!î These ads were supposedly aimed at non-Irish men: we have a job and if you are English or German or anything but Irish come in and apply. Today anyone can buy fake NINA signs on Ebay (the fakes are all dated Sept 11, 1915, by the way.) No historian, archivist or museum curator has ever been able to find a genuine NINA signs, nor a newspaper report or court case, nor even a recollection of...

The real sound of Shakespeare? (Globe theatre performs Shakespeare's plays in Shakespeare's dialect)

Posted by nickcarraway
On General/Chat 07/19/2005 10:36:29 AM PDT · 3 replies · 79+ views

BBC News | Joe Boyle
Ever been baffled by the bard? Vexed by his verse? Or perplexed by his puns? London's Globe theatre thinks it has the answer: perform Shakespeare's plays in Shakespeare's dialect. In August the theatre will stage an "original production" of Troilus and Cressida - with the actors performing the lines as close to the 16th century pronunciations as possible. By opening night, they will have rehearsed using phonetic scripts for two months and, hopefully, will render the play just as its author intended. They say their accents are somewhere between Australian, Cornish, Irish and Scottish, with a dash of Yorkshire -...

This Day In History Civil War July 18, 1863 Assault of Battery Wagner

Posted by mainepatsfan
On General/Chat 07/18/2005 12:02:33 PM PDT · 3 replies · 47+ views

historychannel.com | 7/18/05 | historychannel.com
This Day In History | Civil War July 18 1863 Assault of Battery Wagner and death of Robert Gould Shaw On this day, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and 272 of his troops are killed in an assault on Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina. Shaw was commander of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, perhaps the most famous regiment of African-American troops during the war. Fort Wagner stood on Morris Island, guarding the approach to Charleston harbor. It was a massive earthwork, 600 feet wide and made from sand piled 30 feet high. The only approach to the fort was across a...

600-year-old papal seals found in German latrine

Posted by NYer
On Religion 07/17/2005 2:25:18 PM PDT · 9 replies · 453+ views

Expatica | July 15, 2005
GREIFSWALD, GERMANY - In one of the most sensational archaeological discoveries in Germany, four papal seals dating back 600 years have been uncovered from a medieval latrine shaft in the northeastern city of Greifswald, officials said Thursday. The four round seals cast in lead date to the papacy of Pope Bonifatius IX (1389-1404). The 3.5-centimetre seals, each weighing some 50 grams, bear the inscription "BONIFATIUS VIIII" on one side and images of the apostles Peter and Paul on the other. Regional archaeology office director Hauke Joens said the find - in the shaft of a latrine on the campus of...

800-year-old ring is full of mystery

Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 07/16/2005 12:19:04 AM PDT · 77 replies · 1,967+ views

icCoventry | Jul 15 2005 | Duncan Gibbons
AN 800-YEAR-OLD mystical ring unearthed in Warwickshire goes on public display for the first time tomorrow. The precious gold and garnet band features a mysterious cryptic message, written in olde worlde French which has archaeology experts baffled. It appears to say the words "Je suis une fleur" (I am a flower) and "amour" (love) but some of letters of the inscription are reversed and turned upside down. Boffins from the British Museum believe it could be a coded token of affection between two lovers, or even a medieval spell. People will be able to see and decide for themselves when...

Scientists Dispel The Mystery Surrounding Stradivarius Violins

Posted by nickcarraway
On General/Chat 07/17/2005 9:35:07 AM PDT · 74 replies · 543+ views

Science Daily | 2005-07-13
Antonius Stradivarius violins are shrouded in more myths than any other instruments in world history. At Mid Sweden University, researchers are using modern technology to uncover his secrets. At the international acoustics conference ICSV12, taking place in Lisbon on July 11-14, 2005, Associate Professor Mats Tinnsten will be presenting the latest research findings in the field. "It's not possible to copy Stradivarius violins exactly, since wood is a living material with great natural variations. The results of new research indicate, however, that we will be able to overcome such difficulties with the aid of advanced computer support," says Mats Tinnsten....

History for Sale

Posted by struwwelpeter
On News/Activism 07/17/2005 8:55:04 AM PDT · 2 replies · 138+ views

Noviy Vestnik (New Herald), Karaganda, Kazakhstan | July 6th, 2005 | Marina Funtikova
The Karlag headquarters is put up for sale This decaying three-story building in Dolinka was built during the 1930s, and still reflects its its past glory. Seventy years ago the administrative offices of the Karlag (Karaganda GULAG) were located here. On June 27th this historical building was put up for sale. One could buy it for three and one-half million tenge (about $25,000), but there were no takers. "THERE WON'T BE ANYTHING LEFT IN ITS PLACE BUT RUINS" Dolinka village head Igor Lenev gave us a tour of the former Karlag administrative building. The three-story building is hidden behind overgrown...

INSIDE FORT LANE Archaeological study finds fragments of site history

Posted by ApplegateRanch
On News/Activism 07/17/2005 9:55:13 AM PDT · 4 replies · 229+ views

Medford Mail Tribune | July 17, 2005 | PARIS ACHEN
The little pioneer cabin on a terrace overlooking the Rogue River had been torched in 1853 by American Indians. The only evidence of its existence until last week was a letter written in December 1853 by a U.S. Army officer reporting to his superior about the construction of Fort Lane northwest of Central Point. A group of anthropology students from Southern Oregon University and volunteers from the Southern Oregon Historical Society found the cabinís remains July 5 during a nine-day archaeological dig that ended Friday. The group, headed by Mark Tveskov, SOU associate professor of anthropology, expected to find the...

end of digest #53 20050723

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #54
Saturday, July 30, 2005

Asia

History rehabilitates the tyrants of old in Central Asia

Posted by nwrep
On News/Activism 10/26/2003 1:22:46 PM PST · 26 replies · 94+ views

Boston.com | October 24, 2003 | H.D.S. Greenway
By H.D.S. Greenway, 10/24/2003 UNTIL THE TYRANTS of the 20th century came along, they were the most efficient, cold-blooded, feared, and destructive conquerors the world had ever known. They were the Mongol horsemen from the steppes of Central Asia, whose hordes under the leadership of Genghis Khan built a 13th-century empire by mass slaughter -- burning cities and terrifying half a dozen civilizations from Russia to the East China Sea. Genghis Khan's grandson, Hulagu, leveled Baghdad, and Iraqis have invoked his name ever since to brand their enemies, including the Americans. It is said that you could smell their stench...

Minatogawa People (An Asian Neanderthal?)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/24/2005 5:01:11 PM PDT · 10 replies · 415+ views

University Of Tokyo | 7-24-2005 | Hisoa Baba/Banri Endo
Postcranial Skeleton of the Minatogawa Man Hisao Baba* and Banri Endo** *Department of Anatomy, Dokkyo University School of Medicine; **Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Science, The University of Tokyo GENERAL DISCUSSION Estimation of the Stature The stature of the Minatogawa man was estimated according to the methods of Peason (1899) and of Fujii (1960). The estimated statures using the femora by Fujii's method are 1532, 1499, 1556, 1499 mm in MI, MII, MIII, MIV, respectively. The value for MIII seems too great when the relative shortness of her tibia is taken into account. In estimating statures by Peason's formula, various...

Biology and Cryptobiology

British Have Changed Little Since Ice Age, Gene Study Says

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/26/2005 8:41:38 AM PDT · 34 replies · 312+ views

National Geographic News | July 19, 2005 | James Owen
"There's been a lot of arguing over the last ten years, but it's now more or less agreed that about 80 percent of Britons' genes come from hunter-gatherers who came in immediately after the Ice Age," Miles said... New evidence for the genetic ancestry of modern Britons comes from analysis of blood groups, oxygen traces in teeth, and DNA samples taken from skeletal remains... The most visible British genetic marker is red hair, he added. The writer Tacitus noted the Romans' surprise at how common it was when they arrived 2,000 years ago. "It's something that foreign observers have often...

Genetic Makeup in E. Asia (blood type Gm gene)

Posted by TigerLikesRooster
On News/Activism 06/21/2005 10:08:05 AM PDT · 22 replies · 760+ views

The Daily China

Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran

Tombs of Mede Priests Found in Qom Province

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/28/2005 7:54:07 AM PDT · 3 replies · 104+ views

Cultural Heritage News Agency | May 29 2005 | staff
The two discovered tombs apparently date back to the Iron Age. Usually these are filled with ritual offerings buried alongside the dead, but no burial objects or pottery remains, except for two unique bronze bracelets with snake heads at each end on the corpseís left hands, have been found in the tombs... Animals such as snakes, ants, and scorpions are considered devilish in Zoroastrianism, but in Mithraism which was the faith of the Mede people, snakes were sacred respected animals, therefore the skeletons are believed to be of Mithraist Mede priests.

India

Romany Gypsies Came Out Of India

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/06/2004 3:51:50 PM PDT · 112 replies · 1,985+ views

ABC Science News | 9-6-2004 | Anna Salleh
Romany Gypsies came out of India Anna Salleh ABC Science Online Monday, 6 September 2004 A Romany woman dances in downtown Prague during the third annual Khamoro Festival of Roma music and culture (Image: Reuters/Petr Josek) Legend has it that European Gypsies came from Egypt but a new genetic study has shown they came from a small population that emerged from ancestors in India around 1000 years ago. The research, by Professor Luba Kalaydjieva of the University of Western Australia and team, looked at the origins of eight to 10 million people in Europe commonly known as Gypsies. Roma, Romani...

PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis

Mexican Archaeologists Find Rare Sacrifice

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/23/2005 3:31:29 PM PDT · 49 replies · 886+ views

The Guardian (UK) | 7-23-2005 | Mark Stevenson
Mexican Archeologists Find Rare Sacrifice Saturday July 23, 2005 2:16 AM By MARK STEVENSON Associated Press Writer MEXICO CITY (AP) - Archeologists digging through an Aztec temple say they've found a rare child sacrifice to the war god, a deity normally honored with the hearts or skulls of adult warriors. The child found at Mexico City's Templo Mayor ruins was apparently killed sometime around 1450, in a sort of grim cornerstone ceremony intended to dedicate a new layer of building, according to archaeologist Ximena Chavez. Priests propped the child - apparently already dead, since the sand around him showed no...

Underwater Archaeology

Seafloor survey buoys Atlantis claim: Earthquake debris shores up evidence for lost city

Posted by CHARLITE
On News/Activism 07/22/2005 8:56:42 PM PDT · 26 replies · 1,081+ views

NATURE.COM | JULY 22, 2005 | Andreas von Bubnoff
There occurred violent earthquakes and floods. And in a single day and night of misfortune... the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea." This account, written by Plato more than 2,300 years ago, set scientists on the trail of the lost city of Atlantis. Did it ever exist? And if so, where was it located, and when did it disappear? In a recent paper in Geology, Marc-Andre Gutscher of the European Institute for Marine Studies in PlouzanÈ gives details of one candidate for the lost city: the submerged island of Spartel, west of the Straits of Gibraltar....

Ancient Egypt

The Curse Of The Red-Headed Mummy

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 12/01/2002 5:11:08 PM PST · 81 replies · 1,432+ views

The Birdman.com | 12-01-2002 | Heather Pringle
THE CURSE OF THE RED-HEADED MUMMY by Heather Pringle Until he first encountered the mummies of Xinjiang, Victor Mair was known mainly as a brilliant, if eccentric, translator of obscure Chinese texts, a fine sinologist with a few controversial ideas about the origins of Chinese culture, and a scathing critic prone to penning stern reviews of sloppy scholarship. Mair's pronouncements on the striking resemblance between some characters inscribed on the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Chinese symbols were intensely debated by researchers. His magnum opus on the origins of Chinese writing, a work he had been toiling away at for...

Ramesses II Suffered From Arthritis

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/25/2005 9:11:31 PM PDT · 6 replies · 113+ views

Discovery News | Sept. 15, 2004 | Rossella Lorenzi
The finding challenges a previous diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis (A.S), a condition by which some or all of the joints and bones of the spine fuse together. That would have meant that the pharaoh spent most of his life in pain, feeling feverish and experiencing night sweats... The third king of Egypt's 19th dynasty, Ramesses ruled for 67 years (1279-1212 B.C.). During his long reign, Ramesses build more temples and monuments, took more wives -- his favorite was the beautiful Nefertari -- and produced more children -- as many as 162, according some accounts -- than any other pharaoh... "Ankylosing...

Ancient Greece

Golden Treasure Unearthed In Bulgaria

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/25/2005 8:16:14 PM PDT · 15 replies · 467+ views

Yahoo/AP | 7-25-2005 | Nevyana Hadjiyska
Golden Treasure Unearthed in Bulgaria By NEVYANA HADJIYSKA, Associated Press Writer Mon Jul 25, 8:08 AM ETAP Photo: A Bulgarian archeologist shows a golden wreath of laurels, discovered late Saturday by his team... " SOFIA, Bulgaria - Archaeologists have unearthed a 2,400-year old golden treasure in an ancient Thracian tomb in eastern Bulgaria, the director of the country's History Museum said Monday. The gold-rich burial was discovered late on Saturday by a team of archaeologists, working on excavations near the village of Zlatinitsa, some 290 kilometers (180 miles) east of the capital, Sofia. The most impressive finds included a golden...

A massive grave site thousands of years old was discovered at the Monastery of St. Barnabas

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/26/2005 5:17:01 PM PDT · 24 replies · 761+ views

HR Net/Cyprus Times | 7-24-2005
A massive grave site thousands of years old was discovered at the Monastery of St. Barnabas in the occupied areas of Cyprus Turkish Cypriot daily CYPRUS TIMES newspaper (24.07.05) reports that a major archaeological discovery was made recently at the Monastery of St. Barnabas, after the wheel of a tourist bus disappeared into a hole revealing an underground chamber. The so-called authorities of the Antiquities and Museums Department at occupied Famagusta, headed by Mr Hasan Tekel, were informed and a subsequent investigation, in the form of a dig has uncovered a massive grave site thousands of years old covering Classical,...

Prehistoric Archaeology of the Aegean, Human Sacrifice

Posted by Little Bill
On General/Chat 07/26/2005 1:07:44 PM PDT · 35 replies · 315+ views

Dartmouth University | 1995 | Various
Site of Western Extension to Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos In a LM IB context in excavations just to one side of the Royal Road some distance northwest of the Little Palace at Knossos, 327 children's bones were found in a burnt deposit in the basement of a building christened the North House. Originally attributed to between eight and eleven children provisionally aged between ten and fifteen years old, between 21% and 35% of these bones, which included skull fragments as well as other bones, all found in an unarticulated heap, exhibited "fine knife marks, exactly comparable to butchery marks on...

Tomb discovery reveals treasures after 2,400 years

Posted by DaveLoneRanger
On News/Activism 07/27/2005 7:03:08 PM PDT · 19 replies · 544+ views

London Telegraph | 07/26/2005 | Matthew Brunwasser
Archaeologists have unearthed 2,400-year-old treasure in a Thracian tomb in eastern Bulgaria, the director of the country's history museum said yesterday. Professor Daniela Agre, who led the team of 15 from the Bulgarian Archaeological Institute, said the finds, made on Saturday, provided enormous clues to understanding one of Europe's most mysterious ancient people. "The Thracians are one of the founders of European civilisation, this is important for all of us, not just Bulgaria," she said. "The period of the grave is exceptionally important. It was a peak moment in the development of Thracian culture, statesmanship and art. They had very...

Ancient Rome

Ancient Roman Puzzle Yields Clues

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/26/2005 5:10:20 PM PDT · 11 replies · 642+ views

BBC | 7-26-2005 | Vanessa Collingridge
Ancient Roman puzzle yields clues By Vanessa Collingridge Presenter, Rebuilding Rome The map provides a unique insight into ancient Rome (pic: Stanford University) For more than 500 years scholars have been wrestling with an ancient Roman puzzle that would test even the most cunning of quiz-masters. How do you put together a giant stone jigsaw when 80% of the pieces are missing and you have even lost the lid? Now with a joint Italian-US team on the case using a hi-tech approach the answer might finally be within reach. The Forma Urbis, or Severan Marble Plan, is a giant map...

Carthage: Forgotten

Posted by onja
On General/Chat 07/26/2005 1:20:19 AM PDT · 68 replies · 455+ views

If this isn't appropiate please cut it. I'm trying to get my facts straight so I don't mind correction if I'm wrong. Carthage was an important figure in history. They were the heirs of Phoenicia and were the main traders of the Mediterranean. They controlled Northern Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. They posed a very real threat to Rome and its allies. So much that the Romans destroyed them with no pity at all in the Third Punic War with absolutely no pretense other than that the Carthaginians were regaining the trade business. I went to my local library found...

Emperor's Decline And Fall (Constantine)

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/29/2005 3:17:43 PM PDT · 9 replies · 321+ views

Times (UK) | 7-29-2005 | Richard Owen
July 29, 2005 Emperor's decline and fall By Richard OwenA 2,000-year-old treasure reached an ignominious end A SEWER might be no place for an emperor, but that is where archaeologists have discovered a marble statue of the head of Constantine, one of Romeís greatest leaders. Eugenio La Rocca, the superintendent for Romeís monuments, said that archaeologists found the 61cm (2ft) head while clearing an ancient drainage system in the Roman Forum, the centre of public life in the ancient city. Signor La Rocca said yesterday that officials were unsure why the statue was in the sewer. One possibility is that...

Egnatia Digs Reveal Roman Road Secrets

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/28/2005 4:51:21 PM PDT · 20 replies · 553+ views

Kathimerini/AP | 7-28-2005 | Costas Kantouris
Egnatia digs reveal Roman road secretsExcavations uncover ancient equivalent of interstate highway A man walks along the remains of a wayside inn along the route of the ancient Via Egnatia, near the northern town of Komotini. Culture Ministry officials have unearthed extensive traces of the second-century-BC highway, which was built with safety features to protect even the clumsiest charioteer. By Costas Kantouris - The Associated Press KOMOTINI - Archaeologists excavating along the route of the ancient Via Egnatia are revealing the secrets of the ancient Romans' equivalent of an interstate highway. Stretching 861 kilometers (535 miles) across modern-day Albania, the...

Roman dig backs ancient writers' portrait of megalomaniac Caligula

Posted by churchillbuff
On News/Activism 08/29/2003 3:54:32 PM PDT · 42 replies · 294+ views

Guardian | Aug., 03 | John Hooper
British and American archaeologists digging in the Roman Forum said yesterday they had uncovered evidence to suggest that the emperor Caligula really was a self-deifying megalomaniac, and not the misunderstood, if eccentric, ruler that modern scholars have striven to create. For several decades historians have been lifting their eyebrows at the Latin authors' portrait of Caligula as a madman who came to believe he was a god. But Darius Arya of the American Institute for Roman Culture said a 35-day dig by young archaeologists from Oxford and Stanford universities had reinstated a key element in the traditional account. "We have...

Stanford, Oxford archaeologists find evidence that depraved tyrant annexed sacred temple

Posted by vannrox
On News/Activism 09/12/2003 1:57:26 PM PDT · 14 replies · 67+ views

Stanford Report, September 10, 2003 | September 10, 2003 | BY JOHN SANFORD
Did Caligula have a God complex?Stanford, Oxford archaeologists find evidence that depraved tyrant annexed sacred temple BY JOHN SANFORD Archaeologists from Stanford, Oxford and the American Institute for Roman Culture have unearthed evidence that Caligula, in an act of astonishing hubris, extended his palace to the podium of a sacrosanct temple. The discovery, made during the final weeks of a month-and-a-half-long dig this summer in the Roman Forum, appears to support accounts by some ancient historians that the profligate but short-lived emperor was a megalomaniac. "It's the equivalent of Queen Elizabeth taking over St. Paul's Cathedral as an anteroom,"...

Let's Have Jerusalem

Apostlesí Successor's Bones Discovered in Iranís St. Stephanus Church

Posted by nuconvert
On Religion 07/28/2005 7:15:48 AM PDT · 36 replies · 908+ views

MEHR News.com | July 27, 2005
Apostlesí successor's bones discovered in Iranís St. Stephanus Church TEHRAN, July 27 (MNA) -- Shahriar Adl, the director of the team documenting three Iranian churches for registration on UNESCOís World Heritage List, said on Wednesday that they have discovered the bones of one of the successors of the Apostles of Jesus in one of the ceilings of the St. Stephanus Church, which is located near Marand in East Azarbaijan. Some historical sources, such as the travelogue of Frenchmen Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605-1689), some photos kept at Tehranís Golestan Palace, and the photos taken by Ali Khan Vali, the governor of...

Genesis Text: Response or Documentary? Allegory or Narrative?

Posted by JediGirl
On News/Activism 02/27/2002 12:58:33 PM PST · 25 replies · 207+ views

Theistic-Evolution.net
When reading a novel, you already know that it is fiction. Even if it is inspired by actual events, a novel is fiction. This means that the text is classified as being in the fiction narrative genre. When reading a children's fiction book to a child, it generally carries more than just an entertainment value; there is usually an accompanying educational element within the story. Such books can sometimes be ended with the popular phrase "The moral of the story is..." as a way of emphasizing an underlying principle that was intended to be communicated in the book. The ever...

In the Bible, who were the "giant sons of God"?

Posted by Sir Gawain
On News/Activism 11/27/2001 5:41:01 AM PST · 104 replies · 1,290+ views

SD | Dex
In the Bible, who were the "giant sons of God"? 20-Nov-2001 Dear Straight Dope: Who or what were the giant sons of God (Nephilim) mentioned in the Bible and what happened to them? Depending on the author, they are refered to as sons of Seth, angels, aliens, monsters, and "weird hybrid offspring" that may have been wiped out in the flood. Were the ancient scribes jealous because they were just the big guys that got the good looking daughters? --Michael K. SDSTAFF Dex replies: Let's quote the text from Genesis 6. This is my own translation, combined from several sources, ...

Ancient Europe

28,000yo phallus discovered

Posted by Aussie Dasher
On Smoky Backroom 07/20/2005 10:24:41 PM PDT · 53 replies · 845+ views

Herald Sun | 21 July 2005
A STONE phallus 28,000 years-old has been discovered in a cave in Baden-Wuertemberg in southern Germany, the University of Tubingen said today. In assembling 14 stone fragments, found last year in the Hohle Fels cave, archeologists rebuilt the phallus, which is 20 centimetres long and three centimetres wide. It will be on display at the prehistoric museum in Blaubeuren, starting on Monday. The caves in the Blaubeuren region, which sheltered Neanderthal man, are among the most important archeological sites in Europe. The oldest object representing a bird, dating back 32,000 years, was discovered a few years ago in the same...

Ancient phallus unearthed in cave

Posted by traumer
On General/Chat 07/25/2005 8:13:47 AM PDT · 150 replies · 2,338+ views

BBC
A sculpted and polished phallus found in a German cave is among the earliest representations of male sexuality ever uncovered, researchers say. The 20cm-long, 3cm-wide stone object, which is dated to be about 28,000 years old, was buried in the famous Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm in the Swabian Jura. The prehistoric "tool" was reassembled from 14 fragments of siltstone. Its life size suggests it may well have been used as a sex aid by its Ice Age makers, scientists report. "In addition to being a symbolic representation of male genitalia, it was also at times used for knapping flints,"...

Megaliths and ArchaeoAstronomy

Mama Mia! You gotta nice rocks.

Posted by scouse
On News/Activism 10/23/2002 5:28:03 PM PDT · 15 replies · 48+ views

Daily Telegraph (UK) | 10/22/02 | Bruce Johnston
Italian Stonehenge found on a mountain By Bruce Johnston in Rome (Filed: 22/10/2002) A series of prehistoric stone structures, reminiscent of Stonehenge but taller and possibly earlier, have been located 3,500ft above sea level on a mountain in Calabria, southern Italy. The structures - now largely in ruins as a result of earthquakes - are mainly made up of two columns of large, square granite blocks, topped by a lintel. Measuring up to 33ft tall and 60ft wide, traces of them have been found over an area described as extending for "many square miles". They are believed to be the...

Star sheds light on African 'Stonehenge'

Posted by spetznaz
On News/Activism 12/05/2002 2:53:20 PM PST · 22 replies · 76+ views

CNN | Dec 5, 2002. | Richard Stenger
(CNN) -- Mysterious ruins in Zimbabwe, nearly brushed this week by the shadow of a total solar eclipse, once served as an astronomical observatory to track eclipses, solstices and an elusive exploding star, a South African scientist said. The Great Enclosure in the archaeological site of Great Zimbabwe, a crumbling ring of stone walls and platforms about 250 meters in circumference, was thought to have been a palace complex for regional rulers some 800 years ago. But Richard Wade of the Nkwe Ridge Observatory thinks that the enclosure was used in a similar capacity as the much older Stonehenge in...

Avebury Stone Is Found to Rival Stonehenge

Posted by SteveH
On News/Activism 04/18/2003 3:42:48 AM PDT · 9 replies · 57+ views

PA news (scotsman.com) | Stuart Coles
Avebury Stone Is Found to Rival Stonehenge By Stuart Coles, PA News Archaeologists working at the ancient Avebury stone circle have been surprised to uncover what could be one of the largest standing stones in the country. Experts at English Heritage and the National Trust say the stone could weigh in at 100 tons, rivalling the largest megaliths at its fellow site in Wiltshire, Stonehenge. The surprise discovery was made during work at the 4,500 year-old stone circle to straighten two stones known as the Cove, which have begun to lean over the last 300 years and which it was...

Stonehenge "King" was from central Europe

Posted by spetznaz
On News/Activism 02/10/2003 9:48:39 PM PST · 18 replies · 194+ views

Yahoo! | Mon, Feb 10, 2003
LONDON (Reuters) - The construction of one of the country's most famous ancient landmarks, the towering megaliths at Stonehenge in southern England, might have been supervised by the Swiss, or maybe even the Germans. Archaeologists studying the remains of a wealthy archer found in a 4,000-year-old grave exhumed near Stonehenge last year said on Monday he was originally from the Alps region, probably modern-day Switzerland, Austria or Germany. "He would have been a very important person in the Stonehenge area and it is fascinating to think that someone from abroad -- probably modern-day Switzerland -- could have played an important...

Female Anatomy Inspired Stonehenge

Posted by vannrox
On News/Activism 03/02/2003 4:02:02 PM PST · 85 replies · 198+ views

Discovery News | Feb. 28, 2003 | By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Female Anatomy Inspired Stonehenge? By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Feb. 28, 2003 —The design of Stonehenge, the 4,800-year-old monument in southwestern England, was based on female sexual anatomy, according to a paper in the current Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The theory could explain why the ancients constructed Stonehenge and similar monuments throughout the United Kingdom. Anthony Perks, a professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver, and a doctor at the university's Women's Hospital, first thought of Stonehenge's connection to women after noticing how some of the stones were smooth,...

The vagina monoliths: Stonehenge was ancient sex symbol

Posted by Pokey78
On News/Activism 07/05/2003 7:14:10 PM PDT · 77 replies · 197+ views

The Observer (U.K.) | 07/06/03 | Robin McKie
Stone circle is exciting gynaecologists, reports Science Editor Robin McKie Stonehenge has dominated the Wiltshire landscape for more than 4,000 years and is one of the world's most important heritage sites, but its purpose has remained a mystery. Some researchers have claimed the stone circles were used as a giant computer; others that Stonehenge was an observatory for studying stars and predicting the seasons; and a few have even argued that its rings acted as a docking pad for alien spaceships. Now a University of British Columbia researcher who has investigated the great prehistoric monument for several years has announced...

Morford: Yay, Giant Stone Vaginas

Posted by presidio9
On News/Activism 07/23/2003 8:01:13 AM PDT · 56 replies · 175+ views

San Francisco Chronicle | Wednesday, July 23, 2003 | Mark Morford, Bathroom Humor Affecianado
Stonehenge. Buncha rocks. Assortment of really huge really old really gray really heavy stones over there in really old gray heavy England. You know the ones. Turns out it's really a giant vagina. Who knew? No, really. Look at it from above. Notice, like those Canadian researchers did, the outline, the general shape, that come-hither winkingly divine invitation that enchants all of life and confounds the GOP and makes grown men weep. Then ask your nearest female paramour to please remove her pants. You need to compare. See? Ahh. Mystery solved.

Aging (and Wannabe)Hippie Alert: Stonehenge 2003 "...in touch with the flow of nature"

Posted by yankeedame
On News/Activism 06/21/2003 8:56:57 AM PDT · 20 replies · 76+ views

BBC News On-Line | Saturday, 21 June, 2003 | staff writer
Saturday, 21 June, 2003, 12:32 GMT 13:32 UK Solstice revellers watch sunrise Revellers said the sunrise over the stones was "spectacular" More than 30,000 people gathered at Stonehenge in Wiltshire to mark the summer solstice. Ahead of the midsummer event police warned people not to hold any unlicensed "mass gatherings" afterwards. English Heritage has reopened the site to the public after it was closed for a number of years. Astrologer Roy Gillett, who was among the crowds there to watch the sunrise just before 0500 BST, said it was important to celebrate this the longest day of the year. (It...

England: Govrn't gives A-OK for Stonehenge hotel and gas station.

Posted by yankeedame
On News/Activism 06/23/2003 7:23:47 AM PDT · 9 replies · 43+ views

BBC News On Line | Monday, 23 June, 2003 | staff writer
Monday, 23 June, 2003, 07:16 GMT 08:16 UK Stonehenge hotel given go-aheadThousands of people visit Stonehenge every year Controversial plans to build a hotel on a greenfield site near Stonehenge have been given the go-ahead. Proposals to build the 120-room hotel three miles from the ancient stones sparked outrage from countryside campaigners. But planning officials in Wiltshire decided to allow the development because of a lack of tourist accommodation within easy reach of the historic site. The plans, which will swallow up a 160-acre area of countryside off the A303 near Amesbury, will also include a roadside service station....

High-tech lasers have been used to unlock the secrets of Stonehenge.

Posted by stainlessbanner
On News/Activism 10/17/2003 7:19:17 AM PDT · 45 replies · 92+ views

bbc | Thursday, 16 October, 2003
The work at the ancient site in Wiltshire has already uncovered two carvings which are invisible to the naked eye.The carvings of bronze axe heads are between four and six inches long.Similar markings were found at the site in the 1950s, but archaeologists say these are now too badly eroded to be seen.The research by Wessex Archaeology and 3D laser scan firm Archaeoptics began in the summer of 2002.They used a low-powered laser beam to scan the stones without causing damage to the structure.Three stones have been scanned to date, and the investigating team insists a full survey of all...

Modern Merlin raises faux Stonehenge in day

Posted by Darnright
On News/Activism 04/02/2004 1:07:35 PM PST · 18 replies · 78+ views

Roanoke Times, roanoke.com | Thursday, April 01, 2004 | Matt Chittum
NATURAL BRIDGE - This kind of madness requires planning. It took weeks for artist and oddball Mark Cline to reach this point. Monday, he stood on a hill by U.S. 11 with the dust devils, his sidekick Victor Reyes Peres and a disassembled life-size Styrofoam replica of Stonehenge. They awaited a kind, portly old guy named Hershel and his concrete truck. There may be other imaginations unregulated enough to conceive of "Foamhenge." Not many could pull it off. Not many would even try. But they are not Cline. In fact, the madness of Foamhenge may not be in the mere...

Stonehenge: Built By Welshmen?

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/18/2004 7:33:38 PM PDT · 31 replies · 264+ views

Discovery News | 6-18-2004 | Jennifer Viegas
Stonehenge: Built by Welshmen? By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Building Mystery Solved? June 18, 2004 -- At least three of the builders of Stonehenge were from Wales, according to archaeologists who found the builders' grave close to the Stonehenge site, and have linked the remains to stones used in the construction of the Salisbury Plain monument. The finding, which comes just before Sunday's summer solstice, not only sheds light on Stonehenge's origins, but also provides clues to prehistoric migration patterns within Europe following the Stone Age, which was the earliest known period in human culture. Most historians believe that Stonehenge...

The Untold Mystery of Stonehenge

Posted by Starhubbler
On Bloggers & Personal 12/03/2004 5:56:17 PM PST · 47 replies · 665+ views

Over the millenia, most people have wondered about the strange builders of Stonehenge and other megalithic remains in Europe. Irish tradition has it that Stonehenge was built by Blacks from Africa. This may seem unbelievable at first. However, Irish tradition mentions the Formorians, Black giants who came from Africa. Anyone can easily check on the Formorians. Scottish historian David MacRitchie, and English Egyptologist Gerald Massey have all claimed in their works that Blacks were the original inhabitants of the British Isles and that the Tuatha De Danaan and Firbolgs all belonged to the Black race. In the book "Retake Your...

Scientists Seek Fresh Chance To Dig Up Stonehenge's Secrets

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/24/2005 1:07:56 PM PDT · 30 replies · 777+ views

The Guardian (UK) | 7-24-2005 | Robin McKie
Scientists seek fresh chance to dig up Stonehenge's secrets Robin McKie, science editor Sunday July 24, 2005 The Observer (UK) Stonehenge has always mystified. Julius Caesar thought it was the work of druids, medieval scholars believed it was the handiwork of Merlin, while local folk tales simply blamed the devil. Now scientists are demanding a full-scale research programme be launched to update our knowledge of the monument and discover precisely who built it and its burial barrow graves. This is the key recommendation of Stonehenge: an Archaeological Research Framework, edited by Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University, soon to be published...

Mystery Man Of Stonehenge

Posted by blam
On News/Activism 07/28/2005 4:13:48 PM PDT · 22 replies · 699+ views

Smithsonian | 7-28-2005 | Doug Stern
Mystery Man of Stonehenge Who was he and where did he come from? And what was his role in the making of the great monument? The discovery of a 4,300-year-old skeleton surrounded by intriguing artifacts has archaeologists abuzz Early one Friday in May 2002, a crew from England's Wessex Archaeology discovered two graves that predated the Romans by more than 2,500 years. When the sifting and analysis was done, 100 artifacts had been retrieved -- the richest Bronze Age grave ever discovered in Britain. There were two male skeletons, the most important of which was interred in a timber-lined grave on its...

Thoroughly Modern Miscellany

Diggers Plumb Moscow's Cavernous Depths

Posted by RussianConservative
On News/Activism 08/26/2003 7:44:23 AM PDT · 18 replies · 281+ views

Moscow Times | 26 Aug 03 | Ira Iosebashvili
For most people, Moscow's underworld conjures up images of high-rolling gangsters driving around in expensive cars. For Vadim Mikhailov, Moscow's underworld is a tangible place of wonder and awe, a site of endless tunnels and labyrinths, clandestine streams and strange, unexplainable phenomena. "Moscow has the largest, deepest and most complicated network of underground channels of any city in the world," Mikhailov said. In 1990, Mikhailov founded Diggers of the Underground Planet, a loose confederacy of subterranean explorers. The group first formed in Moscow, but now it has members in major cities all over the world. Mikhailov's love affair with the...

Goose isn't spruce.

Posted by aimhigh
On General/Chat 07/24/2005 3:05:14 PM PDT · 8 replies · 156+ views

Statemen Journal | 7/24/05 | DENNIS THOMPSON
Salem retiree Evelyn Potts, visiting the "Spruce Goose" at the Evergreen Aviation Museum, shook her head in irritation at the name the famous airplane is known by. "It was birch, not spruce," Potts said, looking the plane over. "It really is birch." She should know. She ordered the wood the plane is made from, as well as the glue that holds it together. Potts played an important role in the construction of the Spruce Goose, the enormous wooden aircraft built by millionaire aviator Howard Hughes during World War II.

Last bottle of world's oldest single malt whisky leaves Scotland

Posted by Dan from Michigan
On News/Activism 02/25/2005 5:36:40 PM PST · 94 replies · 2,007+ views

AFP | 2-25-05
Last bottle of world's oldest single malt whisky leaves Scotland Fri Feb 25,12:29 PM ET Offbeat - AFP LONDON (AFP) - The last remaining bottle of the world's oldest single malt whisky left its distillery in Scotland bound for Hong Kong, where it will be the star attraction at an airport shop. The bottle of Glenfiddich Rare Collection 1937, left to mature in a cask for 64 years before being bottled, is heading for Hong Kong's Chep Lap Kok Airport, where it will be available for a well-heeled buyer, but only at a steep cost. Previous bottles sold direct by...

Nautical Research Group Discovers Some Significant Findings on the Wreck Site of RMS Titanic

Posted by nickcarraway
On General/Chat 07/25/2005 12:23:19 PM PDT · 4 replies · 147+ views

Yahoo/PRWEB | Sun Jul 24
Nautical Research Group has returned from a highly successful scientific research expedition to RMS Titanic. In the course of processing the high quality digital video shot on Titanic last week, two startling observations of note were discovered. Preliminary findings have revealed that Titanic is in an advanced state of deterioration and some data may provide new clues to how she broke up near the surface. The first significant observation was that the mast has finally collapsed in the area above the bell stanchion. In a recent scientific article that Nautical Research Group president, David Bright will present at Oceans 2005,...

Seaport Museum Artifacts Ship Out

Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 07/25/2005 7:03:32 AM PDT · 1 reply · 82+ views

Archaeology | June 22, 2005 | Mark Rose
Although it is greatly reassuring to know that the Seaport Museum collection--2 million artifacts from excavations in Manhattan--is going to a good home in Albany, it is difficult to conclude that this is anything but another chapter in the ongoing divorce proceedings between New York City and its past. In 1999, the Giuliani administrations put the wraps on excavations around City Hall and the Tweed Courthouse that exposed numerous burials of early New Yorkers. Who were they? Were the burials of residents of an almshouse, built in 1736 on the site now occupied by City Hall, or of Revolutionary War...

This Day in History July 28, 1914 World War I Begins with Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia.

Posted by mainepatsfan
On General/Chat 07/28/2005 7:54:57 AM PDT · 30 replies · 121+ views

thehistorynet.com | 7/28/05 | thehistorynet.com
Today in History July 28 1914 Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, beginning World War I.

The Venona decodes, their meaning and interpretation, are too large a subject for this thread.

Posted by Libloather
On General/Chat 07/23/2005 11:09:22 PM PDT · 11 replies · 209+ views

Free Republic | 7/24/05 | liberallarry
The Venona decodes, their meaning and interpretation, are too large a subject for this thread.

Who Were The Knights Templar? (Sunday History Read)

Posted by Hacksaw
On News/Activism 07/21/2002 10:01:31 AM PDT · 155 replies · 2,294+ views

www.templarhistory.com | undated | Stephen Dafoe and Alan Butler
The Knights Templar were a monastic military order formed at the end of the First Crusade with the mandate of protecting Christian pilgrims on route to the Holy Land. Never before had a group of secular knights banded together and took monastic vows. In this sense they were the first of the Warrior Monks. From humble beginnings of poverty when the order relied on alms from the traveling pilgrims, the order would go on to have the backing of the Holy See and the collective European monarchies. Within two centuries they had become powerful enough to defy all but...

end of digest #54 20050730

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Prehistory and Origins
Temples Older Than Pyramids Found (In Europe)
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 06/11/2005 12:54:56 PM PDT · 62 replies · 1,552+ views BBC \| Saturday June 11 2005 A series of temples thought to be older than Stonehenge or the Pyramids have been uncovered by a team of archaeologists working in Europe. More than 150 monuments built between 4,800 BC and 4,600 BC have been found beneath the fields of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They are thought to represent Europe's oldest civilisation. The discoveries are so new that this temple building culture does not even have a name, The Independent reports. Click here to try our ancient civilisations quiz The temples were made of earth and wood, with the buildings stretching for up to half a mile....

Europe's oldest civilisation unearthed
	Posted by wagglebee On News/Activism 06/11/2005 2:02:58 PM PDT · 31 replies · 808+ views theage.com \| 6/11/05 \| AFP Europe's oldest civilisation has been discovered by archaeologists across the continent, it was reported yesterday. More than 150 large temples, constructed between 4800 BC and 4600 BC, have been unearthed in fields and cities in Germany, Austria and Slovakia, predating the pyramids in Egypt by some 2,000 years, The Independent newspaper revealed. The network of temples, made of earth and wood, were constructed by a religious people whose economy appears to have been based on livestock farming, The Independent reported. Excavations have taken place over the past three years but the discovery is so new that the civilisation has not...

Europe's oldest civilisation unearthed: report
	Posted by STARWISE On General/Chat 06/11/2005 9:38:16 PM PDT · 8 replies · 153+ views Yahoo/AFP \| 6-11-05 LONDON (AFP) - Europe's oldest civilisation has reportedly been discovered by archaelogists across the continent. More than 150 large temples, constructed between 4800 BC and 4600 BC, have been unearthed in fields and cities in Germany, Austria and Slovakia, predating the pyramids in Egypt by some 2,000 years, The Independent newspaper revealed. The network of temples, made of earth and wood, were constructed by a religious people whose economy appears to have been based on livestock farming, The Independent reported. (snip) The most complex centre discovered so far, beneath the city of Dresden in Saxony, eastern Germany, comprises a temple...

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #50 Saturday, July 2, 2005
Underwater Archaeology
Archaeological wonders are under the sea (Shipwrecked 4th century BC vessel found in Greek waters)
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 06/27/2005 4:15:32 PM PDT · 16 replies · 493+ views Yorkshire Divers/AFP \| June 24 2005 \| Eleni Colliopoulou Athens - The recent discovery of the remains of a shipwrecked 4th century BC vessel, nicknamed Kythnos I after the Greek island near which it was found, is the latest testimony of the archaeological riches still submerged in Greek waters. It also demonstrates the technological advances that underwater archaeology has made in this country in recent years. Greece has no shortage of skilled archaeologists. But when it comes to underwater research, it is only recently that the Greek ministry of culture has begun mixing academic knowledge with hi-tech wizardry. Collaboration with the national centre for maritime research (Elkethe), and increased...

Police warn of 'dangerous treasure hunt' off coast (Scotland)
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 06/27/2005 1:21:46 PM PDT · 19 replies · 921+ views Scotsman \| SARAH BRUCE POLICE have warned people not to endanger their lives treasure-hunting after ancient coins and gold were found off the Scottish coast. Four divers from Glasgow made the discovery earlier this month while exploring two wooden wrecks. They took ashore samples of gold and coins they had found on the floor of a cave in a sea cliff, believed to be in the Cullykhan bay area, near the Local Hero village of Pennan. Among the sample of goodies they took ashore were bottles of irregularly shaped granules of 23-carat gold and a box of coins. A spokesman for Grampian Police said:...
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptian Princess Head from 14th Century B.C. Listed on eBay
	Posted by FairOpinion On News/Activism 06/25/2005 11:59:09 PM PDT · 21 replies · 496+ views Business Wire \| June 25, 2005 \| GazinAuctions Amazing Ancient Egyptian Princess Head from 14th Century B.C. to be Listed on eBay; Head is That of King Tut's Sister - First Time on the Market in More Than 50 Years LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 23, 2005--A rare Mansoor portrait sculpture of an 18th dynasty Amarna Princess (ca 1363-1364 B.C.) goes live on eBay, the world's largest online marketplace, June 23rd at 10 AM P.S.T. Previews of the piece are now viewable at www.ebay.com/princess . The beautiful, delicately carved pink limestone head was last sold more than 50 years ago by the legendary M.A. Mansoor, to a private collector, who...

Microprobe Makeover For Museum's Mummy (Australia)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/28/2005 11:03:38 AM PDT · 4 replies · 108+ views The Australian \| 6-28-2005 \| Selina Mitchell Microprobe makeover for museum's mummy Selina Mitchell JUNE 28, 2005 THE CSIRO has teamed up with the National Gallery of Victoria to reconstruct and conserve the last resting place of a teenage Egyptian priestess who died around 700BC. The coffin lid, one of the first major Egyptian antiquities to arrive in Australia, is in a fragile state. About 60 per cent of the wood, and even more of its painted surface, are lost, but the original bright colours on the remaining pieces survive under layers of dirt -- gallery officials think. "It's good that it's in many pieces, because unlike...

Scientists May Soon Get Glimpse Of Mummy's Face
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/27/2005 11:57:56 AM PDT · 30 replies · 594+ views AP \| 6-26-2005 Scientists may soon get glimpse of mummy's face 6/26/2005, 5:49 p.m. ET The Associated Press NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. (AP) -- Pesed has called a western Pennsylvania college home for about 120 years, but her caretakers don't know what she looks like. But that might change now that researchers have a CT scan of the 2,300-year-old Egyptian mummy. Officials believe the scan will provide enough information to allow a forensic artist to construct a bust of Pesed, a mummy from the Nile River town of Akhmim, about 350 miles south of Cairo. Pesed has been the property of Westminster College, located...
Ancient Greece
After 2,600 Years, The World Gains Fourth Poem By Sappho
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/25/2005 6:38:31 PM PDT · 53 replies · 1,093+ views The Guardian (UK) \| 6-24-2005 \| John Ezard After 2,600 years, the world gains a fourth poem by Sappho John Ezard Friday June 24, 2005 The Guardian (UK) Plato believed Sappho should be honoured not merely as a poet but as a Muse. Photo: Getty A newly found poem by Sappho, acknowledged as one of the greatest poets of Greek classical antiquity and seen by some as the finest of any era, is published for the first time today. Written more than 2,600 years ago, the 101 words of verse deal with a theme timeless in both art and soap operas; the stirrings of an ageing body towards...
Ancient Rome
Major Excavation At Roman Forts (Wales)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/27/2005 11:43:56 AM PDT · 4 replies · 396+ views The Telegraph (UK) \| 6-27-2005 Major excavation at Roman forts The forts have been discovered at Dinefwr Park Three weeks of digging to excavate what could be the largest Roman garrison fort in Wales start on Monday. The site, which dates from the first century AD, was first found at Dinefwr Park, near Llandeilo, in 2003. Experts said the south Wales discovery could rewrite our understanding of the Roman conquest in the area. Recent surveys confirmed the site, which is invisible from the surface, is much larger than first thought and is made up of two overlapping forts. Emma Plunkett Dillon, archaeologist for the National...

Revealed: our friends the Romans did not invade Britain after all
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 06/29/2005 12:33:12 AM PDT · 34 replies · 1,089+ views Wren's Nest \| 26 June 2005 Astonishing new archaeological finds reveal they were already our countrymen 50 years before Claudius spun his way into the history books. reports The history of Britain will have to be rewritten. The AD43 Roman invasion never happened - and was simply a piece of sophisticated political spin by a weak Emperor Claudius. A series of astonishing archaeological findings of Roman military equipment, to be revealed this week, will prove that the Romans had already arrived decades earlier - and that they had been welcomed with open arms by ancient Britons. The discovery of swords, helmets and armour in Chichester, Sussex,...
Asia
Ancient bronze drum found in central province
	Posted by FairOpinion On News/Activism 06/29/2005 10:51:02 PM PDT · 6 replies · 189+ views Vietnam News Agency \| June 30, 2005 \| VNA Quang Tri, June 30 (VNA) - An ancient bronze drum believed to date back to the Dong Son culture, which existed 2,000-2,500 years ago, has been discovered in the central province of Quang Tri. The drum, 1m in diameter and 1.5m in height, was unearthed by some local people while looking for scrap iron along the Viet Nam-Laos borderline. However, the locals then sold the drum to a scrap store. Concerned provincial agencies are now looking for the antique. -Enditem

Ancient urban civilisation dug out in Anantnag (Kashmir)
	Posted by FairOpinion On News/Activism 06/29/2005 9:32:38 PM PDT · 9 replies · 207+ views Express India \| June 30, 2005 \| ENS Srinagar, June 29: THE State Archaeology Department has discovered remains of some hitherto unknown civilisation on plateau at Kutbal in south Kashmirís Anantnag district. In a statement, the department said that the remains of the civilisation were scattered over several kanals of land of this plateau. A portion of the land was given a trial dig and at depth of five feet, the first layer of the ancient settlement, probably of the Buddhist period, consisting of a tile pavement laid out in concentric circle with a full-blown lotus in the centre, was found. This pavement was laid in such a...

Cambodia beyond Angkor Wat
	Posted by nickcarraway On General/Chat 06/24/2005 10:48:17 PM PDT · 1 reply · 61+ views The Straits Times \| 2005-06-25 \| Janice Wong When they heard that I was going to Cambodia, my friends and family first worried about my safety, and then reminded me to take lots of pictures of Angkor Wat. They told me that whenever they read something about the country, the reports were more often than not about bombings and crime. But after my recent five-day holiday, I discovered that the country, which has been ravaged for years by civil war, is peaceful. Incidentally, the hostage drama in an international school in Siem Reap happened after I came back, but I know that it was just a one-off unfortunate...

Site of 6000-year-old ancient city discovered in Hubei
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 06/29/2005 12:15:36 AM PDT · 10 replies · 388+ views People's Daily \| June 27, 2005 The ancient city, covering 80,000 sq. meters, is surrounded by lakes in the east, west and south; to its north is a human-dug trench. The city is of an irregular round shape. The city wall is about 2 meters at the highest point and 1 meter the lowest. A great deal of fired red earth was used in buildings and utensils in the city. Stone implements, potteries and some jade articles are found in the city too. The discovery of the site is of paramount importance to study of formation and development of ancient cities in the middle and lower...
Prehistoric Europe
Bog Mummy Mistaken For Murder Victim (Germany)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/28/2005 10:10:18 AM PDT · 27 replies · 722+ views The Discovery Channel \| 6-27-2005 \| Rossella Lorenzi Bog Mummy Mistaken for Murder Victim By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News June 27, 2005 -- The body of a teenage girl thought to be the victim of foul play has turned out to be one of Germany's oldest and best-preserved mummies, German archaeologists announced at a press conference last week.Bog Mummy's Hand Found in September 2000 in a peat bog in the town of Uchte, in Lower Saxony, the corpse was first examined by the police homicide unit. Though it had been fragmented by the peat machine, the body appeared to belong to a teenage girl. Investigators thought it could be...
Elam, Media, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Zoroastrianism - Religion of the Persian Empire
	Posted by freedom44 On News/Activism 06/25/2005 8:31:30 PM PDT · 29 replies · 737+ views MB Faith \| 6/25/05 \| MB Faith During the 7th and 6th centuries BC the ancient polytheistic religion of the Iranians was reformed and given new dimensions by the prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathusthra). Zoroaster's life dates have been traditionally given as (c. 628 - 551 BC), but many scholars argue for earlier dates. Linguistic evidence suggests that he was born in northeastern Iran, but the prophet's message was to spread throughout the Persian Empire. Adopted as the faith of the Persian kings, Zoroastrianism became the official religion of the Achaemenid empire and flourished under its successors, the Parthian and Sassanian empires. Its theology and cosmology may have...
Epigraphy and Language
Vanilla Ice: "Ice Ice Baby" translated into Latin
	Posted by Constitution Day On Bloggers & Personal 07/01/2005 6:54:33 AM PDT · 54 replies · 331+ views Livejournal.com \| 01/17/2005 \| cataptromancer (Livejournal) In the noble tradition of De clunibus magnis amandis oratio (Baby Got Back), I bring you: Gelu, O Gelu, CaraVANILL? GELUS doo doo doo, doo-doo-doo-doo doo doo doo, doo-doo-doo-doo... Etenim, siste, me iuva, auscultaque (Indeed: Halt, aid me, and take heed) Gelu redivit cum inventione novissima (Frost has returned with a very new invention) Nescioquid me constringit (Something constrains me) Fluo ceu hasta baleanarum necandarum noctu et quotidie (I flow in the manner of a whale-killing spear daily and by night) Umquam hoc desistetne? Ego dubito. (Shall this ever cease? I myself doubt it.) Lucernis restinctis luceam (When the lamps...
Mesopotamia
Study sheds fresh light on Dilmun
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 06/25/2005 11:30:22 PM PDT · 3 replies · 161+ views Gulf Daily News \| 20 June 2005 \| REBECCA TORR A SAUDI archaeologist is rounding up a group of experts to witness an annual phenomenon in Saar, which he claims sheds new light on the Dilmun civilisation. Dammam Regional Museum archaeologist Nabiel Al Shaikh has been visiting a temple at the 4,000-year-old Saar settlement for the last nine years in an attempt to prove his theory. The ancient temple has an oddly positioned triangular corner room, which Mr Al Shaikh claims was used as an astronomical device to measure the position of the sun. He believes that during the summer solstice, which falls on June 21, the sun would set...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Antiquity Unearthed Downtown (Tuscon - 2,000 Years Old)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 07/01/2005 3:18:22 PM PDT · 11 replies · 359+ views Daily Star \| 7-1-2005 \| Lindsay A. Miller Antiquity unearthed Downtown Lindsay A. Miller / Arizona Daily Star Desert Archaeology crew member Jennifer Sandretto fields a question from Tucson resident John Cushman about the excavation site at a triplex on Court Avenue Downtown. Lying beneath the triplex is a pit house dating back 2,000 years, which predates the Hohokam Indians by centuries. The triplex is destined to become a museum in the Presidio Historic Park, a Rio Nuevo project Downtown. The shallow trenches and holes in the dirt, roped off in the back yard of an old adobe row house Downtown, seem at first like nothing more than...

Did ancient Polynesians visit California? Maybe so. Scholars revive idea using linguistic ties...
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 06/25/2005 11:35:01 PM PDT · 15 replies · 361+ views San Francisco Chronicle \| June 20, 2005 \| Keay Davidson Scientists are taking a new look at an old and controversial idea: that ancient Polynesians sailed to Southern California a millennium before Christopher Columbus landed on the East Coast. Key new evidence comes from two directions. The first involves revised carbon-dating of an ancient ceremonial headdress used by Southern California's Chumash Indians. The second involves research by two California scientists who suggest that a Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe" is derived from a Polynesian word for the wood used to construct the same boat. The scientists, linguist Kathryn A. Klar of UC Berkeley and archaeologist Terry L. Jones of Cal...

Scientists to Begin Studying Kennewick Man
	Posted by Pharmboy On News/Activism 06/29/2005 5:49:30 AM PDT · 43 replies · 675+ views Associated Press \| WILLIAM McCALL After nearly a decade of court battles, scientists plan to begin studying the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man next week. A team of scientists plans to examine the bones at the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle beginning July 6, according to their attorney, Alan Schneider. Four Northwest Indian tribes had opposed the study, claiming the skeleton could be an ancestor who should be buried. The Interior Department and the Army Corps of Engineers had sided with the tribes. But a federal judge in Portland, backed by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that the researchers...

Scientists To Begin Study Of Ancient Skeleton Over Indian Protest (Kennewick Man - Update)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/30/2005 4:50:47 PM PDT · 113 replies · 1,060+ views Union - Tribune/AP \| 6-28-2005 \| William McCall Scientists to begin study of ancient skeleton over Indian protest By William McCall ASSOCIATED PRESS 2:05 p.m. June 28, 2005 PORTLAND, Ore. -- After nearly a decade of court battles, scientists plan to begin studying the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man next week. A team of scientists plans to examine the bones at the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle beginning July 6, according to their attorney, Alan Schneider. Four Northwest Indian tribes had opposed the study, claiming the skeleton could be an ancestor who should be buried. The Interior Department and the Army Corps of Engineers had...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
UNESCO worried about pillage of Iraqi archaeological sites
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 06/29/2005 8:14:27 PM PDT · 7 replies · 124+ views Middle East Times \| June 23, 2005 PARIS -- UNESCO expressed concern on Wednesday about the pillage of archaeological sites in Iraq, part of the ancient region of Mesopotamia described as the cradle of civilization. "Illegal digs on archaeological sites unfortunately are continuing to destroy Iraq's heritage", said UNESCO director-general Koichiro Matsuura at a meeting of an international committee for the protection of Iraq's cultural heritage. "It is totally impossible to evaluate the number of objects illegally removed from archaeological sites, it is an inestimable loss for Iraq and for all of humanity," he said. Matsuura also warned that the installation of military bases on or near...

Workers discover old tombstone inside tree
	Posted by QwertyKPH On General/Chat 06/25/2005 3:08:35 PM PDT · 17 replies · 438+ views The Telegraph \| 25JUN05 \| LINDA N. WELLER ALTON -- To the surprise of tree-cutters in Alton Cemetery, a 150-year-old ash revealed a secret it had kept inside its "heart" for possibly more than a century. Jim Scroggins, 27, and Mark Brunetto, 31, both of Holiday Shores and owners of Holiday Tree and Landscape, discovered a limestone headstone dating to 1854 inside the 90-foot tree they were cutting down June 17. As it grew slowly over the years, the tree enclosed the grave marker in its middle, surrounding it with wood and bark and eventually reaching a diameter of 4 feet. The growth process of the tree also...
end of digest #50 20050702

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #52 Saturday, July 16, 2005
Africa
Studies Prove People Of Madagascar Came From Borneo And Africa
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 07/10/2005 8:31:26 AM PDT · 19 replies · 255+ views Mongabay \| 7-10-2005 \| MongaBay Studies prove people of Madagascar came from Borneo and Africa mongabay.com July 8, 2005 Studies released earlier this year found the people of Madagascar have origins in Borneo and East Africa. Half of the genetic lineages of human inhabitants of Madagascar come from 4500 miles away in Borneo, while the other half derive from East Africa, according to a study published in May by a UK team. The island of Madagascar, the largest in the Indian Ocean, lies some 250 miles (400 km) from Africa and 4000 miles (6400 km) from Indonesia. Its isolation means that most of its mammals,...
Ancient Egypt
Archaeologists uncover 3700-year-old 'magical' birth brick in Egypt
	Posted by vannrox On News/Activism 07/28/2002 4:16:09 PM PDT · 32 replies · 378+ views University of Pennsylvania via Eurek Alert! \| Pam Kosty Contact: Pam Kostypkosty@sas.upenn.edu 215-898-4045University of Pennsylvania Archaeologists uncover 3700-year-old 'magical' birth brick in Egypt PHILADELPHIA--University of Pennsylvania Museum archaeologists have discovered a 3700-year-old "magical" birth brick inside the palatial residence of a Middle Kingdom mayor's house just outside Abydos, in southern Egypt. The colorfully decorated mud birth brick--the first ever found--is one of a pair that would have been used to support a woman's feet while squatting during actual childbirth. The birth brick, which measures 14 by 7 inches, was discovered during summer 2001 excavations directed by Dr. Josef Wegner, Associate Curator, Egyptian section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum...

Great Pyramid may still contain Khufu's intact pharaonic tomb
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 07/13/2005 9:56:38 PM PDT · 20 replies · 297+ views Daily Star (Lebanon) \| Thursday, July 14, 2005 \| Kyle Cassidy Both shafts terminate somewhere within the structure as there are no holes in the outside of the pyramid. In the past, scholars have speculated that because of their alignment with the North Star and constellation Orion, these shafts could be symbolic exits for King Khufu's ka, or soul. Many archaeologists today find this unlikely because these small openings are unique to this pyramid. At the time of Khufu's reign, false doors served as symbolic gateways to the afterlife. As to whether the shafts terminate in larger rooms or not are still anybody's guess.
Ancient Greece
Unearthing the Treasures of the Mediterranean
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 07/09/2005 2:56:13 PM PDT · 8 replies · 162+ views Skin Diver \| February 2000 \| Isabelle Croizeau
Ancient Rome
Romans' Brutal Crackdown on Celts
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 07/10/2005 12:04:17 AM PDT · 59 replies · 1,247+ views EDP24 \| 09 July 2005 \| BEN KENDALL Norfolk acted as a hub of resistance against Roman occupation, new analysis of archaeological finds has revealed. But the empire's military might eventually eclipsed native East Anglians in a brutal crackdown described as a "lost holocaust". A sprawling Celtic 'proto-city', as significant to its Iceni occupants as modern-day London, sprawled across eight square miles of West Norfolk, almost certainly providing a regular home to Boudicca. David Thorpe, from the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project (Sharp), is excavations director for the site - the exact location of which is not being disclosed. Speaking yesterday, he explained the team have discovered...
Asia
China: Archeologists shake up history (Jinsha Ruins, Sanxingdui Culture)
	Posted by TigerLikesRooster On News/Activism 07/13/2005 7:21:21 AM PDT · 69 replies · 991+ views Taipei Times \| 07/13/05 Archeologists shake up historyNEW EVIDENCE: Artifacts found at a building site and the subsequent discovery of a lost civilization have forced historians to rethink Chinese history as a wholeAFP , JINSHA, CHINA Wednesday, Jul 13, 2005,Page 4 A worker stands on a stack of bags of cement before a huge billboard featuring the famous ''bronze human head figure with gold mask,'' one of the treasures of the Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan, Sichuan Province in this photo from May. Recent archeological finds from previously unknown civilizations such as the Sanxingdui and the Jinsha are dealing shattering blows to traditional views of...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Fossilized bones may reveal complete specimen: Cal paleontologist, "find resembles ancient elephant"
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 07/14/2005 2:22:03 PM PDT · 12 replies · 286+ views San Francisco Chronicle \| Thursday, July 14, 2005 \| Maria Alicia Gaura UC Berkeley paleontologist Mark Goodwin said Wednesday the bones discovered Saturday by environmental watchdog Roger Castillo may be the femur, tusks and pelvic bones of a Columbian mammoth, a species of ancient elephant that roamed Silicon Valley tens of thousands of years ago. UC Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology has a mammoth pelvis and some assorted teeth and bones found at other South Bay sites, Goodwin said. But the generous scattering of bones atop the ground at the San Jose site Goodwin visited Wednesday may indicate a more complete specimen. "If these are tusks here, there's a good chance that there's...

Large Bones Found in Calif. Creek Bed
	Posted by NormsRevenge On News/Activism 07/12/2005 9:33:18 PM PDT · 23 replies · 474+ views AP on Yahoo \| 7/12/05 \| AP SAN JOSE, Calif. - The fossilized bones of a creature that might have been a mastodon were unearthed Tuesday in the creek bed of a suburban river being renovated for flood protection. The remains of what appears to be a massive pelvic bone, ribcage fragments and a tusk were uncovered along the Guadalupe River in San Jose. The river project has been cited as a model of how to integrate nature and development. The discovery prompted both wonder and frustration, as officials tried to determine the source of the remains but couldn't find experts to scour the site. "We've never...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Native Lore Tells Tale: There's Been A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On (Seattle Area)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 07/13/2005 7:42:17 AM PDT · 11 replies · 386+ views Eureka Alert \| 7-13-2005 \| VinceStricherz Native lore tells the tale: There's been a whole lotta shakin' goin' onContact: Vince Stricherz vinces@u.washington.edu 206-543-2580 University of Washington This illustration depicts a late 19th century interior ceremonial screen from Port Alberni, on British Columbia's Vancouver Island. It shows Thunderbird carrying Whale in its talons, a common native depiction of seismic activity. The original screen is in the American Museum of Natural History. The image is taken from "Northwest Coast Painting – House Fronts and Interior Screens" by Edward Malin, ©1999, Timber Press, Portland, Ore. Stories of two-headed serpents and epic battles between Thunderbird and Whale, common among Northwest...
India
Lycian Influence To The Indian Cave Temples
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 07/11/2005 10:37:19 PM PDT · 15 replies · 130+ views The Guide to the Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent \| spring of 2000 \| Takeo Kamiya There are caves and sarcophagi with pointed arches in Lycia, moreover carved as if they were wooden structures. Many of them were made in the 4th century B.C. As to India, the first cave temples appeared in the middle of the 3rd century B.C. They are the caves at Barabar and Nagarjuni Hills built for Ajivikas by King Ashoka. If there is no connection between the two sites located so far apart, it might be considered only a strange coincidence. However, there exists historical evidence of the eastern expedition by Alexander the Great of Macedonia (reign 336 B.C. - 323...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Bedouin Wanders Across Biblical Manuscript
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 07/15/2005 9:24:34 AM PDT · 21 replies · 1,043+ views ABC News Online \| 7-15-2005 Bedouin wanders across Biblical manuscript Fragments of a Biblical manuscript dating back to the last Jewish revolt against Roman rule in 135 AD Judaea, have been uncovered near the Dead Sea. After four decades with a dearth of new finds, archaeologists had resigned themselves to believing the desert caves in the modern-day West Bank had already yielded all their secrets from the Roman era. "It's simply sensational, a dream come true," archaeology professor Hanan Eshel, a Biblical specialist at Israel's Bar Ilan University, said. For the past 20 years, he has scoured the Judaean desert around the Dead Sea, overturning...

Biblical scroll fragments found in Israel
	Posted by DaveLoneRanger On News/Activism 07/15/2005 8:29:23 PM PDT · 17 replies · 530+ views AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer \| Friday, July 15, 2005 \| DANIELLE HAAS JERUSALEM -- A secretive encounter with a Bedouin in a desert valley led to the discovery of two fragments from a nearly 2,000-year-old parchment scroll - the first such finding in decades, an Israeli archaeologist said Friday. The finding has given rise to hope that the Judean Desert may yield more treasures, said Professor Chanan Eshel, an archaeologist from Tel Aviv's Bar Ilan University. The two small pieces of brown animal skin, inscribed in Hebrew with verses from the Book of Leviticus, are from "refugee" caves in Nachal Arugot, a canyon near the Dead Sea where Jews hid from the...

Jewish Presence in the Land of Israel of Yesteryear
	Posted by Alouette On News/Activism 07/11/2005 11:49:42 AM PDT · 15 replies · 283+ views Israel National News \| July 11, 2005 Dramatic findings from the First and Second Temple periods have been uncovered of late in Antiquities Authority digs in the Nachal Toot area. Arutz-7’s Kobi Finkler reports that the digs, taking place near Yokne’am in the western Galilee, have revealed the existence of an impressive administrative center from the First Temple period, which ended some 2,500 years ago. In addition, remnants of dense housing in a Jewish village from the Second Temple period – 2,000 years ago – have been found. The Jewish village is thought to have been destroyed at the same time as the Temple, around the year...
The Pacific
New Lapita Find Re-dates Known Fiji Settlers (Jomon/Ainu)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 07/14/2005 10:29:09 AM PDT · 8 replies · 173+ views Taipei Times \| 7-14-2005 New Lapita find re-dates known Fiji settlers VITAL CLUE: The pottery shard, at least 200 years older than any other piece found in Fiji, is thought to be the work of the Lapita people that originated near Taiwan AFP , AUCKLAND Sunday, Oct 24, 2004 A biological anthropologist excavates a skeleton after archeologists discovered a 3,000-year-old cemetery in Vanuatu in August, holding secrets about the first humans to colonize the South Pacific. A shard of pottery showing a human face, pre-dating any other Lapita pottery in Fiji, has now been found and hailed a s a significant discovery. PHOTO: AFP...
Prehistoric Europe
Iron age settlement poses sinister mystery
	Posted by vannrox On General/Chat 07/27/2002 4:30:10 PM PDT · 4 replies · 75+ views The Guardian \| Friday July 26, 2002 \| Martin Wainwright Iron age settlement poses sinister mystery Martin Wainwright Friday July 26, 2002 The Guardian The most baffling settlement ever unearthed from iron age Britain was revealed by English Heritage archaeologists yesterday, inside a prehistoric fort on former marshes by the Humber estuary. Eerily spick and span, the rows of rectangular wooden buildings have yielded an almost complete lack of artefacts, remains or even litter, apart from one macabre find - fragments of crushed human skulls. Guarded by stone and wooden pallisade defences, the complex also had a ceremonial gateway, vast by the standards of 600-400BC when it was built by...
Underwater Archaeology
Archaeologists make major discovery... underwater(Belize; paddle find leads to Mayan 'white gold')
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 07/11/2005 1:36:30 PM PDT · 28 replies · 1,439+ views Channel5Belize \| Thursday, July 07, 2005 When most people think about Mayan archaeology they imagine excavations in royal tombs or trenches cut into tree covered mounds. Few of us would expect that a significant find could be made underwater... particularly in a swamp. But Belizean archaeology is a many-faceted field, as the presentations at this year's Archaeology Symposium, now underway in San Ignacio, amply reveal. Among the updates to last year's reports is a startling discovery made by a team from Louisiana State University. It is a find unlike any in all of the Meso-American world, and it was made right here in Belize. Janelle Chanona,...

Divers recover cannon from CSS Alabama in English Channel
	Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 07/14/2005 10:35:41 AM PDT · 76 replies · 1,073+ views Columbus Ledger-Enquirer \| Tue, Jul. 12, 2005 MOBILE, Ala. - The 7,000-pound main battery pivot gun of the Confederate sea raider CSS Alabama has been recovered from the bottom of the English Channel, where the vessel was sunk 141 years ago by a Union warship, a project spokesman said. The cannon was brought to the surface by the French naval vessel Elan, said Gordon Watts, an underwater archaeologist from North Carolina who is overseeing the project. Watts told the Mobile Register in a story Tuesday that French divers and American archaeologists recovered the cannon Saturday about 7 miles off the coast of Cherbourg, France, in 200 feet...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Furness Dig May Have Found St Patrick's Birthplace
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 07/13/2005 4:00:07 PM PDT · 27 replies · 418+ views NW Evening Mail \| 7-12-2005 FURNESS DIG MAY HAVE FOUND ST PATRICK'S BIRTHPLACE Published on 12/07/2005 ARCHAEOLOGISTS believe they have found the birthplace of St Patrick. A dig in Urswick has uncovered a Roman fort which may be the Banna Vernta Berniae, thought by scholars to be where Ireland’s patron saint was born. Excavations are being led by Steve Dickinson, from Ulverston, who tutors archaeology at Lancaster University. Evidence of the Romans in Furness is rare. But Mr Dickinson is convinced the finds at Urswick are Roman with their typical layout of foundations and ditches. Mr Dickinson said: “I can’t tell you how important it...
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