Posted on 07/16/2004 11:27:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #183
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Underwater Archaeology
Underwater City Could Be Revealed (UK)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/18/2008 2:00:03 PM EST · 6 replies
BBC | 1-18-2008
Underwater city could be revealed Sonar, underwater camera and scanning equipment will be used Britain's own underwater "Atlantis" could be revealed for the first time with hi-tech underwater cameras. Marine archaeologist Stuart Bacon and Professor David Sear, of the University of Southampton, will explore the lost city of Dunwich, off the Suffolk coast. Dunwich gradually disappeared into the sea because of coastal erosion. "It's about the application of new technology to investigate Britain's Atlantis, then to give this information to the public," Professor Sear said. Mr Bacon, director of the Suffolk Underwater Studies, first located the debris of the lost...
British Isles
Roman bridge put back together again
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/14/2008 12:45:00 AM EST · 26 replies
Journal Live | Saturday, January 12, 2008 | Tony Henderson
Remains of what was one of the biggest Roman bridges to be built in Britain have been reassembled on the banks of the River Tyne. The 50ft long and 10ft high reconstruction is opposite Corbridge Roman site in Northumberland and near the spot where the ornate stone bridge spanned the river. Excavations rescued stonework from the bridge which was threatened by river erosion. The bridge carried Dere Street, the main South-North road, over the Tyne to the important Roman fort and supply base at Corbridge -- and was built accordingly. The excavations revealed that the bridge, built around 160AD, had...
Prehistory and Origins
'Hobbits' Not A Different Species, Say Scientists
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/13/2008 5:25:04 PM EST · 28 replies
The Telegraph (UK) | 1-3-2008 | Roger Highfield
The long-running debate about the existence of so-called hobbits of Indonesia has taken a new turn with a study that suggests these ancient people were not an unusual species of human but modern humans with a growth disorder. Scientists believe the "hobbit" had the same growth condition as Paddy Ryan The work, if confirmed, suggests that there could be up to around 100 documented such "hobbits" in the world today, the people who have the mutation that leads to them being normally proportioned...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Ancient Tomb Art Found in Path of Irish Highway
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/17/2008 12:41:24 PM EST · 11 replies
National Geographic News | January 14, 2008 | James Owen
...The stone was discovered within an early medieval souterrain, an underground structure that may have been used by local inhabitants to defend themselves against Viking raiders, the excavation team reported. Dating to around the 10th century A.D., the souterrain was probably constructed using the broken megalith as building material. "The souterrain builders robbed or quarried the stone from a Neolithic [Late Stone Age] monument," Deevy said. "Souterrains are common in Ireland, and it's not unusual to have stones from earlier monuments reused on them," she added.
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Study Of Ancient Farmers DNA Challenges European Origins
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/16/2008 5:03:31 PM EST · 23 replies
Fox News | 11-10-2005
A study of DNA from ancient farmers in Europe shows sharp differences from that of modern Europeans -- results that are likely to add fuel to the debate over European origins. Researchers led by Wolfgang Haak of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, argue that their finding supports the belief that modern residents of central Europe descended from Stone Age hunter-gatherers who were present 40,000 years ago, and not the early farmers who arrived thousands of years later. But other anthropologists questioned that conclusion, arguing that...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Pacific Islanders Ancestry Emerges in Genetic Study
Posted by Dysart
On News/Activism 01/18/2008 9:57:04 AM EST · 22 replies
NYT | 1-18-08 | John Noble Wilford
The ancestral relationships of people living in the widely scattered islands of the Pacific Ocean, long a puzzle to anthropologists, may have been solved by a new genetic study, researchers reported Thursday.In an analysis of the DNA of 1,000 individuals from 41 Pacific populations, an international team of scientists found strong evidence showing that Polynesians and Micronesians in the central and eastern islands had almost no genetic relationship to Melanesians, in the western islands like Papua New Guinea and the Bismarck and Solomons archipelagos.The researchers also concluded that the genetic data showed that the Polynesians and Micronesians were most closely...
China
2,500-Year-Old-Sword Excavated From Tomb (China)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/16/2008 5:55:11 PM EST · 37 replies
China Daily - Xinhua | 1-16-2008
Chinese archaeologists have discovered an elaborately-made sword, which they believe is 2,500 to 2,600 years old, in an ancient tomb in the eastern province of Jiangxi. A 2500-year-old sword is displayed. This sword was unearthed in an ancient tomb in East China's Jiangxi Prvovince. [Sina.com] "It is reckoned as the oldest ever excavated in the country," said Xu Changqing, chief of the excavation team. The well-preserved sword, some 50 centimeters long, is black, gold and bright red. "A dragon pattern was carved on both ends of the scabbard, and...
India
The Cradle That Is India
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/17/2008 8:30:58 AM EST · 15 replies
Rediff | 3-7-2005
Ideas about early Indian history continue to play an important role in political ideology of contemporary India. On the one side are the Left and Dravidian parties, which believe that invading Aryans from the northwest pushed the Dravidians to south India and India's caste divisions are a consequence of that encounter. Even the development of Hinduism is seen through this anthropological lens. This view is essentially that of colonial historians which was developed over a hundred years ago. On the other side are the nationalist parties, which believe that the Aryan languages...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Iran Plans on Destroying Tomb of King Cyrus, Friend of the Jews
Posted by West Coast Conservative
On News/Activism 01/13/2008 1:57:06 PM EST · 56 replies
Arutz Sheva | January 13, 2008 | Ezra HaLevi
Iran is planning on submerging the tomb of King Cyrus (Coresh), the Persian King known for authorizing the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Holy Temple. According to a report by Omedia, an Iranian organization is demanding that the International Criminal Court take action against those responsible. The Iranian ayatollahs are planning on destroying the tomb as part of a general campaign to sever the Persian people from their non-Islamic heritage; Cyrus was thought to be a Zoroastrian and was one of the first rulers to enforce a policy of religious tolerance on his huge kingdom. Journalist...
Arabia
Ancient Bronze Coffin Discovered In Ibb Province (Yemen)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/15/2008 1:51:56 PM EST · 12 replies
Saba News | 1-14-2008
The excavation operations at al-Asibia area of Ibb province have revealed a stone grave and bronze coffin in a marble-walled room dating back to the Sheba era. The discoveries were found out last Wednesday at Jabal Esam eastern of Raidan Fort which is considered as an extension to Dhafar city the capital of Sheba and Dhu Raidan Ancient Kingdom, director general of the antiques office at Ibb province Khalid al-Ansi was quoted as saying. The characteristics of the...
Unknown Persons Destroy Ancient Bronze Coffin Discovered Recently
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/17/2008 7:23:38 PM EST · 4 replies
Saba News | 1-17-2008
Unknown persons devastated early morning on Thursday an ancient bronze coffin and stole another one completely were in an archaeological location in al-Asibia area in Dhefar valley of Ibb province. The director general of Antiques and Cultural Properties Protection in the General Authority for Antiquities and Museums Hesham al-Thawr held the director general of the security office in the al-Saddah district responsible for destroying the location and disinterring the bronze coffin. Al-Thawr said that the security official has ordered the military patrols, which have...
Africa
New tree species found in Madagascar (self-destructing palm tree flowers once, then dies)
Posted by NormsRevenge
On News/Activism 01/16/2008 9:45:48 PM EST · 43 replies
AP on Yahoo | 1/16/08 | Jonny Hogg - ap
A self-destructing palm tree that flowers once every 100 years and then dies has been discovered on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, botanists said Thursday. The name of the giant palm and its remarkable life cycle will be detailed in a study by Kew Gardens scientists in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society published Thursday. "It's spectacular. It does not flower for maybe 100 years and when it's like this it can be mistaken for other types of palm," said Mijoro Rakotoarinivo, who works for the London botanical gardens in Madagascar. "But then a large...
Egypt
How Pharaoh Sailed To Karnak
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/15/2008 2:00:27 PM EST · 20 replies
Al-Ahram | 1-14-2008 | Nevine El-Aref
New discoveries at Karnak Temple in Luxor have changed the landscape and the history of this great religious complex, writes Nevine El-Aref Clockwise from top: Ptolemaic bath with 16 seats; a stelae bearing the name of the 25th-Dynasty King Taharqa; the obelisk of Tuthmoses I at the eight pylons; restoration work at the Chapel of Osiris Neb-Ankh History has a special scent and taste at Karnak Temple. The emotions it evokes are powerful and timeless. Inside the lofty pylons is amassed an unsurpassed assembly of soaring obelisks, awe-inspiring chapels and hushed sanctuaries reflecting the spectacular...
Let's Have Jerusalem
First Temple seal found in Jerusalem
Posted by Alouette
On News/Activism 01/16/2008 9:41:36 PM EST · 130 replies
Jerusalem Post | Jan. 17, 2008 | Etgar Lefkowitz
A stone seal bearing the name of one of the families who acted as servants in the First Temple and then returned to Jerusalem after being exiled to Babylonia has been uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David, a prominent Israeli archeologist said Wednesday. The 2,500-year-old black stone seal, which has the name "Temech" engraved on it, was found earlier this week amid stratified debris in the excavation under way just outside the Old City walls near the Dung Gate, said archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, who is leading the dig. According to the Book of Nehemiah, the...
Faith and Philosophy
Jesus 'Tomb' Controversy Reopened
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/17/2008 7:18:50 PM EST · 28 replies
Time - CNN | 1-16-2008 | TIM MCGIRK
When the Discovery Channel aired a TV documentary last year raising the possibility that archeologists had found the family tomb of Jesus Christ in the hills behind Jerusalem, it caused a huge backlash among Christians. The claim, after all, challenged one of the cornerstones of Christian faith -- that Jesus, after his crucifixion, rose bodily to heaven in his physical form. The Lost Tomb of Jesus, made by Hollywood director James Cameron and Canadian investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici, was shown only once on Discovery....
Anatolia
A Journey To 9,000 Years Ago (Catal huyuk)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/17/2008 7:06:53 PM EST · 19 replies
Turkish Daily News | 1-17-2008 | Verchan Zeflolu
Catal Huyuk Research Project Director Ian Hodder says goddess icons do not, contrary to assumptions, point to a matriarchal society in Catal Huyuk. Findings in Catal Huyuk show that men and women had equal social status. According to Hodder, who also has been following the Gobeklitepe excavations in Sanliurfa, meticulous archaeological excavation in southeastern Anatolia can change all scientific archaeological assumptions Clues as to when mankind really began living in urban patterns lie in the Neolithic layers of Catal Huyuk. Catal Huyuk is within the borders of Cumra district...
Greece
Did a Tsunami Wipe Out a Cradle of Western Civilization?
Posted by forkinsocket
On News/Activism 01/15/2008 11:53:15 AM EST · 38 replies
Discover Magazine | 01.04.2008 | Evan Hadingham
The effects of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 are only too well known: It knocked the hell out of Aceh Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, leveling buildings, scattering palm trees, and wiping out entire villages. It killed more than 160,000 people in Aceh alone and displaced millions more. Similar scenes of destruction were repeated along the coasts of Southeast Asia, India, and as far west as Africa. The magnitude of the disaster shocked the world. What the world did not know was that the 2004 tsunami -- seemingly so unprecedented in scale -- would yield specific clues to one of...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Tsunami linked to Yellowstone crater (~13,000 years ago)
Posted by NormsRevenge
On General/Chat 01/14/2008 6:56:48 PM EST · 43 replies
AP on Yahoo | 1/14/08 | AP
Tsunami-like waves created by an earthquake may have triggered the world's largest known hydrothermal explosion some 13,000 years ago, a federal scientist says. The explosion created the Mary Bay crater that stretches more than one mile across along the north edge of Yellowstone Lake. Debris from the explosion has been found miles away. Lisa Morgan of the U.S. Geological Survey told a gathering of scientists over the weekend at Mammoth Hot Springs that an earthquake may have displaced more than 77 million cubic feet of water in Yellowstone Lake, creating huge waves that essentially unsealed...
Biology and Cryptobiology
1-ton rodent was size of small car
Posted by Red in Blue PA
On News/Activism 01/16/2008 8:44:07 AM EST · 47 replies
CNN | 1/16/2008 | CNN
Scientists have discovered the remains of a rodent the size of a small car which used to forage the South American continent. The 1-ton creature is believed to have been about 3 meters in length and 1.5 meters tall. The fossilized skull of the new giant rodent The giant rat's skull, which measures an impressive 53 centimeters in diameter was found by Andres Rinderknecht and Ernesto Blanco, two scientists from Montevideo, Uruguay. The two paleontologists stumbled upon the fossilized remains in a broken boulder in San Jose along the coast of Uruguay. By looking at the size ratios of the...
Ain't No Spanish Lady, It's Your Life
Flu Deaths Run In The Family
Posted by blam
On General/Chat 01/08/2008 4:58:39 PM EST · 10 replies
New Scientist | 1-8-2008 | Lisa Albright
Flu deaths run in the family 08 January 2008 NewScientist.com news service Everyone gets the flu - but it seems some people are more likely to die from it than others. Lisa Albright and colleagues at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City looked at death certificates and family records going back 100 years. Nearly 5000 people were said to have died of flu, 2000 of them in the 1918 pandemic. Albright's team found that blood relatives of flu victims were more likely to die than non-relatives - even during different flu outbreaks - and the risk was greater...
Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
New study blames Columbus for syphilis spread
Posted by Sub-Driver
On News/Activism 01/14/2008 8:31:47 PM EST · 67 replies
Yahoo
New genetic evidence supports the theory that Christopher Columbus brought syphilis to Europe from the New World, U.S. researchers said on Monday, reviving a centuries-old debate about the origins of the disease. They said a genetic analysis of the syphilis family tree reveals that its closest relative was a South American cousin that causes yaws, an infection caused by a sub-species of the same bacteria. "Some people think it is a really ancient disease that our earliest human ancestors would have had. Other people think it came...
Maya Markets
Ancient Yucatan Soils Point to Maya Market, and Market Economy
Posted by restornu
On News/Activism 01/10/2008 6:24:46 AM EST · 11 replies
New York Times | January 8, 2008 | By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
The findings, archaeologists say, are some of the first strong evidence that the ancient Maya civilization, at least in places and at certain times, had a market economy similar in some respects to societies today. The conventional view has been that food and other goods in Maya cities were distributed through taxation and tributes controlled by the ruling class. Archaeologists suspected that a wide clearing at the center of the ruins of Chunchucmil might have been a market, not a ritual plaza. Rock alignments peeking above the surface seemed to outline the positions of stalls and regular pathways; the rock...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Andean Crops Cultivated Almost 10,000 Years Ago
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/17/2008 6:55:35 PM EST · 18 replies
Discover Magazine | 1-15-2008 | Michael Abrams
Archaeologists have long thought that people in the Old World were planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting for a good 5,000 years before anyone in the New World did such things. But fresh evidence, in the form of Peruvian squash seeds, indicates that farming in the New and Old Worlds was nearly concurrent. In a paper the journal Science published last June, Tom Dillehay, an anthropological archaeologist at Vanderbilt University, revealed that the squash seeds he found in the ruins of what may have been ancient storage bins on the lower...
Ancient "Lost City" Discovered In Peru, Official Claims
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/16/2008 4:48:06 PM EST · 14 replies
National Geographic News | 1-16-2008 | Kelly Hearn
Ruins recently discovered in southern Peru could be the ancient "lost city" of Paititi, according to claims that are drawing serious but cautious response from experts. The presumptive lost city, described in written records as a stone settlement adorned with gold statues, has long been a grail for explorers -- as well as a lure for local tourism businesses. A commonly cited legend claims that Paititi was built by the Inca hero Inkarri, who founded the city of Cusco before retreating into the jungle after Spanish...
Wild Thing, Don't Think I Love You
And Then There Was One
Posted by forkinsocket
On News/Activism 01/15/2008 11:57:33 AM EST · 17 replies
Washington Post | January 13, 2008 | Monte Reel
The Rumor Was A Wild One, and it seized Marcelo dos Santos with the power of a primary myth. There's an Indian living in the woods around here, some local ranch hands were saying in 1996. He wears no clothes. Get near him, and he vanishes. He is utterly alone. Marcelo knew a lot about elusive Indians -- more than just about anyone. He was a sertanista, a uniquely Brazilian profession that is part jungle explorer, part ethnologist and part bureaucrat. As a member of Funai -- the Brazilian government agency charged with protecting indigenous interests and cultures -- Marcelo's...
Oh So Mysterioso
Mongolians first to discover America claims professor
Posted by Daffynition
On General/Chat 01/13/2008 6:25:31 AM EST · 40 replies
RIA Novosti | 11/ 01/ 2008 | unknown
A Mongolian professor of history has said America was discovered by the Mongolians and not Christopher Columbus, as is popularly believed, the Xinhua news agency reported late on Thursday. Professor Sumiya Jambaldorj from the Genghis Khan University in the Mongolian capital, UIan Bator, performed a study proving the similarity between American place names and words in the Mongolian language. "About 8,000 to 25,000 years ago, Mongols with stone tools crossed the Aleutian Islands and arrived in America," Jambaldorj was reported as saying. The academic said that over 20 place names in the Alaskan Aleutian...
Imaginary Numbers
Medieval Mosque Shows Amazing Math Discovery
Posted by forkinsocket
On News/Activism 01/17/2008 10:24:05 AM EST · 92 replies
Discover Magazine | 01.09.2008 | John Bohannon
The mosques of the medieval Islamic world are artistic wonders and perhaps mathematical wonders as well. A study of patterns in 12th- to 17th-century mosaics suggests that Muslim scholars made a geometric breakthrough 500 years before mathematicians in the West. Peter J. Lu, a physics graduate student at Harvard University, noticed a striking similarity between certain medieval mosque mosaics and a geometric pattern known as a quasi crystal -- an infinite tiling pattern that doesn t regularly repeat itself and has symmetries not found in normal crystals (see video below). Lu teamed up with physicist Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University to test the...
Early America
A new chance to right a historic wrong
Posted by Coleus
On General/Chat 01/12/2008 9:06:12 PM EST · 8 replies
blog.nj.com | November 26, 2007 | Mark DiIonno
Of all the things that make no sense about New Jersey, the state's failure to invest, promote and capitalize on our Revolutionary War history has always led my list. People who ran state tourism said there was no money in it. But 40 years ago, the government leaders of Pennsylvania saw the 1976 Bicentennial coming and funded the Valley Forge Convention and Visitors Bureau. It cost them about a million bucks to promote the historic significance of the area, the natural beauty and the proximity to Philadelphia. In time, hotels and restaurants went up, most with a historic theme. Within...
History on the scrap pile (Steuben House)
Posted by Coleus
On General/Chat 01/16/2008 2:00:17 AM EST · 9 replies
northjersey.com | December 31, 2007 | Mike Kelly
Is this any way to treat history? Of course not. But this is life -- and land -- at New Bridge Landing Park in River Edge. When will someone fix this? That question has lingered for decades over the sliver of land along the Hackensack River that was home to a narrow bridge that saved George Washington's army in 1776 -- and perhaps the Revolution itself. Today, the place is treated like a forgotten uncle, hidden from traffic by an abandoned junkyard, an apartment complex, a fenced-in transformer station and a parking lot for a former pizza restaurant. Out...
Longer Perspectives
Muhammad's Tribe (the true history of Islam's suppression of conquered nations and people)
Posted by Mrs. Don-o
On News/Activism 01/13/2008 11:08:44 AM EST · 55 replies
National Post (Canada) | Janary 10, 2008 | Philip Carl Salzman
Today's religious map of the Middle East traces to the unification of the Arabian tribes under the banner of Islam in the 7th century, and their subsequent conquest of much of the known world. Muhammad's genius was in finding a way to unite the myriad of fissiparous, feuding Bedouin tribes of northern Arabia into a cohesive polity. Just as he had provided a constitution of rules under which the people of Medina could live together, so he provided a constitution for all Arabs, but this one had the imprimatur not just of Muhammad, but of God. Submission -- Islam --...
Epigraphy and Language
High tomes: monks bedevilled by agile thief's love of books (thief found map of secret passage)
Posted by dead
On News/Activism 06/20/2003 1:02:58 PM EDT · 14 replies · 163+ views
The Guardian via SMH | June 21 2003 | By Paul Webster in Paris
To the monks of Mont Saint-Odile, perched high in the Vosges mountains in north-eastern France, it seemed like the work of the devil: during nearly two years of doubt and mystification, 1100 ancient books disappeared from the monastery library without any trace of a break-in. On Thursday the mystery concluded when the thief, Stanislas Gosse, 33, was given a suspended sentence of 18 months for a burglary that had echoes of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and a touch of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The thief, who baffled priests and police between August 2000 and...
Archive of Historic Photographs
My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven [Library of Congress photos available on the web]
Posted by Daffynition
On General/Chat 01/16/2008 6:29:34 PM EST · 7 replies
Library of Congress | January 16, 2008 | Matt Raymond
If you re reading this, then chances are you already know about Web 2.0. Even if you don t know the term itself, you re one of millions worldwide who are actively creating, sharing or benefiting from user-generated content that characterizes Web 2.0 phenomena. As a communicator, I want to expand the reach of the Library and access to our magnificent collections as far and wide as possible. Of course, there are only so many hours in the day, so many staff in Library offices and so many dollars in the budget. Priorities have to be chosen that will most effectively advance our...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Ritual Mask From Lost Village Returned to Eskimos
Posted by Froufrou
On News/Activism 01/18/2008 12:37:44 PM EST · 28 replies
FOX | 01/18/08 | Unknown
Four decades after it was abandoned, King Island holds an almost mystical pull for former inhabitants and their descendants, its crumbling homes still perched on stilts, clinging to the steep, rocky terrain. Until recently, little else remained of the island, an Inupiat Eskimo village, except for traditions, memories and artifacts scattered at museums around the nation. Then came word from a stranger nearly 2,000 miles away who said she possessed an ancient mask a relative brought back from Alaska more than a century ago. On the back of the relic was a faint inscription: "Taken from a medicine man's grave...
end of digest #183 20080119
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Welcome to the 183rd issue, and it was a smokin' week for GGG. Thanks Blam for posting a ton of stuff. Oh, and for letting me take care of editing in English equivalent characters for those crazy mixed up Turkish dingbats in that article about Catal Huyuk. ;') |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #184
Saturday, January 26, 2008
China
100,000-year-old human skull found
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/23/2008 2:48:22 PM EST · 34 replies
China Daily | Wednesday, January 23, 2008 | unattributed
An almost complete human skull fossil that could date back 100,000 years was unearthed in Henan last month, Chinese archaeologists announced yesterday... The Henan find was made after two years of excavation at the site in Xuchang. Archaeologists have worked on an area of 260 sq m, merely one-hundredth of the Paleolithic site... The fossil consisted of 16 pieces of the skull with protruding eyebrows and a small forehead. More astonishing than the completeness of the skull is that it still has a fossilized membrane on the inner side, so scientists can track the nerves of the Paleolithic ancestors... The...
Ancient skull dug up in Henan may bury 'Out of Africa' theory
Posted by charles m
On General/Chat 01/24/2008 12:39:26 PM EST · 22 replies
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) | Jan 24, 2008
Mainland archaeologists have discovered a fractured but almost complete skull in Xuchang, Henan province, that they believe is from an anatomically modern Homo sapiens nearly 100,000 years old. If the estimate is correct and if the skull, broken into 16 pieces seemingly by a powerful strike, demonstrates a feature of the East Asian population, then one of palaeoanthropology's paradigms - "Out of Africa" - may be shattered. Part of the Out of Africa theory holds that anatomically modern human beings first appeared in Africa. Then, about 100,000 years ago, they moved off the continent and took over the...
Biology and Cryptobiology
'Tree Of Life' Has Lost A Branch, According To Largest Genetic Comparison Of Higher Life Forms Ever
Posted by blam
On General/Chat 01/21/2008 6:22:36 PM EST · 12 replies
Science Daily | 1-21-2008 | University of Oslo
The four new super-groups of life are Plants (green and red algae, and plants; Opisthokonts (amoebas, fungi, and all animals -- including humans; Excavates (free-living organisms and parasites; SAR (the new main group, an abbreviation of Stramenophiles, Alveolates, and Rhizaria, the names of some of its members). (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Oslo) ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2008) -- Norwegian and Swiss biologists have made a startling discovery about the relationship between organisms that most people have never heard of. The Tree of Life must be...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Did Mice Domesticate The House Cat [?]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/21/2008 1:27:35 PM EST · 69 replies
Discover | Tuesday, January 15, 2008 | Jocelyn Rice
Driscoll gathered genetic material from nearly one thousand domestic and wild cats to trace the house kitty's family tree back to its roots. The depth and diversity of that tree suggest that the process of domestication took place over a widespread area and a long period of time... As humans made the transition from hunting and gathering to farming, they created concentrated, permanent stores of food. Stockpiles of grain attracted hungry mice, which in turn drew hungry feral cats... For a cat raiding a grain store in a primitive village, being tolerant of humans became an evolutionary advantage. Eventually,...
Prehistory and Origins
Earliest Shoe-Wearers Revealed By Toe Bones
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/25/2008 5:21:03 PM EST · 48 replies
Discovery News | 1-25-2008 | Jennifer Viegas
People started wearing shoes around 40,000 years ago, according to a study on recently excavated small toe bones that belonged to an individual from China who apparently loved shoes. Most footwear erodes over time. The earliest known shoes, rope sandals that attached to the feet with string, date to only around 10,000 B.C. For the new study, the clues were in middle toe bones that change during an individual's lifetime if the person wears shoes a lot. "When you walk barefoot,...
Ancient Europe
Archaeologists of the UGR reconstruct life in the Bronze Age through the site of ...
Posted by decimon
On News/Activism 01/24/2008 3:54:27 PM EST · 16 replies
Science News | May 25, 2006 | Unknown
The researchers have excavated for the first time in a scientific and systematic way a site of these characteristics, where they have found the first water well of the Iberian Peninsula - From the 20th century, the motillas were erroneously considered to be burial mounds, a theory which was refuted by the experts of the UGR, who proved that it was a fortification surrounded by a small settlement and a necropolis C@MPUS DIGITAL Researchers of the Group of Recent Prehistory Studies (GEPRAN) of the Universidad de Granada, from the department of Prehistory and Archaeology, have taken an important step...
British Isles
Bronze Age site is found in city [Peterborough UK]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/22/2008 2:45:29 AM EST · 1 reply
BBC | Thursday, January 17, 2008 | unattributed
Archaeologists in Cambridge have unearthed the first hard evidence that an area of the city was occupied during the Bronze Age. The remains were found during a dig at Fitzwilliam College and probably belonged to a 3,500-year-old farmstead. The remains comprise a series of ditches, in which the team found pieces of antler, flint tools, pottery and animal remains. The items were discovered by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit. Christopher Evans, from the Unit, said the site would help people understand the early development of the city. In September 2007 archaeologists found a Bronze Age burial site at Pode Hole Quarry,...
Treasure Hunters Find Bronze Age Axes
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/21/2008 9:45:50 PM EST · 29 replies
The Telegraph (UK) | 1-22-2008
An amateur treasure hunter has unearthed a hoard of bronze age axe heads thought to be worth about £80,000. Tom Peirce started combing a field with his metal detector after dropping off a school coach party at a farm. Within a few minutes it began beeping and he found the first axe head fragment 10in into the soil. When he dug deeper, Mr Peirce found dozens more and, over the following two days, he and a colleague, Les Keith, uncovered nearly 500 bronze artefacts dating back 3,000 years. The...
Epigraphy and Language
Gold Coins Show 'Emperor Of Britain'
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/24/2008 6:14:29 PM EST · 25 replies
The Times | Dalya Alberge
Two "extremely important" gold coins that shed light on a little-known rebel Roman emperor from the 3rd century AD have been unearthed by a farmer in the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire area. They relate to the Roman commander Carausius, who declared himself Emperor of Britain around 286 or 287 after the Emperor in Rome ordered his execution. He was overthrown in a coup d'Ètat by his finance minister, Allectus, in 293. The coins were handed in to the Portable Antiquities Scheme and moved to the British Museum. The scheme is facing...
Rome and Italy
Ancient tannery in Pompeii to undergo restoration this year
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/22/2008 11:51:36 AM EST · 8 replies
SignOn SanDiego | Monday, January 21, 2008 | Associated Press
An ancient tannery in the archaeological complex of Pompeii, a city destroyed by a volcanic eruption in the first century, will be restored, officials said Monday. The tannery -- discovered in the 19th century and excavated in the 1950s -- includes water pipes, 15 round tubs and the tannery manager's house, archaeological officials said. A drying area is also believed to have been part of the complex. Restoration of the tannery, which is believed to be among the world's most ancient, is expected to start this year, the statement said. No other information was immediately available. Pompeii was destroyed in...
Greece
New Discoveries At The Ash Altar Of Zeus, Mt Lykaion... Ancient Greece's Most Powerful God
Posted by blam
On General/Chat 01/24/2008 6:20:28 PM EST · 14 replies
Penn Museum | 1-24-2008 | PennMuseum
Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project Finds Early Activity Atop Arcadia's Famous Mountain -- The Greek traveler, Pausanias, living in the second century, CE, would probably recognize the spectacular site of the Sanctuary of Zeus at Mt. Lykaion, and particularly the altar of Zeus. At 4,500 feet above sea level, atop the altar provides a breathtaking, panoramic vista of Arcadia. "On the highest point of the mountain is a mound of earth, forming an altar of Zeus Lykaios, and from...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Iraqi Archaeologists Excavate New Sites And Find 'Rare' Parthian Artefacts
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/25/2008 6:51:02 PM EST · 3 replies
CAIS News
Iraqi archaeologists have resumed excavations in southern Iraq uncovering three important ancient sites and collecting magnificent items. The museum's information officer, Abdulzahara al-Talaqani, said said Iraqi diggers have come across "a very important" Parthian site which has so far yielded "200 rare pieces". The head of the excavation team of the Parthian site, Mohammed Abbas, said: "Most of the finds are unique. We have a silver statue of a woman, another silver piece representing a cobra, household utensils, legendary animals, incised pots and various...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Recovering From A Mass Extinction
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/19/2008 7:13:15 PM EST · 20 replies
Science Daily | 1-20-2008 | University of Bristol.
Fossilised skull of the sabre-toothed Lycaenops, a top predator of the latest Permian. (Credit: Photo by Michael Benton) ScienceDaily (Jan. 20, 2008) -- The full recovery of ecological systems, following the most devastating extinction event of all time, took at least 30 million years, according to new research from the University of Bristol. About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian, a major extinction event killed over 90 per cent of life on earth, including insects, plants, marine animals, amphibians, and reptiles. Ecosystems were destroyed worldwide, communities were restructured and organisms were left...
Flood, Here Comes the Flood
Noah's Ark Flood Spurred European Farming
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/24/2008 6:04:09 PM EST · 31 replies
Canada West | Randy Boswell
A British scientist has found evidence linking the catastrophic collapse of a glacial ice dam in Canada more than 8,000 years ago and the rapid spread of agriculture across Europe around the same time. The dramatic discharge of freshwater from prehistoric Lake Agassiz - which covered much of Central Canada at the end of the last ice age - has long been blamed for altering global climate patterns and raising sea levels around the world by at...
Climate
Massive volcano exploded under Antarctic icesheet, study finds
Posted by NormsRevenge
On News/Activism 01/20/2008 7:13:34 PM EST · 87 replies
AFP on Yahoo | 1/20/08 | AFP
PARIS (AFP) - A powerful volcano erupted under the icesheet of West Antarctica around 2,000 years ago and it might still be active today, a finding that prompts questions about ice loss from the white continent, British scientists report on Sunday. The explosive event -- rated "severe" to "cataclysmic" on an international scale of volcanic force -- punched a massive breach in the icesheet and spat out a plume some 12,000 metres (eight miles) into the sky, they calculate. Most of Antarctica is seismically stable. But its western part lies on a rift in Earth's crust that gives rise to...
Antarctic volcanoes identified as a possible culprit in glacier melting
Posted by RDTF
On News/Activism 01/20/2008 11:02:37 PM EST · 58 replies
International Herald Tribune | January 20, 2008 | Kenneth Chang
Another factor might be contributing to the thinning of some of the Antarctica's glaciers: volcanoes. In an article published Sunday on the Web site of the journal Nature Geoscience, Hugh Corr and David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey report the identification of a layer of volcanic ash and glass shards frozen within an ice sheet in western Antarctica. "This is the first time we have seen a volcano beneath the ice sheet punch a hole through the ice sheet" in Antarctica, Vaughan said. Volcanic heat could still be melting ice to water and contributing to thinning and speeding up...
Asia
Japan Team Finds Ancient Cambodian Water Site
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/21/2008 11:11:14 PM EST · 20 replies
Japan Times | 1-22-2008
SNAY VILLAGE, Cambodia (Kyodo) Japanese archaeologists said Monday they have found a man-made water channel in northwest Cambodia used for rituals as far back as the first century. The archaeologists said they discovered sacred mounds or altars at the ruins in Snay village in Banteay Meanchey Province under a two-year project that began last January. "Before, it was said that Khmer civilization started from the seventh to ninth century AD, but based on our research here, Khmer civilization went back to the first century AD," said Yoshinori Yasuda, a professor...
Egypt
Black Pharaohs
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/21/2008 2:49:03 PM EST · 32 replies
National Geographic | February 2008 | Robert Draper
In the year 730 B.C., a man by the name of Piye decided the only way to save Egypt from itself was to invade it... North on the Nile River his soldiers sailed. At Thebes, the capital of Upper Egypt, they disembarked. Believing there was a proper way to wage holy wars, Piye instructed his soldiers to purify themselves before combat by bathing in the Nile, dressing themselves in fine linen, and sprinkling their bodies with water from the temple at Karnak, a site holy to the ram-headed sun god Amun, whom Piye identified as his own personal deity. Piye...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Rogem Hiri: An Ancient, Mysterious Construction
Posted by Fred Nerks
On News/Activism 01/19/2008 6:41:43 AM EST · 30 replies
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs | 2008 | U/A
The megalithic complex of Rogem Hiri (Rujm al-Hiri in Arabic, meaning stone heap of the wild cat) is located in the central Golan, some 16 km. east of the Sea of Galilee, on a desolate plateau of basalt boulders. Since its discovery in a survey of the Golan in the late 1960s, this mysterious site has aroused the curiosity of archeologists. Between 1988 and 1991, archeological excavations and research were conducted in order to establish facts and determine the time of its construction and its function. Rogem Hiri is a monumental construction of local basalt fieldstones of various sizes. It...
Let's Have Jerusalem
The Real Bloodline of Jesus
Posted by Richard Poe
On News/Activism 12/19/2007 10:03:18 PM EST · 112 replies
Poe.com | December 17, 2007 | Richard Lawrence Poe
At Christmastime, Nativity scenes help bring the family of Jesus to life. However, they present only a small portion of his family. Scripture informs us that Jesus grew up in a large, sprawling clan, with many relatives. What became of that clan? Some branches may have survived. It is possible that some people living today might be related to Jesus. Dan Brown's blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code contends that Jesus wed Mary Magdalene and fathered a royal dynasty of France. The book sparked interest in Jesus' bloodline....
Faith and Philosophy
Ancient Islamic Texts Resurface (Impugning The Legitimacy of the Koran,Islam)
Posted by america4vr
On News/Activism 01/19/2008 5:38:36 AM EST · 153 replies
The Third Eye Concept | January 14, 2008 | Staff
Islam watchers blogged all weekend about news that a secret archive of ancient Islamic texts had surfaced after 60 years of suppression. Andrew Higgins' Wall Street Journal report that the photographic record of Koranic manuscripts, supposedly destroyed during World War II but occulted by a scholar of alleged Nazi sympathies, reads like a conflation of the Da Vinci Code with Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail. The Da Vinci Code offered a silly fantasy in which Opus Dei, homicidal monks and twisted billionaires chased after proof that Christianity is a hoax. But the story of the photographic archive of the...
Ancient Art
1500-Year-Old Mayan Paint Job Peeled Back
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/22/2008 3:24:02 PM EST · 11 replies
The Australian | 1-23-2008 | Jill Rowbotham
More secrets of the Mayan civilisation are being revealed via groundbreaking research into paint pigments used on a temple at one of the culture's most significant sites: Copan, in Honduras. Brisbane physical and chemical sciences PhD student Rosemary Goodall used an infrared analysis technique, FTIR-ATR spectral imaging, never before applied in archeology. It revealed a map of the painted surfaces of stucco masks that adorn the corners of the Rosalila temple, built in about AD550. Mrs Goodall found that the Mayans mixed finely ground muscovite mica in their...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Ancient Maya sacrificed boys not virgin girls: study
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/23/2008 2:00:57 PM EST · 53 replies
Reuters | Wednesday, January 23, 2008 | edited by Todd Eastham
The victims of human sacrifice by Mexico's ancient Mayans, who threw children into water-filled caverns, were likely boys and young men not virgin girls as previously believed, archeologists said on Tuesday... Maya priests in the city of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan peninsula sacrificed children to petition the gods for rain and fertile fields by throwing them into sacred sinkhole caves, known as "cenotes." The caves served as a source of water for the Mayans and were also thought to be an entrance to the underworld. Archeologist Guillermo de Anda from the University of Yucatan pieced together the bones of...
Oh So Mysterioso
Secret Of Scottish Sheep Evolution Discovered
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/19/2008 7:06:53 PM EST · 46 replies
Science Daily | 1-19-2008 | EurekAlert!
ScienceDaily (Jan. 20, 2008) -- Researchers from the University of Sheffield, as part of an international team, have discovered the secret of why dark sheep on a remote Scottish Island are mysteriously declining, seemingly contradicting Darwin's evolutionary theory. Dr Jacob Gratten and Dr Jon Slate, from the University's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, led the team, which found that the gene responsible for dark coat colour is linked to other genes that reduce an animal's fitness. The researchers looked at coat colour in a feral population of Soay sheep on Hirta in the...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Authorities Raid California Museums
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/25/2008 6:29:47 PM EST · 7 replies
Associated Press | 1-25-2008 | Greg Risling
Federal agents raided several Southern California museums on Thursday in search of Southeast Asian antiquities believed to have been illegally obtained, smuggled into the U.S. and donated so collectors could claim fraudulent tax deductions. Agents also investigated American Indian artifacts at one museum. Search warrants were executed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Authorities said no arrests...
end of digest #184 20080126
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· Saturday, January 26, 2008 · 25 topics · 1959702 to 1956198 · now 670 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 184th issue. Thanks Blam for once more posting a ton of stuff, and to everyone who posted topics and replies. It has been a lively week in that regard, despite a somewhat smaller number of topics. |
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cheap and easy, just like the women of Troy. Oh, sorry.
8-)
;’) It was documented in the lost play, “The Trojan Women of Easy Virtue”. ;’)
Congratulations on being #666
That smell? It’s brimstone...
There’s a reason it’s called a Trojan...
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #185
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Egypt
Ruins of 7,000-year-old city found in Egypt oasis
Posted by Fred Nerks
On News/Activism 01/30/2008 12:36:38 AM EST · 42 replies
Source: ABC (Australia) | January 30, 2008 - 9:47AM | U/A
A team of US archaeologists has discovered the ruins of a city dating back to the period of the first farmers 7,000 years ago in Egypt's Fayyum oasis, the supreme council of antiquities said. "An electro-magnetic survey revealed the existence in the Karanis region of a network of walls and roads similar to those constructed during the Greco-Roman period," the council's chief Zahi Hawwas said. The remnants of the city are "still buried beneath the sand and the details of this discovery will be revealed in due course," Mr Hawwas said. "The artefacts consist of the remains of walls and...
Amarna
Grim Secrets Of Pharaoh's City
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/27/2008 1:18:42 AM EST · 15 replies
BBC | 1-26-2008 | John Hayes-Fisher
Bones reveal the darker side to building Ancient Egypt Evidence of the brutal lives endured by some ancient Egyptians to build the monuments of the Pharaohs has been uncovered by archaeologists. Skeletal remains from a lost city in the middle of Egypt suggest many ordinary people died in their teenage years and lived a punishing lifestyle. Many suffered from spinal injuries, poor nutrition and stunted growth. The remains were found at Amarna, a new capital built on the orders of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, 3,500 years ago. Hieroglyphs written at the...
Delta Dawn
Dutch Archaeologists Uncover Earliest Egyptian Temple [2000]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/26/2008 9:59:13 AM EST · 18 replies
Science News | January 21, 2000 | adapted from Netherlands Organization For Scientific Research
During excavations at Tel Ibrahim Awad in the eastern Nile Delta, Dutch archaeologists discovered a large Middle Kingdom temple. Beneath this building, which dates from around 2000 BC, there were traces of five earlier temples, the earliest dating back to around 3100 BC... The ground plan of the earliest of these temples is unlike anything previously discovered in Egypt, and no other sites are known where a similar series of temples was built one on top of the other and which date back so far. The archaeologists do not yet know which gods were worshipped in the temples. In the...
China
Ancient Mass Sacrifice, Riches Discovered In China Tomb
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/29/2008 3:56:26 PM EST · 17 replies
National Geographic News | 1-29-2008 | Kevin Holden Platt
A 2,500-year-old tomb containing nearly four dozen victims of human sacrifice has been excavated in eastern China, yielding a treasure trove of precious artifacts and new insights into ritual customs during the era of Confucius, archaeologists say. The tomb was discovered in January 2007 after police caught looters plundering the site in the province of Jiangxi (see map), said Xu Changqing, who heads the excavation team. Among the most impressive artifacts found in the tomb is a black, gold, and...
Central Asia
Fragments Of The Tocharian
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/30/2008 11:39:28 AM EST · 14 replies
Salon.com | 1-30-2008
Between 1902 and 1914 the German Ethnological Institute sent repeated expeditions into the great Taklamakan desert of Central Asia, in search of ancient manuscripts that had survived destruction due to the arid climate of the Tarim Basin. One expedition brought back fragments of a manuscript written in a hitherto unknown language but employing a familiar North Indian script. Later dubbed Tocharian A, the language was deciphered by two linguists at Germany's Gottingen University, Emil Siel and Wilhem Siegling. The parchment turned out to be part of the Maitreyasamiti-Nataka, a Sanskrit Buddhist work in the Mahayana canon...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
The History Of Medicine In Ancient Persia
Posted by blam
On General/Chat 01/29/2008 4:14:16 PM EST · 14 replies
Press TV | 1-28-2008 | Hedieh Ghavidel
The history of medicine in Iran is as old and as rich as its civilization. In the Avesta, science and medicine rise above class, ethnicity, nationality, race, gender and religion. Some of the earliest practices of ancient Iranian medicine have been documented in the Avesta and other Zoroastrian religious texts. During the Achaemenid era (559-330 BCE), the 21 books of Avesta encompassing 815 chapters were an encyclopedia of science consisting of medicine, astronomy, law, social science, philosophy, general knowledge, logic and biology....
Epidemic, Pandemic, Plague, the Sniffles
Clues to Black Plague's Fury in 650-Year-Old Skeletons
Posted by forkinsocket
On News/Activism 01/29/2008 1:00:36 AM EST · 32 replies
NY Times | January 29, 2008 | NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Many historians have assumed that Europe's deadliest plague, the Black Death of 1347 to 1351, killed indiscriminately, young and old, hardy and frail, healthy and sick alike. But two anthropologists were not so sure. They decided to take a closer look at the skeletons of people buried more than 650 years ago. Their findings, published on Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the plague selectively took the already ill, while many of the otherwise healthy survived the infection. Although it may not be surprising that healthy people would be more likely to survive an...
Black Death Targeted The Weak
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/30/2008 11:59:46 AM EST · 14 replies
The Telegraph (UK) | 1-30-2008 | Roger Highfield
The Black Death, which killed one person in every three in Europe, was not as indiscriminate as thought, according to studies of remains in mass grave in East Smithfield. Skeletons of plague victims in a mass grave at East Smithfield, London The toll was so high during its height in the 1300s that many have concluded that anyone and everyone who came into contact with the agent, thought to be a bacterium, was doomed. But research published today shows that people who were physically frail...
Rome and Italy
Find may shed light on Roman era [Calstock, Cornwall, UK]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/30/2008 2:02:37 PM EST · 4 replies
BBC | Wednesday, January 30, 2008 | unattributed
A team of archaeologists from the University of Exeter has found a Roman fort dating from the 1st Century AD in fields in Cornwall. Several items of pottery have been excavated and a furnace which may have been used to smelt minerals. Researchers said the find at Calstock, close to a silver mine, could show for the first time the Romans' interest in exploiting Cornish minerals. Very little is known so far about the Roman occupation in Cornwall... Archaeologists became interested in the site when they found references in medieval documents to the smelting of silver "at the old castle"...
Phoenicians
Major Archeological Discovery of Necropolis in Sousse Sheds Light on Punic Life in... 4th century BC
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/30/2008 1:44:34 PM EST · 4 replies
Tunisia Online / AllAfrica | Monday, January 28, 2008 | unattributed
A Punic necropolis dating back to the 4th-5th century BC has been recently discovered at the museum of Sousse during extension and refurbishing works that started last May and are due to be completed by the end of the current year... This discovery comes following last year's discovery of a roman burial vault located near the roman catacombs in the district of Bouhsina in Sousse. The vault which is being restored by the INP, contains 2 tombs with the remains of some 13 members of the same family buried together along with sacred ceramic vessels.
Anatolia
Ancient City In Corum
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/29/2008 1:10:38 PM EST · 5 replies
Turkish Daily News | 1-28-2008 | Doğan News
Remnants of an ancient city from the Byzantine period have been found during surface excavations carried out in the Anatolian city of Corum. The location of the ancient city Avkat has been determined to be within the borders of the Beyozu village in the Mecitozu district. Excavation works will start this year, said Mehmet Demir, an official from the Ankara Ethnography Museum. A team of 32 scientists from the United States, Britain, Italy and Switzerland and led by the Byzantine Empire expert, Professor John Haldon, carried out a...
Near East
Ancient cemetery unearthed in Syria
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/26/2008 7:43:58 AM EST · 7 replies
Yahoo! | Wednesday, January 23, 2008 | unattributed
Archaeologists in northeast Syria have unearthed a 3rd century cemetery in the shape of a cross, the country's official news agency reported Wednesday. Ten skeletons, along with pottery and coins, were found at the site in Hassaka, 441 miles northeast of the capital Damascus, SANA reported. Some of the artifacts contained inscriptions in the ancient Aramaic language, it said. Wednesday's find came a day after SANA reported that archaeologists had found a Roman-era cemetery in Latakia, northwest of Damascus. That cemetery was believed to date back about 1,000 years, SANA said. Also according to the report, Wednesday's find is not...
Epigraphy and Language
Ancient Document Confirms Existence Of Biblical Figure
Posted by Sopater
On Religion 07/11/2007 12:39:39 PM EDT · 19 replies · 459+ views
The New York Sun | July 11, 2007 | NIGEL REYNOLDS
LONDON -- The sound of unbridled joy seldom breaks the quiet of the British Museum's great Arched Room, which holds its collection of 130,000 Assyrian cuneiform tablets, dating back 5,000 years. But Michael Jursa, a visiting professor from Vienna, let out such a cry last Thursday. He had made what has been called the most important find in biblical archaeology for 100 years, a discovery that supports the view that the historical books of the Bible are based on fact. Searching for Babylonian financial accounts among the tablets, Jursa suddenly came across a name that he half remembered -- Nabusharrussu-ukin,...
Let's Have Jerusalem
"Temech" Seal Controversy [Mazar's Revises Reading]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/30/2008 1:12:49 PM EST · 10 replies
Biblical Archaeology Review | Wednesday, January 30, 2008 | editors
On January 16, 2008, excavator Eilat Mazar announced that a team she is leading south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem had uncovered an inscribed seal that dated to the time of Nehemiah. She read the name on the seal as "Temech" (tav, mem and het) and suggested that it belonged to the family of that name mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah. Soon after the announcement, however, European scholar Peter van der Veen suggested that Mazar had erred by reading the inscription straight on rather than backward, to account for the fact that a seal creates a mirror image...
Faith and Philosophy
Jesus Tomb Case Closed for Most Scholars (It's NOT His Tomb).
Posted by SeekAndFind
On News/Activism 01/30/2008 7:52:14 PM EST · 29 replies
Christian Post | Jan. 24,2008 | Katherine T. Phan
A group of scholars posted a statement rejecting the identification of the Talpiot tomb as belonging to Jesus, a week after a conference in Jerusalem revisited evidence on claims presented in the controversial film "Lost Tomb of Jesus." In a statement posted Monday on the Duke University Religion Department's blog site, key figures in the discovery of the 1980 Talpoit tomb and other experts who attended the conference agreed that most scholars in attendance rejected the claims that the tomb belonged to the author of Christianity, despite the consensus being represented by the media as otherwise. "We wish to protest...
Symposium on Afterlife and Burial Practices in Second Temple Judaism [Talpiot tomb]
Posted by Ottofire
On Religion 01/31/2008 12:15:22 AM EST · 3 replies
Princeton Theological Seminary | 2007 | Professor Mordechai Aviam, et al.
The third in a series of privately-funded symposia on Judaism and Christian Origin was recently held in Jerusalem (Jan 13-16, 2008). As with the earlier two events, this symposium was organized by Professor James H. Charlesworth, the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. The conference was attended by some fifty international and Israeli scholars. The general subject of the symposium was "Jewish Views of the Afterlife and Burial Practices in Second Temple Judaism," with specific attention also given to an evaluation of...
Temple Tablet Or Forger's Art? Patina Fits, Words Don't
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/31/2003 10:29:52 PM EST · 3 replies · 298+ views
National Post | 1-31-2003 | Joseph Brean/Simcha Jacobovici
Rarely do politics and carbon-dating mix, but when an ancient stone plaque was sent from Jerusalem to a Florida laboratory for analysis a little over a year ago, a nation's identity literally hung in the balance. The tablet, with its ancient Hebrew inscription, is believed by some to have once hung in the long-lost First Temple of Judaism, built by King Solomon to house the Ten Commandments and burned to the ground by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The plaque's...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Lost City pumps life-essential chemicals at rates unseen at typical black smokers
Posted by decimon
On News/Activism 01/31/2008 4:28:30 PM EST · 37 replies
University of Washington | January 31, 2008 | Unknown
Hydrocarbons -- molecules critical to life -- are being generated by the simple interaction of seawater with the rocks under the Lost City hydrothermal vent field in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Being able to produce building blocks of life makes Lost City-like vents even stronger contenders as places where life might have originated on Earth, according to Giora Proskurowski and Deborah Kelley, two authors of a paper in the Feb. 1 Science. Researchers have ruled out carbon from the biosphere as a component of the hydrocarbons in Lost City vent fluids. Hydrocarbons, molecules with various combinations of hydrogen and carbon...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor
Posted by decimon
On News/Activism 01/30/2008 5:10:37 PM EST · 269 replies
University of Copenhagen | January 30, 2008 | Unknown
New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today. What is the genetic mutation "Originally, we all had brown eyes", said Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. "But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a "switch", which literally "turned off" the ability to produce brown eyes". The...
Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted by cate_wingnutx
On General/Chat 02/01/2008 2:03:17 AM EST · 21 replies
Fox News | Thursday, January 31, 2008
If you've got blue eyes, shake the hand of the nearest person who shares your azure irises: He or she may be a distant cousin. Danish researchers have concluded that all blue-eyed people share a common ancestor, presumably someone who lived 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. "Originally, we all had brown eyes," Professor Hans Eiberg of the University of Copenhagen said in a press release. "But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a 'switch,' which literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes." That "switch" -- a simple change from...
Prehistory and Origins
Ancient Bones Found At UCSD
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/27/2008 10:58:31 PM EST · 32 replies
Sign On San Diego | 1-27-2008 | Tanya Sierra
Locked away in a museum safe near Escondido are perhaps the oldest skeletal remains found in the Western Hemisphere. More than 30 years after the relics were unearthed during a classroom archaeological dig at UC San Diego, the county's Kumeyaay tribes are fighting to reclaim the bones that anthropologists estimate are nearly 10,000 years old.
Ancient Art
Maya Mask Splendor Enhanced With Sparkling Mica ScienceDaily
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/27/2008 2:01:12 AM EST · 6 replies
Science Daily | 1-27-2008 | Queensland University of Technology.
Reconstruction of the Rosalila in the Copan museum. The Rosalila is still entombed within another pyramid. Ms Goodall said the mica was applied over the red paint of stucco masks on the corners of Copan's well-preserved Rosalila temple, found buried under another pyramid. (Credit: Dr. Jay Hall) (Jan. 27, 2008) -- Ancient Mayan temple builders discovered and used lustrous pigments to make their buildings dazzle in the daylight, a Queensland University of Technology researcher has discovered. Studying tiny shards of paint from the Mayan city of Copan, QUT physical and chemical sciences PhD...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Archaeologist 'strikes gold' with finds of ancient nasca iron ore mine in Peru
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/29/2008 3:08:06 PM EST · 13 replies
PhysOrg | January 29, 2008 | Purdue University press release
The researchers determined that the mine is a human-made cave that was first created around 2,000 years ago. An estimated 3,710 metric tons was extracted from the mine during more than 1,400 years of use. The mine, which is nearly 700 cubic meters, is in a cliffside facing a modern ochre mine... Vaughn and his team discovered a number of artifacts in the mine, including corncobs, stone tools, and pieces of textiles and pottery. The age of the items was determined by radiocarbon dating, a process that determines age based on the decay of naturally occurring elements. "Archaeologists have a...
Archaeologist 'Strikes Gold' With Finds Of Ancient Nasca Iron Ore Mine In Peru
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/30/2008 11:51:00 AM EST · 6 replies
Purdue University | 1-29-2008 | Kevin J Vaughn
A Purdue University archaeologist discovered an intact ancient iron ore mine in South America that shows how civilizations before the Inca Empire were mining this valuable ore. "Archaeologists know people in the Old and New worlds have mined minerals for thousands and thousands of years," said Kevin J. Vaughn, an assistant professor of anthropology who studies the Nasca civilization, which existed from A.D. 1 to A.D. 750. "Iron mining in the Old World, specifically in Africa, goes back...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Researchers Unearth Glimpse Of Adena Hunter-To-Farmer Shift
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/31/2008 9:49:57 AM EST · 8 replies
The Columbus Dispatch | 1-29-2008 | Bradley T. Lepper
Ohio's Adena culture represents a turning point in state history. Situated between the nomadic hunting and gathering cultures of the Archaic period and the more settled farming cultures of the later Woodland period, the Adena culture represented the dawn of a new way of life for Ohio's ancient people. Archaeologists now are fleshing out the details of the daily lives of Ohio's first farmers, who were known mostly for their mortuary and ritual sites, such as Chillicothe's Adena Mound, for which the culture...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Last glimpse inside ancient enigma[UK][Silbury Hill]
Posted by BGHater
On News/Activism 01/31/2008 11:31:26 AM EST · 46 replies
BBC | Stephen Smith
You're in your jouncing people-carrier, taking in the agreeable but unremarkable view, and then suddenly it's upon you; a pointy attention-grabber at the side of the road, towering street furniture in the shape of a hazard-warning equilateral. This is crushing historical time expressed in trigonometry.Old Egypt hands could be forgiven for thinking that the terrible shark's fin that I'm talking about is the sort of thing that looms in your windshield as you're driving through the suburbs of Cairo. But they'd be wrong. Or they'd be half-right. Silbury...
British Isles
Mystery 'Mound' To Be Saved From The Sea (Shetlands)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/27/2008 1:07:01 AM EST · 6 replies
The Shetland news | 1-26-2008 | Gavin Morgan
Archaeologists plan to save a fine example of a Bronze Age burnt mound from disappearing into the sea in a unique £70,000 removal operation on Shetland this coming summer. Historic Scotland has given permission for the site at Cruister, on Bressay, to be shifted to the islands' heritage centre. The unprecedented project will see the prehistoric version of a water heater, a third of which has already been eroded by the sea, dismantled and rebuilt in fully functional order. Barbara Anderson, of Bressay Heritage Centre, said it...
Oh So Mysterioso
Vault believers want new dig ("secret vault" of Sir Francis Bacon)
Posted by Marius3188
On General/Chat 08/20/2006 3:15:31 AM EDT · 22 replies · 1,139+ views
The Virginia Gazette | 20 Aug 2006 | Steve Vaughan
Advocates of our version of "The DaVinci Code" were back in town Friday, calling for another excavation to locate the "secret vault" of Sir Francis Bacon, which they still allege is buried beneath the churchyard of Bruton Parish Episcopal Church. It is a replay of a saga from 14 years ago that put the church in an awkward position of dispelling some very weird myths. A media circus resulted. The story propagated by Sir Francis Bacon's Sages of the Seventh Seal has all the elements of Dan Brown's theological thriller. The Bacon story relies on a conspiracy theory...
Climate
Thousands Of Crop Varieties Depart For Arctic Seed Vault
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/27/2008 2:09:25 AM EST · 18 replies
Science Daily | 1-26-2008 | Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.
At the end of January, more than 200,000 crop varieties from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East -- drawn from vast seed collections maintained by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) -- will be shipped to a remote island near the Arctic Circle, where they will be stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), a facility capable of preserving their vitality for thousands of years. The...
Crown of Creation
Man-Made Changes Bring About New Epoch in Earth's History
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/27/2008 1:38:21 AM EST · 65 replies
Alpha Galileo | 1-26-2008 | University Of Leicester
Geologists from the University of Leicester propose that humankind has so altered the Earth that it has brought about an end to one epoch of Earth's history and marked the start of a new epoch. Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams at the University of Leicester and their colleagues on the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London have presented their research in the journal GSA Today. In it, they suggest humans have so changed the Earth that on the planet the Holocene epoch has ended and we...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Dig At Homes Site Uncovers Skeletons Of Eight Monks (UK)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/28/2008 2:01:43 PM EST · 10 replies
The Northern Echo | 1-28-2008 | Nicola Fenwick
Archaeologists have discovered the complete skeletons of eight Carmelite monks. The excavation in Northallerton, North Yorkshire, also revealed that the town's priory is unique, because its layout differs from all other known Carmelite priories and monasteries in Europe. Housing developer Castle Homes owns the site and will be building a residential development there. But it has given assurances that the design of the building will ensure the preservation...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
(NY)Man arrested in eBay sale of historic documents
Posted by restornu
On News/Activism 01/29/2008 7:54:11 PM EST · 24 replies
REUTERS | Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:21pm EST | By Christopher Michaud
A New York state employee who had access to government-owned archives has been arrested on suspicion of stealing hundreds of historic documents, many of which he sold on eBay, authorities said on Monday. Among the missing documents were an 1823 letter by U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun and copies of the Davy Crockett Almanacs, pamphlets written by the frontiersman who died at the Alamo in Texas. Daniel Lorello, 54, of Rensselaer, New York, was charged with grand larceny, possession of stolen property and fraud. He pleaded innocent in Albany City Court on Monday. He was...
end of digest #185 20080202
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· Saturday, February 2, 2008 · 32 topics · 1963073 to 1686763 · now 672 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 185th issue, and welcome to all recent new members. It's a day early, which has been done perhaps once before. It's back to average size, but a couple are duplicate topics. Nice variety, and it was particularly pleasurable to make the order work out in what I hope is a readable flow of association. As usual, I pared away the duplicative text (such as headlines and bylines in the "excerpt" itself) and garbage characters. |
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What??? Surely you don't mean to imply that you're not raking in enough cash compensation & fringe benefits for your gig as CEO/COO of GGG, Inc, do you? ;-)
Need a new job? Hmmm.. Mammoth cloning seems to be a new and hot industry.
You could be in demand as a public affairs officer with your trunkful of mammoth stories and info at your fingertips.
Non-women and non-children hardest hit. ;’)
re: wildbill — Helix like he has a good idea.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #186
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Epidemic, Pandemic, Plague, the Sniffles
Ancient Bones May Hold Key (TB Tests)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/07/2008 7:06:32 PM EST · 2 replies
Portsmouth.com | 2-7-2008 | Emily Pykett
Ancient human remains held in Portsmouth's museum archives are set to be DNA-tested for signs of tuberculosis. Skeletons which have been dug up in the city during developments, some dating back to the Bronze Age, will now form a vital part of new research into TB. Academics from Durham and Manchester universities have asked permission to remove bits of bone and teeth to analyse as part of their research project into how tuberculosis evolved through the ages. The remains of two ancient city dwellers, one which is known to have suffered TB...
Crown of Creation
Doctoral Student Makes Discovery On Neanderthal Eating Habits
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/07/2008 6:01:50 PM EST · 13 replies
G W Hatchett.com | 2-7-2008 | Michael Moffett
A doctoral student studying hominid paleobiology has pioneered a method for analyzing reindeer bones from around 65,000 to 12,000 years ago, an accomplishment that allows scientists to further understand the eating habits of early humans. Early humans flocked to reindeer meat when the temperature dropped, J. Tyler Faith discovered. "We see a steady increase in the abundance of reindeer, associated with declines in summer temperature," Faith said. Faith analyzed bones from the Grotte XVI archaeological site in southern France in order to better understand...
Prehistory and Origins
Putting The Clock Back 10,000 Years (UK)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/03/2008 7:40:56 PM EST · 20 replies
Hoovers - WDP | 2-3-2008 | Western Daily Press
Chock-full of famous Roman Baths, Celtic kings, Georgian crescents and Jane Austen, the history of Bath already ran to quite a weighty tome. But archaeologists admitted yesterday that two new chapters would have to be written after amazing discoveries made while a new sewer was being dug. At the very depths of the site of a new GBP350 million shopping centre in the heart of the ancient city, archaeologists found new evidence that extends the history of the city thousands of years further back. The archaeologists found...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Iran's Salt Men Hazardously Exposed
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/07/2008 6:08:46 PM EST · 9 replies
Press TV | 2-7-2008
The company owning the right to the salt mines in which Iran's invaluable salt men lie wishes to renew its permit to continue operations. A renewed permit issued by the mining industry will allow operations to continue for another ten years, beginning this week. The industry is obliged to give authorization, as all conditions stipulated in the previous contracts have been met by the company. If archaeological groups lose the fight to block this renewal, mining in even the most archaeologically sensitive areas will begin. It is very likely these...
Ancient Autopsies
Lice From Mummies Provide Clues To Ancient Migrations
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/06/2008 8:34:40 PM EST · 20 replies
IHT | 2-6-2008 | John Noble Wilford
When two pre-Columbian individuals died 1,000 years ago, arid conditions in the region of what is now Peru naturally mummified their bodies, down to the head lice in their long, braided hair. This was all scientists needed, they reported Wednesday, to extract well-preserved louse DNA and establish that the parasites had accompanied their human hosts in the original peopling of the Americas, probably as early as 15,000 years ago. The DNA matched that of the most common type of louse known to exist worldwide,...
Jimmy Cagney
Rat Genes Shed Light On Ancient Human Migrations
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/01/2008 5:42:13 PM EST · 8 replies
New Scientist | 2-1-2008 | Emma Young
One of humanity's greatest scourges -- the black rat -- may help health experts track the spread of disease. New work probing Rattus rattus's origins and historical movements should help health officials track its ongoing dispersal -- and might also explain anomalies in its spread of diseases such as typhus and plague. Ken Aplin at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems in Canberra, Australia, and colleagues have analysed the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of 170 black rats from 76 regions in 32 countries. They also surveyed other...
Australia and the Pacific
Tonga archaeology discovery blow to Samoa's 'cradle' claim
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 02/06/2008 9:32:05 AM EST · 8 replies
Radio Australia | January 10, 2008 | unattributed
A Canadian archaeologist has identified a small fishing village in Tonga, established nearly 3,000 years ago, as the birthplace of Polynesia. Matangi Tonga online reports that Professor David Burley drew his conclusion from his final excavation at Nukuleka, east of the capital Nuku'alofa, six months ago when they found pieces of Lapita pottery. "The big pieces of pottery are about 2,900 years old," he said... Professor Burley and his team say they have made their conclusions based on the designs of the pottery and carbon dating of samples... Stuff NZ reports that the discovery is a blow to surrounding Pacific...
In Fields of Ardath
Genetic mutation makes those brown eyes blue
Posted by G8 Diplomat
On General/Chat 02/02/2008 4:02:18 PM EST · 26 replies
MSNBC | January 31, 2008 | Jeanna Bryner
People with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor, according to new research. A team of scientists has tracked down a genetic mutation that leads to blue eyes. The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, so before then, there were no blue eyes. "Originally, we all had brown eyes," said Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen. The mutation affected the so-called OCA2 gene, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives color to our hair, eyes and skin. "A genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Team Uncovers New Evidence of Recent Human Evolution
Posted by neverdem
On News/Activism 02/06/2008 1:45:27 AM EST · 11 replies
ScienceNOW Daily News | 4 February 2008 | Ann Gibbons
In the past 100,000 years, modern humans have colonized the far corners of the globe, adapting to new environments as they migrated. Researchers have long assumed that these dramatic transitions resulted in a sort of accelerated evolution in which genes for traits such as skin color and stature changed rapidly to allow humans to survive in their new habitats. Now, a team of French and Spanish researchers has found powerful new evidence to support this idea, identifying 582 genes that have evolved differently...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Using DNA, Scientists Hunt For The Roots Of The Modern Potato
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/04/2008 1:46:04 PM EST · 33 replies
Science Daily | 2-4-2008 | University of Wisconsin-Madison.
More than 99 percent of all modern potato varieties planted today are the direct descendants of varieties that once grew in the lowlands of south-central Chile. How Chilean germplasm came to dominate the modern potato-which spread worldwide from Europe-has been the subject of a long, contentious debate among scientists. While some plant scientists have maintained that Chilean potatoes were the first to be planted in Europe, a more widely accepted story holds that European potatoes were originally descended from plants grown high in the...
Using DNA, Scientists Hunt for Roots of Modern Potato
Posted by Diana in Wisconsin
On General/Chat 02/07/2008 10:27:18 AM EST · 7 replies
Biology Net News | January 30, 2008 | Staff Writer
More than 99 percent of all modern potato varieties planted today are the direct descendents of varieties that once grew in the lowlands of south-central Chile. How Chilean germplasm came to dominate the modern potato-which spread worldwide from Europe-has been the subject of a long, contentious debate among scientists. While some plant scientists have maintained that Chilean potatoes were the first to be planted in Europe, a more widely accepted story holds that European potatoes were originally descended from plants grown high in the Andes mountains between eastern Venezuela and northern Argentina. According to this theory, Andean potatoes were wiped...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Scottish wildcats: Tall tales and tartan tabbies (New film documents "baddest cats on the planet")
Posted by Stoat
On General/Chat 02/02/2008 7:18:57 PM EST · 56 replies
The Telegraph (U.K.) | February 2, 2008 | Jack Watkins
Despite our eagerness to devour reports of wild beasts at large on Exmoor, there are those who still dismiss the existence of Britain's most ferocious mammal, the Scottish wildcat, as a myth. Recent scientific findings suggest there are only 400 pure wildcats left "In Edinburgh and Glasgow, some people are amazed to hear that there is such a thing. "They think you must mean a feral or stray domestic cat," says Steve...
British Isles
She Crucified Her Enemies And Burnt London To The Ground. Meet Britain's First Feminist, Boadicea
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/07/2008 6:19:53 PM EST · 24 replies
Daily Mail | 2-6-2008 | Paul Johnson
Britain's history is rich in fiery queens, and the first such heroine, tall with red hair down to her waist, commanding and brave, was Boadicea, warrior leader of the ancient Britons. She lived at the same time as the emperors Claudius and Nero, and led a surprisingly successful British revolt against Roman rule in AD60-61 (which, for reference, was when St Paul was writing epistles and St Mark composing his Gospel). She was a...
Rome and Italy
Archaeologists Discover Roman Fort In Cornwall, England
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/06/2008 9:10:12 PM EST · 17 replies
Science Daily | 2-6-2008 | University of Exeter
University of Exeter archaeologists have discovered a Roman fort in South East Cornwall. Dating back to the first century AD, this is only the third Roman fort ever to have been found in the county. The team believes its location, close to a silver mine, may be significant in shedding light on the history of the Romans in Cornwall. Situated next to St Andrew's Church, Calstock, the site is on top of a hill in an area known to have been involved with silver mining in medieval times....
Anatolia
Justinian 30, Factionists 10: The Nika Rebellion of AD 531 [Superbowl Warm-up]
Posted by Antoninus
On News/Activism 02/02/2008 5:43:02 PM EST · 17 replies
Catholic Men's Quarterly | 2-2-08 | Paolo Belzoni
It's a safe bet that most of you reading these words have been to a professional football game. Many of you -- particularly those who live in Philadelphia -- have probably witnessed the occasional brawls between the home crowd and those foolish enough to wear an opposing team's colors. A few of you, I dare say, have been involved in such altercations. But how often have you witnessed football fans actually kill opposition partisans? Well, perhaps I should qualify that by saying American football fans. When was the last time you heard of agitated sports nuts rioting in the streets and burning down half...
Ancient Art
UN vandals spray graffiti on Sahara's prehistoric art
Posted by knighthawk
On News/Activism 01/31/2008 6:47:29 AM EST · 23 replies
Times Online (UK) | January 31 2008 | Dalya Alberge
Spectacular prehistoric depictions of animal and human figures created up to 6,000 years ago on Western Saharan rocks have been vandalised by United Nations peacekeepers, The Times has learnt. Archaeological sites boasting ancient paintings and engravings of giraffes, buffalo and elephants have been defaced within the past two years by personnel attached to the UN mission, known by its French acronym, Minurso. Graffiti, some of it more than a metre high and sprayed with paint meant for use for marking routes, now blights the rock art at Lajuad, an isolated site known as Devil Mountain, which is regarded by the...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Robots take scientists into sea depths
Posted by LibWhacker
On News/Activism 08/02/2005 3:42:11 PM EDT · 7 replies · 455+ views
Seattle Post-Intelligencer | 7/29/05 | Tom Paulson
Think of it as the Mars Rover but at the bottom of the ocean, remotely exploring our own planet's most alien landscape for scientists back at mission control. "This is how the science is going to be done," said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer. In 2000, Kelley led an expedition using a manned submersible to explore the deep Atlantic Ocean. Her team stumbled upon something never seen before. The researchers discovered a startlingly massive collection of limestone towers located miles away from the tectonic "spreading" cracks in the seafloor that typically produce such structures. Some of these hydrothermal...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Tsunami Threat Hangs Over Southern Italy
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/05/2008 4:45:51 PM EST · 37 replies
New Scientist
Southern Italy's active volcanoes mean that living in the region is not for the risk-averse. Less well known, though, is the threat from the sea. Tsunamis occur around once a century in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1908, a magnitude 7 earthquake created a tsunami that almost destroyed the Italian cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria. Stefano Lorito of the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology in Rome and his team used historical data to estimate earthquake risk for three different fault zones in the Mediterranean region, and simulated...
Mega-Tsunami Theory Disputed (Australia)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/03/2008 7:35:17 PM EST · 46 replies
The Australian | 2-3-2008
Supposed evidence Australia has been subject to prehistoric tsunamis up to 20m in height over the past 10,000 years could just be the result of Aboriginal occupation, a major conference is set to hear tomorrow. Archaeologists from the Australian National University say the theory about the mega-tsunamis, which has influenced the development of emergency service plans in Western Australia, is not supported by evidence. In 2003 Australian geological researchers suggested prehistoric tsunamis over the past 10,000 years were much larger than those recorded since European settlement, including findings of surges up to 20m in...
Faith and Philosophy
"Renaissance Couldn't Have Happened Without Muslim Input'
Posted by forkinsocket
On News/Activism 01/15/2008 8:15:30 AM EST · 100 replies
Arab News | 15 January 2008 | Hassna'a Mokhtar
The history of science and civilization, as taught by many institutions in the West, often fails to include more than 1,000 years of Islamic heritage and civilization, according to Dr. Salim Al-Hassani of the UK-based Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilization. "The Renaissance couldn't have happened out of nothing," said Al-Hassani while speaking at Dar Al-Hekma College here yesterday. "In the West, there's total ignorance of the contributions of other civilizations. Did modern civilization really rise from nothing?" Al-Hassani explained how many Western discoveries are of Muslim origin. There was a lost age of Muslim...
Paleontology
Freakish And Feathered Dinosaurs From China
Posted by Incorrigible
On News/Activism 02/06/2008 7:06:07 PM EST · 20 replies
Newhouse News | 2/6/2008 | Joe Rojas-Burke
Workers piece together a lifelike model of a Mamenchisaurus for the 'China's Ancient Giants' museum exhibit. (Photo by Beth Nakamura) PORTLAND, Ore. -- Since the mid-1990s, China has rocked the paleontology world with a steady stream of dazzling finds, many dug from dry farmland west of Beijing in a province called Liaoning.There, about 130 million years ago, a series of volcanic eruptions entombed uncounted thousands of dinosaurs, along with primitive birds and mammals. The sudden burial in fine ash and mud preserved detailed features of bone, skin and...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Stolen 15th-Century Map Finds Way Back to Spain
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/07/2008 6:51:04 PM EST · 5 replies
National Geographic News | 2-5-2008 | Harold Heckle
A stolen 15th century map dating to the dawn of modern printing -- a decade before Christopher Columbus sailed to America -- was returned to Spain on Monday. The map was discovered missing from Spain's National Library in August, cut out of a 1482 edition of Claudius Ptolemy's Cosmographia. Fifteen other irreplaceable documents also disappeared. Scattered Around the World The Cosmographia map was seized by Australian Federal Police at an art gallery in Sydney, after it passed through dealers in Argentina, London, and New York, a spokesperson...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Search For Lost Colony Goes High-Tech
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/04/2008 1:26:23 PM EST · 31 replies
News Observer | 2-4-2008 | Catherine Kozak
An innocuous-looking golf course tractor pushing a platform on wheels could help illustrate the nation's oldest mystery. In the quest for the Lost Colony, the vanished 1587 English settlement on Roanoke Island, archaeologists have conducted numerous explorations in Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, digging and surveying and scanning and scoping. But they've never used high-tech radar tomography that can produce 3-D images out of data collected from 6 feet, more or less, under ground. The refined technology, which can also use sound and light waves, gained...
end of digest #186 20080209
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· Saturday, February 9, 2008 · 25 topics · 1966750 to 1455539 · now 673 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 186th issue, and welcome to all recent new members. I do apologize for some recent pings which included the message about the FReepathon. It was an old, alt version of the message that I used on another machine (or a different folder on a Flash drive, I dunno), and I should have been using it during the actual FReepathon. Anyway, my thanks for not pointing out my error. |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #186
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Epidemic, Pandemic, Plague, the Sniffles
Ancient Bones May Hold Key (TB Tests)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/07/2008 7:06:32 PM EST · 2 replies
Portsmouth.com | 2-7-2008 | Emily Pykett
Ancient human remains held in Portsmouth's museum archives are set to be DNA-tested for signs of tuberculosis. Skeletons which have been dug up in the city during developments, some dating back to the Bronze Age, will now form a vital part of new research into TB. Academics from Durham and Manchester universities have asked permission to remove bits of bone and teeth to analyse as part of their research project into how tuberculosis evolved through the ages. The remains of two ancient city dwellers, one which is known to have suffered TB...
Crown of Creation
Doctoral Student Makes Discovery On Neanderthal Eating Habits
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/07/2008 6:01:50 PM EST · 13 replies
G W Hatchett.com | 2-7-2008 | Michael Moffett
A doctoral student studying hominid paleobiology has pioneered a method for analyzing reindeer bones from around 65,000 to 12,000 years ago, an accomplishment that allows scientists to further understand the eating habits of early humans. Early humans flocked to reindeer meat when the temperature dropped, J. Tyler Faith discovered. "We see a steady increase in the abundance of reindeer, associated with declines in summer temperature," Faith said. Faith analyzed bones from the Grotte XVI archaeological site in southern France in order to better understand...
Prehistory and Origins
Putting The Clock Back 10,000 Years (UK)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/03/2008 7:40:56 PM EST · 20 replies
Hoovers - WDP | 2-3-2008 | Western Daily Press
Chock-full of famous Roman Baths, Celtic kings, Georgian crescents and Jane Austen, the history of Bath already ran to quite a weighty tome. But archaeologists admitted yesterday that two new chapters would have to be written after amazing discoveries made while a new sewer was being dug. At the very depths of the site of a new GBP350 million shopping centre in the heart of the ancient city, archaeologists found new evidence that extends the history of the city thousands of years further back. The archaeologists found...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Iran's Salt Men Hazardously Exposed
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/07/2008 6:08:46 PM EST · 9 replies
Press TV | 2-7-2008
The company owning the right to the salt mines in which Iran's invaluable salt men lie wishes to renew its permit to continue operations. A renewed permit issued by the mining industry will allow operations to continue for another ten years, beginning this week. The industry is obliged to give authorization, as all conditions stipulated in the previous contracts have been met by the company. If archaeological groups lose the fight to block this renewal, mining in even the most archaeologically sensitive areas will begin. It is very likely these...
Ancient Autopsies
Lice From Mummies Provide Clues To Ancient Migrations
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/06/2008 8:34:40 PM EST · 20 replies
IHT | 2-6-2008 | John Noble Wilford
When two pre-Columbian individuals died 1,000 years ago, arid conditions in the region of what is now Peru naturally mummified their bodies, down to the head lice in their long, braided hair. This was all scientists needed, they reported Wednesday, to extract well-preserved louse DNA and establish that the parasites had accompanied their human hosts in the original peopling of the Americas, probably as early as 15,000 years ago. The DNA matched that of the most common type of louse known to exist worldwide,...
Jimmy Cagney
Rat Genes Shed Light On Ancient Human Migrations
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/01/2008 5:42:13 PM EST · 8 replies
New Scientist | 2-1-2008 | Emma Young
One of humanity's greatest scourges -- the black rat -- may help health experts track the spread of disease. New work probing Rattus rattus's origins and historical movements should help health officials track its ongoing dispersal -- and might also explain anomalies in its spread of diseases such as typhus and plague. Ken Aplin at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems in Canberra, Australia, and colleagues have analysed the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of 170 black rats from 76 regions in 32 countries. They also surveyed other...
Australia and the Pacific
Tonga archaeology discovery blow to Samoa's 'cradle' claim
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 02/06/2008 9:32:05 AM EST · 8 replies
Radio Australia | January 10, 2008 | unattributed
A Canadian archaeologist has identified a small fishing village in Tonga, established nearly 3,000 years ago, as the birthplace of Polynesia. Matangi Tonga online reports that Professor David Burley drew his conclusion from his final excavation at Nukuleka, east of the capital Nuku'alofa, six months ago when they found pieces of Lapita pottery. "The big pieces of pottery are about 2,900 years old," he said... Professor Burley and his team say they have made their conclusions based on the designs of the pottery and carbon dating of samples... Stuff NZ reports that the discovery is a blow to surrounding Pacific...
In Fields of Ardath
Genetic mutation makes those brown eyes blue
Posted by G8 Diplomat
On General/Chat 02/02/2008 4:02:18 PM EST · 26 replies
MSNBC | January 31, 2008 | Jeanna Bryner
People with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor, according to new research. A team of scientists has tracked down a genetic mutation that leads to blue eyes. The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, so before then, there were no blue eyes. "Originally, we all had brown eyes," said Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen. The mutation affected the so-called OCA2 gene, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives color to our hair, eyes and skin. "A genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Team Uncovers New Evidence of Recent Human Evolution
Posted by neverdem
On News/Activism 02/06/2008 1:45:27 AM EST · 11 replies
ScienceNOW Daily News | 4 February 2008 | Ann Gibbons
In the past 100,000 years, modern humans have colonized the far corners of the globe, adapting to new environments as they migrated. Researchers have long assumed that these dramatic transitions resulted in a sort of accelerated evolution in which genes for traits such as skin color and stature changed rapidly to allow humans to survive in their new habitats. Now, a team of French and Spanish researchers has found powerful new evidence to support this idea, identifying 582 genes that have evolved differently...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Using DNA, Scientists Hunt For The Roots Of The Modern Potato
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/04/2008 1:46:04 PM EST · 33 replies
Science Daily | 2-4-2008 | University of Wisconsin-Madison.
More than 99 percent of all modern potato varieties planted today are the direct descendants of varieties that once grew in the lowlands of south-central Chile. How Chilean germplasm came to dominate the modern potato-which spread worldwide from Europe-has been the subject of a long, contentious debate among scientists. While some plant scientists have maintained that Chilean potatoes were the first to be planted in Europe, a more widely accepted story holds that European potatoes were originally descended from plants grown high in the...
Using DNA, Scientists Hunt for Roots of Modern Potato
Posted by Diana in Wisconsin
On General/Chat 02/07/2008 10:27:18 AM EST · 7 replies
Biology Net News | January 30, 2008 | Staff Writer
More than 99 percent of all modern potato varieties planted today are the direct descendents of varieties that once grew in the lowlands of south-central Chile. How Chilean germplasm came to dominate the modern potato-which spread worldwide from Europe-has been the subject of a long, contentious debate among scientists. While some plant scientists have maintained that Chilean potatoes were the first to be planted in Europe, a more widely accepted story holds that European potatoes were originally descended from plants grown high in the Andes mountains between eastern Venezuela and northern Argentina. According to this theory, Andean potatoes were wiped...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Scottish wildcats: Tall tales and tartan tabbies (New film documents "baddest cats on the planet")
Posted by Stoat
On General/Chat 02/02/2008 7:18:57 PM EST · 56 replies
The Telegraph (U.K.) | February 2, 2008 | Jack Watkins
Despite our eagerness to devour reports of wild beasts at large on Exmoor, there are those who still dismiss the existence of Britain's most ferocious mammal, the Scottish wildcat, as a myth. Recent scientific findings suggest there are only 400 pure wildcats left "In Edinburgh and Glasgow, some people are amazed to hear that there is such a thing. "They think you must mean a feral or stray domestic cat," says Steve...
British Isles
She Crucified Her Enemies And Burnt London To The Ground. Meet Britain's First Feminist, Boadicea
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/07/2008 6:19:53 PM EST · 24 replies
Daily Mail | 2-6-2008 | Paul Johnson
Britain's history is rich in fiery queens, and the first such heroine, tall with red hair down to her waist, commanding and brave, was Boadicea, warrior leader of the ancient Britons. She lived at the same time as the emperors Claudius and Nero, and led a surprisingly successful British revolt against Roman rule in AD60-61 (which, for reference, was when St Paul was writing epistles and St Mark composing his Gospel). She was a...
Rome and Italy
Archaeologists Discover Roman Fort In Cornwall, England
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/06/2008 9:10:12 PM EST · 17 replies
Science Daily | 2-6-2008 | University of Exeter
University of Exeter archaeologists have discovered a Roman fort in South East Cornwall. Dating back to the first century AD, this is only the third Roman fort ever to have been found in the county. The team believes its location, close to a silver mine, may be significant in shedding light on the history of the Romans in Cornwall. Situated next to St Andrew's Church, Calstock, the site is on top of a hill in an area known to have been involved with silver mining in medieval times....
Anatolia
Justinian 30, Factionists 10: The Nika Rebellion of AD 531 [Superbowl Warm-up]
Posted by Antoninus
On News/Activism 02/02/2008 5:43:02 PM EST · 17 replies
Catholic Men's Quarterly | 2-2-08 | Paolo Belzoni
It's a safe bet that most of you reading these words have been to a professional football game. Many of you -- particularly those who live in Philadelphia -- have probably witnessed the occasional brawls between the home crowd and those foolish enough to wear an opposing team's colors. A few of you, I dare say, have been involved in such altercations. But how often have you witnessed football fans actually kill opposition partisans? Well, perhaps I should qualify that by saying American football fans. When was the last time you heard of agitated sports nuts rioting in the streets and burning down half...
Navigation
Discovery: Oldest Lighthouse At Ancient Port
Posted by blam
On General/Chat 02/06/2008 9:20:24 PM EST · 10 replies
New Anatolian | 2-6-2008
Turkish archaeologists unearthed a 2000-year-old lighthouse at the ancient Roman port of Patara, near southern town of Kas, Antalya, discovering probably the oldest such structure that managed to remain intact. The 12-meter-high lighthouse was built under the reign of Emperor Nero who ruled from 54 to 68, Professor Havva Iskan Isik, head of the excavation team reported. "The oldest known lighthouse is the one in Alexandria but there is nothing left of it. So, the lighthouse at the Patara port is the oldest one that...
Egypt
SSU exhibit explores archaeology in ancient Nubia [Savannah State University ]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 02/06/2008 9:46:58 AM EST · 2 replies
Connect Savannah | February 5, 2008 | Linda Sickler
Nubia was an important part of the trade route from ancient Egypt to other parts of Africa. Tirhaka, mentioned in the Bible as the king of Ethiopia (II Kings, 18-20; Isaiah, 37-38), actually was Taharqa, king of Nubia and Kush. He ruled Egypt from 690 to 664 BC during its 25th Dynasty. The Kingdom of Kerma was the first Nubian kingdom to unify much of the region. Its capital city was one of the earliest urban centers in tropical Africa. The kings of Kerma left behind rich tombs, which were filled with their possessions and sacrificial offerings. The metalworking and...
Ancient Art
UN vandals spray graffiti on Sahara's prehistoric art
Posted by knighthawk
On News/Activism 01/31/2008 6:47:29 AM EST · 23 replies
Times Online (UK) | January 31 2008 | Dalya Alberge
Spectacular prehistoric depictions of animal and human figures created up to 6,000 years ago on Western Saharan rocks have been vandalised by United Nations peacekeepers, The Times has learnt. Archaeological sites boasting ancient paintings and engravings of giraffes, buffalo and elephants have been defaced within the past two years by personnel attached to the UN mission, known by its French acronym, Minurso. Graffiti, some of it more than a metre high and sprayed with paint meant for use for marking routes, now blights the rock art at Lajuad, an isolated site known as Devil Mountain, which is regarded by the...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Robots take scientists into sea depths
Posted by LibWhacker
On News/Activism 08/02/2005 3:42:11 PM EDT · 7 replies · 455+ views
Seattle Post-Intelligencer | 7/29/05 | Tom Paulson
Think of it as the Mars Rover but at the bottom of the ocean, remotely exploring our own planet's most alien landscape for scientists back at mission control. "This is how the science is going to be done," said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer. In 2000, Kelley led an expedition using a manned submersible to explore the deep Atlantic Ocean. Her team stumbled upon something never seen before. The researchers discovered a startlingly massive collection of limestone towers located miles away from the tectonic "spreading" cracks in the seafloor that typically produce such structures. Some of these hydrothermal...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Tsunami Threat Hangs Over Southern Italy
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/05/2008 4:45:51 PM EST · 37 replies
New Scientist
Southern Italy's active volcanoes mean that living in the region is not for the risk-averse. Less well known, though, is the threat from the sea. Tsunamis occur around once a century in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1908, a magnitude 7 earthquake created a tsunami that almost destroyed the Italian cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria. Stefano Lorito of the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology in Rome and his team used historical data to estimate earthquake risk for three different fault zones in the Mediterranean region, and simulated...
Mega-Tsunami Theory Disputed (Australia)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/03/2008 7:35:17 PM EST · 46 replies
The Australian | 2-3-2008
Supposed evidence Australia has been subject to prehistoric tsunamis up to 20m in height over the past 10,000 years could just be the result of Aboriginal occupation, a major conference is set to hear tomorrow. Archaeologists from the Australian National University say the theory about the mega-tsunamis, which has influenced the development of emergency service plans in Western Australia, is not supported by evidence. In 2003 Australian geological researchers suggested prehistoric tsunamis over the past 10,000 years were much larger than those recorded since European settlement, including findings of surges up to 20m in...
Faith and Philosophy
"Renaissance Couldn't Have Happened Without Muslim Input'
Posted by forkinsocket
On News/Activism 01/15/2008 8:15:30 AM EST · 100 replies
Arab News | 15 January 2008 | Hassna'a Mokhtar
The history of science and civilization, as taught by many institutions in the West, often fails to include more than 1,000 years of Islamic heritage and civilization, according to Dr. Salim Al-Hassani of the UK-based Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilization. "The Renaissance couldn't have happened out of nothing," said Al-Hassani while speaking at Dar Al-Hekma College here yesterday. "In the West, there's total ignorance of the contributions of other civilizations. Did modern civilization really rise from nothing?" Al-Hassani explained how many Western discoveries are of Muslim origin. There was a lost age of Muslim...
Paleontology
Freakish And Feathered Dinosaurs From China
Posted by Incorrigible
On News/Activism 02/06/2008 7:06:07 PM EST · 20 replies
Newhouse News | 2/6/2008 | Joe Rojas-Burke
Workers piece together a lifelike model of a Mamenchisaurus for the 'China's Ancient Giants' museum exhibit. (Photo by Beth Nakamura) PORTLAND, Ore. -- Since the mid-1990s, China has rocked the paleontology world with a steady stream of dazzling finds, many dug from dry farmland west of Beijing in a province called Liaoning.There, about 130 million years ago, a series of volcanic eruptions entombed uncounted thousands of dinosaurs, along with primitive birds and mammals. The sudden burial in fine ash and mud preserved detailed features of bone, skin and...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Stolen 15th-Century Map Finds Way Back to Spain
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/07/2008 6:51:04 PM EST · 5 replies
National Geographic News | 2-5-2008 | Harold Heckle
A stolen 15th century map dating to the dawn of modern printing -- a decade before Christopher Columbus sailed to America -- was returned to Spain on Monday. The map was discovered missing from Spain's National Library in August, cut out of a 1482 edition of Claudius Ptolemy's Cosmographia. Fifteen other irreplaceable documents also disappeared. Scattered Around the World The Cosmographia map was seized by Australian Federal Police at an art gallery in Sydney, after it passed through dealers in Argentina, London, and New York, a spokesperson...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Search For Lost Colony Goes High-Tech
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/04/2008 1:26:23 PM EST · 31 replies
News Observer | 2-4-2008 | Catherine Kozak
An innocuous-looking golf course tractor pushing a platform on wheels could help illustrate the nation's oldest mystery. In the quest for the Lost Colony, the vanished 1587 English settlement on Roanoke Island, archaeologists have conducted numerous explorations in Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, digging and surveying and scanning and scoping. But they've never used high-tech radar tomography that can produce 3-D images out of data collected from 6 feet, more or less, under ground. The refined technology, which can also use sound and light waves, gained...
end of digest #186 20080209
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Welcome to the 186th issue, and welcome to all recent new members. I do apologize for some recent pings which included the message about the FReepathon. It was an old, alt version of the message that I used on another machine (or a different folder on a Flash drive, I dunno), and I should have been using it during the actual FReepathon. Anyway, my thanks for not pointing out my error. |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #187
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Mine Ochre Scene the Glory
Ancient Iron Ore Mine Discovered In Peruvian Andes (More)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/12/2008 5:17:28 PM EST · 22 replies
National Geographic News | 2-11-2008 | Kelly Hearn
A 2,000-year-old mine has been discovered high in mountains in Peru. The find offers proof that an ancient people in the Andes mined hematite iron ore centuries before the Inca Empire, archaeologists say. The mine was used to tap a vein of hematite, or ochre -- the first such mine found in South America that predates the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, experts note. The discovery, reported by a U.S. archaeologist, was made in southern Peru in the region once inhabited by the...
Climate
With Climate Swing, A Culture Bloomed In Americas
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/12/2008 5:07:20 PM EST · 20 replies
NPR | 2-12-2008 | Christpher Joyce
The mound builders settled in the arid, coastal hills of northwestern Peru. Archaeologist Winifred Creamer works at an excavation in Norte Chico, Peru. Courtesy Jonathan Haas All Things Considered, February 11, 2008 -- Along the coast of Peru, a mysterious civilization sprang up about 5,000 years ago. This was many centuries before the Incan Empire. Yet these people were sophisticated. They cultivated crops and orchards. And they built huge monuments of earth and rock. Archaeologists are trying to prove that an abrupt change of climate created...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
A Three-Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/13/2008 1:45:46 PM EST · 24 replies
Plosone.org | 2-13-2008 | Andrew Kitchen1, Michael M. Miyamoto, Connie J. Mulligan
Abstract: We evaluate the process by which the Americas were originally colonized and propose a three-stage model that integrates current genetic, archaeological, geological, and paleoecological data. Specifically, we analyze mitochondrial and nuclear genetic data by using complementary coalescent models of demographic history and incorporating non-genetic data to enhance the anthropological relevance of the analysis. Methodology/Findings...
Migrating people had 20,000-year campout
Posted by Pharmboy
On News/Activism 02/13/2008 5:20:02 PM EST · 36 replies
Reuters via Yahoo | Tue Feb 12, 2008 | Maggie Fox
People who migrated from Asia to the New World camped out for 20,000 years on land now submerged under the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia, according to a genetic analysis published on Tuesday. A team at the University of Florida combined studies of DNA, archeological evidence, climate data and geological data to come up with their new theory, which describes a much longer migration than most other researchers have proposed. "We sort of went out onto a limb, incorporating all this nongenetic data," molecular anthropologist Connie Mulligan said in a telephone interview. Mulligan's team proposes that the people who...
Chumash
Archaeologist Dig May Have Found Chumash Home Foundation
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/11/2008 6:05:40 PM EST · 4 replies
San Jose Mercury | 2-11-2008
Archaeologists digging in a garden at the Santa Barbara Mission may have unearthed the complete stone foundation of a Chumash house. The dig is expected to be completed Wednesday under the watchful eyes of American Indian representatives. The foundation of the home is believed to be part of what's left of a Chumash village at the site, which is at the northeastern edge of an Indian pueblo at the mission. Much of the village remains were destroyed over the years. In...
Malta
Cistern Found To Have Been Ancient Tomb (Malta)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/10/2008 8:10:07 PM EST · 24 replies
Times Of Malta
Studies at Limestone Heritage, the museum/park which traces the use of stone in Malta, have confirmed that a bell-shaped cistern in the Siggiewi quarry where the museum is located, is an ancient tomb of Punic or Roman origin. The studies were conducted by Dr Nicholas Vella, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the Department of Classics and Archaeology of the University of Malta. Entrance into the tomb is now through one of its two burial chambers but in antiquity the tomb was reached from the fields above, down a deep shaft. In later years,...
India
2,500 Years Ago, A City Bigger Than Athens In Orissa
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/10/2008 8:26:54 PM EST · 15 replies
Times Of India | 2-9-2008
Experts say Sishupalgarh is the "most visible standing architectural monument' discovered in India (TOI Photo) BHUBANESWAR: From under the ruins of an ancient fort on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, archaeologists have dug out the remains of a 2,500-year-old city which they believe was bigger than classical Athens. Eighteen pillars were found among the remnants of the grand city at Sishupalgarh, a ruined fortification first discovered 60 years ago. The findings include debris of household pottery and terracotta ornaments, pointing to an advanced lifestyle...
Rome and Italy
The Romans Carried Out Cataract Operations
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/09/2008 9:46:48 PM EST · 16 replies
BBC | 2-9-2008 | Jane Elliott
An eye stamp: the equivalent of the modern medicine label Think of the Roman legacy to Britain and many things spring to mind - straight roads, under-floor heating, aqueducts and public baths. But they were also pioneers in the health arena - particularly in the area of eye care, with remedies for various eye conditions such as short-sightedness and conjunctivitis. Perhaps most surprisingly of all is that the Romans - and others from ancient times, including the Chinese, Indians and Greeks - were also able also to...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Egypt's Earliest Agricultural Settlement Unearthed
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/15/2008 5:27:15 PM EST · 6 replies
Science Daily | 2-15-2008 | University of California - Los Angeles.
A fragment of a bangle made of a shell found only at the Red Sea suggests possible trade links with the cradle of agriculture in the Near East. (Credit: Copyright UC Regents) ScienceDaily (Feb. 15, 2008) -- Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals, pits for cooking and even floors for what appear to be dwellings. The findings, which were unearthed in 2006 and are still being analyzed, also suggest possible...
Ancient Autopsies
Rare Egyptian "Warrior" Tomb Found
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/15/2008 10:21:27 PM EST · 16 replies
National Geographic News | 2-15-2008 | Steven Stanek
An unusual, well-preserved burial chamber that may contain the mummy of an ancient warrior has been discovered in a necropolis in Luxor. Scientists opened the tomb -- found in Dra Abul Naga, an ancient cemetery on Luxor's west bank -- on Wednesday. Inside the burial shaft -- a recess crudely carved from bedrock -- experts found a closed wooden coffin inscribed with the name "Iker," which translates to "excellent one" in ancient Egyptian. Near the coffin they also found five arrows made of reeds, three of them still feathered. A team of...
Neandertal / Neanderthal
Tooth Scan Reveals Neanderthal Mobility
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/09/2008 9:25:24 PM EST · 94 replies
Psysorg - AP | 1-9-2008 | Elena Becatoros - AP
A 40,000-year-old tooth is seen in this undated hand out photo released by Greek Culture Ministry. Analysis of the tooth uncovered in southern Greece indicates for the first time that Neanderthals may have traveled more widely than previously thought, paleontologists announced on Friday, Feb. 8, 2008. (AP Photo/Greek Culture Ministry)(AP) -- Analysis of a 40,000-year-old tooth found in southern Greece suggests Neanderthals were more mobile than once thought, paleontologists said Friday. Analysis of the tooth - part of the first and only Neanderthal remains found in Greece - showed...
Paleontology
Two new flesh-eating dinosaurs discovered in Niger
Posted by RDTF
On General/Chat 02/13/2008 8:03:48 PM EST · 11 replies
AFP | Feb 13, 2008 | not specified
CHICAGO (AFP) -- Two strange new flesh-eating dinosaurs which hunted the rich forests of Africa some 110 million years ago have been unearthed in Niger, researchers said Thursday. Both ran quickly on powerful hind legs with the aid of a long tail and competed for prey with a third creature, which was previously discovered and which hunted both in and out of the water. But the three massive predators likely divided up the rich spoils based upon how their body structures impacted their hunting capacities, said lead author Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago. The heavy-browed 40-foot long Eocarcharia...
Fossils of new meat-eating dinos found
Posted by martin_fierro
On General/Chat 02/15/2008 7:15:35 AM EST · 6 replies
Yahoo | 2/14/08
Fossil hunters say they have discovered bones of two massive meat-eating dinosaurs in Africa. In the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno and co-author Stephen Brusatte named one Kryptops palaios, or "old hidden face," because of a horny covering over its face. They named the other Eocarcharia dinops, or "fierce-eyed dawn shark," for its razor-sharp teeth and bony brow. Both were about 25 feet long and stood 7 feet high at the hip. Kryptops had a short snout with teeth better for...
Asia
17th Century Japanese Village Uncovered In Cambodia
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/14/2008 6:49:10 PM EST · 21 replies
Japan Today | 2-14-2008
A site of a Japanese village dating back to the 17th century has been found in the outskirts of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, a Japanese archaeologist said Wednesday. Hiroshi Sugiyama, chief research fellow at Japan's National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, said that based on research since 2004 and analyses of excavations and documents, the site in Ponhea Lueu Commune, about 25 kilometers north of Phnom Penh, is a Japanese village dating back to the 17th century. Based on on-site research, excavations and...
Ancient Art
Fire destroys South Korean landmark
Posted by nuconvert
On News/Activism 02/10/2008 10:37:53 PM EST · 64 replies
Yahoo/AP
An overnight fire destroyed a 610-year-old landmark that was considered the top national treasure, officials said Monday. Police said the cause of the blaze was unclear but one official said arson was suspected. The fire broke out Sunday night and burned down the wooden structure at the top of the Namdaemun gate that once formed part of a wall that encircled the capital. Some 360 firefighters fought to bring the blaze under control, according to Lee Sang-joon, an official with the National Emergency Management Agency. No one was injured, he...
Australia and the Pacific
Model Of Easter Island Collapse Might Reveal Message For Today
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/11/2008 7:04:19 PM EST · 27 replies
Physorg | 2-11-2008 | Lisa Zyga
Graphs based on the researchers' model, showing the population (top) and resources (bottom). The decline of resources coincides with a sharp population increase, followed by a sharp decrease. Image credit: M. Bologna and J. C. Flores. When a thriving civilization suddenly collapses, it's often a mystery -- and an ominous one, at that. For Easter Island circa 1000-1400 AD, experts believe it was a case of humans overexploiting their natural resources -- mostly, the palm tree. But exactly where did the culturally rich Rapanui society go too far?...
British Isles
Church's Pre-Historic Past Unearthed
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/14/2008 6:54:38 PM EST · 24 replies
Journal Live | 2-14-2008 | Tony Henderson
Work on a town's church has revealed that the site may have been used for ritual and worship for thousands of years. Major refurbishment work on the Grade I-listed St Michael and All Angels church in Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear, began last month and has involved digging up the floor to install a new heating system. The church, dating back to Norman times, is the oldest building in the town. A carved stone above a tiny doorway, featuring a carving of mysterious intertwined animals known as the Houghton Beasts, may...
Scotland Yet
Scottish Masons' Mysterious Signatures In Stone To Be Recorded
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/09/2008 9:38:15 PM EST · 41 replies
24 Hour Museum | 2-8-2008 | Courtesy Historic Scotland
Mysterious symbols carved into Scotland's medieval churches, castles and bridges are to be studied and recorded in a new scheme supported by Historic Scotland. Masons' marks are enigmatic signatures cut into stone wherever they worked, and hold clues as to dates of construction as well as the craftsmen who worked on the structure. However, little is known about the identities and life stories of these men who played such an important role in creating the country's most cherished buildings from the Middle...
Epigraphy and Language
Lasers Conserve Pictish Treasures
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/14/2008 5:40:39 PM EST · 25 replies
BBC | 2-14-2008
The Pictish carved stones date from the decades before 843 AD High-tech laser technology has been used to record and conserve one of the finest collections of Pictish carved stones in Scotland. The St Vigeans Stones from Arbroath are being cleaned by a specialist team of Historic Scotland experts in Edinburgh. Earlier efforts at conservation, dating back to the 1960s, carried out using the best techniques of the time have now reached the end of their life. The project removes the earlier repairs and uses more modern treatments. The project is part of works to upgrade...
Faith and Philosophy
Druid Grave Unearthed In UK?
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/11/2008 6:11:33 PM EST · 37 replies
Discovery News | 2-11-2008 | Jennifer Viegas
Historical records tell of a mystical, priestly and learned class of elite individuals called Druids among Celtic societies in Britain, but there has been no archaeological evidence of their existence. Until, perhaps, now. A series of graves found in a gravel quarry at Stanway near Colchester, Essex, have been dated to 40-60 A.D. At least one of the burials, it appears, may have been that of a Druid, according to a report published in British Archaeology. Mike Pitts, the journal's editor and an archaeologist,...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
How a Lunar Eclipse Saved Columbus (And us in ten days)
Posted by decimon
On News/Activism 02/10/2008 7:49:38 PM EST · 31 replies
SPACE.com | February 10, 2008 | Joe Rao
On the night of Feb. 20, the full moon will pass into Earth's shadow in an event that will be visible across all of the United States and Canada. The total lunar eclipse will be made even more striking by the presence of the nearby planet Saturn and the bright bluish star, Regulus. Eclipses in the distant past often terrified viewers who took them as evil omens. Certain lunar eclipses had an overwhelming effect on historic events. One of the most famous examples is the trick pulled by Christopher Columbus.
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Viking Women Had Sexy Style
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/11/2008 6:47:30 PM EST · 89 replies
The Local | 2-11-2008 | David Bartal
Women who lived in the major Viking settlement called Birka in the 9th and 10th centuries dressed in a much more provocative manner than previously believed. When the area around Lake Malaren was Christianized about a century later, women's dress style became more modest, according to archaeologist Annika Larsson. Previously, it was thought that Viking ladies wore a long garment held up by braces, made of square pieces of wool whose front and back sides were contained with a belt. The characteristic decorative circular buckles, a common...
Oh So Mysterioso
The Mystery Of The Voynich Manuscript
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/12/2008 4:51:49 PM EST · 49 replies
Scientific American | Gordon Rugg
Strange images of heavenly spheres, fantastic plants and nude women adorn the pages of the Voynich manuscript, which is written in an odd script that does not match that of any known language. The manuscript now resides at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. In 1912 Wilfrid Voynich, an American rare-book dealer, made the find of a lifetime in the library of a Jesuit college near Rome: a manuscript some 230 pages long,...
Civil War
Abraham Lincoln's paper trail
Posted by jazusamo
On General/Chat 02/11/2008 1:40:49 PM EST · 1 reply
LA Times | February 11, 2008 | P.J. Huffstutter
A team of historians scours the country for any scrap or document written by or to the 16th president. Even the tiniest message can be a revelation. -- Bouncing down an empty country road, past browning cotton fields lined with signs advertising church services and cheap guns, historian John A. Lupton hunches over a minivan's steering wheel and ignores his aching back. He has been traveling for six days -- covering five states and more than 1,400 miles -- in a mentally exhilarating and physically exhausting pursuit of anything handwritten by Abraham Lincoln, as well as documents addressed...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
ARTFUL CODGERS: How a high-school dropout and his elderly parents fooled the world
Posted by billorites
On News/Activism 02/10/2008 5:55:31 PM EST · 56 replies
National Post | January 29, 2008 | Robert Fulford
Shaun Greenhalgh, an Englishman whose furtive career has been unfolding in courtrooms, newspapers and museums for the last three months, may well be the most versatile art forger in history. He can do a convincing Gauguin, an 18th-century bronze portrait, a Barbara Hepworth sculpture or a broken chunk of Assyrian wall art. He finds it just as easy to do ancient Egyptian.A high-school dropout at 16, Shaun taught himself painting, drawing, stone carving and several other techniques. Then, with the enthusiastic support of his family, he became an art criminal.His story has been mostly ignored in North America because...
end of digest #187 20080216
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