Posted on 07/16/2004 11:27:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
You don’t need a new job, you’re doing fine with the one you have on FR.
And, I’m saving that quote.
Many thanks!
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #214
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Neandertal / Neanderthal
Earliest Known Human Had Neanderthal Qualities
08/22/2008 2:36:54 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 13 replies · 301+ views
Discovery News | Aug 22, 2008 | Jennifer Viegas
The world's first known modern human was a tall, thin individual -- probably male -- who lived around 200,000 years ago and resembled present-day Ethiopians, save for one important difference: He retained a few primitive characteristics associated with Neanderthals, according to a series of forthcoming studies conducted by multiple international research teams. The extraordinary findings, which will soon be outlined in a special issue of the Journal of Human Evolution devoted to the first known Homo sapiens, also reveal information about the material culture of the first known people, their surroundings, possible lifestyle and, perhaps most...
Climate
New climate record shows century-long droughts in eastern North America
08/19/2008 2:01:30 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 14 replies · 451+ views
Ohio University | Aug 19, 2008 | ANDREA GIBSON
Weak sun created cool oceans, lowered rainfall seven times in 7,000 years -- A stalagmite in a West Virginia cave has yielded the most detailed geological record to date on climate cycles in eastern North America over the past 7,000 years. The new study confirms that during periods when Earth received less solar radiation, the Atlantic Ocean cooled, icebergs increased and precipitation fell, creating a series of century-long droughts. A research team led by Ohio University geologist Gregory Springer examined the trace metal strontium and carbon and oxygen isotopes in the stalagmite, which preserved climate conditions...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Ancient stone chamber unearthed in garden
08/17/2008 10:10:44 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 10 replies · 508+ views
Derry Journal | Friday, August 15, 2008 | Staff reporter
Discovered by Clonmany man Sean Devlin, the previously unrecorded structure appears to be an underground tunnel or souterrain. Mr Devlin revealed yesterday that he first discovered the underground chamber several years ago while landscaping his front garden, but didn't make much of a fuss about his amazing find at the time. The historic significance of the tunnel only became apparent recently after Mr Devlin showed it to amateur archaeologist friends... Souterrains are underground man-made drystone built structures roofed with large lintels, comprising of one or more chambers linked by tunnels called creepways. Their entrance is concealed at ground level. They...
Britain
Bronze age remains 'may be tribal chieftain'
08/17/2008 10:28:11 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 2 replies · 155+ views
Telegraph | August 15, 2008 | Richard Savill
A 3,500-year-old bronze-age skeleton, found beside a beach, could be a tribal chieftain, archaeologists believe. The discovery of the middle-aged man's remains and burial casket, or cisk, was made by an amateur archaeologist, Trevor Renals, as walked on Constantine Island, North Cornwall. It was regarded as unusual because cremation rather than burial was popular in the bronze-age period and skeletons are not normally found in such a well preserved state... It is believed the man was from the middle bronze age, between 1380 and 1100BC, and he may have been an important member of his community... The discovery was made...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Metal detector find dates back 1,500 years[UK]
08/19/2008 8:10:18 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 11 replies · 1,012+ views
Kent Online | 19 Aug 2008 | Gerry Warren
When a Kent metal detecting enthusiast found something in a field of stubble he thought it looked interesting...and he was right! The gold pendant he discovered dated back more than 1,500 years and has been declared treasure trove. Fork lift truck driver Andy Sales, from Deal, found the ancient artefact near Worth. A coroner has declared the item treasure trove after an expert from the British Museum examined and dated it to between 491-518 AD. In his report to the hearing, the curator in early medieval coinage, Dr Gareth Williams, said it was a gold tremissis bearing the image of...
Old silver cross found in field declared treasure[UK][15th Century]
08/23/2008 8:40:28 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 7 replies · 735+ views
Yorkshire Post | 23 Aug 2008 | Andrew Robinson
A metal detector enthusiast unearthed a 15th century silver cross depicting the figure of Christ while working in a field he had searched many times before. Retired postal worker Philip Fletcher, 53, discovered the small cross in the Ackworth area of Pontefract in February last year. He said yesterday: "I had an inkling it might be a significant find as I had found things on this land in the past which indicated a past medieval presence." The value of the find -- which, once sold, will be divided between Mr Fletcher and the landowner, a farmer -- has yet to...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Amid war, a prophet's shrine survives
08/17/2008 3:18:36 PM PDT · Posted by forkinsocket · 4 replies · 368+ views
Babylon And Beyond | Aug 17 2008 | Raheem Salman
Here on the plains of the Tigris River lies the shrine of Ezra, the Jewish prophet, who returned to Jerusalem at the end of the Babylonian exile. According to biblical scholars, Ezra died years later back in the Mesopotamia at age 120 in what is now called Uzair. Locals believe Ezra passed away while roaming through the area with his donkey. His shrine still exists in this predominantly Shiite district of Amarah province filled with supporters of young cleric Muqtada's Sadr late father, a grand ayatollah assassinated in 1999. Bashir Zaalan is the custodian of Ezra's shrine. Zaalan inherited the...
Diet and Health
Arsenic Linked to Diabetes
08/20/2008 7:53:21 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 77 replies · 1,056+ views
WebMD Health News | Aug. 19, 2008 | Caroline Wilbert
Reviewed By Elizabeth Klodas, MD, FACC 13 Million Americans Are Exposed to Dangerous Levels of Arsenic Through Drinking Water Exposure to arsenic, typically through drinking water, is linked to diabetes, according a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Thirteen million Americans -- and millions more worldwide -- are exposed to drinking water contaminated with more inorganic arsenic than the Environmental Protection Agency has deemed safe. The EPA standard is 10 micrograms per liter. Researchers, led by Ana Navas-Acien, MD, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, studied 788 adults who had their urine tested...
...and Cuisine
The Inuit Paradox
08/17/2008 12:31:54 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 416+ views
Discover | October 1, 2004 | Patricia Gadsby
Shaped by glacial temperatures, stark landscapes, and protracted winters, the traditional Eskimo diet had little in the way of plant food, no agricultural or dairy products, and was unusually low in carbohydrates. Mostly people subsisted on what they hunted and fished. Inland dwellers took advantage of caribou feeding on tundra mosses, lichens, and plants too tough for humans to stomach (though predigested vegetation in the animals' paunches became dinner as well). Coastal people exploited the sea. The main nutritional challenge was avoiding starvation in late winter if primary meat sources became too scarce or lean. These foods hardly make up...
Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
Survivors of 1918 Flu Pandemic Immune 90 Years Later
08/17/2008 3:55:24 PM PDT · Posted by fightinJAG · 58 replies · 969+ views
USNWR | August 17, 2008 | Steven Reinberg
People who lived through the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 50 million worldwide are still producing antibodies to the virus 90 years later, researchers report. "Most people have a notion that elderly people have very weak immunity or they have lost immunity," said lead researcher Dr. James E. Crowe Jr., a professor of pediatrics, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt University. "This study shows that extremely elderly people have retained memory of being infected with the 1918 flu, even 90 years later," Crowe said. This is the first evidence that shows that people developed significant...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
The Genetic Map of Europe
08/17/2008 2:13:47 PM PDT · Posted by forkinsocket · 72 replies · 2,167+ views
The NY Times | August 13, 2008 | NICHOLAS WADE
Biologists have constructed a genetic map of Europe showing the degree of relatedness between its various populations. All the populations are quite similar, but the differences are sufficient that it should be possible to devise a forensic test to tell which country in Europe an individual probably comes from, said Manfred Kayser, a geneticist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands. The map shows, at right, the location in Europe where each of the sampled populations live and, at left, the genetic relationship between these 23 populations. The map was constructed by Dr. Kayser, Dr. Oscar Lao and...
Epigraphy and Language
In search of Western civilisation's lost classics (Herculaneum)
08/19/2008 4:37:00 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 9 replies · 328+ views
The Australian | August 06, 2008 | Luke Slattery
The unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, buried beneath lava by Vesuvius's eruption in AD79, is slowly revealing its long-held secrets -- Stored in a sky-lit reading room on the top floor of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples are the charred remains of the only library to survive from classical antiquity. The ancient world's other great book collections -- at Athens, Alexandria and Rome -- all perished in the chaos of the centuries. But the library of the Villa of the Papyri was conserved, paradoxically, by an act of destruction. Lying to the northwest of ancient Herculaneum, this...
Greece
Unearthed after 2,500 years, the gold earrings that could have been made yesterday[Bulgaria]
08/19/2008 8:06:02 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 27 replies · 1,423+ views
Daily Mail | 17 Aug 2008 | Daily Mail
It's the sort of classic jewellery favoured by modern women except these earrings were worn 2,500 years ago. An archeologist discovered gold earrings, a ring and other funeral gifts dating back to the 5th century B.C. while excavating a Thracian tomb near the village of Kushare, about 280km from Sofia, Bulgaria.Some of the oldest examples of gold jewellery and artifacts have been discovered in Bulgaria and it's Black Sea coast is considered the birthplace of the world's metal production. Thracian bling: The gold earrings discovered during excavations of a tomb in Bulgaria What are Bulgaria's borders today were part of several...
Anatolia
New light on the history of Ephesus
08/17/2008 9:22:18 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 220+ views
Turkish Daily News | Friday, August 8, 2008 | unattributed
The Austrian archeological team that has been carrying out excavations in Ephesus enlarged the scope of their activity in the past months to cover the nearby tumulus Cukuricihoyuk. The team has uncovered archeologically unique relics in the ancient tumulus[.] Traces of ancient settlements were unearthed during excavations of a tumulus located to the southeast of the ancient city of Ephesus. The Austrian archeological team that has been conducting excavations in Ephesus near the city of Izmir for more than a year expanded the scope of their activity in recent months to include the nearby tumulus of Cukuricihoyuk. Led by Dr....
Rome and Italy
Colossal Head of Roman Empress Unearthed
08/17/2008 5:18:19 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 25 replies · 992+ views
Archaeology | Marc Waelkens | August 13, 2008
The head is 0.76 m in height (2.5 feet). It has large, almond-shaped eyes (only the tear ducts are rendered, not the iris or pupils as became usual during the reign of Hadrian) and fleshy thick lips. Its hair is parted in the middle of the front and taken in wavy strains below and around the ears toward the back. The rendering of the hair was done with only sparing sparing use of the drill, a feature characteristic for portraits of empresses in this, the Antonine, dynasty, in sharp contrast with the beards and curly hairs of their husbands. On...
1700-year old Apollon statue unearthed in Turkey
08/17/2008 10:27:34 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 368+ views
World Bulletin | Friday, August 15, 2008 | unattributed
Arch[a]eologists unearthed a 1,700-year old Apollon statue in Soloi Pompeipolis ancient city [founded in 65-66 B.C.] in the southern province of Mersin. Dr. Remzi Yagci, an archeologist from Dokuz Eylul University, told AA that the statue was made up of bronze in the first half of 3rd century, and belonging to Roman period. Yagci said that the statue of sun-god Apollon was 615 grams and 20 cm. He added that the statue would be given to officials of Mersin Museum.
Egypt
Sphinx statues found in Egypt
08/17/2008 9:53:50 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 263+ views
Yahoo! | Friday, August 15, 2008 | AFP
Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed four small statues of the Sphinx, the mythological figure of a lion with a human head, the Higher Council of Antiquities said on Friday. The headless sandstone statues were found on a road linking the ancient temples of Luxor and Karnak in southern Egypt, antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass said in a statement. They were unearthed in an area once occupied by a police station that was demolished as part of a project to rescue artifacts, Hawass said. The statues date from the reign of King Nekhtnebef who founded the 30th Pharaonic dynasty (363-380 BC), Hawass added.
Asia
Bronze Age ancient artifacts unearthed in Myanmar
08/17/2008 10:14:15 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 150+ views
Chinaview | August 16, 2008 | Xinhua
Ancient artifacts on Bronze Age and Iron Age were excavated in Thazi township in the central Mandalay division recently, proofing an evidence of transition from Bronze culture to Iron culture in Myanmar, according to state-run newspaper The New Light of Myanmar on Saturday. The Archaeological, Natural Museum and Libraries Department under the Ministry of Culture unearthed the ancient artifacts near Kanthitgon village in Thazi township, Mandalay division, in June this year, the paper said. Foreign archaeologists once considered that in the early history, Myanmar was transferred from Stone Age into the Iron Age without flourishing of Bronze culture, it said,...
Central Asia
1900-Year-Old Buddha Plaque discovered in Gujarat's Vadnagar
08/17/2008 9:11:28 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 190+ views
Desh Gujarat | August 14th, 2008 | Japan K Pathak
Archaeological department of Gujarat has three different sites in Vadnagar where excavations are going on. So far around 2,000 pieces of archaeological importance including 2000 years old house, numerous clay utensils, silver coins, beads, ornaments, Roman style head sculpture, turbaned face clay plaque etc are unearthed from these sites. Ghaskol darwaja site from where Buddha plaque is found is also known as 'Mystery structure' site in archaeologists circles.
Afghanistan
Archeologists find vast ancient city in Afghanistan
08/17/2008 1:59:17 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 12 replies · 473+ views
The Whig | Thursday, August 7, 2008 | Matthew Pennington, AP
Centuries-old shards of pottery mingle with spent ammunition rounds on a wind-swept mountainside in northern Afghanistan where French archeologists believe they have found a vast ancient city. For years, villagers have dug the baked earth on the heights of Cheshme-Shafa for pottery and coins to sell to antique smugglers.
Chronological History of Afghanistan
11/10/2001 9:08:09 PM PST · Posted by Cultural Jihad · 23 replies · 1,037+ views
Afghanistan Online | 04/2001 | Unknown
Chronological History of Afghanistan Part I (50,000 BCE - 652) 50,000 BCE-20,000 BCE Archaeologists have identified evidence of stone age technology in Aq Kupruk, and Hazar Sum. Plant remains at the foothill of the Hindu Kush mountains indicate, that North Afghanistan was one of the earliest places to domestic plants and animals. 3000 BCE-2000 BCE Bronze might have been invented in ancient Afghanistan around this time. First true urban centers rise in two main sites in Afghanistan--Mundigak, and Deh Morasi Ghundai. Mundigak (near modern day Kandahar)--had an economic base of wheat, barley, sheep and goats. Also, evidence indicates that ...
Ancient Autopsies
5000 years ago women in control of Burnt City [ women of Burnt City redux ]
08/17/2008 10:36:46 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 210+ views
IranMania (yes, that's what it says) | Tuesday, August 12, 2008 | unattributed
Some paleo-anthropologists believe that mothers in the Burnt City had social and financial prominence, director of the team working at the Burnt City in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, southeastern Iran said recently. Addressing the archaeology students at Zabol University, Seyed Mansour Seyed Sajjadi said that 5000 year-old insignias, made of river pebbles and believed to belong only to distinguished inhabitants of the city, were found in the graves of some female citizens... In December 2006, archaeologists discovered the world's earliest artificial eyeball in the city's necropolis, thought to have been worn by a female resident of the Burnt City... Microscopic research has...
Paleontology
The Big Pig Dig is just about dug. (Paleo dig at Badlands Nat Park)
08/18/2008 1:23:09 PM PDT · Posted by ApplegateRanch · 4 replies · 275+ views
SF Chronicle | Aug 17, 2008 | Carson Walker
Story via AP, so follow link to read. The fossil field formally known as the Pig Wallow Site at Badlands National Park will close for good at the end of this summer, 15 years after student paleontologists started unearthing prehistoric remains. "The main research of the site is to better understand how fossils are preserved and how bones accumulate in a particular setting. The main story also describes some of the fossil finds; gives the location and much more.
Biology and Cryptobiology
Horse teeth an intriguing find
08/19/2008 9:53:04 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 29 replies · 505+ views
Brantford Expositor | Monday, August 18, 2008 | Joanne Miltenburg
Jarrod Barker... The Port Dover man has found several teeth in the shallow water along the shore of Lake Erie -- teeth that may be more than 10,000 years old. Barker is an avocational archeologist, someone who takes an interest in historic finds, but doesn't have a licence or formal training. He makes a habit of walking along the beach or in the surf with his head down, which is how he found the teeth... Barker's interest in archaeology was piqued after he dropped out of university and got a job on a ginseng farm... he took his finds to...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Two points from the same time period with strange attributes [ Dalton points ]
08/17/2008 9:36:34 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 305+ views
Corsicana Daily Sun | Sunday, August 17, 2008 | Bill Young
If you will look at the two points illustrated in today's article, the overall outline of each one does not look like the other one. However, both are typical Dalton points. One point has a parallel shaped stem while the other has a concave stem with flaring ears on the base. If the sites of Sloan and Brand in Arkansas and the Big Eddy site in southwestern Missouri had not been successfully excavated, we would not know both types are typical Dalton points dating to the same time period. For instance at the Sloan site in Arkansas, the archeologists recovered...
Peru
Pre-Hispanic tombs and well-preserved textiles found in Machu Picchu, Peru
08/17/2008 9:01:34 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 179+ views
Peru News Agency
Skeletal remains of around fifteen people along with well-preserved textiles and ceramic relics were found in pre-Hispanic tombs located at Machu Picchu Archeological Park, in Cusco, Peru... Astete said these remains were found a week ago by archeologist Francisco Huarcaya in a cave located at the 84th kilometer of the railway leading to Machu Picchu citadel, one of the new seven wonders of the world... [the] textiles display an orange colour shade, but experts have not identified the material used in knitting. Although excavation works have not yet been initiated, Astete mentioned that these remains will be exhumed in September...
Captain Obvious
Olmeca Waterproofing Technology Involved Tar
08/17/2008 12:40:28 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 169+ views
INAH | August 7, 2008 | unattributed
Earliest evidence of tar used as waterproofing material was found in Veracruz and is more than 3,500 years old. Olmeca cultures that inhabited the Gulf of Mexico vicinity used it to protect soil, terracotta or wooden constructions, floor and wall covering, boat sealant, as well as glue. Earliest remains of containers with tar are those recovered in the municipality of Hidalgotitlan, Veracruz, as part of El Manati archaeological project. Containers found by INAH archaeologists may have been used to heat up tar... Contemporary inhabitants of the Gulf coast vicinity still use tar to flatten the entrance of their houses, patios,...
Navigation
Sharks and the Chumash : Santa Barbara's First People Relied Heavily on Our Finned Friends
08/17/2008 3:00:35 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 202+ views
Independent | Thursday, August 14, 2008 | Matt Kettmann
According to the archaeological record, sharks (and rays, their close relative) were the number two source of protein for coastal Chumash after sardines, at least for the past 1,000 or so years... Specifically, the coastal Chumash were eating the easier-to-catch near-shore species such as leopard shark, angel shark, soupfin shark, and swell shark... The Chumash also ate many species of rays, but seemed to prefer the shovelnose guitarfish, which is wide like a ray in its torso but lanky and finned like a shark on the tail... The guitarfish, like other small sharks and rays, lives part of its life...
Longer Perspectives
Could the Western World of today develop anything resembling a new renaissance?
08/22/2008 9:38:37 PM PDT · Posted by WesternCulture · 42 replies · 267+ views 08/22/2008 | WesternCulture
- YES! To begin with, let's try and fully understand what Renaissance Florence actually has accomplished, apart from making tourists feel like this: "I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty ... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations ... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves.' Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear...
Ancient Science
Do subatomic particles have free will?
08/16/2008 6:40:10 PM PDT · Posted by LibWhacker · 40 replies · 955+ views
Science News | 8/15/08 | Julie Rehmeyer
If we have free will, so do subatomic particles, mathematicians claim to prove."If the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect -- what is the source of the free will possessed by living things throughout the earth?" -- Titus Lucretius Carus, Roman philosopher and poet, 99-55 BC. Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Shroud of Turin stirs new controversy
08/17/2008 9:13:02 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 42 replies · 1,415+ views
LA Times | 17 Aug 2008 | DeeDee Correll
A Colorado couple researching the shroud dispute radiocarbon dating of the alleged burial cloth of Jesus, and Oxford has agreed to help them reexamine the findings. The tie that binds John and Rebecca Jackson is about 4 feet by 14 feet, woven of herringbone twill linen. It once led to their romance; years later, it still dominates their thoughts and fills their conversations. It brought Rebecca, an Orthodox Jew, to the Catholic Church; it led John to suspend himself from an 8-foot-tall cross to study how blood might have stained the cloth. Together, the two have committed to memory every...
Shroud of Turin stirs new controversy
08/17/2008 1:36:36 PM PDT · Posted by Swordmaker · 6 replies · 449+ views
Los Angeles Times | 08/17/2008 | By DeeDee Correll, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
A Colorado couple researching the shroud dispute radiocarbon dating of the alleged burial cloth of Jesus, and Oxford has agreed to help them reexamine the findings.COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- The tie that binds John and Rebecca Jackson is about 4 feet by 14 feet, woven of herringbone twill linen. It once led to their romance; years later, it still dominates their thoughts and fills their conversations. It brought Rebecca, an Orthodox Jew, to the Catholic Church; it led John to suspend himself from an 8-foot-tall cross to study how blood might have stained the cloth. Together, the two have committed...
Faith and Philosophy
Questing lost manuscripts [Hungary's king, Matthias Corvinus]
08/17/2008 8:33:49 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 169+ views
The Economist | July 17th, 2008 | unattributed
When Hungary fell to the Turks and the library was lost, its size in the minds of men grew exponentially. Figures of up to 50,000 books were bandied about. In fact there were probably never more than 2,500. Today some 216 of them are known to have survived. How they did, and how they became Hungary's quest for the holy grail, is a gripping tale, helped along by Mr Tanner's penchant for intriguing asides... Translations of Greek and Latin works were often of poor quality, even if they had been prepared for princes. Although Hungarians eventually built a cult of...
Australia and the Pacific
Captain Cook's boomerang to make a handsome return
08/21/2008 3:34:58 PM PDT · Posted by xp38 · 9 replies · 396+ views
The London Times | August 21, 2008 | Lucy Bannerman
Captain Cook's boomerang has returned - and could bring its owner £60,000.
Early America
Naming the General Arnold's lost sailors
08/21/2008 6:00:57 AM PDT · Posted by Pharmboy · 4 replies · 262+ views
Boston Globe | August 21, 2008 | Emily Wilcox
Bob Jannoni and Lou Cook at the Burial Hill monument to the General Arnold casualties. (Emily Wilcox/Globe Correspondent) The brigantine General Arnold was heading south out of Boston, carrying supplies and reinforcements to struggling Revolutionary War troops in the Carolinas, when, on Dec. 25, 1778, a northeaster hit the New England coast. Hurricane-force winds and blinding snow forced Captain James Magee to seek shelter in Plymouth Harbor. It was a mistake. The ship ran aground on White Flat, a treacherous sandbar half a mile from shore and safety. There, as the storm raged on over the long Christmas weekend,...
Civil War
Could Confederate surrender paper be original?
08/17/2008 6:18:10 PM PDT · Posted by indcons · 44 replies · 1,205+ views
Inquirer | Edward Colimore
Ever since the document was examined several weeks ago, it's been a mystery. Initially, it appeared to be a reproduction of the terms and conditions of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender in Appomattox, Va., in 1865. But staff members of the Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum in Center City - who came upon the document while preparing for the museum's relocation - soon noticed pen indentations in the paper, and darker and lighter ink strokes consistent with handwriting. They also found a notation in a 1935 museum inventory identifying the document as an "original." Could this artifact, crudely...
No-so-Ancient Autopsy
The mystery of Flight 4422 (Severed hand helps scientists ID victim)
08/16/2008 8:44:06 AM PDT · Posted by AlaskaErik · 23 replies · 1,316+ views
Anchorage Daily News | August 16, 2008 | By GEORGE BRYSON
It's said that dead men tell no tales. But a severed arm and hand that emerged from a Wrangell Mountain glacier nine years ago just might -- with the help of two pilots, several forensic and genetic scientists and a raft of state and federal officials. Their combined efforts, detailed at an Anchorage press conference Friday, have determined that the human remains belong to one of the passengers on board a DC-4 airliner that slammed into the side of Mount Sanford 60 years ago last spring. More specifically, they belong to Francis Joseph Van Zandt, a 36-year-old merchant marine from...
World War Eleven
A New Take on Earhart Mystery
11/23/2003 5:11:32 PM PST · Posted by Canticle_of_Deborah · 43 replies · 1,437+ views
LA Times | November 23, 2003 | Cecilia Rasmussen
Amelia Earhart vanished nearly 70 years ago, but her fate remains one of the nation's great mysteries. The pioneering aviator disappeared on July 2, 1937, as she was flying an equatorial route around the globe. The official U.S. position is that she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ran out of gas and went down in the Pacific. But conspiracy buffs begin with the premise that she was a spy captured by the Japanese. Maybe she died. And maybe she survived, living out her life anonymously. Which brings us to Rollin C. Reineck and his new book. "Strange indeed for one...
Swastika a Butt Pucker?
Adolf Hitler's Aryan theory rubbished by science
06/13/2008 9:38:51 PM PDT · Posted by bruinbirdman · 60 replies · 1,467+ views
The Telegraph | 6/13/2008 | Harry de Quetteville in Berlin
The theory of Scandinavian racial purity cherished by Hitler and the Nazis has been rubbished by new scientific research. The study found that bodies from 2000-year-old burial sites in eastern Denmark contained "as much genetic variation in their remains as one would expect to find in individuals of the present day". The findings, in an analysis by the University of Copenhagen which has just been published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, explodes the Nazis' much cherished concept of a 'superior' Nordic race. Adolf Hitler cherished the concept of a 'superior' Nordic race Hitler used pseudo-scientific research to back...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Clueless About Columbus
10/08/2007 10:11:47 AM PDT · Posted by William Tell 2 · 47 replies · 976+ views
The Bulletin | 10/05/2007 | Michael P Tremoglie
Columbus Day was originally celebrated Oct. 12, the day Christopher Columbus landed in the New World, but it is currently celebrated the second Monday in October. However, in some quarters, "celebrate" is not the appropriate term. Since about 1992, Columbus Day has been not only a celebration by Italian-Americans, but a day of protests by some - not all - Native Americans and by those who describe themselves as "multiculturalists." It is important to note who these "multiculturalists" are: people who think Western civilization is an evil culture. They want to portray the European/American culture as uniquely causing death and...
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Saw a want ad for a new Chinese Olympic coordinator for the next time they host the summer games!
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #215
Saturday, August 30, 2008
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Scientists find ancient lost settlements in Amazon
08/28/2008 5:54:59 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 22 replies · 438+ views
Reuters | Aug 28, 2008 | Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Maggie Fox
A vast region of the Amazon forest in Brazil was home to a complex of ancient towns in which about 50,000 people lived, according to scientists assisted by satellite images of the region. The scientists, whose findings were published on Thursday in the journal Science, described clusters of towns and smaller villages connected by complex road networks and housing a society doomed by the arrival of Europeans five centuries ago. The existence of the ancient settlements in the Upper Xingu region of the Amazon in north-central Brazil means what many experts had considered virgin tropical...
Peru
Mummy discovered in Peruvian city
08/27/2008 3:41:48 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 9 replies · 301+ views
Telegraph | 27 Aug 2008 | Telegraph
The mummified remains of a woman who died 500 years before the Incas have emerged from the rubble of an ancient tomb beneath the bustling streets of the Peruvian capital. A mummy of the Wari prehispanic culture is seen inside a recently discovered tomb in Lima's Huaca Pucllana ceremonial complex Archaeologists working at the Huaca Pucllana site in the Miraflores neighbourhood of Lima unearthed the mummy on Tuesday along with the remains of another two adults and a child. The tombs are thought to belong to members of the Wari tribal culture who lived and ruled in Peru from 600-800...
Ancient Aliens
1,200-year-old home found [ Virgin Anasazi ]
08/24/2008 11:11:08 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 360+ views
Salt Lake Tribune | August 20, 2008 | Mark Havnes
It is believed that the single-family dwelling belonged to the Virgin Anasazi, who once flourished in the region, said Utah Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Kitchen. The Virgin Anasazi was a prehistoric American Indian culture that lived along the Virgin River. The culture predates other American Indian tribes who inhabited the area. The site, found amid deep red, sandy soil, was apparently home to a single family, Higgins said. No remains were found and it's unknown how many people lived there or for how long. Crews identified a pit house used for shelter, which measured about 13 feet in diameter,...
Australia and the Pacific
Tahitian Vanilla Originated In Maya Forests, Says Botanist
08/24/2008 11:16:07 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 232+ views
ScienceDaily | Aug. 21, 2008 | adapted from U of C Riverside press release
Known by the scientific name Vanilla tahitensis, Tahitian vanilla is found to exist only in cultivation; natural, wild populations of the orchid have never been encountered... "All the evidence points in the same direction," Lubinsky said. "Our DNA analysis corroborates what the historical sources say, namely, that vanilla was a trade item brought to Tahiti by French sailors in the mid-19th century. The French Admiral responsible for introducing vanilla to Tahiti, Alphonse Hamelin, used vanilla cuttings from the Philippines. The historical record tells us that vanilla -- which isn't native to the Philippines -- was previously introduced to the region...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Uncovering the ultimate family tree
08/26/2008 7:44:43 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 440+ views
BBC News | Thursday, August 21, 2008 | Tristana Moore
The Lichtenstein Cave is a short drive away from Manfred's village, deep in the Harz mountains. This is the spot where Manfred's relatives, dating back 3,000 years, were buried. The cave remained hidden from view until 1980, and it was only later, in 1993, that archaeologists discovered 40 Bronze Age skeletons. The 3,000-year-old skeletons were in such good condition that anthropologists at the University of Goettingen managed to extract a sample of DNA. That was then matched to two men living nearby: Uwe Lange, a surveyor, and Manfred Huchthausen, a teacher. The two men have now become local celebrities.
Neandertal / Neanderthal
New evidence debunks 'stupid' Neanderthal myth
08/25/2008 4:27:06 PM PDT · Posted by Soliton · 30 replies · 444+ views
Eureka Alert | 25-Aug-2008 | Sarah Hoyle
Research by UK and American scientists has struck another blow to the theory that Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) became extinct because they were less intelligent than our ancestors (Homo sapiens). The research team has shown that early stone tool technologies developed by our species, Homo sapiens, were no more efficient than those used by Neanderthals. Published today (26 August) in the Journal of Human Evolution, their discovery debunks a textbook belief held by archaeologists for more than 60 years. The team from the University of Exeter, Southern Methodist University, Texas State University, and the Think Computer Corporation, spent three years flintknapping...
'Complexity' of Neanderthal tools
08/27/2008 6:20:18 AM PDT · Posted by Pontiac · 19 replies · 296+ views
BBC | Tuesday, 26 August 2008 | Staff
Early stone tools developed by our species Homo sapiens were no more sophisticated than those used by our extinct relatives the Neanderthals. That is the conclusion of researchers who recreated and compared tools used by these ancient human groups. The findings cast doubt on suggestions that more advanced stone technologies gave modern humans a competitive edge over the Neanderthals.
Diet, Health, and Cuisine
Giant Clams Fed Early Humans (Better to be a late human)
08/28/2008 1:18:38 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 36 replies · 608+ views
Live Science | Aug 28, 2008 | Charles Q. Choi
Giant clams two feet long might have helped feed prehistoric humans as they first migrated out of Africa, new research reveals. Fossil evidence that the researchers uncovered suggests the stocks of these giant clams began crashing some 125,000 years ago, during the last interval between glacial periods. During that time, scientists think modern humans first emerged out of Africa, Richter said.
Biology and Cryptobiology
Viruses are hidden drivers of ocean's nutrient cycle (CO2)
08/27/2008 2:36:40 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 12 replies · 216+ views
AFP | Aug 27, 2008 | Unknown
Scientists on Wednesday said they had discovered deep-sea viruses to be an unexpectedly potent driver of the so-called carbon cycle that sustains oceanic life and helps dampen global warming. Under the carbon cycle, microscopic algae at the sea surface suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Many of these microscopic creatures, called prokaryotes, become infected by naturally-occurring marine viruses. When they die, their carbon-rich remains gently sink to lower depths, where they are then cannibalistically gobbled up by other bacteria. These prokaryotes in turn become a meal for a larger life form and so on, up the...
Climate
New Report Calls into Question "Man-Made' Climate Change
08/26/2008 10:11:46 AM PDT · Posted by sionnsar · 40 replies · 1,104+ views
CNS News | 8/26/2008 | Kevin Mooney
New scientific evidence suggests there is a stronger link between solar activity and climate trends on Earth than there is with greenhouse gases, Fred Singer, an atmospheric and space physicist, told CNSNews.com. The new data call into question whether scientific evidence shows that global warming is a man-made phenomenon and suggests that natural forces, as opposed to human activity, may drive global climate change. Singer is one of many scientists who say recent scientific observations have determined that "solar variability" -- or fluctuations in the sun's radiation -- directly affects climate change on Earth. "In...
Neolithic Warm Period
Alpine melt reveals ancient life [ Schnidejoch glacier ]
08/26/2008 5:51:59 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 12 replies · 497+ views
BBC News | Sunday, August 24, 2008 | Imogen Foulkes
Melting alpine glaciers are revealing fascinating clues to Neolithic life in the high mountains... Everyone knows the story of Oetzi the Ice Man, found in an Austrian glacier in 1991. Oetzi was discovered at an altitude of over 3,000m. He lived in about 3,300 BC, leading to speculation that the Alps may have had more human habitation than previously suspected. Now, more dramatic findings from the 2,756m Schnidejoch glacier in Switzerland have confirmed the theory. It all started at the end of the long hot summer of 2003, when a Swiss couple, hiking across a melting Schnidejoch, came across a...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Ritual horns do not predate Jewish expulsion [ postmedieval Shofar in Britain ]
08/26/2008 5:18:38 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 4 replies · 133+ views
Times | August 25, 2008 | Norman Hammond
Radiocarbon dating of two Jewish ritual instruments found in London a century and a half ago has dashed hopes that they date from the period before the Jewish community was expelled in 1290. They are postmedieval and one of them may never have been finished or used in the synagogue. The shofar is a ritual instrument often made from a ram's horn, Tamara Chase and her colleagues explain in London Archaeologist... The first occurrence is in the book of Exodus, and they were also blown at Jericho on Joshua's orders, whereupon the walls fell down. Shofarot are used in the...
Dead Sea Scrolls
Israel to Put Dead Sea Scrolls on the Internet
08/26/2008 9:56:35 AM PDT · Posted by Alouette · 38 replies · 853+ views
NY Times | Aug. 26, 2008 | Ethan Bonner
In a crowded laboratory painted in gray and cooled like a cave, half a dozen specialists embarked this week on an historic undertaking: digitally photographing every one of the thousands of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of making the entire file -- among the most sought-after and examined documents on earth -- available to all on the Internet. Equipped with highly powerful cameras with resolution and clarity many times greater than those of conventional models, and with lights that emit neither heat nor ultraviolet rays, the scientists and technicians are uncovering previously illegible sections...
Faith and Philosophy
Does the "Jesus Stone" Hurt Christianity
08/07/2008 8:57:37 AM PDT · Posted by francke · 95 replies · 1,393+ views
Lets Ask God | 7-19-2008 | Eric Francke
The New York Times ran a feature story on July 6th, 2008 about the discovery of a stone tablet found near the Dead Sea in Jordan that apparently contains some reference to a "Prince of Princes" (ie. The Jewish Messiah) who would be slain and rise from the dead after three days. (Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection", July 6, 2008) The essence of the article and the opinion of the scholars quoted is that somehow, the credibility of Christianity is at stake, on the grounds that this pre-Christian inscription, also known in scholastic circles as "Gabriel's Revelation", robs...
Flood, Here Comes the Flood
Noah's Ark - Fact Not Fiction
08/22/2008 9:59:31 AM PDT · Posted by Fennie · 81 replies · 4,286+ views
http://rsanoa.home.comcast.net/~rsanoa/ark_summary.htm | Ray Anderson
In 1943 during WW2, an army Sgt., Ed Davis, was working in Iran near the Turkish border, in charge of locals hired by our army to build a road through Iran to the Soviet border, which would carry supplies to the Soviets instead of flying them in. In short, Ed did a tremendous favor for a little Kurdish village near Ararat. His workers were mostly Kurds and the chief of the village came to Ed and asked if he would like to see Noah's Ark. He said the summer on the mountain had been hottest in many years and the...
Astrology
Messianic Judiasm Pastor using NASA on Blood moon eclipses: 2nd Coming in 2015
06/13/2008 8:18:28 AM PDT · Posted by Raineygoodyear · 87 replies · 1,072+ views
http://mygomediaarsenal.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/blood-moon-eclipses-2nd-coming-in-2015/ | April 30th, 2008 | Joe Kovacs
And can studying NASA's website provide evidence for such a scenario? A minister who promotes the Old Testament roots of Christianity suggests a rare string of lunar and solar eclipses said to fall on God's annual holy days seven years from now could herald what's come to be known as the "Second Coming" of Jesus. "God wants us to look at the biblical calendar," says Mark Biltz, pastor of El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake, Wash. "The reason we need to be watching is [because] He will signal His appearance. But we have to know what to be watching as...
Moderate Islam
Mohammed, The Mad Poet Quoted....
10/17/2003 11:58:54 PM PDT · Posted by PsyOp · 361 replies · 14,125+ views The Koran | 10-17-03 | PsyOp
Not too long ago I was listening to the radio, Bill O'Reilly on KFMB, as I recall. During his show, Bill was talking about some passages from the Koran that had appeared in print that seemed to contradict much of the CAIR and other Islamic apologist propaganda. During the program a man, a Muslim, called in to the show to accuse O'Reilly of being unfair and taking things out of context, etc. He then said that you need to have an Imam explain these passages to you so you can understand their meaning. This of...
Longer Perspectives
Who was in Israel first, the Jews or Palestinians
12/05/2001 7:50:45 PM PST · Posted by 100American · 208 replies · 7,163+ views
Here are 20 conveniently overlooked facts that give some perspective to the current Middle East situation. These were compiled by a Christian university professor..... Takes just 1.5 minutes to read!!! 1. Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam. 2. Arab refugees began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel. 3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E, the Jews had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past ...
The History and Meaning Of "Palestine" and "Palestinians"
04/05/2002 8:28:06 AM PST · Posted by samtheman · 43 replies · 11,828+ views
Eretz Yisroel.org | 2001 | Joseph E. Katz
"There is no such thing as a Palestinian Arab nation . . . Palestine is a name the Romans gave to Eretz Yisrael with the express purpose of infuriating the Jews . . . . Why should we use the spiteful name meant to humiliate us? "The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation's supposed ancient name, though they couldn't even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin a fictional entity." -- Golda Meir quoted by Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, 25 November...
Epigraphy and Language
The writing on the rocks
01/11/2003 4:39:54 PM PST · Posted by vannrox · 8 replies · 346+ views
Al-Ahram Weekly Online | 9 - 15 January 2003 | Jane Taylor
The ancient Nabataeans are chiefly remembered for their breathtaking rock-carved capital of Petra in southern Jordan. Jane Taylor traces their fascinating story, from absurd theory to identification and decipherment of their inscriptions in Sinai In their heyday some 2000 years ago the Nabataeans were known throughout the Middle East and in parts of Europe -- in other words, wherever they travelled to trade. At Alexandria and Rhodes, at Puteoli near Naples and other places along the sea routes to Greece and Italy, Nabataean merchants established trading settlements and built temples in which to worship...
Petra
Byzantine glass at Petra [ 2nd story, "Ritual horns do not predate Jewish expulsion" ]
08/26/2008 7:18:05 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 226+ views
Times Online | August 25, 2008 | Norman Hammond
Petra, "the rose-red city half as old as time" in southern Jordan, is best known for its spectacular Nabataean rock-cut temples and the narrow entry through the gorge of the Siq, featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. But the site has a much longer history, with an early neolithic village on the hill of Beidha near by, and it was a regional centre in the Roman and early Byzantine eras. During this latter period, a number of churches were built: one known as the Petra Church was probably built in the late 5th century and destroyed by fire...
Anatolia
Huge statue of Roman ruler found [ Marcus Aurelius , Sagalossos ]
08/26/2008 5:04:30 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 18 replies · 618+ views
BBC News | Monday, August 25, 2008 | Paul Rincon
Parts of a giant, exquisitely carved marble sculpture depicting the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius have been found at an archaeological site in Turkey... at the ancient city of Sagalassos. So far the statue's head, right arm and lower legs have been discovered... The partial statue was unearthed in the largest room at Sagalassos's Roman baths. The cross-shaped room measures 1,250 sq m (13,500 sq ft), is covered in mosaics and was probably used as a frigidarium -- a room with a cold pool which Romans could sink into after a hot bath. It was partially destroyed in an earthquake between...
Rome and Italy
Secrets of the Dead; Case File: The Great Fire of Rome
10/01/2005 4:17:14 PM PDT · Posted by Captain Rhino · 45 replies · 1,592+ views
Secrets of the Dead Series webpage on PBS website | © 2002 Educational Broadcasting Corporation | John Uhl; Thirteen/WNET New York.
Certainly, it's hard to know whether to trust the allegations in the writings of Tacitus. Yet, what about the explanation offered by Nero, that the Christians were to blame? At least one scholar believes Nero was on the mark. Professor Gerhard Baudy of the University of Konstanz in Germany has spent fifteen years studying ancient apocalyptic prophecies. His studies have shown that in the poor districts of Rome, Christians were circulating vengeful texts predicting that a raging inferno would to reduce the city to ashes. "In all of these oracles, the destruction of Rome by fire is prophesied," Baudy explains....
Arabia
Archaeological site discovered in Taiz [ "Sheba kings and Thu Ridan"]
08/26/2008 7:04:30 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 112+ views
Yemen News Agency | August 21, 2008 | unattributed (FR?)
Authorities in Taiz province have discovered a new archaeological site on the Yamanh mountain in the district of Janadya, the state-run 26sep.net said on Thursday. Manuscripts dating back to the era of Sheba Kings and Thu Ridan as well as an eagle-shaped statue under which a grape cluster graved were found at the site. Head of the archaeological office in the province Alezi Muhammad Saleh said the site, covered by many trees, was discovered previously by citizens who did not reveal that for authorities, adding citizens used stones of the site to build houses. Saleh said authorities are currently collecting...
Octopi My Time
Outlook for Oceans Bleak as Sea 'Deserts' Grow
03/22/2008 9:59:57 AM PDT · Posted by ricks_place · 29 replies · 846+ views
NPR | 3/6/08 | All Things Considered
The region of the ocean known as "the desert of the sea" has expanded dramatically over the past decade, according to a new study. Scientists looking at the color of the ocean from space have found that vast areas that were once green with plankton have been turning blue, as marine life becomes scarcer. If it's linked to global warming, as they suspect, this could be another blow for the world's fisheries. Just as plants make up the base of the food web on land, tiny green phytoplankton in the ocean are a critical foodstuff for life in the oceans....
Pages
(Book Review): 10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others that Didn't Help
08/24/2008 7:16:12 AM PDT · Posted by Publius804 · 26 replies · 1,027+ views
InsideCatholic.com | 8/23/08 | Logan Gage
A Good Book About Bad Books by Logan Gage 8/23/08 10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others that Didn't Help Benjamin Wiker, Regnery, 260 pages, $27.95 If ever there were a book designed specifically for the enjoyment of InsideCatholic readers, surely it is Benjamin Wiker's new 10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others that Didn't Help. Wiker should be renowned (if he is not already) for Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists -- a book that at once exposes both the ancient philosophical antecedents and modern cultural consequences of Darwinism. In the present book,...
Oh So Mysteriouso
[CATHOLIC/ KNIGHTS TEMPLAR CAUCUS] Knights Templar heirs in legal battle with the Pope
08/04/2008 1:20:36 PM PDT · Posted by markomalley · 22 replies · 631+ views
The Telegraph | 8/3/2008 | Fiona Govan
The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ, whose members claim to be descended from the legendary crusaders, have filed a lawsuit against Benedict XVI calling for him to recognise the seizure of assets worth 100 billion euros (£79 billion). They claim that when the order was dissolved by his predecessor Pope Clement V in 1307, more than 9,000 properties as well as countless pastures, mills and other commercial ventures belonging to the knights were appropriated by the church. But their motive is not to reclaim damages only to restore the "good name" of the Knights Templar....
Knights Templar to Vatican: Give us back our assets
08/04/2008 5:23:47 PM PDT · Posted by Clint Williams · 34 replies · 1,392+ views
The Register | 8/4/8 | Joe Fay
The Knights Templar are demanding that the Vatican give them back their good name and, possibly, billions in assets into the bargain, 700 years after the order was brutally suppressed by a joint venture between the Pope and the King of France. If the Holy See doesn't comply, the warrior knights, renowned for liberating the Holy Land, will deploy that most fearsome of weapons: a laborious court case through the creaking Spanish legal system. The Daily Telegraph reports that The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ has launched a court case in Spain, demanding Pope Benedict...
Ancient Europe
Venus of Willendorf still hot at ripe old age of 25,000 [ fetishist writes headline ]
08/26/2008 5:31:28 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 420+ views
AFP | Wednesday, August 20, 2008 | unattributed
The Venus of Willendorf, a small ochre-coloured figurine from the Paleolithic period, takes her name from the village in northern Austria where she was excavated on August 7, 1908 by three Austrian paleontologists... On the 100th anniversary of her excavation, this Venus is being honoured with a special exhibition at the museum, alongside other artefacts from the same period. Carved from oolitic limestone, she is a round woman, standing with her arms resting on her breasts and belly, her bowed head hiding her face but showing off elaborate hair... The first and only statuette of her kind before the...
Scotland Yet
Archaeologists may reveal millennium stone secrets [ Picts , St Orland's stone ]
08/26/2008 5:11:39 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 8 replies · 301+ views
A millennium-old mystery may soon be at a close after archaeologists began investigating a unique Pictish stone near Glamis... It is thought the stone once marked the western edge of Forfar Loch. If, as is thought, the stone has remained unmoved at the same site for more than 1100 years then it could provide a unique window into the past. Most stones of its type have been moved from their original sites -- destroying their link to the land and hindering the work of those trying to decipher what messages they were intended to convey. St Orland's stone also bares...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Towton, the bloodbath that changed the course of English history. (Well worth reading)
08/23/2008 7:45:39 PM PDT · Posted by PotatoHeadMick · 57 replies · 1,195+ views
The Sunday Times (UK) | August 24, 2008 | AA Gill
Get onto the B1217 -- the Ferrybridge-to-Tadcaster road -- just after the M1 joins the A1M, and you've crossed that unmapped line where the north stops being grim and begins to be bracing. Go through Saxton, past the Crooked Billet pub, and on your left you'll see rising farmland, green corn and copses -- an old landscape, untroubled by poets or painters or the hyperbole of tourist boards, but handsome, still and hushed. The road is straight; it knows where it's going, hurrying along, averting its gaze. Through the tonsured hedge you might just notice a big old holly tree...
Underwater Archaeology
Great Britain: Thames reveals forgotten wrecks ( 7 shipwrecks discovered, up to 350 years old)
08/26/2008 10:12:31 PM PDT · Posted by Stoat · 21 replies · 503+ views
The Evening Standard (U.K.) | August 26, 2008 | Mark Blunden
The largest-ever post-war salvage operation on the Thames has discovered seven shipwrecks up to 350 years old. They include a warship that was blown up in 1665, a yacht converted to a Second World War gunboat, and a mystery wreck in which divers found a personalised gin bottle. The vessels, in the Thames Estuary, are just some of about 1,100 ships which went down in the whole of the river. The salvage by Wessex Archaeology and the Port of London Authority, which regulates the river, was both historical and practical. Jagged metal...
Shakespeare
Edward Achorn: Was the immortal Bard a Catholic?
08/07/2008 7:37:07 PM PDT · Posted by annalex · 33 replies · 557+ views
The Providence Journal | Tuesday, August 5, 2008 | EDWARD ACHORN
Edward Achorn: Was the immortal Bard a Catholic? 01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 EDWARD ACHORN FOR CENTURIES, people have been trying to form a coherent picture of the greatest writer in the English language. We have scattered pieces that do not always fit together, leading crackpots to seize on all kinds of theories about William Shakespeare ¬ -- most notably, the preposterous idea that someone else wrote the plays and poems under his name. But a new and stunning line of inquiry has gathered momentum in recent years. Academics have increasingly noted links between the Bard and the...
Shakespeare, The Secret Rebel
09/17/2005 7:29:46 PM PDT · Posted by siunevada · 31 replies · 955+ views
Catholic Educator's Resource | August 1, 2005 | Robert Mason Lee
Does all of Shakespeare's work contain hidden, dissident, pro-Catholic content? Living in Moscow toward the end of the Cold War with her husband, Raymond, a British diplomat, Clare Asquith went one evening to the theatre. It was the winter of 1983, when political censors and dissident writers still played a game of cat and mouse. They were the only westerners in attendance. The theatre was shabby and cold, but the audience was tightly packed, under the watchful eyes of KGB agents at the door and the Asquiths' two "minders." At first, the adaptation of Chekhov short stories struck Clare as...
The Catholic Bard
09/25/2005 7:21:40 PM PDT · Posted by siunevada · 11 replies · 389+ views
Catholic Educator's Resource | June 17, 2005 | Clare Asquith
Ever since a seventeenth-century Protestant clergyman, Richard Davies, remarked that "William Shakespeare dyed a papist," Shakespeare's religion has been a thorny subject for scholars and biographers. Protestant England would much rather he had not died a papist. Three hundred years after Shakespeare's death, English Catholics were still viewed as a fifth column liable to join forces with the country's enemies at a moment's notice. Even today, England's entry into the European Union is portrayed in some quarters as a Vatican plot to reclaim England for Catholic Christendom. Until recently the English nation was viewed as incontrovertibly Protestant, and, of course,...
The Shakespeare Code
05/13/2006 9:45:58 PM PDT · Posted by marshmallow · 18 replies · 357+ views
National Catholic Register | 5-14-06 | Fr. Andreas Kramarz LC
"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes / I all alone beweep my outcast stateÖ"What does William Shakespeare's immortal Sonnet 29 really mean? Was the melancholy Bard transmitting a coded message? The hypothesis that the playwright concealed his secret Catholic identity during the years of Elizabethan persecution has long been the subject of academic daydreams. But startling revelations in a book that is so far available only in German may take the hypothesis out of the realm of dreams. In a previous issue of the Register (Feb. 5-11), Jennifer Roche wrote about recent textual discoveries. Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel's book The...
Man arrested over Shakespeare theft (Book valued at over $30m stolen ten years ago)
07/11/2008 10:08:37 AM PDT · Posted by Stoat · 11 replies · 486+ views
The Sunderland Echo (U.K.) | July 11, 2008
The Shakespeare book is worth an estimated £15m plus -- A man has been arrested on suspicion of the theft of a priceless book from Durham University ten years ago. The first folio edition of a collection of the works of William Shakespeare, published in 1623, was one of a number of manuscripts and books stolen from the University library on Palace Green in December 1998. It is believed to be worth at least £15 million. Durham Police were alerted by the British Embassy in the United States, two weeks ago...
Early America
Coded diary of Methodist Church co-founder Charles Wesley is cracked after 270 years
08/26/2008 8:59:36 AM PDT · Posted by yankeedame · 30 replies · 1,588+ views
DailyMail.uk | 26 August 2008 | Daily Mail Reporter
Coded diary of Methodist Church co-founder Charles Wesley is cracked after 270 years Charles Wesley, Christmas carols composer DM 3.1.2002 P51 A 270-year-old diary, written in code, has been cracked for the first time to reveal a secret history of the Methodist church, it emerged today. After nine years of painstaking work, more than 1,000 handwritten pages from 1736 - 1756 have been deciphered from the personal diary of co-founder Charles Wesley. He helped establish Methodism with his brother John and also wrote many well-known Christmas carols, including Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. The long passages of "hidden' material in...
Civil War
Widow of Confederate Soldier Dies at 93
08/20/2008 11:27:53 AM PDT · Posted by PurpleMan · 88 replies · 2,249+ views
AOL News | 20 Aug 08 | PEGGY HARRIS
Maudie White Hopkins, who grew up during the Depression in the hardscrabble Ozarks and married a Confederate army veteran 67 years her senior, has died. She was 93.
World War Eleven
Hikers find possible WWII skeleton hanging in New Guinea canopy
08/27/2008 6:37:07 PM PDT · Posted by RDTF · 33 replies · 1,547+ views
Breitbart | April 27, 2008 | AP
A skeleton thought to belong to a World War II pilot has been discovered dangling in the jungle canopy in Papua New Guinea, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported Thursday. Hikers on the Kokoda Track discovered the skeleton halfway along the 96-kilometer trail that was the scene of intense fighting between Japanese and Australian soldiers from 1942 to 1943. -snip-
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
New 7 Wonders of the World Named (Portuguese audience jeers Statue of Liberty announcement)
07/07/2007 8:17:35 PM PDT · Posted by Stoat · 47 replies · 7,130+ views
Fox News | July 7, 2007
LISBON, Portugal -- Monuments in three Latin American countries were named among the new seven wonders of the world Saturday. Brazil's , Peru's , and Mexico's pyramid were chosen alongside the Great Wall of China, Jordan's Petra, the Colosseum in Rome and India's Taj Mahal. The sites were selected according to a tally of around 100 million votes cast by people around the world over the Internet and by cell phone text messages, the nonprofit organization that conducted the poll said.(snip)Many in the 50,000-member audience at a soccer stadium jeered when the United States' Statue of Liberty was announced...
New Seven Wonders of the World named
07/08/2007 7:51:02 AM PDT · Posted by kinoxi · 30 replies · 1,221+ views
swissinfo | 08/07/07 | swissinfo with agencies
The original seven wonders of the ancient world were selected by the Greek philosopher Philon more than 2,000 years ago. The Pyramids of Giza are the only one of the original wonders still standing. They have been given honorary status in addition to the new seven wonders, after Egyptian officials complained that it was undignified that the pyramids had to compete in an online poll.
end of digest #215 20080830
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Welcome to the 215th issue. Sick as a dog this week. Well, not a very sick dog. But sick. And I still need a new job. 42 topics, with a bunch of them oldies, and I'm about twelve new topics behind because I've been snoozing and coughing, plus I've gone into overdrive on this week's political topics, such as the selection of Governor Palin for the Pubbie VP candidacy. |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #216
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Ancient Europe
Melting Swiss glacier yields Neolithic trove, climate secrets
09/05/2008 3:00:50 PM PDTT · Posted by Islander7 · 33 replies · 960+ views
Yahoo - AFP | Sept 5, 2008 | by Hui Min Neo Hui Min Neo
Some 5,000 years ago, on a day with weather much like today's, a prehistoric person tread high up in what is now the Swiss Alps, wearing goat leather pants, leather shoes and armed with a bow and arrows. The unremarkable journey through the Schnidejoch pass, a lofty trail 2,756 metres (9,000 feet) above sea level, has been a boon to scientists. But it would never have emerged if climate change were not melting the nearby glacier. So far, 300 objects dating as far back as the Neolithic or New Stone Age -- about 4,000 BC in Europe...
Ancient Autopsies
Putting a face to the past
09/05/2008 9:01:42 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 265+ views
BBC News | Monday, September 1, 2008 | Monise Durrani
What do Johann Sebastian Bach, Saint Nicholas, and the firstborn son of Pharaoh Rameses II all have in common? The answer? All their faces have been reconstructed using cutting-edge computer technology.
No Pastys Jokes
Archeological dig unearths old woman in Poland
09/04/2008 10:44:37 PM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 14 replies · 227+ views
Polskie Radio | Tuesday, September 2, 2008 | unattributed (mmj?)
The remains of a 30-year-old woman were found today at an archeological excavation in Pinczow, in the Swietokrzyska region, southern Poland. The body, identified as female, dates back 6,500 years. The director of the dig, Przemyslaw Duleba, from the Institute of Archeology at the University of Warsaw, stated that this is the oldest discovery every to be found in this region. "The skeleton of the young woman is perfectly preserved and laid on her left side in an embryonic position." Duleba says that this skeleton provides evidence as to the funereal rites of the people that lived on this land...
Climate
Hot And Cold: Circulation Of Atmosphere Affected Mediterranean Climate During Last Ice Age
08/30/2008 1:52:22 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 20 replies · 241+ views
ScienceDaily | August 27, 2008 | National Oceanography Centre, Southampton
A new study published in the scientific journal Science reveals the circulation of the atmosphere over the Mediterranean during the last ice age, 23,000 to 19,000 years ago, and how this affected the local climate... and is co-authored by Professor Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton School of Ocean and Earth Science... The first surprise is that the Mediterranean climate at that time was similar to that seen during cold spells in the region today and -- particularly -- during the Little Ice Age (15th to 19th century), but more extreme. The new evidence suggests that the Mediterranean climate...
Astronomy and Catastrophism
Sun Makes History: First Spotless Month in a Century [possible mini-ice age]
09/03/2008 2:40:38 PM PDTT · Posted by DBCJR · 30 replies · 461+ views
Daily Tech | September 1, 2008 8:11 AM | Michael Asher
The record-setting surface of the sun. A full month has gone by without a single spot (Source: Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)) The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted. The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity -- which determines the number of sunspots -- is an influencing factor for climate on earth. According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was...
Asia
Tomb made from porcelain bowls unearthed
09/04/2008 11:17:02 PM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 199+ views
China.org | September 3, 2008 | Keen Zhang
Yesterday the archaeology department of China's Chongqing Municipality announced a remarkable discovery: a Qing Dynasty tomb of an almost unique style, made out of more than 2,000 qing hua ci (blue and white porcelain) bowls. The Chongqing Economic Times quoted archaeologists as saying that this kind of tomb is very rare and had probably been constructed by migrants to the area... The tomb was discovered on the morning of August 24... in the Yuzhong district of Chongqing... The archaeology department sent a team to investigate. They discovered a tomb constructed from porcelain bowls. Lying just 60 centimeters under the road...
Hobbits
Bone Parts Don't Add Up To Conclusion Of Hobbit-like Palauan Dwarfs
08/30/2008 1:46:13 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 1 replies · 143+ views
Science News | August 27, 2008 | University of Oregon press release
Scientists from the University of Oregon, North Carolina State University and the Australian National University have refuted the conclusion of Lee R. Berger and colleagues that Hobbit-like little people once lived there... They argue that Berger, an expert on much earlier humans dating to the Pleistocene, failed to review existing documentation, much of it published by Nelson or Fitzpatrick. Much of their rebuttal comes from remains unearthed by Fitzpatrick and Nelson at Chelechol ra Orrak, only miles from Berger's two sites. Among these whole remains are bone pieces that match -- some are even smaller that fragments found by Berger...
Keeping It In Your Genes
Marriage problems? Husband's genes may be to blame
09/02/2008 6:33:28 PM PDTT · Posted by Pharmboy · 31 replies · 688+ views
Reuters via Yahoo! | Tue Sep 2, 2008 | Maggie Fox
The same gene that affects a rodent's ability to mate for life may affect human marriages, Swedish and U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. Men carrying a common variation of gene involved in brain signaling were more likely to be in unhappy marriages than men with the other version, the team at the Karolinska Institute found. Although they are not sure what the genetic changes do to a man's behavior, some other research suggests it has to do with the ability to communicate and empathize, the team reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We never looked at...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
In Our Genes, Old Fossils Take On New Roles
09/02/2008 3:41:39 PM PDTT · Posted by decimon · 14 replies · 244+ views
Washington Post | Sep 1, 2008 | David Brown
"The past is never dead. It's not even past." -- William Faulkner · · Over the past 15 years, scientists have been comparing the inherited genetic material -- the genomes -- of dozens of organisms, acquiring a life history of life itself. What they're finding would impress even novelist William Faulkner, the great chronicler of how the past never really goes away. It turns out that about 8 percent of the human genome is made up of viruses that once attacked our ancestors. The viruses lost. What remains are the molecular equivalents of mounted trophies, insects preserved in genomic amber, DNA fossils.
Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
Did the Romans destroy Europe's HIV resistance?
09/04/2008 10:56:55 PM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 27 replies · 474+ views
New Scientist | Wednesday, September 3, 2008 | Matt Walker
The gene in question codes for a protein receptor called CCR5. The HIV virus binds to this receptor before entering cells. One gene variant, called CCR5-Delta32, has 32 DNA base pairs missing and produces a receptor that HIV cannot bind to, which prevents the virus from entering the cells. People with this variant have some resistance to HIV infection and also take longer to develop AIDS. Generally, only people in Europe and western Asia carry the variant, and it becomes less and less frequent as you move south. For example, more than 15 per cent of people in some areas...
Metallurgy
Blowing back to a red-hot history [ Sri Lanka iron smelting ]
09/01/2008 10:03:08 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 135+ views
Sri Lanka Sunday Times | Sunday, August 31, 2008 | Renuka Sadanandan
Centuries ago, Arab writer Al Kindi referred to Sarandibi steel. Now comes the evidence that there had been in ancient Sri Lanka a large scale and highly successful metal producing industry which was based on a smelting and furnace design driven by the wind that only died out after the Chola invasion. In the quiet of a museum room in Koggala, visitors are transported to a wind-swept hillside in Sabaragamuwa, circa 9th century AD, where flourished this ancient iron smelting industry... discovery of the bigger wind-powered furnaces, that produced iron on an industrial scale, was, in fact, an earlier chapter...
Egypt
Ancient royal burial chamber found [ Pharaoh Senusret II ]
09/02/2008 10:33:24 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 328+ views
The Australian | Monday, September 1, 2008 | correspondents in Cairo
Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered the burial chamber and coffin of King Senusret II who was believed to have ruled Egypt from 1897 BC to 1878 BC, it was reported today. The burial chamber was found in Al Lahun, the town built by Senusret which became Egypt's political capital during the 12th and 13th dynasties, and where the king built his pyramid. "The coffin is made of pink granite and the burial chamber is lined with red granite," said Ahmed Abdel Aal, head of antiquities in Fayum, south of Cairo. The team also discovered "corridors and passageways inside the pyramid built...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Honey of a discovery [ 3000 year old beehive, ancient Israel ]
08/31/2008 6:12:12 PM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 22 replies · 434+ views
Science News | Friday, August 29th, 2008 | Bruce Bower
The Bible refers to ancient Israel as the "land flowing with milk and honey," so it's fitting that one of its towns milked honey for all it was worth. Scientists have unearthed the remains of a large-scale beekeeping operation at a nearly 3,000-year-old Israeli site, which dates to the time of biblical accounts of King David and King Solomon. Excavations in northern Israel at a huge earthen mound called Tel Rehov revealed the Iron Age settlement. From 2005 to 2007, workers at Tel Rehov uncovered the oldest known remnants of human-made beehives, excavation director Amihai Mazar and colleagues report in...
Neolithic
Prehistoric Funerary Precinct Excavated In Northern Israel... [6,750-8,500 BC]
09/02/2008 9:56:44 PM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 189+ views
ScienceDaily | Tuesday, September 2, 2008 | Hebrew University of Jerusalem / AlphaGalileo
Hebrew University excavations in the north of Israel have revealed a prehistoric funerary precinct dating back to 6,750-8,500 BCE. The precinct, a massive walled enclosure measuring 10 meters by at least 20 meters, was discovered at excavations being undertaken at Kfar HaHoresh. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site in the Nazareth hills of the lower Galilee is interpreted as having been a regional funerary and cult center for nearby lowland villages. Prof. Nigel Goring-Morris of the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology, who is leading the excavations, says that the precinct is just one of the many finds discovered at the site...
Cyprus
Plateau could be ancient gateway to Pyla
09/05/2008 9:31:10 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 4 replies · 160+ views
Cyprus Weekly | Tuesday, September 2, 2008 | unattributed
For over a millennium, a fortified settlement with a shrine stood on a plateau near the eastern Larnaca coast ringed with a defensive wall, foreign and Cypriot archaeologists believe. Earlier theories about the significance of the site were confirmed during this year's fieldwork at the Pyla-Koutsopetria locality by the identification of a section of the wall, datable to the Late Bronze Age... The settlement, located on a hill known as Kokkinokremmos/ Vigla -- Red Cliff/Lookout Post, is estimated to have been inhabited from the Cypro-Archaic period in the 13th-14th century B.C. to Hellenistic and Roman times. The site is situated...
Faith and Philosophy
Symbolic past of early Aegeans revealed at Dhaskalio Kavos site
09/04/2008 10:49:55 PM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 83+ views
Times of London | Tuesday, September 2, 2008 | Normand Hammond
A rocky islet and a nearby hillside have yielded evidence of one of Greece's oldest and most enigmatic ritual sites. Imported stones and fragmented marble statuettes show that Dhaskalio and Kavos were "a symbolic central place for the Early Bronze Age" in the Aegean, according to Professor Colin Renfrew. Kavos is a stony, scrub-covered slope on the Cycladic island of Keros. Forty-five years ago Professor Renfrew, then a PhD student at Cambridge, found extensive looting there, with fragments of marble bowls and the famous Cycladic folded-arm figurines scattered across the surface. The date of the Dhaskalio Kavos site, based on...
Greece
Ancient Treasure Unearthed in Greece
08/30/2008 1:28:20 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 4 replies · 326+ views
AOL News | August 29, 2008 | Nicholas Paphitis (AP)
A priceless gold wreath has been unearthed in an ancient city in northern Greece, buried with human bones in a large copper vase that workers initially took for a land mine.
Constantinople
Mystery under famous mosque [ Hagia Sophia basilica, in the former Constantinople ]
09/04/2008 10:38:10 PM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 12 replies · 323+ views
Turkish Daily News | Thursday, September 4, 2008 | Vercihan Ziflioglu
The second church was inaugurated in A.D. 405, after being built upon the remnants of the first church at the same site, which dates to A.D. 360... No scientific examinations have yet been carried out on the flooded ground four meters beneath the floor of the museum. According to Akkaya, the water found below is connected to the Basilica Cistern and Topkapi Palace. "Yes, the area underneath Hagia Sophia is filled with water. I assume the layers contain pieces of pottery and ceramics, as well as relics from the second church of Hagia Sophia," Akkaya acknowledged... Recently, a team of...
Forgotten Empire
Hittites' holy city Nerik to emerge
09/05/2008 9:48:29 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 157+ views
Turkish Daily News | Tuesday, September 2, 2008 | Fulya Cemen
Today, excavators at the Oymaagac mound in the Black Sea city of Samsun's Vezirkopru district are reveling in their potential find, believing the evidence is mounting and Oymaagac will be unveiled as the holder of Nerik. The geographical location of Oymaagac, the impressive representative building on top of the acropolis, and especially the tiny cuneiform writing style on the tablet fragments all suggested the excavators might find Nerik here... the tiny cuneiform writing resembled that on clay tablets from the Bogazkoy/Hattusha archives dealing with Nerik... the writings, along with several ritual texts from the Hittite period, suggested Oymaagac had to...
Anatolia
Ancient City Waits To Be Unearthed In Western Turkey
09/01/2008 10:16:38 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 1 replies · 146+ views
Turkish Press | Sunday, August 31, 2008 | unattributed
An ancient city in western Turkey, discovered by smugglers of ancient artifacts at an illegal excavation six years ago and recovered with soil by officials, now waits to be unearthed. Local officials asked archaeologists to dig the region in Saruhanli town of the western province of Manisa to bring to light the ancient city which is thought to be dated from around 3rd or 4th century B.C. "Six years ago, smugglers found a few pieces of historical artifacts at an illegal dig here. There were mosaics of a stag`s head among them. But no researches have been carried out since...
Sarmatians / Scythians
Archeologists found woman's burial of Sarmatian epoch in one of burial mounds of Chutovo district...
09/05/2008 9:06:07 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 1 replies · 156+ views
National Radio Company of Ukraine | September 2, 2008 | unattributed
According to director of the centre of protection and research of the archeological monuments of the department of culture of the Poltava Regional State Administration Oleksandr Suprunenko, the woman was very influential. The things found next to her prove this, namely a bronze mirror, a dagger and iron scissors as well as a unique silver brooch. Besides, an iron awl was stuck in the woman's head. Sarmatians is a general name of the people that dominated in the Ukrainian steppes after collapse of the Scythian state. According to Herodotus, the Sarmatians originated from Amazonians who married Scythian men.
Malta
Luqa cemetery expansion finds Bronze Age remains [ Malta ]
09/01/2008 10:36:46 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 2 replies · 108+ views
Malta Independent | Saturday, August 30, 2008 | Francesca Vella
A cluster of five silos dating back to the Bronze Age period were recently discovered when excavation work, forming part of a project to extend the Luqa cemetery, was being carried out... various cisterns and silo pits had previously been discovered in the area known as Tal-Mejtin... Themistocles (Temi) Zammit -- who discovered, among others, the Hypogeum, Tarxien Temples, Hagar Qim, Mnajdra, and St Paul's Catacombs -- had unearthed a number of silos in the same area, while British archaeologist David Trump had also discovered another cluster of pits in the 1960s... The Bronze Age culture replaced the Temple culture,...
Rome and Italy
Beyond Pompeii: Places swallowed by Vesuvius
09/02/2008 9:49:01 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 4 replies · 330+ views
Philadelphia Inquirer | Sunday, August 31, 2008 | Edward Sozanski
Over several centuries, millions of tourists have visited Pompeii to acquaint themselves with the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius that began on Aug. 24, 79 A.D. But while it's the most famous eruption site, the ancient Roman city 15 miles south of Naples isn't the best place to gauge the volcano's awesome destructive power. For that, one should visit lesser-known Herculaneum, which is closer to Vesuvius, or Oplontis and Stabiae, two sites more recently uncovered and still relatively unknown to tourists. In these places, several of which are still being excavated, the eruption's consequences are more visible.
Phoenicians
Phoenician site agreement [ Spain ]
08/30/2008 1:19:30 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 113+ views
Euro Weekly News | August 28, 2008 | unattributed
The new agreement also considers action on other sites within the province, that are related to the one at Cerro del Villar. This Phoenician site was one of the more important colonial sites on the Andalucian Coast. Its foundation dates from the VIII century B.C but due to the constant floods suffered in the area, the Phoenician settlers moved to what is known today as Malaga, which they named 'Malaka' about 570. It was discovered by the archaeologist Juan Manuel Munoz in 1965, and in 1998, the site was declared of general interest by the Andalucian Government... About 2,500 students...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Roman settlement uncovered in US
09/04/2008 10:03:48 AM PDTT · Posted by Perdogg · 50 replies · 2,291+ views
Press TV IR | Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:16:36 GMT
An American archaeologist has uncovered the foundations for a Roman settlement on east Cleveland coast in the United States. According to a report in The Northern Echo, archaeologist Steve Sherlock has found a 1,600 year-old site for creating jet jewellery, with the help of volunteers from the Teesside Archaeological Society. Sherlock's latest discovery comes a year ater he uncovered evidence of Anglo-Saxon royalty in a farmer's fields near Loftus. Aerial photographs first guided Sherlock's Iron Age research project to the location in 2004, showing evidence of an Iron Age enclosure. Then last year, the site revealed 109 Anglo Saxon graves.
Biology and Cryptobiology
Mammoth Mystery: The Beasts' Final Years
09/04/2008 10:42:29 AM PDTT · Posted by decimon · 22 replies · 494+ views
Live Science | Sep 4, 2008 | Charles Q. Choi
Woolly mammoths' last stand before extinction in Siberia wasn't made by natives - rather, the beasts had American roots, researchers have discovered. Woolly mammoths once roamed the Earth for more than a half-million years, ranging from Europe to Asia to North America. These Ice Age giants vanished from mainland Siberia by 9,000 years ago, although mammoths survived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean until roughly 3,700 years ago. "Scientists have always thought that because mammoths roamed such a huge territory - from Western Europe to Central North America - that North American woolly mammoths were a sideshow of no...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Missouri cave paintings give ancient insight
08/30/2008 1:08:19 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 377+ views
The Missourian | August 27, 2008 | Michael Gibney
The story begins, as many do, with curiosity. About 20 years ago, two men exploring "Picture Cave" found paintings on the rock walls and sent hand-drawn reproductions to archaeologists Jim Duncan and Carol Diaz-Granados. "These things are fake!" Duncan remembered thinking at the time. As it turned out, the nature and location of the drawings contradicted widely held beliefs about Mississippian culture. The figures on the walls of the cave in east-central Missouri now provide crucial details of the prehistoric timeline of the region. And there's recent evidence that the paintings in Picture Cave predate the Cahokia Mounds as the...
Underwater Archaeology
Oldest Skeleton in Americas Found in Underwater Cave?
09/03/2008 4:15:35 PM PDTT · Posted by my3centseuro · 21 replies · 557+ views
National Geographic | 3 Sep 2008 | Eliza Barclay
Deep inside an underwater cave in Mexico, archaeologists may have discovered the oldest human skeleton ever found in the Americas. Dubbed Eva de Naharon, or Eve of Naharon, the female skeleton has been dated at 13,600 years old. If that age is accurate, the skeleton -- along with three others found in underwater caves along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan Peninsula -- could provide new clues to how the Americas were first populated. The remains have been excavated over the past four years near the town of Tulum, about 80 miles southwest of Cancun, by a team of scientists led by Arturo Gonzalez,...
Australia and the Pacific
Pacific island claims to be the roots of Mexico [ Mexcaltitan was Atzlan? ]
09/02/2008 9:51:06 PM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 17 replies · 347+ views
Houston Chronicle | August 30, 2008 | Jeremy Schwartz
For local officials and some historians, Mexcaltitan is nothing less than the mythical Aztlan, birthplace of the ancient Aztecs. According to legend, the Aztecs left an island in 1091 and wandered for two centuries before settling in what is now Mexico City. There, they founded the legendary city of Tenochtitlan, an island city of canals and floating gardens, and lorded over an empire that stretched from Guatemala to northern Mexico before the Spanish conquered them in 1521... In Mexcaltitan, located in the Pacific state of Nayarit, clues that this was once Aztlan are tantalizing. In Nahuatl, the language of the...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Stonehenge 'was hidden from lower classes'
08/31/2008 8:04:57 PM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 26 replies · 492+ views
Telegraph | Sunday, August 31, 2008 | "How about that?" editor
Archeologists have uncovered the remains of what they believe to be a 20ft fence designed to screen Stonehenge from the view of unworthy Stone Age Britons. The wooden construction extended nearly two miles across Salisbury Plain more than 5,000 years ago, and would have served to shield the sacred site from the prying eyes of ordinary lower-class locals... The dig's co-director Dr Josh Pollard, of Bristol University, said: "The construction must have taken a lot of manpower. The palisade is an open structure which would not have been defensive and was too high to be practical for controlling livestock. It...
Scotland Yet
Chariot find at settlement site [ Birnie Scotland Iron Age ]
08/30/2008 1:01:32 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 148+ views
BBC | Thursday, August 28, 2008 | Steven McKenzie
Archaeologists have uncovered a small - but vital - clue to the use of a chariot in Moray. The piece for a horse harness was found during the latest dig at an Iron Age site at Birnie, near Elgin. Dr Fraser Hunter, of the National Museums of Scotland, said it was further evidence of the high status of its inhabitants. Excavations would have been unlikely at Birnie if not for the discovery of Roman coins 10 years ago. Glass beads that may have been made at Culbin Sands, near Nairn, in the Highlands, a dagger and quern stones for making...
British Isles
Medieval canals spotted from air
08/31/2008 7:21:19 PM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 19 replies · 580+ views
BBC | Sunday, August 31, 2008 | unattributed
Archaeologists have found what they have described as a "breathtaking engineering project" in Lincolnshire. Almost 60 miles of medieval canals, possibly built by monks to ferry stone, have been identified in the Fens. Although the canals were up to 40ft wide they have filled up with silt and are now only visible from the air. Experts said the network of waterways represented an achievement not matched until the Industrial Revolution 300 years later. Viking raiders Martin Redding, of the Witham Valley Archaeology Research Committee, discovered the canals using aerial photographs. "They have been completely infilled by later deposits that have...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Stone Clock from the First Bulgarian Kingdom Discovered
08/30/2008 12:53:40 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 8 replies · 168+ views
International Ibox (?) | Saturday, August 30, 2008 | Stefan Nikolov
Bulgarian citizens have accidentally come across two stone blocks near a Proto-Bulgarian fortress near Mogila village, Kaspichan municipality. The fortress is a part of the system, constructed for the defense of the capital Pliska. It closely resembles the Madara fortress, but is considerably smaller. At the initial investigation enormous treasure-hunter decays can be seen, reaching a depth of 4 meters. Up to this moment no regular archeological studies have been carried out, but just on-foot surveillance by the late Professor Rasho Rashev. Typical Proto-Bulgarian graffiti are inscribed in one of the blocks, showing horsemen with their armory. Several horses...
Longer Perspectives
Ben Macintyre on the gory reality behind nursery rhymes
08/30/2008 1:55:39 AM PDTT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 637+ views
The Times | August 30, 2008 | Ben Macintyre
The hapless Humpty, it appears, was not an egg (that notion did not take root until 1871, with the publication of Alice Through the Looking Glass and Sir John Tenniel's illustration of Humpty as an egg). The original Humpty Dumpty was really a large cannon, used by Royalist forces to defend besieged Colchester in 1648. Royalists under the command of Sir Charles Lucas defended the town against the encircling Parliamentarians for 11 weeks, largely thanks to "Humpty Dumpty", the nickname for the cannon expertly operated by a Royalist gunner, "One-eyed" Thompson, and mounted on the church tower of St Mary-at-the-Walls....
World War Eleven
Josef Stalin acted rationally in killing millions, claims Russian textbook
09/05/2008 10:16:18 AM PDTT · Posted by george76 · 48 replies · 668+ views
Telegraph | 03 Sep 2008 | Chris Irvine
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin claims he acted "rationally" in executing and imprisoning millions of people in the Gulags, a Russian school book claims. The book, A History of Russia, 1900-1945, will be used as a teaching guide in Russian schools, 55 years after Stalin died. It is designed for teachers to promote patriotism among the Russian young, and seems to follow an attempt backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to re-evaluate Stalin's record in a more positive light. Historians believe up to 20 million people died as a result of his actions, many times more than were killed under Hitler's...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Scientist says cremation should meet a timely death
04/18/2007 1:00:49 PM PDTT · Posted by Triggerhippie · 128 replies · 2,190+ views
(AFP) | Wed Apr 18, 10:30 AM ET | Staff Writer (apparently)
An Australian scientist called Wednesday for an end to the age-old tradition of cremation, saying the practice contributed to global warming. Professor Roger Short said people could instead choose to help the environment after death by being buried in a cardboard box under a tree. The decomposing bodies would provide the tree with nutrients, and the tree would convert carbon dioxide into life-giving oxygen for decades, he said. "The important thing is, what a shame to be cremated when you go up in a big bubble of carbon dioxide," Short told AFP. "Why waste all that carbon...
end of digest #216 20080906
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Welcome to the 216th issue. I just jumped the v/n to 8, which is correct (4 years times 52 issues is 208). The week seemed to start a little slow, but then this FReeper got a *huge* wave of help, for which all those involved have my heartfelt thanks. |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #217
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Climate
Huge Ancient Lake Discovered in Russia
09/10/2008 3:45:49 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 8 replies · 402+ views
Live Science | Sep 9, 2008 | Andrea Thompson
A huge ancient lake once dammed up by the vast ice sheets of the last Ice Age has been found by geologists in Russia. Large glacial lakes were known to cover parts of Russia and North America during the Ice Age. One of the most well-known is Lake Agassiz, which covered portions of Canada and northern Minnesota more than 10,000 years ago. At the time it was the largest freshwater lake on the planet, with an area larger than all of the present-day Great Lakes combined, larger even than California. Last year, geologists found the remnants of a lake near...
Panspermia
Tracing Our Interstellar Relatives
09/12/2008 6:29:45 PM PDT · Posted by LibWhacker · 9 replies · 165+ views
Centauri Dreams | 9/12/08
The idea that life on Earth might have originated elsewhere, on Mars, for example, has gained currency in recent times as we've learned more about the transfer of materials between planets. Mars cooled before the Earth and may well have become habitable at a time when our planet was not. There seems nothing particularly outrageous in the idea that dormant bacteria inside chunks of the Martian surface, blasted into space by comet or asteroid impacts, might have crossed the interplanetary gulf and given rise to life here. But what of an interstellar origin for life on Earth? The odds on...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
New Work Shows Shawnee Lookout Site to Be Ancient Water Works, Not a Fort (Not full title)
09/12/2008 10:02:02 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 14 replies · 296+ views
University of Cincinnati | Sep 12, 2008 | Carey Hoffman
The site known as Miami Fort is no fort at all, and it is also much larger than previously believed -- so large, in fact, that its berms stretch to almost six kilometers in length, making it twice as large as any other Native American earthworks in Ohio, and one of the largest in the nation. Those are discoveries made this summer by members of UC's Ohio Valley Archaeology Field School project, who spent weeks working at the site in Hamilton County's Shawnee Lookout park. What they found actually offers great insight into the cultural priorities of the Shawnee --...
Paleontology
Lucky break allowed dinosaurs to rule Earth: study
09/11/2008 12:58:08 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 20 replies · 579+ views
Reuters | Sep 11, 2008 | Will Dunham
Thanks to a big stroke of luck 200 million years ago, dinosaurs beat out a fearsome group of creatures competing for the right to rule the Earth, scientists said on Thursday. Dinosaurs appeared about 230 million years ago, during the Triassic Period, and competed for 30 million years with a group of reptiles called crurotarsans, cousins of today's crocodiles that grew to huge sizes and looked a lot like dinosaurs.
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Nails around Tahluj ancient skeletons puzzle archaeologists [Iran]
09/09/2008 7:52:01 PM PDT · Posted by BlackVeil · 7 replies · 326+ views
Tehran Times | September 10, 2008 | Tehran Times Culture Desk
The nails found around ancient skeletons at a newly discovered cemetery of Tahluj have puzzled the team of archaeologists working at the 3000-year-old site. The cemetery dating back early Islamic era was discovered during the rescue excavation, which has begun at the site near the village of Mirar-Kola in northern Iran in late August. The Tahluj site, home to several sites dating back from Iron Age to early Islamic era, will be completely submerged under water and mud when the Alborz Dam becomes operational. Tahluj is located in the Savadkuh region of Mazandaran Province. The team has discovered...
Greece
Persian Wars Battle at Thermopylae - 480 B.C.
03/12/2007 2:54:43 PM PDT · Posted by freedom44 · 93 replies · 4,467+ views
Ancient History | 3/12/07 | Ancient History
What Was the Battle at Thermopylae?: Thermopylae was a pass that the Greeks tried unsuccessfully to defend in battle against the Persians led by Xerxes in 480 B.C.Although the Spartans who led the defense were all killed (and may have known in advance that they would be), their courage provided inspiration to the Greeks, many of whom otherwise might have willingly become part of the Persian Empire (the relevant verb is "medize" from the word Mede). The following year the Greeks did win battles agains the Persians. Persians Attack the Greeks at Thermopylae: Xerxes' fleet of Persian ships had sailed...
Does military history hold the key to Western ascendency?
12/28/2002 7:04:13 PM PST · Posted by chasio649 · 35 replies · 397+ views
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/default.htm | 12/12/02 | Stephen Barton
In a recent article in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman wrote that NATO is essentially irrelevant. It had been replaced by what he tongue-in-cheek calls NASTY: Nations Allied to Stop TYrants. NASTY is made up of what he calls three "like-minded English-speaking allies", America, Australia and Britain, with occasional French involvement. He claims "what these four countries have in common is that they are sea powers, with a tradition of fighting abroad, with ability to transport troops around the world and with mobile special forces that have an 'attitude'." All four nations, he notes enjoy playing either rugby or...
Why the West Has Won (and will) Freedom is the Ultimate Weapon
05/14/2002 6:42:50 AM PDT · Posted by Valin · 16 replies · 183+ views
gilder.com | Victor Davis Hanson
Even the plight of enterprising killers can tell us something. In the summer of 401 B.C., 10,700 Greek hoplite soldiers-infantrymen, heavily armed with spear, shield and body armor-were hired by Cyrus the Younger to help press his claim to the Persian throne. The recruits were mostly battle-hardened veterans of the 27-year Peloponnesian War, mustered from throughout the Greek-speaking world. Many were murderous renegades and exiles. Both near-adolescents and the still-hale in late middle age enlisted for pay. Large numbers were unemployed and desperate for lucrative work as killers in the exhausted aftermath of the internecine war that had nearly ruined...
Why Western Soldiers Have Always Been Such Fierce Fighters
12/09/2001 6:31:26 AM PST · Posted by cornelis · 33 replies · 555+ views
NYT | December 1, 2001 | Edward Rothstein
In 480 B.C., near Salamis off the coast of Greece, an armada of perhaps a thousand Persian ships attacked some 300 Greek vessels. This was, as the military historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson writes in this provocative book, "one of the most deadly battles in the entire history of naval warfare." Lured by a brilliant Greek strategy through the narrow straits, and rammed by Greek ships, hundreds of Persian vessels were sunk; more than 40,000 Persian soldiers were drowned ...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Olives and People, Past and Present
09/09/2008 9:40:15 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 19 replies · 244+ views
Archaeology | Monday, September 5, 2008 | interview of Anagnostis Agelarakis
Hippocrates uses olive oil-based ointments for all kinds of uses and for treating trauma, scratches, wounds, and concussions that are not too deeply penetrating; it was considered to have healing power. In essence, it does because it contains the vital antioxidants scalene, flavonoids, and polyphenols at a minimum. Also, it has Omega components such as Omega 9, Vitamin A, Vitamin K, and traces of Vitamin C. It has Vitamin E, as well, which is in itself an antioxidant, so it has the ability to enhance and repair components of our skin. It is very important for our skin; our skin...
Diet and Cuisine
EU funds study of the origins of milk consumption in Europe
09/09/2008 1:03:10 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 15 replies · 227+ views
Cordis | Monday, September 8, 2008 | University of Uppsala, and Leche
An EU-funded project coordinated by Uppsala University in Sweden will study the origins and significance of lactose tolerance in Europe. The project, called LECHE ('Lactase persistence and the early cultural history of Europe'), is a training network with 13 participating universities in Europe... Approximately 85% of adult northern Europeans are able to digest lactose, a sugar found in milk and other dairy products; however, in the rest of the world the ability to digest milk drops off sharply after infancy. In fact, as one moves south from Scandinavia, lactose tolerance in adulthood drops off. The persistence of lactase (the enzyme...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Few Clues About African Ancestry To Be Found In Mitochondrial DNA
09/09/2008 12:34:57 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 12 replies · 344+ views
ScienceDaily | October 14, 2006 | BioMed Central / Reuters
Mitochondrial DNA may not hold the key to your origins after all. A study published in the open access journal BMC Biology reveals that fewer than 10% of African American mitochondrial DNA sequences analysed can be matched to mitochondrial DNA from one single African ethnic group. There has been a growing interest in the use of mitochondrial DNA to trace maternal ancestries, and several companies now offer to analyse individuals' mitochondrial DNA sequences to obtain information about their origins. The current study suggests that only one in nine African Americans may be able to find clues about where their ancestors...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Jews and Their DNA
09/07/2008 9:41:27 AM PDT · Posted by Pharmboy · 26 replies · 692+ views
Commentary Magazine | Sept, 2008 | Hillel Halkin
Eight years ago, I published an article in these pages called "Wandering Jews -- and Their Genes" (September 2000). At the time I was working on a book about a Tibeto-Burmese ethnic group in the northeast Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, many of whose members believe that they descend from the biblical tribe of Manasseh, and about a group of Judaizers among them known as the B'nei Menashe, over a thousand of whom live today in Israel as converts to Judaism. This led me to an interest in Jewish historical genetics, then a new discipline. Historical genetics itself was still a...
Khazars
Russian archaeologists find long-lost Jewish capital
09/03/2008 9:26:26 AM PDT · Posted by Alouette · 43 replies · 1,086+ views
AFP | Sept. 3, 2008
Russian archaeologists said Wednesday they had found the long-lost capital of the Khazar kingdom in southern Russia, a breakthrough for research on the ancient Jewish state. "This is a hugely important discovery," expedition organiser Dmitry Vasilyev told AFP by telephone from Astrakhan State University after returning from excavations near the village of Samosdelka, just north of the Caspian Sea. "We can now shed light on one of the most intriguing mysteries of that period -- how the Khazars actually lived. We know very little about the Khazars -- about their traditions, their funerary rites, their culture," he...
Asia
After millennia in India, lost tribe returns to Israel
09/30/2006 2:42:52 PM PDT · Posted by Traianus · 41 replies · 1,638+ views
Asia News | 09-30-2006 | Asia News
The presumed descendents of the Bnei Menashe, one of the 10 lost biblical tribes mentioned in the Bible, are about to leave India after 2,700 years. They will reside in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Tel Aviv (AsiaNews/Agencies) -- A group of 218 people from a mountainous area of north-eastern India are about to be welcomed in Israel. These are the presumed descendents of the Bnei Menashe tribe, one of the 10 lost biblical tribes lost after the exodus from the Promised Land,...
Pages
Torturing History: Reason reviews Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage & Culture (with Davis's reply)
07/12/2002 1:03:19 PM PDT · Posted by denydenydeny · 17 replies · 851+ views
Reason | April 2002/July 2002 | Chris Bray/Victor Davis Hanson/Chris Bray
You're in a crowded room, watching someone rail about some issue of politics or culture. He's loud, sloppy with facts. He's trashing his own position, discrediting the very thing that he believes. Which -- here's the problem -- is pretty much the same thing you happen to believe. He's a wrecking ball on legs, taking out the walls of his own house, and you live there too. So...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
The Carolina bays: Explaining a cosmic mystery, part one of three
09/07/2008 6:57:55 PM PDT · Posted by baynut · 63 replies · 1,558+ views
The Virginian-Pilot | September 7, 2008 | Dianne Tennant
The morning began with a brief but vigorous argument - call it a discussion - in the hotel lobby. The breakfast table was loaded with road maps, Google Earth printouts and colorful elevation images intended to help the three researchers locate a curious landscape feature. They were hunting for slight depressions in the earth, dimples almost invisible at ground level but so striking from the air that, for a number of years, they captivated the entire country. Scientists in the mid-1900s devoted careers to their study, debated furiously in print, were celebrated, vilified, laughed at and honored,...
Neandertal / Neanderthal
Neanderthal Brains Grew Like Ours
09/09/2008 8:40:07 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 18 replies · 223+ views
Live Science | Sep 8, 2008 | Neanderthal Brains Grew Like Ours
Score one more for Neanderthals. A new study has found that Neanderthal brains grew at much the same rate as modern human brains do, knocking down the idea that they grew faster in a style considered more primitive.
Underwater Archaeology
Bronze Age mouse offers clues to royal shipwreck [ Ulu Burun wreck ]
09/09/2008 12:31:13 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 13 replies · 272+ views
New Scientist | Thursday, September 4, 2008 | unattributed
Remains of a long dead house mouse have been found in the wreck of a Bronze Age royal ship. That makes it the earliest rodent stowaway ever recorded, and proof of how house mice spread around the world. Archaeologist Thomas Cucchi of the University of Durham, UK, identified a fragment of a mouse jaw in sediment from a ship that sank 3500 years ago off the coast of Turkey. The cargo of ebony, ivory, silver and gold - including a gold scarab with the name of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti - indicates it was a royal vessel. Because the cargo...
Moderate Islam
Afghans unearth 19-metre Buddha statue, relics
09/08/2008 6:47:47 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 20 replies · 649+ views
Reuters | 08 Sep 2008 | Sayed Salahuddin
Archaeologists have discovered a 19-metre (62-foot) Buddha statue along with scores of other historical relics in central Afghanistan near the ruins of giant statues destroyed by the Islamist Taliban seven years ago. The team was searching for a giant sleeping Buddha believed to have been seen by a Chinese pilgrim centuries ago when it came upon the relics in the central province of Bamiyan, an official said on Monday. "In total, 89 relics such as coins, ceramics and a 19 meters statue have been unearthed," Mohammad Zia Afshar, adviser in the information and culture ministry, told Reuters. He said the...
Longer Perspectives
Alphamummy - The most controversial women ever
09/09/2008 12:17:47 AM PDT · Posted by bruinbirdman · 15 replies · 397+ views
The Times | 9/9/2008
The 20 most controversial women in history It's disgraceful what passes for controversy these days. From the media storm created last week, you would think Sarah Palin was the first moose-shooting anti-abortionist to ever take the world stage. Come to think of it, she probably is. But to really get tongues wagging back in the day you had to have a reputation for incest, torture, murder and stealing from the destitute. Here, the top women leaders with reputations for raising hackles. 1. Messalina (c17-48) If a man is successfully promiscuous, he's regarded as a bit of a chap. A woman...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Jack the Ripper revealed at last -- by great-grandson of cop who tracked him down
09/08/2008 7:05:43 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 42 replies · 2,938+ views
East London Advertiser | 05 Sep 2008 | Mike Brooks
The Jack the Ripper "industry' got a boost on the 120th anniversary of his first acknowledged murder. The great-grandson of the police chief in charge of the 1888 Whitechapel Murders arrived at the Ripper exhibition at the Museum in Docklands in East London -- just before the 120th anniversary of the murder Mary Ann Nichols, a prostitute known as "Polly,' believed by many to be his first victim. He arrived with evidence from his Victorian ancestor revealing the Ripper's true identity. Jack the Ripper was never caught and his identity has remained a mystery for 120 years, feeding a whole "industry' that...
Cold War One
Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits Spying for Soviets
09/11/2008 3:45:45 PM PDT · Posted by RKV · 94 replies · 1,851+ views
New York Times | 11 Sep 2008 | Sam Roberts
Ever since he was tried and convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges in 1951, Morton Sobell has maintained his innocence. A U.S. Marshal escorted Morton Sobell, left, to Federal Court in New York in March of 1951. Until now. In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Sobell, who served nearly 19 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy. And he implicated his fellow defendant, Julius Rosenberg, in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets vital classified military information and what the American government claimed was the...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Encore for a Stradivarius
09/08/2008 5:17:29 PM PDT · Posted by Diana in Wisconsin · 32 replies · 617+ views
JSOnline | September 6, 2008 | Tom Strini
(Violinist welcomes loan with strings) The e-mail came to Frank Almond from out of the blue. It said, basically: I have a Stradivarius violin. Want to see it? Almond, concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and a violinist with an international career, knew from long experience that most alleged Strads turn out to be knockoffs. But he had a hunch about this one. He called Stefan Hersh, his Chicago violin dealer and occasional performing colleague, and shared what he'd been told of the instrument. The story sounded plausible to Hersh. In May, Almond and Hersh met the owner in the...
end of digest #217 20080913
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 217th issue. A mere 24 topics. Seems like it was a too-fast week. I soaked in the tub each day, and read a book I've had for at least five years. I'd post a review on Amazon, but I don't think that site is worth a bleep. |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #218
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Large Reservoir Of Mitochondrial DNA Mutations Identified In Humans
09/19/2008 8:21:43 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 1 replies
ScienceDaily | August 12, 2008 | adapted from Virginia Tech release
Researchers at the University of Newcastle, England, and the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech in the United States have revealed a large reservoir of mitochondrial DNA mutations present in the general population. Clinical analysis of blood samples from almost 3,000 infants born in north Cumbria, England, showed that at least 1 in 200 individuals in the general public harbor mitochondrial DNA mutations that may lead to disease.... Mutations in mitochondrial DNA inherited from the mother may cause mitochondrial diseases that include muscle weakness, diabetes, stroke, heart failure, or epilepsy. In almost all mitochondrial diseases caused by mutant mitochondrial DNA,...
Prehistory and Origins
Malaysian archaeologists find complete Neolithic skeletons: report
09/19/2008 7:26:18 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies
PhysOrg | September 19, 2008 | AFP
Archaeologists have found two groups of complete Neolithic human remains in peninsular Malaysia and on Borneo island that may better explain prehistoric human life, reports said Friday... the remains are more than 3,000 years old and were found within two months of each other, in prehistoric burial grounds surrounded by ceremonial beads, pottery, shells and animal bones... The first set of remains found in a mangrove swamp on the island of Pulau Kalumpang off northern Perak state consists of three Mongoloid males aged between 15 and 35 years old... The second set were of seven males and a female found...
Asia
Out of Africa: Scientists find earliest evidence yet of human presence in Northeast Asia [ 2004 ]
09/19/2008 8:14:53 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 4 replies
Eurekalert | September 29, 2004 | Elizabeth Malone
Early humans lived in northern China about 1.66 million years ago, according to research reported in the journal Nature this week. The finding suggests humans -- characterized by their making and use of stone tools -- inhabited upper Asia almost 340,000 years before previous estimates placed them there, surviving in a pretty hostile environment. The research team, including Richard Potts of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, reports the results of excavating four layers of sediments at Majuangou in north China. All the layers contained indisputable stone tools apparently made by early humans, known to researchers as "hominins."
Neandertal / Neanderthal
Photo In The News: DNA-Based Neanderthal Face Unveiled
09/19/2008 7:20:56 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 32 replies
National Geographic News | September 17, 2008 | David Braun
Neanderthals Conquered Mammoths, Why Not Us?
09/18/2008 10:51:17 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 18 replies
Discovery News | September 9, 2008 | Jennifer Viegas
Most notably among the new studies is what researchers say is the first ever direct evidence that a woolly mammoth was brought down by Neanderthal weapons. Margherita Mussi and Paola Villa made the connection after studying a 60,000 to 40,000-year-old mammoth skeleton unearthed near Neanderthal stone tool artifacts at a site called Asolo in northeastern Italy. The discoveries are described in this month's Journal of Archaeological Science. Villa, a curator of paleontology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, told Discovery News that other evidence suggests Neanderthals hunted the giant mammals, but not as directly. At the English...
British Isles
Discovery of ancient axes delights experts[UK][400K BC]
09/18/2008 7:30:37 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 16 replies
Western Daily Press | 18 Sep 2008 | Western Daily Press
They may only look like a couple of sharp rocks, but 400,000 years ago these stones may well have been used as axes to butcher woolly rhinos. Archaeologists were celebrating the find of the two rare huge hand axes found in a gravel pit at a Somerset quarry. Dr Laura Basell, Professor Tony Brown and Dr Phil Toms could not believe their luck when they spotted the pair at Bardon Aggregates' quarry at Chard Junction. And it is thought that the quality of the workmanship indicates it was not our own species wielding the deadly hand axes back in the...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Stone-age pilgrims trekked hundreds of miles to attend feast [ Stonehenge ]
09/15/2008 9:08:27 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 12 replies · 256+ views
Guardian | September 11, 2008 | James Randerson
Stone age people drove animals hundreds of miles to a site close to Stonehenge to be slaughtered for ritual feasts, according to scientists who have examined the chemical signatures of animal remains buried there... Durrington Walls is a stone-age village containing the remains of numerous cattle and pigs which are thought to have been buried there after successive ritual feasts. The site is two miles north east of Stonehenge and dates from around 3000 BC, 500 years before the first stones were erected... The evidence points to groups of people driving animals from as far away as Wales for the...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Research pushes back history of crop development 10,000 years
09/19/2008 7:17:04 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 8 replies
PhysOrg | September 19, 2008 | University of Warwick
Until recently researchers say the story of the origin of agriculture was one of a relatively sudden appearance of plant cultivation in the Near East around 10,000 years ago spreading quickly into Europe and dovetailing conveniently with ideas about how quickly language and population genes spread from the Near East to Europe. Initially, genetics appeared to support this idea but now cracks are beginning to appear in the evidence underpinning that model. Now a team led by Dr Robin Allaby from the University of Warwick have developed a new mathematical model that shows how plant agriculture actually began much earlier...
Diet and Cuisine
Chianti: Secret to Long Life, Says Ancient Recipe
09/18/2008 11:03:38 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 18 replies
Discovery News | September 15, 2008 | Rossella Lorenzi
The elixir of life may be a concoction of honey, cherries and secret herbs infused in a full Chianti wine, according to a centuries-old recipe discovered in one of Italy's oldest pharmacies. The 18th century-old recipe was discovered in an old manuscript found among the shelves of a pharmacy in Asciano near Sienna dating back to 1715. "My ancestors left several manuscripts with formulas for digestive drinks, but this one struck me because of its ingredients. I knew it had strong scientific basis," said pharmacist Giovanni De Munari, who found the old recipe from behind a small shelf in his...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
How Lager Yeasts Came in from the Cold, Twice
09/18/2008 11:16:22 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies
New Scientist | September 10, 2008 | Andy Coghlan
Yeast strains used today to brew lager have two genetic ancestors, not one as previously thought. The discovery may explain the origins of the two major categories of lager today, described in the trade as the "Saaz" beers such as Pilsner and Budweiser, and the "Frohberg" beers such as Orangeboom and Heineken. It turns out that both probably owe their origins to laws in 16th-century Bavaria that banned brewing in the summer because scorching heat ruined the ale that was brewed before the emergence of lager. Forced to produce their beer in the winter, brewers accidentally created conditions favouring the...
Anatolia
Defences at Troy reveal larger town [ news finally reaches UK ]
09/19/2008 7:36:25 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies
Times o' London | September 19, 2008 | Normand Hammond
Ancient Troy was much bigger than previously thought, and may have housed as many as 10,000 people, new excavations have revealed. The lower town, in which most of the population would have lived, may have been as large as 40 hectares (100 acres), according to Professor Ernst Pernicka... Excavations by the late Manfred Korfmann showed that this Troy was just the citadel and that a much larger lower town lay south of it enclosed by a rock-cut ditch (The Times, February 25, 2002). Professor Pernicka's continuation of Korfmann's work has confirmed the substantial nature of this defensive work, which was...
Greece
First Greek Mummy Once Led Privileged Life
09/17/2008 10:13:39 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 212+ views
Discovery News | August 8, 2008 | Rossella Lorenzi
Dating to 300 A.D., when the Romans ruled Greece, the partially mummified remains belong to a middle-aged woman. Her Roman-type marble sarcophagus was unearthed in 1962 during archaeological excavations in the eastern cemetery of Thessaloniki, which was used from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine Periods for burials and other rituals. Wrapped in bandages and covered with a gold-embroidered purple silk cloth, the woman lay on a wooden pallet... [from page 2] Although there are no written accounts describing the practice of mummification in ancient Greece, it is known that the Greeks were familiar with the extraction of essential oils and...
Rome and Italy
How the barbarians drove Romans to build Venice
09/17/2008 10:08:24 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 433+ views
The Times | September 17, 2008 | Richard Owen in Rome
The hidden ruins of an ancient lagoon city that was the ancestor of Venice have been unearthed by scientists using satellite imaging. The outlines are clearly visible about three feet below the earth in what is now open countryside... Paolo Mozzi, a researcher at the University of Padua geography department, said high-definition satellite photographs had revealed the ruins of an extensive town much closer to present day Venice at Altino -- known in Roman times as Altinum -- a little more than seven miles north of the city, close to Marco Polo airport... The newly identified ruins include streets, palaces,...
Epigraphy and Language
Coin found by Wrexham pensioner is 2,000 years old[UK]
09/16/2008 6:39:52 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 18 replies · 712+ views
Evening Leader | 16 Sep 2008 | Evening Leader
A ROMAN coin unearthed by a Wrexham metal detecting enthusiast has been confirmed as one of the oldest ever found in Wales. Retired butcher Roy Page, 69, of Coedpoeth, found the detailed 2,000-year-old coin on a farm near St Asaph when he went on a search there with the Mold-based Historical Search Society earlier this year. Roy gave the tiny silver coin, which depicts two horses being driven by a man on a chariot, to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), who have recently confirmed the specific date that it was made. It is believed to have been brought over some...
India
A Strategic Advance on Europe [ from 2002, chess in 5th century Europe ]
09/14/2008 9:37:31 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 10 replies · 169+ views
Discover Vol. 23 No. 11 | November 2002 | Jocelyn Selim
A two-inch-tall ivory chess piece, part of an ancient set, suggests that traders brought the game to Europe at least five centuries earlier than previously thought. Archaeologists led by Richard Hodges of Britain's East Anglia University excavated the game piece (right) from the remains of a fifth-century port city on the Albanian coast. Chess had probably originated as a war-strategy training game in India by the third century A.D., but it took ages to reach Europe, historians traditionally believed. "A number of chess pieces, found from Scotland down to southern Italy, date to around the 12th century, so it...
One Hump or Two?
Million-year-old camel bone unearthed in Syria (unknown tiny species of camel family)
09/13/2008 1:03:48 PM PDT · Posted by NormsRevenge · 16 replies · 239+ views
AP on Yahoo | 9/13/08 | AP
DAMASCUS, Syria -- Scientists have unearthed a camel jawbone in the Syrian desert that they think may be a previously unknown tiny species of the animal and say dates back a million years.
Let's Have Jerusalem
Galilee Drought Uncovers Oldest Village In The World
09/24/2001 1:40:07 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 96 replies · 998+ views
Sunday Times (UK) | 9-23-2001 | Dina Shiloh
Israeli archeologists have found what could be the world's oldest village on the dried-out bed of the Sea of Galilee. The settlement, dating back 20,000 years, came to light in one of the worst droughts in recent years. Thousands of items including huts, tools and fireplaces found at Ohalo, on the southwestern shore, give a unique insight into the semi-nomadic people who lived there towards the end of the early Stone Age. "We found what every researcher dreams of finding," said Dani Nadel, ...
Climate
Sahara dried out slowly, not abruptly: study
05/08/2008 2:12:41 PM PDT · Posted by suthener · 20 replies · 603+ views
Reuters | Thu May 8, 2008 2:10pm EDT | Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) - The once-green Sahara turned to desert over thousands of years rather than in an abrupt shift as previously believed, according to a study on Thursday that may help understanding of future climate changes. And there are now signs of a tiny shift back towards greener conditions in parts of the Sahara, apparently because of OSLO (Reuters) - The once-green Sahara turned to desert over thousands of years rather than in an abrupt shift as previously believed, according to a study on Thursday that may help understanding of future climate changes. And there are now signs of a...
Graves Found From Sahara's Green Period
09/15/2008 4:21:39 PM PDT · Posted by Fred Nerks · 51 replies · 733+ views
New York Times Science | August 15, 2008 | By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
When Paul C. Sereno went hunting for dinosaur bones in the Sahara, his career took a sharp turn from paleontology to archaeology. The expedition found what has proved to be the largest known graveyard of Stone Age people who lived there when the desert was green. The first traces of pottery, stone tools and human skeletons were discovered eight years ago at a site in the southern Sahara, in Niger. After preliminary research, Dr. Sereno, a University of Chicago scientist who had previously uncovered remains of the dinosaur Nigersaurus there, organized an international team of archaeologists to investigate what had...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Solving a 10,000-year-old mystery
09/17/2008 10:33:47 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 10 replies
Columbus Dispatch | Tuesday, September 16, 2008 | Kevin Mayhood
Among the stag moose remains Bob Glotzhober is studying is this fossilized jaw bone. The teeth indicate that the animal was probably 4 or 5 years old... In August, Tyler Underwood was digging clay in Medina County when he unearthed remains of a stag moose, a mammal that became extinct 10,000 years ago. In all, 34 pieces were recovered. Most of the other stag-moose remains found in Ohio consist of one or two bones... a humerus, a long forelimb bone... [has] a hole on one side and grooves on the other... "If we can show the marks on this bone...
Paleontology
Pigs ruled the world 260 million years ago: Study
09/17/2008 1:54:57 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 70 replies · 518+ views
Newspost Online | Sep 17, 2008 | Unknown
Scientists from Leeds University have discovered that the world was ruled by pig-like creatures for a million years. The "Age of the Porcine" occurred around 260 million years ago - when the creatures called lystrosaurs were the few survivors of a mass extinction. Nearly 95 pct of the living species were destroyed by a series of volcanic eruptions leaving behind pigs in a "golden age" of no predators. They had Earth's abundant plant-life all to themselves. "We can only speculate on how lystrosaurs survived while the rest died. Perhaps its ability to burrow and hibernate protected it from the worst...
High Hopes
Scientists discover 120 million year-old ant
09/16/2008 10:05:02 AM PDT · Posted by null and void · 36 replies · 867+ views
Reuters | Tue Sep 16, 2008 11:48am EDT | Reporting by Josie Cox, Editing by Mark Trevelyan
BERLIN (Reuters) - German biologists have discovered a new species of ant they believe is the oldest on the planet, dating back around 120 million years. Researchers from Karlsruhe's Natural History Museum found the 3-millimeter-long (0.118 inch) insect in the Amazon rainforest in 2007, and hope it will shed light on the early evolution of ants. "It's by far the most spectacular find of my 26-year career," said museum biologist Manfred Verhaagh on Tuesday. A new species of Martialis heureka, a blind, subterranean, predatory ant, in an undated photo. German biologists have discovered a new species of ant they believe...
Strange 'Ant From Mars' Discovered in Amazon Rainforest
09/16/2008 9:12:42 PM PDT · Posted by Justice Department · 25 replies · 709+ views
foxnews | September 16, 2008
A newly discovered species of a blind, subterranean predator -- dubbed the "Ant from Mars" -- is likely a descendant of one of the very first ants to evolve on Earth, a new study finds.
The Vikings
Kimmirut site suggests early European contact [ Vikings ]
09/15/2008 8:58:05 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 211+ views
Nunatsiaq News | September 12, 2008 | Jane George
Vikings - or perhaps other Europeans - may have set up housekeeping and traded with Inuit 1,000 years ago near today's community of Kimmirut. That's the picture of the past emerging from ancient artifacts found near Kimmirut, where someone collected Arctic hare fur and spun the fur into yarn and someone else carved notches into a wooden stick to record trading transactions. Dorset Inuit probably didn't make the yarn and tally sticks because yarn and wood weren't part of Inuit culture at that time, said Patricia Sutherland, an archeologist with the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Other artifacts from the area,...
Clovis Superhunters
'Macho' ancient hunters may have relied on rabbits [ Clovis ]
09/17/2008 10:04:45 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 18 replies · 355+ views
Columbus Dispatch | Tuesday, September 16, 2008 | Bradley T. Lepper
Clovis points are the hallmark of one of America's earliest cultures: the Paleoindians. Since archaeologists found Clovis points lodged in the skeleton of a mammoth, they have viewed Paleoindians as big-game hunters par excellence... This macho view of Paleoindian prehistory has prevailed even though surprisingly little evidence exists to support it. In a study published in the October issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, Kent State University archaeologist Mark Seeman and several co-researchers wrote of Paleoindian stone tools from the Nobles Pond site in Stark County. They reported the discovery of blood residue on eight Clovis points. Four were...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
'Lost towns' discovered in Amazon
09/19/2008 4:43:17 AM PDT · Posted by Renfield · 12 replies
BBC News | 8-28-08
A remote area of the Amazon river basin was once home to densely populated towns, Science journal reports. The Upper Xingu, in west Brazil, was once thought to be virgin forest, but in fact shows traces of extensive human activity. Researchers found evidence of a grid-like pattern of settlements connected by road networks and arranged around large central plazas....
Early America
How in the world did coin land in Latham?[NY]
09/17/2008 8:50:58 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 21 replies
Times Union | 16 Sep 2008 | JORDAN CARLEO-EVANGELIST
Dig at 19th-century tavern site reveals possible link to China -- Digging through 200-year-old trash heaps isn't always glamorous. But a small Asian coin uncovered behind a 19th-century Latham tavern turned a routine archaeological survey into an international puzzle. The copper alloy coin was unearthed as archaeologists combed through the soil behind the old Ebenezer Hills Jr. house. The one-time way station on a busy turnpike between Albany and Schenectady (now Route 7) was the equivalent of a Thruway rest stop when the trip between the two cities could take a day. Last month, the Albany County Airport Authority...
Early America
Ike Uncovers Mystery Civil War-Era Shipwreck
09/19/2008 4:23:26 PM PDT · Posted by metmom · 15 replies
FOXNews.com | Friday, September 19, 2008 | Associated Press
FORT MORGAN, Ala. , Texas -- When the waves from Hurricane Ike receded, they left behind a mystery -- a ragged shipwreck that archeologists say could be a two-masted Civil War schooner that ran aground in 1862 or another ship from some 70 years later. The wreck, about six miles from Fort Morgan, had already been partially uncovered when Hurricane Camille cleared away sand in 1969. Researchers at the time identified it as the Monticello, a battleship that partially burned when it crashed trying to get past the U.S. Navy and into Mobile Bay during the Civil War.
World War Eleven
A Chat w/WW II Vet
09/15/2008 6:13:36 AM PDT · Posted by 7thson · 34 replies · 411+ views
My wife and I went to a Republican fund-raiser this weekend - a wine-tasting party. At our table an eldery couple sat down - both in their late 80's. The man was a WW II vet. Joked that he joined the army in 1940 only for one year and ended up getting out in 1946. Was in the Normandy invasion all the way to Germany. Was part of the group that liberated Dachau. Swore up and down that Patton was the greatest general ever. Had some good conversation with both he and his wife.
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Check out this amazing ad!!! 12 Decades of English History in 2 minutes.
09/15/2008 11:25:40 AM PDT · Posted by C19fan · 24 replies · 867+ views
http://www.hovisbakery.co.uk/our-ads/ | 9/15/08 | Me
What an amazing ad from UK bakery Hovis. A little boy taking a loaf home goes through 120 years of British history, the bakery is celebrating its 120 anniversary. What a great scene of the Tommies marching off to Flanders and a Spitfire.
Longer Perspectives
I, Obama
09/12/2008 2:10:24 PM PDT · Posted by Congressman Billybob · 50 replies · 1,343+ views
Special to FreeRepublic | 12 Sept 2008 | John Armor (Congressman Billybob)
Remember the PBS series special on the Roman Emperor, Claudius? The title, which captured the style of his governance, "I, Claudius." It was a 13-part series on Masterpiece Theater. How many of you saw it? Let's not always see the same hands. Well, almost all of you remember some of the history of the Roman Emperors. They ranged from mad and murderous, like Nero, to rational and effective, like Augustine. Hold that thought, and we'll get to today's subject. A good friend, Duncan Parham, is a man of eclectic interests. One of those is rare coins. Last weekend he showed...
Moderate Islam
Did Muhammad Ever Really Live?
09/19/2008 5:25:25 AM PDT · Posted by Perdogg · 29 replies
Spiegel (Germany) | 9/18/2008
A number of Islamic associations have put a quick end to their collaboration with a professor -- and trainer of people who are supposed to teach Islam in German high schools -- who has expressed his doubt that Muhammad ever lived. Islam scholar Michael Marx spoke with SPIEGEL ONLINE about what lies behind the debate and the historical person of the Prophet.
end of digest #218 20080920
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I can’t believe I stayed up for THIS!!!
(Is there something about you that you haven’t told me?)
Nope, these are it. :’) :’P
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #219
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Neandertal / Neanderthal
Neanderthals Ate Seals and Dolphins
09/22/2008 4:47:55 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 27 replies · 2+ views
Live Science | Sep 22, 2008 | Clara Moskowitz
The diet of prehistoric Neanderthals living in caves on the Rock of Gibraltar included seals and dolphins, showing once again that the hominids had skills rivaling those modern humans living then, according to a new study. The discovery of seal, dolphin and fish remains in the caves dating from 60,000 to 30,000 years ago provides the first evidence that Neanderthals ate sea mammals as well as land grub.
Let's Have Jerusalem
Biblical archaeology focus of lecture and exhibit [ Sennacherib, Tell Halif ]
09/26/2008 4:39:57 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 2 replies · 89+ views
Webster Progress Times | September 17, 2008 | from Press Reports
Dr. James W. Hardin and Dylan Karges of the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State University will present an upcoming lecture and host a reception for an exhibit of finds from excavations in southern Israel... [Hardin's] current research has focused mostly on materials from excavations at Tell Halif, a small, fortified village in the border country with Phillistia and on the northern fringe of the Negev Desert. This area was the buffer zone between the Coastal Plain and the Hill Country, which guarded the routes to Jerusalem. Excavations at Tell Halif have uncovered evidence of a major destruction that...
Khazars / Lost Tribes
Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital
09/20/2008 3:31:37 PM PDT · Posted by kronos77 · 13 replies · 2+ views
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jCPEFby_6F0YUp2G94NhXNwtf4iwD93AJSA80 ^
A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture. Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital. By law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said....
Scholar Claims to Find 1,000-Year-Old Jewish Capital
09/20/2008 9:14:49 PM PDT · Posted by Cinnamon Girl · 23 replies · 4+ views
fox news | Saturday, September 20, 2008
MOSCOW -- A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture. Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital. (edit) The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China...
Jewish city feared by Stalin is rediscovered
09/24/2008 6:02:50 PM PDT · Posted by bruinbirdman · 10 replies · 517+ views
The Telegraph | 9/24/2008 | Ben Leach
The ruins of a lost Jewish city that vanished 700 years ago have been found, it has been claimed. The city, Itil, was the capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear, leaving little trace of its culture. Archeologists hope the discovery of Itil will reveal how the Khazars actually lived It was mentioned in medieval travellers' accounts but Soviet dictator Josef Stalin banned any research into the city and the Khazars, fearing it would prove Russia was descended from a Jewish state. The city made...
Rome and Italy
Roman skeleton may give TB clues
09/21/2008 8:02:35 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 4+ views
BBC | Tuesday, September 16, 2008 | unattributed
A newly-discovered Roman skeleton could be one of the earliest British victims of tuberculosis, experts believe... The man's remains - which date from the fourth century AD - were found on a construction site at York University. The first known case of TB in Britain is from the Iron Age - but finding cases from Roman times is still rare, especially in the north. Most finds have been confined to the southern half of England. If the new case is confirmed as TB it could provide scientists with a valuable tool to trace the movement of the disease as it...
Greece
Greek dig unearths secrets of Alexander the Great's golden era
09/21/2008 7:56:59 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 3+ views
Daily Mail | September 11, 2008 | Ryan Kisiel
It would be more than 100 years at least until Alexander the Great led the forces of Macedonia to conquer the Hellenistic world... A dig in an ancient burial ground in Alexander's birthplace of Pella, northern Greece, has unearthed the graves of 20 warriors in battle dress, a find which archaeologists say sheds fresh light on the development of Macedonian culture... The warriors, whose remains have been dated to the late Archaic period, between 580BC and 460BC, were among 43 graves excavated in the latest dig, with the other bodies ranging from 650BC to 279BC... Among the excavated graves, the...
Thrace
Georgi Kitov [obit, Bulgarian archaeologist, excavator of Thracian tombs]
09/22/2008 4:01:10 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 6+ views
Telegraph | Monday, September 22, 2008 | Obituaries
Georgi Kitov, who died on September 14 aged 65, led a Bulgarian archaeological team which unearthed a hoard of treasures from ancient Thrace, said to be as important as those of Agamemnon or Tutankhamun. The Thracians were Indo-European tribes which settled the Balkans in the third millennium BC and built a civilisation that, at its height 2,400 years ago, controlled what is now Bulgaria as well as parts of Romania, Macedonia, Turkey and Greece before finally being incorporated into the Roman Empire. Little is known of their culture because they had no written language. Greek and Roman writers tended to...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Ancient genetic imprint unites the tribes of India
09/21/2008 8:11:19 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 25 replies · 6+ views
New Scientist | September 11, 2008 | Anil Ananthaswamy
The first humans to arrive on the Indian subcontinent from Africa about 65,000 years ago left a genetic imprint that can still be found in the tribes of India... "Whether the original inhabitants of India were replaced by more modern immigrants or contributed to the contemporary gene pool has been debated," says Michael Bamshad of the University of Washington in Seattle, who has studied the genetic diversity of India. One way researchers have used to figure this out is to use linguistic groups. The tribes speaking Indo-European languages, for instance, are known to be descendants of the people who migrated...
Prehistory and Origins
Tribal war drove human evolution of aggression
09/21/2008 7:47:24 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 21 replies · 1+ views
PhysOrg | September 9, 2008 | Lisa Zyga
However, as you might expect, there is a downside to belligerence and bravery. While both these traits offer advantages during war for a tribe, both traits are also considered high-risk social behaviors. An individual possessing the traits has a greater chance of dying, which means the tribe not only loses a warrior, but the death also opens a spot for another male to appropriate the first male's reproduction-enhancing resources. This trade-off leads to another question: if an individual himself does not benefit from belligerence and bravery, but only his tribe, why would humans evolve this altruistic trait? The scientists explain...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Wolves make dog's dinner out of domestication theory
09/26/2008 5:15:44 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 8 replies · 226+ views
New Scientist | September 24, 2008 | Ewen Callaway
Dogs are no better than wolves at picking up on human cues... When tasked with choosing between two paint cans based on a trainer's hand signal, tamed wolves actually proved more adept at picking the right can. This casts doubt on the idea that domestication some 15,000 years ago imbued dogs with a window into the human mind, says Clive Wynne, an animal psychologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Rather, dogs -- and tamed wolves -- probably learn to associate human arm movements with treats, play and affection. Researchers who argue for a dog "theory of mind" are...
Ancient Europe
Mysterious Neolithic People Made Optical Art
09/25/2008 5:39:23 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 31 replies · 466+ views
Discovery News | September 22, 2008 | Rossella Lorenzi
Running until the end of October at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in the Vatican, the exhibition, "Cucuteni-Trypillia: A Great Civilization of Old Europe," introduces a mysterious Neolithic people who are now believed to have forged Europe's first civilization... Archaeologists have named them "Cucuteni-Trypillians" after the villages of Cucuteni, near Lasi, Romania and Trypillia, near Kiev, Ukraine, where the first discoveries of this ancient civilization were made more than 100 years ago. The excavated treasures -- fired clay statuettes and op art-like pottery dating from 5000 to 3000 B.C. -- immediately posed a riddle to archaeologists... "Despite recent extensive excavations, no...
The Vikings
Rare Viking-era shield found in Denmark
09/21/2008 7:50:28 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 15 replies · 2+ views
Yahoo! | Thursday, September 18, 2008 | AP?
Danish archaeologists say they have found a well-preserved Viking shield that is more than 1,000 years old.
British Isles
Rare Viking ingot found[UK]
09/25/2008 7:42:12 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 16 replies · 523+ views
Luton Today | 23 Sep 2008 | Paul Fisher
An ancient solid silver ingot found in Stagsden is stealing the limelight at Bedford Museum. The Viking coin is the first of its kind discovered in the county and dates from AD 850-1000. It was found by treasure hunters in the north Bedfordshire village last year, but has only just been bought by the museum following lengthy examination and valuation at the British Museum in London. Jim Inglis, keeper of archaeology at Bedford Museum, said: "This is the only one to be found in Bedfordshire, and in terms of looking for Viking material in Bedford, which used to be a...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
UK experts say Stonehenge was place of healing
09/22/2008 12:33:00 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 25 replies · 3+ views
Associated Press | Sep 22, 2008 | Raphael G. Satter
The first excavation of Stonehenge in more than 40 years has uncovered evidence that the stone circle drew ailing pilgrims from around Europe for what they believed to be its healing properties, archaeologists said Monday.
Oh So Mysteriouso
Smithsonian Puts Mysterious Crystal Skull on Display
09/23/2008 4:04:46 PM PDT · Posted by Justice Department · 27 replies · 4+ views
foxnews | Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Some mysteries are such fun you almost don't want to know the truth. That may help explain why people are fascinated with crystal skulls. "People like to believe in something greater than themselves," Smithsonian anthropologist Jane MacLaren Walsh said, and crystal skulls are mysterious and beautiful.
Diet and Cuisine
Prehistoric Oregon latrine trove of fossil DNA
09/22/2008 2:06:38 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 30 replies · 5+ views
AP | 21 Sep 2008 | Jeff Barnard
For some 85 years, homesteaders, pot hunters and archaeologists have been digging at Paisley Caves, a string of shallow depressions washed out of an ancient lava flow by the waves of a lake that comes and goes with the changing climate. Until now, they have found nothing conclusive-arrowheads, baskets, animal bones and sandals made by people who lived thousands of years ago on the shores of what was then a 40-mile-long lake, but is now a sagebrush desert on the northern edge of the Great Basin. But a few years ago, University of Oregon archaeologist Dennis Jenkins and his students...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Updated Three-Stage Model for the Peopling of the Americas
09/21/2008 8:18:03 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 14 replies · 3+ views
Plosone.org | September 17, 2008 | CJ Mulligan, A Kitchen, MM Miyamoto
We recently published a three stage model for the peopling of the Americas [1]. Specifically, we proposed that a recent, rapid expansion into the Americas was preceded by a long period of population stability in greater Beringia by the proto-Amerind population after divergence from their ancestral Asian population... Fagundes et al. have published a re-analysis of the data we used in developing our three stage model for the peopling of the Americas [1]. Specifically, they identified nine mitochondrial coding region sequences that we assumed were Native American sequences, but instead are likely to derive from Asian or European individuals. Fagundes...
Humans Inhabited New World's Doorstep For 20,000 Years
02/14/2008 2:40:28 PM PST · Posted by tricky_k_1972 · 17 replies · 24+ views
www.terradaily.com, Gainesville FL (SPX) | Feb 14, 2008 | Staff Writers
Humans Inhabited New World's Doorstep For 20,000 Years "The idea that people were stuck in Beringia for a long time is obvious in retrospect, but it has never been promulgated. But people were in that neighborhood before the last glacial maximum and didn't get into North America until after it. It's very plausible that a bunch of them were stuck there for thousands of years." by Staff Writers...
Peru, the Andes
Rare Mass Tombs Discovered Near Machu Picchu
09/21/2008 8:06:27 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 3+ views
National Geographic News | September 15, 2008 | Jose Orozco
Eighty skeletons and stockpiles of textiles found in caves near the ancient Inca site of Machu Picchu may shed light on the role that the so-called lost city of the Inca played as a regional center of trade and power, scientists say. Researchers found the artifacts and remains at two sites within the Machu Picchu Archaeological Park in southeastern Peru, said Fernando Astete, head of the park (see map of Peru).
Climate
Ice Age Features Found at World Trade Center Site
09/24/2008 9:06:47 AM PDT · Posted by Justice Department · 41 replies · 680+ views
foxnews ^
Construction workers digging at ground zero have uncovered a 40-foot pothole and other features carved by glaciers about 20,000 years ago. Unearthing these glacial features has been critical in preparing the foundation for Tower 4 of the new World Trade Center, being built by Silverstein Properties at the southeast corner of the site. Engineers need a clear understanding of the contours of the rock....... "It's nice to look at," said Robert B. Reina, a supervising structural engineer at Mueser Rutledge, "but it's all got to go."
Paleontology
Smallest Dinosaur in North America Discovered
09/26/2008 6:48:57 AM PDT · Posted by Renfield · 10 replies · 211+ views
National Geographic News | 9-25-08 | Ker Than
A chicken-size dinosaur with a taste for termites was the "anteater" of its day and may be one of the smallest dinosaurs ever discovered in North America, scientists say. The new species, dubbed Albertonykus borealis, is a member of an unusual-looking dinosaur group known as the Alvarezsaurs, which have also been found in Asia and South America. About a dozen arm and leg bones dated at 70 million years old were found in Alberta, Canada, in 2002 but have only recently been analyzed. Bizarre Creatures "They're really freakish animals," study co-author Nick Longrich, a paleontologist at the University of Calgary...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
St. Peter's in St. Paul ('Vatican Splendors' tour comes to Minnesota)
09/25/2008 10:04:08 PM PDT · Posted by MplsSteve · 4 replies · 106+ views
Minneapolis StarTribune (aka The Red Star) | 9/26/08 | Mary Abbe - Staff Reporter
Mannequins sport the plumed helmets and gaily striped uniforms of the Vatican's Swiss Guard. There's a walk-through recreation of the scaffolding from which Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling. But beyond all the gold embroidery and bejeweled chalices, the "Vatican Splendors" show opening Saturday at the Minnesota History Center presents a sweeping 2,000-year survey of Roman Catholic Church history and ceremony, art and architecture, outreach and faith. With more than 200 objects -- from ancient relics to a modern smoke cartridge --"Vatican" tries to offer something for all of the 150,000 expected visitors. More than 20,000 have already bought tickets...
Early America
Archaeologists hold out hope of finding lost French fleet [ Jean Ribault's, 1565, Florida]
09/26/2008 4:25:26 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 157+ views
Daytona Beach News-Journal Online | September 20, 2008 | Ronald Williamson
It's an old story of a terrible storm that some believed was the hand of God. It scattered and sank a French fleet led by Jean Ribault as it bore down on a handful of Spanish ships sheltering with Pedro Menendez in a harbor at today's St. Augustine. Hundreds of Frenchmen, mostly Protestants, died either in the tempest, or of starvation and exposure, or at the hands of Catholic Spaniards who hunted down survivors in a bloody autumn genocide. Despite the passing of 443 years, archaeologists say the remains of those galleons still lie beneath the sand and water, a...
Civil War
The Washington Post Slams Civil War History
09/22/2008 5:45:30 AM PDT · Posted by Mobile Vulgus · 32 replies · 3+ views
publiusforum.com | 09/22/08 | Warner Todd Huston
Washington Post Writer Philip Kennicott sees all the worst in America at the reopening of the famous Gettysburg Cyclorama. Talk about a skewed look at history. On September 20, the Washington Post's Philip Kennicott unleashed a tirade against everything Civil War in a story that was supposed to be about the re-opening of the revamped Cyclorama painting in the America's quintessential Civil War town, Gettysburg, PA. Not only did Kennicott denigrate in every way possible the over 100-year-old painting in the round of the battle of Gettysburg -- it's a mere "relic" that doesn't live up to its hype he...
A Candid Topic
Photography and archaeology: Going back in time
09/24/2008 8:25:21 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 82+ views
Sunday Times, Sri Lanka | Sunday, September 21, 2008 | unattributed
Most historians consider 1839 as the year of the birth of photography. Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre's innovative method of image-making was placed before the French Academy of Sciences in the same year. The words ethnography and anthropology were also coined around the same time. It also signalled the beginnings of archaeology in a professional sense. The potential of using photography as a recording tool in the service of archaeology, engineering, medicine, science and technology was quickly appreciated. As early as 1840, Alexander Gordon lectured to the Institute of Civil Engineers on the advantages to the profession resulting from the discovery...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Gem stone discovered could be world's largest diamond
09/22/2008 8:43:36 AM PDT · Posted by Red Badger · 24 replies · 1+ views
www.telegraph.co.uk | 09/22/2008 | Staff
A huge gem stone which could become the largest polished round diamond in history has been discovered. Miners in Lesotho have discovered a huge gem stone which could become the largest polished round diamond in history Photo: PA The massive stone is the 20th largest rough diamond ever found, weighs 478 carats and is of outstanding clarity, said Gem Diamonds. It was recovered at the Letseng Mine, owned by the company, in Lesotho earlier this week. Another similar sized rough stone from the same mine was recently valued at 12 million US dollars. But the clarity and round shape of...
end of digest #219 20080927
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· Saturday, September 27, 2008 · 27 topics · 2091458 to 2086908 · 688 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 219th issue. It's the 27th, and we have 27 topics. A public welcome to all new members to the list. FR appears to have weathered the storm, in this case a system malfunction. So far, so good. |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #220
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Rome and Italy
New Life Found In Ancient Tombs [ Catacombs of Saint Callistus in Rome ]
10/04/2008 5:35:06 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 1 replies · 32+ views
ScienceDaily | September 24, 2008 | Society for General Microbiology, via EurekAlert!
The two new species of bacteria found growing on the walls of the Roman tombs may help protect our cultural heritage monuments, according to research... The Catacombs of Saint Callistus are part of a massive graveyard that covers 15 hectares [37 acres], equivalent to more than 20 football pitches. The underground tombs were built at the end of the 2nd Century AD and were named after Pope Saint Callistus I. More than 30 popes and martyrs are buried in the catacombs. "Bacteria can grow on the walls of these underground tombs and often cause damage," said Professor Dr Clara Urzì...
Diet and Cuisine
Fish Sauce Used to Date Pompeii Eruption [ garum / liquamen]
09/30/2008 4:30:31 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 15 replies · 353+ views
Discovery News | Monday, September 29, 2008 | Rossella Lorenzi
Remains of rotten fish entrails have helped establish the precise dating of Pompeii's destruction, according to Italian researchers who have analyzed the town's last batch of garum, a pungent, fish-based seasoning. Frozen in time by the catastrophic eruption that covered Pompeii and nearby towns nearly 2,000 years ago with nine to 20 feet of hot ash and pumice, the desiccated remains were found at the bottom of seven jars. The find revealed that the last Pompeian garum was made entirely with bogues (known as boops boops), a Mediterranean fish species that abounded in the area in the summer months of...
Phoenicians
Port of 'second Carthage' found [ Tharros / Sardinia ]
10/01/2008 3:29:40 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 172+ views
ANSA.it | September 25, 2008 | unattributed
Archaeologists in Sardinia said Thursday they have found the port of the Phoenician city of Tharros, held by some to be the ancient people's most important colony in the Mediterranean after Carthage. Researchers from the University of Cagliari and Sassari found the submerged port in the Mistras Lagoon, several kilometres from the city ruins. Excavations have long been going on at the site of the city itself, on a peninsula overlooking the Bay of Oristano in western Sardinia, but this is the first time its waterfront has been located despite almost two centuries of hunting. As well as an impressive...
Greece
'The Odyssey' and 'The Iliad' are giving up new secrets about the ancient world
10/03/2008 11:34:06 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 22 replies · 530+ views
Boston Globe | September 28, 2008 | Jonathan Gottschall
In his influential book, "Troy and Homer," German classicist Joachim Latacz argues that the identification of Hisarlik as the site of Homer's Troy is all but proven. Latacz's case is based not only on archeology, but also on fascinating reassessments of cuneiform tablets from the Hittite imperial archives. The tablets, which are dated to the period when the Late Bronze Age city at Hisarlik was destroyed, tell a story of a western people harassing a Hittite client state on the coast of Asia Minor. The Hittite name for the invading foreigners is very close to Homer's name for his Greeks...
Ancient Europe
[3000 year old] Rare knife uncovered from ancient Swedish tomb [5000 years old]
10/01/2008 3:26:01 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 436+ views
The Local: Sweden's news in English | September 26, 2008 | David Landes
Swedish archaeologists have been captivated by a Bronze Age knife which was uncovered along with other artifacts from an excavation site near Falbygden in central Sweden. The knife was discovered at the Firse Sten tomb in Falkoping and is in remarkably good condition, despite having been buried for thousands of years. "It's a knife blade which ends in a handle that looks like the throat and head of a horse," said antiques expert Peter Jankavs from Falbygdens museum to Sveriges Radio. The knife was found near the entrance to a 5,000-year-old tomb, although the knife itself is thought to be...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
A Wolf's Dark Pelt Is A Gift From The Dogs
10/01/2008 3:32:53 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 13 replies · 289+ views
New Scientist | September 29, 2008 | Peter Aldhous
They may not be man's best friend, but wolves in North America do have a little dog in them. Geneticists investigating the relationships between members of the dog family have found that wolves with black pelts owe their distinctive coloration to a mutation that first arose in domestic dogs. Domestic dogs were bred from the grey wolf Canis lupus, but exactly when and where that domestication took place, and how various modern breeds of dog relate to wolves, has been a matter of debate. Now Robert Wayne at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues are revealing these...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Prehistoric Giant Goose Skull Found
09/27/2008 4:48:11 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 33 replies · 563+ views
LiveScience | September 26, 2008 | Andrea Thompson
Scientists have found a new huge and well-preserved fossil of a goose and duck relative that swam around what is now England 50 million years ago flashing sharp, toothy smiles. The skull, discovered on the Isle of Sheppey off the southeast coast of England in the Thames Estuary, belonged to a huge ancient bird in the extinct genus Dasornis, which had a whopping 16-foot (5-meter) wingspan... Scientists had found fossils of other bony-toothed birds, or pelagornithids, in deposits called the London Clay, which underlies much of London, Essex and northern Kent in the southeast of England. This new fossil, from...
Climate
The Green Sahara, A Desert In Bloom
10/03/2008 11:55:57 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 37 replies · 402+ views
Science News, ScienceDaily | September 30, 2008 | Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet zu Kiel
Reconstructing the climate of the past is an important tool for scientists to better understand and predict future climate changes that are the result of the present-day global warming. Although there is still little known about the Earth's tropical and subtropical regions, these regions are thought to play an important role in both the evolution of prehistoric man and global climate changes. New North African climate reconstructions reveal three 'green Sahara' episodes during which the present-day Sahara Desert was almost completely covered with extensive grasslands, lakes and ponds over the course of the last 120.000 years. The findings of Dr....
Paper Tiger
Real or Fake? The Frightening Creatures of '10,000 BC'
10/02/2008 4:11:11 PM PDT · Posted by Justice Department · 21 replies · 637+ views
foxnews
In the film "10,000 BC," a band of hunters venture on an epic quest, overcoming prehistoric monsters to end up at a land of gods and pyramids. The fantastic creatures depicted in the movie -- from the giant carnivorous birds to saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths -- actually once existed. The most famous of the saber-toothed cats was Smilodon, a group of predators often dubbed saber-toothed tigers, although they were not actually close relatives of the modern tiger. Ironically, Smilodon was recently found to have had a relatively weak bite.
Neandertal / Neanderthal
Why your boss is white, middle-class and a show-off
10/03/2008 10:30:53 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 26 replies · 659+ views
University of New South Wales | Oct 3, 2008 | Unknown
The way male managers power dress, posture and exercise power is due to humans' evolutionary biology, according to research from the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Prehistoric behaviours, such as male domination, protecting what is perceived as their "turf" and ostracising those who do not agree with the group is more commonplace in everyday work situations than many of us want to accept, according to the research which was carried out in hospitals. "This tribal culture is similar to what we would have seen in hunter gather bands on the savannah in southern Africa," says the author of the...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Polygamy left its mark on the human genome
10/03/2008 11:45:01 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 42 replies · 543+ views
New Scientist | September 26, 2008 | Ewen Callaway
Throughout human history, relatively few men seem to have had a greater input into the gene pool than the rest, suggests a study of variations in DNA. Tens of thousands of years of polygamy has left a mark on our genomes that is a signature that small numbers of males must have mated with lots of females. Over time, such a pattern will spawn more genetic differences on the X chromosome than other chromosomes. This is because women have two copies of the X, while men only one. In other words, the diversity arises because some men don't get to...
The Wide, Wild World of Genetic Testing
09/14/2006 10:11:28 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 4 replies · 282+ views
NY Times | September 12, 2006 | ANDREW POLLACK
A medical journal in March published a study suggesting that drinking coffee can raise the risk of heart attack, but only for people with a gene that makes them slow metabolizers of caffeine. Experts called the finding intriguing, but said it needed to be validated by others and its health implications better understood. Still, Consumer Genetics, a company formed only a month earlier, is already advertising a genetic test that purports to tell consumers whether they can continue to enjoy their morning jolt. That is how fast things can move in the rapidly expanding, chaotic and largely unregulated world of...
Genghis Khan
How I am related to Genghis Khan
05/29/2006 3:32:15 PM PDT · Posted by MadIvan · 45 replies · 1,690+ views
The Times | May 30, 2006 | Mark Henderson
A US accountant has proof that he is descended from the Mongol warlord -- They seem the unlikeliest of relatives. One was a fearsome warlord whose name became a byword for savagery. The other is a mild-mannered accountancy academic from Florida. Yet Tom Robinson, 48, has become the first man outside Asia to trace his ancestry directly to Genghis Khan, the 13th-century Mongol leader whose empire stretched from the South China Sea to the Persian Gulf. And, since his paternal great-great-grandfather emigrated to the United States from Windermere, Cumbria, many more descendants are probably scattered across the Lake District. Genetic tests have...
Beijing Shopgirl Could Be Descendant Of Confucius
06/19/2006 5:51:27 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 27 replies · 13,096+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 6-20-2006 | Richard Spencer
Kong Tao is a 24-year-old sales assistant from a humble village background in eastern China, living in Beijing. But popular belief has it that she is a descendant of Confucius, the Great Sage. Now Miss Kong, with three million other people worldwide, may be able to find out whether her claim to fame is well-merited, or whether she can return to obscurity. The Chinese Academy of Science has said it is willing to offer DNA tests to anyone claiming Confucius as an ancestor. Since Confucius's proper...
Genghis Khan, Law Giver, Free Trader And Diplomat, Is Back With A New Image
07/10/2006 6:44:22 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 20 replies · 555+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 7-11-2006 | Richard Spencer - Ulan Bator
The Mongolian capital has been swamped with images of its former potentate, Genghis Khan, in honour of the anniversary of his unification of the nation in 1206. At the climax of celebrations in Ulan Bator yesterday, soldiers in traditional uniform and bearing yaks' tail standards heralded the unveiling of an enormous statue of the Great Khan in the main Sukhbaatar Square. The monument in which it is set contains earth and stones from the holy and historic places in Mongolia associated with his rule... Genghis has always had his cultish admirers, those on the remote steppe who believe that he will return 800 years after his death to rescue the world from decay. But the reverence in which he is held by mainstream Mongolians comes as a shock to visitors from the West, where his name is associated with bloodshed and terror...
Let's Have Jerusalem
'Jesus was a Palestinian,' claims U.S. history text
10/03/2008 5:09:03 AM PDT · Posted by Sopater · 57 replies · 812+ views
World Net Daily | October 03, 2008 | Bob Unruh
A new study reveals that if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to criticize the nation of Israel before the United Nations, he could use American public school textbooks to do so. "It is shocking to find the kind of misinformation we discovered in American textbooks and supplemental materials being used by schools in every state in the country," said Dr. Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research and a co-author of the study. "Elected officials at every level should investigate how these offensive passages are creeping into our textbooks. Presenting false information in the classroom undermines...
Faith and Philosophy
Massacre of Drogheda under Oliver Cromwell (Lessons for Victory in Iraq?)
11/14/2006 8:32:32 AM PST · Posted by xzins · 105 replies · 2,400+ views
Christian History Institute | Christian History Institute
After the massacre, Oliver Cromwell declared to the English Parliament, "I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbued their hands in so much innocent blood and that it will tend to prevent the effusion [shedding] of blood for the future, which are satisfactory grounds for such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret." Oliver Cromwell, responsible for a massacre. Just what happened at Drogheda, Ireland on this day, September 11, 1649 is hard to...
British Isles
Britons Dedicate Renovated Franklin Home
01/17/2006 5:16:05 PM PST · Posted by Pharmboy · 53 replies · 701+ views
Forbes/Associated Press | 01.17.2006 | Jill Lawless
The U.S. founding father lived in the British capital for almost two decades before the American Revolution, working to bridge the widening gap between the colonies and the crown. After decades of neglect and a $5.3 million restoration, his house was unveiled to the public Tuesday as a museum dedicated to a revolutionary who spent years trying to keep Britain and its American colonies united. "He wasn't very successful, but he sowed the seeds of the Anglo-American special relationship," said Marcia Balisciano, director of the Benjamin Franklin House museum. U.S. Ambassador Robert H. Tuttle and Foreign Secretary...
Ancient Autopsies
Ancient Egyptian Skulls Dug Out of English Garden
10/03/2008 12:57:07 PM PDT · Posted by Justice Department · 27 replies · 658+ views
foxnews | September 30, 2008
Two ancient Egyptian skulls unearthed in a yard in England have been returned to their native country. And the mystery of how they got from the hot sands of Egypt to the rainy north of England has been solved, investigators said Tuesday. The first skull was discovered by homeowner Matthew McClelland as he did some gardening at his home in the northern city of Manchester a year ago. He called authorities, and they discovered a second skull. An analysis by an Oxford University expert confirmed the skulls were a little more than 2,000 years old.
Epigraphy and Language
Former PM's face seen in 2,000-year-old coin[UK][Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher]
10/02/2008 7:12:32 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 28 replies · 1,020+ views
Grantham Journal | 02 Oct 2008 | Grantham Journal
An Iron Age coin depicting a warrior leader bearing an uncanny likeness to Grantham-born former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has been found just a few miles from her birth place. Metal detectorist David Baker was searching a muddy field near Grantham when he uncovered the 2,000-year-old silver coin. On one side was the head of a tribal leader or goddess that looked just like Margaret Thatcher. On its reverse was a celtic armed war horse - imagery associated with Lady Thatcher during her 1980s pomp. David, 40, said: "I'd gone out detecting for the day to get...
The Vikings
'Viking mouse' invasion tracked
10/01/2008 7:06:42 PM PDT · Posted by Justice Department · 20 replies · 317+ views
bbc.co.uk | 1 October 2008
Scientists say that studying the genes of mice will reveal new information about patterns of human migration. They say the rodents have often been fellow travellers when populations set off in search of new places to live - and the details can be recovered. A paper published in a Royal Society journal analyses the genetic make-up of house mice from more than 100 locations across the UK. It shows that one distinct strain most probably arrived with the Vikings.
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Yard work yields archaeological finds for Seguin man
10/01/2008 3:19:43 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 363+ views
Houston Chronicle | Sunday, September 28, 2008 | Roger Croteau (San Antonio Express-News)
One day this past June, Floyd McKee hauled a load of topsoil from near the bank of the Guadalupe River, on which his property sits, and dumped it on the grass in his yard. "It rained that night, and when I went out in the morning, the yard was covered with spear points," he said. "I got more dirt and sifted it and found a dozen more." Surprised, McKee contacted local archaeologists Bob Everett and Richard Kinz, both of whom soon declared that McKee's property, near Starcke Park, was among the richest Paleo-Indian archaeological finds they had ever seen. On...
Prehistory and Origins
Team finds Earth's 'oldest rocks'
10/01/2008 3:41:44 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 28 replies · 292+ views
BBC | Friday, September 26, 2008 | James Morgan
Earth's most ancient rocks, with an age of 4.28 billion years, have been found on the shore of Hudson Bay, Canada. Writing in Science journal, a team reports finding that a sample of Nuvvuagittuq greenstone is 250 million years older than any rocks known. It may even hold evidence of activity by ancient life forms. If so, it would be the earliest evidence of life on Earth - but co-author Don Francis cautioned that this had not been established... "Now we have pushed the Earth's crust back by hundreds of millions of years. That's why everyone is so excited." ......
Paleontology
Meat-eating Dinosaur From Argentina Had Bird-like Breathing System
09/30/2008 9:49:28 AM PDT · Posted by Soliton · 20 replies · 388+ views
Science Daily | Sep. 30, 2008
The remains of a 30-foot-long predatory dinosaur discovered along the banks of Argentina's Rio Colorado is helping to unravel how birds evolved their unusual breathing system. University of Michigan paleontologist Jeffrey Wilson was part of the team that made the discovery, to be published Sept. 29 in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE and announced at a news conference in Mendoza, Argentina. The discovery of this dinosaur builds on decades of paleontological research indicating that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Birds have a breathing system that is unique among land animals. Instead of lungs that expand, birds have a...
Cretaceous Chicken: Bus-Sized Dinosaur Breathed Like Birds Do
09/30/2008 3:08:33 PM PDT · Posted by Justice Department · 32 replies · 424+ views
foxnews | September 30, 2008
Dinosaur that lived 85 million years ago was size of a bus, but breathed like a bird A huge carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 85 million years ago had a breathing system much like that of today's birds, a new analysis of fossils reveals, reinforcing the evolutionary link between dinos and modern birds.
Pages
What Are You Reading Now? - My Quarterly Survey of Freeper Reading Habits
09/29/2008 7:19:37 AM PDT · Posted by MplsSteve · 236 replies · 1,332+ views 9/29/08 | MplsSteve
It's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" thread! It can be anything...a NY Times bestseller, a technical journal, a trashy pulp novel...in short, anything! DO NOT answer by saying "I'm Reading This Thread". It stopped being funny a long time ago. Here's what I'm reading. I'm just about finished with "Blockaders, Refugees & Contrabands: Civil War on Florida's Gulf Coast 1861-1865." It's a very interesting book about how the US Navy was able to turn a substantial portion of Florida's Gulf Coast population against the Confederacy, creating a civil war within that part of Florida. So...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Forbidden Archeology: Human Giants Then And Now
09/28/2008 1:27:28 PM PDT · Posted by Justice Department · 133 replies · 2,200+ views Vanity
Almost every form of life that has existed on earth appears to have gone through a "giant' phase. There have been giant plants, giant insects, giant reptiles, giant birds, giant fish, giant mammals and giant humans.
Oh So Mysteriouso
English Crop Circle's Mysterious Pattern Solved
10/04/2008 9:41:56 AM PDT · Posted by Justice Department · 63 replies · 1,222+ views
foxnews
Another crop circle has appeared in the English countryside -- and this one's clearly been made by someone, or something, that understands math.
Early America
RFK Jr. writes book on slave-era hero (An uncomfortable detail is not mentioned by MSNBC)
10/02/2008 2:05:06 AM PDT · Posted by Colonel Kangaroo · 2 replies · 854+ views
MSNBC | 10-1-2008 | Today Books
In his new children's book, Kennedy shares the story of Robert Smalls On a moonlit night in the spring of 1862, six slaves stole one of the Confederacy's most crucial gunships from its wharf in the South Carolina port of Charleston and delivered it to the Federal Navy. This audacious and intricately coordinated escape, masterminded by a 24-year-old sailor named Robert Smalls, astonished the world and exploded the Confederate claim that Southern slaves did not crave freedom or have the ability to take decisive action. In his new children's book, Robert F. Kennedy recounts the story of Robert Smalls, who...
Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
Colonial clue to the rise of HIV
10/01/2008 5:53:13 PM PDT · Posted by Lorianne · 29 replies · 610+ views
BBC | 1 October 2008
The arrival of colonial cities in sub-Saharan Africa at the dawn of the 20th Century may have sparked the spread of HIV. US experts analysed one of the earliest samples of the virus ever found, in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1959. The study, published in the journal Nature, suggests the virus may have crossed from apes to humans between 1884 and 1924. They believe newly-built cities may have allowed the virus to thrive. Aids, the illness caused by HIV, was first reported by doctors in 1981, but the virus had been around for many decades before that. Scientists...
Revenge of the AV Club
1908 Audio of Presidential Election Oddly Similar to 2008
10/03/2008 2:40:39 PM PDT · Posted by Crimson Elephant · 1 replies · 328+ views
Science News
1908 Audio Recordings of the Presidential Race
World War Eleven
Washington Post Claims McCain Wildly Exaggerated D-Day, says Soviets better
09/28/2008 12:40:20 PM PDT · Posted by meandog · 82 replies · 1,638+ views
washington post | 9.28.08 | Michael Dobbs
John McCain kicked the evening off with a wild exaggeration by describing the allied invasion of Normandy as "the greatest invasion" in history. Such historical comparisons are always dangerous. In scale, the D-Day landings were far exceeded by Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, in June 1941, and the Soviet invasion of Germany at the end of World War II.
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Sex, food, armadillos dominate 2008 Ig Nobel Awards: offbeat but useful scientific discoveries
10/03/2008 7:38:56 AM PDT · Posted by Justice Department · 15 replies · 355+ views
foxnews | October 03, 2008
PHYSICS: Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith for proving that heaps of string or hair will inevitably tangle. CHEMISTRY: Sheree Umpierre, Joseph Hill and Deborah Anderson for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and C.Y. Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu and B.N. Chiang for proving it is not. ARCHAEOLOGY: Astolfo Gomes de Mello Araujo and Jose Carlos Marcelino for showing armadillos can scramble the contents of an archaeological dig. BIOLOGY: Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert and Michel Franc for discovering that fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than fleas that live on a cat. MEDICINE: Dan Ariely for...
end of digest #220 20081004
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