Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #81
Saturday, February 4, 2006
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Ancient Greece
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Greek Shipwreck from 350 BC Revealed
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Posted by NormsRevenge
On General/Chat 02/02/2006 3:53:32 PM PST · 18 replies · 183+ views
LiveScience.com on yahoo | 2/2/06 | Ker Than
The remains of an ancient Greek cargo ship that sank more than 2,300 years ago have been uncovered with a deep-sea robot, archaeologists announced today. The ship was carrying hundreds of ceramic jars of wine and olive oil and went down off Chios and the Oinoussai islands in the eastern Aegean Sea sometime around 350 B.C. Archeologists speculate that a fire or rough weather may have sunk the ship. The wreckage was found submerged beneath 200 feet (60 meters) of water. The researchers hope that the shipwreck will provide clues about the trade network that existed between the ancient Greek...
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Deep-Sea Robot Photographs Ancient Greek Shipwreck
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/03/2006 2:51:12 PM PST · 14 replies · 717+ views
MIT | 2-3-2006 | MIT
Deep-sea robot photographs ancient Greek shipwreck Deborah Halber, News Office Correspondent February 2, 2006Image © / Chios 2005 Shipwreck Survey -- WHOI, Hellenic Ministry of Culture: Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, Hellenic Center for Marine ResearchThis image shows a sample of the data collected by the SeaBed autonomous underwater vehicle as it swam over the Chios shipwreck in July 2005. The 3-D color mesh represents a topographic map of the sea floor, created using data collected by multibeam sonar. The brown strip shows the area captured in digital images, which were used to create the photomosaic of the wreck. Sometime in...
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Ancient Navigation
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Syracusia [Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia]
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/28/2006 8:46:55 PM PST · 9 replies · 142+ views
Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia | prior to 2006 | Houghton Mifflin
One of the most complete descriptions of a ship from antiquity is that described by the Greek writer Athenaeus. Writing in the second century ce, but basing his account on more contemporary descriptions (now lost), he described a huge grain ship built by Hieron II, king of Syracuse from 269 to 215 bce. Lionel Casson considers this to be the largest ship built in antiquity... There were cabins for 142 first-class passengers on the second deck in addition to accommodations for steerage, the lower deck being reserved for cargo and the upper deck for soldiers, said to number 400. The...
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Underwater Archaeology
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A Sunken Warship Sets Off a New Mediterranean Battle
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Posted by aculeus
On News/Activism 01/28/2006 2:16:25 PM PST · 12 replies · 778+ views
The New York Times | January 28, 2006 | By WILLIAM J. BROAD
What is probably the world's richest sunken treasure -- the Sussex, a British warship that went to the bottom of the Mediterranean in 1694 with a cargo of coins now worth up to $4 billion -- has become embroiled in a bitter diplomatic dispute that pits Spain against Britain, the United States and an American company that wants to salvage the wreck. The conflict turns on arcane and often disputed aspects of international law that govern sovereign waters and the rights of shipwreck owners and finders. Spain claims the waters, off the coast of Gibraltar. Britain claims the ship, says...
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Epigraphy and Language
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New Mexico's Mystery Stone
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Posted by Muleteam1
On News/Activism 01/09/2006 6:45:23 PM PST · 108 replies · 3,282+ views
New Mexico State Land Office website | Unknown | New Mexico State Land Office
It is a mystery in the desert hills near Los Lunas, New Mexico. It has puzzled experts for more than 50 years. It has been referred to by many different names -- Ten Commandments Rock, Mystery Rock, The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone. It is most commonly known as the Mystery Stone. Mystery Stone is located at the base of Hidden Mountain, on New Mexico state trust land, about 16 miles west of Los Lunas. It is a boulder weighing an estimated 80 to 100 tons and is about eight meters in length. Nine rows of 216 characters were chiseled at...
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Ancient Egypt
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Ancient Egyptian royal head puzzles archaeologists
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/30/2006 11:36:54 PM PST · 2 replies · 34+ views
Mail&Guardian online | 30 January 2006 | Sapa-dpa
The Sakhmet statues, which date to the New Kingdom's 18th dynasty (circa 1533 to 1292 BC), hail from the same period as most of the finds in the area. The head, believed to date to the 25th dynasty (circa 760 to 656 BC) that is characterised by its Nubian features, seems out of place, however.
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The Sarcophagus Of Mycerinus
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/29/2006 8:18:20 PM PST · 9 replies · 111+ views
Skoob Occult Review #2 | 1990 | Frater Choronzon
From lengthy searches in the Lloyd's marine loss books for the period it seems most likely that the sarcophagus was loaded on board 'The Beatrice', a relatively small vessel, at Alexandria, bound for London via Malta. She got to Malta OK, but after departing from there on 14th October 1838 she was "never heard of again", as Lloyd's List so succinctly puts it. This may not be true. There is a barely legible pencil margin note in a surviving copy of Vyse's account (not the one in the British Library) which records fishermen reporting that wreckage identifying the vessel had...
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Tutankhamen Died of Gangrene
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Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 05/12/2005 12:25:42 AM PDT · 14 replies · 585+ views
Middle East Times | May 11, 2005
CAIRO -- Egyptian scientists claim that they have finally lifted the veil of mystery surrounding famed Pharaoh Tutankhamen's death, saying that he died of a swift attack of gangrene after breaking his leg. "After consultations with Italian and Swiss experts Egyptian scientists ... have found that a fracture in the boy king's left leg a day before his death was infected with gangrene and led to his passing," Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said. "The fracture was not sustained during the mummification process or as a result of some damage to the mummy as claimed by [British archaeologist Howard] Carter,"...
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Demonstrators say King Tut exhibit depicts wrong skin color
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Posted by Rebelbase
On News/Activism 12/18/2005 12:08:30 PM PST · 133 replies · 2,634+ views
centredaily.com | Dec. 17, 2005 | MACOLLVIE JEAN-FRANCOIS
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A "King Tut is back and he's still black" placard drew the gaze of visitors making their way to view the acclaimed exhibit at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale Saturday. Across from the entrance, about 25 demonstrators donning T-shirts marked with various pro-black slogans held up the placards. Waving the red, black and green African flag, at times moving to the beat of djembe drums on the sidewalk, they asked drivers in passing cars to honk in support of their goal: reminding people not to take the lighter-skinned portrait of King Tutankhamun on display...
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King Tut slain by sword in the knee
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 02/04/2006 8:27:21 AM PST · 2 replies · 9+ views
Gruppo Ansa | February 4, 2006
The group found traces of gold leaf bearing animal symbols in the late pharaoah's right kneecap, leading them to surmise that it had fallen off Tutankhamun's raiments and lodged in a hole during mummification. The hole in question appears to have been caused by a sword, they say.
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Anatolia
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Anatolian tree-ring studies are untrustworthy
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 02/03/2006 8:59:13 AM PST · 16 replies · 165+ views
The Limehouse Cut | 30 October 2005 | Douglas J. Keenan
The approach that was adopted for Anatolia, however, was to rely largely on what is called a "D-score". The D-score does not exist in statistics. It has been used solely with tree rings. D-scores do not have a mathematical derivation -- unlike t-scores, g-scores, and times series. In fact, D-scores were more or less just made up (in an unpublished 1987 thesis), and using them to evaluate a tree-ring match turns out to be little better than rolling dice... The most important of those dates was perhaps for wood from a shipwreck, which was claimed to resolve some of the...
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Ancient Europe
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Neanderthals: Top-Notch Hunters
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/02/2006 11:47:20 AM PST · 44 replies · 920+ views
Discovery News | 2-1-2006 | Rossella Lorenzi
Neanderthals: Top-Notch Hunters By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery NewsNeanderthal And Modern Humans Feb. 1, 2006 -- Neanderthals did not disappear because modern humans were better hunters and thus out-competed them for resources, according to U.S. and Israeli anthropologists. On the contrary, they were top predators who knew how to hunt the biggest and fastest of the animals. Neanderthals went extinct about 30,000 years ago, after having inhabited Europe and parts of Asia for roughly 200,000 years. The reason for their demise has been long debated and frequently attributed to modern humans' greater intelligence and consequently greater hunting skills. However, evidence from animal...
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Asia
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7000 Year-Old Sacrificial Altar Found In Hunan
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/29/2006 2:23:12 PM PST · 36 replies · 734+ views
Xinhuanet/China View | 1-29-2006
7000 year-old sacrificial altar found in Hunan www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-29 11:23:54 BEIJING, Jan. 29 (Xinhuanet) -- A sacrificial altar, dating back about 7,000 years, has been discovered in central China's Hunan Province, according to Chinese archaeologists. The altar is the earliest sacrificial site so far found in China, said He Gang, a researcher with the Hunan Institute of Archaeology. "Ancients prayed to the gods of nature, such as the gods of the earth, river and heaven," said He at a archaeological forum held by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences recently in Beijing. Archaeologists have found China's oldest white pottery specimens...
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Origins Of The Ainu
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/02/2006 4:16:59 PM PST · 54 replies · 1,049+ views
Nova/PBS | 2-2-2006 | Gary Crawford
A map of Japan showing the fateful site of Sakushukotoni-gawa on Hokkaido. Origins of the Ainu by Gary Crawford The ringing telephone broke the evening silence. It was the fall of 1983, and my research partner, Professor Masakazu Yoshizaki, was calling from Japan. "Gary, I have some news," Yoshi said. "We have a few grains of barley from a site on the Hokkaido University campus. I think you should come and look at them." The Japanese language is notorious for its ambiguity, so I wasn't quite sure of the full meaning of what I had just heard. But I didn't...
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China map lays claim to Americas
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Posted by West Coast Conservative
On News/Activism 01/13/2006 10:31:34 AM PST · 115 replies · 2,139+ views
BBC News | January 13, 2006
A map due to be unveiled in Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher Columbus. The map, which shows North and South America, apparently states that it is a 1763 copy of another map made in 1418. If true, it could imply Chinese mariners discovered and mapped America decades before Columbus' 1492 arrival. The map, which is being dated to check it was made in 1763, faces a lot of scepticism from experts. Chinese characters written beside the map say it was drawn by Mo Yi Tong and copied...
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Australia and the Pacific
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Ancient Find (30K Year-Old Village, Australia)
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Posted by blam
On General/Chat 02/01/2006 10:48:50 AM PST · 13 replies · 208+ views
The Standard | 2-1-2006 | Liz McKinnon
ANCIENT FIND By LIZ McKINNON February 1, 2006 Damein Bell stands in the remains of an ancient stone house uncovered by a bushfire at Tyrendarra. Picture: LEANNE PICKETT THE bushfire at Tyrendarra last month has unearthed some of the biggest Aboriginal stone houses ever seen in Gunditjmara land. Undocumented sites have been uncovered including a village thought to be 30,000 years old. The Winda-Mara Aboriginal Co-operative made the discovery yesterday during an analysis of its Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected Area. On January 22 fire burnt 240 hectares, blackening 90 per cent of the property's rocky outcrop on the Mt Eccles lava...
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Ancient Rome
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Roman-Era Benefactors' Tomb Unearthed
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Posted by NormsRevenge
On General/Chat 02/01/2006 6:33:25 PM PST · 15 replies · 111+ views
AP on Yahoo | 2/1/06 | Nicholas Paphitis - ap
ATHENS, Greece - A well-preserved underground tomb belonging to a prominent Roman-era family has been unearthed on the island of Crete, archaeologists said Wednesday. The large first or second century A.D. structure beside one of the main gates to the walled city of Aptera was looted during Christian times, archaeologist Vanna Niniou-Kindeli said. It still yielded a wealth of finds, including 10-inch pottery statuettes of the ancient Greek love deity Eros, glass and pottery vases and lamps. Built of large stone blocks, the grave is reached by a flight of steps. It has an antechamber and a main room measuring...
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Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
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Buried Warrior, Warrior Found Buried In Attack Position
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/29/2006 9:54:37 PM PST · 11 replies · 229+ views
Discovery News | Jan. 27, 2006 | Jennifer Viegas
Archaeologists have unearthed a 3,000-year-old skeleton of a man who appears to be clutching a dagger and is posed as though he were about to thrust the weapon into something, or someone, according to a Cultural Heritage News report from Iran... Gohar Tepe is located in northeastern Iran near the town of Behshahr and the Caspian Sea. "Beside the skeleton, a number of dishes have also been found which seem to have been presented to the warrior," Mahforuzi said. "One of the dishes has some holes in it containing the remains of coal. "Archaeologists had discovered such dishes before, but...
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Mediterranean
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Charting The Past: Surveys Map Two Lost Harbors Of Phoenicia
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Posted by blam
On General/Chat 01/31/2006 12:01:24 PM PST · 5 replies · 83+ views
Science News Online | 1-28-2006 | Sid Perkins
Charting the Past: Surveys map two lost harbors of Phoenicia Sid Perkins By analyzing long tubes of sediment drilled from locations in and around the Mediterranean ports of Tyre and Sidon, scientists have discovered the locations of the harbors from which legions of ancient Phoenician mariners set sail. Tyre and Sidon, located in what is now Lebanon, were the two most important city-states of Phoenicia, a trading empire founded more than 3,000 years ago. Although archaeologists knew much about the two cities and Phoenician civilization, they have long debated the sizes and locations of the ancient harbors, says Christophe Morhange,...
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India
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Questions on Ancient India, Gupta Civilization (Vanity)
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Posted by DeuceTraveler
On General/Chat 02/01/2006 4:22:13 AM PST · 43 replies · 302+ views
I just thought I'd throw this question out for the history fans to see what they think. I've been asked to research the military and cultural aspects of India's ancient Gupta civilization. I have to publish an article for a magazine on the subject, but am living in Germany and my personal library consists of American, European and Japanese historical works. I have hardly anything on India and have been searching the internet for factual information. Besides an English translation of the Siva-Dhanur-Veda, I have not found anything of historical quality. Most of what I've seen focuses on some post-Modernist...
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India Cultivated Homegrown Farmers
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/31/2006 11:42:30 AM PST · 10 replies · 195+ views
Science News Online | 1-28-2006 | Bruce Bower
India cultivated homegrown farmers Bruce Bower Approximately 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers living in what's now India adapted agricultural practices for their own purposes rather than giving way to an influx of foreign farmers, a new genetic study suggests. Y SPREAD. Maps of India and surrounding regions denote where a Y chromosome marker occurs more frequently (dark green) and less frequently (light green) in caste populations (larger map) and tribal groups (inset). Kashyap/PNAS Comparisons of men's Y chromosomes show that nearly all Indian men today, regardless of their tribe or caste, are descendants of populations that inhabited South Asia before agriculture's...
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Let's Have Jerusalem
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Boys discover intact Second Temple burial cave
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Posted by SmithL
On General/Chat 01/30/2006 8:02:48 AM PST · 14 replies · 269+ views
Jerusalem Post | 1/30/6 | ETGAR LEFKOVITS
In a scene out of the Hollywood blockbuster 'Indiana Jones,' three Israeli children stumbled upon an ancient Second Temple cave in the Beit Shemesh area filled with skeletons and ossuaries inside, Israel's Antiquities Authority announced Monday. The boys, aged 11-13, who discovered the heretofore unknown cave during a hike were awarded a certificate of recognition for reporting their find to the Antiquities Authority. The cave was subsequently sealed by Antiquities Authority inspectors.
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2,000-Year-Old Judean Date Seed Growing Successfully
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Posted by SJackson
On News/Activism 01/30/2006 5:46:16 PM PST · 38 replies · 941+ views
Arutz Sheva | 1-30-06 | Ezra HaLevi
A 2,000 year old date seed planted last Tu BíShvat has sprouted and is over a foot tall. Being grown at Kibbutz Ketura in the Negev, it is the oldest seed to ever produce a viable young sapling. The Judean date seed was found, together with a large number of other seeds, during archaeological excavations carried out close to Massada near the southern end of the Dead Sea, the last Jewish stronghold following the Roman destruction of the Holy Temple. The age of the seeds was determined using carbon dating, but has a margin of error of 50 years --...
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PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
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The City Of The White Men (Who Built Tiahuanaco)
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/01/2006 4:27:40 PM PST · 80 replies · 1,352+ views
UNMuseum | unknown
The City of the White MenThere isn't much left of the city of Tiahuanaco in Bolivia, South America. In the 1500's, the Spanish systematically destroyed the buildings. Later, many of the stone blocks were looted for houses in a nearby village. Most recently more stone was taken to lay a railroad right-of-way. Despite this, what is left is still a sight to see. Tiahuanaco is old. It was already in ruins when the Incas took over the area in 1200 A.D.. It is situated on a mountain at an altitude of 12,500 feet and boasts a pyramid 700 feet long,...
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Human bones raise dispute between museum and Alaska Natives
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Posted by Tyche
On News/Activism 01/29/2006 8:30:05 PM PST · 12 replies · 275+ views
Kenai Peninsula Online | 29 Jan 2006 | AP
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Inupiats in Barrow want the Smithsonian Institution to return dozens of human skeletal remains unearthed in northern Alaska. The American Museum of Natural History refuses to give up the remains of 85 individuals, saying they came from a group of Arctic people who predated the ancestors of the modern-day Inupiat. The Washington D.C.-based institution believes those remains, excavated in the early 20th century, belong to the ancient Birnirk culture, whose descendants apparently left Alaska to resettle in Greenland and Canada around 1,000 A.D. The Smithsonian said the remains, excavated from four sites, are more likely related to...
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Who came first, Chinese or Columbus?
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Posted by SteveH
On News/Activism 05/16/2005 3:26:15 AM PDT · 29 replies · 682+ views
Herald Today | May 14, 2005 | Dana Sanchez
Who came first, Chinese or Columbus? DANA SANCHEZ Herald Staff Writer SARASOTA - A local company could help rewrite history if it can prove, using DNA testing, that Chinese explorers landed in the New World about 70 years before Columbus. But it's going to take money - up to $2 million in research funding - to test a hypothesis that hasn't been popular. Sarasota-based DNAPrint genomics plans to make a presentation Monday at the U.S. Library of Congress Symposium in Washington, D.C., commemorating the 600th anniversary of Chinese Admiral Zheng He's first voyage. Zheng He was a Ming Dynasty explorer...
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Biology and Cryptobiology
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Sons I gave birth to are 'unrelated' to me
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Posted by NYer
On News/Activism 11/17/2003 10:20:10 AM PST · 171 replies · 1,215+ views
The Telegraph | November 13, 2003 | Roger Highfield
One human chimera came to light when a 52-year-old woman demanded an explanation from doctors after tests showed that two of her three grown-up sons were biologically unrelated to her.Although the woman, "Jane", conceived them naturally with her husband, tests to see if she could donate a kidney suggested that somehow she had given birth to somebody else's children.A study in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr Margot Kruskall, of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, Massachusetts, showed that Jane is a chimera, a mixture of two individuals - non-identical twin sisters - whose cells intermingled...
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A Real-Life Jurassic Park
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Posted by Calpernia
On General/Chat 01/31/2006 8:22:33 AM PST · 25 replies · 189+ views
MSNBC | Jan. 30, 2006 | Mac Margolis
(snip) Most scholars now agree that hunters -- more than climate change or a mystery epidemic -- are what doomed the mammoths. Whatever the cause, by 11,000 years ago the king of the Pleistocene was a goner. (snip) If a group of devotees has its way, this shaggy ice-age mascot -- and a host of other bygone megafauna besides -- may yet walk again. (snip) The scientists, in other words, had managed to assemble half the woolly-mammoth genome; they claimed that in three years they could finish the job. That would put scientists within striking distance of an even greater feat: repopulating the earth with creatures that vanished...
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Only 40 Genes Separate Your Pet Dog From A Wolf
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 11/21/2005 6:18:45 PM PST · 76 replies · 1,088+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 11-22-2005 | Roger Highfield
Only 40 genes separate your pet dog from a wolf By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 22/11/2005) The difference between an obedient, friendly dog and a big bad wolf could be down to as few as 40 genes, according to a study into tameness. The research also found that to adapt to a life on the farm or in the home takes many more changes in gene activity than that required to love humans. A Swedish team compared two groups of farm-raised silver foxes in Siberia, one where for 40 generations the foxes have been selected for their friendly nature,...
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Researchers Decode Dog Genome
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Posted by neverdem
On News/Activism 12/07/2005 5:14:45 PM PST · 58 replies · 753+ views
NY Times | December 7, 2005 | NICHOLAS WADE
Researchers have decoded the dog genome to a high degree of accuracy, allowing deep insights into the evolutionary history not only of Canis familiaris but also of its devoted companion species, Homo sapiens. The dog whose genome has been sequenced is Tasha, a female boxer whose owners wish to remain anonymous, said Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, a biologist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge who led a large group of colleagues in the DNA sequencing effort. Their findings are being reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. The world's dog population numbers some 400 million, divided into about 400 breeds. The...
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Man's best friend stands test of time, study says
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/31/2006 9:09:16 AM PST · 42 replies · 343+ views
Lawrence Journal-World | Saturday, January 28, 2006 | Sophia Maines
The man was buried in Sweden with a dog laid out across his legs. It could have been yesterday, but that burial site actually dates back 7,000 years to the Mesolithic period... "Nothing," he wrote in his paper, "signifies the social importance that people have attached to dogs more conspicuously than their deliberate interment upon death." There are burial sites on every continent, except Antarctica, where the ground surface makes burial practically impossible. Morey's map of dog burial sites includes spots in current-day Greenland, Sweden, Sudan, Siberia, Japan and the United States, including Alaska. Some date back 14,000 years... In...
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Prehistory and Origins
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Scientists Find Gene That Controls Type of Earwax in People
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Posted by Pharmboy
On News/Activism 01/30/2006 3:02:26 AM PST · 66 replies · 1,108+ views
NY Times | January 30, 2006 | NICHOLAS WADE
Earwax may not play a prominent part in human history but at least a small role for it has now been found by a team of Japanese researchers. Earwax comes in two types, wet and dry. The wet form predominates in Africa and Europe, where 97 percent or more of people have it, and the dry form among East Asians. The populations of South and Central Asia are roughly half and half. By comparing the DNA of Japanese with each type, the researchers were able to identify the gene that controls which type a person has, they report in today's...
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DNA Testing: In Our Blood (Genetic Genealogy)
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Posted by martin_fierro
On General/Chat 01/30/2006 6:26:16 AM PST · 15 replies · 129+ views
Newsweak | Week of 2/6/06 | Claudia Kalb
DNA Testing: In Our Blood It is connecting lost cousins and giving families surprising glimpses into their pasts. Now scientists are using it to answer the oldest question of all: where did we come from? By Claudia Kalb Newsweek Feb. 6, 2006 issue - Brian Hamman had always wondered: what was up with his great-grandfather Lester? Hamman, an avid genealogist, could trace his patrilineal line back to 19th-century rural Indiana, but there was a glitch in the family records. Great-Grandpa Lester, the documents showed, was born before his parents were married. So was Lester really a Hamman? Was Brian? Three...
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Middle Ages and Renaissance
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Tall Tales / Medieval people weren't shorter
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/31/2006 10:35:59 PM PST · 10 replies · 188+ views
Discover | October 28, 2005 | Eric Slyter
Low doorways and laughably small suits of armor led to conventional thinking that people in the middle ages were significantly shorter than we are. After an exhaustive study of hundreds of churchyard skeletons, British archaeologists Charlotte Roberts and Margaret Cox say that height discrepancy is little more than a tall tale. Although medieval children were in fact shorter -- 10-year-olds then were around 8 inches shorter than 10-year-olds now -- most likely due to poorer nutrition and slow growth, adult European heights really haven't changed much over the past few centuries. Adult heights of men and women have remained constant...
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Historic vases smashed in stumble
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Posted by untenured
On General/Chat 01/30/2006 12:54:01 PM PST · 24 replies · 306+ views
BBC | 1/30/06 | Anon.
A stumbling visitor to a top museum has destroyed a set of priceless vases which stood on a shelf for 40 years. The 300-year-old Qing vases were among the best known artefacts at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The visitor is said to have slipped on a loose shoelace and fallen down a staircase bringing the vases crashing down as he tried to steady himself. The vases, donated in 1948, were said to hold a "significant value" and were among the best known pieces on display. The museum declined to identify the man who had tripped. The accident happened last...
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Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
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At Burial Site, Teeth Tell Tale of Slavery
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Posted by Pharmboy
On News/Activism 01/31/2006 3:29:26 AM PST · 43 replies · 1,234+ views
NY Times | January 31, 2006 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
American Journal of Physical AnthropologyHINTS OF DIASPORA Archaeologists found the remains of at least 180 people -- European, Indian and African -- near the ruins of a colonial church in Campeche, Mexico. While remodeling the central plaza in Campeche, a Mexican port city that dates back to colonial times, a construction crew stumbled on the ruins of an old church and its burial grounds. Researchers who were called in discovered the skeletal remains of at least 180 people, and four of those studied so far bear telling chemical traces that are in effect birth certificates. The particular mix of...
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Archaeologists find evidence of earliest African slaves brought to new world
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 02/01/2006 8:48:12 AM PST · 12 replies · 102+ views
University of Wisconsin-Madison via EurekAlert | 31-Jan-2006 | T. Douglas Price
The African origin of the slaves was determined through the reading of telltale signatures locked at birth into the tooth enamel of individuals by strontium isotopes, a chemical which enters the body through the food chain as nutrients pass from bedrock through soil and water to plants and animals. The isotopes found in the teeth are an indelible signature of birthplace, as they can be directly linked to the bedrock of specific locales, giving archaeologists a powerful tool to trace the migration of individuals on the landscape.
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Research: Genes Made Abe Lincoln 'Clumsy'
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Posted by wagglebee
On News/Activism 01/27/2006 6:59:00 AM PST · 39 replies · 545+ views
NewsMax | 1/27/06 | AP
Abraham Lincoln's appearance and historical documents that note his especially clumsy gait have long caused researchers to puzzle over whether he may have had a genetic disorder called Marfan syndrome. Now, members of the beloved president's family tree are wondering if Lincoln had a different, incurable hereditary disease called ataxia that affects the coordination it takes to walk, write, speak and swallow. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered a gene mutation in 11 generations of relatives who descended from Lincoln's grandparents. There's a 25 percent chance that Lincoln also inherited the gene, said Laura Ranum, a genetics professor...
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The View From Suribachi
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Posted by gunnyg
On Bloggers & Personal 01/21/2006 5:23:44 AM PST · 16 replies · 177+ views
Sgt Grit's Marine Forums | Jan 20, 2006 | Ray Jacobs
"D + 4 on Iwo Jima was Friday,February 23,1945.At about 10:30 hours I was standing on the broad rim of the crater on top of Suribachi looking up at our colors snapping in the breeze. Suddenly something extraordinary happened.We could clearly hear cheering from the Marines in combat on the plain of Iwo below us.They had spotted the flag and as the word spread more Marines joined in cheering our flag crowning Suribachi some 500 feet above.Soon the boats along the landing beaches and the ships at sea joined in blowing horns and whistles.It was a remarkable moment in Marine...
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