Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #189
Saturday, March 1, 2008
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Let's Have Jerusalem
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1st Temple seal found in City of David
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Posted by SJackson
On News/Activism 02/29/2008 8:07:44 AM EST · 60 replies
Jerusalem Post | 2-29-08 | ETGAR LEFKOVITS
An ancient seal bearing an archaic Hebrew inscription dating back to the 8th century BCE has been uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Thursday. The seal excavated in the City of David bears the name of a public official from the 8th century BCE. Photo: Shalem Center / Carla Amit The find reveals that by 2,700 years ago, clerks and merchants had already begun to add their names to the seals instead of the symbols that were used in earlier centuries. The state-run archeological body said the seal, which was discovered...
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Egypt
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Cleopatra's Cosmetics And Hammurabi's Heineken: Name Brands Far Predating Modern Capitalism
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/23/2008 9:38:35 PM EST · 12 replies
Science Daily | 2-19-2008 | University of Chicago Press Journals
Egyptian perfume bottle. Could product branding have begun in ancient Egypt? (Credit: iStockphoto) ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2008) -- From at least Bass Ale's red triangle--advertised as "the first registered trademark"--commodity brands have exerted a powerful hold over modern Western society. Marketers and critics alike have assumed that branding began in the West with the Industrial Revolution. But a pioneering new study in the February 2008 issue of Current Anthropology finds that attachment to brands far predates modern capitalism, and indeed modern Western society. In "Prehistories of Commodity Branding," author David...
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Numismatism
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Gaulish coin hoard is France's biggest ever
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Posted by DeaconBenjamin
On News/Activism 02/25/2008 8:38:08 AM EST · 56 replies
French News | Monday, 18 February 2008 | David Boggis
France's biggest trove of Gaulish coins has been unearthed in Brittany. Archeologists found them while searching along the route of a bypass under construction in the Cotes d'Armor. The coins are in the hands of specialist restorers and will go on display in the departement. The trove consists of 545 gold-silver-copper coins: 58 staters and 487 quarterstaters. "Stater' is the generic term for antique coins. They lay a foot beneath the earth's surface near Laniscat, 64km south of Saint-Brieuc, at a known Iron Age manor house or farm site, and date to 75- 50BC. They are very well preserved. Inrap,...
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Farty Shades of Green
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Archaeological Treasures Found In Roscrea (Ireland)
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Posted by blam
On General/Chat 02/26/2008 5:52:29 PM EST · 10 replies
The Nenagh Guardian | 2-22-2008 | Peter Gleeson
A 'beautiful' Bronze Age axe and a number of ancient burial grounds have been unearthed near Roscrea during the construction of the new Dublin-Limerick motorway in the area. The bronze axe was found in Camblin, south of Roscrea. Archaeologists say the find dates to the later Bronze Age and appears to have been hidden in a shallow pit and never recovered by the person who concealed it. On a second site in Camblin a medieval iron 'bearded' axe was discovered while two Bronze Age enclosed settlements with two...
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British Isles
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Archaeologists To Drill In Bexley (UK) For Evidence Of Ancient Occupation
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/29/2008 4:16:47 PM EST · 11 replies
24 Hour Museum | 2-29-2008
An illustration of Homo neanderthalensis at Swanscombe, Kent, one of the sites investigated in the AHOB project. © Natural History Museum Archaeologists from Durham University will be returning to a London borough site where a 19th century historian once found flint tools and animal bones. This time, however, the latest sonic drilling equipment will be used to take samples from the earth, for the ongoing Ancient Human Occupation of Britain II project (AHOB). Initial drillings were carried out at Holmscroft Open Space in September...
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Neandertal / Neanderthal
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Cannibalism May Have Wiped Out Neanderthals
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/28/2008 9:52:33 PM EST · 113 replies
Discovery News | 2-27-2008 | Jennifer Viegas
A Neanderthal-eat-Neanderthal world may have spread a mad cow-like disease that weakened and reduced populations of the large Eurasian human, thereby contributing to its extinction, according to a new theory based on cannibalism that took place in more recent history. Aside from illustrating that consumption of one's own species isn't exactly a healthy way to eat, the new theoretical model could resolve the longstanding mystery as to what caused Neanderthals, which emerged around 250,000 years ago, to disappear off the face of the Earth...
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Africa
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Oldest hominid discovered is 7 million years old: study
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Posted by Renfield
On News/Activism 02/28/2008 7:21:27 AM EST · 33 replies
Yahoo News | 2-27-08
CHICAGO (AFP) - French fossil hunters have pinned down the age of Toumai, which they contend is the remains of the earliest human ever found, at between 6.8 and 7.2 million years old. The fossil was discovered in the Chadian desert in 2001 and an intense debate ensued over whether the nearly complete cranium, pieces of jawbone and teeth belonged to one of our earliest ancestors. Critics said that Toumai's cranium was too squashed to be that of a hominid -- it did not have the brain capacity that gives humans primacy -- and its small size indicated a creature...
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Oldest hominid discovered is 7 million years old: study
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Posted by Red Badger
On News/Activism 02/28/2008 10:02:18 AM EST · 29 replies
www.physorg.com | 02/28/2008 | Staff
Undated handout photo shows the skull of Toumai, a seven-million-year-old fossil believed to be the remains of the earliest human ever found, found in 2001. New fossil remains as well as the 3D reconstruction of the skull confirm that the creature is the oldest species of the human branch, a common ancester of the chimpanzee and of homo sapiens French fossil hunters have pinned down the age of Toumai, which they contend is the remains of the earliest human ever found, at between 6.8 and 7.2 million years old. The fossil was discovered in the Chadian desert in 2001...
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Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
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Feel Short? Blame Your Ancestors
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 02/24/2008 11:47:46 AM EST · 20 replies
Discovery News | February 20, 2008 | Jennifer Viegas
The scientists collected data on 32 such groups, paying attention to the ecology, population density and female adult body size for each named society... "We focused on female adult body mass because we wanted to relate the variation back to female reproduction," Walker said, adding that earlier first periods relate to earlier first births. The researchers determined that across all hunter-gatherer groups, body size directly relates to population density. The bigger the population, especially within island or island-like communities, the smaller the people will be. One example of an island-like community would be a tropical rainforest group that is clustered...
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Asia
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Confucius, He Has Many Descendants
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/18/2008 10:01:57 PM EST · 24 replies
The Telegraph (UK) | 2-18-2008 | Richard Spencer
More than a million people around the world have responded to an appeal for people who think that they are descendants of the Chinese sage Confucius. The appeal was made by Kong Deyong, a 77th generation descendant of Confucius who founded the Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee and is based in the family's home town of Qufu, eastern China. Confucious: founding father of Chinese political and ethical thought Mr Kong, a senior member of the Confucius clan, fled to Hong Kong after the Cultural Revolution, when...
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Epigraphy and Language
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Indecipherable Ancient Books Found In Chongqing
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Posted by blam
On General/Chat 02/26/2008 5:33:44 PM EST · 34 replies
Epoch Times | 2-24-2008
Mysterious ancient books found in Chongqing. For the past two years no one has been able to read them. (Epoch Times screen shot taken from 21 cn.com) The Tujia have been known as an ethnic minority with its own spoken language but without a written language. Yet a succession of ancient books in the same written language have been found in the Youyang Tujia habitation straddling the borders of Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou Province, and Chongqing City. For the past two years none have been able to read the...
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Catastrophism and Astronomy
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How it happened: The catastrophic flood that cooled the Earth
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Posted by 2ndDivisionVet
On News/Activism 02/25/2008 5:36:06 AM EST · 61 replies
Breitbart | February 24, 2008
Canadian geologists say they can shed light on how a vast lake, trapped under the ice sheet that once smothered much of North America, drained into the sea, an event that cooled Earth's climate for hundreds of years. During the last ice age, the Laurentide Ice Sheet once covered most of Canada and parts of the northern United States with a frozen crust that in some places was three kilometres (two miles) thick. As the temperature gradually rose some 10,000 years ago, the ice receded, gouging out the hollows that would be called the Great Lakes. Beneath the ice's thinning...
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Climate
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Drained Lake Holds Record Of Ancient (Warmer) Alaska
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/28/2008 10:02:41 PM EST · 35 replies
Sit News | Ned Rozell
Not too long ago, a lake sprung a leak in the high country of the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains. The lake drained away, as glacier-dammed lakes often do, but this lake was a bit different, and seems to be telling a story about a warmer Alaska. The lake, known as Iceberg Lake to people in McCarthy, about 50 airmails to the north, had been part of the landscape for as long as people could remember. Pinched by glacial ice, the three-mile-long, one-mile-wide lake on the northern boundary of the...
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PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
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Royals weren't only builders of Maya temples, archaeologist finds
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Posted by decimon
On News/Activism 02/25/2008 6:47:59 PM EST · 11 replies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | February 25, 2008 | Andrea Lynn
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- An intrepid archaeologist is well on her way to dislodging the prevailing assumptions of scholars about the people who built and used Maya temples. From the grueling work of analyzing the "attributes," the nitty-gritty physical details of six temples in Yalbac, a Maya center in the jungle of central Belize -- and a popular target for antiquities looters -- primary investigator Lisa Lucero is building her own theories about the politics of temple construction that began nearly two millennia ago. Her findings from the fill, the mortar and other remnants of jungle-wrapped structures lead her to believe...
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Mayans
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Centuries-old Maya Blue mystery finally solved
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Posted by Jedi Master Pikachu
On General/Chat 02/26/2008 5:17:19 PM EST · 21 replies
physorg.com | February 26, 2008.
Anthropologists from Wheaton College (Illinois) and The Field Museum have discovered how the ancient Maya produced an unusual and widely studied blue pigment that was used in offerings, pottery, murals and other contexts across Mesoamerica from about A.D. 300 to 1500. First identified in 1931, this blue pigment (known as Maya Blue) has puzzled archaeologists, chemists and material scientists for years because of its unusual chemical stability, composition and persistent color in one of the world's harshest climates. The anthropologists solved another old mystery, namely the presence of a 14-foot layer of blue precipitate found at the bottom of the...
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Ancient Aliens
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WSU Researchers Study Fate of an Ancient American Southwest Civilization
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/29/2008 9:33:25 AM EST · 22 replies
Salem-News.com | 2-19-2008 | WSU
Evidence suggests that the Anasazi fled the region and joined related groups to the south and east. While the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde are easily the best known of these settlements, the region is dotted with some 4,000 known archaeological sites, including communities which supported as many as several hundred families. (PULLMAN, Wash.) - Using computer simulations to synthesize both new and earlier research, a team of scientists led by a Washington State University anthropology professor has given new perspective to the long-standing question of what happened more...
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Peru
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Ancient ceremonial plaza found in Peru
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Posted by decimon
On News/Activism 02/26/2008 6:30:52 PM EST · 35 replies
Associated Press | February 26, 2008 | ANDREW WHALEN
LIMA, Peru - A team of German and Peruvian archaeologists say they have discovered the oldest known monument in Peru: a 5,500-year-old ceremonial plaza near Peru's north-central coast. Carbon dating of material from the site revealed it was built between 3500 B.C. and 3000 B.C., Peter Fuchs, a German archaeologist who headed the excavation team, told The Associated Press by telephone Monday. The discovery is further evidence that civilization thrived in Peru at the same time as it did in what is now the Middle East and South Asia, said Ruth Shady, a prominent Peruvian archaeologist who led the team...
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Oldest Urban Site in the Americas Found, Experts Claim
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Posted by Renfield
On News/Activism 02/27/2008 8:04:57 AM EST · 6 replies
National Geographic News | 02-26-08 | Kelly Hearn
A circular plaza found under an existing archaeological site in Peru could be the oldest known human-made complex in the New World, experts report. Initial analysis dates the ceremonial structure to around 3500 B.C. -- 500 years older than the current record holder, an ancient city named Caral, also in Peru. Although the age has yet to be confirmed, reports of the newfound plaza surfaced in Peruvian media on Sunday. Peter R. Fuchs, a German archaeologist who worked at the site, told the Peruvian newspaper El Commercial that the excavation contained "construction from 5,500 years ago." Cesar Perez, an archaeologist at Peru's...
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Rock Around the Clock
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Peru's "Lost City" Is a Natural Formation, Experts Rule
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Posted by Renfield
On News/Activism 02/27/2008 8:08:52 AM EST · 25 replies
National Geographic News | 2-25-08 | Kelly Hearn
Stone structures in Peru recently suggested to be the ruins of an ancient "lost city" were actually shaped by natural forces, not Inca stone workers, officials say. The announcement comes from archaeologists with Peru's culture ministry, clouding the prospects of one local politician to turn the site into a tourist attraction. On January 10, Peruvian state media reported that a stone fortress had been discovered on the heavily forested eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains (see map). . The story quoted the local mayor as saying the structures were discovered under heavy vegetation by villagers, who dubbed the site Manco...
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Oh So Mysterioso
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Discovery Of Vast Prehistoric Works Built By Giants?
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Posted by blam
On General/Chat 02/28/2008 7:25:52 PM EST · 75 replies
Raider News Network | 2-24-2008 | David E. Flynn
The size and scope of David Flynn's Teohuanaco discovery simply surpasses comprehension. Mammoth traces of intelligence carved in stone and covering hundreds of square miles. For those who understand what they are seeing here for the first time, this could indeed be the strongest evidence ever found of prehistoric engineering by those who were known and feared throughout the ancient world as gods. ~ Thomas Horn This satellite image (above) is a portion of the Andean foothills...
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Helix, Make Mine a Double
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Largest yet survey of human genetic diversity
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Posted by neverdem
On News/Activism 02/25/2008 1:07:03 AM EST · 18 replies
Nature News | 21 February 2008 | Erika Check Hayden
DNA analyses highlight human differences -- and similarities. Scientists have taken an unprecedented look at worldwide genetic diversity to illuminate the history of the world's populations. In two papers -- one published today in Science 1, the other published yesterday in Nature 2 -- two teams performed the most thorough genetic analysis yet on samples from the Human Genome Diversity Project, which covers more than 50 geographic groups from all over the globe. The group publishing in Nature looked at 29 different populations; the group publishing in Science examined 51. Both analyzed variations in single letters of DNA, called single...
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Biology and Cryptobiology
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'Monster' fossil find in Arctic (First complete pliosaur and ichthyosaur skeletons ever found)
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Posted by DaveLoneRanger
On News/Activism 10/05/2006 11:03:56 AM EDT · 34 replies · 1,268+ views
BBC | October 5, 2006 | Paul Rincon
Norwegian scientists have discovered a "treasure trove" of fossils belonging to giant sea reptiles that roamed the seas at the time of the dinosaurs. The 150 million-year-old fossils were uncovered on the Arctic island chain of Svalbard - about halfway between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole. The finds belong to two groups of extinct marine reptiles - the plesiosaurs and the ichthyosaurs. One skeleton has been nicknamed The Monster because of its enormous size. These animals were the top predators living in what was then a relatively cool, deep sea. Palaeontologists from the University of Oslo's Natural History...
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Remains of Ancient Reptile Are Found [size of a bus]
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Posted by null and void
On News/Activism 10/05/2006 11:36:14 AM EDT · 22 replies · 867+ views
MyWay via Drudge | Oct 5, 7:59 AM (ET | Not attributed
OSLO, Norway (AP) - Researchers on Thursday announced the discovery of the remains of a short-necked plesiosaur, a prehistoric marine reptile the size of a bus, that they believe is the first complete skeleton ever found. The 150 million year old remains of the 33-foot ocean going predator were found in August on the remote Svalbard Islands of the Arctic, the University of Oslo announced. Fragments of plesiosaur have been found elsewhere, including in England, Russia, and Argentina, but researcher Joern Harald Hurum said the partially fossilized Svalbard find appeared to be the first whole example. "We are quite sure...
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BBC: Sea reptile is biggest on record ( measured 15m (50ft) from nose to tail - alligator jaws)
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Posted by Ernest_at_the_Beach
On News/Activism 02/27/2008 12:26:47 PM EST · 29 replies
BBC | Wednesday, 27 February 2008, 00:54 GMT | Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News
A fossilised "sea monster" unearthed on an Arctic island is the largest marine reptile known to science, Norwegian scientists have announced.The 150 million-year-old specimen was found on Spitspergen, in the Arctic island chain of Svalbard, in 2006. The Jurassic-era leviathan is one of 40 sea reptiles from a fossil "treasure trove" uncovered on the island. Nicknamed "The Monster", the immense creature would have measured 15m (50ft) from nose to tail. A large pliosaur was big enough to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half Richard Forrest,...
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Navigation
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Vikings Did Not Dress The Way We Thought
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Posted by blam
On General/Chat 02/26/2008 9:28:06 AM EST · 113 replies
Physorg | 2-26-2008 | Uppsala University
Vikings did not dress the way we thought Swedish viking men's fashions were modeled on styles in Russia to the east. Archeological finds from the 900s uncovered in Lake Malaren Valley accord with contemporary depictions of clothing the Vikings wore on their travels along eastern trade routes to the Silk Road. The outfit in the picture is on display at Museum Gustavianum, Uppsala University. Photo: Annika Larsson Vivid colors, flowing silk ribbons, and glittering bits of mirrors - the Vikings dressed with considerably more panache than we previously thought. The men were especially vain, and the women dressed provocatively, but...
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Middle Ages and Renaissance
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'Da Vinci link' to chess drawings
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Posted by Daffynition
On General/Chat 02/27/2008 9:37:39 AM EST · 1 reply
BBC News, Rome | February 27, 2007 | Christian Fraser
Researchers believe early illustrations of how to play the game of chess, found in a long-lost Italian manuscript, may have been drawn by Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci was a close friend of Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli, who wrote the manuscript. Pacioli wrote the book - a collection of puzzles called "De ludo scacchorum" found in a private library last year - around the year 1500, experts say. The puzzles are very similar to those found in daily newspapers today. So far, three pages of the manuscript have been published, showing carefully drawn diagrams, each representing a...
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Early America
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'John Adams' doesn't go Hollywood (Looks like an excellent HBO series next month)
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Posted by dickmc
On General/Chat 02/24/2008 2:48:31 PM EST · 72 replies
Pittsburgh Tribune Review | Feb 24, 2008 | Bill Steigerwald, David McCullough
When Hollywood's movie-makers and docu-dramatists get their hands on American history, accuracy, reality and truth often are tortured beyond recognition. But starting at 8 p.m. Sunday, March 16, HBO Films will be delivering the seven-part, nine-hour mini-series "John Adams." ... it is by all accounts a high-quality, historically accurate and meticulously faithful adaptation of super-historian David McCullough's blockbuster 2001 book of the same name. I talked to McCullough about the making of the HBO series Tuesday by phone from his home in West Tisbury, Mass.
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World War Eleven
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Former Classmate Puts a Face on Anne Frank's Lost Love (Love interest 1st photo)
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Posted by barackyroad
On News/Activism 02/26/2008 11:49:45 AM EST · 45 replies
ABC News | 2-25-08 | MAEVA BAMBUCK
On Jan. 6, 1944, Anne Frank wrote in her diary that her image of him was so vivid she didn't need a photograph to remember him. Indeed, more than 60 years later, no photograph had been found of Anne Frank's childhood sweetheart, leaving hundreds of readers around the world curious for a glimpse. But now, 81-year-old Earnst Michaelis has identified his dearest childhood friend, Peter Schiff, as the "Petel" or "Peter" from the diary -- the mysterious boy who stole Anne Frank's heart. Despite "Anne Frank's Diary" becoming one of the world's most-read journals, selling an estimated 35 million copies,...
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Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
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Antarctic May Hold Future Of Archaeology
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 02/25/2008 1:07:04 PM EST · 41 replies
London Times | 2-25-2008 | Normaan Hammond
Antarctic may hold the future of archaeology Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent It is a truism that archaeology begins yesterday, and now with only the archaeology of the future to plan for, the discipline has been expanding into areas of the globe where material culture has hitherto played little part. Antarctica is one of these new areas: more than two centuries of human occupation have left plentiful traces. At least five successive and partly overlapping phases of activity can be defined: sealing, whaling, polar exploration, scientific investigation and tourism. Sealing began in the late 18th century, when Captain James Cook's account...
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end of digest #189 20080301
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