Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #191
Saturday, March 15, 2008
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Let's Have Jerusalem
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First-Ever: First-Temple Building Remains Found Near Temple Mt.
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Arutz Sheva - IsraelNationalNews | 3/13/8 | Hillel Fendel
(IsraelNN.com) The Israel Antiquities Authority announces the first time in the history of the archaeological research of Jerusalem that building remains from the First Temple period have been exposed so close to the Temple Mount -- on the eastern slopes of the Upper City. A rich layer of finds from the latter part of the First Temple period (8th-6th centuries B.C.E.) has been discovered in archaeological rescue excavations near the Western Wall plaza.†The dig is being carried out in the northwestern part of the Western Wall plaza, near the staircase leading up towards the Jaffa Gate. The Israel Antiquties...
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Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
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Ancient Architectural Acoustic Resonance Patterns and Regional Brain Activity
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Ingenta Connect | 3-2008 | Cook, Ian A.; Pajot, Sarah K.; Leuchter, Andrew F.
Abstract: Previous archaeoacoustic investigations of prehistoric, megalithic structures have identified acoustic resonances at frequencies of 95-120 Hz, particularly near 110-12 Hz, all representing pitches in the human vocal range. These chambers may have served as centers for social or spiritual events, and the resonances of the chamber cavities might have been intended to support human ritual chanting. We evaluated the possibility that tones at these frequencies might...
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Scotland Yet
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AD 200 - Valtos: Brochs And Wheelhouses
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Current Archaeology | 3-14-2008
AD 200 - Valtos: brochs and wheelhouses While the Romans were civilising England, life was very different story in Northern Scotland, and particularly in the outer isles, Orkney and the Hebrides. Here we are faced with something entirely different, with a completely new vocabulary of brochs and duns and wheelhouses. The most exotic are the brochs - tall, defensive towers built of stone - very different to the hillforts of southern Britain. These huge circular towers are one of the greatest monuments of British archaeology, but in the Western Isles they have been little studied in modern times. What was...
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British Isles
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Irish And Dutch Vessels Found In Scottish Graves (2500-2280BC)
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Current Archaeology | 3-12-2008
Evidence that some of our prehistoric ancestors travelled considerable distances has come from two graves in Upper Largie, near Kilmartin in Argyll and Bute. One grave contained three distinctive beakers which Alison Sheridan, of the National Museums Scotland, describes as belonging to an early, international style, best paralleled by finds from the lower Rhine region of the modern-day Netherlands. Radiocarbon dates of 2500-2280 BC from hazel charcoal from within the grave confirms an early Bronze Age date. Though no bone was found because of the acidic nature of the local soils, the...
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I Seen Ye
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Silver Of The Iceni
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Current Archaeology | 3-13-2008 | Megan Dennis
The traditional image is of backward, hostile, bluepainted hordes led by a red-haired fury. Unlike the Celtic sophisticates of the South East, with their wheel-thrown tablewares and imported wines, the Norfolk Iceni were rural primitives. Or were they? Megan Dennis, specialist min Late Iron Age metalwork, pays tribute to the high culture of Boudica's people. The Iceni are famous forn two things -- Boudica and gold. Little else is known of this society that existed in the shadow-lands between the Iron Age and the Roman periods in Norfolk, Suffolk, and north-east Cambridgeshire. Archaeological evidence seems to...
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Middle Ages and Renaissance
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Ancient (Anglo-Saxon) Grave Markers Found At The Cathedral
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Peterborough Today | 3-5-2008 | Jackie Hall
Archaeologist Dr Jackie Hall with a rare find of Anglo-Saxon grave markers discovered during repairs to a wall in the cathedral precincts. Picture: PAUL FRANKS EIGHT Anglo-Saxon grave markers belonging to ordinary folk have been uncovered in Peterborough Cathedral's grounds during restoration work. Workers at the site, who are repairing ancient stone walls in the precincts, alerted the cathedral's archaeologist to the find, which was discovered in the same wall as a medieval fireplace. Archaeologist Dr Jackie Hall analysed the pieces, and discovered they were 11th century grave markings which are believed to...
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Prehistory and Origins
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Paleolithic Handaxes From The North Sea (Neanderthals)
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Wesssex Archaeology | 3-10-2008
What are handaxes? Handaxes are stone tools that were used in the Ice Age. They were multi purpose tools, a bit like a modern Swiss army knife. Twenty-eight handaxes and some smaller pieces of flint (known as flakes) were found. The remains of mammoth, including tusk fragments and teeth, and fragments of deer antler were discovered at the same time. The discovery of the handaxes was reported through a scheme set up to report archaeological finds from the sea; the BMAPA Protocol. How old are they? We know that handaxes date to the Ice...
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Climate
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Beetles, Lentils and Anchovies
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Current Archaeology | 3-14-2008
No, not some new dieting fad - what beetles, lentils and anchovies have in common is their value as indicators of ancient climate change. In a special issue of the journal Fisheries Research (Volume 87, November 2007), an international group of ecologists and historians have drawn upon archaeological material, tax accounts, church registers and monastic account books to present a picture of marine life in the North Sea from 7000 BC to the present. They found that warm-water species, including anchovy and black sea bream, once thrived around Britain's shores -- notably during the warm Atlantic...
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Flood, Here Comes the Flood
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Making Waves Over Noah's Flood.
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Newsday | January 14, 2003 | By Robert Cooke
Scientists are seriously challenging a recent, fascinating proposal that Noah's epic story - setting sail with an ark jam-full of animal couples - was based on an actual catastrophic flood that suddenly filled the Black Sea 7,500 years ago, forcing people to flee. In a detailed new look at the rocks, sediments, currents and seashells in and around the Black Sea, an international research team pooh-poohs the Noah flood idea, arguing that all the geologic, hydrologic and biologic signs are wrong. Little that the earth can tell us seems to fit the Noah story, they say.
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Wave of the Antefuture
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Tsunami that devastated the ancient world could return
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AFP on Yahoo | 3/9/08 | AFP
PARIS (AFP) - "The sea was driven back, and its waters flowed away to such an extent that the deep sea bed was laid bare and many kinds of sea creatures could be seen," wrote Roman historian Ammianus Marcellus, awed at a tsunami that struck the then-thriving port of Alexandria in 365 AD. "Huge masses of water flowed back when least expected, and now overwhelmed and killed many thousands of people... Some great ships were hurled by the fury of the waves onto the rooftops, and others were thrown up to two miles (three kilometres) from the shore." Ancient documents...
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It's Not My Fault
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Earthquake Activity Is Frozen By Ice Sheets
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New Scientist | 3-11-2008
Can you put a freeze on earthquakes? It seems so, according to a computer model showing that earthquakes happen less often in areas covered by ice caps. Trouble is, quakes come back with a vengeance when the ice melts. Andrea Hampel at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, and colleagues wondered why Scandinavia experienced a surge in tectonic activity around 9000 years ago, whereas few earthquakes occur there today. They realised that the earthquake flurry coincided with the melting of the Fennoscandian ice sheet, which blanketed the area...
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Mammoth Told Me
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The Mystery Of Mammoth Tusks With Iron Fillings
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Alaska Report News | 3-5-2008 | Ned Rozell
The mystery of mammoth tusks with iron fillings By By Ned RozellMarch 5, 2008 A giant meteor may have exploded over Alaska thousands of years ago, shooting out metal fragments like buckshot, some of which embedded in the tusks of woolly mammoths and the horns of bison. Simultaneously, a large chunk of the meteor hit Alaska south of Allakaket, sending up a dust cloud that blacked out the sun over the entire state and surrounding areas, killing most of the life in the area. Embedded iron particles surrounded by carbonized rings in the outer layer of a mammoth tusk from...
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Catastrophism and Astronomy
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How The Peruvian Meteorite Made It To Earth
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Science Daily | 3-12-2008 | Brown University
The Carancas Fireball. Planetary geologists had thought that stony meteorites would be destroyed when they passed through Earth's atmosphere. This one struck ground near Carancas, Peru, at about 15,000 miles per hour. Brown University geologists have advanced a new theory that would upend current thinking about stony meteorites. (Credit: Peter Schultz, Brown University) ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2008) -- It made news around the world: On Sept. 15, 2007, an object hurtled through the sky and crashed into the Peruvian countryside. Scientists dispatched to the site near the village of Carancas found a gaping...
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Helix, Make Mine a Double
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Indian DNA Links To 6 'Founding Mothers'
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Yahoo News/AP | 3-13-2008 | Malcolm Ritter
NEW YORK - Nearly all of today's Native Americans in North, Central and South America can trace part of their ancestry to six women whose descendants immigrated around 20,000 years ago, a DNA study suggests. Those women left a particular DNA legacy that persists to today in about 95 percent of Native Americans, researchers said. The finding does not mean that only these six women gave rise to the migrants who crossed into North America from Asia in the initial populating of the continent, said study co-author...
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PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
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Americas Settled 15,000 Years Ago, Study Says
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National Geographic News | 3-13-2008 | Stefan Lovgren
A consensus is emerging in the highly contentious debate over the colonization of the Americas, according to a study that says the bulk of the region wasn't settled until as late as 15,000 years ago. Researchers analyzed both archaeological and genetic evidence from several dozen sites throughout the Americas and eastern Asia for the paper. "In the past archaeologists haven't paid too much attention to molecular genetic evidence," said lead author Ted Goebel, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University in College Station. "We have brought...
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Peru
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Pre Inca Temple Discovered in Peru
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News Vine
LIMA -- Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of an ancient temple, roadway and irrigation systems at a famed fortress overlooking the Inca capital of Cuzco, according to officials involved with the dig. The temple on the periphery of the Sacsayhuaman fortress casts added light on pre-Inca cultures of Peru, showing that the site had religious as well as military aims, according to researchers. It includes 11 rooms thought to have held mummies and idols, lead archaeologist Oscar Rodriguez told The Associated Press. The team of archaeologists that made the discoveries believes the structures predated the Inca empire but were then...
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Hobbits
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Ancient Bones Of Small Humans Discovered In Palau (Not 'Hobbits')
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National Geographic News | 3-11-2008 | John Roach
Thousands of human bones belonging to numerous individuals have been discovered in the Pacific island nation of Palau. Some of the bones are ancient and indicate inhabitants of particularly small size, scientists announced today. The remains are between 900 and 2,900 years old and align with Homo sapiens, according to a paper on the discovery. However, the older bones are tiny and exhibit several traits considered primitive, or archaic, for the human lineage. "They weren't very typical, very small in fact," said Lee Berger,...
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Asia
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Rare Cave Inscriptions
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The Sunday Times | 3-8-2008 | Gamini Mahadura
A cave with rare ancient inscriptions dating back to more than 10000 years has reportedly been discovered at Badungala in the PS division of Yakkalamulla in Galle. Archaeology officials say that the inscriptions date back to the Endera yugaya or the era when animals were domesticated. They say similar cave inscriptions had been so far discovered in Alauwa, Ambilikanda and Mawanella. This is the first time that such a find has been reported from the South.
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Epigraphy and Language
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Iran makes cuneiform writing software
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Press TV Iran | Thursday, March 6, 2008 | unattributed (FBA/PA)
An original new software that enables users to type in Persian cuneiform writing is to be released into Iran's market in the near future. Cuneiform is a pictographic writing system used by many languages over several empires in ancient Mesopotamia and Persia and inspired the old Persian national alphabet. With this unique software enthusiasts will be able to write inscriptions in cuneiform and see their phonetic equivalents. The cuneiform script is the earliest known form of written expression, created by the Sumerians in 3000 BC. Cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. Over time, the pictorial representations became simplified...
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Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
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A masterpiece told in a language that is lush, sensual and highly inventive [Persian Literature]
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Iranian.com | 20 Feb 2008 | Anon
Vis & Ramin by Fakhraddin Gorgani Translated by Dick Davis 2008, Mage Publishers About the book, the author, and the translator Vis & Ramin is one of the world's great love stories. It was the first major Persian romance, written between 1050 and 1055 in rhyming couplets. This remarkable work has now been superbly translated into heroic couplets (the closest metrical equivalent of the Persian) by the poet and scholar Dick Davis and published by Mage Publishers. Vis and Ramin had immense influence on later Persian poetry and is very probably also the source for the tale of Tristan and...
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Greece
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Ancient graves found in Greece (Thessaloniki)
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Associated Press | March 10, 2008 | Unknown
ATHENS, Greece - Greek workers discovered around 1,000 graves, some filled with ancient treasures, while excavating for a subway system in the historic city of Thessaloniki, the state archaeological authority said Monday. Some of the graves, which dated from the first century B.C. to the 5th century A.D., contained jewelry, coins and various pieces of art, the Greek archaeological service said in a statement. Thessaloniki was founded around 315 B.C. and flourished during the Roman and Byzantine eras. Today it is the Mediterranean country's second largest city. Most of the graves -- 886 -- were just east of the city...
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Ancient graves found in Greece
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AP via Yahoo | 3-10-08 | ANON
Greek workers discovered around 1,000 graves, some filled with ancient treasures, while excavating for a subway system in the historic city of Thessaloniki, the state archaeological authority said Monday. Some of the graves, which dated from the first century B.C. to the 5th century A.D., contained jewelry, coins and various pieces of art, the Greek archaeological service said in a statement. Thessaloniki was founded around 315 B.C. and flourished during the Roman and Byzantine eras. Today it is the Mediterranean country's second largest city. Most of the graves -- 886 -- were just east of the city center in what...
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Mycenaeans
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FSU classics professor exploring a 'lost' city of the Mycenaeans
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Florida State University | March 11, 2008 | Unknown
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Along an isolated, rocky stretch of Greek shoreline, a Florida State University researcher and his students are unlocking the secrets of a partially submerged, "lost" harbor town believed to have been built by the ancient Mycenaeans nearly 3,500 years ago. "This is really a remarkable find," said Professor Daniel J. Pullen, chairman of FSU's Department of Classics. "It is rare indeed to locate an entire town built during the Late Bronze Age that shows this level of preservation." Pullen and a colleague, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies Thomas F. Tartaron of the University of Pennsylvania, led students...
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Back-Alley Trepanning
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Skeleton May Show Ancient Brain Surgery
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Physorg | 3-11-2008 | Ap
The skeleton of a young woman from a 3rd century A.D. grave in Veria, northern Greece, is seen in this undated handout photo provided by the Greek Culture Ministry on Tuesday, March 11, 2008. Archaeologists believe a large hole on the front of the skull, above the eyes, was caused by -- apparently failed -- brain surgery nearly 1,800 years ago. Although references to such delicate operations abound in ancient writings, discoveries of surgically perforated skulls are uncommon in Greece. (AP Photo/Greek Culture Ministry) (AP) -- Greek archaeologists said Tuesday they have unearthed rare...
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Rome and Italy
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House of Augustus opens to public
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BBC | Sunday, March 9, 2008 | Christian Fraser
Almost 50 years ago, archaeologists searching for the ruined house of Augustus found a... single fragment of painted plaster, discovered in masonry-filled rooms... On Sunday following decades of painstaking restoration, the frescoes in vivid shades of blue, red and ochre went on public show for the first time since they were painted in about 30BC. One large room boasts a theatrical theme, its walls painted to resemble a stage with narrow side-doors. High on the wall a comic mask peers through a small window. Other trompe l'oeil designs include an elegant garden vista, yellow columns and even a meticulously sketched...
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Ancient Art
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Statue of Egypt pharaoh rolls to new home
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Reuters on Yahoo | 8/25/06 | Summer Said
CAIRO (Reuters) - A massive statue of one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs, Ramses II, rolled through the streets of Cairo to a new home near the Pyramids on Friday to escape the corrosive pollution of its former spot in a crowded transit hub. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to bid farewell to the 3,200-year-old red granite statue, which weighs 83 tons and was wrapped in plastic and thick padding for the painstakingly slow 35 km (21 mile) journey, which took 10 hours. Only the face was visible. "We are going to miss you. Cairo will never be...
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Ancient Autopsies
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Egyptian Mummy Exhibit Is Son Of Ramesses II
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The Telegraph (UK) | 3-15-2008 | Lucy Cockcroft
An Egyptian mummy kept on display in a provincial museum for nearly 80 years has been identified as a son of the powerful pharaoh Ramesses II. The 3,000-year-old relic was thought to have been a female temple dancer, but a hospital CT scan showed features so reminiscent of the Egyptian royal family that experts are 90 per cent sure it is one of the 110 children Ramesses is thought to have fathered. The Bolton Museum mummy was thought for many years to have been...
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Buried with a Donkey
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Tutankhamun was not black: Egypt antiquities chief
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AFP | September 25, 2007
Egyptian antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass insisted Tuesday that Tutankhamun was not black despite calls by US black activists to recognise the boy king's dark skin colour. "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilisation as black has no element of truth to it," Hawass told reporters. "Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa," he said, quoted by the official MENA news agency. Hawass said he was responding to several demonstrations in Philadelphia after a lecture he gave there on September 6 where he defended his theory. Protestors also...
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Egypt
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How Wild Asses Became Donkeys Of The Pharaohs
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New Scientist | 3-10-2008 | Andy Coghlan
The ancient Egyptian state was built on the backs of tamed wild asses. Ten skeletons excavated from burial sites of the first Egyptian kings are the best evidence yet that modern-day donkeys emerged through domestication of African wild asses. The 5000-year-old bones also provide the earliest indications that asses were used for transport. The skeletons suggest that the smaller frames of today's donkeys hadn't yet evolved. Instead, the bones resemble those of modern-day Nubian and Somali wild asses, which are much larger than...
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Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
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Domestication Of The Donkey May Have Taken A Long Time
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Science Daily | 3-13-2008 | Washington University in St. Louis
An international group of researchers has found evidence for the earliest transport use of the donkey and the early phases of donkey domestication, suggesting the process of domestication may have been slower and less linear than previously thought. (Credit: iStockphoto/Andrea Laurita) ScienceDaily (Mar. 13, 2008) -- An international group of researchers has found evidence for the earliest transport use of the donkey and the early phases of donkey domestication, suggesting the process of domestication may have been slower and less linear than previously thought. Based on a study of 10 donkey...
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Puss and Roots
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Cat Joins Exclusive Genome Club (Abyssinian Cat Cinnamon Has DNA Decoded Alert)
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news.bbc.co.uk | 11/01/2007 | BBC News
A pedigree cat called Cinnamon has made scientific history by becoming the first feline to have its DNA decoded. The domestic cat now joins the select club of mammals whose genome has been deciphered - including dogs, chimps, rats, mice, cows and people. The genome map is expected to shed light on both feline and human disease. Cats get hundreds of illnesses similar to human ones, including a feline version of HIV, known as FIV, and a hereditary form of blindness. Cinnamon, a four-year-old Abyssinian cat, is descended from lab cats bred to develop retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease,...
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Paleontology
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Ancient Flying Reptiles Likely Had Sex As Youths
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National Geographic News | 3/12/2008 | John Roach
Pterosaurs, like their dinosaur relatives, didn't wait until they were fully grown to have sex, a new study suggests. Researchers examined microscopic tree ring-like growth markings in hundreds of bones from a species of the extinct flying reptiles discovered in central Argentina in the 1990s. The Pterodaustro guioazui bones came from multiple individuals, including an embryo inside an egg and adults with wingspans between 1 to 8 feet (0.3 to 2.5 meters). P. guiÃ’azui lived during the mid-Cretaceous, about a hundred million years ago. "It is quite amazing that even after millions of years, the microscopic structure of the bone...
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Toil and Trouble
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Mysterious Pits Shed Light On Forgotten Witches Of The West
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Times Online | 3-10-2008 | Simon de Bruxelles
Evidence of pagan rituals involving swans and other birds in the Cornish countryside in the 17th century has been uncovered by archaeologists. Since 2003, 35 pits at the site in a valley near Truro have been excavated containing swan pelts, dead magpies, unhatched eggs, quartz pebbles, human hair, fingernails and part of an iron cauldron. The finds have been dated to the 1640s, a period of turmoil in England when Cromwellian Puritans destroyed any links to pre-Christian pagan England. It was also a period when witchcraft attracted...
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Oh So Mysterioso
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Rennes le-Chateau researcher dies
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The Daily Grail | 13 March 2008 | n/c
The world of Rennes-Le-Chateau has lost a great friend; it has lost Jean-Luc Robin. Jean-Luc was my friend and gave me my first tour of Rennes-Le-Chateau. His knowledge was broad and deep, and his conclusions sensible, sceptical and measured. He lived and breathed Rennes-le-Chateau, having once served as caretaker of the Villa Bethania. In recent years he managed a restaurant in the Villa's garden where he sponsored summer lectures that drew crowds from all over France. Jean-Luc created an organization for the preservation of Rennes-Le-Chateau and his passion for the integrity of the village -- and the mystery - was...
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Early America
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'John Adams' (HBO Sunday Hight Reminder)
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Pittsburg Tribune-Review | 02/24/2008 | Bill Steigerwald
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."
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World War Eleven
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His Cup Runneth Over: a Warrior's Thanks
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Breitbart | 3/8/08 | CHARLES J. HANLEY
BIALLA, Papua New Guinea (AP) - The Japanese fighter caught the American pilot from behind, riddling his plane with machine-gun rounds. The left engine burst into flames. It was time to bail out. He yanked on the release lever but the cockpit canopy only half- opened. He unbuckled his seat belt, rose to shake the canopy loose and was instantly sucked out. Swinging beneath his opened parachute, he plunged toward a Pacific island jungle of thick, towering eucalyptus trees, of crocodile rivers and headhunters, into enemy territory, and into an unimagined future as a hero, "Suara Auru," Chief Warrior, to...
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Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
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Da Vinci's works on exhibit in Saxony
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PressTV Iran | Monday, March 10, 2008 | unattributed
A Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition focusing on his fascination with machines opens in the Museum of Industry in the German city of Saxony. The exhibition which opened on Sunday includes more than 40 wooden models of his inventions, including Archimedes screws, lifting devices, pulleys and flywheels. The exhibition will be open until June 15. One of the advantages of this particular exhibition is that the visitors are permitted to touch many of the exhibits and try them out for themselves, DPA reported. Da Vinci was a superb painter as well as designer of buildings and machinery and produced studies on...
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end of digest #191 20080315
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