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LAHORE: The vast Amazon rainforest is on the verge of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world’s climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year. Geoffrey Lean and Fred Pearce, writing for The Independent on Sunday, quote studies conducted by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre in Amazonia as concluding that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down. “Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences,...

SAO PAULO, Brazil - A grouping of granite blocks along a grassy Amazon hilltop may be the vestiges of a centuries-old astronomical observatory — a find that archaeologists say shows early rainforest inhabitants were more sophisticated than previously believed. snip...

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - Archaeologists discovered a pre-colonial astrological observatory possibly 2,000 years old in the Amazon basin near French Guiana, said a report. "Only a society with a complex culture could have built such a monument," archaeologist Mariana Petry Cabral, of the Amapa Institute of Scientific and Technological Research (IEPA), told O Globo newspaper. The observatory was built of 127 blocks of granite each three meters (10 feet) high and regularly placed in circles in an open field, she said. Cabral said the site resembles a temple which could have been used as an observatory, because the blocks...

Brazilian archaeologists have found an ancient stone structure in a remote corner of the Amazon that may cast new light on the region's past. The site, thought to be an observatory or place of worship, pre-dates European colonisation and is said to suggest a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy. Its appearance is being compared to the English site of Stonehenge. It was traditionally thought that before European colonisation, the Amazon had no advanced societies. Winter solstice The archaeologists made the discovery in the state of Amapa, in the far north of Brazil. A total of 127 large blocks of stone were...

ST. LOUIS -- The search for El Dorado in the Amazonian rainforest might not have yielded pots of gold, but it has led to unearthing a different type of gold mine: some of the globe's richest soil that can transform poor soil into highly fertile ground. That's not all. Scientists have a method to reproduce this soil -- known as terra preta, or Amazonian dark earths -- and say it can pull substantial amounts of carbon out of the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, helping to prevent global warming. That's because terra preta is loaded with...

Early Fig Farming Scientists tracing the origins of agriculture have followed the trail of cultivated grains like wheat and barley back to about 10,500 years ago in the Near East . Now a new study reported in the 2 Jun 2006 Science suggests that fig trees could have been the first domesticated crop, preceding cereals by about a thousand years. Kislev et al. ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/312/5778/1372) described the remains of figs found in several archaeological sites in the Jordan Valley as early as about 11,400 years ago. The carbonized fruits represent a variety of fig in which the fruit forms and...

It is often held aloft by environmental campaign groups as an example of one of the last remaining regions of unspoiled habitat left in the world. But instead of being a pristine rainforest untouched by human hands, the Amazon appears to have been profoundly shaped by mankind. An international team of researchers have published evidence that suggests the Amazon was once home to millions of people who lived and farmed in the area now covered by trees.

Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before ColumbusBy Heather Whipps, Special to LiveScience Which came first–the chicken or the European? Popular history, and a familiar rhyme about Christopher Columbus, holds that Europeans made contact with the Americas in 1492, with some arguing that the explorer and his crew were the first outsiders to reach the New World. But chicken bones recently unearthed on the coast of Chile—dating prior to Columbus’ “discovery” of America and resembling the DNA of a fowl species native to Polynesia—may challenge that notion, researchers say. “Chickens could not have gotten to South America on their own—they...

The study questions recent claims that chickens were first introduced into South America by Polynesians, before the arrival of Spanish chickens in the 15th century following Christopher Columbus. ...the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) Director Professor Alan Cooper says there has been considerable debate about the existence and degree of contact between Polynesians and South Americans, with the presence of the sweet potato throughout the Pacific often used as evidence of early trading contacts... A recent study claimed to have found the first direct evidence of a genetic link between ancient Polynesian and apparently pre-Columbian chickens...

2007—Year of the Lapita? Volume 61 Number 1, January/February 2008 by Mark Rose Polynesian Breakthroughs A Polynesian chicken (Anita Gould) and a Chilean chicken bone (Courtesy Alice Storey) There was no doubt about including in our 2007 Top Ten the discovery that chicken bones from ancient Polynesian sites in Tonga and Samoa and El Arenal, a Chilean site occupied between A.D. 700 and 1390, had identical DNA. The chicken was domesticated in Southeast Asia, but how it arrived in the New World before Europeans arrived was a mystery. Now it seems that Polynesian seafarers brought them, adding to the evidence...

Early Polynesians Sailed Thousands of Miles for Trade Dave Hansford for National Geographic News September 27, 2007 Early Polynesians sailed thousands of miles for exploration and trade, suggests a new study of early stone woodworking tools. The analysis confirms traditional tales of vast ocean voyages and hints that a trading network existed between Hawaii and Tahiti as early as a thousand years ago. The work also bolsters research suggesting that the Polynesians were skillful sailors who rapidly expanded across the Pacific and journeyed as far as South America by the 1400s A.D. Kenneth Collerson and Marshall Weisler of the University...

First Chickens in Americas Were Brought From Polynesia By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Why did the chicken cross the Pacific Ocean? To get to the other side, in South America. How? By Polynesian canoes, which apparently arrived at least 100 years before Europeans settled the continent. That is the conclusion of an international research team, which reported yesterday that it had found “the first unequivocal evidence for a pre-European introduction of chickens to South America,” or presumably anywhere in the New World. The researchers said that bones buried on the South American coast were from chickens that lived between 1304 and...

Legends and bits of evidence tell a story of Asians arriving here long, long ago. Part one of two. "Even pale ink is better than memory." -- Chinese proverbAs the tide creeps over the sand flats of Pachena Bay south of Bamfield, it brings ashore the flotsam of the Pacific that -- on occasion -- hints at extraordinary travels and a mystery of historic proportions. Amid the kelp, in decades past, hundreds of green-glass fishing floats would arrive intact on the Vancouver Island coast, having ridden the powerful Japanese Current in year-long transits from Asia. But on rare occasions, entire...

Archaeologists Find Evidence of Origin of Pacific Islanders By Heidi Chang Honolulu, Hawaii 31 March 2008 The origin of Pacific Islanders has been a mystery for years. Now archaeologists believe they have the answer. As Heidi Chang reports, they found it in China. The excavation of the Zishan site (Zhejiang Province) in 1996, where many artifacts from the Hemudu culture have been found China had a sea-faring civilization as long as 7000 years ago. Archaeologist Tianlong Jiao says, one day, these mariners sailed their canoes into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, and stayed. He points out, "Most scientists, archaeologists,...

JERUSALEM (Reuters Life!) – A ritual sacrifice of chickens that are also twirled about one's head to atone for sins ahead of the Yom Kippur holiday has come under fire in Israel where animal activists want it outlawed. The custom known in Hebrew as "kaparot" is commonly practiced by Ultra Orthodox Jews before the annual Day of Atonement, a 25-hour period of fasting and prayer observed by Jews the world over starting at sunset Friday. In Israel, where a majority of Jews view themselves as secular or non-observant, a small group of Ultra Orthodox has angered the wider public by...

Two Durham University scientists are to play a key part in a 6000km trip following the migration route of ancient Pacific cultures. Drs Keith Dobney and Greger Larson, both from the Department of Archaeology, will be joining the voyage, which will be the first ever expedition to sail in two traditional Polynesian boats -- ethnic double canoes -- which attempts to re-trace the genuine migration route of the ancient Austronesians. The main aim of the voyage is to find out where the ancestors of Polynesian culture originated but the Durham University researchers will also be examining the local wildlife. Dr...

Chicken bones show Polynesians went to Chile By MAGGIE FOX - Reuters | Tuesday, 5 June 2007 A chicken bone found in Chile provides solid evidence to settle a debate over whether Polynesians travelling on rafts visited South America thousands of years ago – or vice versa, New Zealand researchers have said. The DNA in the bone carries a rare mutation that links it to chickens in Tonga and Samoa, and radiocarbon dating shows it is around 600 years old – meaning it predates the arrival of Spanish conquerors in South America. "These chickens are related to hens from Polynesia,"...

Iron Age Britons were importing olives from the Mediterranean a century before the Romans arrived with their exotic tastes in food, say archaeologists who have discovered a single olive stone from an excavation of an Iron Age well at at Silchester in Hampshire. The stone came from a layer securely dated to the first century BC, making it the earliest ever found in Britain -- but since nobody ever went to the trouble of importing one olive, there must be more, rotted beyond recognition or still buried. The stone, combined with earlier finds of seasoning herbs such as coriander, dill...

REMAINS OF FOOD SHED LIGHT ON ANCIENT WAYS BY BEN MURCH 11:00 - 20 November 2004 Exotic spices unearthed beneath the Bath Spa show military administrators lived in the lap of luxury in the city's early days. Food and architectural remains found preserved beneath the remains of Roman buildings provide new evidence of the high living enjoyed by the military rulers of what was then Aquae Sulis in the first century AD. The remains were discovered in 1999, but have only just finished being analysed. The ancient grapes, figs, coriander and a peppercorn - along with highly decorative architectural fragments...

Giraffe was on the menu in Pompeii's standard restaurants, says a new research into a non-elite section of the ancient Roman city buried by Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D. The study, which will be presented on Jan. 4 at the Archaeological Institute of America and American Philological Association Joint Annual Meeting in Chicago, draws on a multi-year excavation in a forgotten area inside one of the busiest gates of Pompeii, the Porta Stabia. Steven Ellis, a University of Cincinnati associate professor of classics, said his team has spent more than a decade researching the life of the middle and...