Free Republic

JERUSALEM – Islamic authorities using heavy machinery to dig on the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site – have been caught red-handed destroying Temple-era antiquities and what's believed to be a section of an outer wall of the Second Jewish Temple.

It's one of Minnesota's greatest mysteries. It's something that puts settlers in America well before Columbus. A Minnesota geologist thinks the controversial Kensington Runestone is the real thing and there is evidence that he says backs up the theory. The Kensington Runestone is a rock found near Alexandria a century ago. It's inscription speaking of Norwegians here in 1362. It begs the question. Were Vikings exploring our land more than 100 years before Columbus? Or is it just an elaborate hoax? New research shows that the stone is genuine and there's hidden code that may prove it. It contains carved...

Ooparts ? What are Ooparts? That stands for Out of Place Artifacts. Things that show up where they shouldn't, a piece of gold chain found in a coal seam, what appears to be a sparkplug embedded in rock that is thousands of years old and what appears to be a bullet hole in the skull of a mastodon. These things are ooparts. A Gold Thread Workmen quarrying stone near the River Tweed below Rutherford, Scotland in 1844, found a piece of gold thread embedded in the rock of the quarry eight feet below ground level. A small piece of the...

Artifacts could be from early galleon Mon Feb 26, 11:42 PM ET MEXICO CITY - Archeologists said Monday that porcelain plates and other artifacts found along the Baja California coast could be from the wreckage of a Spanish galleon that sailed between the Philippines and Mexico hundreds of years ago. Seals and other markings on some of the estimated 1,000 fragments of porcelain plates found at the site indicate they were made in China in the late 1500s, said archaeologist Luz Maria Mejia of the National Institute of Anthropology and History. The site, near the port of Ensenada about 50...

Some of the artefacts confiscated may be up to one million years old French customs officials say they have seized more than 650 ancient artefacts smuggled from Mali in one of the largest such finds at a Paris airport. Described as an "archaeological treasure", the objects were thought to be on their way to private US buyers. Experts say most of the items are from the Neolithic period, but some may be up to one million years old. The artefacts are thought to have been taken from archaeological sites on the edge of the Sahara desert. The 669 items...

Shortly before Christmas, electrician Pio DiPofi pried open a 114-year-old box kneeler that ran for 200 feet along the balcony rail of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in the Strip District. In the hollow where he planned to run wiring for the church's ongoing renovation he saw dirt, soot and something more colorful. He reached in and carefully pulled out two very old holy cards -- images of Jesus and the saints that are often used in Catholic prayer. "When I looked at them, I was amazed," he said. Items found inside the 114-year-old box kneeler include a torn prayer card...

Railway construction unearths ancient artifacts in Germany By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff | January 21, 2007 COLOGNE, Germany -- Genialinius Gennatus was one fine duck hunter. Alerts In the third century , he recorded his prowess in high Latin on a stone tablet that he dedicated to Jupiter. That and a hefty donation probably ensured that the tablet won display in the temple to the Roman god in the settlement then called Colonia. Five or six centuries later, Cologne's early Christians, perhaps offended by the tablet dedicated to a pantheist god, chucked it into the silting channel between the Rhine...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - A man hunting for American Indian artifacts with his sons along a gravel bar on the Missouri River has uncovered an ancient fishhook that is making collectors envious. "The first thing I thought is, 'I hope this isn't metal,'" said Eric Henley, who found the hook last month near McBaine. "When I picked it up, there was a pretty good jump for joy and a couple of 'whoops' and yells. It's the cream of the crop." The hook is made of bone and covers his entire palm, making it much larger than most bone hooks. Joe Harl,...

Field Museum scientists solve riddle of mysterious faces on South Pacific artifactsDecipher their hidden meaning and religious significance John Terrell, Regenstein Curator of Pacific Anthropology at the Field Museum, and Esther M. Schechter, a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the Field Museum, have pieced together... CHICAGO—The strange faces drawn on the first pottery made in the South Pacific more than 3,000 years ago have always been a mystery to scientists. Now their riddle may have been solved by new research done by two Field Museum scientists to be published in the February 2007 issue of the Cambridge...

Last update - 09:31 19/10/2006 First Temple artifacts found in dirt removed from Temple Mount By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent The project of sifting layers of Temple Mount dirt has yielded thousands of new artifacts dating from the First Temple period to today. The dirt was removed in 1999 by the Islamic Religious Trust (Waqf) from the Solomon's Stables area to the Kidron Stream Valley. The sifting itself is taking place at Tzurim Valley National Park, at the foot of Mount Scopus, and being funded by the Ir David Foundation. Dr. Gabriel Barkai and Tzachi Zweig, the archaeologists directing the...

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — Archaeologists believe they have uncovered evidence of an ancient village, possibly dating back to the time of Christ, that once thrived along the shores of this Gulf Coast community. The artifacts were unearthed during recent efforts to rebuild a thoroughfare and major bridge heavily damaged last year by Hurricane Katrina. Marco Giardino, an archaeologist acting as the city's liaison on a dig to preserve the ancient remains, said as many as 400 people may have lived in the village. "That area was very strategic and would have allowed them to travel, fish and hunt," he...

< img src = http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/06/uk_enl_1155824432/html/1.stm> An ancient Peruvian headdress which was looted from an archaeological site almost 20 years ago has been found by police in London. It is considered a national treasure and disappeared in 1988 after a tomb in northern Peru was raided and its contents sold on the black market. It was handed to a firm of solicitors in central London by one of its clients who did not know it was stolen. The headdress, depicting a sea god, dates back to 700AD. It is an example of ancient Peruvian Mochica civilisation art and is regarded by...

SAN FRANCISCO – Previously hidden writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being uncovered with powerful X-ray beams nearly 800 years after a Christian monk scrubbed off the text and wrote over it with prayers. Over the past week, researchers at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park have been using X-rays to decipher a fragile 10th century manuscript that contains the only copies of some of Archimedes' most important works. The X-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment. “We are...

RICHMOND, Va. - Sometime around 1610, archaeologists figure, a thirsty colonist in Jamestown set his brass pistol on the side of a well as he pulled up some water and accidentally knocked the weapon in.

A fire in a 1,000-year-old Buddhist temple in a remote valley of Himachal Pradesh has reduced the pinewood-structure to ashes and also destroyed a number of scriptures, artefacts and murals, officials said. The fire at the temple in Ribba in Kinnaur valley, about 200 km from Shimla, started late on Friday and caused losses of nearly Rs 125 million, they said. Besides, 170 Buddhist scriptures written over centuries by monks on birch paper rolls, many murals of Lord Buddha, antique jewellery and other artefacts have been reduced to ashes. Himalayan pinewood planks that were used to construct the temple only...

Diver Dennis O'Neil of Plattsburgh, N.Y., poses with a piece of a cannon muzzle which he discovered during a dive Friday, June 30, 2006, in Peru, N.Y. Divers have spent the last seven years combing the bottom of Lake Champlain in search of 'battlefield scatter' from the crucial 1776 Battle of Valcour near Peru. O'Neil has made about 100 dives during the project. PERU, N.Y. - Gen. Benedict Arnold led a "wretched, motley" crew of sailors on Lake Champlain against a far superior British fleet near here on Oct. 11, 1776. The rebels lost. But their dogged fight delayed...

The altar was old. It was ornate. And it was on the gambling floor of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.James Lang was startled when he saw it there. Lang, vicar of parishes for the Roman Catholic diocese in Syracuse, had a chat with the manager about desecration. The altar eventually was removed."They thought it looked cool," Lang remembers.It also looked like part of a growing phenomenon: Religious artifacts are migrating as America's shifting population leaves empty churches across the Midwest and Northeast. This March, New York City's archdiocese recommended shutting 31 metro parishes, and Boston has...

Iraq Antiquities Find Sparks Controversy By Sue Biggin and Andrew Lawler ScienceNOW Daily News 10 April 2006 TRIESTE, ITALY--Italian researchers in Iraq claim to have stumbled upon an important cache of ancient clay tablets in one of the world's oldest cities. But others dispute the claim, and Iraqi authorities say the scientists have been acting illegally. No archaeologist has been given permission to do excavations since the U.S. invasion in March 2003 toppled Saddam Hussein. But last month, Italy's National Research Council announced that it had discovered some 500 rare tablets on the surface of Eridu, a desert site in...

Artifacts in Ancient Chinese City Reveal Superb TechnologySuperb drilling technology and the world's earliest stone drill bits were found at site Epoch Times Staff Apr 01, 2006 A worker looks over an excavation site. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)In Lingjiatan, Hanshan County of Anhui Province in China, archaeologists have discovered a primitive tribal site that was inhabited 5,000 years ago. Superb drilling technology and the world's earliest stone drill bits were found at the site. Archaeology professor Zhang Jingguo said there are still many mysteries in the Lingjiatan ruins waiting to be solved. The Lingjiatan ruins are located in Lingjiatan Village,...

The Jesus Dynasty Excerpt: 'The Jesus Dynasty' by James D. Tabor New Book Challenges Christian Philosophy April 7, 2006 -- James Tabor is the chairman of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His book challenges many of the beliefs that Christians hold dear, maintaining that Jesus is neither the son of God nor the son of Joseph but most likely the child of a Roman soldier named Pantera. Jesus, Tabor maintains, became the head of the household when Joseph died and looked after his six half-brothers and sisters. When Jesus died, his brother James took over...