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How goes the culture war? Posted: November 15, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc. Evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics who trooped to the polls in 11 states to reject the legalization of marriage between homosexuals are celebrating a great victory in America's culture war. And understandably so. With "moral values" the surprise issue in campaign 2004, the Red States and George Bush prevailed by 3.5 million votes. Onward Christian soldiers. Yet, within the West, in the ancient struggle for moral supremacy between secularism and Christianity, Christianity remains in retreat. Consider the moral condition of the cradle of...

5,000-Year-Old Artifacts Near Texas Coast By LYNN BREZOSKY The Associated Press Saturday, November 13, 2004; 8:50 PM HARLINGEN, Texas - Archaeologists have discovered a cache of artifacts near South Padre Island that they say could be up to 5,000 years old, potentially providing new clues about early peoples of the Texas coast. Ricklis said the find is significant because so little is known about the ancient Rio Grande Valley. Most early manmade items would have been eroded by sand and sea air, or washed out by the ever-changing course of the waterways of the Rio Grande basin near the Mexican...

Madoc In AmericaNative American Histories in the USA Is truth stranger than fiction? Of course it is; it always has been One subject that has been debated for the last four hundred years was whether or not a Khumric-Welsh Prince called Madoc discovered America. Queen Elizabeth I was persuaded by her advisors that this was so and the Khumric-Welsh discovery was put forward as somehow giving England a prior claim in the political wrangles over first rights in the New World of the Americas. No one ever thought to investigate the British records. Caradoc of Llancarfan wrote about it circa...

The Mandans were an Indian tribe that lived in the Midwest, present day western North Dakota. The Mandans were different from other Indian tribes when White explorers encoutered them. Instead of the red skin and black hair, the Mandans had blonde or red hair, blue eyes, and light skin. Some spoke Welsh. The Mandans gladly welcomed the White explorers. It is believed they came from a Welsh settlement in the Ohio River Valley, which was first established in the mid 14th century, about 300 years before the first White settlers came to America. Madoc a Welsh prince is though to...

Ancient Amazon Settlements Uncovered Thu Sep 18, 7:26 PM ET Add Science - AP to My Yahoo! By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer WASHINGTON - The Amazon River basin was not all a pristine, untouched wilderness before Columbus came to the Americas, as was once believed. Researchers have uncovered clusters of extensive settlements linked by wide roads with other communities and surrounded by agricultural developments. The researchers, including some descendants of pre-Columbian tribes that lived along the Amazon, have found evidence of densely settled, well-organized communities with roads, moats and bridges in the Upper Xingu part of the vast...

Did the Vikings Stay... Vatican Files May Offer Clues. / How did the Swedes end up in Minnesota?

Did the Vikings Stay... Vatican Files May Offer Clues. / How did the Swedes end up in Minnesota?

Archaeologist continues to dig up history By Marjorie Wertz For The Tribune-Review Sunday, October 17, 2004 In the past 30 years archaeologists worldwide have visited the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County. The general public can now see what's involved in the archaeological dig that has proved the existence of early humans dating back 16,000 years. "The site was opened last year for the first time to the public," said David Scofield, director of Meadowcroft Museum of Rural Life. "We are now in the process of getting an architect to create a design for a permanent roof over the excavation. This...

Extinct humans left louse legacy By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff The evolutionary history of head lice is tied very closely to that of their hosts Some head lice infesting people today were probably spread to us thousands of years ago by an extinct species of early human, a genetics study reveals. It shows that when our ancestors left Africa after 100,000 years ago, they made direct contact with tribes of "archaic" peoples, probably in Asia. Lice could have jumped from them on to our ancestors during fights, sex, clothes-sharing or even cannibalism. Details of the research appear...

Deseret Morning News, Sunday, October 03, 2004 Mexico discovery fuels debate about man's origins Archeologists are baffled by hominid bones By John Rice Associated Press MEXICO CITY — For decades, Federico Solorzano has gathered old bones from the shores of Mexico's largest lake — bones he found and bones he was brought, bones of beasts and bones of men. Mexican professor Federico Solorzano shows the supraorbital arch from the fossil of an early hominid. Guillermo Arias, Associated Press The longtime teacher of anthropology and paleontology was sifting through his collection one day when he noticed some that didn't seem to...

After almost 10,000 years buried in the muck of the Columbia River, followed by six years in lab and museum vaults, the skeletal remains of Kennewick Man should be given to scientists looking for clues about how people first migrated to North America, a federal judge in Portland ruled yesterday. The ruling by U.S. Magistrate John Jelderks is a victory for eight anthropologists who fought the federal government's attempts to turn the remains over to a coalition of five Northwest tribes who want to rebury the "Ancient One." "We hung in there because we think these ancient remains are very...

Associated Press KENANSVILLE — When workers digging up peat at a former central Florida sod farm unearthed human remains with their backhoe, they called the police. But this was a cold case that authorities were unlikely to solve. The bones found Thursday appeared to be those of a young man who died in his late teens or early 20s about 4,800 years ago, said Anthony Falsetti, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida. "It's quite significant because it ties into some earlier discoveries in the 1980s ... dating back to 8,000 years ago," Falsetti said Friday. "It...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - More than six years after the discovery of one of the oldest skeletons ever found in North America, a federal judge overturned a decision to give the bones to Indian tribes for reburial and ruled that scientists can keep them for more study. U.S. Magistrate John Jelderks said he reviewed 20,000 pages of documents before concluding that "nothing I have found in a careful examination of the administrative record" supported the government's decision to give the bones to the tribes. Scientific study of the ancient skeleton will benefit all people, including tribes, by offering clues to...

Tribes, archaeologists at odds over prehistoric cemetery By John W. Gonzalez HOUSTON CHRONICLE Monday, July 28, 2003 VICTORIA -- Prehistoric human remains and artifacts discovered in one of the continent's oldest known cemeteries will undergo extensive analysis, despite complaints of grave desecration from several American Indian tribes. Federal officials say they hope to minimize destructive tests on the human bones and promptly rebury them when studies are complete, but tribes say they are considering legal action to halt further analysis. "These are our ancestors," said Walter Celestine of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe in East Texas. After more than 18 months of...

Archaeologists split hairs over first arrivals A site in Oregon could shake America's view of history, says Sanjida O'Connell Thursday October 17, 2002 The Guardian Woodburn is a small agricultural town in the US state of Oregon. Next to the high school is Mammoth Park. It sounds cheesy, but Mammoth Park is a paleoarchaeological site whose findings could shake America's view of her history. In suitably prosaic fashion, the site was discovered in 1987, when local authorities tried to install a sewer line. At depths of 5m, workers found huge bones, but said nothing and took them home. Now, Mammoth...

New Study on Peopling of Americas Confirms Some Theories, Unsettles Others The New World was populated in at least two migrations, according to a paper presented by C. Loring Brace to the National Academy of Sciences. The settlers in the first wave, who walked across the Bering Land Bridge 15,000 years ago, were the forebears of present-day inhabitants south of the U.S.-Canadian border. The ancestors of linguistically distinct peoples including the Inuit, Aleut, and Na-Dene speakers made the watery crossing from Asia about 5,000 years ago.(The people are todays American Indian/Native Americans) The new study by Dr. Brace, professor of...

Columbus Day was the product of the Italian population of New York City, which organized the first celebration of the discovery of America on October 12, 1866. In 1869, the Italian – American population of San Francisco celebrated October 12, as Columbus Day. It was not until 1905, that a state, Colorado, observed a Columbus Day and in 1937 FDR proclaimed October 12 Columbus Day. Today Columbus Day is disparaged by liberal multiculturalists who distort the history of Christopher Columbus and has been since 1992. An October 2, 2003 post to the Portland Independent Media Center addressed the issue of...

Contact: Joel Schwarz joels@u.washington.edu 206-543-2580 University of Washington Evidence acquits Clovis people of ancient killings, archaeologists say Archaeologists have uncovered another piece of evidence that seems to exonerate some of the earliest humans in North America of charges of exterminating 35 genera of Pleistocene epoch mammals. The Clovis people, who roamed large portions of North America 10,800 to 11,500 years ago and left behind highly distinctive and deadly fluted spear points, have been implicated in the exterminations by some scientists. Now researchers from the University of Washington and Southern Methodist University who examined evidence from all suggested Clovis-age killing sites...

Workers find signs of 7,500-year-old civilization while building water plant The Associated Press NORWELL, Mass. -- The discovery of a possible American Indian settlement as much as 7,500 years old has halted work on a new water treatment plant. Workers have found about 38 tools and stone chips used for making and repairing tools, as well as a hearth and a storage pit, at the site on South Street near Third Herring Brook. Lauren J. Cook, senior archaeologist on the team that surveyed the area, said it was unusual to find "features" of civilizations, like the hearth and the stone...

Dear Editor: This is a response to a pro wolf advocate stating that there has never been an attack by a "HEALTHY" wolf in North America, July 8,002 15 By Joy York, It has been widely discussed whether a healthy wild wolf has ever attacked a human on this continent. In fact, many say such attacks have never occurred in North America. HISTORY STATES OTHERWISE! It depends on which century you want to research wolves attacking and killing humans,1800's, 1900's or 2000's. Noted naturalist documented wolf attacks on humans. John James Audubon, of whom the Audubon society is named, reported...

World's dogs are descended from Asian wolves Scientists have found that almost all dogs share a common gene pool after analysing the DNA of hundreds of dogs from Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. They have concluded domesticated dogs originated from wolves in East Asia nearly 15,000 years ago. The animals travelled with humans through Europe and Asia and across the Bering Strait with the first settlers in America. Swedish and Chinese scientists studied the genes of 654 dogs and found a higher genetic diversity among East Asian dogs suggested that people there were the first to domesticate dogs from...

Pre-Columbian ruins could be a pyramid EFE - 3/29/2002 Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) this week confirmed having uncovered pre-Columbian ruins in the central state of Morelos that might be a pyramid or palace from the late Mesoamerican post-classical period (1200-1521). The find was made in February, when the owner of a property in the town of Tepotzlan was preparing to lay the foundation for a snack bar he hoped to build alongside the road and unearthed the ruins, the newspaper Reforma reported. Residents in the area alerted local officials, who called in scientists to inspect the...

CONNECTICUT "BOAT" CAIRN An unusual, large stone cairn is located atop Rattlesnake Hill in Connecticut's Natchang State Forest. At an elevation of 640 feet, it commands an almost 360° view. Its long axis is aligned with the Pole Star. The cairn seems to have been constructed according to some plan rather than just being a deposit of cleared stones. One's first impression is that it resembles a boat. Could it be a Norse "ship burial" such as found in Europe? It is impossible to prove such a conjecture without tearing the cairn apart. (Whittall, James P., II; "The 'Boat"...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The National Museum of the American Indian opens today, a spectacular symbol of the cultural and political renaissance of the nation's "first people." With its sinewy limestone facade and prime spot on the National Mall, the 254,000-square-foot museum is a visually stunning showcase of 10,000 years of American Indian art, history and culture. More than 500 years after Indians' first, often disastrous contacts with Europeans -- and just a half-century after Congress passed a law trying to "terminate" tribes -- the museum offers American Indians "a prominent place of honor on the nation's front lawn," said W....

VINTAGE SKULLS Researcher Silvia Gonzalez examines a 13,000-year-old skull. (Liverpool John Moores University) The oldest human remains found in the Americas were recently "discovered" in the storeroom of Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology. Found in central Mexico in 1959, the five skulls were radiocarbon dated by a team of researchers from the United Kingdom and Mexico and found to be 13,000 years old. They pre-date the Clovis culture by a couple thousand years, adding to the growing evidence against the Clovis-first model for the first peopling of the Americas. Of additional significance is the shape of the skulls, which are...

WASHINGTON -- Scientists hoping to study the ancient skeleton known as Kennewick Man are protesting a bill by Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell that they say could block their efforts. A two-word amendment would change an Indian graves-protection law to allow federally recognized tribes to claim ancient remains even if they cannot prove a link to a current tribe. Scientists say the bill, if enacted, could have the effect of overturning a federal appeals court ruling that allowed them to study the 9,300-year- old bones.

In an otherwise unremarkable gravel bluff on the banks of the Bow River in Calgary, University of Alberta researchers Jiri Chlachula and Alan Bryan believe they have unearthed the remains of what could be the oldest human artifacts in North America, the pair announced this month. If substantiated, the discovery pushes back the known date of human settlement in North America by several thousand years. Other earth scientists are sceptical about the find's authenticity: U of A geomorphologist Rob Young describes it as "based only on pure speculation." ...Comments Prof. Young: "Any dude could have put that rock there."

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal found elsewhere on this site has suggested people might have camped here and built fires by the north branch of the Potomac River, anywhere from 9,000 years ago to as much as 16,000 years ago... Some tools and bones have been found in Pennsylvania and Virginia that date well before the Clovis era, although scientists debate whether the dating is accurate.

Divers making dangerous probes through underwater caves near the Caribbean coast have discovered what appears to be one of oldest human skeletons in the Americas, archaeologists announced at a seminar that was ending on Friday. The report by a team from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History exploits a new way of investigating the past. Most coastal settlements by early Americans now lie deep beneath the sea, which during the Ice Age was hundreds of feet lower than now. Researchers at the international ``Early Man in America'' seminar here also reported other ancient finds -- including a California bone...

Last Updated: Tuesday, 7 September, 2004, 14:26 GMT 15:26 UK Tribe challenges American origins By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff, at the BA festival The skulls (r) are long and narrow, not in keeping with Native Indians' broader, rounder features. Some of the earliest settlers of America may have come from Australia, southern Asia, and the Pacific, new research suggests. Traditional theories have held that the first Americans originated from northern Asia. Dr Silvia Gonzalez conducted a study of ancient bones found in Mexico and found that they have very different characteristics to Native Americans. The results are...

I have created a public register of "bump lists" here on Free Republic. I define a bump list as a name listed in the "To" field used to index articles. Free Republic Bump List Register

<p>Did you know that any Free Republic topic can be a sidebar for you? Did you know you can remove any sidebar that you currently have? Did you know you can control how many posts show up in each sidebar, and what order the sidebars show up on your latest posts page?</p> <p>I have compiled this thread to help make the task of managing your sidebars easier.</p>

Kon-Tiki Replica to Sail, Study Pacific in 2005 Sept. 6, 2004 — By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - A replica of the Kon-Tiki balsa raft will sail the Pacific in 2005 to study mounting environmental threats to the oceans since Thor Heyerdahl made his daredevil 1947 voyage, organizers said on Monday. One of Heyerdahl's grandsons will be among the six-strong crew for the trip from Peru aiming to reach Tahiti, about 310 miles west of the Raroia atoll where the Kon-Tiki ran aground after traveling 4,970 miles in 101 days. Heyerdahl's original voyage defied many experts' predictions that...

Discover Feb, 1999 First Americans.(origins of man) Author/s: Karen Wright Not long ago we thought the first humans in the New World were mammoth hunters from Siberia who crossed the Bering Strait at the end of the Ice Age. Now, we are learning, none of that may be true not the who, not the where, not the how, and certainly not the when. You don't expect someone who has been dead for more than 9,000 years to have any odor left--let alone a strong one. But you don't expect him to have any hair or skin or clothes left, either,...

'First Americans were Australian' This is the face of the first known American, Lucia The first Americans were descended from Australian aborigines, according to evidence in a new BBC documentary. The skulls suggest faces like those of Australian aborigines The programme, Ancient Voices, shows that the dimensions of prehistoric skulls found in Brazil match those of the aboriginal peoples of Australia and Melanesia. Other evidence suggests that these first Americans were later massacred by invaders from Asia. Until now, native Americans were believed to have descended from Asian ancestors who arrived over a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and...

Silvia Gonzalez from John Moores University in Liverpool said skeletal evidence pointed strongly to this unpalatable truth and hinted that recovered DNA would corroborate it... She said there was very strong evidence that the first migration came from Australia via Japan and Polynesia and down the Pacific Coast of America. Skulls of a people with distinctively long and narrow heads discovered in Mexico and California predated by several thousand years the more rounded features of the skulls of native Americans. One particularly well preserved skull of a long-face woman had been carbon dated to 12,700 years ago, whereas the...

'First Americans' may be Johnnies-come-lately By MIKE TONER The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 08/20/04 Human history is being written —and rewritten — a shovelful at a time on a shaded hillside along the Savannah River. Each summer Al Goodyear's team of archaeologists digs deeper into the riverbank in South Carolina's Allendale County. Each summer the story of the first Americans, the primitive hunters who first populated the continent, grows longer. And more complex. And more controversial. David Tulis/AJC (ENLARGE) Archaeologist Al Goodyear holds a hand-made 'microblade,' one of the hundreds of artifacts unearthed during his team's seven years of excavations...

Stone Age Columbus - questions and answersWhat was the Ice Age climate like in southern France/Spain? During the last glacial maximum around 20,000 years ago the climate was a lot colder and drier than now. In southern France one could expect summer temperatures of between 5-10°C and winter temperatures dropping below -20°C. Even so, there were three basic land types that had their own advantages and disadvantages for people: Wide coastal plain that was probably an open grass land with sparse vegetation Uplands that would have been much like the Arctic tundra today Inland valleys that were well sheltered and...

Skulls found in Mexico suggest the early Americans would have said 'G'day mate' By Steve Connor, Science Editor 04 September 2003 The accepted theory of how prehistoric humans first migrated to America has been challenged by a study of an ancient set of bones unearthed in Mexico. An analysis of 33 skulls found on the Mexican peninsula of Baja California suggests that the first Americans were not north Asians who crossed to the American continent about 12,000 years ago. The skulls more closely resemble the present-day natives of Australia and the South Pacific, suggesting that there might have been an...

Bye Bye, Beringia Anthropology and Archaeology of The Americas by Bill Jones One might think that Archeology sites throughout the World have produced many datable human remains. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ancient human remains have so rarely been found that these singular findings could not be connected to others to form chronologies about human evolution. The scarcity of human remains to be analyzed has prevented the sciences of Anthropology and Archaeology from forming conclusions about the cultural levels of ancient humans. We try to measure the culture of a people in terms of the totality of their...

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - An ancient walled city complex inhabited some 1,300 years ago by a culture later conquered by the Incas has been discovered deep in Peru's Amazon jungle, explorers said on Tuesday. U.S. and Peruvian explorers uncovered the city, which may have been home to up to 10,000 people, after a month trekking in Peru's northern rain forest and following up on years of investigation about a possible lost metropolis in the region. The stone city, made up of five citadels at 9,186 feet above sea level, stretches over around 39 square miles and contains walls covered in...

RAWLINGS, Md. -- Robert D. Wall is too careful a scientist to say he's on the verge of a sensational discovery. But the soybean field where the Towson University anthropologist has been digging for more than a decade is yielding hints that someone camped there, on the banks of the Potomac River, as early as 14,000 B.C. If further digging and carbon dating confirm it, the field in Allegany County could be among the oldest and most important archaeological sites in the Americas.

On September 19, 1997, the New York Times announced the discovery of a group of earthen mounds in northeastern Louisiana. The site, known as Watson Brake, includes 11 mounds 26 feet high linked by low ridges into an oval 916 feet long. What is remarkable about this massive complex is that it was built around 3400 B.C., more than 3,000 years before the development of farming communities in eastern North America, by hunter-gatherers, at least partly mobile, who visited the site each spring and summer to fish, hunt, and collect freshwater mussels... Social complexity cannot exist unless I it...

Scientists wait to examine Kennewick Man August 08 2004 at 04:58PM By Tomas Alex Tizon For a few days last week, the top forensic anthropologists in the United States thought they were finally going to get their chance to study Kennewick Man. The eight-year legal battle over the 9 300-year-old bones, one of the oldest skeletons found in North America, appeared finished after five northwest Indian tribes decided not to pursue their case to the US supreme court. The tribes claimed that Kennewick Man was an ancestor and should not be desecrated by scientific study. Two courts ruled in favour...

<p>The "Peñon Woman III" skeleton was found near Mexico City International Airport.</p> <p>But perhaps more significant than the bones' age, researchers said, is that they were found while digging a well near Mexico City International Airport. Because the remains were discovered outside the United States, scientists will be able to study the DNA and structure of the skeleton without the objection of Native American groups, who can claim and rebury ancestral remains under a 1990 U.S. law.</p>

<p>Eight anthropologists who want to study an ancient skeleton must want until a federal court has heard an appeal of the case by four Northwest tribes that consider the bones sacred.</p> <p>The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, made last week, prevents any study of the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man, which scientists have sought to examine since 1996.</p>

Narrow skulls clue to first Americans 11:24 04 September 03 NewScientist.com news service Skull measurements on the remains of an isolated group of people who lived at the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California has stirred up the debate on the identity of the first Americans once again. The earliest inhabitants of North America differed subtly but significantly from modern native Americans. The difference is clearly seen in the skull shapes of the first people to colonise the continent, who had longer, narrower skulls than modern people. One theory says it is because two distinct groups of people migrated to...

With both sides clashing over the definition of "Native American," an appeals court heard arguments Wednesday on whether a 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man belongs to scientists or Indian tribes. The Interior Department has been fighting with scientists over control of the bones since they were discovered in 1996 along the banks of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Wash. Anthropologists want to do research on the skeleton. But then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt ruled three years ago the bones should be handed over to the tribes for reburial. Last October, U.S. Magistrate John Jelderks overturned Babbitt and approved research on...

Date limit set on first Americans By Paul Rincon BBC Science A new genetic study deals a blow to claims that humans reached America at least 30,000 years ago - around the same time that people were colonising Europe. Kennewick Man, a 9,300-year-old American The subject of when humans first arrived in America is hotly contested by academics. On one side of the argument are researchers who claim America was first populated around 13,000 years ago, toward the end of the last Ice Age. On the other are those who propose a much earlier date for colonisation of the continent...

Calico: A 200,000-year old site in the Americas? New World archaeological sites inferred to be even slightly older than the 11.5 ka Clovis complexes have been controversial; so claims for a 200 ka site in North America have heretofore been treated with substantial disdain. But the acceptance of Monte Verde and Diring may soon change that. The classic "ancient site" in the New World is "Calico," located in the Central Mojave Desert of California (Shlemon and Budinger, 1990). Two issues have dogged acceptance of Calico by mainstream archaeologists: (1) the authenticity of the artifacts; are they truly the product of ...