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With the help of his professor, Gary Urton, a scholar of Pre-Columbian studies, Medrano interpreted a set of six khipus, knotted cords used for record keeping in the Inca Empire. By matching the khipus to a colonial-era Spanish census document, Medrano and Urton uncovered the meaning of the cords in greater detail than ever before. Their findings could contribute to a better understanding of daily life in the Andean civilization.

A set of articles written on different current issues facing Afghanistan from economic, political, religious, social and even sports. One mans view on what is going on in his country, what is right or wrong, who is doing a good job and if Afghanistan is heading in the right direction. Mahmud Khalili was born in New Jersey, USA to Afghan parents who had fled Afghanistan because of the newly started war against the Soviets.

<p>A group of teen thugs threaten to murder Republican Donald Trump in a new amateur rap video.</p> <p>“A group of black teens posted a music video threatening to shoot Donald Trump in what they’re calling the “F*ck Trump Anthem” as they march down the street carrying baseball bats and shovels. Clearly these kids have been influenced by mainstream gangster rap artists like Rick Ross and others who have called for the murder of Donald Trump. Media analyst Mark Dice shows you some clips from their disturbing video, and decodes their ghetto talk. Song by DooleyFunny, Tlow, and Lor Roger – CIT4DT.</p>

A glass vial stopped with a cork during the Civil War has been opened, revealing a coded message to the desperate Confederate commander in Vicksburg on the day the Mississippi city fell to Union forces 147 years ago. The dispatch offered no hope to doomed Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton: Reinforcements are not on the way. The encrypted, 6-line message was dated July 4, 1863, the date of Pemberton's surrender to Union forces led by Ulysses S. Grant, ending the Siege of Vicksburg in what historians say was a turning point midway into the Civil War.

Meticulous ancient notetakers have given archaeologists a glimpse of what life was like 3,000 years ago in the Assyrian Empire, which controlled much of the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. Clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform, an ancient script once common in the Middle East, were unearthed in summer 2009 in an ancient palace in present-day southeastern Turkey... A team led by University of Akron archaeologist Timothy Matney has been excavating the massive mud brick palace, once inhabited by the governor of the empire's Tushhan Province, for more than a decade. The palace is located in Ziyaret...

Aztec Math Decoded, Reveals Woes of Ancient Tax Time Brian Handwerk for National Geographic NewsApril 3, 2008 Today's tax codes are complicated, but the ancient Aztecs likely shared your pain. To measure tracts of taxable land, Aztec mathematicians had to develop their own specialized arithmetic, which has only now been decoded. By reading Aztec records from the city-state of Tepetlaoztoc, a pair of scientists recently figured out the complicated equations and fractions that officials once used to determine the size of land on which tributes were paid. Two ancient codices, written from A.D. 1540 to 1544, survive from Tepetlaoztoc. They...

PARIS (AFP) - Scientists in France and Italy have deciphered the complete genetic code for the plant producing wine grapes, according to a study published Sunday. While the findings will do nothing to enhance the mystique of winemaking, they could pave the way for gene-based manipulations to boost flavour and improve resistance against disease. Dozens of researchers analyzing the Pinot Noir varietal of Vitis vinifera, the core species from which virtually all grape wine is made, found twice as many genes contributing to aroma than in other sequenced plants, suggesting that wine flavours could be traced to the genome level....

Mystery of 'chirping' pyramid decoded Philip BallAcoustic analysis shows how temple transforms echoes into sounds of nature El Castillo's strange echoes have fascinated visitors for generations © Punchstock A theory that the ancient Mayans built their pyramids to act as giant resonators to produce strange and evocative echoes has been supported by a team of Belgian scientists. Nico Declercq of Ghent University and his colleagues have shown how sound waves ricocheting around the tiered steps of the El Castillo pyramid, at the Mayan ruin of Chichén Itzá near Cancún in Mexico, create sounds that mimic the chirp of a bird...

March 22, 2004 Evolution Encoded New discoveries about the rules governing how genes encode proteins have revealed nature's sophisticated "programming" for protecting life from catastrophic errors while accelerating evolution By Stephen J. Freeland and Laurence D. Hurst On April 14, 2003, scientists announced to the world that they had finished sequencing the human genome--logging the three billion pairs of DNA nucleotides that describe how to make a human being. But finding all the working genes amid the junk in the sequence remains a further challenge, as does gaining a better understanding of how and when genes are activated and...

Incan Counting System Decoded? By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News Learn how to add 9+7 on the yupana abacus. Jan. 29, 2004 — The Inca invented a powerful counting system that could be used to make complex calculations without the tiniest mistake, according to an Italian engineer who claims to have cracked the mathematics of this still mysterious ancient population. Begun in the Andean highlands in about 1200, the Inca ruled the largest empire on Earth by the time their last emperor, Atahualpa, was garroted by Spanish conquistadors in 1533. Long been considered the only major Bronze Age civilization without a...