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Using the oldest fossil micrometeorites -- space dust -- ever found, Monash University-led research has made a surprising discovery about the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere 2.7 billion years ago. The findings of a new study published today in the journal Nature -- led by Dr Andrew Tomkins and a team from the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash, along with scientists from the Australian Synchrotron and Imperial College, London -- challenge the accepted view that Earth's ancient atmosphere was oxygen-poor. The findings indicate instead that the ancient Earth's upper atmosphere contained about the same amount of oxygen as...

We're all suckers for a great story, and "Teen finds lost Mayan city" definitely sounds promising. Throw in some ancient cosmology, a little help from the Canadian Space Agency and some satellite sleuthing, and the movie offers practically write themselves. Sadly, the reality may not be as cinematic as promised. Experts say the "city" found by Canadian teen William Gadoury could be something much simpler: Abandoned fields. This whole archaeological kerfuffle started as a tantalizing possibility: Gadoury, 15, says he used Mayan constellation patterns to pinpoint ruins of a heretofore unknown ancient Mayan city. The Canadian Space Agency helped him...

TAU–Cornell collaboration provides insight into unique community whose history is largely unknown A new study from Tel Aviv University, Cornell University and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine reveals genetic proof of the Jewish roots of the Bene Israel community in the western part of India. They have always considered themselves Jewish. "Almost nothing is known about the Bene Israel community before the 18th century, when Cochin Jews and later Christian missionaries first came into contact with it," says first author Yedael Waldman of both TAU's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Cornell's Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology. "Beyond...

Last February, archaeologists unearthed a unique rock-carved underground church in Nevsehir, in the central Turkish region of Cappadocia. The church was decorated with never before seen frescoes depicting Jesus’ Ascension, the Final Judgement, Jesus feeding the multitudes, and portraits of saints and prophets.The discovery, made during excavations and cleaning operations in an underground city recently uncovered as part of an urban project in Nevsehir, is located within a castle that might date back to the fifth century. Authorities expect it will make Cappadocia an even more important pilgrimage center for Orthodox Christians. Semih İstanbulluoğlu, the archaeologist who heads the works for...

It will take around two weeks to a month to finalise the investigations on the carcass of a kid in Kota Tinggi that was said to resemble a human infant (pic). Johor state Agriculture and Agro-based Industry committee chairman Ismail Moha­med said then they would be able to find out the possibility of an offspring produced by a human and an animal. "For now we cannot confirm or deny anything as we have never received such a case before. "We will have to wait for the results and findings to be finalised and that takes somewhere between two weeks and...

Archaeologists from The Australian National University (ANU) have unearthed fragments from the edge of the world's oldest-known axe, found in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Lead archeologist Professor Sue O'Connor said the axe dates back between 46,000 and 49,000 years, around the time people first arrived on the continent. "This is the earliest evidence of hafted axes in the world. Nowhere else in the world do you get axes at this date," said Professor O'Connor from the ANU School of Culture, History and Language. "In Japan such axes appear about 35,000 years ago. But in most countries in the...

A braided head of hair found buried beneath a medieval abbey in England has given up some of its secrets, thanks to a scientist's curiosity about the relic, which he first saw when he was a schoolboy. Jamie Cameron, an archaeological research assistant at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, first visited Romsey Abbey, near the city of Southampton, on a school field trip when he was 7 years old. Cameron said he became curious about the abbey's display of a brightly colored and braided head of hair, which had been found in a lead casket buried beneath...

<p>Two treasure hunters who claim to have found the last resting place of a German military train believed be to laden gold are set to begin digging on the site despite widespread scepticism over their claim.</p> <p>Piotr Koper and Andreas Richter, the two treasure hunters, sparked international attention and a mini gold rush last summer when they claimed to have found the train in a secret siding beside a railway line near the southern Polish town of Walbrzych.</p>

(Title was shortened. Add: "of the night sky from his bedroom ") A Canadian schoolboy appears to have discovered a lost Mayan city hidden deep in the jungles of Mexico using a new method of matching stars to the location of temples on earth. William Gadoury, 15, was fascinated by the ancient Central American civilization and spent hours poring over diagrams of constellations and maps of known Mayan cities. And then he made a startling realisation: the two appeared to be linked. “I was really surprised and excited when I realised that the most brilliant stars of the constellations matched...

The Egyptian-German Archaeological Mission to Matariya (Ministry of Antiquities of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Egyptian Museum University of Leipzig, University of Applied Sciences Mainz) has discovered new evidence for a sanctuary of Nectanebo I (380-363 BC) in the temple precinct of Heliopolis, according to Dr. Mahmoud Afify, head of the ancient Egyptian antiquities sector at the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. Dr. Aiman Ashmawy, head of the Egyptian team at the Mission, said the number of blocks from a limited area proves that the excavation area is the site of the original building built of limestone reliefs and columns, with...

Born in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo died in 1519, age 67, and was buried in Amboise, southwest of Paris. His creative imagination foresaw and described innovations hundreds of years before their invention, such as the helicopter and armored tank. His artistic legacy includes the iconic Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. The idea behind the Project, founded in 2014, has inspired and united anthropologists, art historians, genealogists, microbiologists, and other experts from leading universities and institutes in France, Italy, Spain, Canada and the USA, including specialists from the J. Craig Venter Institute of California, which pioneered the sequencing of the human...

Chinese archaeologists said they have found a paddy dating back more than 8,000 years, which could be the earliest wet rice farming site in the world. The field, covering less than 100 square meters, was discovered at the neolithic ruins of Hanjing in Sihong county in East China's Jiangsu province in November 2015, according to a spokesman with the archeology institute of Nanjing Museum. At a seminar held in late April to discuss findings at the Hanjing ruins, more than 70 scholars from universities, archeology institutes and museums across the country concluded that the wet rice field was the oldest...

How the U.S. can avoid its own version of the fall of the Roman empire That is, are we Americans, citizens of the mightiest empire the world has known since the days of the Caesars, living in the last days of our civilization? Is the United States, like the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, doomed to collapse from its own decadence? Or can we avoid Rome's fate?

In 1984 a German scholar worked out that 210 reasons had been advocated for the fall of the Roman empire. Peter Jones enjoys a "fine narrative history" that concentrates on just one.Peter Jones reviews and The Fall of the Roman Empire by Peter Heather and The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-PerkinsIn 1984 a German scholar worked out that 210 reasons had been advocated for the fall of the Roman empire in the West in the fifth century AD - from bureaucracy to deforestation, from moral decline to over-hot public baths, from female emancipation to...

The Roman Empire is luxurious but it is filled with misery. It is dying but it laughs – moritur et ridet.                               --- Salvian But Salvian, we learned with a deflecting smile, was an extremist, though, in the hindsight of disaster, his foresight would scarcely seem overstated. What interested me was that men had smiled complacently at Salvian’s words when he spoke them, and men still smiled at them complacently a thousand years later – the same kind of men, I was beginning to suspect,...

Europe was essentially defined by Islam. And Islam is redefining it now. For centuries in early and middle antiquity, Europe meant the world surrounding the Mediterranean, or Mare Nostrum (“Our Sea”), as the Romans famously called it. It included North Africa. Indeed, early in the fifth century A.D., when Saint Augustine lived in what is today Algeria, North Africa was as much a center of Christianity as Italy or Greece. But the swift advance of Islam across North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries virtually extinguished Christianity there, thus severing the Mediterranean region into two civilizational halves, with the...

The five marks of the Roman decaying culture: Concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth; Obsession with sex and perversions of sex; Art becomes freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original; Widening disparity between very rich and very poor; Increased demand to live off the state.

Many people with whom I talk these days say they sense something is happening to their familiar world.  They are not sure how to put this feeling into words.  For them, the river of time seems to have altered its course.  You hear this uncertainty expressed not only at cocktail parties but at barbecues, too. We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." These words by Barack Obama echo through time. Have they been heard before, in another language, in another age? I sense those who walk by the banks of the Potomac nowadays...

The US government is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned. David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”. These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt. Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned...

The Second Fall of Rome? Beware: the new goths are coming http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2220267_1,00.html ONE of Britain's most senior military strategists has warned that western civilisation faces a threat on a par with the barbarian invasions that destroyed the Roman empire. In an apocalyptic vision of security dangers, Rear Admiral Chris Parry said future migrations would be comparable to the Goths and Vandals while north African "barbary" pirates could be attacking yachts and beaches in the Mediterranean within 10 years. Europe, including Britain, could be undermined by large immigrant groups with little allegiance to their host countries — a "reverse colonisation" as...