Free Republic

A painting from the Six-Dynasties period of Chinese art - AD 220-589 - depicting the collating of historical texts. Yang Zihua is known for his horses. One strange aspect is the cosmetic use by the women of bright white on foreheads and the bridge of the nose. The music is Flowing Water - Gu Guanren.

An Egyptian archaeological mission has uncovered the third section of a Greaco-Roman winery and its store galleries surrounded by a mud brick wall at Abu Al-Matameer archaeological site in Beheira governorate. Adjacent is a residential settlement that was once used by the winery employees. Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Ahram Online that the galleries of the winery have a distinct architectural design, with thick mud brick walls of different sizes. Some of the walls bear in their mortar small blocks of limestone that appear to have been inserted randomly. "These blocks may have been used...

In two previous studies, researchers analyzed isotopes (an element that has a different number of neutrons than normal in its nucleus) in the women's remains, so they could piece together where the women had lived. But now, new research finds that these analyses were likely contaminated by modern agricultural lime... However, the researchers of the original studies are standing by their work... Both Bronze Age women are well known by archaeologists; the remains of Egtved Girl (the possible priestess) and Skrydstrup Woman were found in Denmark in 1921 and 1935, respectively. More recently, the Freis and their colleagues found that...

There's no question that today's modern culture is very different from that of ancient Rome, but certain human realities remain consistent across time. The challenges of illness and injury were as prevalent in the Roman Empire as they are in today's society, and the concern with medicine and health is something modern people have in common with ancient Romans. BAS Director of Educational Programs Sarah Yeomans's doctoral research is concerned with Roman medical technology, medical cult and the impact of plague on Roman society. Recently, she gave a lecture on these subjects at the prestigious Explorers Club in New York...

Around 2,400 years ago, the great city of Elusa arose in the heart of the Negev Desert, at the crossing point of two great trading routes: the Incense Road and the biblical Way of Shur. Elusa presumably began, as desert cities do, with a village built around an oasis. That particular area is rich in groundwater. At first a village of pagans worshipping Venus, Aphrodite (locally named al-Allat) and the like, the people there would convert to Christianity in the 4th century C.E. We can be confident that this particular set of ruins in the heart of what is now...

Such evidence is tough to interpret at this point, paleoanthropologist María Martinón-Torres of University College London said at the meeting. Interbreeding of closely related populations, such as Denisovans, Neandertals and H. sapiens, generates novel skeletal features that can obscure what started out as, say, a distinctive Denisovan look, she suggested. Whatever evolutionary niche these mysterious hominids occupied, at least three separate Denisovan populations interbred with ancient humans, population geneticist Murray Cox of Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand, also reported at the meeting. Genetic remnants of two of those populations appear in modern aboriginal groups in Papua New Guinea,...

Broken arrows and worn stone gear speak to the plight of the ancient alpine hunter. Before his violent death 5,300 years ago, the man known as Ötzi the Iceman was carrying all the essentials, from bark storage containers to an axe. Now, an analysis suggests that many of his stone tools were old and worn, hinting at the travails of the iceman's final hours. Ursula Wierer at the provincial Department of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape in Florence, Italy, and her colleagues examined artefacts found in the Alps near Ötzi's mummified remains. His stone knife was well worn and his...

A sarcophagus containing an Egyptian high priest was opened on live TV Sunday during a special two-hour broadcast by the American channel Discovery. 'Expedition Unknown: Egypt Live' aired from the site outside Minya, which is along the Nile River south of Cairo and its Giza pyramids. Archaeologists recently discovered a network of vertical shafts at the site which led to tunnels and tombs containing 40 mummies 'believed to be part of the noble elite.' After exploring other tombs -- finding artifacts like statues, amulets, canopic jars used to store organs, and other mummies including one that had decomposed to a...

Deep in the Gulf of California, scientists have discovered a fantastical expanse of hydrothermal vents, full of crystallized gases, glimmering pools of piping-hot fluids and rainbow-hued life-forms. Punctuating it all are towering structures made of minerals from the vents, looming as tall as 75 feet (23 meters). A decade ago, scientists visiting this spot saw nothing unusual; this psychedelic seascape seems to have built up around an increase in hydrothermal venting — spots in the seafloor where mineral-laden and superhot water jets out — in the last 10 years. "Astonishing is not strong enough of a word," said Mandy Joye,...

On April 7, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt took the first step toward ending Prohibition and signed a law that allowed people to brew and sell beer, in the United States, as long as it remained below 4.0% alcohol by volume (ABV). Beer drinkers celebrated and were happy to be able to purchase beer again for the first time in thirteen years. National Beer Day is observed annually on April 7th. Celebrate with a pint of pale ale, lager, stout, wheat beer or pale ale...

Archaeologists have found evidence that people on an inland Icelandic farm burned chunks of whale bone as fuel during a 17th- and 18th-century cold snap... Gröf Farm in southern Iceland -- is more than 30 kilometers from the coast. Whale bones are much more porous than those of land mammals, and the open spaces collect oily deposits of fat, which may help whales to maintain buoyancy. That fat also makes the bones easy to burn... Coastal peoples in high Arctic latitudes, where wood is scarce, have traditionally burned oil-laden whale bones for heat and cooking. Archaeologists have also found burned...

They were one of the most powerful organizations in the world at their time, controlling wealth and military arms across the world. The Knights Templar were the first Christian religious military order, eventually growing to be one of the first international banking organizations, a massive military arm in the Holy Land, and the fodder for conspiracy theorists for literally hundreds of years. The Knights Templar were established during the Crusades, largely because of the state of the Holy Land after the First Crusade. Military campaigns launched from 1095 to 1099 had secured small Christian kingdoms in and around Jerusalem, but...

The reason that humans shifted away from hunting and gathering, and to agriculture -- a much more labor-intensive process -- has always been a riddle. It is only more confusing because the shift happened independently in about a dozen areas across the globe... One theory posits that in times of plenty there may have been more time to start dabbling in the domestication of plants like squash and sunflowers, the latter of which were domesticated by the native peoples of Tennessee around 4,500 years ago. The other theory argues that domestication may have happened out of need to supplement diets...

"Having studied the skull of one of the men who went down with the Mary Rose, we found the bone structure was consistent with someone who had North African features, and DNA evidence seems to back this up," he said. "Today, with a much more mobile world population, it would have been harder to isolate, but in the 16th Century it's easier to pinpoint facial characteristics to a specific location. "Henry, as we've named him, had a broad nose bridge and wide cheek bones which are far more similar to skeletons found in Morocco or Algeria than those of the...

Dr. Stephen Brusatte, a Palaeontologist at University of Edinburgh and author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, is among those that have questions around the extraordinary claims made by the team that have... ... said he was “very excited about this discovery” but noted aside from a single partial dinosaur hip bone mentioned in the paper, ideas of a dinosaur graveyard being reported in the media lack any real evidence so far. “The New Yorker article reports a dinosaur graveyard with bones of many types of dinosaurs, along with feathers, eggs, and even embryos,” he said. “I’m afraid...

Colombia on Friday opens bidding for investors willing to retrieve billions of dollars in gold and silver from an 18th century ship wreck off the country's Caribbean coast. The Spanish galleon "San Jose" was the main ship in a fleet carrying gold and silver -- likely extracted from Spanish colonial mines in Peru and Bolivia -- and other valuables back to King Philip V. It sank in June 1708 during combat with British warships attempting to take its cargo, as part of the War of Spanish Succession. Only a handful of the ship's crew of 600 survived. President Juan Manuel...

From the very beginning, it’s clear that Wilfred M. McClay’s Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story isn’t a typical textbook. The title alone alerts readers that McClay’s book will not be the kind of history text that has become so popular in today’s high school and college courses—a diatribe against America’s many sins. Instead, it is an accurate, but loving, story of our country and our shared culture. McClay describes his book as “a patriotic endeavor as well as a scholarly one.” In his introduction, McClay explains that the purpose of his text is: to offer...

Recently discovered tomb of official dating back more than 2,000 years contains dozens of animals and two mummies Dozens of mummified mice were among the animals found in an ancient Egyptian tomb that was unveiled on Friday. The well-preserved and finely painted tomb near the Egyptian town of Sohag – a desert area near the Nile about 390km (242 miles) south of Cairo – is thought to be from the early Ptolemaic period, dating back more than 2,000 years.... ...Ptolemaic rule spanned about three centuries until the Roman conquest in 30 BC.

The age of the grains was ascertained using radiocarbon dating. Based on the results, the grains originated in the period of the Pitted Ware culture, thus being approximately 4,300-5,300 years old. In addition to the cereal grains, the plant remnants found in the sites included hazelnut shells, apple seeds, tuberous roots of lesser celandine and rose hips. The study suggests that small-scale farming was adopted by the Pitted Ware Culture by learning the trade from farmers of the Funnel Beaker Culture, the latter having expanded from continental Europe to Scandinavia. Other archaeological artefacts are also evidence of close contact between...

Georgia Southern University scientists say they made the discovery about General Casimir Pulaski after years of research They claim DNA testing and examination of skeletal remains shows Pulaski was biologically female A new documentary suggests that Pulaski had an intersex condition known as congenital adrenal hyperplasia They said Pulaski's remains showed a female-looking pelvis, as well as a more female facial structure and jaw The team's findings are currently being reviewed by the Journal of Forensic Anthropology ====================================================================== Scientific researchers are arguing that examination of skeletal remains and DNA testing has found that a Revolutionary war hero dubbed 'the father...