Posted on 07/16/2004 11:27:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
(Excerpt) Read more at freerepublic.com ...
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· Saturday, December 18, 2010 · 53 topics · 2644361 to 1436202 · 760 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 335th issue, a huge 53-topic issue. Many if not most of the topics were gleaned from the FRchives, including 17 regarding Alexander Hamilton, part of the Framers series. |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #336 Saturday, December 25, 2010 |
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| Star of the East | |
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| Revealing the Star of Bethlehem |
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· 12/21/2010 1:32:02 PM PST · · Posted by ZULU · · 22 replies · · Michael R. Molnar · · 1997-2010 · · Michael R. Molnar · |
Could the purchase of an ancient coin have led to an important clue about the Star of Bethlehem? The above illustration is a Roman coin from Antioch, Syria which shows the zodiacal sign, Aries the Ram. In trying to understand the meaning behind this coin, I found that Aries was the sign of the Jews. Realizing that this is where ancient stargazers would have watched for the Star of Bethlehem, I embarked on searching for the celestial event that signified the birth of the Messiah in Judea. |
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| Let's Have Jerusalem | |
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| Beneath the Dead Sea, Scientists Are Drilling for Natural History |
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· 12/18/2010 3:55:56 PM PST · · Posted by smokingfrog · · 11 replies · · NYT · · 17 Dec 2010 · |
Five miles out, nearly to the center of the Dead Sea, an international team of scientists has been drilling beneath the seabed to extract a record of climate change and earthquake history stretching back half a million years. The preliminary evidence and clues found halfway through the 40-day project are more than the team could have hoped for. The scientists did not expect to pull up a wood fragment that was roughly 400,000 years old. Nor did they expect to come across a layer of gravel from a mere 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. That finding... |
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| Prehistory & Origins | |
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| DNA says new human relative roamed widely in Asia |
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· 12/22/2010 2:22:43 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 13 replies · · AP · · December 22, 2010 · · Malcolm Ritter · |
Scientists have recovered the DNA code of a human relative recently discovered in Siberia, and it delivered a surprise: This relative roamed far from the cave that holds its only known remains. By comparing the DNA to that of modern populations, scientists found evidence that these "Denisovans" from more than 30,000 years ago ranged all across Asia. They apparently interbred with the ancestors of people now living in Melanesia, a group of islands northeast of Australia. There's no sign that Denisovans mingled with the ancestors of people now living in Eurasia, which made the connection between Siberia... |
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| Ancient humans, dubbed 'Denisovans', interbred with us |
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· 12/22/2010 6:26:50 PM PST · · Posted by LibWhacker · · 56 replies · · BBC · · 12/22/10 · · Pallab Ghosh · |
Scientists say an entirely separate type of human identified from bones in Siberia co-existed and interbred with our own species.The ancient humans have been dubbed "Denisovans" after the caves in Siberia where their remains were found. There is also evidence that this population was widespread in Eurasia. A study in Nature journal shows that Denisovans co-existed with Neanderthals and interbred with our species - perhaps around 50,000 years ago. An international group of researchers sequenced a complete genome from one of the ancient hominins (human-like creatures), based on nuclear DNA extracted from a finger bone. |
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| Genome of extinct Siberian cave-dweller linked to modern-day humans |
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· 12/23/2010 10:27:59 AM PST · · Posted by LucyT · · 25 replies · · EurekaAlert · · 22-Dec-2010 · · Bobbie Mixon, NSF · |
Sequencing of ancient DNA reveals new hominin population that is neither Neanderthal nor modern human Researchers have discovered evidence of a distinct group of "archaic" humans existing outside of Africa more than 30,000 years ago at a time when Neanderthals are thought to have dominated Europe and Asia. But genetic testing shows that members of this new group were not Neanderthals, and they interbred with the ancestors of some modern humans who are alive today. Until last year, the mainstream view in genetics was that modern humans inherited essentially their entire DNA makeup from Neanderthal-related individuals when they migrated from... |
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| Neandertal / Neanderthal | |
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| Bones Give Peek Into the Lives of Neanderthals |
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· 12/21/2010 5:32:19 AM PST · · Posted by Pharmboy · · 19 replies · · NY Times · · December 20, 2010 · · Carl Zimmer · |
Deep in a cave in the forests of northern Spain are the remains of a gruesome massacre. The first clues came to light in 1994, when explorers came across a pair of what they thought were human jawbones in the cave, called El Sidrón. At first, the bones were believed to date to the Spanish Civil War. Back then, Republican fighters used the cave as a hide-out. The police discovered more bone fragments in El Sidrón, which they sent to forensic scientists, who determined that the bones did not belong to soldiers, or even to modern humans. They were the... |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double | |
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| Population expansion in the N African Late Pleistocene signalled by mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U6 |
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· 12/24/2010 7:06:25 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 33 replies · · 7thSpace Interactive · · December 21, 2010 · · Luisa Pereira et al · |
The archaeology of North Africa remains enigmatic, with questions of population continuity versus discontinuity taking centre-stage. Debates have focused on population transitions between the bearers of the Middle Palaeolithic Aterian industry and the later Upper Palaeolithic populations of the Maghreb, as well as between the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Results: Improved resolution of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup U6 phylogeny, by the screening of 39 new complete sequences, has enabled us to infer a signal of moderate population expansion using Bayesian coalescent methods. To ascertain the time for this expansion, we applied both a mutation rate accounting for purifying selection... |
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| Epigraphy & Language | |
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| "Red Festival' In Udmurtia (Redheads) |
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· 12/19/2010 11:29:11 AM PST · · Posted by blam · · 54 replies · · Finugor · · 11-19-2010 · · Nadezhda Volokitina · |
The Udmurts are the most red-haired Finno-Ugric people, the most red-haired nation in Russia, and as far as the rest of the world is concerned, they are inferior only to the Irish in this respect. The so-called "Red Festival', which gathers a lot of people, takes place annually in the capital of Udmurtia, Izhevsk. There organized such contests and competitions as "Mother, Father and I are a Red Family' (the most red-haired family contest), "Mischievous Gingers' (the most red-haired child contest), as well as "red' pet contests for cats, dogs,... |
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| Carbon Credits | |
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| Nondestructive Radiocarbon Dating -- College Station, Texas |
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· 12/24/2010 6:51:46 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 7 replies · · Archaeology, v64 n1 · · January/February 2011 · · Nikhil Swaminathan · |
Over the past 20 years, chemist Marvin Rowe of Texas A&M University has developed a nondestructive method for carbon dioxide extraction. In his process, an object is placed in a vacuum chamber and a supercritical fluid -- a hybrid gas/liquid -- is applied as a solvent (as in dry cleaning). Next, Rowe passes plasma -- an "electrically excited ionized gas" -- over the artifact, which selectively strips carbon from the sample. "It's essentially like slowly burning the sample, so we can just oxidize a little off the surface and collect that carbon dioxide," explains Rowe. This year he further refined... |
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| The Trojan War | |
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| The War that Killed Achilles by Caroline Alexander [reviews] |
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· 12/23/2010 8:35:56 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 33 replies · · Guardian, NY Times · · 10/13/09 --12/18/10 · · Tom Holland · · Vera Rule · · Steve Coates · · Dwight Garner · |
...In the earliest days of their history, so the Greeks recorded, a city in Asia by the name of Troy had been besieged by their ancestors for 10 long years, captured, and burnt to the ground. Why? Responsibility for the conflict was pinned on Paris, a Trojan prince whose abduction of Helen, the fabulously beautiful daughter of the king of the gods, had set in train a truly calamitous sequence of events. Not only Troy had ended up obliterated, but so, too, had the age of heroes. War had consumed the world. No wonder, then, that the Greeks should have... |
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| Alexander the Great | |
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| Bactrian gold - A treasure hunt - The case of Afghanistan 's missing cache |
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· 12/18/2003 4:27:49 PM PST · · Posted by swarthyguy · · 17 replies · 626+ views · · Economist · · Dec 15 · |
The mound lies just beyond the oasis town of Sheberghan in northern Afghanistan, on the plain that slips south to the Hindu Kush and north to the banks of the Amu Darya, or Oxus. This was once Bactria, where the Hellenic world briefly touched and intertwined with the worlds of the Indus and the Siberian steppe. Greeks prospered here for a century or so after the death of Alexander the Great, in 323BC, and then were driven off. The mound is anonymous now, barely noticeable from the road. It stands three metres (ten feet) high, 100 metres in diameter, lopped... |
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| Middle Ages & Renaissance | |
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| Will Tuesday Be the Darkest Day in 456 Years? |
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· 12/19/2010 4:52:21 PM PST · · Posted by TaraP · · 28 replies · · Fox News · · Dec 19th, 2010 · |
Break out the flashlights. When a full lunar eclipse takes place on the shortest day of the year, the planet may just get awfully dark. The upcoming Dec. 21 full moon -- besides distinguishing itself from the others in 2010 by undergoing a total eclipse -- will also take place on the same date as the solstice (the winter solstice if you live north of the equator, and the summer solstice if you live to the south). Winter solstice is the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and marks the official beginning of winter. The sun is... |
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| Darwinners & Losers | |
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| Truth is a monkey on pols' backs -- Richard Cohen: "Half Of America Rejects Theory Of Evolution." |
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· 04/12/2005 11:29:22 AM PDT · · Posted by presidio9 · · 131 replies · 4,487+ views · · NY Daily News · · April 12, 2005 · · Richard Cohen · |
Behold the giant Galapagos tortoise! It weighs 700 pounds, lives God-only-knows how long and a couple of weeks ago when I was on the Galapagos Islands, could not be beholden at all. The tortoise we wanted to see, Lonesome George, so called because he is apparently the last of his subspecies, was in hiding. In a sense, that's appropriate because almost half of America cannot see any of the Galapagos for what they are: the home office of evolution. This is where Charles Darwin got his bright idea. It is odd to amble around the Galapagos and see the handiwork... |
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| Underwater Archaeology | |
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| Robert Ballard on exploring the oceans (Drill, baby, drill!!) |
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· 12/18/2010 7:52:44 AM PST · · Posted by pillut48 · · 6 replies · · TED · · Feb. 2008 · · Dr. Robert Ballard · |
Ocean explorer Robert Ballard takes us on a mindbending trip to hidden worlds underwater, where he and other researchers are finding unexpected life, resources, even new mountains. He makes a case for serious exploration and mapping. Google Ocean, anyone? |
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| Britain | |
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| Woodhenge: Is this one of the greatest discoveries of archaeology ...or a simple farmer's fence? |
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· 12/20/2010 9:18:55 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 8 replies · · Daily Mail · · December 12, 2010 · · Alun Rees & Jonathan Petre · |
The discovery of a wooden version of Stonehenge -- a few hundred yards from the famous monument -- was hailed as one of the most important archaeological finds for decades. But now experts are at loggerheads after claims that what was thought to be a Neolithic temple was a rather more humble affair -- in fact the remains of a wooden fence. One leading expert on Stonehenge criticised the announcement of the "remarkable' find in July as "hasty' and warned it could become a "PR embarrassment'. But sceptics have now suggested that the evidence is far from conclusive, especially... |
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| Farty Shades of Green | |
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| Seeing daybreak at 'Ireland's Stonehenge' |
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· 12/21/2010 6:05:08 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 9 replies · · BBC · · December 21, 2010 · · Trish Flanagan · |
On the morning of 21 December, a select group of people made their way through a dark, narrow passage and gathered in a small cross-shaped chamber at Newgrange in Co Meath, Irish Republic, to celebrate the winter solstice.Newgrange, located 40km north of Dublin and perched high above a bend of the River Boyne, is a prehistoric passage tomb, covered on the outside by a large grassy mound. At over 5,000 years old it is the older cousin of Stonehenge and it predates the pyramids by about 500 years. It is difficult to estimate how long it would have taken to... |
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| Ancient Autopsies | |
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| Chinese archaeologists unearth 2,400-year-old 'soup' |
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· 12/23/2010 7:33:18 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 21 replies · · BBC · · December 2010 · · unattributed · |
Experts say the 'bone soup' in the vessel turned green due to the oxidation of the bronze Chinese archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is a 2,400-year-old pot of soup, state media report. The liquid and bones were in a sealed bronze cooking vessel dug up near the ancient capital of Xian - home to the country's famed terracotta warriors. Tests are being carried out to identify the ingredients. An odourless liquid, believed to be wine, was also found. The pots were discovered in a tomb being excavated to make way for an extension to the local airport. "It's... |
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| Paleontology | |
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| PBS Program Alert- Nova:Arctic Dinosaurs Dec 21 8 pm |
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· 12/20/2010 10:46:41 PM PST · · Posted by CanadianPete · · 35 replies · · PBS Nova · |
Most people imagine dinosaurs lurking in warm locales with swamps and jungles, dining on vegetation and each other. But "Arctic Dinosaurs" reveals that many species also thrived in the harsh environments of the north and south polar regions. NOVA follows two high-stakes expeditions and the paleontologists who push the limits of science to unearth 70 million-year-old fossils buried in the vast Alaskan tundra. |
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| Climate | |
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| A Dalton Minimum Repeat is Shaping Up |
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· 12/20/2010 3:05:33 PM PST · · Posted by Ernest_at_the_Beach · · 65 replies · · Watts Up With That? · · December 20, 2010 · · Anthony Watts · |
The sun went spotless yesterday, the first time in quite awhile. It seems like a good time to present this analysis from my friend David Archibald. For those not familiar with the Dalton Minimum, here's some background info from Wiki:The Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity, named after the English meteorologist John Dalton, lasting from about 1790 to 1830.[1] Like the Maunder Minimum and Spˆrer Minimum, the Dalton Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. The Oberlach Station in Germany, for example, experienced a 2.0°C decline over... |
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| Catastrophism & Astronomy | |
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| How Earth's orbital shift shaped the Sahara |
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· 12/21/2010 10:03:52 AM PST · · Posted by LucyT · · 35 replies · · PhysOrg · · December 21, 2010 · · Anuradha K. Herath · |
The Sahara, the world's largest desert, was once fertile grassland. This fact has been common knowledge in the scientific community for some time, but scientists are still grappling with historic data to determine whether that transition took place abruptly or gradually. At the European Geosciences Union General Assembly held in Vienna, Austria earlier this year, researchers presented new evidence showing that the eastern region of the Sahara desert, particularly the area near Lake Yoa in Chad, dried up slowly and progressively since the mid-Holocene period. |
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| Archaeoastronomy & Megaliths | |
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| Along The 'Hammonasset Line' (Stone Formations He Believes Native Americans Built Long Ago) |
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· 12/21/2010 4:38:40 AM PST · · Posted by raybbr · · 13 replies · · Courant.com · · December 20, 2010 · · PETER MARTEKA · |
Madison Resident Finding Stone Formations He Believes Native Americans Built Long Ago To Mark Winter Solstice Sunrise -- As the summer solstice approaches each June, a chunk of white rock in a manmade chamber on the edge of a reservoir here is illuminated by sunlight in the shape of a dagger. In another part of town, a 7-acre parcel is filled with stone walls that align during the solstices with rocks in the shape of snakes, white quartz boulders, prayer seats and assorted cairns. These stone displays are among the thousands discovered by Madison resident and retired engineer Tom Paul... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis | |
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| Archeological site on Ingonish Island dates back thousands of years |
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· 12/20/2010 5:34:39 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 20 replies · · Cape Breton Post · · December 16th, 2010 · · Rannie Gillis · |
Ronald Nash found two separate quarries on the island. The larger one was located on the relatively flat northwest side, facing the village of Ingonish, and provided 40 boxes of artifacts. The smaller site was under cliffs on the very steep northeast side, facing the ocean, and provided a smaller amount of material... All of the evidence found indicates that both sites were quarries, and not the location of early villages. We know this because Nash found no animal bones, empty shells, or pottery fragments at either site, meaning that food was not cooked or eaten on location. Although these... |
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| Biology & Cryptobiology | |
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| Ancient Caucasian Remains in America: The Ainu in North America |
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· 12/22/2010 2:50:38 PM PST · · Posted by blam · · 118 replies · · Nephilman · · 12-21-2010 · |
Archeological anomalies that suggest Amerindians were not the first Americans · Kennewick Man · Spirit Cave Mummy · Wizards Beach Man · Gordon Creek Woman · Penon Woman · The "Mummy People" of Alaska A handful of skeletal remains have come to light in recent years which suggests that the Modern Amerindians, descended primarily from Mongolian stock were not truly the first Americans. The Ainu race of Japan appears the be the last remaining vestiges of a race that once roamed the Pacific Areas of Asia and the Americas, theiry skeletal remains may possibly be related... |
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| Man-Eating Giants Discovered in Nevada Cave [8 feet tall!] |
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· 12/22/2010 1:49:27 PM PST · · Posted by Fractal Trader · · 135 replies · · Salem News · · 20 December 2010 · · Terrence Aym · |
The Paiutes, a Native-American tribe indigenous to parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona, told early white settlers about their ancestors' battles with a ferocious race of white, red-haired giants. According to the Paiutes, the giants were already living in the area. Roaming, man-eating giants The Paiutes named the giants Si-Te-Cah that literally means "tule-eaters." The tule is a fibrous water plant the giants wove into rafts to escape the Paiutes continuous attacks. They used the rafts to navigate across what remained of Lake Lahontan. Giants roamed the Earth According to the Paiutes, the red-haired giants stood as... |
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| The Civil War | |
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| Restoration efforts on Civil War steam engine progressing |
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· 12/20/2010 2:45:54 PM PST · · Posted by thecodont · · 34 replies · · LA Times · · December 18, 2010, 9:13 p.m. · · Mark St. John Erickson · · Newport News Daily Press · |
When archaeologists and Navy divers recovered the warship Monitor's steam engine from the Atlantic in 2001, the pioneering Civil War propulsion unit was enshrouded in a thick layer of marine concretion. Sand, mud and corrosion combined with minerals in the deep waters off Cape Hatteras, N.C., to cloak every feature of Swedish American inventor John Ericsson's ingenious machine, and they continued to envelop the 30-ton artifact after nine years of desalination treatment. This month, however, conservators at the Mariners' Museum here and its USS Monitor Center drained the 35,000-gallon solution in which the massive... |
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| Lincoln the Tyrant: The Libertarians' Favorite Bogeyman |
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· 12/07/2010 11:31:03 AM PST · · Posted by presidio9 · · 289 replies · · Big Government · · Dec 5th 2010 · · Brad Schaeffer · |
On a recent pilgrimage to Gettysburg I ventured into the Evergreen cemetery, the scene of chaotic and bloody fighting throughout the engagement. Like Abraham Lincoln on a cold November day in 1863, I pondered the meaning of it all. With the post-Tea Party wave of libertarianism sweeping the nation, Lincoln's reputation has received a serious pillorying. He has even been labeled a tyrant, who used the issue of slavery as a mendacious faux excuse to pummel the South into submitting to the will of the growing federal power in Washington D.C. In fact, some insist, the labeling of slavery as... |
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| The Revolution | |
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| America's First Christmas - How we reversed our fortunes in the Revolutionary War |
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· 12/23/2010 10:21:39 PM PST · · Posted by neverdem · · 18 replies · · National Review Online · · December 23, 2010 · · Rich Lowry · |
Gen. George Washington's army retreated from New York in ignominy in November 1776. As it moved through New Jersey, Lt. James Monroe, the future president, stood by the road and counted the troops: 3,000 left from an original force of 30,000. In December 1776, the future of America hung on the fate of a bedraggled army barely a step ahead of annihilation. The Americans confronted about two-thirds of the strength of the British army, and half of its navy, not to mention thousands of German mercenaries. Ron Chernow recounts... |
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| World War Eleven | |
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| 'Don't shoot, we're Republicans' |
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· 12/21/2010 3:23:14 PM PST · · Posted by artichokegrower · · 7 replies · · Navy Memories Shop · |
From November 1943, until her demise in June 1945, the American destroyer 'William Porter' was often hailed - whenever she entered port or joined other Naval ships - with the greetings: 'Don't shoot, we're Republicans!' For a half a century, the US Navy kept a lid on the details of the incident that prompted this salutation. A Miami news reporter made the first public disclosure in 1958 after he stumbled upon the truth while covering a reunion of the destroyer's crew. The Pentagon reluctantly and tersely confirmed his story, but only a smattering of newspapers took notice. In 1943, the... |
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| Oh So Mysteriouso | |
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| Was Patton killed? |
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· 12/19/2010 12:17:44 PM PST · · Posted by ConservativeStatement · · 152 replies · · NY Post · · December 18, 2010 · · Robert K. Wilcox · |
Sixty-five years ago this month, Gen. George S. Patton Jr., hero of World War II and an outspoken critic of the Soviets, was en route to a Sunday hunting trip, a day before permanently leaving Europe, when he was critically injured in a vehicle accident on a deserted two lane highway near Mannheim, Germany. A large US army truck that Patton's driver later said was waiting for them, suddenly -- and without signaling -- abruptly turned into his limousine's path, causing a head-on crash. Even though Patton had an aide with him and the driver of the truck had one... |
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| The Mysterious Death of George Patton |
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· 04/27/2006 6:26:15 PM PDT · · Posted by spanalot · · 524 replies · 15,548+ views · · Fox News · · 4/27/06 · · Oliver North · |
Was General Patton's death the result of a traffic accident or was he the victim of an assassination plot? (By Stalin) |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| Kevin Connolly's guide to American culture |
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· 12/19/2010 3:44:51 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 17 replies · · BBC · · December 18, 2010 · · Kevin Connolly · |
After three years of eating steaks the size of elephants' ears, Kevin bids farewell The BBC's America correspondent Kevin Connolly is packing his bags for a new post in the Middle East. During his three years in the US he has visited 46 out of 50 states and covered the country's election of its first black president.Sometime around the spring of 1835, a young Frenchman called Alexis de Tocqueville travelled to the United States on a mission guaranteed to make Americans bristle with irritation. He was going to understand them, and explain them. De Tocqueville was smart, Gallic and aristocratic... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| Sunderland experts study 18th Century Arctic voyages |
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· 12/24/2010 6:18:03 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 10 replies · · BBC · · December 23, 2010 · · Unknown · |
Ships' logs from vessels which travelled in the Arctic Circle in the 18th Century are to be studied to see if they shed light on climate change.A team from Sunderland University will study records kept by explorers, whalers and merchants during trips which took place up to 260 years ago. They want to see if the logs provide clues about the ice levels in the area at that time. They will be analysing log books written between 1750 and 1850. "The Arctic environmentally is a hugely important area, but we need to know how it's behaved in the past... |
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| end of digest #336 20101225 | |
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· Saturday, December 25, 2010 · 32 topics · 2647073 to 2644953 · 762 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 336th issue. A big thank you to the many who contributed topics and the more who shared in the threads. A public welcome to new members. |
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Please consider me active. Whether I comment or not, I like the topics.
Hmm, this must be a great thread, 1200 posts going back years! Got some links to check out :)
Meanwhile, here’s one you may not have seen. An old book, and a grand one, available complete online.
It’s “The Cassiterides: An Inquiry Into the Commercial Operations of the Phoenicians in Western Europe, With Particular Reference to the British Tin Trade,” by George Smith, published in 1863.
The entire book can be downloaded free — download link is at the upper right. Book is about 150 pages.
Enjoy! and Happy New Year to all, with special thanks to the pingmaster of GGG, my favorite list.
Thanks!
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001736537
http://members.tripod.com/cornwall_phoenicians/The%20phoenicians.htm
http://members.tripod.com/cornwall_phoenicians/The%20mermaid.htm
Thanks! Will do!
Please keep me on your list. if that is what you are asking in your GGG ping/ I really enjoy your posts. even though I don’t reply often. I reaed them all.
Please keep me on your ping list. Thanks!
Will do!
Thanks, will do!
I’ve been around since the beginning of this list, please keep me on it. Thanks
Thanks Founding Father, will do.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2649110/posts
The Battle of Towton :Nasty, brutish and not that short
Please consider me active, also. I really don’t comment, but do read and enjoy all the topics. Thanks!
Will do, thanks Lynne.
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #337 Saturday, January 1, 2011 |
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| Let's Have Jerusalem | |
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| Armageddon Fortress May Hold Keys to History |
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· 12/26/2010 9:43:25 PM PST · · Posted by Alex Murphy · · 23 replies · 2+ views · · AOL News · · Dec 26, 2010 · · Matthew Kalman · |
MEGIDDO, Israel -- The Book of Revelation says the biblical fortress of Armageddon will be the site of an apocalyptic battle between good and evil at the end of time. Scientists believe it could also be the place where time begins -- at least for archaeology. In a groundbreaking new project, scholars are using the rich archaeological remains that soar more than 50 feet above the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel to synchronize the clocks of the ancient world and create the first definitive calendar of human history. The word "Armageddon" comes from the Hebrew Har Megiddo, which means mountain... |
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| Prehistory & Origins | |
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| Did first humans come out of Middle East and not Africa?... |
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· 12/27/2010 4:13:51 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 44 replies · 4+ views · · Daily Mail · · December 27, 2010 · · Matthew Kalman · |
Scientists could be forced to re-write the history of the evolution of modern man after the discovery of 400,000-year-old human remains. Until now, researchers believed that homo sapiens, the direct descendants of modern man, evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago and gradually migrated north, through the Middle East, to Europe and Asia. Recently, discoveries of early human remains in China and Spain have cast doubt on the 'Out of Africa' theory, but no-one was certain. The new discovery of pre-historic human remains by Israeli university explorers in a cave near Ben-Gurion airport could force scientists to re-think earlier theories. |
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| Researchers: Ancient human remains found in Israel |
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· 12/28/2010 9:05:38 AM PST · · Posted by Immerito · · 24 replies · 5+ views · · Yahoo! News · · December 27, 2010 · · Daniel Estrin · |
JERUSALEM -- Israeli archaeologists said Monday they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern man, and if so, it could upset theories of the origin of humans. A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern man, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old. |
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| Agriculture & Animal Husbandry | |
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| You are what your father ate |
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· 12/26/2010 1:40:23 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 49 replies · 4+ views · · UMass Medical School · · December 23, 2010 · · Unknown · |
UMMS research suggests paternal diet affects lipid metabolizing genes in offspring -- Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the University of Texas at Austin have uncovered evidence that environmental influences experienced by a father can be passed down to the next generation, "reprogramming" how genes function in offspring. A new study published this week in Cell shows that environmental cues -- in this case, diet -- influence genes in mammals from one generation to the next, evidence that until now has been sparse. These insights, coupled with previous human epidemiological studies, suggest that paternal environmental effects may play a more... |
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| Neandertal / Neanderthal | |
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| US study finds Neanderthals ate their veggies |
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· 12/27/2010 2:01:06 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 27 replies · 5+ views · · AFP · · December 27, 2010 · · Unknown · |
WASHINGTON (AFP) -- A US study on Monday found that Neanderthals, prehistoric cousins of humans, ate grains and vegetables as well as meat, cooking them over fire in the same way homo sapiens did. The new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) challenges a prevailing theory that Neanderthals' over reliance on meat contributed to their extinction around 30,000 years ago. Researchers found grains from numerous plants, including a type of wild grass, as well as traces of roots and tubers, trapped in plaque buildup on fossilized Neanderthal teeth unearthed in northern Europe and Iraq. |
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| Darwinners & Losers | |
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| Scientists say new human relative roamed widely in Asia |
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· 12/25/2010 1:48:33 AM PST · · Posted by Islander7 · · 21 replies · 2+ views · · Star Advertiser · · Dec 22, 2010 · · Malcolm Ritter · |
NEW YORK -- Scientists have recovered the DNA code of a human relative recently discovered in Siberia, and it delivered a surprise: This relative roamed far from the cave that holds its only known remains. By comparing the DNA to that of modern populations, scientists found evidence that these "Denisovans" from more than 30,000 years ago ranged all across Asia. They apparently interbred with the ancestors of people now living in Melanesia, a group of islands northeast of Australia. |
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| Fish Swam the Sahara, Bolstering Out of Africa Theory |
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· 12/29/2010 11:42:33 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 30 replies · 4+ views · · Live Science · · December 29, 2010 · · Charles Q. Choi · |
Fish may have once swum across the Sahara, a finding that could shed light on how humanity made its way out of Africa, researchers said. The cradle of humanity lies south of the Sahara, which begs the question as to how our species made its way past it. The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, and would seem a major barrier for any humans striving to migrate off the continent. Scientists have often focused on the Nile Valley as the corridor by which humans left Africa. However, considerable research efforts have failed to uncover evidence for its... |
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| Catastrophism & Astronomy | |
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| What Triggers Mass Extinctions? Study Shows How Invasive Species Stop New Life |
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· 12/30/2010 8:02:00 AM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 37 replies · 51+ views · · National Science Foundation · · December 29, 2010 · · Unknown · |
An influx of invasive species can stop the dominant natural process of new species formation and trigger mass extinction events, according to research results published today in the journal PLoS ONE. The study of the collapse of Earth's marine life 378 to 375 million years ago suggests that the planet's current ecosystems, which are struggling with biodiversity loss, could meet a similar fate. Although Earth has experienced five major mass extinction events, the environmental crash during the Late Devonian was unlike any other in the planet's history. The actual number of extinctions wasn't higher than the natural rate of species... |
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| Climate | |
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| Assessing the accuracy of ice-core CO2 records |
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· 12/26/2010 8:48:45 AM PST · · Posted by steveab · · 40 replies · 2+ views · · Greenie Watch · · 12-25-2010 · · David Middleton · |
Assessing the accuracy of ice-core CO2 records In the excerpt below, David Middleton points out large problems with ice-core data and suggests that fossil Plant Stomata give a much more accurate account of past CO2 levels -- an account that gives no support for Warmism at all and which in fact supports the obvious physics of the matter: Warming causes higher CO2 levels rather than vice versa |
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| Africa | |
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| Lost Cities of the Sahara |
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· 12/26/2010 9:06:39 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 53 replies · · University of Leicester · · July 26, 2000 · · Barbara Whiteman · |
...the Garamantes - a mysterious desert people of Greco-Roman date (broadly 500 BC AD 500)... Inhabiting a region that had already been for several thousand years a hyper-arid desert environment, with negligible rainfall, elevated summer temperatures and blistering expanses of barren sand and rock... have long been an enigma. They were depicted by Roman sources as ungovernable nomadic barbarians, who raided the settled agricultural zone and cities of the Mediterranean littoral. Following up earlier work by Daniels, the current project allows a different picture of the Garamantes to be drawn. Archaeological evidence shows them to have been a complex and... |
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| Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran | |
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| Natural factors added to threats to Shush Castle |
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· 12/27/2010 11:57:45 PM PST · · Posted by BlackVeil · · 9 replies · 1+ views · · Tehran Times · · 28 Dec 2010 · · Culture Desk · |
TEHRAN -- Natural environmental factors have been added to the perils threatening the Shush Castle, a historical monument that is a storehouse of many ancient Iranian inscriptions and artifacts. Heavy rainfalls and strong winds have dealt devastating blows to the castle, the Persian service of the Mehr News Agency reported on Monday. The Shush Castle is located on a hill in Shush near the ancient sites of Susa in Khuzestan Province in southwestern Iran. The construction of the Shush Castle was started in 1897 by the French civil engineer, geologist, and archaeologist Jacques Jean-Marie de Morgan (1857-1924), who had come... |
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| Australia & the Pacific | |
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| Ancient rock art's colours come from microbes (Australia) |
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· 12/28/2010 1:35:28 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 8 replies · 5+ views · · BBC · · December 27, 2010 · · Unknown · |
A particular type of ancient rock art in Western Australia maintains its vivid colours because it is alive, researchers have found.While some rock art fades in hundreds of years, the "Bradshaw art" remains colourful after at least 40,000 years. Jack Pettigrew of the University of Queensland in Australia has shown that the paintings have been colonised by colourful bacteria and fungi. These "biofilms" may explain previous difficulties in dating such rock art. Professor Pettigrew and his colleagues studied 80 of these Bradshaw rock artworks - named for the 19th-Century naturalist who first identified them - in 16 locations within Western... |
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| Archaeoastronomy & Megaliths | |
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| Stonehenge Built With Balls? New experiment suggests monumental stones could have rolled on rails |
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· 12/30/2010 3:10:25 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 34 replies · 18+ views · · National Geographic News · · Friday, December 10, 2010 · · Kate Ravilious · |
It's one of Stonehenge's greatest mysteries: How did Stone Age Britons move 45-ton slabs across dozens of miles to create the 4,500-year-old stone circle? ...A previous theory suggested that the builders used wooden rollers -- carved tree trunks laid side by side on a constructed hard surface. Another imagined huge wooden sleds atop greased wooden rails. But critics say the rollers' hard pathway would have left telltale gouges in the landscape, which have never been found. And the sled system, while plausible, would have required huge amounts of manpower -- hundreds of men at a time to move one of... |
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| Middle Ages & Renaissance | |
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| Archaeologists to probe Sherwood Forest's 'Thing' [ Thynghowe ] |
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· 12/29/2010 6:27:55 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 22 replies · 14+ views · · BBC · · Wednesday, December 29, 2010 · · unattributed · |
A team of experts hope to shed new light on one of Nottinghamshire's most mysterious ancient monuments. A 'Thing', or open-air meeting place where Vikings gathered to discuss the law, was discovered in the Birklands, Sherwood Forest, five years ago... It started after husband and wife team Lynda Mallett and Stuart Reddish, along with their friend John Wood, came into possession of a 200 year old document. It described a walk around part of Sherwood Forest which marked an ancient boundary. They searched for the boundary on the landscape and found a place called Hanger Hill on which stood three... |
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| Britain | |
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| The Battle of Towton :Nasty, brutish and not that short |
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· 12/29/2010 5:00:36 PM PST · · Posted by worst-case scenario · · 18 replies · 9+ views · · The Economist · · Dec 16 2010 · |
Medieval warfare was just as terrifying as you might imagine. THE soldier now known as Towton 25 had survived battle before. A healed skull fracture points to previous engagements. He was old enough -- somewhere between 36 and 45 when he died -- to have gained plenty of experience of fighting. But on March 29th 1461, his luck ran out. Towton 25 suffered eight wounds to his head that day. The precise order can be worked out from the direction of fractures on his skull: when bone breaks, the cracks veer towards existing areas of weakness. The first five blows were delivered by a... |
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| Ancient Autopsies | |
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| Rare Discovery of Intact Tomb: German Archeologists Uncover Celtic Treasure |
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· 12/29/2010 7:07:14 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 23 replies · 28+ views · · Spiegel · · Wednesday, December 29, 2010 · · cro -- with wire reports · |
Archeologists in Germany have discovered a 2,600-year-old Celtic tomb containing ornate jewellery of gold and amber. They say the grave is unusually well preserved and should provide important insights into early Celtic culture... The subterranean chamber measuring four by five meters was uncovered near the prehistoric Heuneburg hill fort near the town of Herbertingen in south-western Germany. Its contents including the oak floor of the room are unusually well preserved. The find is a "milestone for the reconstruction of the social history of the Celts," archeologist Dirk Krausse, the director of the dig, said on Tuesday. The intact oak should... |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| Mead, drink of Vikings, comes out of the Dark Ages |
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· 12/29/2010 10:09:41 AM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 51 replies · · hosted.ap.org · · Dec 29 · · Allen G. Breed · |
Pittsboro, N.C. (AP) -- Mead, that drink of viking saga and medieval verse, is making a comeback. But this ain't your ancestors' honey wine. "It's not just for the Renaissance fair anymore," says Becky Starr, co-owner of Starrlight Mead, which recently opened in an old woven label mill in this little North Carolina town. In fact, this most ancient of alcoholic libations hasn't been this hot since Beowulf slew Grendel's dam and Geoffrey Chaucer fell in with the Canterbury pilgrims at the Tabard./font> |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis | |
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| Ancient Maya Temples Were Giant Loudspeakers? |
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· 12/30/2010 7:01:44 PM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 40 replies · 437+ views · · National Geographic News · · December 16, 2010 · · Ker Than · |
Centuries before the first speakers and subwoofers, ancient Americans -- intentionally or not -- may have been turning buildings into giant sound amplifiers and distorters to enthrall or disorient audiences, archaeologists say. Temples at the ancient Maya city of Palenque (map) in central Mexico, for example, might have formed a kind of "unplugged" public-address system, projecting sound across great distances, according to a team led by archaeologist Francisca Zalaquett of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Zalaquett's team recently discovered that Palenque's Northern Group of public squares and temples -- built around roughly A.D. 600 -- is especially good at... |
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| America's Forgotten City |
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· 12/30/2010 2:07:10 AM PST · · Posted by BlueMoose · · 16 replies · 31+ views · · National Geographic · · Jan 2011 · · National Geographic · |
If they ever build a Wal-Mart at Machu Picchu, I will think of Collinsville Road. |
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| The Greeks | |
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| The Original Birth of Freedom - What we owe the audacious Athenians |
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· 12/27/2010 9:03:08 PM PST · · Posted by neverdem · · 9 replies · 1+ views · · City Journal · · Autumn 2010 · · André Glucksmann · |
Over the centuries, there have appeared two great conceptions of freedom. The first vision, which one can call "epic freedom," is freedom as Hegel or Marx understood it, the freedom of messianists and of revolutionaries. The meaning of freedom, on this view, is the progressive emancipation of man: step by step, battle by battle, mankind is supposed to break with its alienations and become the creator and absolute master of its fate. Epic freedom is the assumption of a cosmic mastery, more and more aware of itself. Crises become mere historical stages on the way to the final achievement of... |
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| Early America | |
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| Jamestown unearths 400-year-old pipes for patrons (tobacco pipes) |
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· 12/31/2010 7:44:44 PM PST · · Posted by decimon · · 14 replies · · Associated Press · · December 31, 2010 · · Michael Felberbaum · |
Richmond, Va. -- Archeologists at Jamestown have unearthed a trove of tobacco pipes personalized for a who's who of early 17th century colonial and British elites, underscoring the importance of tobacco to North America's first permanent English settlement. "It really brings the people back into the picture," said Bly Straube, senior archaeological curator for the Jamestown Rediscovery Project. "We have a lot of artifacts that we can associate with types of people like gentleman or women or children, but to find things like the pipe that bears the name Sir Walter Raleigh, I mean, my goodness. ... It just... |
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| The Revolution | |
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| Tea totaler returns Memphis to revolutionary roots (Tea Party) |
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· 12/29/2010 3:38:00 PM PST · · Posted by GailA · · 11 replies · 3+ views · · The Commercial Appeal · · 12/29/10 · · Richard Morgan · |
He was the last president to be a Revolutionary War veteran. Orphaned at 14 by that war, Andrew Jackson went on to be a country lawyer in the pre-Tennessee Southwest Territory. He soon became the state's first U.S. senator, before resigning. He was also a judge on the Tennessee Supreme Court and commander of Tennessee's militia. Then, in 1819, with two other men, he founded Memphis. In 1999, Mark Skoda -- now 56 -- moved to Memphis, which set the stage for a new kind of revolution. Nationwide in 2010, feral Jacksonian populism reigned. This was the year of the... |
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| The Great War | |
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| Photographs of the World's First Aircraft Carrier Resurface |
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· 12/27/2010 8:04:19 PM PST · · Posted by nuconvert · · 25 replies · 3+ views · · The Atlantic · |
On November 14, 1910, Eugene Ely became the first pilot to successfully launch a plane from a stationary ship. The Curtiss pusher airplane, one of the first models in the world to be built in any significant quantity, flew for two miles before Ely landed on a beach. Using the same aircraft, Ely landed on the USS Pennsylvania on January 18, 1911, while the ship was anchored at the San Francisco waterfront. He had to use a braking system made of ropes and sandbags, but he was able to quickly turn around and take off once again, proving that ideas... |
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| World War Eleven | |
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| A 1944 Christmas miracle for Gen. Patton |
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· 12/26/2010 6:31:05 AM PST · · Posted by Saije · · 46 replies · 2+ views · · LA Times · · 12/26/2010 · · Alison Bell · |
In early December 1944, Gen. George S. Patton Jr., commander of the United States' 3rd Army, stood with his troops at Germany's doorstep. He'd pushed his men across France toward Germany with furious speed during summer and early fall, but in the last months, as he drove through France's Lorraine region toward the Saar River, progress stalled. Fuel and supplies were running short, and perhaps even more deviling, the weather wouldn't cooperate. Driving rains had mired his troops and grounded the fighter planes and bombers needed for air support. On Dec. 8, Patton turned to a higher power to clear... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| NM gov. declines to pardon outlaw Billy the Kid |
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· 12/31/2010 8:38:03 AM PST · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 45 replies · · hosted.ap.org · · Dec 31 · |
Santa Fe, N.M. (AP) -- Billy the Kid, the Old West outlaw who killed at least three lawmen and tried to cut a deal from jail with territorial authorities, won't be pardoned, Gov. Bill Richardson said Friday. The prospect of a pardon for the notorious frontier figure nearly 130 years after his death drew international attention to New Mexico, centering on whether Billy the Kid had been promised a pardon from New Mexico's territorial governor in return for testimony in killings he had witnessed. |
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| Epigraphy & Language | |
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| English language has doubled in size in the last century |
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· 12/30/2010 3:39:23 AM PST · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 25 replies · 32+ views · · Telegraph · · December 16, 2010 · · Richard Alleyne · |
Researchers at Harvard University and Google found that the language was expanding by 8,500 words a year in the new millennium and now stands at 1,022,000 words. The rate of increase over the years is shown by the fact the language has grown by more than 70 per cent since 1950, according to the study. The previous half century it only grew by a tenth. But nearly half of the new words are not included in any dictionary and are dubbed lexical "dark matter". They are either slang or invented jargon. The findings came from the computer analyse of 5,195,769... |
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| Pages | |
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| What Are You Reading Now? - My Quarterly Survey |
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· 12/31/2010 7:25:35 AM PST · · Posted by MplsSteve · · 189 replies · · 12/31/10 · · MplsSteve · |
Hello everyone! it's time for my quarterly "What Are You reading Now?" survey. As you know, I consider Freepers to be among the more well-read of those of us out in cyberspace. As a result, I like to find out what you're reading. It can be anything...a technical journal, a NY TImes bestseller, a trashy pulp novel, in short, it can be anything. Please do not defile this thread by posting "I'm reading this thread". It became very unfunny a long long time ago. I'll start. I went to the library and picked up a copy of "Sam Walton, Made... |
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| end of digest #337 20110101 | |
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· Saturday, January 1, 2011 · 27 topics · 2648935 to 2647430 · 762 members · |
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Saturday |
Happy New Year! |
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Fletcher Richman uses the fake cover story that he is “researching” the Bruton Vault and Francis Bacon in order to trick people out of their money through financial misrepresentation. He’s done this for the last 25 years. Fletcher Richman caused MASSIVE financial ruin - and agonizing psychological torture - to my family for the last 2 years through his lies, deceptions, and financial fraud. It is still hard to believe that he could have caused just horrific destruction to my family - along with the assistance of his co-conspirators, Warren Angel and Ellie Henderson. Read the details of what he did to me and countless others over the last 25 years at http://sacredvaults.org
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