Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

Gods, Graves, Glyphs ^ | 7/17/2004 | various

[SunkenCiv]

I'm doing this 45 minutes early so I can get to bed close to a normal time, as the normal people do.

Last week there were two topics (this one and this one) which didn't make the Digest. Apparently I forgot to add the keyword. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #147 20070512

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

Topics 1832248 to 1826833. 619 members.

[ValerieTexas]

Normal people?? What’s that? sounds boring.....

[SunkenCiv]

I was looking for, but couldn't find, the old "Why Be Normal?" bumpersticker. Found this instead.

[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #148 Saturday, May 19, 2007
Oh So Mysteriouso
Snake Cults Dominated Early Arabia
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/18/2007 1:51:54 PM EDT · 28 replies · 331+ views Discovery News | May 18, 2007 | Jennifer Viegas Pre-Islamic Middle Eastern regions were home to mysterious snake cults, according to two papers published in this month's Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy journal. From at least 1250 B.C. until around 550 A.D., residents of what is now the Persian Gulf worshipped snakes in elaborate temple complexes that appear to have been built for this purpose, the studies reveal. The first paper, by archaeologist Dan Potts of the University of Sydney, describes architecture and relics dating to 500 B.C. from Qalat al-Bahrain in Bahrain. Two rooms in what is now known as the Late Dilmun Palace each contain 39 pits, some...
Epigraphy and Language
Cliff carvings may rewrite history of Chinese characters
	Posted by Renfield On News/Activism 05/18/2007 1:33:37 PM EDT · 22 replies · 659+ views Xinhua News Agency | 5-18-07 | unknown Chinese archaeologists say they have found more than 2,000 pictographs dating back 7,000 to 8,000 years, about 3,000 years before other texts that are believed to be the origin of modern Chinese characters. The pictographs are on the rock carvings in Damaidi, at Beishan Mountain in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, which covers about 450 square kilometers with more than 10,000 prehistoric rock carvings. Paleographers claim that the pictographs may take the history of Chinese characters back to 7,000 to 8,000 years ago. Previously, scholars believed the earliest Chinese characters included 3,000-year-old inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells, known...
Chinese writing '8,000 years old'
	Posted by Jedi Master Pikachu On News/Activism 05/18/2007 2:54:50 PM EDT · 50 replies · 928+ views BBC | Friday, May 18, 2007 Chinese archaeologists studying ancient rock carvings say they have evidence that modern Chinese script is thousands of years older than previously thought.State media say researchers identified more than 2,000 pictorial symbols dating back 8,000 years, on cliff faces in the north-west of the country. They say many of these symbols bear a strong resemblance to later forms of ancient Chinese characters. Scholars had thought Chinese symbols came into use about 4,500 years ago. The Damaidi carvings, first discovered in the 1980s, cover 15 sq km (5.8 square miles) and feature more than 8,000 individual figures including the sun, moon,...
Neanderthal / Neandertal
Dry Period In Spain Explains Neanderthals' Last Stand
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/18/2007 6:13:47 PM EDT · 16 replies · 429+ views New Scientist | 5-18-2007 Dry period in Spain explains Neanderthals' last stand 18 May 2007 NewScientist.com news service While modern humans were taking over the rest of Europe, Neanderthals were somehow able to cling on in southern Iberia. Now a climate model has helped to explain why. It suggests the region became desert-like around 39,000 years ago, making it undesirable for modern humans. Pierre Sepulchre from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and colleagues modelled climate and vegetation patterns over the Iberian peninsula around 40,000 years ago. In particular they were interested in the impact of "Heinrich event 4" - an episode of sluggish...
Art
Conservation-damaged frescoes can be saved [damaging techniques have caused darkening & crumbling]
	Posted by bedolido On News/Activism 05/18/2007 5:16:51 PM EDT · 4 replies · 211+ views newscientisttech.com | 5-18-2007 | Staff Writer Widespread use of a damaging conservation technique has seen many of Italy's Renaissance frescoes darken and crumble. That degradation can now be stopped in its tracks. In the 1960s conservators began coating frescoes in clear acrylic polymers to preserve them, but the treatment has had the opposite effect. "The acrylic makes the fresco look brilliant and well preserved initially," says Piero Baglioni, a chemist at the University of Florence. "But as the plaster can no longer breathe, degradation beneath the coating actually speeds up, due to calcium salt and humidity build-up."
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Shipwreck yields historic riches -- $500M worth
	Posted by Red Badger On News/Activism 05/18/2007 10:23:38 AM EDT · 56 replies · 1,462+ views AP via cnn.com | 05/18/2007 | Staff TAMPA, Florida (AP) -- Deep-sea explorers said Friday they have mined what could be the richest shipwreck treasure in history, bringing home 17 tons of colonial-era silver and gold coins from an undisclosed site in the Atlantic Ocean. Estimated value: $500 million. A jet chartered by Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration landed in the United States recently with hundreds of plastic containers brimming with coins raised from the ocean floor, Odyssey co-chairman Greg Stemm said. The more than 500,000 pieces are expected to fetch an average of $1,000 each from collectors and investors. "For this colonial era, I think (the find)...
Ice Ice Baby to Go
Analysis Finds Large Antarctic Area Has Melted
	Posted by neverdem On News/Activism 05/16/2007 1:50:21 AM EDT · 28 replies · 779+ views NY Times | May 16, 2007 | ANDREW C. REVKIN While much of the world has warmed in a pattern that scientists have linked with near certainty to human activities, the frigid interior of Antarctica has resisted the trend. Now, a new satellite analysis shows that at least once in the last several years, masses of unusually warm air pushed to within 310 miles of the South Pole and remained long enough to melt surface snow across a California-size expanse. The warm spell, which occurred over one week in 2005, was detected by scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA and the University of Colorado, Boulder. Balmy air, with...
Macedonia
How Alexander The Great Used 'Mother Nature'
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/15/2007 7:39:17 PM EDT · 24 replies · 832+ views The Telegraph (UK) | 5-15-2007 | Roger Highfield How Alexander the Great used 'Mother Nature' By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 1:45am BST 15/05/2007 Alexander the Great had ''Mother Nature'' on his side when he conquered the island fortress of Tyre in 332 BC, says a study published today. A bust of Alexander the Great Tyre, in present day Lebanon, was then a strategic coastal base in the war between the Greeks and the Persians. Now archeologists have at last worked out how Alexander's engineers managed to build a causeway to enable his army to conquer what had become a bastion of resistance. All previous settlements on...
British Isles
Romans' second fort a thrilling idea [ Monmouth, Wales, UK ]
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/15/2007 11:26:15 AM EDT · 4 replies · 72+ views icWales | May 10, 2007 | Western Mail A second Roman fort has been found in Monmouth, in what the town's archaeological society describes as one of the most thrilling Roman discoveries in South-East Wales for many years. Archaeologists have long known of the existence of a large, "vexillation" fort in the town centre, dating from about AD50, but excavations over the past 25 years have hinted at a smaller, later, second fort. Now its existence has been confirmed thanks to earthworks for a building on land owned by the chairman of Monmouth Archaeological Society, Steve Clarke. The "auxiliary" fort may have housed up to 500 soldiers. It...
Ireland
Ancient "Royal Temple" Discovered in Path of Ireland Highway
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/16/2007 3:53:52 PM EDT · 26 replies · 635+ views National Geographic | 5-15-2007 | James Owen Ancient "Royal Temple" Discovered in Path of Ireland Highway James Owen for National Geographic NewsMay 15, 2007 The discovery of a major prehistoric site where experts believe an open-air royal temple once stood has stalled construction of a controversial four-lane highway in Ireland. A large circular enclosure estimated to be at least 2,000 years old was exposed at Lismullin in County Meath, by road-builders working on a 37-mile-long (60-kilometer-long) road northwest of Dublin. The find is located just 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) from the Hill of Tara, once the seat of power of Ireland's Celtic kings, and likely represents a...
Rome and Italy
Roman towns aligned with Sun
	Posted by BGHater On News/Activism 05/17/2007 12:17:19 AM EDT · 10 replies · 330+ views Discovery News | 16 May 2007 | Rossella Lorenzi Ancient Romans built their towns using astronomically aligned grids, an Italian study concludes. The research examines the orientation of virtually all Roman towns in Italy and is published on the arXiv physics website, which is maintained by Cornell University. "It emerged that these towns were not laid out at random. On the contrary, they were planned following strong symbolic aspects, all linked to astronomy," says Professor Giulio Magli, of the mathematics department at Milan's Polytechnic University. The research examined the orientation of some 38 towns in Italy and is part of a wider study published in Magli's book Secrets of...
Cracks threaten Rome's majesty
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/15/2007 11:21:21 AM EDT · 15 replies · 172+ views BBC | Monday, May 14, 2007 | Christian Fraser The Emperor Augustus said he found Rome a city of brick - and he left it a city of marble... The Forum, the Colosseum and the palaces of the Palatine Hill still stand as proud testament to the Roman builders' genius. Yet today they are betrayed by monumental neglect. The problem of course is money. It costs millions to protect the treasures of Ancient Rome. Not to mention the funds needed to safeguard the newly discovered ruins, which in Rome they find practically every week... The Palatine is honeycombed with cavities - the result of centuries of tunnelling and digging....
Let's Have Jerusalem
Artifacts From Time of Kings David and Solomon Revealed
	Posted by Esther Ruth On News/Activism 05/15/2007 8:06:06 AM EDT · 19 replies · 856+ views www.israelnationalnews.com | 27 Iyar 5767, 15 May 07 03:03 | Nissan Ratzlav-Katz 27 Iyar 5767, 15 May 07 03:03 by (IsraelNN.com) In honor of Jerusalem Day, which begins Tuesday night, archaeologists revealed a number of seals from the time of the Biblical Kings David and Solomon. The seals, along with other recently uncovered artifacts, were displayed for the first time on Monday, at a conference marking 40 years since the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem by the modern State of Israel. The Bible-period artifacts were unearthed during archaeological excavations underway in Ir David, the City of David, below Jerusalem's Old City to the east. The specific artifacts on display on Monday were...
Faith and Philosophy
Archaeologist: Antiquities Authority destroying Leviticus scroll
	Posted by BlackVeil On Religion 05/14/2007 7:18:53 AM EDT · 13 replies · 292+ views Ha-Aretz | 10 May 2007 | By Yair Sheleg Professor Hanan Eshel, the archaeologist who two years ago uncovered scroll fragments of the Book of Leviticus, says the Israel Antiquities Authority, which now has the finds, has cut out large chunks of the scroll on the pretext that its dating needed to be examined. This was not a necessary procedure, says Eshel, since "experts say it was possible to test the dating without an intrusive examination and in the worst case scenario by cutting a tiny, peripheral portion of the scroll." Relying on internal sources in the Antiquities Authority, Eshel says "there had even been plans to cut letters...
Navigation
Ancient Wooden Anchor Discovered (World's Oldest)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/15/2007 5:04:27 PM EDT · 25 replies · 645+ views Newswise | 5-15-2007 | University Of Haifa Source: University of Haifa Released: Tue 15-May-2007, 08:50 ET Ancient Wooden Anchor Discovered The world's oldest wooden anchor was discovered during excavations in the Turkish port city of Urla, the ancient site of Liman Tepe / the Greek 1st Millennium BCE colony of Klazomenai, by researchers from the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies of the University of Haifa. The anchor, from the end of the 7th century BC, was found near a submerged construction, imbedded approximately.1.5 meters underground. Marine archaeologists excavating at Urla Newswise -- The world's oldest wooden anchor was discovered during excavations in the Turkish port city...
India
Surveys Launched To Trace Malabar's Maritime History
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/12/2007 2:08:44 PM EDT · 20 replies · 254+ views Arab News | 5-12-2007 | Mohammed Ashraf Surveys Launched to Trace Malabar's Maritime History Mohammed Ashraf, Arab News THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, 12 May 2007 -- The Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) has begun surveys to trace the Malabar coast's maritime history. The council will be assisted by the Indian Navy in the waters of the Kodungallur region since excavations there have produced evidence of Roman and West Asian maritime contacts. Historians believe Muziris, the lost port city of south India, which was a major center of trade with the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago, existed in the town of Pattanam. The navy undertook sea bottom profiling and the...
Ancient Europe
Work Begins To Uncover Secrets Of Silbury Hill
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/12/2007 1:43:08 PM EDT · 43 replies · 847+ views The Telegraph (UK) | 5-12-2007 | Richard Savill Work begins to uncover secrets of Silbury Hill By Richard Savill Last Updated: 2:26am BST 12/05/2007 Work began yesterday to save an ancient landmark in Wiltshire from collapsing. Silbury Hill, which at 130 feet high is the largest prehistoric man-made construction in Europe, continues to mystify archaeologists. English Heritage is to spend £600,000 this summer trying to preserve the mound. Specialist engineers will enter the mound through a tunnel which was dug in 1968 by a team led by the archaeologist, Prof Richard Atkinson. That tunnel was the last of three made over two centuries by archaeologists. The original purpose...
Ancient Bulgarian Sanctuaries "Older" Than Egyptian Pyramids
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/16/2007 3:40:25 PM EDT · 18 replies · 507+ views Novinite | 5-16-2007 Ancient Bulgarian Sanctuaries "Older" than Egyptian Pyramids 16 May 2007, Wednesday Bulgarian scientist will try to prove their hypothesis that the rock sanctuaries of Tatul and Perperikon in the Eastern Rhodopi Mountains are more ancient than Egyptian pyramids. To prove their hypothesis, the scientists will organize the biggest archaeology expedition in the country that will be situated near the southern town of Kardzhali. The top Bulgarian archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov will lead the expedition. The hypothesis of the rock sanctuaries' age was voiced some months ago by two Bulgarian historians. According to them the first cuts in the rocks there date...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Moundsville new home to beads, bullets and other historic bling
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/14/2007 12:38:27 PM EDT · 14 replies · 151+ views Daily Mail | Monday May 14, 2007 | Justin D. Anderson ...head curator Scott Speedy... said it would be difficult to estimate just how many individual relics he's responsible for at the museum. He just knows he'll have to go through a lot of boxes containing materials from the prehistoric Paleo Indian nomads to Civil War artifacts unearthed at the Reed Farmstead in Hardy County during work on Corridor H... The collection currently being stored at Grave Creek used to be housed at the Blennerhassett Museum in Wood County and various other state institutions. About 11 years ago, the collection was shipped up to Moundsville. The rest of the collection has...
Climate
Lightning spurs hurricanes - Link shows storms in Africa can cause havoc in the United States.
	Posted by neverdem On News/Activism 05/14/2007 3:53:43 AM EDT · 29 replies · 643+ views news@nature.com | 11 May 2007 | Harvey Leifert Close window Published online: 11 May 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070508-12 Lightning spurs hurricanesLink shows storms in Africa can cause havoc in the United States.What creates an Atlantic hurricane? The most devastating ones are spurred by intense thunderstorms in the Ethiopian highlands, according to new research. The link between lightning strikes and hurricane formation should give researchers a heads-up about when a nasty hurricane might form, weeks before it could make landfall in the United States, says Colin Price of Tel Aviv University in Israel. Today, scientists apply various models to predict storm tracks and strength, but only once they form...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Did comet start deadly cold snap?
	Posted by Mike Darancette On News/Activism 05/16/2007 6:00:33 PM EDT · 76 replies · 1,213+ views Canada.com | Monday, May 14, 2007 | Margaret Munro An extraterrestrial impact 13,000 years ago wiped out mammoths and started a mini-ice age, scientists believe Margaret Munro CanWest News Service Monday, May 14, 2007 A comet or some other extraterrestrial object appears to have slammed into northern Canada 12,900 years ago and triggered an abrupt and catastrophic climate change that wiped out the mammoths and many other prehistoric creatures, according to a team of U.S. scientists. Evidence of the ecological disaster exists in a thin layer of sediment that has been found from Alberta to New Mexico, say the researchers, whose work adds a dramatic and provocative twist to...
Whole Lotta Shakin'
Slip sliding away [ Machu Picchu is in imminent danger ]
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/12/2007 9:45:02 AM EDT · 11 replies · 252+ views New Scientist | March 7, 2001 | Peter Hadfield Japanese geologists have found that the earth beneath the ruins is shifting at an alarming rate. They say a major landslide could split the ruins in two at any time... Researchers from the Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University set up 10 extensometers to measure the rate of surface movement. They found that one section of back slope was moving downwards at a rate of up to one centimetre per month... Sassa estimates that the landslide will be around 100 metres deep, enough to destroy all of Machu Picchu. The two-ridge structure of the site - with a concave...
CHiPs, Flakes
Malibu Archaeological Find Is a Point of Contention [ Clovis point ]
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/15/2007 11:04:55 AM EDT · 17 replies · 178+ views Malibu Surfside News | May 13th, 2007 | Anne Soble ...a spearhead, or projectile point, that could have been used by hunters in the Clovis cultural era around 11,000 years ago to pursue a giant mammoth or buffalo in the vicinity of what is now Point Dume... was found in September 2005 by Edgar Perez, a cultural resources specialist for the Tongva Tribe in Los Angeles, who was hired as the Native American monitor at a Point Dume residential construction site. Stickel said Perez was overseeing backhoe digging and spotted the spearhead in the bucket before it was crushed... Interestingly, some descendants of the post-Clovis Chumash, traditionally considered Malibu's earliest...
Prehistory and Origins
Human Remains Thought To Be Oldest Ever Found In Santa Cruz
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/12/2007 1:13:51 PM EDT · 23 replies · 649+ views Santa Cruz Sentinel | Todd Guild Human remains thought to be oldest ever found in Santa Cruz By Todd Guild Sentinel CorrespondentMay 12, 2007 SANTA CRUZ -- For the Santa Cruz Water Department, most construction projects are uneventful, encountering nothing more than dirt, rocks and an occasional root. That was not the case when city workers installing a water pipe on the Westside unearthed the bodies of two Ohlone people -- now believed to be the oldest human remains ever found in the city. Studies over the past six months date the bones back 5,000 years, when construction on the Great Pyramids in Egypt had just...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Ancient Canals Reveal Underpinnings of Early Andean Civilization
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/12/2007 9:38:45 AM EDT · 12 replies · 133+ views Newswise | Tuesday, November 29, 2005 | Vanderbilt University The discovery by Vanderbilt University anthropologist Tom Dillehay and his colleagues, Herbert Eling, Instituto Naciona de Anthropolotica e Historia in Coahulila, Mexico, and Jack Rossen, Ithaca College, was reported in the Nov. 22 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The anthropologists discovered the canals in Peru's upper middle Zana Valley, approximately 60 kilometers east of the Pacific coast. Preliminary results indicate one of the canals is over 6,700 years old, while another has been confirmed to be over 5,400 years old. They are the oldest such canals yet discovered in South America... Dillehay and his team...
After 10 Years New Excavations In Sipan
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/15/2007 5:11:13 PM EDT · 2 replies · 196+ views Latino America | May 2007 | Antonio Aimi After 10 years, the new excavations in SipanAntonio Aimi This is probably one of the most important archaeological projects in the world, at least under the economical aspect: it's a project of about 1.350.000 Euros. As for the rest, if we want to talk cheap, roughly but objectively, we can say that the previous campaigns of archaeological excavations resulted in more than 8 kilos of gold and silver, paling the mythical Tomb 7 of Monte Alban and the treasures of any El Dorado in Colombia. We are talking about the new excavation campaign originating in these days from Sipan, a...
Agriculture
Biotechnology Solves Debate Over Origin Of European Potato
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/18/2007 6:48:45 PM EDT · 26 replies · 470+ views Science Daily | 5-16-2007 | American Society of Agron Source: American Society of Agronomy Date: May 16, 2007 Biotechnology Solves Debate Over Origin Of European Potato Science Daily -- Molecular studies recently revealed new genetic information concerning the long-disputed origin of the "European potato." Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of La Laguna, and the International Potato Center used genetic markers to prove that the remnants of the earliest known landraces of the European potato are of Andean and Chilean origin. They report their findings in the May-June 2007 issue of Crop Science. Americans each eat about 140 pounds of potatoes a year in fresh and processed...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Cave Near Chicago Full of Ancient Wonders
	Posted by LibWhacker On News/Activism 05/19/2007 2:36:05 PM EDT · 18 replies · 869+ views Yahoo | LiveScience | 5/18/07 | Corey Binns North America's oldest conifer tree and some ancient scorpion parts are among the fossil treasures found in a newly discovered cave in Illinois. The new discovery also unearthed fossils of plants that may be new to science and revealed evidence of prehistoric forest fires. Scientists date the specimens to nearly 315 million years ago, according to initial findings presented last month at the regional meeting of the Geological Society of America in Lawrence, Kan. "I've never seen anything like this before," said Roy Plotnick, a paleontologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who discovered the cave with students on...
Longer Perspectives
11-nation commission agrees to start transferring Nazi archive to Holocaust researchers
	Posted by Calpernia On General/Chat 05/15/2007 11:53:17 AM EDT · 8 replies · 81+ views SignOnSandiego | 6:03 a.m. May 15, 2007 AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Diplomats from 11 countries agreed Tuesday to bypass legal obstacles and begin distributing electronic copies of documents from a secretive Nazi archive, making them available to Holocaust researchers for the first time in more than a half century. The decision was meant to avoid further delays in allowing Holocaust survivors to find their own stories and family histories, and for historians to seek new insights into Europe's darkest period. The countries governing the archive maintained by the International Tracing Service approved a plan to begin transferring scanned documents as soon as they are ready so that receiving...
Early America
Scientists unearth Ft. Duquesne remnants
	Posted by nypokerface On News/Activism 05/17/2007 11:18:11 AM EDT · 9 replies · 384+ views AP | 05/16/07 | RAMESH SANTANAM PITTSBURGH - About two weeks ago, archaeologist Tom Kutys thought he'd found a stone wall when he came across mortared capstones in a trench at the state park that once was the site of French and British forts. Instead, archaeologists at Point State Park believe they very well might have uncovered long-buried remnants of Fort Duquesne, Pittsburgh's original fort. "If we are correct about this, we are looking at the earliest example of European masonry in Pittsburgh," said Brooke Blades, an archaeologist with A.D. Marble and Co., which is working on the $35 million renovation of the park in downtown...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Book details plot to steal Abe's body[Abraham Lincoln]
	Posted by BGHater On News/Activism 05/11/2007 10:15:20 PM EDT · 18 replies · 449+ views AP | 07 May 2007 | Don Babwin When it comes to Abraham Lincoln, apparently there's no such thing as enough. After countless books about his boyhood, his presidency, the hunt for his killer and yes, even his feet, maybe it was time for a new book devoted to what happened to Lincoln's body after he was done using it. As its title implies, "Stealing Lincoln's Body" by Thomas J. Craughwell (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) is devoted to Lincoln after, as Craughwell writes in the first sentence, "the last tremor of life" left his body. Craughwell details a little-known plot to steal the 16th president's...
Lincoln came near death from smallpox: researchers
	Posted by wagglebee On News/Activism 05/17/2007 8:09:38 PM EDT · 7 replies · 461+ views Reuters | 5/17/07 | Reuters HOUSTON, May 17 (Reuters Life!) - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln may have come closer than previously realized to dying from smallpox shortly after delivering his Gettysburg Address, medical researchers said on Thursday. After giving the Civil War speech, Lincoln became ill with symptoms of smallpox: high fever, weakness, severe pain in the head and back, "prostration" -- an old-fashioned word for extreme fatigue -- and skin eruptions that lasted for three weeks in late 1863. Lincoln's doctors told the ailing president he suffered from a cold or a "bilious fever" before one physician told him he had a mild form...
Political Party Platforms -- parties receiving electoral votes (1840 - 2004)
	Posted by mdittmar On General/Chat 05/17/2007 8:10:46 PM EDT · 2 replies · 38+ views The American Presidency Project | 5/17/07 | The American Presidency Project Political Party Platforms -- parties receiving electoral votes (1840 - 2004) Democratic Party 2004 2000 1996 1992 1988 1984 1980 1976 1972 1968 1964 1960 1956 1952 1948 1944 1940 1936 1932 1928 1924 1920 1916 1912 1908 1904 1900 1896 1892 1888 1884 1880 1876 1872 1868 1864 1860 1856 1852 1848 1844 1840 Republican Party 2004 2000 1996 1992 1988 1984 1980 1976 1972 1968 1964 1960 1956 1952 1948 1944 1940 1936 1932 1928 1924 1920 1916 1912 1908 1904 1900 1896 1892 1888 1884 1880 1876 1872 1868 1864 1860 1856 Other Parties 1972 - Libertarian...
end of digest #148 20070519

[SunkenCiv]

Well, it's the 20th, and the 5/19 issue is a day late. Luckily everyone has lives and didn't notice. :')

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #148 20070519

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

Topics 1836028 to 1832329. 619 members.

[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #149 Saturday, May 26, 2007
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Diamonds tell tale of comet that killed off the cavemen
	Posted by Renfield On News/Activism 05/20/2007 7:50:33 PM EDT · 59 replies · 1,616+ views Guardian | 5-20-07 | Robin McKie Fireballs set half the planet ablaze, wiping out the mammoth and America's Stone Age hunters Scientists will outline dramatic evidence this week that suggests a comet exploded over the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, creating a hail of fireballs that set fire to most of the northern hemisphere. Primitive Stone Age cultures were destroyed and populations of mammoths and other large land animals, such as the mastodon, were wiped out. The blast also caused a major bout of climatic cooling that lasted 1,000 years and seriously disrupted the development of the early human civilisations that were emerging in Europe and...
Catastrophic Comet Chilled and Killed Ice Age Beasts (and Clovis people)
	Posted by TigerLikesRooster On News/Activism 05/22/2007 1:16:48 AM EDT · 45 replies · 988+ views Live Science | 05/21/07 | Jeanna Bryner Catastrophic Comet Chilled and Killed Ice Age Beasts Jeanna Bryner LiveScience Staff Writer LiveScience.com Mon May 21, 9:30 AM ET An extraterrestrial object with a three-mile girth might have exploded over southern Canada nearly 13,000 years ago, wiping out an ancient Stone Age culture as well as megafauna like mastodons and mammoths. The blast could be to blame for a major cold spell called the Younger Dryas that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, a period of time spanning from about 1.8 million years ago to 11,500 years ago. Research, presented today at a meeting of the American...
Oregon Researchers Involved In New Clovis-Age Impact Theory (More)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/23/2007 5:30:19 PM EDT · 20 replies · 543+ views Eureka Alert Contact: Jim Barlow jebarlow@uoregon.edu 541-346-3481 University of Oregon Oregon researchers involved in new Clovis-age impact theory Did a comet hit the Great Lakes region and fragment human populations 12,900 years ago? Two University of Oregon researchers are on a multi-institutional 26-member team proposing a startling new theory: that an extraterrestrial impact, possibly a comet, set off a 1,000-year-long cold spell and wiped out or fragmented the prehistoric Clovis culture and a variety of animal genera across North America almost 13,000 years ago. Driving the theory is a carbon-rich layer of soil that has been found, but not definitively explained, at...
Epigraphy and Language
The Bat Creek Stone
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/20/2007 7:09:05 PM EDT · 11 replies · 138+ views OSU | December 2005 | J. Huston McCulloch [T]he most telling difference between the Bat Creek and Masonic inscriptions is in the different ways the two words are separated. Macoy's illustrator, who was undoubtedly working from a newly-available dictionary chart of Jewish War coinscript letters to transcribe standard Square Hebrew into the older alphabet, erroneously assumed that the words should be separated by a space, as in English or modern Hebrew. Bat Creek instead correctly uses a word divider. There is no way this subtle detail could have been copied from Macoy's illustration, even if the copyist threw in a few random changes to disguise his or her...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Piles of rocks spark an American Indian mystery
	Posted by rainbow sprinkles On General/Chat 05/19/2007 6:33:03 AM EDT · 5 replies · 153+ views YahooNews | Fri May 18, | Jason Szep In a thick forest of maple, willow and oak trees where 17th century European settlers fought hundreds of American Indians, algae-covered stones are arranged in mysterious piles. Wilfred Greene, the 70-year-old chief of the Wampanoag Nation's Seaconke Indian tribe, says the stone mounds are part of a massive Indian burial ground, possibly one of the nation's largest, that went unnoticed until a few years ago. "When I came up here and looked at this, I was overwhelmed," said Greene, a wiry former boxer, standing next to one of at least 100 stone piles -- each about 3 feet (1 meter)...
Piles of rocks spark an American Indian mystery [ Rhode Island ]
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/21/2007 12:20:29 AM EDT · 14 replies · 280+ views Star (Malaysia) / Reuters | May 19, 2007 | Jason Szep In a thick forest of maple, willow and oak trees where 17th century European settlers fought hundreds of American Indians, algae-covered stones are arranged in mysterious piles. Wilfred Greene, the 70-year-old chief of the Wampanoag Nation's Seaconke Indian tribe, says the stone mounds are part of a massive Indian burial ground, possibly one of the nation's largest, that went unnoticed until a few years ago... The firm has hired an archeologist who studied the stones and concluded they were likely left in piles by early European settlers who built a network of stone walls in the area, said company president...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Possible Aztec offerings found in Mexico (into a lake in the crater of a snowcapped volcano)
	Posted by NormsRevenge On News/Activism 05/25/2007 3:04:19 PM EDT · 18 replies · 596+ views AP on Yahoo | 5/25/07 | Mark Stevenson - ap MEXICO CITY - Archaeologists diving into a lake in the crater of a snowcapped volcano found wooden scepters in the shape of lightning bolts that match the description by Spanish priests and conquerors writing 500 years ago about offerings to the Aztec rain god. The lightning bolts -- along with cones of copal incense and obsidian knives -- were found during scuba-diving expeditions in one of the twin lakes of the extinct Nevado de Toluca volcano, at more than 13,800 feet above sea level. Scientists must still conduct tests to determine the age of the findings, but the writings after...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Pioneers In Northern Circumpolar Areas
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/24/2007 6:55:40 PM EDT · 12 replies · 296+ views Innovations Report | 5-24-2007 Pioneers in the Northern Circumpolar Areas 24.05.2007 "Arctic Natural climate and environmental changes and human adaptation: from Science to Public Awareness" is one of Norwayís three flagship projects for the International Polar Year. Anzeige Archaeology and geology researchers from the University of Troms¯ will contribute to the project together with a national team of researchers from around the country. Archaeology professor Hans Peter Blankholm is looking forward to this interdisciplinary collaboration. "I believe itís fantastic that we, together with the geologists, can contribute to solving some of the puzzles of the past," says Professor Blankholm. "From an archaeological stand point, we...
Australia and the Pacific
Discovery Of The Hobbit
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/23/2007 5:26:08 PM EDT · 7 replies · 372+ views Stuff.comNZ | 5-23-2007 | Nicola Jennings The Discovery of the Hobbit - Mike Morwood and Penny Van Oosterzee By NICOLA JENNINGS - Sunday Star Times Wednesday, 23 May 2007 Long after homo sapiens invented art, porn and sailing, another kind of human scampered about in Indonesian forests. We know this because a team led by one of the writers of this fascinating book, Australian archaeologist Mike Morwood, discovered the creature's skeleton in 2003, in a cave on the remote island of Flores. Since then, bones belonging to at least eight more individuals have been found, ranging in age from 95,000 to 12,000 years old. Our own...
Greece
Ancient shrine found in Greece
	Posted by rainbow sprinkles On General/Chat 05/24/2007 10:03:19 AM EDT · 7 replies · 162+ views YahooNews | 05.24.2007 | Staff reporter ATHENS, Greece - Archaeologists in central Greece have discovered thousands of miniature clay pots and statuettes in the ruins of an ancient sanctuary possibly dedicated to the Three Graces, officials said on Wednesday. In volume, it is one of the richest finds in recent years. Excavations near Orchomenos, 80 miles northwest of Athens, revealed sparse remains of retaining walls from a small rural shrine, a Culture Ministry statement said. But a rock-carved shaft was found to contain thousands of pottery offerings, dating from the early 5th century B.C. until at least the 3rd century B.C, the statement said. The finds...
Longer Perspectives
Study Finds Hurricanes Frequent in Some Cooler Periods
	Posted by neverdem On News/Activism 05/24/2007 4:44:02 AM EDT · 9 replies · 214+ views NY Times | May 24, 2007 | ANDREW C. REVKIN Over the last 5,000 years, the eastern Caribbean has experienced several periods, lasting centuries, in which strong hurricanes occurred frequently even though ocean temperatures were cooler than those measured today, according to a new study. The authors, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, say their findings do not necessarily conflict with recent papers asserting a link between the regionís hurricane activity and human-caused warming of the climate and seas. But, they say, their work does imply that factors other than ocean temperature, at least for thousands of years, appear to have played a pivotal role in shaping storminess in the...
Climate
The Faithful Heretic: Reid A. Bryson on Global Warming
	Posted by an amused spectator On News/Activism 05/22/2007 8:49:59 PM EDT · 19 replies · 591+ views Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News | May 2007 Issue | Dave Hoopman The Faithful HereticA Wisconsin Icon Pursues Tough Questions Some people are lucky enough to enjoy their work, some are lucky enough to love it, and then thereís Reid Bryson. At age 86, heís still hard at it every day, delving into the science some say he invented. Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology -- now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences... **snip** ...Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. ìWhat do they find...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Rare scroll fragment to be unveiled [7th century scrap of "Exodus"]
	Posted by Alouette On News/Activism 05/22/2007 10:02:22 AM EDT · 15 replies · 495+ views Jerusalem Post | May 22, 2007 | Etgar Letkowitz A rare Torah scroll fragment from the Book of Exodus dating back to the 7th century that includes the famous Song of the Sea will be unveiled Tuesday at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the museum announced Monday. The manuscript, which is a fragment of a Torah scroll from the Book of Exodus (13:19-16:1), comes from the six-hundred year period from the 3rd through 8th centuries known as the "silent era," from which almost no Hebrew manuscripts have survived. The scroll, which is on loan to the museum, is believed to have originally been part of a vast depository of...
Faith and Philosophy
The Light of Kucha (Caucasian Buddhist kingdom's contribution)
	Posted by TigerLikesRooster On News/Activism 05/23/2007 10:44:26 AM EDT · 9 replies · 240+ views lakdiva | 05/27/07 | Nishy Wijewardane The Light of Kucha In this third part of travels on the Chinese Silk Road, Nishy Wijewardane reveals the remarkable Buddhist legacy of the Kingdom of Kucha, northern Taklamakan Desert, Xinjiang. Just a day before leaving Colombo for Central Asia, a book I ordered months earlier arrived through the post, much to my delight. It contained rare photographs of extraordinarily beautiful 3-5th C AD Buddhist cave murals from a remote corner of China's vast Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The exhilarating photographs depicted exquisite renditions of the Jataka Tales in colours alien to murals in Sri Lanka. As the pages turned, my...
Navigation
Spain probing if sunken treasure taken illegally
	Posted by nypokerface On News/Activism 05/21/2007 7:32:22 PM EDT · 19 replies · 634+ views Reuters | 05/21/07 | Ben Harding MADRID (Reuters) - Spain is investigating whether one of the world's biggest-ever finds of sunken treasure was plundered from its waters or from a shipwrecked Spanish galleon, the government said on Monday. Florida-based treasure hunters Odyssey Marine Exploration said on Friday it had legally recovered gold and silver coins worth an estimated $500 million from a colonial-era wreck code-named Black Swan at an undisclosed location in the Atlantic Ocean. Spain's Culture Ministry called the discovery suspicious and said the booty could have come from a wrecked Spanish galleon or the remains of HMS Sussex off the coast of Gibraltar, which...
Ancient Europe
Archaeological Find Could Shed Light On Orkney's Past
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/21/2007 11:32:43 PM EDT · 14 replies · 516+ views Historic-Scotland | 5-16-2007 Archaeological find could shed light on Orkney's past Published: 16 May 2007 By: Communications and Media Archaeologists have discovered what appears to be a subterranean Iron Age structure, known as a souterrain, in an Orkney field. The find was made when the field was being seeded for barley. At first it was believed to be a Bronze Age cist burial, as others have previously been uncovered nearby, but subsequent examination has revealed it to be an Iron Age souterrain or earth-house. Dr Allan Rutherford of Historic Scotland said: ìPreliminary investigations by staff from Orkney College Archaeology Department have shown this...
Prehistory and Origins
Turkmenistan: Making Bid For Cradle-OfCivilization Bid
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/23/2007 7:33:27 PM EDT · 10 replies · 232+ views Eurasianet | 5-21-2007 TURKMENISTAN: MAKING A BID FOR CRADLE-OF-CIVILIZATION STATUS 5/21/07 Even in mid-spring, a stark landscape greets visitors to the Gonur-depe historical site in eastern Turkmenistan. Standing amid sand and rock at the edge of the Karakum desert, it is hard to imagine that a rich civilization once thrived here, built around a lush oasis fed by the Murgab River. Yet Greek-Russian archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi has uncovered just that since his expedition began in 1972. He says Gonur-depe was the capital -- or imperial city, as he prefers to call it -- of a complex, Bronze Age state -- one that stretched...
Africa
King Tut exhibition 'racist' [no mention of Africa & suggests ancient Egyptian king was white]
	Posted by bedolido On News/Activism 05/21/2007 3:35:05 PM EDT · 144 replies · 2,488+ views new24 | 5-21-2007 | Staff Writer Philadelphia - A travelling exhibition on King Tutankhamun drew about 50 protesters in Philadelphia who denounced the popular display as racist. Molefi Asante, a professor of African-American studies at Temple University, led the demonstration on Sunday outside the Franklin Institute, claiming the exhibit has no mention of Africa and that it suggests the ancient Egyptian king was white.
Egypt
Belgians find tomb of ancient Egypt courtier [ 1st Intermediate Period ]
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/22/2007 12:35:10 AM EDT · 10 replies · 92+ views Yahoo! | Sunday, May 20, 2007 | Reuters Belgian archaeologists have discovered the intact tomb of an Egyptian courtier who lived about 4,000 years ago, Egypt's culture ministry said on Sunday. The team from Leuven Catholic University accidentally found the tomb, one of the best preserved of its time, while excavating a later burial site at the Deir al-Barsha necropolis near the Nile Valley town of Minya, south of Cairo. The tomb belonged to Henu, an estate manager and high-ranking official during the first intermediate period, which lasted from 2181 to 2050 BC and was a time of political chaos in ancient Egypt. The archaeologists found Henu's mummy...
Giza
Stones of the Pyramids were Poured, Not Chisled
	Posted by mission9 On News/Activism 05/21/2007 1:44:47 PM EDT · 95 replies · 4,005+ views Associated Content | 05-21-07 | Ranger Drexel University researchers are revising the book on the Pyramids of Egypt, the last surviving wonder of the ancient world. The standard hypothesis for their construction speculates that ancient Egyptians carved the blocks out of nearby deposits of natural limestone, using stone age tools, and then floated the stones on barges, and used primitive ramps and levers to wrestle the blocks into place. The fact is, no one knows even to this day how the Pyramids were built. Many of the limestone blocks fit so perfectly that not even a human hair ....
Pandemics, Epidemics, Plagues, Really Bad Cases of the Sniffles
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 (History of Bird Flu's Grampa)
	Posted by Travis McGee On News/Activism 10/19/2005 11:42:53 PM EDT · 17 replies · 1,332+ views Stanford.edu | 1997, updated 2005 | Molly Billings The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster. In the fall of 1918 the Great War in Europe was winding down and peace was on the...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Bach works were written by his second wife, claims academic
	Posted by sitetest On News/Activism 04/24/2006 11:01:14 AM EDT · 108 replies · 1,567+ views The Telegraph (UK) | April 23, 2006 | Barbie Dutter in Sydney and Roya Nikkhah Famous works attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach were not penned by the great composer but by his second wife, researchers believe. A study by an academic who has spent more than 30 years looking at Bach's work claims that Anna Magdalena Bach, traditionally believed to be Bach's musical copyist, actually wrote some of his best-loved works, including his Six Cello Suites. Martin Jarvis, a professor at Charles Darwin University School of Music in Darwin and the conductor of the city's symphony orchestra, said that "a number of books would need to be rewritten" after presenting his findings to a Bach...
Early America
Archaeologist Says Clarke County Site May Be Lost De Soto Battleground
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/24/2007 6:27:26 PM EDT · 14 replies · 473+ views MobilePress-Register | 5-24-2007 | Connie Baggett Archaeologist says Clarke County site may be lost De Soto battleground Thursday, May 24, 2007By CONNIE BAGGETTStaff Reporter A Mobile archaeologist said this week that he believes he has found a site in southern Clarke County that could be the Indian stronghold Mauvilla, where Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto fought a bloody battle in the mid-1500s. If he is correct, he has solved a mystery that for decades left others with false leads and dashed hopes. Andrew Holmes, who works as a archaeological field technician for Barry Vittor and Associates conducting environmental assessments at construction projects, said he used a...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Doctors say Lincoln had smallpox when giving Gettysburg Address
	Posted by Graybeard58 On General/Chat 05/24/2007 7:06:51 PM EDT · 7 replies · 112+ views Waterbury Republican-American | May 24, 2007 | Lindsey Tanner (A.P.) CHICAGO -- Abraham Lincoln has been dead for 142 years, but he still manages to make medical headlines, this time from doctors who say he had a bad case of smallpox when he delivered the Gettysburg Address. Physicians in Baltimore said last week that Lincoln might have survived being shot if today's medical technology had existed in 1865. Last year, University of Minnesota researchers suggested that a genetic nerve disorder rather than the long-speculated Marfan syndrome might have caused his clunky gait. "If you play doctor, it's difficult to shut down the diagnostic process" when reading about historical figures, said...
end of digest #149 20070526

[SunkenCiv]

Memorial Day (observed) weekend edition. It was a slow week. :') One new member.

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #149 20070526

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[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #150 Saturday, June 2, 2007
Agriculture
Japan: Researchers find 2,100 year-old melon
	Posted by TigerLikesRooster On News/Activism 06/02/2007 6:35:52 AM EDT · 16 replies · 389+ views AP | 06/01/07 | KOZO MIZOGUCHI Researchers find 2,100 year-old melon By KOZO MIZOGUCHI, Associated Press Writer Fri Jun 1, 5:28 PM ET TOKYO - Archaeologists digging in western Japan have excavated what they believe to be the oldest remains of a melon ever found, an official said Friday. Based on a radiocarbon analysis, researchers estimate the half-rounded piece of fruit to be about 2,100 years old, said Shuji Yamazaki, a local official in the city of Moriyama. The remains are believed to be the oldest of a melon that still has flesh on the rind, Yamazaki said. Previously, the oldest such find was believed...
British Isles
Space Age Lasers Reveal Offa's Dyke Missing Link
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/01/2007 8:36:07 PM EDT · 20 replies · 544+ views Western Daily Press | 6-1-2007 | Janet Hughes SPACE AGE LASERS REVEAL OFFA'S DYKE MISSING LINK BY JANET HUGHES J.HUGHES@BEPP.CO.UK 08:00 - 01 June 2007 It has remained hidden for centuries but space-age technology has stripped away layers of history to discover what excited archaeologists believe could be a missing section of Offa's Dyke. Aerial laser technology, which allows the experts to see what is hidden below the trees and the undergrowth, has discovered a long strip of earthworks in the Forest of Dean. And archaeologists believe they may have finally found a missing 250-metre stretch of the Dyke built by King Offa between 757 to 796 AD...
Pandemics, Epidemics, Plagues, Really Bad Cases of the Sniffles
Lost documents shed light on Black Death
	Posted by rainbow sprinkles On General/Chat 06/01/2007 9:38:06 AM EDT · 50 replies · 660+ views The Times | June 1, 2007 | Simon de Bruxelles For centuries, rats and fleas have been fingered as the culprits responsible for the Black Death, the medieval plague that killed as many as two thirds of Europeís population. But historians studying 14th-century court records from Dorset believe they may have uncovered evidence that exonerates them. The parchment records, contained in a recently-discovered archive, reveal that an estimated 50 per cent of the 2,000 people living in Gillingham died within four months of the Black Death reaching the town in October 1348. The deaths are recorded in land transfers lodged with the manorial court which -- unusually for the period...
Climate
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin Not Sure That Global Warming Is A Problem
	Posted by Names Ash Housewares On News/Activism 05/31/2007 1:31:13 AM EDT · 50 replies · 1,121+ views National Public Radio | May 30, 2007 | NPR MR. GRIFFIN: I have no doubt that global -- that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does...
Cryptobiology, Chimera, Ephemera
New Loch Ness Monster video
	Posted by Red in Blue PA On News/Activism 05/31/2007 2:30:00 PM EDT · 73 replies · 4,867+ views AP/CNN | 5/31/2007 | AP EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) -- Like tartan, bagpipes, and shortbread Scotland's Loch Ness Monster is as much an emblem as a tourist draw. And now Nessie's back. An amateur scientist has captured what Loch Ness Monster watchers say is among the finest footage ever taken of the elusive mythical creature reputed to swim beneath the waters of Scotland's most mysterious lake. "I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this jet black thing, about 45-feet (15 meters) long, moving fairly fast in the water," said Gordon Holmes, the 55-year-old a lab technician from Shipley, Yorkshire, who took the video this past...
...and Biology
UWO Researcher Finds What May Be Oldest Fossil On Earth
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/30/2007 7:46:22 PM EDT · 25 replies · 475+ views The London Free Press | 5-29-2007 | John Miner UWO researcher finds what may be oldest fossil on Earth Tue, May 29, 2007 By JOHN MINER, SUN MEDIA A team led by a University of Western Ontario scientist has discovered direct evidence there was life on Earth 3.35 billion years ago UWO geologist Neil Banerjee and his team found fossilized tunnels of microbes in ancient rock from Australia. The find was dated by scientists at the University of Alberta using a newly developed laser-dating method. ìThis is very strong evidence,î Banerjee said. The discovery pushes the fossil evidence of life back to the early period of the Earthís development....
Let's Have Jerusalem
Much-anticipated scroll exhibition to open June 29
	Posted by Alex Murphy On Religion 05/31/2007 12:00:28 PM EDT · 6 replies · 76+ views Christian Examiner Online | June 4, 2007 | Lori Arnold SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- Southern Californian's will be treated to a once-in-a-lifetime peek of some of the most impressive ancient artifacts to be uncovered in Israel when the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit opens June 29 at the San Diego Natural History Museum, the only California stop in its national tour. Carefully plucked from 11 caves the scrolls, which include biblical books, hymns, prayers and other significant writings, were discovered between 1947 and 1956 on the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea. As part of the exhibit, which runs through Dec. 31, a series of lectures and other events are planned....
Catastrophism and Astronomy
North Oregon Coast Beach Reveals Ancient Ghost Forest Again
	Posted by Renfield On News/Activism 05/29/2007 6:32:10 AM EDT · 47 replies · 1,528+ views Beach Connection | 5/28/07 | Unknown Arch Cape, Oregon) -- The mysterious chunks of wood have shown up periodically over the last few decades, sticking out of the sand like doomed creatures trying to make their last, desperate escape from a dreadful fate beneath the rest of the world. They make momentary impressions on passersby, who have no clue to the real meaning of these muted witnesses to an age practically before Mankind. They are unintentional memorials to the grandiose forest that once stood here, now reduced to twisted, tortured shapes that scream silently from another epoch. The little village of Arch Cape, on the north...
Whole Lotta Shakin'
Imagining the Unthinkable -- In Detail
	Posted by BenLurkin On General/Chat 05/28/2007 8:39:26 PM EDT · 20 replies · 348+ views USGS | 5/7/2007 3:13:18 PM | Stephanie Hanna If you lived through the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994 you know what a mere seven seconds of shaking can do. Could you imagine over two minutes of intense shaking? Scientists can. "When it comes to natural hazards, southern Californians are at great risk," says Lucy Jones, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coordinator of the new USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project. "We all know this. Earthquakes, wildfires, floods, tsunamis, landslides and coastal erosion are inevitable and its time to look at them closely and prepare." Scientists from around the Nation are being pulled together by the USGS to work with community...
India
Archaeologists Hit Upon 'Gold Mine' Of Relics At Hadonahalli (India)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/30/2007 8:04:42 PM EDT · 5 replies · 257+ views Udayavani | 5-30-2007 Archaeologists hit upon `gold mine' of relics at Hadonahalli Shimoga, May 30: Shimoga;The State Department of Archaeology and Museums has sought the permission of the State Government to take up extensive excavation at a proto-historic site at Hadonahalli in Shimoga taluk on the banks of the Tungabhadra. The department had made a formal proposal to the district administration, asking it to send a proposal to the Revenue Department. The excavation is to be taken up on a 12-acre plot on a mound. Owners of the land, which was lying vacant, had decided to utilise it for areca cultivation. They said...
China
European Man Found in Ancient Chinese Tomb, Study Reveals
	Posted by Renfield On News/Activism 05/26/2007 8:45:03 AM EDT · 52 replies · 1,716+ views National Geographic | 5-24-07 | Stefan Lovgren Human remains found in a 1,400-year-old Chinese tomb belonged to a man of European origin, DNA evidence shows. Chinese scientists who analyzed the DNA of the remains say the man, named Yu Hong, belonged to one of the oldest genetic groups from western Eurasia. The tomb, in Taiyuan in central China, marks the easternmost spot where the ancient European lineage has been found (see China map). "The [genetic group] to which Yu Hong belongs is the first west Eurasian special lineage that has been found in the central part of ancient China," said Zhou Hui, head of the DNA laboratory...
Roman Empire
The Last Sunrise
	Posted by rmlew On General/Chat 05/29/2007 7:59:51 PM EDT · 10 replies · 288+ views The American Spectator | 5/29/2007 | Paull J. Cella III Five hundred and fifty-four years ago on this day the Roman Empire was at last extinguished. By then the Empire was, of course, Greek not Roman; Christian not pagan; and no longer strong but pitifully weak. Dispossessed of all its Anatolian and Asian province, and most of its European, all that remained was the great city of Constantinople, much of which was reduced by privation, disease, and depopulation to overgrown ruins. The Turks under a great conqueror, Mehmet II, besieged the city beginning in April, the day after Easter. They outnumbered the defenders at least 10 to 1; possibly the...
Faith and Philosophy
Six factors that brought about the decline and fall of Roman Civilization
	Posted by Maldarr On General/Chat 05/30/2007 11:40:22 PM EDT · 22 replies · 314+ views Poster | 5-30-07 | Maldarr I have identified 6 factors that describe the causes for the Decline and Fall of Rome. 1> Overtaxation. 2> The provinces oppressed by the central government. 3> Government that became top-heavy with bueracracy. 4> Military power overextended across the(their) world. 5> The citizenry diverted from real problems by degenerate mass entertainment. 6> The Borders poorly defended against increasing foreign migrations.
Greece
Astronomy Picture of the day
	Posted by sig226 On General/Chat 12/05/2006 6:55:20 AM EST · 10 replies · 430+ views NASA | 12/5/06 | Wikipedia The Antikythera Mechanism Credit & Copyright: Wikipedia Explanation: What is it? It was found at the bottom of the sea aboard an ancient Greek ship. Its seeming complexity has prompted decades of study, although many of its functions remained unknown. Recent X-rays of the device have now confirmed the nature of the Antikythera mechanism, and discovered several surprising functions. The Antikythera mechanism has been discovered to be a mechanical computer of an accuracy thought impossible in 80 BC, when the ship that carried it sunk. Such sophisticated technology was not thought to be developed by humanity for another 1,000...
Navigation
Centuries after Jason mythed the boat, another team has a go
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/28/2007 12:23:01 AM EDT · 6 replies · 220+ views The Age | April 24, 2006 | Deborah Kyvrikosaios Shipbuilders with handmade tools and methods used long ago are re-creating the Argo, the legendary vessel of Jason and the Argonauts. "It's extremely laborious work," said builder Stelios Kalafatidis in the small port of Volos. "We don't have large, proper, modern tools, only our hands and wooden mallets and chisels." ...The Naudomos Institute, a group of shipbuilders and historians heading the project, is using ancient Greek tools and techniques to build the new Argo. Once the ship is ready, they plan to retrace the mythical journey. The team had to ignore everything they knew about modern boatbuilding and use the...
Viking longship to sail across North Sea - The Sea Stallion of Glendalough
	Posted by NormsRevenge On News/Activism 05/27/2007 10:36:50 PM EDT · 25 replies · 839+ views AP on Yahoo | 5/27/07 | Jan M. Olson - ap ROSKILDE, Denmark - On the skipper's command, deckhands haul in tarred ropes to lower the flax sail. Oars splash into the water. The crew, grimacing with strain, pull with steady strokes sending the sleek Viking longship gliding through the fjord. A thousand years ago, the curved-prow warship might have spewed out hordes of bloodthirsty Norsemen ready to pillage and burn. This time, the spoils are adventure rather than plunder. The Sea Stallion of Glendalough is billed as the world's biggest and most ambitious Viking ship reconstruction, modeled after a warship excavated in 1962 from the Roskilde fjord after being buried...
German man hopes to sail raft made of reeds across Atlantic
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 05/28/2007 10:51:52 PM EDT · 18 replies · 195+ views Newsday | May 28, 2007 | author A man who is convinced, despite a lack of evidence, that adventurers regularly crossed the Atlantic Ocean 14,000 years ago is using reeds and eucalyptus to build a raft so he can imitate their voyage. Dominique Gorlitz, 40, a former school teacher from Chemnitz, Germany, says the two-month journey he and 11 others will make on 41-foot-long craft will prove people could have traveled across the Atlantic Ocean in prehistoric times... More than 25 volunteers are working on the craft at Liberty Landing Marina. Gorlitz based the craft's design on a northeastern African drawing from 6,000 years ago. He said...
Voyage To Prove Pharaohs Traded Cocaine
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/29/2007 9:47:52 PM EDT · 28 replies · 780+ views The Telegraph (UK) | 5-30-2007 | Tom Leonard Voyage to prove pharaohs traded cocaine By Tom Leonard in New York Last Updated: 2:21am BST 30/05/2007 An adventurer who believes that ancient man regularly crossed the Atlantic Ocean 14,000 years ago plans to recreate such a voyage in a 41ft raft made of reeds and eucalyptus tree branches. Basing his theory on the thinnest of historical evidence, Dominique Gorlitz believes that the discovery of traces of tobacco and cocaine in the tomb of the pharaoh Rameses II proves that there was trade between the Old and New Worlds. He also claims that 14,000-year-old cave paintings in Spain show that,...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Colgate Anthropologist Discovers Ancient Tomb In Honduras
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/30/2007 7:56:48 PM EDT · 12 replies · 337+ views Colgate University | 5-30-2007 Colgate anthropologist discovers ancient tomb in Honduras Wednesday, May 30, 2007 Colgate anthropology professor Allan Maca peers into a section of a tomb in Copan, Honduras, that dates back to the 7th century A.D. (Photo by Raul Mejia) Colgate anthropology professor Allan Maca and a team of researchers have found a previously unknown tomb in Cop·n, Honduras, dating back to the 7th century A.D. that contained the skeleton of an elite member of ancient Maya society in the city. The unusual characteristics of the tombís construction, the human remains, and the artifacts found near the body, according to Maca, paint...
Prehistory and Origins
Comet May Have Doomed Mammoths
	Posted by Renfield On News/Activism 05/26/2007 9:12:53 AM EDT · 32 replies · 599+ views Red Orbit | 5-26-07 | Betsy Mason mammoth some 12,900 years ago. A team of two dozen scientists say the culprit was likely a comet that exploded in the atmosphere above North America. The explosions sent a heat and shock wave across the continent, pelted the ground with a layer of telltale debris, ignited massive wildfires and triggered a major cooling of the climate, said nuclear analytic chemist Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, one of the scientists who presented the controversial new theory Thursday at a conference of the American Geophysical Union in Acapulco. At least 15 species, mostly large mammals including mammoths, mastadons, giant ground...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Going Medieval
	Posted by unionblue83 On News/Activism 12/13/2005 10:41:05 AM EST · 43 replies · 1,505+ views National Review Online | 13 December 2005 | James S. Robbins One hears a lot about the Crusades when studying the terrorist threat, and almost exclusively in the form of an accusation. These centuries-old conflicts are raised whenever someone, whether from the region or not, seeks to activate the Western guilt complex. We have to understand this conflict from their point of view, one is told. Memories are long in the region. The time of Saladin is as though yesterday. Had the Europeans (and by extension Americans) not started it all with the Crusades, we might not have the problems we face today. O.K., but what about their crusade? We are...
Early America
VANITY: How Many Freepers Have Patriot Ancestors?
	Posted by nanetteclaret On General/Chat 05/30/2007 1:57:22 PM EDT · 49 replies · 281+ views none | 30 May 07 | me If the proposed Amenesty Bill passes, our country will change in ways we can't forsee. In thinking about this, I thought it might be inspiring to find out how many Freepers have Patriot ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War. Naming those who gave so much for the establishment of this Republic will make their sacrifices (their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor) more real to us. It will remind us of their determination in the face of all odds and give us encouragement to "keep the Republic."
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
7 (great BIG) rarely seen historical naval paintings in British Maritime Museum
	Posted by yankeedame On General/Chat 05/21/2007 2:42:23 PM EDT · 16 replies · 401+ views French Fireships Attacking the English Fleet off Quebec, 28 June 1759 Cavalry embarking at Blackwall,24 April 1793 Shipping in a Gale, circe 1656 Building the 'Great Leviathan' (the 'Great Eastern')Date 1858 The Destruction of 'L'Orient' at the Battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798 An English Ship in a Gale Trying to Claw off a Lee Shore, 1672 Moonlight View over Table Bay Showing Halley's Comet, c. 1842
end of digest #150 20070602

[SunkenCiv]

This digest has a load of different headers, some not seen in a while, but again, it's a little light on topics (23).

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #150 20070602

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

Topics 1843575 to 1840136. 620 members.

[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #151 Saturday, June 9, 2007
Catastrophism and Astronomy
'Kitchen science' reveals dinosaurs died in agony
	Posted by my_pointy_head_is_sharp On News/Activism 06/07/2007 12:45:09 AM EDT · 31 replies · 1,688+ views sfgate.com | June 6, 2007 | David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor A dinosaur mystery that puzzled paleontologists for nearly a century has been solved by a pound of beef tendons from a butcher, a collection of dead hawks and a brace of frozen quail, two investigative scientists in Berkeley and Idaho say. The puzzle: Why were fossils of those ancient creatures so often discovered buried with their heads, necks and feet arched bizarrely backward into a distorted posture unlike anything seen alive? The answer: Kevin Padian, a noted dinosaur expert and curator of the Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley, and Cynthia Marshall Faux, a veterinarian and paleontologist at the Museum...
Ice Age Ends Smashingly: Did A Comet Blow Up Over Eastern Canada? (More) (Carolina Bays)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/02/2007 6:14:23 PM EDT · 77 replies · 1,977+ views Science News | 6-1-2007 | Sid Perkins Ice Age Ends Smashingly: Did a comet blow up over eastern Canada? Sid Perkins Evidence unearthed at more than two dozen sites across North America suggests that an extraterrestrial object exploded in Earth's atmosphere above Canada about 12,900 years ago, just as the climate was warming at the end of the last ice age. The explosion sparked immense wildfires, devastated North America's ecosystems and prehistoric cultures, and triggered a millennium-long cold spell, scientists say. IT'S IN THERE. A layer of carbon-rich sediment (arrow) found here at Murray Springs, Ariz., and elsewhere across North America, provides evidence that an extraterrestrial object...
Epigraphy and Language
Fathers Of The Zodiac Tracked Down
	Posted by blam On General/Chat 06/04/2007 1:50:49 PM EDT · 41 replies · 521+ views Nature | 6-1-2007 | Geoff Brumfiel Fathers of the zodiac tracked downAstronomer shows when and where his ancient counterparts worked. Geoff Brumfiel The MUL.APIN tablets record the dates that constellations appeared in the Assyrian sky. R. D. Flavin Using modern techniques -- and some rocks -- a US astronomer has traced the origin of a set of ancient clay tablets to a precise date and place. The tablets show constellations thought to be precursors of the present-day zodiac. The tablets, known collectively as MUL.APIN, contain nearly 200 astronomical observations, including measurements related to several constellations. They are written in cuneiform, a Middle-Eastern script that is one...
Africa
82,000 Year Old Jewellery Found
	Posted by blam On General/Chat 06/04/2007 1:43:44 PM EDT · 17 replies · 448+ views Oxford Mail | 6-4-2007 | Fran Bardsley 82,000 year old jewellery found By Fran Bardsley Archaeologists from Oxford have discovered what are thought to be the oldest examples of human decorations in the world. The international team of archaeologists, led by Oxford University's Institute of Archaeology, have found shell beads believed to be 82,000 years old from a limestone cave in Morocco. Institute director Prof Nick Barton said: "Bead-making in Africa was a widespread practice at the time, which was spread between cultures with different stone technology by exchange or by long-distance social networks. "A major question in evolutionary studies today is 'how early did humans begin...
Ancient Europe
Prehistoric iceman "Otzi" died from arrow wound
	Posted by Pharmboy On General/Chat 06/06/2007 12:43:47 PM EDT · 58 replies · 699+ views Reuters | 6-6-07 | Anon Science Stringer The world's oldest mummy, the Italian Iceman known as Otzi, is shown in this undated file photo. Otzi died from a shoulder wound inflicted by an arrow, according to research into his perfectly preserved 5,000-year old body. (Werner Nosko/Reuters) Italy's prehistoric iceman "Otzi" died from a shoulder wound inflicted by an arrow, according to research into his perfectly preserved 5,000-year old body. Otzi, the oldest mummy unearthed, was found in the Italian Alps in 1991 wearing clothing made from leather and grasses and carrying a copper axe, a bow and arrows. Though Otzi's body underwent several scientific tests to...
Prehistory and Origins
Archaeologists discover Iron Age Mickey Mouse
	Posted by rainbow sprinkles On General/Chat 06/08/2007 5:53:32 PM EDT · 19 replies · 241+ views The Local [Sweden] | 8th June 2007 | Paul O'Mahony Swedish archaeologists have uncovered signs of a Viking precursor to Mickey Mouse. Among the objects found during excavations at Uppakra in southern Sweden is an iron age figure bearing a strong resemblance to the classic cartoon character. But archaeologist Jerry Rosenberg from Lund University is confident that the bronze brooch - used as a clasp to fasten women's clothing - was in fact intended to represent a Lion King rather than a mere mouse. "The find is from around 900 AD. It was probably a lion's head that originally came from France. It was however more than likely designed by...
The Vikings
Viking Graves To Be Re-Opened
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/08/2007 6:27:19 PM EDT · 9 replies · 686+ views Aftenposten | 6-8-2007 Viking graves to be re-openedA worker welded together the aluminium casket in which the Vikings' remains were re-buried in 1948. The Viking graves that contained the famous ships Oseberg and Gokstad will be re-opened in September, in an effort to gain new knowledge from the remains of the two women and one man buried in them.Grave robbers plundered the Viking mounds centuries ago. This photo was taken in 1904. These leather shoes were found in the Oseberg ship and probably belonged to the older of the two women buried with the ship. The burial mound containing the famed Oseberg ship...
Navigation
Caribbean Frogs Started With A Single, Ancient Voyage On A Raft From South America
	Posted by blam On General/Chat 06/07/2007 6:14:28 PM EDT · 13 replies · 189+ views Science Daily | 6-7-2007 | Penn State Source: Penn State Date: June 7, 2007 Caribbean Frogs Started With A Single, Ancient Voyage On A Raft From South America Science Daily -- Nearly all of the 162 land-breeding frog species on Caribbean islands, including the coqui frogs of Puerto Rico, originated from a single frog species that rafted on a sea voyage from South America about 30-to-50-million years ago, according to DNA-sequence analyses led by a research group at Penn State, which will be published in the 12 June 2007 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and posted in the journal's online early edition...
Australia and the Pacific
Polynesians Beat Columbus To The Americas
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/04/2007 8:58:20 PM EDT · 83 replies · 1,592+ views New Scientist | 6-4-2007 | Emma Young Polynesians beat Columbus to the Americas 22:00 04 June 2007 NewScientist.com news service Emma Young Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Prehistoric Polynesians beat Europeans to the Americas, according to a new analysis of chicken bones. The work provides the first firm evidence that ancient Polynesians voyaged as far as South America, and also strongly suggests that they were responsible for the introduction of chickens to the continent - a question that has been hotly debated for more than 30 years. Chilean archaeologists working at the site of El Arenal-1, on the Arauco Peninsula in south-central Chile, discovered what...
First Chickens in Americas Were Brought From Polynesia (came before Columbus)
	Posted by TigerLikesRooster On News/Activism 06/04/2007 9:55:26 PM EDT · 32 replies · 507+ views NYT | 06/05/07 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD First Chickens in Americas Were Brought From Polynesia By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Why did the chicken cross the Pacific Ocean? To get to the other side, in South America. How? By Polynesian canoes, which apparently arrived at least 100 years before Europeans settled the continent. That is the conclusion of an international research team, which reported yesterday that it had found ìthe first unequivocal evidence for a pre-European introduction of chickens to South America,î or presumably anywhere in the New World. The researchers said that bones buried on the South American coast were from chickens that lived between 1304 and...
Chicken bones show Polynesians went to Chile (Told ya so!)
	Posted by DieHard the Hunter On News/Activism 06/05/2007 8:31:36 AM EDT · 45 replies · 597+ views Reuters | 5 June 2007 | Maggie Fox Chicken bones show Polynesians went to Chile By MAGGIE FOX - Reuters | Tuesday, 5 June 2007 A chicken bone found in Chile provides solid evidence to settle a debate over whether Polynesians travelling on rafts visited South America thousands of years ago -- or vice versa, New Zealand researchers have said. The DNA in the bone carries a rare mutation that links it to chickens in Tonga and Samoa, and radiocarbon dating shows it is around 600 years old -- meaning it predates the arrival of Spanish conquerors in South America. "These chickens are related to hens from Polynesia,"...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Drought uncovers artifacts in Fla. lake
	Posted by rainbow sprinkles On General/Chat 06/05/2007 5:46:28 AM EDT · 12 replies · 357+ views YahooNews | Mon Jun 4 | MATT SEDENSKY A drought that has bared parts of the bed of Florida's largest lake has exposed human bone fragments, pottery and even boats -- and archaeologists are trying to evaluate the artifacts before water levels rise again. Archaeologists said there have been no large-scale digs in Lake Okeechobee; most of the finds have been easily spotted along the surface, some by passers-by who called in what they found. Palm Beach County Archaeologist Chris Davenport said scores of bone fragments ranging from only a few inches to 8 inches long have been spotted in Lake Okeechobee, the second-largest freshwater lake in the...
Florida Drought Exposes Old Debris in Lake Okeechobee
	Posted by Red Badger On News/Activism 06/05/2007 10:04:05 PM EDT · 41 replies · 1,482+ views www.foxnews.com | Tuesday, June 05, 2007 | Staff MIAMI -- A statewide drought that has bared portions of Lake Okeechobee's bottom has also been a boon to archaeologists, exposing human remains, boats and other finds that could date back hundreds of years. Thousands of pieces of pottery, five boats and scores of human bone fragments have been discovered as the lake -- the second-largest freshwater one in the continental U.S., behind Lake Michigan -- reached a historically low level. It is the first time in years some areas have been exposed, prompting archaeologists to scour the lakebed. Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Archaeology Center. "Right now, it's...
Incas
Decapitated Man Found in Peru Tomb With Ceramic "Replacement" Head
	Posted by BGHater On General/Chat 06/07/2007 11:06:26 AM EDT · 23 replies · 441+ views National Geographic | 06 June 2007 | Kelly Hearn A headless skeleton found in a Peruvian tomb is adding new wrinkles to the debate over human sacrifice in the ancient Andes. The decapitated body was found in the Nasca region, named for the ancient civilization that thrived in southern Peru from A.D. 1 to 750. Known for producing "Nasca lines" in the earth that depict giant figures, the culture is also noted among archaeologists for practicing human sacrifice and displaying modified human heads called trophy heads. But experts have been divided over whether the heads were taken from enemies in war or from locals offered up for ritual sacrifice....
Mayans
Aventura - Ancient Maya City Discovered On Modern Papaya Farm In Corozal
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/02/2007 5:05:27 PM EDT · 7 replies · 407+ views The Reporter | 6-1-2007 | Joseph Stamp Romero Aventura - ancient Maya city discovered on modern papaya farm in Corozal Friday, 01 June 2007 By Joseph Stamp Romero - Staff Reporter Excavated structure where platform was found. Platform can be seen to the left of the gentleman. Archeologists say they have stumbled on three Mayan foundations, which are part of a large Mayan city called Aventura, dating back to the early Classic Period of the Mayan Civilization. Among the artifacts retrieved are the bones a man and a woman, believed to be 1,800 years old. The Belize National Institute of Archaeology have said that they found what appears...
Agriculture
Smithsonian Scientists Connect Climate Change, Origins Of Agriculture In Mexico
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/02/2007 4:52:29 PM EDT · 16 replies · 278+ views Eureka Alert | 6-1-2007 | Dolores Piperno Contact: Dolores Piperno pipernod@si.edu 202-633-1912 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Smithsonian scientists connect climate change, origins of agriculture in Mexico Cores from Laguna Tuxpan in Mexico's Iguala Valley, provided evidence for maize and squash cultivation along its edges by ~8000 B.P. and for the major dry event between 1800 and... New charcoal and plant microfossil evidence from Mexicoís Central Balsas valley links a pivotal cultural shift, crop domestication in the New World, to local and regional environmental history. Agriculture in the Balsas valley originated and diversified during the warm, wet, postglacial period following the much cooler and drier climate in the...
Climate
Coral Reveals Increased Hurricanes May Be The Norm
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/06/2007 6:37:16 PM EDT · 10 replies · 228+ views New Scientist | 6-6-2007 | Catherine Brahic Coral reveals increased hurricanes may be the norm 18:00 06 June 2007 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic The recent increase in the number of major Atlantic hurricanes may just be a return to the norm after a period of unusually low storm frequency, say researchers. Johan Nyberg of the Geological Survey of Sweden and colleagues used marine sediment cores of coral samples from the northeast Caribbean to build a proxy record of wind shear and sea-surface temperatures since 1730, and from this they estimated hurricane activity since that time. High wind shear -- the difference in speed and direction between...
Roman Empire
Bridging London's lost centuries (after the fall of Roman Britannia--pretty interesting).
	Posted by Jedi Master Pikachu On News/Activism 06/04/2007 5:04:30 AM EDT · 14 replies · 836+ views BBC | Monday, June 3, 2007 | Trevor Timpson By Trevor Timpson BBC News The Last Roman's grave (ringed) was found close to the Square. Two very different finds, dug up close to each other by Trafalgar Square, shine new light on the greatest puzzle of London archaeology - the "silent" centuries after Roman rule.That the skeleton of "London's Last Roman" - or anything ancient and unknown - can be discovered in 2006 in Trafalgar Square is remarkable. But when it comes to yielding secrets, the square's church, St Martin-in-the-Fields, has a long record. When the present church was being built in the 18th Century a body was...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Sixth Salt Man Discovered In Chehr-Abad Mine
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/05/2007 5:46:29 PM EDT · 41 replies · 1,258+ views Cais News | 6-4-2007 Sixth Salt Man Discovered in Chehr-Abad Mine 04 June 2007 Chehr Abad Saltman No. 2. LONDON, (CAIS) -- The sixth salt man was discovered in Chehr Abad Mine in Zanjan City. It is likely that a large number of salt men were buried in Chehr Abad Salt Mine, said Farhang Farokhi head of Zanjan Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ZCHTO). Five previous discovered salt men are being kept in Washhouse Museum , he added. Based on previous reports, Chehr Abad Mine had been used from the Achaemenid dynastic era (550-330 BCE) up to the early of the Sassanid dynasty (224-651 CE). The...
Egypt
Ancient Egyptian City Spotted From Space
	Posted by BGHater On News/Activism 06/05/2007 9:39:35 PM EDT · 28 replies · 1,110+ views Live Science | 05 June 2007 | Heather Whipps Satellites hovering above Egypt have zoomed in on a 1,600-year-old metropolis, archaeologists say. Images captured from space pinpoint telltale signs of previous habitation in the swatch of land 200 miles south of Cairo, which digging recently confirmed as an ancient settlement dating from about 400 A.D. The find is part of a larger project aiming to map as much of ancient Egypt's archaeological sites, or "tells," as possible before they are destroyed or covered by modern development. "It is the biggest site discovered so far," said project leader Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "Based on the...
Nubia
Where Ancient Gods And Royalty Walked
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/02/2007 7:55:02 PM EDT · 6 replies · 271+ views The Star | 5-31-2007 | John Goddard Where ancient gods and royalty walked JOHN GODDARD/TORONTO STAR Nomadic tribesmen pass the royal burial grounds of ancient Meroe, an area dear to the Royal Ontario Museum's Krzysztof Grzymski. Key ROM archeologist uncovers 'the daily life' of mighty kingdoms that ruled Nubian world May 31, 2007 04:30 AM John Goddard staff reporter MEROE, SUDAN -- More royal pyramids stand in the deserts of northern Sudan than in all of Egypt. For 3,000 years, a succession of African civilizations rose and fell along the Nile River in ancient Nubia, at one point expanding north to the Mediterranean Sea. Relatively little is known about these...
India
New find to guage exact age of ancient Dwarka
	Posted by Renfield On News/Activism 06/05/2007 4:40:42 PM EDT · 18 replies · 543+ views Daily News & Analysis (India) | 6-3-07 NEW DELHI: The exact age of Dwarka, the ancient submerged city off Gujarat coast, can now finally be determined. In a major breakthrough, archaeologists have excavated from the ruins of Dwarka a wooden block that promises to solve the mystery about the exact age of the submerged city believed by many to belong to Lord Krishna. "Now that we have found wood, we are confident of dating the excavations. We will know exactly how old is this submerged city," Alok Tripathi, Superindenting Archaeologist of the Underwater Archaeology Wing of the Archaeological Survey of India. Archaeologists will now use the carbon...
Cryptobiology and Biology
Origins of nervous system found in genes of sea sponge
	Posted by Moonman62 On News/Activism 06/05/2007 10:47:50 PM EDT · 77 replies · 857+ views Eurekalert | 06/05/07 | University of California - Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, Calif.) -- Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered significant clues to the evolutionary origins of the nervous system by studying the genome of a sea sponge, a member of a group considered to be among the most ancient of all animals. The findings are published in the June 6 issue of the journal PLoS ONE, a Public Library of Science journal. The article can be found at http://www.plosone.org "It turns out that sponges, which lack nervous systems, have most of the genetic components of synapses," said Todd Oakley, co-author and assistant professor in the...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Kenya: Maasais, Canaanites And The Inca
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/05/2007 5:10:06 PM EDT · 9 replies · 455+ views All Africa | 6-5-2007 Kenya: Maasais, Canaanites And the Inca Connection 5 June 2007 Posted to the web 5 June 2007 Philip Ochieng Nairobi WHY IS ENKAI, THE Creator god of the Maasai, almost the same as Enki, who created the Sumerians, as well as Enoch, the Canaanite hero who stormed heaven, and Inca, the divine chief of the ancient Andeans? Is it accidental that if you reverse the syllables of those names - a word-game which ancient societies played all the time - you get Ka'in of the Sumerians, Kainan of the Canaanites, Cain of Genesis and Chanes of Mesoamerica? Thus, although Genesis...
Longer Perspectives
Spain Traps US Ships In Row Over Treasure
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/06/2007 9:12:05 PM EDT · 39 replies · 877+ views The Telegraph (UK) | 6-7-2007 | Mike Elkin Spain traps US ships in row over treasureBy Mike Elkin in Madrid Last Updated: 1:38am BST 07/06/2007 A Spanish court has issued a warrant for the capture and search of two American exploration ships suspected of removing sunken treasure from Spanish waters. The ships, belonging to Odyssey Marine Exploration, which is based in Florida, are docked in Gibraltar and cannot leave because Spain controls the waters surrounding the British enclave. A Spanish Culture Ministry spokeswoman said investigations by the Civil Guard, the Defence Ministry and Spanish prosecutors produced sufficient evidence to suspect that the vessels were operating illegally in the...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
One Filing Cabinet Held 500 Years Of History
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/03/2007 11:18:10 PM EDT · 22 replies · 1,070+ views The Telegraph (UK) | 6-4-2007 | Nigel reynolds One filing cabinet held 500 years of history By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent Last Updated: 2:09am BST 04/06/2007 One of the greatest collections of historical letters ever amassed has been found in a laundry room. A Winston Churchill letter is valued at £10,000 Susannah Morris was called in to examine the hoard after the death of the secretive collector and was astonished to be led not into a library or a safe room but to the basement. In the laundry room, wedged between a washing machine and a tumble dryer, was a plain metal filing cabinet. Miss Morris, who works...
Extraordinary letters in the laundry room
	Posted by Alex Murphy On Religion 06/05/2007 12:25:41 AM EDT · 8 replies · 280+ views gulfnews.com | 05/06/2007 | The Telegraph Group One of the greatest collections of historical letters ever amassed has been found in a laundry room. Susannah Morris was called in to examine the hoard after the death of the secretive collector and was astonished to be led not into a library or a safe room but to the basement. In the laundry room, wedged between a washing machine and a tumble dryer, was a plain metal filing cabinet. Morris, who works for the auction house Christie's, opened it and could not believe her eyes. Inside was the most remarkable collection of letters she had seen outside a national...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Original Lincoln document found
	Posted by bnelson44 On General/Chat 06/07/2007 6:26:01 PM EDT · 50 replies · 512+ views AP | 6/7/07 WASHINGTON -- The National Archives on Thursday unveiled a handwritten note by Abraham Lincoln exhorting his generals to pursue Robert E. Lee's army after the battle of Gettysburg, underscoring one of the great missed opportunities for an early end to the Civil War. An archives Civil War specialist discovered the July 7, 1863, note three weeks ago in a batch of military papers stored among the billions of pages of historical documents at the mammoth building on Pennsylvania Avenue. The text of Lincoln's note has been publicly known because the general to whom Lincoln addressed it telegraphed the contents verbatim to the...
end of digest #151 20070609

[SunkenCiv]

This week there are a few more topics (28 vs 23 last week) and more of them to my liking. Thanks Blam and all others who posted topics or pinged us.

Issue 156 will be the last issue of the third year of this Digest. I always threaten to do something special, but perhaps I really will do it this year. Ideas are of course welcome.

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #151 20070609

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

28 topics from 1847249 to 1843791. 622 members.

[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #152 Saturday, June 16, 2007
Cubed Roots
Otzi's violent world
	Posted by Clive On News/Activism 06/11/2007 7:57:26 AM EDT · 30 replies · 784+ views National Post | 2007-06-11 | (editorial page) His scientific handle is Similaun Man, but his family likes to call him Otzi, the Iceman. Don't feel excluded: you're a part of Otzi's extended clan. His corpse was discovered by tourists in September, 1991, lying facedown in a glacier at an elevation beyond 10,000 feet in Europe's Otztal Alps. He was in such an excellent state of preservation that he was at first thought to be a victim of the First World War, whose soldiers sometimes still turn up in the ice of the Tyrolean highlands. But it soon transpired that the five-foot-tall Otzi had died on a spring...
Climate
Ice Ages Dried Up African Monsoons
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/10/2007 5:59:59 PM EDT · 26 replies · 655+ views New Scientist | 6-10-2007 Ice ages dried up African monsoons 10:00 10 June 2007 NewScientist.com news service When ice ages held Europe in their grip, Africa also felt the pinch - though in a different way. It has long been suspected that there is a connection between the west African monsoon and climate at higher latitudes - especially over geological timescales, says David Lea at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "But until now, there hasn't been enough supporting evidence." Now Lea, with team leader Syee Weldeab and colleagues, has reconstructed the most detailed history of the monsoon yet, spanning 155,000 years and two...
Africa
The Primal Roots of Red Hair Revealed
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/09/2007 11:59:18 PM EDT · 37 replies · 677+ views LiveScience | May 24, 2007 | LiveScience Staff Primatologists know humans, apes and monkeys can see red, but have quarreled over what initially locked the adaptation into place. Did it first help primates find meals, or was the ability to see a red-headed, red-skinned mate from a mile away the first benefit of full-color vision? A new study shows that apes first evolved color vision to help them forage food, after which nature made red the sexiest color around and spiked apes' evolutionary tree with red hair and skin... Andre Fernandez, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio University and co-author of the paper, explained that neuroscientists have already found...
Prehistory and Origins
Neanderthals Bid For Human Status
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/13/2007 6:23:54 PM EDT · 28 replies · 527+ views New Scientist | 6-13-2007 | Rowan Hooper Neanderthals bid for human status 13 June 2007 NewScientist.com news service Rowan Hooper NEANDERTHALS as innovators? That the concept seems amusing goes to show how our sister species has become the butt of our jokes. Yet in the Middle Palaeolithic, some 300,000 years ago, innovation is what the Neanderthals were up to. This period is usually regarded as undramatic in cultural and evolutionary terms, with little in the way of technological or cognitive development. Palaeoanthropologists get more excited about the changes in tools found later, as the Middle Palaeolithic gave way to the Upper, and as modern humans replaced Neanderthals,...
Neanderthals 'Were Ahead Of Their Time'
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/14/2007 8:56:19 PM EDT · 77 replies · 1,200+ views The Telegraph (UK) | 6-15-2007 Neanderthals 'were ahead of their time' Last Updated: 2:42am BST 14/06/2007 Big, brutish and stupid - it's a commonly held view that our prehistoric predecessors were as wild and unsophisticated as the animals they hunted. Neanderthal man was 'as smart as we are' But Neanderthal man was not as slow-witted as he looked and was in reality as smart as we are, an archaeologist claims. They were actually innovators who used different forms of tools to adapt to the ecological challenges posed by harsh habitats as they spread through Europe. Although our ancestors have become the butt of jokes about...
Ancient Europe
Early Europeans likely sacrificed their own
	Posted by Renfield On News/Activism 06/13/2007 7:21:13 AM EDT · 37 replies · 665+ views MSNBC | 6-11-07 | Heather Whipps Europe's prehistoric hunter-gatherers may have practiced human sacrifice, a new study claims. Investigating a collection of graves from the Upper Paleolithic (about 26,000 to 8,000 BC), archaeologists found several that contained pairs or even groups of people with rich burial offerings and decoration. Many of the remains were young or had deformities, such as dwarfism. The diversity of the individuals buried together and the special treatment they received could be a sign of ritual killing, said Vincenzo Formicola of the University of Pisa, Italy....
British Isles
Bronze Age finds at A38 bypass
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/09/2007 11:51:06 PM EDT · 4 replies · 30+ views BBC | Friday, June 1, 2007 | unattributed Bronze Age pottery and tools have been unearthed by archaeologists working on the site of... the A38 Dobwalls bypass. Workers discovered flint tools and waste flakes. Fragments of pottery dating back 4,000 years were also found under a mound of stones... The results of the analysis will be published in Cornwall's archaeological records after the end of the bypass work in September 2008.
Thrace
Unique Thracian Symbol Of Royalty Discovered In Bulgaria
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/12/2007 9:22:35 PM EDT · 19 replies · 582+ views Novinite | 6-11-2007 Unique Thracian Symbol of Royalty Discovered in Bulgaria 11 June 2007, Monday Archaeologists have discovered the most ancient ruler's symbol on Bulgarian territory, what was once the kingdom of the Thracian tribes. The Bulgarian archaeologists Daniela Agre and Deyan Dichev, who are leading the Strandzha expedition, made the announcement for the exceptional finding on the Bulgarian National Radio on Monday. The artifact was unearthed near the village of Golyam Dervent. Dichev and Agre were researching a dolmen (dolmens were the first Thracian tombs) when they noticed a frieze of intertwined zoomorphic and geometrical elements carved on the entrance of the...
Rome and Italy
More Clues in the Legend (or Is It Fact?) of Romulus[Rome]
	Posted by BGHater On News/Activism 06/13/2007 9:21:26 AM EDT · 23 replies · 847+ views The New York Times | 12 June 2007 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD The story of Romulus and Remus is almost as old as Rome. The orphan twins were suckled by a she-wolf in a cave on the banks of the Tiber. Romulus grew up to found Rome in 753 B. C. Historians have long since dismissed the story as a charming legend. The 19th-century historian Theodor Mommsen said: "The founding of the city in the strict sense, such as the legend assumes, is of course to be reckoned out of the question: Rome was not built in a day." Yet the legend is as imperishable as Mommsen's skeptical verdict, and it has...
Ancient Rome is rebuilt digitally
	Posted by BenLurkin On General/Chat 06/11/2007 5:21:35 PM EDT · 32 replies · 528+ views Associated Press | 6 minutes ago | ARIEL DAVID, ROME - Computer experts on Monday unveiled a digital reproduction of ancient Rome as it appeared at the peak of its power in A.D. 320 -- what they called the largest and most complete simulation of a historic city ever created. Visitors to virtual Rome will be able to do even more than ancient Romans did: They can crawl through the bowels of the Colosseum, filled with lion cages and primitive elevators, and fly up for a detailed look at bas-reliefs and inscriptions atop triumphal arches. "This is the first step in the creation of a virtual time machine, which...
Experts build simulation of ancient Rome
	Posted by Professional Engineer On News/Activism 06/13/2007 6:58:04 PM EDT · 16 replies · 435+ views Connecticut Post | 06/12/2007 | ARIEL DAVID ROME -- Computer experts on Monday unveiled a digital reproduction of ancient Rome as it appeared at the peak of its power in A.D. 320 -- what they called the largest and most complete simulation of a historic city ever created. Visitors to virtual Rome will be able to do even more than ancient Romans did: They can crawl through the bowels of the Colosseum, filled with lion cages and primitive elevators, and fly up for a detailed look at bas-reliefs and inscriptions atop triumphal arches. "This is the first step in the creation of a virtual time machine, which...
Venice, Italy sick of the slovenly tourists [$675 fine for slobs]
	Posted by Sleeping Beauty On General/Chat 06/05/2007 3:31:07 PM EDT · 21 replies · 516+ views Chicago Tribune | May 25, 2007 | Tracy Wilkinson Officials in Venice -- as well as the handful of actual Italians still living in the lagoon city -- have declared themselves fed up with a certain category of tourist: the pot-bellied, bare-chested, food-chomping, trash-spewing hordes that peak from now until autumn. To combat what they see as a scourge, Venice authorities are distributing leaflets and posting posters with a new set of rules. In St. Mark's Square, it is now forbidden to sit or recline under the porticos and on the steps along the Procuratie Nuove and the Ala Napoleonica, the buildings that ring the city's iconic St. Mark's...
Epigraphy and Language
Tablets Tell All: Ancient Athletes Flogged For Sins
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/11/2007 6:58:10 PM EDT · 11 replies · 419+ views The Age | 6-7-2007 | Allan Hall Tablets tell all: ancient athletes flogged for sins Allan Hall, Berlin June 7, 2007 AN ANCIENT training manual for Roman athletes -- carved in marble almost 2000 years ago -- prescribes far worse punishments than a sending off or a week's docked pay if they performed badly in the Colosseum. The manual recommends a flogging to get them to perform better. And the same went if they drank too much mead or behaved disgracefully with the local maidens. The marble tablet was found in 2003 in the town of Alexandria Troas in Turkey, and deciphered only recently by academics at...
India
'Ancient India Was In The Middle Of Global Trade'
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/15/2007 6:44:26 PM EDT · 11 replies · 252+ views The Times Of India | 6-15-2007 Q&A: 'Ancient India was in the middle of global trade' 15 Jun, 2007 l 0142 hrs IST S P Gupta, former director of Allahabad Museum and current chairman of Indian Archaeological Society, is credited with excavating several Indus Valley sites. He spoke to Rohit Viswanath on recent developments in marine archaeology: What are the latest advancements in marine archaeology? We do not use the term marine archaeology anymore. It is called underwater archaeology. That is because the term merely denotes oceanic and deep-sea archaeology. However, underwater archaeology has a wider scope. Fresh-water sources have been historically conducive to human habitation....
Egypt
Lascaux On The Nile
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/15/2007 5:43:08 PM EDT · 4 replies · 139+ views Ahram | 6-15-2007 | Nevine El-Aref Lascaux on the NileOne of the newly discovered rocks featuring three bovids with horns Palaeolithic rock art depicting animal illustrations similar to those found in the Lascaux caves in France have been discovered in the Upper Egyptian town of Kom Ombo, reports Nevine El-Aref The discovery of huge rocks decorated with Palaeolithic illustrations at the village of Qurta on the northern edge of Kom Ombo has caused excitement among the scientific community. The art was found by a team of Belgian archaeologists and restorers and features groups of cattle similar to those drawn on the walls of the French Lascaux...
Agriculture
The significance of kitchens for Ancient Egyptians
	Posted by Renfield On News/Activism 06/15/2007 8:10:15 AM EDT · 31 replies · 653+ views The Daily Star (Egypt) | 6/2/07 | Ahmed Maged CAIRO: There are diverse aspects to the ancient Egyptian civilization that many of us are fascinated by: the building of pyramids, the tombs that store mummies or hoards of gold, as well as the captivating paintings on the walls. But few of us direct our attention to the ancient Egyptians' cuisine and their kitchens. The issue would have remained sidelined, even despite of the fact that the walls in temples and tombs are replete with images showing the Pharaohs' meals as well as the poultry and animals that made up part of their dishes. But when a tour guide's interest...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Human genome further unravelled ('Junk' DNA not so junky after all).
	Posted by Jedi Master Pikachu On News/Activism 06/15/2007 1:49:42 PM EDT · 31 replies · 484+ views BBC | Thursday, June 14, 2007 The researchers hope to scale the work up to the whole of the genome A close-up view of the human genome has revealed its innermost workings to be far more complex than first thought.The study, which was carried out on just 1% of our DNA code, challenges the view that genes are the main players in driving our biochemistry. Instead, it suggests genes, so called junk DNA and other elements, together weave an intricate control network. The work, published in the journals Nature and Genome Research, is to be scaled up to the rest of the genome. Views transformed...
Biology and Cryptobiology
The Blue People Of Troublesome Creek (Kentucky)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/21/2004 11:08:30 PM EDT · 56 replies · 11,553+ views Science | November, 1982 | Cathy Trost THE BLUE PEOPLE OF TROUBLESOME CREEKThe story of an Appalachian malady, an inquisitive doctor, and a paradoxical cure. by Cathy Trost ©Science 82, November, 1982 Six generations after a French orphan named Martin Fugate settled on the banks of eastern Kentucky's Troublesome Creek with his redheaded American bride, his great-great-great great grandson was born in a modern hospital not far from where the creek still runs. The boy inherited his father's lankiness and his mother's slightly nasal way of speaking. What he got from Martin Fugate was dark blue skin. "It was almost purple," his father recalls. Doctors were so...
Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s
	Posted by Daffynition On General/Chat 06/15/2007 1:58:19 PM EDT · 32 replies · 383+ views Pravda | 15.06.2007 | Staff Reporter Six generations after a French orphan named Martin Fugate settled on the banks of eastern Kentucky's Troublesome Creek with his redheaded American bride, his great-great-great great grandson was born in a modern hospital not far from where the creek still runs. The boy inherited his father's lankiness and his mother's slightly nasal way of speaking. What he got from Martin Fugate was dark blue skin. "It was almost purple," his father recalls. Doctors were so astonished by the color of Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy's skin that they raced him by ambulance from the maternity ward in the hospital near Hazard to...
China
Chinese Find Shipwreck Laden With Ming porcelain
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/13/2007 6:30:40 PM EDT · 18 replies · 570+ views Yahoo News | 6-13-2007 Chinese find shipwreck laden with Ming porcelain Wed Jun 13, 4:21 AM ET BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese archaeologists have found an ancient sunken ship in the South China Sea laden with Ming Dynasty porcelain, the Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. Divers used satellite navigation equipment to find the vessel, dubbed South China Sea II, which is about 17 to 18 meters (yards) long and lying at a depth of 20 meters. "A preliminary study of the sunken ship shows it may have sunk 400 years ago after striking a reef," archaeologist Dr Wei Jun was quoted as saying. The...
Paleontology
China finds new species of big, bird-like dinosaur
	Posted by EndWelfareToday On News/Activism 06/13/2007 11:09:23 AM EDT · 70 replies · 1,047+ views Yahoo News/Reuters | Wed Jun 13 | Tan Ee Lyn and Ben Blanchard HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - China has uncovered the skeletal remains of a gigantic, surprisingly bird-like dinosaur, which has been classed as a new species.Eight meters (26 ft) long and standing at twice the height of a man at the shoulder, the fossil of the feathered but flightless Gigantoraptor erlianensis was found in the Erlian basin in Inner Mongolia, researchers wrote in the latest issue of Nature.The researchers said the dinosaur, discovered in April 2005, weighed about 1.4 tonnes and lived some 85 million years ago.According to lines of arrested growth detected on its bones, it died as a young adult...
'Gigantoraptor' uncovered in the desert
	Posted by bruinbirdman On News/Activism 06/13/2007 8:32:31 PM EDT · 23 replies · 1,259+ views The Telegraph | 6/13/2007 | Roger Highfield, Science Editor 'Roadrunner' dinosaur discovered A 3000 lb "big bird" dinosaur called Gigantoraptor has got scientists into a flap. The remains of the gigantic, surprisingly bird-like dinosaur - the biggest toothless dinosaur ever found - have been uncovered in the Gobi desert in Inner Mongolia, China, and challenge current understanding about the origins of birds. The find was made when Chinese scientists were being filmed by a Japanese TV crew in Erlian Basin and they thought a nearby bone was an example of a newly discovered long necked dinosaur, called a sauropod. But as they took a closer look, under the gaze...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
An ancient bathtub ring of mammoth fossils
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/11/2007 11:47:57 AM EDT · 20 replies · 315+ views PhysOrg.com | May 7, 2007 | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory The fossils, in some cases whole skeletons of Mammathus columbi, the Columbian mammoth, were deposited in the hillsides of what are now the Yakima, Columbia and Walla Walla valleys in southeastern Washington, where the elephantine corpses came to rest as water receded from the temporary but repeatedly formed ancient Lake Lewis. PNNL geologists are plotting the deposits to reconstruct the high-water marks of many of the floods, the last of which occurred as recently as 12,000 to 15,000 years ago... Geologists suspect that most of the Ice Age floods in eastern Washington originated from glacial Lake Missoula. The lake formed...
Ancient DNA Traces The Wooly Mammoth's Disappearance
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/11/2007 1:35:44 PM EDT · 38 replies · 1,065+ views Psysorg | 6-7-2007 Ancient DNA traces the woolly mammoth's disappearanceSome ancient-DNA evidence has offered new clues to a very cold case: the disappearance of the last woolly mammoths, one of the most iconic of all Ice Age giants, according to a June 7th report published online in Current Biology. DNA lifted from the bones, teeth, and tusks of the extinct mammoths revealed a "genetic signature" of a range expansion after the last interglacial period. After the mammoths' migration, the population apparently leveled off, and one of two lineages died out. "In combination with the results on other species, a picture is emerging of...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
An Old Religion Says No To Billboards (Zoroastrians)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/12/2007 6:02:27 AM EDT · 24 replies · 384+ views Bell South | 6-12-2007 | Ramola Talwar Badam An Old Religion Says No to Billboards Published: 6/12/07, 5:25 AM EDT By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM MUMBAI, India (AP) - Some might see the towering billboards that rise out of a centuries-old Mumbai funeral ground as a message from beyond the grave. But the signs - which exhort motorists to "Rev up your night life" by buying a popular car - have bitterly divided the city's Parsi community since they were erected last week, with many people saying they desecrate the sanctity of the place. Trustees of the funeral ground, who authorized the billboards, say they are needed to...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Ancient Tomb Found in Mexico Reveals Mass Child Sacrifice (At least they didn't throw theirs away?)
	Posted by Bladerunnuh On News/Activism 06/13/2007 10:55:30 AM EDT · 45 replies · 655+ views National Geographic | 6-12-07 | Kelly Hearn Construction crews unearthed the burial chamber this spring near the town of Tula, the ancient Toltec capital, 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Mexico City (see Mexico map). The chamber contained 24 skeletons of children believed to have been sacrificed between A.D. 950 and 1150, according to Luis Gamboa, an archaeologist at Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. All but one of the children were between 5 to 15 years of age, and they were likely killed as an offering to the Toltec rain god Tlaloc, Gamboa said. The Toltec, a pre-Aztec civilization that thrived from the 10th to...
Ancient Tomb Found in Mexico Reveals Mass Child Sacrifice
	Posted by NYer On News/Activism 06/13/2007 11:02:55 AM EDT · 25 replies · 813+ views National Geographic | June 12, 2007 | Kelly Hearn The skeletons of two dozen children killed in an ancient mass sacrifice have been found in a tomb at a construction site in Mexico. The find reveals new details about the ancient Toltec civilization and adds to an ongoing debate over ritualistic killing in historic Mesoamerica. Construction crews unearthed the burial chamber this spring near the town of Tula, the ancient Toltec capital, 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Mexico City (see Mexico map). The chamber contained 24 skeletons of children believed to have been sacrificed between A.D. 950 and 1150, according to Luis Gamboa, an archaeologist at Mexico's National...
Faith and Philosophy
Row Erupts In Spain Over Legendary Knight El Cid's Sword
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/11/2007 6:40:38 PM EDT · 17 replies · 706+ views M&C | 6-10-2007 | Sinikka Tarvainen Row erupts in Spain over legendary knight El Cid's sword By Sinikka Tarvainen Jun 10, 2007, 14:33 GMT Madrid - A millennium after the death of the legendary Spanish knight El Cid, a row has erupted over his alleged sword. The solid, 0.75-metre sword with a black handle, called La Tizona, has been known as Spain's answer to King Arthur's Excalibur or Charlemagne's Joyeuse. Until now, nobody doubted that the sword, which was on display at Madrid's Military Museum for more than 60 years, once belonged to the country's national hero. But when the northern region of Castile and Leon...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
(Immense) Subterranean Vault Dating Back To 8th Hejira Century Found Beneath The Citadel
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/09/2007 7:41:54 PM EDT · 18 replies · 705+ views Egyptian State Inrormation Service | 6-9-2007 Subterranean vault dating back to 8th Hejira century found beneath the Citadel An immense subterranean vault was found beneath the Citadel in Cairo on 7/6/2007, said the Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni. The vault dates back to the era of King Al-Nasser Mohamed Ben Qalawun in the 8th century of Hejira, said the Minister. The vault extends along 200 meters between Al-Ablaq Palace and the sideline palaces of the Citadel.
Longer Perspectives
Group announces list of world's 100 most endangered sites (nearly ALL under islamic threat)
	Posted by 2banana On News/Activism 06/11/2007 3:15:16 PM EDT · 9 replies · 578+ views World Monuments Fund | Jun 8, 2007 | World Monuments Fund CONFLICT. Whether past, ongoing, or imminent, conflict has become one of the most severe threats to cultural heritage. Among the sites at grave risk on the 2008 Watch List are: - Cultural Heritage Sites of Iraq, where ongoing conflict has led to catastrophic loss at the world's oldest and most important cultural sites, and where the damage continues. (by islam) - Bamiyan Buddhas, Afghanistan, tragic illustrations of the importance of cultural heritage and the consequences of its destruction, the leftover fragments and historic context remain endangered, and their future in question. (by islam) - Church of the Holy Nativity, Bethlehem,...
Shams and Scams
The Muslims who discovered America
	Posted by swarthyguy On News/Activism 10/11/2002 1:40:55 AM EDT · 78 replies · 5,867+ views WND | 10.11.2002 | Joseph Farah In anticipation of Columbus Day, I've been educating myself on the Muslims who discovered America. You mean you didn't know that Muslims were in America before Columbus? You didn't know Muslim navigators took Columbus by the hand and led him to a little island in the Bahamas known as Guanahani, a settlement of Islamic Mandinkas from Africa? You hadn't heard about the Muslims from both Spain and West Africa who sailed to America at least five centuries before Columbus? Yes, this is the new uni-cultural rage with the U.S. Muslim community. There are seminars in major cities and mosques all...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Loses Funding
	Posted by Renfield On News/Activism 06/12/2007 10:05:58 AM EDT · 8 replies · 203+ views Javno | 6-11-07 | Tatjana Ljubić The hills in Visoko are a natural formation and not pyramids, as Semir Osmanagic wishes to present them, says Bosnian Culture Minister. The Ministry of Culture of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina wants to put an end to the funding of the project "Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun." Opinions on the subject as well as on the pyramid phenomenon are so divided in Bosnia that some public persons, who have denied the existence of pyramids, said that they would set themselves on fire if those were really proven to pyramids. Numerous politicans have given support to the research in...
Navigation
Is This Chaucer's Astrolabe?
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/12/2007 8:54:45 PM EDT · 24 replies · 706+ views Nature | 6-8-2007 | Philip Ball Is this Chaucer's astrolabe?Astronomical instruments were probably made after Chaucer's designs, not before.June8, 2007 Philip Ball The British Museum's 'Chaucerian' astrolabe: not really Chaucer's, of course. British Museum Want to see the astrolabe used for astronomical calculations by Geoffrey Chaucer himself? You'll be lucky, says Catherine Eagleton, a curator at the British Museum in London. Several astrolabes have been suggested to have once belonged to Chaucer. The claims are based on the device in question's resemblance to one described by Chaucer in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, written in the late fourteenth century. Perhaps, the claimants argue, the astrolabe they...
Napoleon
Napoleon's battle sword up for auction (worn during the battle of Marengo in Italy, June 1800)
	Posted by NormsRevenge On General/Chat 06/09/2007 4:03:46 PM EDT · 6 replies · 181+ views AP on Yahoo | 6/9/07 | Marco Chown Oved - ap FONTAINEBLEAU, France - After more than 200 years in the family, the gold-encrusted sword Napoleon carried into battle in Italy will be auctioned off Sunday, across the street from one of his imperial castles. The intricately decorated blade is 32 inches long and curves gently -- an inspiration Napoleon drew from his Egyptian campaign, auctioneer Jean-Pierre Osenat said. "He noticed that the Arab swords, which were curved, were very effective in cutting off French heads" and ordered an imitation made upon his return, Osenat explained. The last of Napoleon's swords in private hands, it has an estimated value of at...
Napoleon's sword sold for $6.4 million
	Posted by BGHater On News/Activism 06/11/2007 12:53:25 PM EDT · 35 replies · 698+ views AP | 10 June 2007 | AP FONTAINEBLEAU, France --A gold-encrusted sword Napoleon wore into battle in Italy 200 years ago was sold Sunday for more than $6.4 million, an auction house said. The last of Napoleon's swords in private hands, it has an estimated value of far less -- about $1.6 million, according to the Osenat auction house managing the sale. Applause rang out in a packed auction hall across the street from one of Napoleon's imperial castles in Fontainebleau, a town southeast of Paris, when the sword was sold. Osenat did not identify the buyer, but said the sword will remain in Napoleon's family, which...
Early America
Thore-La-Rochette Journal: Remembering French Hero of the American Revolution
	Posted by Pharmboy On News/Activism 06/15/2007 7:18:10 AM EDT · 6 replies · 126+ views NY Times | June 15, 2007 | JOHN TAGLIABUE Christophe Calais for The New York Times Michel de Rochambeau at home in Vendume with a portrait of his forebear Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, who fought with George Washington at Yorktown and had a chateau at Thore-la-Rochette. THORE-LA-ROCHETTE, France -- Michel de Rochambeau likes to think that the life span of a tree separates him from his most illustrious ancestor. He recently had dozens of young lime trees planted in a row along the two-mile road that winds along the Loir River leading to his modest chateau in northern France. They replaced trees that had been planted by...
Researchers Seek DNA Link to Lost Colony
	Posted by varina davis On News/Activism 06/11/2007 5:04:04 PM EDT · 64 replies · 1,612+ views WRAL & AP | June 11, 2007 ROANOKE ISLAND, N.C. - Researchers believe they may be able to use DNA to uncover the fate of the Lost Colony, which vanished shortly after more than 100 people settled on Roanoke Island in 1587. Using genealogy, deeds and historical narratives, researchers have compiled 168 surnames that could be connected to settlers in what is considered the first attempt by the English to colonize the New World. The team will try to trace the roots of individuals related to the colonists, to the area's 16th century American Indians or to both.
World War Eleven
Second World War MI5 documents revealed
	Posted by Calpernia On General/Chat 06/15/2007 9:34:59 AM EDT · 13 replies · 196+ views UKTV | 13th June 2007 Second World War MI5 documents revealed MI5 has been criticised for releasing documents that reveal the identities of agents serving in the Second World War. A large number of documents dating from the Second World War have been released by MI5 after more than 60 years. Released to the National Archives, the files contain details about the real identities of a number of spies and double agents working during the war. The documents relate to a camp in Ham, Surrey, that was used to hold and interrogate Nazi spies, many of whom later became double agents working for British intelligence....
Russia declassifies military archives dating back to 1941-1945
	Posted by Calpernia On General/Chat 06/15/2007 9:08:56 AM EDT · 4 replies · 94+ views Interfax | Jun 14 2007 MOSCOW. June 14 (Interfax-AVN) - The archives of the Red Army and the Soviet Navy dating back to the Soviet Union's war against Nazi Germany in 1941-1945 have been declassified, Russian Defense Ministry's Archive Service chief Col. Sergei Ilyenkov told journalists in Moscow on Thursday. "The documents stored at the Defense Ministry Central Archive in Podolsk, the Central Naval Archive in Gatchina, and the Archive of Military Medical Documents of the Defense Ministry's Military Medical Museum in St. Petersburg have been declassified," Ilyenkov said. The declassified documents include 4 million copies.
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Archaeologists Find Early Executive Toilet In Sheffield Works
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/10/2007 11:03:52 AM EDT · 16 replies · 847+ views 24 Hour Museum | 6-8-2007 | Caroline Lewis ARCHAEOLOGISTS FIND EARLY EXECUTIVE TOILET IN SHEFFIELD WORKS By Caroline Lewis 08/06/2007 A grinding workshop at the site. Courtesy University of Sheffield/ARCUS The Victorians were great inventors, and their progress in the field of sewage disposal was not one of their least achievements. Thomas Crapper is famed for popularising the flush lavatory in the 19th century, but not many examples of his early "work" survive. So archaeologists from the University of Sheffield got quite excited when they found a toilet dating back around 150 years in an old cutlery and grinding works, believing it to be an original Crapper. Further...
end of digest #152 20070616

[SunkenCiv]

Forty topics, that's more like it. Around Tuesday someone joked that it was mammoth week, and it seems to me there should be more topics about the mammoth (there are just two), so I guess I'd better check into this.

Issue 156 will be the last issue of the third year of this Digest. Ideas for the gala celebration are of course welcome.

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #152 20070616

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

40 topics from 1851036 to 1847695. 623 members.

[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #153 Saturday, June 23, 2007
Prehistory and Origins
35,000-Year -Old Mammoth Sculpture Found In Germany
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/20/2007 6:48:04 PM EDT · 30 replies · 990+ views Spiegel | 6-20-2007 35,000-Year-Old Mammoth Sculpture Found in Germany In southwestern Germany, an American archaeologist and his German colleagues have found the oldest mammoth-ivory carving known to modern science. And even at 35,000 years old, it's still intact. The 35,000-year-old mammoth figurine was revealed on Wednesday. REUTERS Archaeologists at the University of T¸bingen have recovered the first entirely intact woolly mammoth figurine from the Swabian Jura, a 220-meter long plateau in the state of Baden-W¸rttemberg, thought to have been made by the first modern humans some 35,000 years ago. It is believed to be the oldest ivory carving ever found. "You can be...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Moose, not men, blamed for mammoth extinction
	Posted by SJackson On News/Activism 05/11/2006 10:11:10 PM EDT · 56 replies · 1,063+ views Globe and Mail | 5-11-06 | ANNE MCILROY Humans have been blamed for slaughtering woolly mammoths and other large ice-age animals into extinction, but new evidence from Yukon suggests this isn't the case. Moose were to blame, at least in part, says Dale Guthrie, a researcher at the University of Alaska. He has found evidence that the climate in Yukon and Alaska was warming between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago, around the time a wave of human hunters moved into North America from Asia. The North was changing from a grassland to a boreal forest and tundra, he says. Moose also arrived, and were better adapted to digest...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Climate killed off mammoths, not humans: scientist
	Posted by Bubba_Leroy On News/Activism 05/10/2006 4:38:20 PM EDT · 24 replies · 553+ views reuters.com | May 10, 2006 | Reuters Climate shifts were probably responsible for the extinction of the mammoth and other species more than 10,000 years ago, not over-hunting by humans, according to new research published on Wednesday. Radiocarbon dating of 600 bones of bison, moose and humans that survived the mass extinction and remains of the mammoth and wild horse which did not, suggests humans were not responsible. "That is what this new data points out," said Dr Dale Guthrie of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. "It is not that people weren't hunting these creatures. But climate would have reduced the numbers considerably," he added in...
Mammoth Told Me...
Scientists find mammoth cell fit for cloning
	Posted by Lessismore On News/Activism 02/11/2003 9:35:09 PM EST · 22 replies · 303+ views Vladivostock News | February 6, 2003 Scientists from the Novosibirsk center of virology and biotechnology 'Vector' discovered a living cell in the remains of a mammoth excavated from the ice, and believe it could be suitable for cloning the Ice Age mammal. Oleg Taranov, a researcher from the center, arrived in Yakutsk, the capital of the Russian northeastern republic of Yakutia, Tuesday to report the results to his colleagues at the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North. Last summer a joint team of Russian and Japanese scientists mounted an expedition into Russia's far north with the expressed aim of trying to bring a mammoth back...
Mammoth Skeleton Found In Siberia
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 05/23/2006 4:17:52 PM EDT · 38 replies · 1,092+ views BBC | 5-23-2006 | James Rodgers Mammoth skeleton found in Siberia By James Rodgers BBC News, Moscow It is rare to find mammoth remains in such good condition Fishermen in Siberia have discovered the complete skeleton of a mammoth - a find which Russian experts have described as very rare. The remains appeared when flood waters receded in Russia's Krasnoyarsk region. The mammoth's backbone, skull, teeth and tusks all survived intact. It appears to have died aged about 50. Mammoths lived in Africa, Europe, Asia and North America between about 1.6 million years ago and 10,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch. Alexander Kerzhayev, deputy director...
Disgraced Embryonic Stem Cell Researcher Used Money to Clone Mammoths
	Posted by wagglebee On News/Activism 07/25/2006 2:36:25 PM EDT · 37 replies · 751+ views LifeNews | 7/25/06 | Steven Ertelt Seoul, South Korea (LifeNews.com) -- Disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk, whose team became an international laughingstock after they faked their entirety of their embryonic stem cell research, appeared in court on Monday in a trial about charges that he embezzled public and private research funds. Hwang admitted he spent more than one million in attempting to clone a mammoth. Hwang was indicted in May by South Korean government prosecutors who say that Hwang misspent public and private dollars intended for research. On Monday, Hwang admitted he spent part of the money, some $1.05 million in failed attempts to clone mammoths, extinct...
Paleontology
Bone-Crushing Wolves Once Roamed Alaska
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/22/2007 8:41:33 AM EDT · 36 replies · 930+ views Live Science | 6-21-2007 | Charles Q Choi Bone-Crushing Wolves Once Roamed Alaska By Charles Q. Choi, Special to LiveScience posted: 21 June 2007 12:01 pm ET Email Bone-crushing wolves that specialized in hunting giant prey once roamed the icy expanses of Alaska, an international team of researchers now finds. The scientists unexpectedly discovered what apparently was a novel subspecies of gray wolf (Canis lupus) as they analyzed genes from skeletal remains that had sat in museum collections for up to a few decades after excavation from Alaskan permafrost deposits. The ancient DNA, which dated back 12,500 to 40,000 years, did not match any modern wolves, and closer...
Classical Cuisine
Ancient Romans Preferred Fast Food
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/19/2007 7:25:23 PM EDT · 42 replies · 1,186+ views Discovery | 6-18-2007 | Jennifer Viegas Ancient Romans Preferred Fast Food Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News June 18, 2007 -- Just as a U.S. Presidential state dinner does not reflect how most Americans eat and socialize, researchers think the formal, decadent image of wining and dining in ancient Rome mostly just applied to the elite. According to archaeologist Penelope Allison of the University of Leicester, the majority of the population consumed food "on the run." Allison excavated an entire neighborhood block in Pompeii, a city frozen in time after the eruption of volcano Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Historians often extend findings from Pompeii to other parts...
Rome and Italy
Roman road found at gas pipeline
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/18/2007 1:19:42 PM EDT · 8 replies · 113+ views BBC | Sunday, June 17, 2007 | unattributed The historic roadway was discovered in the Brecon Beacons, on the path of the 190-mile (320km) National Grid pipe from Milford Haven to Gloucestershire. Neil Fairburn, archaeology project manager for National Grid, said the road was found as digging began, but the pipe would still have to cross it... Mr Fairburn said the road, which he estimated as dating from the 1st Century AD, was in "a better condition than we would normally find a Roman road", but a 3m section of it would be lost. "It was in an area where we thought there might be a Roman road,...
British Isles
Roman London's Painted Walls
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/16/2007 11:05:20 PM EDT · 5 replies · 128+ views 50 Connect | June 16/17, 2007 | unattributed One of the best collections of Roman painted wall plaster from London has been discovered on a site on Lime Street, on the edge of Leadenhall Market, in the City of London by the Museum of London Archaeology Service. The plaster is from one room in a high status Roman building, probably dating to about 120 AD and is rare find. The building was just to the east of the Roman forum and basilica, the main market place for London and administrative centre. The excavation has now finished but experts are working to piece together over 40 crates of plaster...
Anatolia
Ancient Etruscans Were Immigrants From Anatolia (Turkey)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/17/2007 7:55:52 PM EDT · 40 replies · 956+ views Eureka Alert | 6-17-2007 | Mary Rice Contact: Mary Rice mary@mrcommunication.org European Society of Human Genetics Ancient Etruscans were immigrants from Anatolia, or what is now TurkeyGeneticists find the final piece in the puzzle Nice, France: The long-running controversy about the origins of the Etruscan people appears to be very close to being settled once and for all, a geneticist will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics today. Professor Alberto Piazza, from the University of Turin, Italy, will say that there is overwhelming evidence that the Etruscans, whose brilliant civilisation flourished 3000 years ago in what is now Tuscany, were settlers from...
Thrace
Image of Mythological Minotaur Labyrinth Unearthed in Bulgaria
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/17/2007 12:18:24 AM EDT · 11 replies · 229+ views Novanite | June 14, 2007 | unattributed Bulgarian archaeologists have found an image of the legendary labyrinth of King Minos, the Bulgarian National Radio reported. The exclusive find was unearthed near the village of Golyam Derven last week. The team of Professor Daniela Agre, who are doing excavation works in the area, stumbled upon the unique artefact while researching a an ancient Thracian tomb's entrance stone. The labyrinth image, which is carved on the slate, is perfectly preserved. The legendary labyrinth was considered a just a myth from the Greek mythology until the exclusive finding. According to the legends, King Minos ordered the construction of the labyrinth...
Ancient Europe
Archaeologists discover Iron Age Mickey Mouse
	Posted by WesternCulture On News/Activism 06/16/2007 9:07:02 AM EDT · 40 replies · 1,140+ views www.thelocal.se | 06/08/2007 | Paul O'Mahony Swedish archaeologists have uncovered signs of a Viking precursor to Mickey Mouse. Among the objects found during excavations at UppÂkra in southern Sweden is an iron age figure bearing a strong resemblance to the classic cartoon character.
Archaeoastronomy and Megaliths
Restored -- but medieval maze is still a puzzle after centuries [UK]
	Posted by BGHater On News/Activism 06/20/2007 7:47:34 AM EDT · 56 replies · 1,611+ views Yorkshire Post | 19 June 2007 | Simon Bristow A maze is designed to puzzle, but whoever dreamt up the intricate earth and grass labyrinth that is Julian's Bower can be especially pleased -- it remains a mystery after hundreds of years. The medieval maze in Alkborough, near Scunthorpe, has been reopened to the public after a major returfing project, but experts are no closer to solving the riddle of why or when it was made. The 44ft relic cut into the landscape has many interlocking rings, and the theories surrounding its origins are just as complex. Some have observed how Alkborough's maze is strikingly similar to a floor design...
Egypt
Virtual explorers comb Egypt's ruins
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/18/2007 1:00:11 PM EDT · 10 replies · 92+ views Boston Globe | Monday, June 18, 2007 | Pamela Ferdinand From the comfort of his study in Norwich, England, Colin Newton, a retired television repairman, explores rare Giza maps and expedition diaries in an effort to catalog all Old Kingdom tombs. Meanwhile, Laurel Flentye, an Egyptologist who specializes in art and archaeology, downloads excavation photos and roams inside subterranean chambers, zooming in on relief decorations in tombs around the Sphinx and Great Pyramid from her Cairo home... The Giza Archives Project, established by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in January 2005, aims to become the world's central online repository for all archaeological activity at the necropolis, beginning with the major...
Epigraphy and Language
Egypt Asks British Museum For Rosetta Stone
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/22/2007 5:33:41 PM EDT · 50 replies · 1,047+ views The Art Newspaper | 6-21-2007 | Martin Bailey Egypt asks British Museum for Rosetta Stone By Martin Bailey | Posted 21 June 2007 LONDON. The Egyptian government has made a formal request to borrow the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum (BM). A letter was sent last month by Dr Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The Art Newspaper can reveal that the request is for a three-month loan in 2012, for the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is being built near the Pyramids. Until now, the BM has been able to fend off questions about the return of the Rosetta Stone, since...
Africa
Ancient gold unearthed in Sudan
	Posted by Jedi Master Pikachu On News/Activism 06/19/2007 5:11:54 PM EDT · 57 replies · 1,103+ views BBC | Tuesday, June 19, 2007 The Kush kingdom was conquered by the Egyptians A team of archaeologists has discovered a huge ancient gold processing centre and a graveyard along the River Nile in northern Sudan.They were part of the 4,000-year-old Kush, or Nubian, kingdom. The scholars say the finds show the empire was much bigger than previously thought and rivalled ancient Egypt. The archaeologists are racing to dig up the Hosh el-Geruf area, some 225 miles from the capital, Khartoum, before the Merowe dam floods the area next year. The dam is due to create a lake 100 miles long and two miles wide,...
Longer Perspectives
US issues deck of cards on Iraq's archaeology
	Posted by BGHater On News/Activism 06/20/2007 8:23:09 AM EDT · 7 replies · 194+ views Telegraph | 20 June 2007 | Tom Leonard American troops in Iraq are being sent another deck of playing cards, this time showing some of the country's most precious archaeological sites and advice on how to respect them. The Pentagon is sending 40,000 new decks to units in Iraq and Afghanistan, four years after it issued soldiers with a more gung-ho pack showing pictures and information about the most-wanted former members of Saddam Hussein's regime. The cards are part of an archaeology awareness programme designed to make troops aware of the damage they can cause to sites and to discourage the illegal trade in artefacts. Archaeologists working at...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Iran's Zoroastrians remember Arab conquest of Persia
	Posted by freedom44 On News/Activism 06/18/2007 3:56:35 PM EDT · 58 replies · 1,210+ views AP | 6/18/07 | AP CHAK CHAK, Iran (AP) - Dressed in white to symbolize purity, a priest recited from the Zoroastrian holy book at a shrine as members of this ancient pre-Islamic religion marked what they see as one of the most bitter events in Iran's history: the 7th century Arab conquest of Persia. The Arab invasion changed history for Persia, the ancient name for non-Arab Iran: Islam was imposed as the new religion, replacing Zoroastrianism, whose followers were dispersed. Thousands of Zoroastrians from Iran's small remaining community and from India, the United States and other countries gathered at this mountain shrine this week...
India
'Ancient India Was In The Middle Of Global Trade'
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/15/2007 6:44:26 PM EDT · 18 replies · 491+ views The Times Of India | 6-15-2007 Q&A: 'Ancient India was in the middle of global trade' 15 Jun, 2007 l 0142 hrs IST S P Gupta, former director of Allahabad Museum and current chairman of Indian Archaeological Society, is credited with excavating several Indus Valley sites. He spoke to Rohit Viswanath on recent developments in marine archaeology: What are the latest advancements in marine archaeology? We do not use the term marine archaeology anymore. It is called underwater archaeology. That is because the term merely denotes oceanic and deep-sea archaeology. However, underwater archaeology has a wider scope. Fresh-water sources have been historically conducive to human habitation....
China
Who were Hunnu? (Mongolian account of Huns)
	Posted by TigerLikesRooster On News/Activism 06/18/2007 3:29:08 AM EDT · 11 replies · 551+ views Mongolia Today Who were Hunnu? Huunu artisan medallion with yak image engraving For many decades the study of ancient history of Mongols was subject to ideological directives and politics. And therefore, with the removal of political and ideological restraints after political reforms of 1990, archeology now experiences a boom.One of the hottest areas is the history of Hunnu, a nomadic tribe that ruled the vast stretches of Central Asian steppes and forced China to go into extreme effort of building the Great China wall in attempt to protect against devastating raids.The name of Atilla, the Hunnu king who led his men...
Navigation
Obsession propels scholar on long, lonesome voyage [ Gunnar Thompson ]
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/18/2007 12:36:03 PM EDT · 19 replies · 158+ views Seattle Times | Monday, June 18, 2007 | Ross Anderson Over the course of his 30-year journey, Thompson has written five books, all self-published, detailing what he believes to be conclusive evidence that, long before 1492, the Americas were explored repeatedly -- by the ancient Chinese, Venetians, Egyptians, Romans, Vikings, Irish, English and who-knows-who-else. He argues, for example, that a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, commanding a fleet of Chinese junks in the early 1400s, explored the coasts of the Americas. He believes that Marco Polo sailed with the Chinese into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and perhaps into Puget Sound in the 13th century. He is convinced that...
China beat Columbus to it, perhaps
	Posted by tbird5 On News/Activism 01/14/2006 12:05:19 AM EST · 36 replies · 849+ views The Economist | Jan 12th 2006 | unknown An ancient map that strongly suggests Chinese seamen were first round the world THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true. It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Thousands of pearls found in shipwreck
	Posted by BenLurkin On General/Chat 06/18/2007 3:15:06 PM EDT · 26 replies · 360+ views YAHOOoooo | Sat Jun 16, 11:56 PM ET KEY WEST, Fla. - Salvagers discovered thousands of pearls Friday in a small, lead box they said they found while searching for the wreckage of the 17th-century Spanish galleon Santa Margarita. Divers from Blue Water Ventures of Key West said they found the sealed box, measuring 3.5 inches by 5.5 inches, along with a gold bar, eight gold chains and hundreds of other artifacts earlier this week. They were apparently buried beneath the ocean floor in approximately 18 feet of water about 40 miles west of Key West. "There are several thousand pearls starting from an eighth of an inch...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Telmex Peru destroys part of 2000 year-old ancient necropolis [ Paracas culture ]
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/16/2007 11:35:36 PM EDT · 3 replies · 41+ views Living in Peru | June 16, 2007 | (LIP-jl) Alfredo Gonzalez, Ica regional director of the INC, has denounced the telecommunications company for allegedly ruining nearly 400 square meters of a 2,000 year-old ancient burial ground that was registered as part of Peru's national heritage... The Paracas culture was an important society between approximately 750 BCE and 100 CE. Most of our information about the lives of the Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside Paracas necropolis, first investigated by the Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello in the 1920s. The Paracas Necropolis is located in Chincha Province, located approximately 200 kilometers south of Peru's capital city of Lima.
Guillermo Cock
First Known Gunshot Victim In Americas Discovered
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/20/2007 7:08:29 PM EDT · 17 replies · 394+ views National Geographic | 6-19-2007 | Kelly Hearn First Known Gunshot Victim in Americas Discovered Kelly Hearn in Buenos Aires, Argentina for National Geographic News June 19, 2007 The first known gunshot victim in the Americas was an Inca Indian killed by a musket-wielding Spaniard nearly 500 years ago in Peru, scientists announced today. (See pictures and watch video.) The casualty's skeleton was discovered in 2004 while excavating an Inca cemetery in the Lima suburb of Puruchuco -- less than a mile from thousands of Inca mummy bundles discovered by Peruvian archaeologist Guillermo Cock. The individual may have been killed during an Inca uprising against Spanish conquistadors in 1536, according...
Researchers find 'first gun victim'
	Posted by Toddsterpatriot On News/Activism 06/20/2007 11:28:49 AM EDT · 33 replies · 732+ views Yahoo! News | Jun 20, 2007 | RANDOLPH E. SCHMID WASHINGTON - The musket blast was sudden and deadly, the killing nearly 500 years ago of what may have been the first gunshot victim in the Western Hemisphere. "We didn't expect it. We saw this skull and saw the almost round hole and thought people must have been shooting around here recently," said Guillermo Cock, an archaeologist who found the remains near Lima, Peru. But he realized that the skull was ancient, and a recent bullet strike would simply have shattered it, Cock said in a telephone interview. The skull was found among a large group of bones of ancient...
First-ever gunshot victim found (History)
	Posted by CarrotAndStick On News/Activism 06/21/2007 12:13:21 PM EDT · 19 replies · 404+ views AP via The Times of India | 21 Jun, 2007 l 0051 hrs IST | AP WASHINGTON: The musket blast was sudden and deadly, the killing nearly 500 years ago of what may have been the first gunshot victim in the Western Hemisphere. "We didn't expect it. We saw this skull and saw the almost round hole and thought people must have been shooting around here recently," said Guillermo Cock, an archaeologist who found the remains near Lima, Peru. But he realised that the skull was ancient, and a recent bullet strike would simply have shattered it, Cock said. The skull was found among a large group of bones of ancient Incas, who had died violently...
Early America
George Washington's Office Unearthed In Old City (Phil)
	Posted by Pharmboy On News/Activism 06/21/2007 6:44:35 AM EDT · 30 replies · 851+ views CBS 3 Philadelphia | June 20, 2007 | Mary Stoker Smith (CBS 3) PHILADELPHIA The archaeological dig at Independence Mall has uncovered another historical treasure. Archaeologists have been working furiously in Old City for the past couple months, revealing the foundation of George Washingtonís former office. "We could never have expected to find a find like this. Things that have such cultural value," said Ed Lawler of the Independence Mall Association. A foundation fragment from the first presidentís office can now be seen protruding from the ground. "We think that may be the corner where the north wall of the office met the west wall of the office," said Lawler. The...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
New life for an old Civil War sentinel
	Posted by Coleus On General/Chat 06/16/2007 11:42:56 PM EDT · 3 replies · 31+ views Star Ledger | 06.11.07 | Bob Braun Bill Styple and time have a peculiar relationship. He lives in the present, writes about the past and wants to save both the present and the past for the future of his town. "I just want to preserve for our children a little of what I and my parents had in the past," says Styple, 46, who, with others from Kearny, is about to give the Hudson County town, its residents and its children a gift: A statue of a Civil War soldier. A replica of a statue that, for nearly 50 years until 1933, stood mute guard before the...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Biblical Passage And Forensic Analysis Suggest New Theory On Human Remains At Masada
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/22/2007 5:29:50 PM EDT · 14 replies · 1,082+ views IHT | 6-22-2007 | AP Biblical passage and forensic analysis suggest new theory on human remains at Masada The Associated PressPublished: June 22, 2007 MASADA, Israel: An Israeli anthropologist is using modern forensics and an obscure Biblical passage to challenge the accepted wisdom about mysterious human remains found at Masada, the desert fortress famous as the scene of a mass suicide nearly 2,000 years ago. A new research paper published Friday takes another look at the remains of three people found in a bathhouse at the site -- two male skeletons and a full head of women's hair, including two braids. They were long thought...
Faith and Philosophy
Isaac Newton saw end of world in 2060
	Posted by voletti On News/Activism 06/17/2007 10:26:12 PM EDT · 130 replies · 3,130+ views Times of India | 6/18/07 | AP JERUSALEM: Renowned British scientist Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics and astronomy, predicted the world would end in 2060. He made the prediction in a 1704 letter that went on show in Jerusalem on Sunday. A famed rationalist, who secured a royal exemption from the ordination in the Church of England that was normally expected of academics of his day so he would not have to follow its teachings, Newton nonetheless based his prediction on a Biblical text. Working from verses in the Book of Daniel, the elaborator of the classical laws of gravity, motion and optics argued...
A War Between Science and Religon? Ask Isaac Newton (a Scientist Guided by religious fervor)
	Posted by SirLinksalot On News/Activism 06/20/2007 12:05:55 PM EDT · 152 replies · 1,935+ views AOL News | 06/19/2007 | Dinesh D' Souza A Jerusalem exhibit of Isaac Newton's manuscripts has some newly-discovered papers showing Newton's calculations of the exact date of the Apocalypse. Using the Book of Daniel, Newton argues that the world will end not earlier than 2060. "It may end later," Newton writes, "but I see no reason for its ending sooner. This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophecies into discredit as often as...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Archaeologist Sparks Hunt For Holy Grail
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/20/2007 6:54:57 PM EDT · 101 replies · 1,991+ views The Telegraph (UK) | 6-20-2007 | Nick Pisa Archaeologist sparks hunt for Holy Grail By Nick Pisa in Rome Last Updated: 8:47pm BST 20/06/2007 An archaeologist has sparked a Da Vinci Code-style hunt for the Holy Grail after claiming ancient records show it is buried under a 6th century church in Rome. The cup - said to have been used by Christ at the Last Supper - is the focus of countless legends and has been sought for centuries. Alfredo Barbagallo, an Italian archaeologist, claims that it is buried in a chapel-like room underneath the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, one of the seven churches which...
Shams and Scams
'No massacre in Nanking,' Japanese lawmakers say
	Posted by skinkinthegrass On News/Activism 06/19/2007 5:55:17 PM EDT · 166 replies · 3,254+ views Reuters, The Associated Press | June 19, 2007 TOKYO: About 100 Japanese governing party lawmakers denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication on Tuesday, contesting Chinese claims that Japanese soldiers killed hundreds of thousands of people after seizing the Chinese city in 1937.
World War Eleven
Winston Churchill's "Finest Hour" Speech 67 Years Ago Today
	Posted by Colonel Kangaroo On General/Chat 06/18/2007 5:41:58 AM EDT · 14 replies · 137+ views On June 18, 1940, the position of Great Britain looked very shaky. The German army had routed the French forces, ran the British Expeditionary Force out of Europe and France was in the process of giving up the fight. On this dark day, Churchill gave a report on the bleak situation to the House of Commons. At the close of the speech he spoke these memorable words: What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends...
Agriculture
Mass Grave Of Quakers Uncovered (UK)
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/22/2007 5:40:36 PM EDT · 4 replies · 391+ views BBC | 6-22-2007 Mass grave of Quakers uncovered A meeting of the Society of Friends in its early days A mass grave believed to contain the bodies of followers of the Quaker religious movement has been uncovered in Cambridgeshire. Environment Agency workers found the rare Quaker burial site while carrying out work for flood defences at St Ives. Sixteen bodies were in the unmarked grave dating back to the late 1600s. Archaeologists described the find as "remarkable and unusual" as it gave an insight into Quaker burial practices just after the movement started. Pipe facet The Society of Friends was still emerging and...
end of digest #153 20070623

[SunkenCiv]

Visit the Free Republic Memorial Wall -- a history-related feature of FR.

Visit Cats That Look Like Hitler -- a silliness-related feature tangentially related to FR, due to the Viking Kitties.

Issue 156 will be the last issue of the third year of this Digest. Commemoration ideas are of course welcome, in order to avoid the chaos of the first and second year, when we let it slip by unnoticed.

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #153 20070623

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

37 topics from 1854793 to 1851036. 625 members.

[uglybiker]

Commemoration ideas are of course welcome...

I'll bring the beer.

[SunkenCiv]

It’s good for what ales.

[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #154 Saturday, June 30, 2007
Climate
THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF EARTH'S UNSTOPPABLE 1,500-YEAR CLIMATE CYCLE
	Posted by PeaceBeWithYou On News/Activism 10/04/2005 11:27:20 PM EDT · 98 replies · 5,024+ views National Center for Policy Analysis | Friday, September 30, 2005 | S. Fred Singer, Dennis Avery Human activities have little to do with the Earth's current warming trend, according to a study published by the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). In fact, S. Fred Singer (University of Virginia) and Dennis Avery (Hudson Institute) conclude that global warming and cooling seem to be part of a 1,500-year cycle of moderate temperature swings. Scientists got the first unequivocal evidence of a continuing moderate natural climate cycle in the 1980s, when Willi Dansgaard of Denmark and Hans Oeschger of Switzerland first saw two mile-long ice cores from Greenland representing 250,000 years of Earth's frozen, layered climate history. From...
Antarctica
Prehistoric equatorial penguins reached 5 feet in height
	Posted by freedom44 On News/Activism 06/25/2007 7:45:20 PM EDT · 33 replies · 570+ views Physorg | 6/25/07 | Physorg Paleontologist Dr. Julia Clarke, assistant professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at NC State with appointments at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the American Museum of Natural History, and colleagues studied two newly discovered extinct species of penguins. Peruvian paleontologists discovered the new penguins' sites in 2005. The research is published online the week of June in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was funded by the National Science Foundation Office of International Science and Engineering and the National Geographic Society. The first of the new species, Icadyptes salasi, stood 5 feet tall and...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Ancient 'Ondol' Heating Systems Discovered In Alaska
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/26/2007 5:32:13 PM EDT · 31 replies · 909+ views English.Choson.com | 6-26-2007 Ancient 'Ondol' Heating Systems Discovered in Alaska What are believed to be the world's oldest underfloor stone-lined-channel heating systems have been discovered in Alaska's Aleutian Islands in the U.S. The heating systems are remarkably similar to ondol, the traditional Korean indoor heating system. The word ondol, along with the word kimchi, is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. The ondol heating system is widely recognized as Korean cultural property. According to "Archaeology", a bi-monthly magazine from the American Archaeological Society, the remains of houses equipped with ondol-like heating systems were found at the Amaknak Bridge excavation site in Unalaska, Alaska....
Navigation
Archaeological sensation in Oestfold [ Inca remains from 11th c Norway? ]
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/27/2007 2:34:20 AM EDT · 28 replies · 425+ views Norway Post | Tuesday, June 26, 2007 | Rolleiv Solholm (NRK) Norwegian arhaeologists are puzzled by a find which indicates an Inca Indian died and was buried in the Oestfold city of Sarpsborg 1000 years ago. The remains of two elderly men and a baby were discovered during work in a garden, and one of the skulls indicates that the man was an Inca Indian. There is a genetic flaw in the neck, which is believed to be limited to the Incas in Peru, says archaeologist Mona Beate Buckholm. The Norway Post suggests that maybe the Vikings travelled even more widely than hitherto believed? Why could not the Viking settlers in...
Incan bones found in Oestfold[Norway]
	Posted by BGHater On News/Activism 06/28/2007 8:56:39 AM EDT · 41 replies · 1,000+ views Aftenposten | 26 June 2007 | Aftenposten Archeologists in Sarpsborg have found one thousand year old skeletal remains that appear to be Incan. The skeletal remains were found during conservations work at St. Nicolas church in Sarpsborg, a city 73 kilometers (45 miles) southeast of Oslo, NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting) reports. When archeologists were to move some rose bushes they made the surprising discovery of the remains of two older men and a baby. "When we were about to take hold under the rose bush the skeletal remains slid out. It was quite surprising," Mona Beate Buckholm, archeologist at the Borgarsyssel Museum, told NRK. One of the skulls...
Agriculture
Squash grown 10,000 years ago in Peru
	Posted by Fred Nerks On News/Activism 06/28/2007 9:39:04 PM EDT · 24 replies · 344+ views Yahoo | Thu Jun 28, 6:09 PM ET | By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Squash grown 10,000 years ago in Peru By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Thu Jun 28, 6:09 PM ET WASHINGTON - Agriculture was taking root in South America almost as early as the first farmers were breaking ground in the Middle East, new research indicates. Evidence that squash was being grown nearly 10,000 years ago, in what is now Peru, is reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science. A team led by anthropologist Tom D. Dillehay of Vanderbilt University also uncovered remains of peanuts from 7,600 years ago and cotton dated to 5,500 years ago in the floors...
Rock Around the Clock
A buried treasure of trees (15 million year-old fossilized tree forest found intact)
	Posted by TigerLikesRooster On News/Activism 06/29/2007 12:02:10 PM EDT · 57 replies · 1,773+ views LAT | 06/28/07 | Tomas Alex Tizon A buried treasure of trees A Washington state man who always loved to dig in the dirt unearths a petrified forest, covered by lava 15 million years ago while still upright. By Tomas Alex Tizon Times Staff Writer June 28, 2007 Yakima, Wash. -- Clyde Friend's life changed the moment his bulldozer hit the first tree on a hot summer afternoon in 2002 as he leveled a hill behind his workshop. Chips flew everywhere, a small explosion of brown and white shards. He hopped off the dozer to investigate. There, embedded in the hill, was a mostly intact fossilized tree...
India
Ghost Cities Of 2100
	Posted by Lorianne On News/Activism 06/22/2007 3:18:28 AM EDT · 136 replies · 2,673+ views Forbes | 11 June 2007 | Elisabeth Eaves For 900 years, Moenjodaro, a city in what is now Pakistan, was the urban hub of a thriving civilization, the New York or London of its day. Around 1700 B.C., residents suddenly abandoned the Indus Valley city, and it was lost in the sands of time until archaeologists began excavating it in the 1920s. Today, visitors can wander for hundreds of acres among its deserted streets and homes. It's believed that Moenjodaro had already fallen into economic decline when an invading army attacked, delivering the sudden fatal blow. Moenjodaro never rose again, and the Indus Valley civilization that it dominated...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Crater Could Solve 1908 Tunguska Meteor Mystery
	Posted by raygun On News/Activism 06/27/2007 9:16:57 PM EDT · 34 replies · 1,158+ views Space.com | 06:27 26 June 2007 ET | By Dave Mosher - Staff Writer In late June of 1908, a fireball exploded above the remote Russian forests of Tunguska, Siberia, flattening more than 800 square miles of trees. Researchers think a meteor was responsible for the devastation, but neither its fragments nor any impact craters have been discovered. Astronomers have been left to guess whether the object was an asteroid or a comet, and figuring out what it was would allow better modeling of potential future calamities. Italian researchers now think they've found a smoking gun: The 164-foot-deep Lake Cheko, located just 5 miles northwest of the epicenter of destruction. "When we looked at...
Let's Have Jerusalem
A lively debate over the Dead Sea Scrolls
	Posted by kiriath_jearim On Religion 06/26/2007 12:55:36 PM EDT · 1 reply · 9+ views Los Angeles Times | 6/26/07 | Mike Boehm The first commandment for showing the Dead Sea Scrolls is: "Let there not be too much light." It has been handed down by the Israel Antiquities Authority, custodian of most of the 2,000-year-old parchments and papyri. The scrolls, many of them pieced together like puzzles from fragments and tatters, contain the oldest known biblical writings -- among them a text of the Ten Commandments that will be part of the six-month Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition that opens Friday at the San Diego Natural History Museum. It's billed as the largest and most comprehensive ever. Museum-goers accustomed to prolonged gazing will...
Egypt
Mummy of Egyptian queen Hatshepsut may have been found (in a humble tomb in the Valley of the Kings)
	Posted by NormsRevenge On General/Chat 06/25/2007 11:05:18 PM EDT · 14 replies · 163+ views Reuters on Yahoo | 6/25/07 | Jonathan Wright CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptologists think they have identified with certainty the mummy of Hatshepsut, the most famous queen to rule ancient Egypt, found in a humble tomb in the Valley of the Kings, an archaeologist said on Monday. Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, will hold a news conference in Cairo on Wednesday. The Discovery Channel said he would announce what it called the most important find in the Valley of the Kings since the discovery of King Tutankhamun. The archaeologist, who asked not to be named, said the candidate for identification as the mummy of Hatshepsut was one of two...
Egyptologists Think They Have Hatshepsut's Mummy
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/26/2007 5:41:36 PM EDT · 21 replies · 520+ views ABC News | 6-26-2007 | Jonathan Wright Egyptologists Think They Have Hatshepsut's MummySculpted Head to show Egyptian Headress taken at Met. Museum of Art.Jonathan Wright June 25, 2007 Egyptologists think they have identified with certainty the mummy of Hatshepsut, the most famous queen to rule ancient Egypt, found in a humble tomb in the Valley of the Kings, an archaeologist said on Monday. Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, will hold a news conference in Cairo on Wednesday. The Discovery Channel said he would announce what it called the most important find in the Valley of the Kings since the discovery of King Tutankhamun. Related Stories Egyptians Find...
Near East
Domestic cats may have ancient roots
	Posted by Pyro7480 On General/Chat 06/28/2007 3:45:32 PM EDT · 41 replies · 379+ views Yahoo! News (AP) | 6/28/2007 | Randolph E. Schmid WASHINGTON - Garfield, Morris and the Aristocats get the fame, but look to the origins of today's furry felines and you find "lybica," a Middle Eastern wildcat. Domestic cats can be traced to wild progenitors that interbred well over 100,000 years ago, new research indicates. "House cats -- which includes fancy breeds and feral cats -- those cats all form a genetic group that is virtually indistinguishable from ones in the Middle East," said Stephen J. O'Brien of the National Cancer Institute. "So, domestication, for sure, took place in the Middle East where those cats live today," added O'Brien, co-author...
Ancient Europe
Calendar Question Over Star Disc
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/26/2007 5:26:55 PM EDT · 28 replies · 374+ views BBC | 6-26-2007 Calendar question over star disc Some observers have likened the disc to a winking face Archaeologists have revived the debate over whether a spectacular Bronze Age disc from Germany is one of the earliest known calendars. The Nebra disc is emblazoned with symbols of the Sun, Moon and stars and said by some to be 3,600 years old. Writing in the journal Antiquity, a team casts doubt on the idea the disc was used by ancient astronomers as a precision tool for observing the sky. They instead argue that the disc was used for shamanistic rituals. But other archaeologists who...
Archaeoastronomy and Megaliths
Saar 'holding the secret of Dilmun'
	Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 06/29/2007 12:48:11 PM EDT · 9 replies · 77+ views Gulf Daily News | June 21st 2007 | Rebecca Torr A Saudi archaeologist... claims the Dilmun civilisation marked the first day of the year by the summer solstice, which falls today and every year on June 21. The theory is based on a discovery made by Dammam Regional Museum archaeologist Nabiel Al Shaikh in 1996, while he was conducting an excavation with a British team of archaeologists. At the site, he found an ancient temple with an oddly positioned triangular corner room, which he claims was used as an astronomical device to measure the position of the sun. He believes that during the summer solstice the sun would set over...
Longer Perspectives
Ancient Human Behavior Uncovered
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/24/2007 9:46:20 PM EDT · 12 replies · 529+ views Medical News Today | 6-24-2007 | Sofia Valleley Ancient Human Behavior Uncovered Article Date: 24 Jun 2007 - 4:00 PDT A major question in evolutionary studies today is how early did humans begin to think and behave in ways we would see as fundamentally modern" One index of 'behavioural modernity' is in the appearance of objects used purely as decoration or ornaments. Such items are widely regarded as having symbolic rather than practical value. By displaying them on the body as necklaces, pendants or bracelets or attached to clothing this also greatly increased their visual impact. The appearance of ornaments may be linked to a growing sense of...
Prehistory and Origins
Rise Of Man Theory 'Out By 400,000 Years'
	Posted by blam On News/Activism 06/24/2007 9:39:42 PM EDT · 76 replies · 1,610+ views Times Online | 6-25-2007 | Dalya Alberge Rise of man theory 'out by 400,000 years' Dalya Alberge, Arts CorrespondentJune 25, 2007 Our earliest ancestors gave up hunter-gathering and took to a settled life up to 400,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to controversial research. The accepted timescale of Man's evolution is being challenged by a German archaeologist who claims to have found evidence that Homo erectus -- mankind's early ancestor, who migrated from Africa to Asia and Europe -- began living in settled communities long before the accepted time of 10,000 years ago. The point at which settlement actually took place is the first critical stage...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Researchers May Remake Neanderthal DNA
	Posted by anymouse On News/Activism 06/25/2007 11:51:04 PM EDT · 48 replies · 676+ views Associated Press | 6-25-07 | RANDOLPH E. SCHMID Researchers studying Neanderthal DNA say it should be possible to construct a complete genome of the ancient hominid despite the degradation of the DNA over time. There is also hope for reconstructing the genome of the mammoth and cave bear, according to a research team led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Their findings are published in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Debate has raged for years about whether there is any relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans. Some researchers believe that Neanderthals were simply...
Mammoth Told Me...
Mammoths to Return? DNA Advances Spur Resurrection Debate
	Posted by presidio9 On News/Activism 06/27/2007 10:10:20 AM EDT · 62 replies · 930+ views National Geographic News | June 25, 2007 | Mason Inman Today the only place to see woolly mammoths and people side-by-side is on The Flintstones or in the movies. But researchers are on the verge of piecing together complete genomes of long-dead species such as Neandertals and mammoths. (See a brief overview of human genetics.) So now the big question is, Will we soon be able to bring such extinct species back to life? Researchers are divided over how they might try to do this and whether it's even feasible. (Related: "Woolly Mammoth Resurrection, 'Jurassic Park' Planned [April 8, 2005].) At the core of this issue is DNA, which encodes...
Biology and Cryptobiology
3TV Exclusive: Bigfoot caught on tape[North Texas]
	Posted by BGHater On News/Activism 06/28/2007 9:17:29 AM EDT · 55 replies · 2,303+ views AZ Family | 27 June 2007 | Scott Davis Exclusive new videotape may show elusive Bigfoot creature Bigfoot hunters are eating their hearts out. Cryptozoologists are hoping this new video may be the evidence they've sought. Skeptics are already dismissing it as another man in a monkey suit. On a secret, secluded location in the north Texas woods, a video camera equipped with a night-vision lens captured something strange. A hunched-over figure moves among the trees. It travels fast, appearing to skirt the trunks and branches with ease, despite the pich-black of night. The figure traverses a ravine and then moves off-camera, with the crunching of branches and leaves...
Civil War
Gen. Grant's Sword Draws $1.6M Bid
	Posted by BGHater On General/Chat 06/27/2007 12:30:48 PM EDT · 46 replies · 331+ views AP | 25 June 2007 | AP A diamond-adorned sword once owned by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant brought a winning bid of more than $1.6 million in an auction of Civil War items. The sword given to Grant, who later became the 18th president, was one of the marquee items among the 750 to be auctioned Sunday and Monday by Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas. Another showcase item up for bid was Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's frayed battle flag, which was auctioned for $896,250. Another item of note was a "Bonnie Blue" flag carried by the 3rd Texas State Cavalry, which drew a bid of $47,800....
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
World's Oldest Car Headed For Auction
	Posted by Daffynition On General/Chat 06/28/2007 6:01:48 PM EDT · 25 replies · 325+ views The Winding Road | June 28th, 2007 | unknown The world's oldest running car is set to cross the auction block at Pebble Beach in August. The catchy-sounding De Dion-Bouton et Trapardoux was built in France in 1884, and amazingly, it's a three owner car. Among its many credentials, "La Marquise" is a steam-powered four-wheeled car that is believed to have won the first automobile race. Top speed on the car is a startlingly high 38 miles-per-hour, which must feel decidedly exciting given its primitive construction and solid rubber tires. To reach that heady speed, drivers need to first stoke the car with coal, wood, paper, or other readily...
end of digest #154 20070630

[SunkenCiv]

Pretty dead week -- a mere 22 topics. I guess it was just too hot to dig.

Issue 156 will be the last issue of the third year of this Digest. Commemoration ideas are of course welcome. Should the gala appear in 156, or in 157? Posterity is at stake here. ;')

The local minor league baseball team got in a huge brawl during a game this week. The catcher started it when he stormed the mound. Apparently he thought the pitcher was throwing directly at him every single pitch, and he was sick of it.

No, I'm not making this up, it's all in the telling.

Visit the Free Republic Memorial Wall -- a history-related feature of FR.

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #154 20070630

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

22 topics from 1858386 to 1855680. 627 members.

[wildbill]

Most archeology in Summer is a mammoth undertaking.