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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #378 · v 8 · n 14 Saturday, October 15, 2011 |
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21 topics |
Welcome to issue #378 of the GGG Digest. · view this issue · |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #378 Saturday, October 15, 2011 |
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| Ancient Autopsies | |
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| Prehistoric Teen Girl's Grave Found Near Henge |
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· 10/10/2011 4:28:43 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 48 replies · · Discovery News · · Thursday, October 6, 2011 · · Jennifer Viegas · |
Four to five thousand years ago, a wealthy teenage girl was laid to rest in a grave at what archaeologists believe is a newly found henge in Kent, England. The discovery of the 17-year-old's grave -- along with a unique prehistoric pot inside of a ringed ditch near two other women -- strengthens the idea that important death-related rituals took place at many of these mysterious ancient monuments when they were first erected. "What is becoming clear is that with a series of major excavations in Kent linked to road and rail works, and new aerial photography, there are many... |
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| Megaliths & Archaeoastronomy | |
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| Do survey results show a massive prehistoric monument under the water of the Stenness Loch? |
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· 10/10/2011 7:11:54 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 28 replies · · Orkneyjar · · Monday, October 3, 2011 · · Sigurd Towrie · |
The preliminary remote sensing results of the loch bed around the Ring of Brodgar (visible at the top of the picture, centre). The large, circular 'anomaly' is boxed in white. (Images: The Rising Tide project) |
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| Take Your Pict | |
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| Dig team find proof there were Picts on the Brough of Deerness before the Vikings |
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· 10/12/2011 4:10:14 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 51 replies · · Orkneyjar · · Thursday, August 11, 2011 · · Sigurd Towrie · |
One of the most significant discoveries of this year's dig is conclusive evidence that the earliest viking houses, thought to date from around AD900, were preceded by a Pictish settlement. Previously -- excavations were carried out in 2008 and 2009 -- a number of Pictish artefacts had been found on the site, but there was no actual proof that the Picts lived there... One question that has yet to be answered though, is what happened in the transition between the Pict and the viking villages, and, as yet, no evidence has been found of an integration between the two. "In... |
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| Climate | |
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| Columbus blamed for Little Ice Age |
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· 10/13/2011 2:17:57 PM PDT · · Posted by afraidfortherepublic · · 114 replies · · ScienceNews · · 10-22-11 · · Devin Powell · |
Depopulation of Americas may have cooled climate MINNEAPOLIS -- By sailing to the New World, Christopher Columbus and the other explorers who followed may have set off a chain of events that cooled Europe's climate for centuries. The European conquest of the Americas decimated the people living there, leaving large areas of cleared land untended. Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University. "We have a massive reforestation event that's sequestering carbon -- coincident... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis & PreClovis | |
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| Figures Found During Mural Restoration in Mexico |
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· 10/10/2011 3:25:25 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 17 replies · · Latin American Herald Tribune · · Monday, October 10,2011 · · EFE · |
Mexican experts have discovered some small, previously hidden figures in a Mayan mural while carrying out restoration work on it, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said. Figures representing the heads of three men were found during the treatment being given to the Murals of Bonampak at the like-named archaeological site, located in the Lacandona jungle in the southern state of Chiapas, that dates back to the year 790 A.D. Further information about the diminutive figures has not yet come to light, the INAH said. At the same time, the iconography of two images painted on the upper... |
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| The Mayans | |
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| Any Freepers an expert in Mayan artifacts? |
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· 10/09/2011 7:15:04 PM PDT · · Posted by big bad easter bunny · · 62 replies · |
I have come across a piece which looks like a Mayan death mask, anyone know much about this type of possible artifact? |
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| Agriculture & Animal Husbandry | |
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| Ancient Greek farmers found buried with livestock: Report |
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· 10/10/2011 4:40:59 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 12 replies · · Straits Times · · Friday, October 7, 2011 · · AFP · |
Archaeologists in northern Greece have found a rare group of ancient graves where farmers were interred with their livestock, a Greek daily reported on Friday. At least 11 adults and 16 farm animals were found buried together near the town of Mavropigi in the northern region of Macedonia, some 21km from the city of Kozani, Ethnos daily said. The men, women and a child lay alongside horses, oxen, dogs and a pig in two rows of graves, the area's head archaeologist told the newspaper. 'It is the first time that this strange custom is found at such a scale, and... |
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| Diet & Cuisine | |
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| New technologies challenge old ideas about early hominid diets |
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· 10/13/2011 1:41:09 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 5 replies · · University of Colorado at Boulder · · October 13, 2011 · · Unknown · |
New assessments by researchers using the latest high-tech tools to study the diets of early hominids are challenging long-held assumptions about what our ancestors ate, says a study by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Arkansas. By analyzing microscopic pits and scratches on hominid teeth, as well as stable isotopes of carbon found in teeth, researchers are getting a very different picture of the diet habitats of early hominids than that painted by the physical structure of the skull, jawbones and teeth. While some early hominids sported powerful jaws and large molars -- including Paranthropus boisei, dubbed... |
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| Africa | |
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| 100,000-year-old ochre toolkit and workshop discovered in South Africa |
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· 10/13/2011 11:32:56 AM PDT · · Posted by Red Badger · · 10 replies · · http://www.physorg.com · · 13 Oct 2011 · · Provided by University of the Witwatersrand · |
An ochre-rich mixture, possibly used for decoration, painting and skin protection 100,000 years ago, and stored in two abalone shells, was discovered at Blombos Cave in Cape Town, South Africa. "Ochre may have been applied with symbolic intent as decoration on bodies and clothing during the Middle Stone Age," says Professor Christopher Henshilwood from the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, who together with his international team discovered a processing workshop in 2008 where a liquefied ochre-rich mixture was produced. The findings will be published in the journal Science tomorrow. The two coeval, spatially associated... |
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| Let's Have Jerusalem | |
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| Israeli cave: World's first factory? |
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· 10/10/2011 5:01:27 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 20 replies · · Jerusalem Post · · Tuesday, October 4, 2011 · · David Rosenberg · |
In a cave not far from where thousands of Israelis work in hi-tech companies in the Afek Industrial Zone, their Paleolithic ancestors were engaged in some of their own cutting-edge innovation and manufacturing. Indeed, the people who produced the thousands of knives and other tools in Qassem Cave between 200,000 and 400,000 years ago may have been the world's first industrial workers, says Ran Barkai, who with two other Tel Aviv University archeologists, Ron Shimelmitz and Avi Gopher, has been excavating the site. Their findings, based on the examination of more than 19,000 stone implements produced and used by the... |
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| Catastrophism & Astronomy | |
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| The shifting face of a 200-million-year-old mystery |
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· 10/14/2011 6:33:24 AM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 26 replies · · BBC · · October 13, 2011 · · Jason Palmer · |
Five times in the last half a billion years, tremendous, global-scale extinctions have wiped out a significant fraction of life on Earth -- and each of them presents a grand puzzle. The most recent and the most familiar is the extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs -- between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, about 65 million years ago. But before that, 205 million years ago, was the "End-Triassic Event" -- it set the stage for the Jurassic Period, which saw the rise to prominence of the dinosaurs. Just what happened that killed off half the species on the planet, though,... |
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| Biology & Cryptobiology | |
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| Giant Kraken Lair Discovered |
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· 10/10/2011 6:55:25 AM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 53 replies · · Geological Society of America · · October 10, 2011 · · Unknown · |
Boulder, CO, USA -- Long before whales, the oceans of Earth were roamed by a very different kind of air-breathing leviathan. Snaggle-toothed ichthyosaurs larger than school buses swam at the top of the Triassic Period ocean food chain, or so it seemed before Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark McMenamin took a look at some of their remains in Nevada. Now he thinks there was an even larger and more cunning sea monster that preyed on ichthyosaurs: a kraken of such mythological proportions it would have sent Captain Nemo running for dry land. McMenamin will be presenting the results of his... |
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| Paleontology | |
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| Terrestrial biodiversity recovered faster after Permo-Triassic extinction than previously believed |
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· 10/10/2011 7:01:06 AM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 17 replies · · University of Rhode Island · · October 10, 2011 · · Unknown · |
Results contradict several theories for cause of extinctionKINGSTON, R.I. -- October 10, 2011 -- While the cause of the mass extinction that occurred between the Permian and Triassic periods is still uncertain, two University of Rhode Island researchers collected data that show that terrestrial biodiversity recovered much faster than previously thought, potentially contradicting several theories for the cause of the extinction. David Fastovsky, URI professor of geosciences, and graduate student David Tarailo found that terrestrial biodiversity recovered in about 5 million years, compared to the 15- to 30-million year recovery period that earlier studies had estimated. The recovery period in... |
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| Central Asia | |
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| Tiny Drone Reveals Ancient Royal Burial Sites [ Scythians ] |
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· 10/11/2011 3:31:47 AM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 4 replies · · LiveScience · · October 7, 2011 · · Charles Choi · |
Tuekta is in the Altai Mountains where Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia come together. Researchers there have discovered burial mounds 2,300 to 2,800 years old and up to 250 feet (76 meters) wide. These burial mounds, called "kurgans," probably belonged to chiefs or princes among the Scythians, a nomadic people known for their horsemanship, who once had a rich, powerful empire. Excavations of some of these have revealed extraordinary treasures of gold and other artifacts well-preserved by permafrost. Nearly 200 burial mounds were discovered in Tuekta, situated along the River Ursul. The site's heart appears to once have been a... |
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| Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles | |
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| Deadly Black Death bug hasn't changed, but we have |
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· 10/12/2011 6:26:05 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 46 replies · · Associated Press · · October 12, 2011 · · Seth Borenstein · |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientists have cracked the genetic code of the Black Death, one of history's worst plagues, and found that its modern day bacterial descendants haven't changed much over 600 years. Luckily, we have. > In devastating the population, it changed the human immune system, basically wiping out people who couldn't deal with the disease and leaving the stronger to survive, said study co-author Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University in Ontario. > |
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| Black death DNA unravelled (Genetic code of 'mother' of deadly bubonic plague reassembled) |
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· 10/13/2011 1:35:49 PM PDT · · Posted by SeekAndFind · · 16 replies · · The Telegraph · · 10/12/2011 · |
Scientists used the degraded strands to reconstruct the entire genetic code of the deadly bacterium. It is the first time experts have succeeded in drafting the genome of an ancient pathogen, or disease-causing agent. The researchers found that a specific strain of the plague bug Yersinia pestis caused the pandemic that killed 100 million Europeans -- between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of the total population -- in just five years between 1347 and 1351. They also learned that the strain is the "mother" of all modern bubonic plague bacteria. "Every outbreak across the globe today stems from... |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double | |
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| DNA Used In Attempt To Solve Christian Mystery |
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· 07/21/2003 3:49:04 PM PDT · · Posted by blam · · 6 replies · · 207+ views · · The Guardian (UK) · · 7-21-2003 · · Tim Radford · |
DNA used in attempt to solve Christian mystery Tim Radford, science editor Monday July 21, 2003 The Guardian (UK) A full-page miniature in the Canterbury Gospels manuscript. Photograph: Corpus Christi Genetic fingerprinting might soon clear up an ancient Christian mystery -- the origins of medieval parchments and even the Canterbury Gospels, thought to have arrived in Britain in 579AD. Cambridge scientists plan to study DNA in parchments prepared from animal skins to trace where they came from. With a £52,000 grant from the arts and humanities research board, Christopher Howe, a Cambridge biochemist, and Christopher de Hamel of Corpus Christi... |
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| Epigraphy & Language | |
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| Invisible Scribes of Medieval Literature Revealed |
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· 10/15/2011 9:05:37 AM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 1 replies · · Past Horizons · · Thursday, October 13, 2011 · · unattributed · |
Scholars led by Professor Linne Mooney in the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, carried out research aimed at identifying the scribes who made the first copies of works by major authors of the 14th and early 15th centuries, including Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland. The project has launched a new freely-accessible website www.medievalscribes.com, created by the University of Sheffield's HRI, which illustrates each medieval or early modern manuscript of writings by five major Middle English authors: Chaucer, Langland, John Gower, John Trevisa and Thomas Hoccleve. Professor Mooney said:... |
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| Middle Ages & Renaissance | |
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| In search of the real Dracula (Squeamish?) |
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· 10/12/2011 8:40:59 AM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 27 replies · · BBC · · Leif Pettersen · |
Long before Bram Stoker's literary Dracula sparked a century-long, global obsession with vampires -- both the torturing and tortured variety -- a lavishly mustachioed Wallachian prince by the name of Vlad Dracula (r 1448, 1456-1462 and 1476) was making a name for himself by heroically repelling successive waves of Ottoman invaders. > However, Dracula famously earned the post-mortem moniker ... (impaler) from his preferred form of execution: skewering. A wooden stake was carefully driven through the victim's buttocks, emerging just below the shoulders. This diabolical method ingeniously (ie, cruelly) spared all the vital organs, meaning that the now writhing victim... |
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| The Revolution | |
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| Hard-Headed Idealist [Book review of short Madison bio] |
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· 10/13/2011 10:52:25 AM PDT · · Posted by Pharmboy · · 5 replies · · Wall St Journal · · OCTOBER 13, 2011 · · Review by ARAM BAKSHIAN JR. · |
The man who drafted the Bill of Rights later helped Thomas Jefferson conduct a back-channel propaganda war.. Yes, George Washington was the father of our country, but who fathered its politics? Certainly not Washington, who detested the very notion of partisanship and did his best to govern as First Magistrate, above the interests of "faction." His successor, the honest but hyper-irascible John Adams, was temperamentally incapable of cold political calculation, one reason that he was so vulnerable to attack during his single presidential term. Thomas Jefferson, who cultivated an above-the-fray, nonpolitical persona, had a keen private appreciation of... |
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| Early America | |
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| Once a host to presidents, historic Bucksport inn up for auction |
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· 10/12/2011 11:17:09 AM PDT · · Posted by ConservativeStatement · · 3 replies · · Bangor Daily News · · October 10, 2011 · · Kevin Miller · |
BUCKSPORT, Maine -- A 230-year-old Bucksport landmark that has hosted presidents, arctic explorers and other famous figures but has sat lifeless for the better part of a decade is about to go on the auction block. The Jed Prouty Inn, as the building is still known, is a 17-bedroom former hotel that has anchored Bucksport's Main Street in one form or another since about 1780. Now the financial firm that acquired the building after the last business closed nearly eight years ago is hoping a buyer will emerge during an online auction held Tuesday through Thursday. Bidding will start at... |
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| end of digest #378 20111015 | |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #378 · v 8 · n 14 Saturday, October 15, 2011 |
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21 topics |
Welcome to issue #378 of the GGG Digest. · view this issue · |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #379 Saturday, October 22, 2011 |
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| Middle Ages & Renaissance | |
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| Hollywood Dishonors the Bard [ review of stupid Roland Emmerich movie ] |
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· 10/18/2011 6:50:16 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 22 replies · · New York Times · · October 16, 2011 · · James Shapiro · |
Roland Emmerich's film "Anonymous," which opens next week, "presents a compelling portrait of Edward de Vere as the true author of Shakespeare's plays." That's according to the lesson plans that Sony Pictures has been distributing to literature and history teachers in the hope of convincing students that Shakespeare was a fraud. A documentary by First Folio Pictures (of which Mr. Emmerich is president) will also be part of this campaign. So much for "Hey, it's just a movie!" The case for Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, dates from 1920, when J. Thomas Looney, an English writer who loathed... |
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| Epigraphy & Language | |
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| Finding Archimedes in the Shadows |
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· 10/18/2011 4:54:46 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 11 replies · · New York Times · · October 16, 2011n · · Edward Rothstein · |
Baltimore --- "The Archimedes Palimpsest" could well be the title of a Robert Ludlum thriller, though its plot's esoteric arcana might also be useful for Dan Brown in his next variation on "The Da Vinci Code." It features a third-century B.C. Greek mathematician (Archimedes) known for his playful brilliance; his lost writings, discovered more than a hundred years ago in an Istanbul convent; and various episodes involving plunder, pilferage and puzzling forgeries. The saga includes a monastery in the Judaean desert, a Jewish book dealer trying to flee Paris as the Nazis closed in, a French freedom fighter and an... |
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| The Etruscans | |
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| Ancient Etruscan childbirth image is first for western art |
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· 10/19/2011 9:01:38 AM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 31 replies · · Southern Methodist University · · Unknown · |
An archaeological excavation at Poggio Colla, the site of a 2,700-year-old Etruscan settlement in Italy's Mugello Valley, has turned up a surprising and unique find: two images of a woman giving birth to a child. Researchers from the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, which oversees the Poggio Colla excavation site some 20 miles northeast of Florence, discovered the images on a small fragment from a ceramic vessel that is more than 2,600 years old. The images show the head and shoulders of a baby emerging from a mother represented with her knees raised and her face shown in profile, one arm... |
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| Megaliths & Archaeoastronomy | |
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| Megalith Builders, Red Paint People and Algonquins |
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· 10/21/2011 5:35:24 PM PDT · · Posted by Renfield · · 14 replies · · Frontiers of Anthropology · · 3-17-2011 · |
...Hearing that the entire language group including the Algonquins (and the others more generically called Algonkians) is most closely related to Old World languages with a Megalithic connection was revealing to me because the peoples with the Algonquin-related languages are also ones that are otherwise compared to Western Europeans.... ~~~snip~~~ ...The book Men Out Of Asia by Harold Gladwin(mcGraw Hill, 1947) was also written when a more racist view of Physical Anthropology was the norm, and the book hypothesizes a series of different movements of people into America (Gladwin assumes via the Bering Straits)Gladwin's second migration dating from 15000 to... |
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| Navigation | |
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| The Seaweed Trail: Peopling the Americas |
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· 10/17/2011 1:55:09 PM PDT · · Posted by Renfield · · 12 replies · · Past Horizons · · 10-12-2011 · · Keith Davis · |
Mapmakers once thought the earth was flat. Astronomers used to believe the sun circled the earth. As late as the 1990s, archaeologists were convinced that the original American settlers crossed a land bridge from Asia into Alaska, found daylight between the glaciers, and gradually followed it south. According to what had been orthodox thinking, that happened about 12,000 years ago. "Suppose it were true," says Jack Rossen, associate professor and chair of the Department of anthropology. "Suppose you could find a corridor through a mile-high wall of ice and follow it for a thousand miles. What would you eat? Popsicles?"... |
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| The Vikings | |
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| Happy Leif Erikson Day! |
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· 10/09/2011 4:20:34 AM PDT · · Posted by Lonesome in Massachussets · · 26 replies · · Eiriks Saga Rau'a · · Snorri Sturluson · |
1. kafli -- Óleifur hét herkonungur er kalla'ur var Óleifur hvíti. Hann var son Ingjalds konungs Helgasonar, Ólafssonar, Gu'rö'arsonar, Hálfdanarsonar hvítbeins Upplendingakonungs. |
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| Scotland Yet | |
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| Ardnamurchan Viking boat burial discovery 'a first' |
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· 10/18/2011 7:18:46 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 12 replies · · BBC · · October 18, 2011 · · Unknown · |
The UK mainland's first fully intact Viking boat burial site has been uncovered in the north-west Highlands, archaeologists have said.The site, at Ardnamurchan, is thought to be more than 1,000 years old. Artefacts buried alongside the Viking in his boat suggest he was a high-ranking warrior. Archaeologist Dr Hannah Cobb said the "artefacts and preservation make this one of the most important Norse graves ever excavated in Britain". Dr Cobb, from the University of Manchester, a co-director of the project, said: "This is a very exciting find." She has been excavating artefacts in Ardnamurchan for six years. |
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| Video: Viking ship found in Scottish Highlands |
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· 10/20/2011 9:42:40 AM PDT · · Posted by smokingfrog · · 23 replies · · youtube · · 19 Oct 2011 · · telegraphtv · |
Archaeologists discover remains of a man buried in a Viking boat-burial site in the Scottish Highlands. |
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| Diet & Cuisine | |
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| Ancient Greek Ships Carried More Than Just Wine |
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· 10/16/2011 7:46:09 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 22 replies · · Nature · · Friday, October 14, 2011 · · Jo Marchant · |
A DNA analysis of ancient storage jars suggests that Greek sailors traded a wide range of foods --- not just wine, as many historians have assumed. The study, in press at the Journal of Archaeological Science1, finds evidence in nine jars taken from Mediterranean shipwrecks of vegetables, herbs and nuts. The researchers say DNA testing of underwater artefacts from different time periods could help to reveal how such complex markets developed across the Mediterranean. Archaeologist Brendan Foley of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts and geneticist Maria Hansson of Lund University, Sweden, retrieved DNA from nine amphorae --- the... |
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| Roman Empire | |
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| Biggest haul of Roman gold in Britain could have been found |
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· 10/17/2011 3:10:32 PM PDT · · DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis · · 8 replies · · Telegraph · · 10-16-11 · |
Britain's biggest haul of Roman gold, worth millions of pounds, could have been found in Worcestershire by a treasure hunter. Details of the treasure remained sketchy and the identity of the lucky metal detecting enthusiast has not been revealed. But it is understood Worcestershire County Council and the county coroner have been informed because of the potential archaeological significance. The treasure, found at Bredon Hill, the site of an Iron Age fort in Worcestershire, is already being compared with the Staffordshire Hoard, the country's biggest ever find of Anglo Saxon gold. It netted lucky Terry and local farmer Fred Johnson... |
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| British Isles | |
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| Staffordshire Gold Hoard (More Saxon Treasure) |
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· 10/20/2011 4:33:14 AM PDT · · Posted by Renfield · · 14 replies · · National Geographic · · 11-2011 · · Caroline Alexander · |
One day, or perhaps one night, in the late seventh century an unknown party traveled along an old Roman road that cut across an uninhabited heath fringed by forest in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia. Possibly they were soldiers, or then again maybe thieves --- the remote area would remain notorious for highwaymen for centuries --- but at any rate they were not casual travelers. Stepping off the road near the rise of a small ridge, they dug a pit and buried a stash of treasure in the ground. For 1,300 years the treasure lay undisturbed, and eventually the landscape evolved from forest clearing... |
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| Ancient Autopsies | |
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| Face-to-face with an ancient human (Norway - 7,500 YO) |
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· 10/20/2011 7:35:10 AM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 27 replies · · University of Stavanger · · October 20, 2011 · · Text: Karen Anne Okstad · · Translation: Rolf Gooderham · |
A reconstruction based on the skull of Norway's best-preserved Stone Age skeleton makes it possible to study the features of a boy who lived outside Stavanger 7 500 years ago."It is hoped that this reconstruction is a good likeness and that, if someone who knew him in life had been presented with this restoration, they would hopefully have recognised the face", says Jenny Barber, an MSc student at the University of Dundee in Scotland. She has scientifically rebuilt the face of the strong and stocky Viste Boy, who lived in the Vistehola cave near Stavanger, so that people can now... |
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| Forensics put a face to stone age boy's remains |
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· 10/21/2011 10:29:14 AM PDT · · Posted by Winstons Julia · · 21 replies · · History · · 10/21/11 · · Staff · |
Earlier studies of the Viste Boy's remains and artifacts from Vistehola suggested that the Stone Age youth died at the age of 15 around 5500 B.C. He stood at just 4 feet tall, lived in a clan with 10 to 15 members and ate a fish-heavy diet. Experts also speculated that the teen had a sickly constitution and died prematurely as a result. |
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| Oëtzi the Iceman | |
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| Iceman stories begin arriving! |
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· 10/18/2011 10:34:58 AM PDT · · Posted by FritzG · · 18 replies · · Dienekes' Anthropology Blog · · 17 Oct 2011 · · Dienekes · |
The National Geographic has info, a teaser for an October 26 Nova special: The genetic results add both information and intrigue. From his genes, we now know that the Iceman had brown hair and brown eyes and that he was probably lactose intolerant and thus could not digest milk --- somewhat ironic, given theories that he was a shepherd. Not surprisingly, he is more related to people living in southern Europe today than to those in North Africa or the Middle East, with close connections to geographically isolated modern populations in Sardinia, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. The DNA analysis also revealed... |
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| Prehistory & Origins | |
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| Archaeologists find blade production earlier than originally thought |
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· 10/17/2011 8:23:34 AM PDT · · Posted by Red Badger · · 54 replies · · http://www.physorg.com · · 17 OCT 2011 · · Tel Aviv University · |
Archaeology has long associated advanced blade production with the Upper Palaeolithic period, about 30,000-40,000 years ago, linked with the emergence of Homo Sapiens and cultural features such as cave art. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University have uncovered evidence which shows that "modern" blade production was also an element of Amudian industry during the late Lower Paleolithic period, 200,000-400,000 years ago as part of the Acheulo-Yabrudian cultural complex, a geographically limited group of hominins who lived in modern-day Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Prof. Avi Gopher, Dr. Ran Barkai and Dr. Ron Shimelmitz of TAU's Department of Archaeology and Ancient... |
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| CSI: PreClovis | |
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| Hunters present in North America 800 years earlier than previously thought: DNA analysis |
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· 10/20/2011 12:18:28 PM PDT · · Posted by Red Badger · · 41 replies · · http://www.physorg.com · · 20 OCT 2011 · · Provided by Texas A&M University · |
The tip of a bone point fragment found embedded in a mastodon rib from an archaeological site in Washington state shows that hunters were present in North America at least 800 years before Clovis, confirming that the first inhabitants arrived earlier to North America than previously thought, says a team of researchers led by a Texas A&M University archaeologist. Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M, and colleagues from Colorado, Washington and Denmark believe the find at the Manis site in Washington demonstrates that humans were... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis & PreClovis | |
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| Knife Lake: Rewriting prehistory |
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· 10/16/2011 7:14:05 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 16 replies · · Past Horizons · · Saturday, October 8, 2011 · · unattributed (David Connolly?) · |
Knife Lake straddles the border between Canada and Minnesota, with Quetoco Provincial Park to the north, and the famous Boundary Waters on the U.S. side. Professor Mark Muniz of St. Cloud State and fellow researches have been digging around there, and what they have found is fairly amazing if their dating holds up. The Ojibwe name for what the glaciers carved from the earth is Mookomaan Zaaga'igan, while the French fur traders called it Lac des Couteaux, or Lake of Knives. Stone tools found in this area may date from 11,000 to 12,500 years ago, which would indicate that the... |
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| Mesopotamia | |
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| The story behind the world's oldest museum, built by a Babylonian princess 2,500 years ago |
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· 10/16/2011 8:26:39 AM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 14 replies · · io9 · · May 25, 2011 · · Alasdair Wilkins · |
In 1925, archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered a curious collection of artifacts while excavating a Babylonian palace. They were from many different times and places, and yet they were neatly organized and even labeled. Woolley had discovered the world's first museum. It's easy to forget that ancient peoples also studied history - Babylonians who lived 2,500 years ago were able to look back on millennia of previous human experience. That's part of what makes the museum of Princess Ennigaldi so remarkable. Her collection contained wonders and artifacts as ancient to her as the fall of the Roman Empire is to us.... |
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| The Silk Road | |
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| Restored ancient citadel in western Afghanistan is symbol of hope in nation beset by war |
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· 10/17/2011 6:11:40 PM PDT · · Posted by Pan_Yan · · 9 replies · · AP via Washington Post · · Monday, October 17, 11:54 AM · |
HERAT, Afghanistan --- In the 1970s, tourists traveled to western Afghanistan to climb on the ruins of an ancient citadel, a fortress resembling a sandcastle that has stood overlooking the city of Herat for thousands of years. The citadel was crumbling then, but today the newly restored structure, dating back to the days of Alexander the Great, is a hopeful sign of progress in a country beset by war. Hundreds of Afghan craftsmen worked to restore the ruins' past glory with help from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and about $2.4 million from the U.S. and German governments. The... |
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| Warring States | |
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| West Asian Bead Found in Anhui's Ancient Tomb |
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· 10/17/2011 6:49:12 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 13 replies · · An Hui News · · October 12, 2011 · · Zheng Weiling · |
A West Asian dragonfly-eye-shaped bead was found in a 2,000-odd-year Chinese tomb in Dangtu, Anhui province, indicating noblemen living in China's Warring States period (475 BC-221BC) were exposed to West Asian civilization. Excavated from the roughly 400-sqm tomb were more than 40 cultural relics, of which most were potteries and celadon wares. Judging from those possessions, the occupant is expected to be an aristocrat of Yue, one of the seven major countries in the Warring States period, archaeologists said. The most eye-catching burial object is a glass bead resembling a dragonfly eye in appearance. Such kind of jewellery was made... |
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| Central Asia | |
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| Mysterious tombs discovered on Pamirs Plateau [ interior of China ] |
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· 10/16/2011 7:42:27 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 9 replies · · Xinhua · · Wednesday, October 12, 2011 · · unattributed · |
Chinese archaeologists have discovered an unidentified cluster of tombs on the Pamirs Plateau, unveiling a new mystery on the crossroads of the ancient Silk Road. Eights tombs, each two meters in diameter, were arranged on a 100-meter-long and 50-meter-wide terrace, with lines of black stones and lines of white stones stretching alongside like rays, according to the archaeology team with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that found the tombs in Xinjiang's Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County, a border region neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan, in October. "The tombs are peculiar. No similar ones had been detected before on the Pamirs Plateau,... |
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| Epigraphy & Language | |
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| Manchu Language Dying Out |
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· 10/15/2011 10:32:36 PM PDT · · Posted by Cronos · · 26 replies · · mongolianhistory.blogspot.com · · 2007 · · David Lague · |
Meng Shujing with her grandson, Shi Junguang, and great-grandson, Shi Yaobin, in their hometown of Sanjiazi.China's Manchu speakers struggle to save language By David Lague Published: International Herald Tribune,March 13, 2007 SANJIAZI, China: Seated cross- legged in her farmhouse on the kang, a brick sleeping platform warmed by a fire below, Meng Shujing lifted her chin and sang a lullaby in Manchu, softly but clearly. After several verses, the 82-year-old widow stopped, her eyes shining. "Baby, please fall asleep quickly," she said, translating a few lines of the song into Chinese. "Once you fall asleep, Mama can go to work.... |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| Nelson Sunk by PC Raiding Party (No heros for us, we're British.) |
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· 05/22/2005 3:55:32 PM PDT · · Posted by quidnunc · · 45 replies · · 827+ views · · The Sunday Times · · May 22, 2005 · · Andrew Porter · |
Admiral Nelson saw off the mighty Franco-Spanish fleet at the battle of Trafalgar but 200 years on, he has been sunk by a wave of political correctness. Organisers of a re-enactment to mark the bicentenary of the battle next month have decided it should be between "a Red Fleet and a Blue Fleet" not British and French/Spanish forces. Otherwise they fear visiting dignitaries, particularly the French, would be embarrassed at seeing their side routed. Even the official literature has been toned down. It describes the re-enactment not as the battle of Trafalgar but simply as "an early 19th-century sea battle".... |
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| Early America | |
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| Andrew Jackson: Tea Party President (Hmmm... maybe) |
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· 10/08/2011 9:20:10 AM PDT · · Posted by MontaniSemperLiberi · · 24 replies · · spectator · · October 8th, 2011 · · Robert W. Merry · |
BACK in the late 1990s, William Kristol and David Brooks, then colleagues at the Weekly Standard, fostered a boomlet of a movement called "national greatness conservatism," the central tenet of which seemed to be that the country didn't rise to sufficient grandeur to satisfy their national aspirations. That was the Clinton era, remember, when the Gross Domestic Product was expanding at an average 3.5 percent a year, and unemployment hovered around 4 percent. Federal coffers were overflowing with cash, and the national debt was actually shrinking. The world was relatively stable, America's global position seemed secure, and young U.S. soldiers... |
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| Catastrophism & Astronomy | |
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| Research team suggests European Little Ice Age came about due to reforestation in New World |
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· 10/17/2011 6:43:48 AM PDT · · Posted by Red Badger · · 88 replies · · http://www.physorg.com · · 14 Oct 2011 · · Bob Yirka · |
A team comprised of geological and environmental science researchers from Stanford University has been studying the impact that early European exploration had on the New World and have found evidence that they say suggests the European cold period from 1500 to 1750, commonly known as the Little Ice Age, was due to the rapid decline in native human populations shortly after early explorers arrived. Following up on their paper published in 2008, the team has now brought their findings before the Geological Society of America. The researchers say that the population decrease, which came about due to the introduction of... |
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| Columbus' Arrival Linked to Carbon Dioxide Drop |
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· 10/21/2011 11:02:39 AM PDT · · Posted by MoJoWork_n · · 47 replies · · Science News · · November 5, 2011 · · Devin Powell · |
By sailing to the New World, Christopher Columbus and other explorers who followed him may have set off a chain of events that cooled Europe's climate. The European conquest of the Americas decimated the people living there, leaving large areas of cleared land untended. Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, Stanford University geochemist Richard Nevle reported October 11 at the Geological Society of America annual meeting. Such carbon dioxide removal could have diminished the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooled the climate, Nevil and his colleagues have previously reported.... |
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| Let's Have Jerusalem | |
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| "Christopher Columbus was the first ZIONIST " |
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· 10/18/2011 4:19:54 AM PDT · · Posted by moneyrunner · · 4 replies · · The Virginian · · 10/18/2011 · · Moneyrunner · |
Someone leaked a batch of emails that have been exchanged by leaders of the Occupy Wall Street group. I've only dipped into them briefly, but some are pretty entertaining. This thread reminded me of my days as a leftist, and the difficulty of accommodating the diverse and sometimes inconsistent varieties of left-wing crackpotism. Christopher Columbus was the first ZIONIST ===don't you guys get it? The same colonial narrative -- genocide. We must endorse the Declaration of First Nation Peoples, in solidarity, for the plight of all people of color. Cesar and Bahareh, i agree -- this is most urgent. This exchange strikes me as... |
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| Religion of Pieces | |
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| Bombings, beheadings? Stats show a peaceful world |
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· 10/22/2011 3:43:04 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 14 replies · · Associated Press · · October 22, 2011 · · Seth Borenstein · |
> --- The number of people killed in battle --- calculated per 100,000 population --- has dropped by 1,000-fold over the centuries as civilizations evolved. Before there were organized countries, battles killed on average more than 500 out of every 100,000 people. In 19th century France, it was 70. In the 20th century with two world wars and a few genocides, it was 60. Now battlefield deaths are down to three-tenths of a person per 100,000. --- The rate of genocide deaths per world population was 1,400 times higher in 1942 than in 2008. --- There were fewer than 20... |
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| Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles | |
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| Witnesses to a catastrophe |
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· 10/19/2011 8:52:05 PM PDT · · Posted by BlackVeil · · 8 replies · · Irish Times · · 20 Oct 2011 · · Dick Ahlstrom · |
A forgotten Famine burial site inside the grounds of a former workhouse in Kilkenny has yielded the remains of nearly 1,000 people, and a wealth of knowledge about how they lived and how they died. AN GORTA M"R, the Great Hunger, was a time of terrible human drama as Ireland's poor struggled to survive the ravages of famine and disease. The chance discovery of a Famine-period burial ground in Kilkenny city now helps to tell their story,... Some one million people died and were buried as conditions and finance allowed, with the poorest ending up in burial grounds used by... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| Rowing for their lives: The poignant photographs of the aftermath of the sinking of the Titanic |
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· 10/19/2011 12:04:29 PM PDT · · Posted by alexmai · · 78 replies · · DailyMail · |
Astonishing unseen photographs of the aftermath of the Titanic disaster have emerged after 99 years. The black and white pictures show an iceberg at the site of the tragedy - and may even be the one that sunk the luxury liner. Another image shows two lifeboats packed full of survivors rowing for safety following the 1912 disaster in which 1,517 people died. Survivors from the Titanic are pictured here rowing towards rescue ship the Carpathia in what appear to be relatively calm seas Danger ahead: Taken from a rescue vessel, this photograph shows an iceberg in the distance - perhaps... |
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| Not-so-Ancient Autopsies | |
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| Spain: Franco's remains may be exhumed [ valiant fight to stay dead ] |
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· 10/21/2011 12:16:50 AM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 31 replies · · ADNKronos · · October 10, 2011 · · AKI · |
Spain may dig up the remains of late Fascist dictator Francisco Franco to move them from a sprawling mausoleum to a cemetery, according to a local news report. A commission of experts hired by the Spanish government is reviewing options on how to deal with the Valley of the Fallen, the burial place near Madrid where Franco is buried and is a controversial pilgrimage destination for Fascist sympathizers. Franco died in 1975 after emerging as the victor in the three-year Spanish Civil War which ended in 1939. The Valley of the Fallen holds the remains of more than 30,000 people.... |
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| Geology & Pareidolia | |
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| 4,000 years of history crashes to the ground |
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· 10/17/2011 6:46:42 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 39 replies · · Western Telegraph · · Thursday 13th October 2011 · · unattributed · |
An ancient monument has crashed to the ground after standing for more than 4,000 years as an important landmark. The famous standing stone at Bedd Morris, on Newport mountain, was snapped over the weekend, toppling over and crushing a nearby fence. Archaeologist Professor Geoffrey Wainwright, an expert who has worked on several sites in the Preselis, plans to play an active role in getting the stone reinstated. He said: "It's a tragedy, the stone has snapped and it's a real mess. "It's an important landscape feature and an important archaeological site and it must be put back as soon as... |
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| Paleontology | |
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| Perfect fossil could be most complete dinosaur ever |
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· 10/16/2011 7:07:25 AM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 68 replies · · New Scientists · · 13 October 2011 · · Jeff Hecht · |
Dinosaur fossils don't come much more impressive than this. With 98 per cent of its skeleton preserved, this young predatory theropod from southern Germany may be the most complete dinosaur ever found. Oliver Rauhut, curator of the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich, announced the find yesterday. Although Chinese bird and dinosaur fossils are famed for delicate details such as their feathers, they don't match this 72-centimetre-long theropod in terms of clarity and completeness of preservation. The young dinosaur has been dated at 135 million years old, putting it in the early Cretaceous, but it has yet... |
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| Biology & Cryptobiology | |
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| Albino Cyclops Shark Is Real, Experts Say |
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· 10/18/2011 10:02:27 AM PDT · · Posted by presidio9 · · 20 replies · · Fox News/Livescience · · October 18, 2011 · · Stephanie Pappas · |
In this world of Photoshop and online scams, it pays to have a hearty dose of skepticism at reports of something strange --- including an albino fetal shark with one eye smack in the middle of its nose like a Cyclops. But the Cyclops shark, sliced from the belly of a pregnant mama dusky shark caught by a commercial fisherman in the Gulf of California earlier this summer, is by all reports the real thing. Shark researchers have examined the preserved creature and found that its single eye is made of functional optical tissue, they said last week. It's unlikely,... |
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| Ribetting News | |
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| Dozen New Frogs, Plus Three 'Extinct' Ones, Found [Mug shots of innocents living in the shadows] |
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· 09/19/2011 9:10:02 AM PDT · · Posted by fight_truth_decay · · 19 replies · · Discovery News · · Mon Sep 19, 2011 08:35 AM ET · · Jennifer Viegas · |
All of the found and re-discovered species belong to the Night frog group, genus Nyctibatrachus. Thanks go to S.D. Biju, an amphibian biologist at the University of Delhi, and his team for tirelessly scouring the wildlife rich Western Ghats region, and performing DNA testing of the frogs. Biju and his colleagues over the years have discovered an astounding number of new frog species, 45. That number is likely to increase. Animal discoveries, however, often come with serious concern, since many of these species are few and far between and are desperately needing conservation help. At present, 32 percent of the... |
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| end of digest #379 20111022 | |
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