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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #379 · v 8 · n 15 Saturday, October 22, 2011 |
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Welcome to issue #379 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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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #379 · v 8 · n 15 Saturday, October 22, 2011 |
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21 topics |
Welcome to issue #379 of the GGG Digest. · view this issue · |
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| Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #380 Saturday, October 29, 2011 |
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| Longer Perspectives | |
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| Astronomers discover complex organic matter in the universe |
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· 10/26/2011 11:05:29 AM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 46 replies · · U of Hong Kong · |
In today's issue of the journal Nature, astronomers report that organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the Universe. The results suggest that complex organic compounds are not the sole domain of life but can be made naturally by stars. Prof. Sun Kwok and Dr. Yong Zhang of the University of Hong Kong show that an organic substance commonly found throughout the Universe contains a mixture of aromatic (ring-like) and aliphatic (chain-like) components. The compounds are so complex that their chemical structures resemble those of coal and petroleum. Since coal and oil are remnants of ancient life, this type of... |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double | |
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| Gene Regulation And The Difference Between Human Beings And Chimpanzees |
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· 10/27/2011 5:49:24 AM PDT · · Posted by Pharmboy · · 23 replies · · Science 2.0 · |
When the DNA sequences of Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes were sequenced, the difference between the sequences of coding genes was smaller than expected based on the phenotypic differences between both species. If not the coding genes, then what is responsible for these dissimilarities? In the words of the authors of a new study that took a look at this question: Although humans and chimpanzees have accumulated significant differences in a number of phenotypic traits since diverging from a common ancestor about six to eight million years ago, their genomes are more than 98.5% identical at protein-coding loci. Since this... |
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| Prehistory & Origins | |
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| Solving the Mysteries of Short-Legged Neandertals |
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· 10/29/2011 2:43:28 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 26 replies · · Science News · |
"Studies looking at limb length have always concluded that a shorter limb, including in Neandertals, leads to less efficiency of movement, because they had to take more steps to go a given distance," says lead author Ryan Higgins, graduate student in the Johns Hopkins Center of Functional Anatomy and Evolution. "But the other studies only looked at flat land. Our study suggests that the Neandertals' steps were not less efficient than modern humans in the sloped, mountainous environment where they lived." Neandertals, who lived from 40,000 to 200,000 years ago in Europe and Western Asia, mostly during very cold periods,... |
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| Diet & Cuisine | |
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| Ancient cooking pots reveal gradual transition to agriculture |
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· 10/24/2011 4:43:41 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 7 replies · · U of York · |
Humans may have undergone a gradual rather than an abrupt transition from fishing, hunting and gathering to farming, according to a new study of ancient pottery. Researchers at the University of York and the University of Bradford analysed cooking residues preserved in 133 ceramic vessels from the Western Baltic regions of Northern Europe to establish whether these residues were from terrestrial, marine or freshwater organisms. The research led by Oliver Craig (York) and Carl Heron (Bradford) included an international team of archaeologists from The Heritage Agency of Denmark, The National Museum of Denmark, Moesgard Museum (Denmark), Christian-Albrechts-Universitat, Kiel (Germany) and... |
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| Agriculture & Animal Husbandry | |
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| From the Cave to the Kennel |
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· 10/29/2011 6:12:54 AM PDT · · Posted by Pharmboy · · 15 replies · · Wall St Journal · |
What the evolutionary history of the dog tells us about another animal: ourselves. From a cave in France, a new picture has emerged of canines as our prehistoric soulmates. Chauvet Cave in southern France houses the oldest representational paintings ever discovered. Created some 32,000 years ago, the 400-plus images of large grazing animals and the predators who hunted them form a multi-chambered Paleolithic bestiary. Many scholars believe that these paintings mark the emergence of a recognizably modern human consciousness. We feel that we know their creators, even though they are from a time and place as alien as another planet. |
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| Oëtzi the Iceman | |
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| Iceman Autopsy |
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· 10/29/2011 4:22:00 AM PDT · · Posted by Renfield · · 30 replies · · National Geographic · |
Shortly after 6 p.m. on a drizzling, dreary November day in 2010, two men dressed in green surgical scrubs opened the door of the Iceman's chamber in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. They slid the frozen body onto a stainless steel gurney. One of the men was a young scientist named Marco Samadelli. Normally, it was his job to keep the famous Neolithic mummy frozen under the precise conditions that had preserved it for 5,300 years, following an attack that had left the Iceman dead, high on a nearby mountain. On this day, however, Samadelli had... |
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| Catastrophism & Astronomy | |
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| News from Finds at the Minoan Palace of Zakros |
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· 10/29/2011 5:41:31 AM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 13 replies · · Greek Reporter · |
Minoan civilisation, Zakros Palace in particular, are the focus of the 11th International Cretological Congress on October 21-27 in Rethymnon, one of the three big cities on the island. The Minoan Zakros Palace, located on the eastern part of the island, is one of the four Minoan palaces -- the others are Knossos, Festos and Malia -- uncovered by archaeological excavations last century. The palace spans 4,500 square metres (one fifth of the area of the Palace of Knossos) and was the religious and administrative centre for a settlement that spanned 8,000 square metres. The palace has two main structures,... |
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| Roman Empire | |
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| Lost Roman camp that protected against Germanic hordes found |
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· 10/28/2011 8:48:42 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 31 replies · · Telegraph UK · |
German archaeologists have unearthed "sensational" evidence of a lost Roman camp that formed a vital part of the frontier protecting Rome's empire against the Germanic hordes. Historians believe the camp, once home to an estimated 1,000 legionaries and located on the River Lippe near the town of Olfen, may well have been served as a key base for the Roman General Drusus, who waged a long and bloody war against the tribes that once inhabited what is now western Germany. The find comes 100 years after the discovery of a bronze Roman helmet near Olfen indicated the presence of ancient... |
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| British Isles | |
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| Fort find adds to potted history of Romans' boozing |
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· 10/28/2011 9:08:07 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 16 replies · · Shields Gazette · |
The "spectacular" discovery of ancient pottery has revealed how the Romans wined and dined here in South Tyneside almost 2,000 years ago. And far from sampling the delights of our local brews, it seems they still preferred to ship wines from the Mediterranean to their northern outpost. Several pieces of a 3ft-tall wine jug have been found during an excavation just outside Arbeia Roman Fort. The pottery will be stuck together to recreate the metre-high jug, which would have contained numerous litres of wine when it was imported to the fort between AD 250 and AD 350. ...archaeologist Nick Hodgson...... |
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| Ancient Autopsies | |
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| Roman-era couple held hands for 1,500 years |
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· 10/25/2011 4:42:32 PM PDT · · Posted by SJackson · · 21 replies · · MSNBC/Discovery · |
Archaeologists believe the pair was buried in a position of mutual adoration The skeletal remains of a Roman-era couple reveal the pair has been holding hands for 1,500 years. Italian archaeologists say the man and woman were buried at the same time between the 5th and 6th century A.D. in central-northern Italy. Wearing a bronze ring, the woman is positioned so she appears to be gazing at her male partner. "We believe that they were originally buried with their faces staring into each other. The position of the man's vertebrae suggests that his head rolled after death," Donato Labate, the... |
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| The Vikings | |
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| The find of a lifetime: Treasure hunter digs up 200-piece haul of Viking jewellery and coins |
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· 10/28/2011 9:00:44 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 21 replies · · Daily Mail · |
Treasure trove: Darren Webster uncovered a 1,000-year-old casket containing 200 pieces of silver jewellery, coins, hacksilver and ingots while using his metal detector in Cumbria... Brian Randall, chairman of the Lune Valley Metal Detecting Club, said: 'We are all thrilled for Darren and wish it was us. 'No one goes out looking for hoards but it's very nice if you do find one.' ...Oxford University anthropology lecturer, Stephen Oppenheimer, said big hoards such as this paint a new picture of what Vikings were doing in England... Local archaeologist Steve Dickinson, of Ulverston, said the hoard was 'extremely important nationally'. He... |
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| Farty Shades of Green | |
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| Linn Duchaill: Ireland's unlikely Viking capital |
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· 10/24/2011 9:42:21 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 8 replies · · BBC · |
A windswept barley field just south of Dundalk seems an unlikely spot for Ireland's capital. But if things had been different, Annagassan near Castlebellingham might have been the principal city on the island of Ireland. Twelve hundred years ago it was the site of Linn Duchaill, one of the first Viking settlements, which rivalled Dublin in size and importance. Folklore said it was there, but all traces of it had disappeared, until a group of archaeologists and local historians set out to prove its existence. Extensive field research and test digs have now done that. What they found was a huge... |
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| Middle Ages & Renaissance | |
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| 13th century Mongolian wreckage discovered off Japanese seabed [Kublai Khan's lost fleet?] |
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· 10/28/2011 8:45:17 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 9 replies · · Telegraph UK · |
The vessel is the first of its kind to have been discovered relatively intact and dates from a series of attempts by Kublai Khan, emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, to subjugate Japan between 1274 and 1281. Researchers have previously only been able to recover anchor stones and cannonballs from the scattered wrecks of the Mongol fleets and they believe that this latest find will shed new light on the maritime technology of the day. The warship was located with ultrasonic equipment about 3 feet beneath the seabed at a depth of 75 feet. The archeological team, from Okinawa's University of... |
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| Age of Sail | |
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| Sir Francis Drake's final fleet 'discovered off the coast of Panama' |
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· 10/24/2011 5:04:43 PM PDT · · Posted by 2ndDivisionVet · · 15 replies · · London Telegraph · |
His burial at sea in full armour and in a lead casket was designed to ensure that no one -- but especially the Spanish -- would find his body. Now, more than 400 years after Sir Francis Drake's death in the Caribbean, the great seafarer's watery grave may be close to being discovered. A team of treasure hunters led by an American former basketball team owner claims to have discovered two ships from Drake's fleet lying on the seabed off the coast of Panama. The 195-ton Elizabeth and 50-ton Delight were scuttled shortly after the naval hero's death from dysentery,... |
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| Climate | |
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| Team Says Arctic Ice Shelf Broke Up Before (1400AD to exact) |
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· 10/25/2011 3:53:10 PM PDT · · Posted by Dallas59 · · 37 replies · · Physorg · |
Now however, new research by a team from UniversitÈ Laval in Canada, led by Dermot Antoniadesa, have found, after studying sedimentary material on the bottom of the Disraeli Fiord, created by backup from an ice shelf in Northern Canada, that it experienced a major fracture that resulted in an overall reduction of the ice shelf some 1,400 years ago. Which means this isn't the first time that the shelf ice has melted and broken apart. The team has published the results of its survey in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. |
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| Megaliths & Archaeoastronomy | |
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| Archaeologist Claims 12,000-Year-Old Solstice Site in Clarke County[VA] |
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· 10/23/2011 6:16:29 PM PDT · · Posted by FritzG · · 12 replies · · Clarke Daily News · |
Bear's Den Rock has captured the attention of travelers in the northern Shenandoah Valley since colonial times and for thousands of years before by the indigenous people who hunted and fished in the region. Now, a local archaeologist believes that the prominent outcrop just south of Virginia's Route 7 in Clarke County is a part of a larger 12,000 year old celestial calendar used by Native Americans to mark the changing of the seasons. Archaeologist Jack Hranicky believes that a 12,000-year-old solstice site has been discovered in Clarke County, Virginia"Although archaeological sites have been discovered across the United States, there's... |
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| Pages | |
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| Strange tales from the Royal Society (now online) |
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· 10/27/2011 7:14:32 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 15 replies · · BBC · |
The world's oldest scientific academy, the Royal Society, has made its historical journal, which includes about 60,000 scientific papers, permanently free to access online.The plague, the Great Fire of London and even the imprisonment of its editor - just a few of the early setbacks that hit the Royal Society's early editions of the Philosophical Transactions. But against the odds the publication, which first appeared in 1665, survived. Its archives offer a fascinating window on the history of scientific progress over the last few centuries. Nestling amongst illustrious papers by Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin are some undiscovered gems from... |
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| World War Eleven | |
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| Possible WWII submarine wreck found in PNG |
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· 10/27/2011 5:05:35 AM PDT · · Posted by naturalman1975 · · 15 replies · · news.com.au · |
The Royal Australian Navy is investigating an uncharted wreck in Papua New Guinea, believed to be a submarine, discovered in a joint operation with the New Zealand Navy. |
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| Epigraphy & Language | |
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| Computer scientist cracks mysterious 'Copiale Cipher' |
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· 10/25/2011 6:44:24 AM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 25 replies · · U of Southern California · |
Translation expert turning insights and computing power on other coded messagesThe manuscript seems straight out of fiction: a strange handwritten message in abstract symbols and Roman letters meticulously covering 105 yellowing pages, hidden in the depths of an academic archive. Now, more than three centuries after it was devised, the 75,000-character "Copiale Cipher" has finally been broken. The mysterious cryptogram, bound in gold and green brocade paper, reveals the rituals and political leanings of a 18th-century secret society in Germany. The rituals detailed in the document indicate the secret society had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology, though it... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany | |
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| Berlin Restaurant Caters to Modern Cavemen |
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· 10/25/2011 3:36:42 PM PDT · · Posted by Cardhu · · 64 replies · · Der Spiegel · |
No cheese, bread or sugar are available at a recently opened Berlin eatery. In fact, guests are served dishes made only of ingredients that would have been available to their hunter-gatherer ancestors. The Stone Age fare is prepared by adherents of the Paleolithic movement, who say their restaurant is the first of its kind in Europe. The restaurant menu shows a stereotypical image of modern humanity's forbearer, the jutting profile of a hirsute caveman. Inside, diners eat at candle-lit tables with a contemporary cave painting hanging in the background. These hints aside, Berlin's Sauvage restaurant looks similar to many of... |
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| end of digest #380 20111029 | |
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