Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #142
Saturday, April 7, 2007
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Climate
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Warmer Globe, Smaller Brain?
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Posted by Sopater
On News/Activism 04/02/2007 6:23:53 PM EDT · 23 replies · 446+ views
AccuWeather.com | April 1, 2007 | Laura Hannon
Researchers at the State University of New York at Albany have found that early humans developed larger brains as they adapted to colder climates. Most likely, it was the need to find ways to keep warm and manage fluctuating food supplies that drove the evolution of larger brains. Gallup and Ash suggest that while our understanding of brain evolution remains incomplete, the study provides evidence of the role of climate and migration away from the equator as selective forces in promoting human intelligence, and that the recent trend toward global warming may be reversing a trend that led to brain...
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Ancient Primates Thrived In . . .Texas?
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 04/04/2007 5:41:08 PM EDT · 29 replies · 528+ views
Discovery | 4-3-2007 | AP
Ancient Primates Thrived in...Texas? Associated Press April 3, 2007 ó A team of anthropologists said their study of South Texas fossil deposits revealed evidence including ancient teeth that shows the area was home to numerous types of primates 42 million years ago. Lamar University Professor Jim Westgate and two colleagues announced the discovery of three new genera and four new species of primates based on their examination of material removed from Lake Casa Blanca International State Park near Laredo and the Mexican border. Westgate said the Laredo area was a coastal lagoon during the stage of geologic history known as...
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Epigraphy and Language
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Swansea woman donates birdman tablet to Mounds[Illinois]
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Posted by Dacb
On News/Activism 04/07/2007 11:00:18 AM EDT · 6 replies · 261+ views
News-Democrat | 03 April 2007 | TERI MADDOX
Archaeologists aren't sure why Mississippian Indians engraved small sandstone tablets with birdman images and crosshatching 1,000 years ago. Maybe the tablets were used as visual aids for spiritual storytelling. Maybe they were dipped in dye and stamped on deerskin to create patterns. "Maybe (a tablet) was displayed when you were traveling from one place to another," said Bill Iseminger, assistant site manager at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville. "It was a passport to show your rank or status or authority." Whatever their purpose, the tablets are considered archaeologically significant because they provide rare pictures from an ancient culture....
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Navigation
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Americas' 1st People Rethought; New Dating Methods Reveal Clovis Migration Theory Flaws
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Posted by Diana in Wisconsin
On News/Activism 02/24/2007 1:14:19 PM EST · 14 replies · 585+ views
JSOnline | February 23, 2007 | Susanne Rust
Brace yourself: The pillars of conventional scientific wisdom are crumbling. Just as science book publishers are rewriting texts to say that there are eight planets instead of nine, they may have another edit to contend with - this time about the first inhabitants of the New World. And we can thank Wisconsin researchers in part for this turnabout. Since the 1960s, archaeologists have argued that the Americas were populated by one group of hunters that crossed a land bridge connecting Siberia to Alaska 11,500 years ago. The descendants of this population then moved throughout the hemisphere, taking up residence across...
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Precolumbian, Clovis, And Preclovis
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ARCHAEOLOGY: Clovis Technology Flowered Briefly and Late, Dates Suggest
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Posted by Lessismore
On News/Activism 02/24/2007 1:56:56 PM EST · 11 replies · 431+ views
Science Magazine | 2007-02-23 | Charles C. Mann
For almost 80 years, one of the most enduring puzzles in the archaeology of the Americas has been the "Clovis culture," known for its elegant, distinctively shaped projectile points. Was Clovis the progenitor of all later Native American societies, as many researchers have long maintained, and, if so, how and when did it arrive in the Americas? On page 1122 of this week's issue, Michael R. Waters of Texas A&M University in College Station and Thomas W. Stafford Jr., proprietor of a private-sector laboratory in Lafayette, Colorado, use new radiocarbon data to argue that Clovis was a kind of brilliant...
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Art
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Prehistoric Women: Not So Simple, Not So Strange
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 03/31/2007 2:03:47 PM EDT · 46 replies · 235+ views
New Scientist | 3-28-2007 | Germaine Greer
Prehistoric women: Not so simple, not so strange 18:00 28 March 2007 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Germaine Greer Prehistoric women: Not so simple, not so strange This is a review of The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the true roles of women in prehistory by J. Adovasio, Olga Soffer & Jake Page, Collins, $27/£13.72, ISBN 9780061170911 Jim Adovasio is the leading expert in the perishable artefacts of the Palaeolithic -- baskets, cordage, woven fabric -- all associated, if somewhat arbitrarily, with women. To correct the astigmatism that has hitherto seen prehistory as the story of early man, Adovasio -- director...
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CSI: Hopewell [ Researchers use forensic photography to see ancient textiles in new light ]
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 04/01/2007 3:58:49 PM EDT · 7 replies · 33+ views
Columbus Dispatch | Tuesday, March 27, 2007 | Meredith Heagney
Christel Baldia and Kathryn Jakes borrowed forensic photographic techniques used in crime labs to study fabrics used by ancient American Indians. But instead of looking for stray fibers or blood evidence, they scan textile fragments for colors and patterns that might be invisible to the eye. These techniques "make the unseen, seen," said Jakes, a professor of textile and fiber science at Ohio State University who has studied ancient fabrics for 25 years. Baldia, a visiting professor at the Florida Institute of Technology who received her doctorate in textile science at Ohio State University in 2005, said she got the...
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The Vikings
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Iceland's Unwritten Saga
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 04/06/2007 5:26:34 PM EDT · 23 replies · 657+ views
Archaeology Magazine | 4-6-2007 | Zach Zorich
Iceland's Unwritten Saga Volume 60 Number 2, March/April 2007 by Zach Zorich Did Viking settlers pillage their environment? Birch and willow forests like this one at Lake MËvatn used to cover much of Iceland's interior. Viking settlers cleared the forest for their pastures and burned the trees to make charcoal. The forests have never recovered. It is estimated that 90 percent of Iceland's pre-settlement forest is gone. (Sigurgeir SigurjÛnsson) Even when the weather is clear, gusts of wind lash the hillsides overlooking the Viking-age farm at Hr"sheimar leaving the land raw and strewn with pebbles. A few miles east the...
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Biology and Cryptobiology
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Doggy DNA: Scientists have dog size mystery licked
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Posted by Pharmboy
On News/Activism 04/06/2007 12:38:39 AM EDT · 44 replies · 1,057+ views
Reuters | Thu Apr 5, 2007 | Julie Steenhuysen
According to Guinness World Records, Gibson, a Great Dane, is the world's tallest dog, from floor to shoulder 42.2'. He stands 7'2' on his hind legs. Gibson plays with his friend, Zoie, a 7.5' Chihuahua in an undated photo. A single gene makes some poodles purse-sized while allowing a Great Dane to look a pony in the eye, U.S. scientists reported on Thursday in a finding that may shed light on human size differences and diseases. (Deanne Fitzmaurice/Handout/Reuters) A single gene makes some poodles purse-sized while allowing a Great Dane to look a pony in the eye, U.S. scientists...
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Great Pyramid, again
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War Of The Pyramid Theorists
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 04/02/2007 7:37:58 PM EDT · 57 replies · 827+ views
Jerusalem Post | 4-1-2007 | Yaniv Salama-Scheer - Jorg Luyken
Apr. 1, 2007 12:21 | Updated Apr. 1, 2007 14:53War of the pyramid theorists By YANIV SALAMA-SCHEER AND JORG LUYKEN Every significant historical site goes through periods of the day when the surrounding environment make a visit truly worthwhile. At the pyramids of Giza, the view at sunset can push away the claustrophobic memory of the flocks of tourists and local souvenir-sellers who dominate the site earlier in the day. In the hush of sunset, visitors can appreciate the beautiful symmetry of these ancient tombs as the half-light of dusk eradicates the imperfections of age that are evident during the...
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Egypt
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Sinai pumice linked to ancient eruption [...not!]
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 04/07/2007 12:08:27 AM EDT · 11 replies · 116+ views
Yahoo | Monday, April 2, 2007 | Katarina Kratovac w/ contrib by Nicholas Paphits
The head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said the discovery of the pumice would open a new field of study in Egyptology. "Geologists will help us study how ... natural disasters, such as the Santorini tsunami, affected the Pharaonic period," he said... While noting that layers of ash from Santorini have been found in Egypt's Nile Delta, he told The Associated Press that he thought it more likely the floating pumice was carried to the Sinai by regular ocean currents. The archaeological team found the pumice while excavating at Tel Habuwa in the desert northeast of Qantara,...
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Africa
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Skeleton Holds Key To Origin Of Man
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 04/02/2007 10:09:39 PM EDT · 47 replies · 805+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 4-3-2007 | Roger Highfield
Skeleton holds key to origin of man By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 2:24am BST 03/04/2007 A skeleton of a possible hybrid between modern and more ancient humans has been found in China, which challenges the theory that modern man originated in Africa. Most experts believe that our ancestors emerged in Africa more than 150,000 years ago and then migrated around the world. However, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Prof Erik Trinkaus and colleagues provide details of a skeleton found in 2003 from Tianyuan Cave near Beijing. The skeleton is 42,000 to 38,500 years old,...
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Find raises doubts on key theory of human evolution
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Posted by DaveLoneRanger
On News/Activism 04/02/2007 10:10:57 PM EDT · 85 replies · 1,671+ views
The Scotsman | April 3, 2007 | JOHN VON RADOWITZ
A 40,000-YEAR-OLD skeleton found in China has raised questions about the "out of Africa" hypothesis on how early modern humans populated the planet. The fossil bones are the oldest from an adult "modern" human to be found in eastern Asia. They contain features that call into question the widely held view that our direct ancestors completed their evolution in Africa before spreading out into Europe and the Far East. The "out of Africa" hypothesis proposes that all humans alive today are descended from a small group of sub- Saharan Africans who made their way out of the continent about 60,000...
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New finding denies Chinese ancestor from Africa
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Posted by TigerLikesRooster
On News/Activism 04/03/2007 9:52:39 AM EDT · 11 replies · 349+ views
China Daily | 04/03/07
New finding denies Chinese ancestor from Africa(Xinhua)Updated: 2007-04-03 09:48WASHINGTON -- Chinese and US researchers have reported the finding of an approximately 40,000-year-old early modern human skeleton in China, indicating that the "Out of Africa" dispersal theory of modern humans may not be as simple as was previously thought. Fossil of a mandible bone found in the Tianyuan Cave, Zhoukoudian, in suburs of Beijing. [Xinhua] The findings were published Monday on the online issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Hong Shang, from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Washington University,...
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Asia
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When Was Chinese Civilization Born?
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 04/05/2007 4:51:40 PM EDT · 18 replies · 458+ views
People's Daily | 4-5-2007 | Zhou Yixing
When was Chinese civilization born? The origin and formation of Chinese civilization has always been a topic of wide discussion. The Chinese word "long" is an important symbol of Chinese civilization. Wherever there are Chinese communities, there is a "long" history. A sacred symbol of the nation, the Chinese word "long" is completely different from the West's interpretation, "dragon". Long ago a foreign missionary translated "long" into "dragon" by mistake. That mistake has been repeated for 300 years. Now, because of this mistake, some people have proposed abandoning the dragon as the symbol of Chinese civilization and replacing it with...
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Professor Digs For Clues To Our Survival
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 04/06/2007 4:36:32 PM EDT · 5 replies · 156+ views
University Of British Columbia | 4-5-2007 | Lorraine Chan
Prof Digs for Clues to our SurvivalUBC Reports | Vol. 53 | No. 4 | Apr. 5, 2007 By Lorraine Chan Zhichun Jing holds a replica of a 1,200 BC ivory cup from the Shang Dynasty of China's Bronze Age - photo by Martin Dee In the Yellow River valley of northern China, Zhichun Jing digs through the remains of long-ago cities to find insights for modern survival. Over the past 10 years, Jing has been excavating the cities of the late Shang Dynasty. Flourishing between 1,200 and 1,050 BC, the Shang was one of the first literate civilizations in China...
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3000 Year-Old Jinsha Coming To Life
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 04/04/2007 7:27:39 PM EDT · 14 replies · 341+ views
China.org.cn | 4-3-2007 | Chen Lin
3000 Year-old Jinsha Coming to Life The archeological site of Jinsha located in the western suburbs of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan Province, is widely believed to have been the capital of the Shu Kingdom close to 3,000 years ago. After some burial grounds and sacrifice emplacements were recently discovered, a renewed effort was made to excavate Jinsha. This vigor has now revealed the outlines of the cemetery, living areas, palace remains and sacrifice grounds. Lying only 50 kilometers away from the famed Sanxingdui, Jinsha rose to prominence around 1000 BC and shared similar origins with Sanxingdui as can...
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Forest Of Broken Urns
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 04/06/2007 5:37:36 PM EDT · 6 replies · 261+ views
Archaeology Magazine | 4-6-2007 | Karen J Coates
Forest of Broken Urns Volume 60 Number 2, March/April 2007 by Karen J. Coates Borneo's unexplored past is dying by the chainsaw. Tony Paran sits near a jar that held the remains of one of his ancestors. Soon, the forests that shelter these jars will be logged. (Jerry Redfern) Walter Paran was a lucky boy. Three minutes out his front door lay an old grave in the forest marked by big stone slabs, a broken jar, and human bones. A few minutes another way was a pit where the riches of the dead were purportedly buried. What more could an...
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India
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Interview [with Iravatham Mahadevan,] the Madras Indus scholar
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 03/31/2007 10:44:03 AM EDT · 24 replies · 33+ views
Himal | April 2007 | interviewed by Sundar Ganesan
[Q:] There are periodic reports of Indus script being deciphered. Are there standard methods to test the validity of claimed decipherments? [A:] The best summary and evaluation of the work done so far is Gregory Possehl’s book, The Indus Age: Its writing. I myself have reviewed five claims to decipherment – two based on Sanskrit, two on Tamil and one claiming that the script is merely a collection of numbers. My conclusion is negative – that none of the decipherments has been successful... There is very little interest in the Indus script in the West – there are very few...
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Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
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The Battle of Daras--The First Victory of the Last Great Roman General
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Posted by Antoninus
On Bloggers & Personal 04/04/2007 11:35:30 PM EDT · 9 replies · 106+ views
Gloria Romanorum | 4/4/07 | Paolo Belzoni
"It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice," wrote Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently in an open letter he thoughtfully scribed for the benefit of the American people. "It is possible to sincerely serve and promote common human values, and honesty and compassion. It is possible to provide welfare and prosperity without tension, threats, imposition or war." These statements sound almost reasonable until it is remembered that they came from the pen of an individual whose repressive regime funds proxy paramilitary forces and outright terrorist groups in Iraq,...
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Iran loses fight over "Lost Paradise" relics
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 03/31/2007 11:07:59 AM EDT · 10 replies
Reuters | Thursday, March 29, 2007 | Peter Griffiths
In a ruling that could affect other countries' attempts to secure the return of antiquities, Britain's High Court rejected Iran's claim that it owned the artifacts... Lawyers acting for Iran said the treasures were among thousands of pieces stolen by looters after floods washed away the topsoil and exposed the ancient city of Jiroft in 2001. Senior judge Charles Gray said Iran had failed to prove its legal ownership of the jars, cups and other items but gave permission for his ruling to be challenged at the appeal court... The gallery's London lawyers, Lane & Partners, said the antiquities were...
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Faith and Philosophy
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Iran's Other Religion
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Posted by siunevada
On Religion 03/30/2007 1:35:10 PM EDT · 11 replies · 106+ views
Boston Review | Summer, 2003 | Jehangir Pocha
In Search of Zarathustra Paul Kriwaczek Alfred A. Knopf, $25 (cloth) A distinct staccato sound of chiseling echoes down a narrow alley in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz. Seated around a mass of black stone, a group of young Muslim men are shaping a Faroharóa winged angel from another time, and faith, than their own. "The Farohar is from our past . . . it is a symbol of our greatness," one of the men says haltingly when I ask him for an explanation. He is referring to one of the most secretive and ineffable aspects of modern Iran,...
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Let's Have Jerusalem
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'Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt' to Shoot in Israel This October [Anne Rice novel]
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 03/31/2007 1:43:02 PM EDT · 8 replies · 65+ views
Earthtimes | Friday, March 30, 2007 | PR Newswire
Christ The Lord: Out Of Egypt, the motion picture based on Anne Rice's best-selling novel about Christ's early years, will begin shooting in Israel this October. Good News Holdings' decision to make the film in Israel has the full support of the Israeli government and casting has begun in Israel to find the boy who will play Jesus at the age of 7. A theatrical release is planned for Fall 2008. The Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles, Ehud Danoch said, "We are pleased that Good News Holdings chose Israel as the location for the making of this movie....
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Catastrophism and Astronomy
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Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say [NYT celebrates Passover]
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Posted by SJackson
On News/Activism 04/03/2007 8:46:48 AM EDT · 89 replies · 1,271+ views
NY Times | 4-3-07
NORTH SINAI, Egypt, April 2 ó On the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of Moses leading the Israelites through this wilderness out of slavery, Egypt's chief archaeologist took a bus full of journalists into the North Sinai to showcase his agency's latest discovery. It didn't look like much ó some ancient buried walls of a military fort and a few pieces of volcanic lava. The archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass, often promotes mummies and tombs and pharaonic antiquities that command international attention and high ticket prices. But this bleak landscape, broken only by electric pylons, excited...
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Prehistory and Origins
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DNA Boosts Herodotus' Account of Etruscans as Migrants to Italy
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Posted by neverdem
On News/Activism 04/04/2007 12:27:29 AM EDT · 55 replies · 826+ views
NY Times | April 3, 2007 | NICHOLAS WADE
Geneticists have added an edge to a 2,500-year-old debate over the origin of the Etruscans, a people whose brilliant and mysterious civilization dominated northwestern Italy for centuries until the rise of the Roman republic in 510 B.C. Several new findings support a view held by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus ó but unpopular among archaeologists ó that the Etruscans originally migrated to Italy from the Near East. Though Roman historians played down their debt to the Etruscans, Etruscan culture permeated Roman art, architecture and religion. The Etruscans were master metallurgists and skillful seafarers who for a time dominated much of...
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Rome and Italy
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Prehistoric whale found in inland Italy
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Posted by martin_fierro
On General/Chat 04/03/2007 6:54:47 PM EDT · 32 replies · 259+ views
AP/Yahoo | 4/3/07 | ALESSANDRA RIZZO
Prehistoric whale found in inland Italy By ALESSANDRA RIZZO, Associated Press Writer 5 minutes ago ROME - Italian researchers have excavated the skeleton of a 4 million-year-old whale in the Tuscan countryside, a discovery that could help reconstruct the prehistoric environment of the sea that once covered the region, officials said Tuesday. The 33-foot skeleton, dating to the Pliocene epoch, was found in almost perfect order, with only the jaw bones out of place, said paleontologists with the Museum of Natural History in Florence. Nearly all of Italy was once under water, and it is not unusual to find cetacean...
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Greece
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Greek archaeologists unearth rich tomb (filled with gold jewelry,pottery,artifacts)
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Posted by NormsRevenge
On News/Activism 04/04/2007 8:08:45 PM EDT · 8 replies · 427+ views
AP on Yahoo | 4/4/07 | AP
ATHENS, Greece - Archaeologists on a Greek island have discovered a large Roman-era tomb containing gold jewelry, pottery and bronze offerings, officials said Wednesday. The building, near the village of Fiscardo on Kefalonia, contained five burials including a large vaulted grave and a stone coffin, a Culture Ministry announcement said. The complex, measuring 26 by 20 feet, had been missed by grave-robbers, the announcement said. Archaeologists found gold earrings and rings, gold leaves that may have been attached to ceremonial clothing, as well as glass and clay pots, bronze artifacts decorated with masks, a bronze lock and copper coins. The...
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Middle Ages and Renaissance
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The Discovery Of America: The Revolutionary Claims Of A Dead Historian
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 04/04/2007 7:49:18 PM EDT · 7 replies · 585+ views
University Of Bristol | 4-4-2007 | Alwyn Ruddock
The discovery of America: the revolutionary claims of a dead historian Press release issued 4 April 2007Replica Of John Cabot's Ship Dr Alwyn Ruddock, a former reader in history at the University of London, was the world expert on John Cabot's discovery voyages from Bristol to North America (1496-98). What she was said to have found out about these voyages looked set to re-write the history of the European discovery of America. Yet, when Dr Ruddock died in December 2005, having spent four decades researching this topic, she ordered the destruction of all her research. In an article published today...
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Ancient Autopsies
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Beyond The Family Feud (Olmecs)
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 04/06/2007 5:19:37 PM EDT · 11 replies · 236+ views
Archaeology Magazine | 4-6-2007 | Andrew Lawler
Beyond the Family Feud Volume 60 Number 2, March/April 2007 by Andrew Lawler After decades of debate, are younger scholars finally asking the right questions about the Olmec? The lush, wet environment of the Laguna de los Cerros site, aerial view above left, typifies the Olmec heartland between the later Aztec (Tenochtitl·n) and Maya (Palenque) regions. (Ken Garrett) It's a drizzly autumn morning in the eastern Mexican city of Xalapa, near the heartland of what many scholars say was Mesoamerica's first civilization. At the city's elegant anthropology museum, amid one of the finest Olmec collections in the world, Yale archaeologist...
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Show Me the Mummy: USC Orthodontist Investigates 2,000-Year-Old Girl
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 04/06/2007 11:48:52 PM EDT · 8 replies · 33+ views
Los Angeles Downtown News | April 2, 2007 | Ben Creighton
His patient was the mummy of a 4- or 5-year-old Egyptian girl. Wrapped and embalmed two millennia ago in North Africa, she called the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, Calif., her home for the past 75 years... Utilizing three-dimensional imaging software used in the School of Dentistry's orthodontic clinic, Mah and Jack Choi of Anatomage - manufacturer of the software - discovered tooth fragments lodged in the throat and the nasal pharynx of the mummy... Using image slices from the region where the tooth was dislodged, Mah was able to record bone density measurements to surmise that the girl...
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Pa-Ib a real person, but royalty?(PT Barnum Mummy)
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Posted by GinJax
On News/Activism 09/19/2006 10:58:36 PM EDT · 1 reply · 260+ views
Connecticut Post | 15 Sep 2006 | MEG BARONE
BRIDGEPORT ó Every day was April Fools' Day for P.T. Barnum, the renowned showman and self-proclaimed Prince of Humbugs, a title that leads to questions about the authenticity of the artifacts he left behind. After all, the Bridgeport Renaissance man gave the world the Fejee Mermaid, a fantasy creature that was one of his biggest hoaxes. But leave it to Barnum to play with people's minds, even from beyond the grave. Just as one starts to believe everything in Barnum's collection sprang from his creative genius, along come a couple of archaeological experts to authenticate Pa-Ib, an Egyptian mummy reputed...
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Joan of Arc remains 'are fakes'[Egyptian mummy and a cat]
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Posted by Dacb
On News/Activism 04/05/2007 1:45:21 AM EDT · 2 replies · 152+ views
BBC | 04 April 2007 | BBC
Bones thought to be the holy remains of 15th Century French heroine Joan of Arc were in fact made from an Egyptian mummy and a cat, research has revealed. In 1867, a jar was found in a Paris pharmacy attic, along with a label claiming it held relics of Joan's body. But new forensic tests suggest that the remains date from between the third and sixth centuries BC - hundreds of years before Joan was even born. The study has been reported in the news pages of the Nature journal. Forensic scientist Dr Philippe Charlier, who led the investigation, told...
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Bone fragment likely not Joan of Arc
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Posted by NYer
On Religion 12/17/2006 6:29:22 PM EST · 17 replies · 372+ views
Yahoo News | December 17, 2006 | CHRISTIAN PANVERT
A rib bone and a piece of cloth supposedly recovered after Joan of Arc was burned at the stake are probably not hers, according to experts trying to unravel one of the mysteries surrounding the 15th century French heroine.Eighteen experts began a series of tests six months ago on the fragments reportedly recovered from the pyre where the 19-year-old was burned for heresy.Although the tests have not been completed, findings so far indicate there is "relatively little chance" that the remnants are hers, Philippe Charlier, the head of the team, told The Associated Press on Saturday.The fragment of linen from...
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Longer Perspectives
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Lessons On The Ancients Are History [UK to stop teaching ancient history]
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 03/31/2007 2:05:53 PM EDT · 10 replies · 95+ views
Daily Express | Saturday March 31, 2007 | John Ingham
Elements of the existing ancient history exam will now be merged into a new classical civilisation A-level to be taught from September 2008. But Tory education spokesman Boris Johnson, who is also an author and TV presenter on classical civilisation, said: "You can't just subsume the study of ancient history into the study of classical civilisation. "You might as well say that you can learn English history by studying English language and literature... A spokesperson for the board said: "OCR is committed to enabling –students to study classics and we are the only awarding body still offering a comprehensive suite...
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Teachers Drop Holocaust, Crusades From History Lessons to Avoid Offending Children
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Posted by B4Ranch
On News/Activism 04/02/2007 6:22:59 PM EDT · 57 replies · 1,124+ views
www.foxnews.com | April 01, 2007 | Alexandra Frean
Teachers are dropping controversial subjects such as the Holocaust and the Crusades from history lessons because they do not want to offend children from certain races or religions, a report claims. A lack of factual knowledge among some teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to "shallow" lessons on emotive and difficult subjects, according to the study by the Historical Association.
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Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
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Trench discovery unearths Texas Revolution artifacts
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Posted by SwinneySwitch
On News/Activism 04/05/2007 12:35:27 PM EDT · 24 replies · 615+ views
Houston Chronicle/AP | April 5, 2007
SAN ANTONIO ó Historians say an old trench discovered in San Antonio might have been used by Mexican soldiers as fortification against Texan rebels during a siege that preceded the Battle of the Alamo. Workers found the trench off Main Plaza, San Antonio's historic city center, as they were digging up the street a couple of weeks ago to install a storm-water line, city officials said. Archeologists think the trench was built by Mexican forces under the command of Gen. Martin Perfecto de Cos. From October to December 1835, the city was under siege by Texas rebels in an early...
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end of digest #142 20070407
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