Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #181
Saturday, January 5, 2008
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Helix, Make Mine a Double
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New Route For Heredity Bypasses DNA
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Posted by Maelstorm
On News/Activism 01/04/2008 11:35:22 PM EST · 15 replies
ScienceDaily | (Jan. 4, 2008) | ScienceDaily(Princeton University)
ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2008) -- A group of scientists in Princeton's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology has uncovered a new biological mechanism that could provide a clearer window into a cell's inner workings. What's more, this mechanism could represent an "epigenetic" pathway -- a route that bypasses an organism's normal DNA genetic program -- for so-called Lamarckian evolution, enabling an organism to pass on to its offspring characteristics acquired during its lifetime to improve their chances for survival. Lamarckian evolution is the notion, for example, that the giraffe's long neck evolved by its continually stretching higher and higher in...
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Biology and Cryptobiology
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Mammoth Could Shed Light on Warming
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Posted by Turret Gunner A20
On News/Activism 01/04/2008 11:32:34 AM EST · 50 replies
PeoplePC Online | January 4, 2008 | Staff
TOKYO - Frozen in much the state it died some 37,500 years ago, a Siberian mammoth undergoing tests in Japan could finally explain why the beasts were driven to extinction - and shed light on climate change, scientists said Friday. The calf, unearthed in May by a reindeer herder in northern Siberia's remote Yamal-Nenets autonomous region, is virtually intact and even has some fur, though the tail and ear of the animal dubbed "Lyuba" were apparently bitten off. "Lyuba's discovery is an historic event," said Bernard Buigues, vice president of the Geneva-based International Mammoth Committee. "It could tell us why...
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Climate
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Bodies point to Alaska's past
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Posted by Ernest_at_the_Beach
On General/Chat 12/31/2007 12:55:27 PM EST · 18 replies
BBC | Monday, 31 December 2007, 11:20 GMT | Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Alaska
The Nuvuk site is a snowmobile ride away from modern-day Barrow It is not the type of a call that an archaeologist receives every day.There are bodies, the voice on the end of the line told Anne Jensen; we don't know who they were, or why they are here. "People started noticing stuff eroding out of the bluff," she recalls, "and I got called out, along with the police, the real estate people and so on. "It was very clearly an archaeological burial. And the...
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Catastrophism and Astronomy
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Antarctica May Contain "Oasis of Life"
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 12/30/2007 12:07:37 AM EST · 97 replies
National Geographic News | Thursday, December 27, 2007 | Christine Dell'Amore
Researchers have uncovered a complex subglacial system miles under the ice where rivers larger than the Amazon link a series of "lake districts," which may teem with mineral-hungry microbes. This watery environment may be more than one-and-a-half times the size of the United States, scientists say, which would make it the world's largest wetland... Studinger's research focuses on "recovery lakes," part of a a series of cascading lakes found earlier this year under the ice sheet. The lakes... ebb and flow as they empty into the polar sea. They stay fluid because the ice sheet above acts like a gigantic...
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Greece
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Questioning the Delphic Oracle
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 12/30/2007 8:01:30 PM EST · 10 replies
Scientific American | August 2003 | John R. Hale, Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, Jeffrey P. Chanton and Henry A. Spiller
Tradition attributed the prophetic inspiration of the powerful oracle to geologic phenomena: a chasm in the earth, a vapor that rose from it, and a spring... The ancient testimony, however, is widespread, and it comes from a variety of sources: historians such as Pliny and Diodorus, philosophers such as Plato, the poets Aeschylus and Cicero, the geographer Strabo, the travel writer Pausanias, and even a priest of Apollo who served at Delphi, the famous essayist and biographer Plutarch... in about 1900, a young English classicist named Adolphe Paul Oppe['s] opinions were so strongly expressed that his theory became the new...
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Underwater Archaeology
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Brock University professor anxious to dive on Iron Age shipwreck
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 12/29/2007 9:52:12 PM EST · 15 replies
The Standard (St. Catharine's Ontario) | Saturday, December 29, 2007 | Samantha Craggs
The last time anyone touched the artifacts Elizabeth Greene is after, Rome was a new empire and climate change had just pushed the Scandinavians into Europe... The unexplored wreck sank between 700 and 450 BC. For Greene, who has assisted in a handful of shipwreck dives, it will also be the first in which she takes the lead... A trade hub in ancient times for Greece and Turkey, the Mediterranean has thousands of ancient shipwrecks, "more than we'll ever be able to excavate," Greene said. They are so old that most of the actual ships are gone, eaten by underwater...
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Travel in the Ancient World
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Nautical Archaeology Takes A Leap Forward
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 12/31/2007 10:53:57 AM EST · 10 replies
Times Online | 12-31-2007 | Institute Of Nautical Archaeology
Nautical archaeology takes a leap forward For centuries the harbour of Ancient Constantinople, modern Istanbul, was the inlet of the Golden Horn, running north between the peninsula on which the city s core stands and the commercial and foreign quarter of Galata and Pera to the east. A boom across the inlet protected the city from attack, although the Ottoman troops of Mehmet II stormed across the Golden Horn in 1453 to end the Byzantine Empire. A second, mainly commercial, harbour, in use from the 5th-10th centuries AD, has been found on the south shore of the peninsula, on the Sea...
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Navigation
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Riddle Of The Jade Jewels Reveals Vast Trade Arena
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 01/03/2008 10:47:02 PM EST · 5 replies
Science Daily | 1-2-2008 | Australian National University.
Analysing the origins of jade used in ancient jewellery has revealed a trading arena that was active for more than 3,000 years and sprawled over 3,000km in Southeast Asia -- possibly the largest such network discovered in the region to date. An international research team led by archaeologists from The Australian National University used electron probe microanalysis to examine jade earrings excavated from sites all over Southeast Asia, and were able to pinpoint the origin of the precious stone to a source in Taiwan. "People have...
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Faith and Philosophy
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Stolen Bangladeshi Vishnu relics found in pieces in garbage [ R.O.P. alert? ]
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/01/2008 6:57:58 PM EST · 4 replies
Monsters and Critics | Friday, December 28, 2007 | Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Security forces in Bangladesh have recovered the two missing Hindu Vishnu relics from a garbage dump on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, Cultural Ministry officials said Friday. The ancient artifacts, broken into pieces, were retrieved from the dump after it was apparently stolen from the airport about a week ago, a senior security officer said. The authorities suspect the images were smashed into pieces to avoid countrywide police surveillance after a state of high alert was announced soon after the relics were found missing. 'The seventh century statues of Lord Vishnu were fragmented into 13 pieces before these were...
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Exegesis
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Islam Based on Epileptic Prophecies, says Book From Iran-Native Neuropsychologist
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Posted by dennisw
On News/Activism 12/12/2006 11:01:11 PM EST · 58 replies · 1,336+ views
ummahnewslinks | 12/11/2006
CANTON, Ohio, Dec. 11 - Religious prophet Muhammad suffered from epileptic seizures, according to a book recently released by a Tehran- native and Muslim-raised neuropsychologist. Abbas Sadeghian delivers these findings in the book Sword & Seizure, which is based on historical text, including the Koran. Sadeghian was inspired by a comparable paper he presented in 2001 at New York University's Fielding Institute. He says Muhammad had suffered from "complex partial seizures," which are displayed through "excessive sweating and light trembling, olfactory, auditory and visual hallucinations, epigastric sensations (bad taste), excessive perspiration and hyper-religiosity." He says evidence of these is recounted...
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Anatolia
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Yapi Kredi Museum exhibit explores Phrygian culture
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/01/2008 7:46:12 PM EST · 20 replies
Today's Zaman | Wednesday, January 2, 2008 | unattributed
Istanbul's Yapi Kredi Vedat Nedim Tor Museum is hosting an archaeology exhibition called "Phrygia," showcasing a selection of major Phrygian artifacts on loan from various museums in Turkey, including the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara and the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. The exhibit, held under scientific advice from archaeologist Taciser Sivas, will run until April 13.
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Scythians (?)
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Remains of ancient civilization discovered on the bottom of a lake
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 12/29/2007 11:32:21 PM EST · 20 replies
RIA Novosti | Thursday, December 27, 2007 | Nikolai Lukashov
An international archeological expedition to Lake Issyk Kul, high in the Kyrgyz mountains, proves the existence of an advanced civilization 25 centuries ago... The expedition resulted in sensational finds, including the discovery of major settlements, presently buried underwater... Last year, we worked near the north coast at depths of 5-10 metres to discover formidable walls, some stretching for 500 meters-traces of a large city with an area of several square kilometers... We also found Scythian burial mounds, eroded by waves over the centuries, and numerous well preserved artifacts-bronze battleaxes, arrowheads, self-sharpening daggers, objects discarded by smiths, casting molds, and a...
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Colchis
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In a rich corner of antiquity: gold, wine, plenty of luxury [Colchis, the Vani]
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 12/29/2007 9:17:59 PM EST · 10 replies
Register-Guard | December 27, 2007 | Blake Gopnik, Washington Post
Since Colchis was famous in antiquity for gold and precious metal -- it's where the Greek hero Jason went to grab the legendary Golden Fleece -- you'd be wearing gold-spangled robes while pouring and drinking your famous Colchian wine from gold or silver vessels. You'd also be so rich you could afford to bury your wine service with you... A fascinating exhibition, "Wine, Worship & Sacrifice: The Golden Graves of Ancient Vani" at the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., through Feb. 24, gives a thrilling image of the plenty that nobility enjoyed in that far corner of the ancient...
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Egypt
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A good year for the record [tomb of Henu, Middle Kingdom Egypt]
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/02/2008 8:43:13 AM EST · 5 replies
Al-Ahram | 27 December 2007 - 2 January 2008 | Nevine El-Aref
Also this year an intact tomb chamber complete with funerary goods was found on the southern slope of the archaeological hill of Deir Al-Barsha, near Minya, by archaeologists from the Katholicke Universiteit Leuven working on the Middle-Kingdom (2066-1650 BC) tomb of Uky, a top government official. While removing debris from a rock-cut shaft found inside the chamber of Uky's tomb, archaeologists came across a huge limestone block leading to a small, intact chamber stuffed with wooden objects and containing a sarcophagus bearing two lines of hieroglyphic texts representing formulae addressed to the gods Anubis and Osiris. A third line on...
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Epigraphy and Language
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Maltese claims extraordinary discovery in Sahara desert
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 12/29/2007 11:01:23 PM EST · 73 replies
Independent Online | Saturday, December 29, 2007 | unattributed
Mark Borda and Mahmoud Marai, from Malta and Egypt respectively, were surveying a field of boulders on the flanks of a hill deep in the Libyan desert some 700 kilometres west of the Nile Valley when engravings on a large rock consisting of hieroglyphic writing, Pharaonic cartouche, an image of the king and other Pharaonic iconography came into view. Mr Borda would not reveal the precise location in order to protect the site... "The consensus among Egyptologists is that the Egyptians did not penetrate this desert any further than the area around Djedefre's Water Mountain. This is a sandstone hill...
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Mesopotamia
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Deployed Airmen find ancient artifacts at Iraqi air base
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Posted by Jet Jaguar
On General/Chat 12/30/2007 7:49:43 PM EST · 6 replies
AFPN | 28 Dec 2007 | Staff Sgt. Trevor Tiernan
KIRKUK AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- An Airman and his team discovered fragments of pottery, possibly dating back as far back as 2,000 years during a recent job at Kirkuk Air Base. Tech. Sgt. Kelly Wayment, a heavy equipment operator with the 506th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron here, was carrying out a routine operation near a helicopter landing pad when he noticed something peculiar. Sergeant Wayment was spotting for fellow 506th ECES member Staff Sgt. Michael Massey as he drove a grader over the area. "I noticed something on the ground that looked kind of like a rock," said the...
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Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
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Victor Davis Hanson: With Your Shield or On It
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Posted by neverdem
On News/Activism 03/27/2007 4:35:05 PM EDT · 18 replies · 1,208+ views
City Journal | 7 March 2007 | Victor Davis Hanson
Zack Snyder's 300: a spirited take on a clash of civilizations -- On Monday night in Hollywood I attended an advance screening of the entertaining new Zack Snyder movie 300, starring Gerard Butler as Leonidas, king of Sparta. This past October, I had seen an earlier version when screenwriter Kurt Johnstad asked me to take a look at an advance copy of the film. He drove down to my farm, I liked what I saw, and I then wrote an introduction to the book accompanying the film. So I am not a disinterested observer. In truth, I think that many critics will...
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British Isles
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Celtic Land of Dead 'lies in North Wales'
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 12/29/2007 11:51:08 PM EST · 21 replies
North Wales News | Monday, December 24, 2007 | Steve Bagnall, Daily Post
According to Welsh mythology the Land of the Dead - or Annwn: Celtic Underworld - was ruled over by Gwynn ap Nudd. He escorted the souls of the dead there, and led a pack of supernatural hounds... experts say there is a grain of truth in the story from which it developed, with the evidence now pointing to Ruabon and Halkyn Mountains. Steve Blake, author of the Keys to Avalon, which argued the myths of King Arthur are firmly rooted in North Wales, said: "Llangollen and the Dee Valley are rich in this piece of Celtic folklore. Central to this...
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Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
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Secrets of Miami Circle, known as America's Stonehenge, lie buried[Florida]
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Posted by BGHater
On News/Activism 01/03/2008 4:08:31 PM EST · 30 replies
Orlando Sentinel | 02 Jan 2008 | Manya Bell
The 2,000-year-old site remains under temporary protection laid in 2003. Nine years ago, an array of American Indians, environmentalists, preservationists, New Age spiritualists, diviners, even Cub Scouts rose up to save the Miami Circle, a 2,000-year-old artifact that many embraced as America's own Stonehenge. But today, the Circle -- a series of loaf-shaped holes chiseled into the limestone bedrock at the mouth of the Miami River -- is interred beneath bags of sand and gravel, laid over the formation in 2003 to protect it from the elements. And though taxpayers shelled out $27.6 million to purchase the 38-foot Circle and...
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PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
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Archaeologists surprised by ancient find at unlikely spot
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 12/29/2007 11:42:03 PM EST · 15 replies
Helena Independent Record | December 22, 2007 | Lorna Thackeray, Billings Gazette
The sample that dated to most recent times - charcoal picked from a hearth uncovered 6 to 10 inches below the grassy surface - was determined to be 1,050 years old. The oldest, a bison foot bone found near stone artifacts, was dated at 5,300 years old. About 18 inches below the 5,300-year level, archaeologists working for Aaberg's company, Aaberg Cultural Resource Consulting Service, found a single piece of charcoal. Aaberg isn't sure what to make of it but believes it could be 7,000 to 8,000 years old. Also found at that level was a fragment of a long, narrow...
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Prehistory and Origins
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Can Ice Age art survive Man's attempt to save it? (Lascaux Cave Paintings)
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Posted by SubGeniusX
On General/Chat 01/02/2008 10:18:36 AM EST · 8 replies
The Times (U.K.) | January 2, 2008 | Dalya Alberge
The survival of the most important cave paintings in the world is in doubt because of a severe fungal infection that spread after an air-circulation system was installed to protect them, archaeologists say. The 17,000-year-old paintings known as "the Sistine Chapel of pre-history" - the Lascaux cave in the Dordogne region of southwest France - are being damaged by black spots that are spreading at an alarming rate. Fragments of the cave walls have broken off and some colour tones are fading. Now Unesco is sending a delegation of specialists to the cave to determine whether it should be placed...
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Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
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Noble or savage?
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Posted by dirtboy
On News/Activism 12/31/2007 11:30:01 PM EST · 27 replies
economist.com | 12/19/2007 | not stated
The era of the hunter-gatherer was not the social and environmental Eden that some suggest -- Human beings have spent most of their time on the planet as hunter-gatherers. From at least 85,000 years ago to the birth of agriculture around 73,000 years later, they combined hunted meat with gathered veg. Some people, such as those on North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Sea, still do. The Sentinelese are the only hunter-gatherers who still resist contact with the outside world. Fine-looking specimens -- strong, slim, fit, black and stark naked except for a small plant-fibre belt round the waist -- they are the very model of...
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Ancient Autopsies
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Grisly discovery of headless bodies gives insight into justice Saxon style
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/01/2008 1:59:34 PM EST · 17 replies
Yorkshire Post | Monday, December 31, 2007 | Alexandra Wood
[W]ith pagan Britain's conversion to Christianity, the Bronze Age burial mounds came to be regarded with suspicion as places where devils and dragons lurked. It was at one such site in East Yorkshire that the Anglo-Saxons chose to bury the worst kind of criminals, away from hallowed ground, leaving their heads to rot on stakes... The dozen skeletons -- 10 without their heads -- were discovered by archaeologists in the late 1960s in a Bronze Age barrow at Walkington Wold... [A] new study by two Yorkshire archaeologists... Jo Buckberry, from Bradford University and Dawn Hadley, from Sheffield University have confirmed...
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Oh So Mysteriouso
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Holy Grail Riddle Solution 'To Be Revealed'
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Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 11/25/2004 2:03:39 AM EST · 203 replies · 5,164+ views
Scotsman | Nov. 24, 2003 | Katherine Haddon
A team of Second World War codebreakers was today poised to reveal the solution to a cryptic 18th century riddle which is rumoured to reveal the location of the Holy Grail. Oliver Lawn and his wife Sheila, the leaders of the team, are now in their 80s but were posted at the codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, during the Second World War. The couple, who worked on cracking the Enigma code, have spent the last seven months deciphering the significance of a sequence of letters on the Shepherd s Monument in the Shugborough Estate in Staffordshire. The marble slab, located...
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D.B. COOPER REDUX - Help Us Solve the Enduring Mystery (FBI)
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Posted by DogByte6RER
On News/Activism 01/01/2008 5:59:53 PM EST · 94 replies
FBI | 12/31/07 | FBI
On a cold November night 36 years ago, in the driving wind and rain, somewhere between southern Washington state and just north of Portland, Oregon, a man calling himself Dan Cooper parachuted out of a plane he d just hijacked clutching a bag filled with $200,000 in stolen cash. Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? And what happened to the loot, only a small part of which has ever surfaced? It s a mystery, frankly. We ve run down thousands of leads and considered all sorts of scenarios. And amateur sleuths...
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Longer Perspectives
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Ideology Is Trumping Scholarship / Ideology over Integrity in Academe
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 01/01/2008 8:01:13 PM EST · 9 replies
Dafka (originally The Fall 2007 Columbia University Current) | January 1, 2008 | James R. Russell
A professor of anthropology calls for a million Mogadishus, a professor of Arabic and Islamic Science tells a girl she isn't a Semite because her eyes are green, and a professor of Persian hails the destruction of the World Trade Center as the castrating of a double phallus. The most recent tenured addition to this rogues' gallery is to be an anthropologist, the principal thrust of whose magnum opus is the suggestion that archaeology in Israel is a sort of con game meant to persuade the unwary that Jews lived there in antiquity... from Columbia... Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalism......
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Early America
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U.S. sends $150,000 to Crossroads of Revolution
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Posted by Pharmboy
On News/Activism 01/03/2008 5:07:39 PM EST · 11 replies
Newark Star-Ledger | Thursday, January 03, 2008 | TOM HESTER
More than a year after gaining federal recognition, the Crossroads of the American Revolution National Heritage Area has been awarded $150,000 in aid from Washington. The heritage area ties together New Jersey's Revolutionary War sites and landscapes as well as the state and national parks that highlight the pivotal role New Jersey played in the Revolution. big snip... Reps. Rush Holt (D-12th Dist.) and Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11th Dist.) have been instrumental is pushing for the funding. "Despite featuring over 290 military engagements and serving as a buffer between the rebel stronghold of Philadelphia and the British stronghold of New York,...
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Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
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Have A Happy FReeping New Year
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Posted by writer33
On News/Activism 12/31/2007 8:54:12 PM EST · 106 replies
Vanity | 12/31/07 | Chris Davis
Happy New Year for all FReepers! This is still the greatest conservative site for free thought on the internet. May your 2008 be great and prosperous. Thank you for all of your activism and your tireless efforts against liberal tyranny. Thank you for battling those that would do their best in destroying capitalism. May you continue to stay in the fight when Congress goes back into session. You are the best and brightest that America has to offer. Your love of country has helped keep us one of the greatest countries in the world. For those that are away from...
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end of digest #181 20080105
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