Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #206
Saturday, June 28, 2008
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Prehistory and Origins
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Prehistoric Settlement Found In Qatar (700,000 YO)
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06/23/2008 1:38:41 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 18 replies · 599+ views
The Peninsular | 6-23-2008
A prehistoric settlement in what is now Qatar may confirm alternative theories on how early humans emigrated from the African continent, a report in a Danish newspaper said. Danish archaeologists have uncovered a settlement they believe may be over 700,000 years old, making it the oldest organised human community ever found, reported Berlingske Tidende newspaper. Eight dwellings in the desert region of Qatar indicate that an early human species crossed what is now the Red Sea to leave their origins in Africa, according to the scientists. There is still uncertainty within...
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Ancient Europe
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Balkan Caves, Gorges Were Pre-Neanderthal Haven
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06/27/2008 2:45:44 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 24 replies · 420+ views
Reuters | 6-27-2008 | Ljilja Cvekic
A fragment of a human jaw found in Serbia and believed to be up to 250,000 years old is helping anthropologists piece together the story of prehistoric human migration from Africa to Europe. "This is the earliest evidence we have of humans in the area," Canada's Winnipeg University anthropology professor Mirjana Roksandic told Reuters. The fragment of a lower jaw, complete with three teeth, was discovered in a small cave in the Sicevo gorge in south Serbia. "It is a pre-Neanderthal...
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Neandertal
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Britain's last Neanderthals were more sophisticated than we thought
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06/23/2008 9:58:11 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 41 replies · 673+ views
University College London | Jun 23, 2008 | Unknown
An archaeological excavation at a site near Pulborough, West Sussex, has thrown remarkable new light on the life of northern Europe's last Neanderthals. It provides a snapshot of a thriving, developing population -- rather than communities on the verge of extinction. "The tools we've found at the site are technologically advanced and potentially older than tools in Britain belonging to our own species, Homo sapiens," says Dr Matthew Pope of Archaeology South East based at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. "It's exciting to think that there's a real possibility these were left by some of the last...
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Britain's Last Neanderthals Were More Sophisticated Than We Thought
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06/23/2008 1:49:37 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 12 replies · 523+ views
Plosone.org | 6-23-2008 | University College London
An archaeological excavation at a site near Pulborough, West Sussex, has thrown remarkable new light on the life of northern Europe's last Neanderthals. It provides a snapshot of a thriving, developing population -- rather than communities on the verge of extinction. "The tools we've found at the site are technologically advanced and potentially older than tools in Britain belonging to our own species, Homo sapiens," says Dr Matthew Pope of Archaeology South East based at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. "It's exciting to think that there's a real possibility these were...
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Africa
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The Great Human Migration
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06/25/2008 5:04:06 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 11 replies · 434+ views
Smithsonian Magazine | July 2008 | Guy Gugliotta
Seventy-seven thousand years ago, a craftsman sat in a cave in a limestone cliff overlooking the rocky coast of what is now the Indian Ocean. It was a beautiful spot, a workshop with a glorious natural picture window, cooled by a sea breeze in summer, warmed by a small fire in winter. The sandy cliff top above was covered with a white-flowering shrub that one distant day would be known as blombos and give this...
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Anatolia
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Who Were the Hurrians?
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06/25/2008 6:28:07 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 28 replies · 770+ views
Archaeology Magazine | July/August 2008 | Andrew Lawler
New discoveries in Syria suggest a little-known people fueled the rise of civilization -- Excavations at the 3rd millennium city of Urkesh in Syria are revealing new information about the mysterious people who lived there, known as the Hurrians. This view of the city's royal palace shows the service area (left) and living quarters (right). (Ken Garrett) With its vast plaza and impressive stone stairway leading up to a temple complex, Urkesh was designed to last. And for well over a millennium, this city on the dusty plains of what is...
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Trojan War
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Ancient Eclipse Found in "The Odyssey," Scientists Say
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06/23/2008 5:36:32 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 26 replies · 798+ views
National Geographic News | 6-23-2008 | Richard A. Lovett
"The sun has perished out of heaven, and an evil mist has overspread the world." With those words in The Odyssey, Homer laid down not a prophecy of doom but a description of a real-world total solar eclipse, scientific sleuths announced today. It has been known for decades that there was only one such eclipse during the time period Homer wrote about in the ancient Greek poem -- on April 16, 1178 B.C. The blackout even occurred at noon, as described in the epic poem. But...
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Scientists calculate the exact date of the Trojan horse using eclipse in Homer
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06/24/2008 11:49:01 AM PDT · Posted by LibWhacker · 37 replies · 947+ views
Telegraph | 6/24/08 | Roger Highfield
The exact date when the Greeks used the Trojan horse to raze the city of Troy has been pinpointed for the first time using an eclipse mentioned in the stories of Homer, it was claimed today. # The truth about an epic tale of love, war and greed Scientists have calculated that the horse was used in 1188 BC, ten years before Homer in his Odyssey describes the return of a warrior to his wife on the day the "sun is blotted out of the sky". The legend of the fall of Troy is mentioned in Virgil and Homer's poems...
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Oh Pumice Me
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Pumice As A Time Witness (Archaeology)
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06/23/2008 2:07:42 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 7 replies · 293+ views
IDW Online | 6-23-3008 | Georg Steinhauser - Mag. Werner Sommer
A chemist of Vienna University of Technology demonstrates how chemical fingerprints of volcanic eruptions and numerous pumice lump finds from archaeological excavations illustrate relations between individual advanced civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean. Thanks to his tests and to the provenancing of the respective pumice samples to partially far-reaching volcanic eruptions, it became possible to redefine a piece of cultural history from the second millenium B.C. Vienna (TU). During the Bronze Age, between the years 3000 and 1000 B.C., the Mediterranean was already intensely populated. Each individual culture,...
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Diet and Cuisine
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Shipwreck Yields World's Oldest Salad Dressing
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06/24/2008 7:28:42 AM PDT · Posted by blam · 35 replies · 775+ views
Discovery News | Jennifer Viegas
Olive oil infused with fragrant herbs has been identified in an ancient Greek ceramic transport jar known as an amphora, along with another container of what could be the world's oldest retsina-type wine, according to a recent Journal of Archaeological Science paper. It is the first time DNA has been extracted from shipwrecked artifacts -- the two large jars were recovered from a 2,400-year-old wrecked vessel off the Greek island of Chios. If the second jar indeed contained a retsina-like wine, which is preserved and flavored...
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Greece
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Bats about the Attic: Fewer Greek students, but still plenty of devoted ones
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06/26/2008 10:49:54 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 202+ views
The Economist | Thursday, June 26th, 2008 | unattributed op-ed
At first sight, the statistics are positively wine-dark. As part of school education, countries may maintain it in theory but rarely in practice. Portuguese pupils have it as an option in their final year; in Sweden fewer than 100 schoolchildren study it, in Belgium around 800. In Britain, of a mere 241 entrants for Greek A-level (typically taken at 18) in 2007, fully 226 were from independent (private) schools... Though some classics departments in the United States have had to close or merge, the number of students enrolled in Greek has been going up since the 1990s. In 2006 fully...
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Mediterranean
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Archaeologists Uncover 5,000-Year-Old Jewellery Workshop (Cyprus)
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06/26/2008 6:06:10 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 8 replies · 373+ views
Cyprus Mail | 6-25-2008 | Jean Christou
Archaeologists have uncovered was appears to have been a jewellery workshop during excavations at the 5,000-year old Souskiou-Laona settlement. According to the Antiquities Department, a dense concentration of the mineral picrolite in the west ridge of the cliff-top settlement indicates that the spot was a workshop for the production of the cruciform figurines and large pendants. "The assemblage mainly consists of the raw picrolite material, possibly quarried from the Troodos Mountains rather than imported in pebble form from the Kouris River valley, many waste chips flaked from that raw material in order...
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Near East
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Hidden City Provides Fascinating Insight Into The Structures Of Hellenistic Settlements
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06/23/2008 1:58:45 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 7 replies · 405+ views
FWF | 6-23-2008 | Prof. Schmidt-Colinet
Six centuries of Hellenistic culture lay hidden under the sand. The site has provided a unique insight into the structures of settlements at that time. The discovery of an ancient city buried beneath the sands of modern-day Syria has provided evidence for a Hellenistic settlement that existed for more than six centuries extending into the time of the Roman Empire. The site provides a unique insight into the structures of a pre-Roman Hellenistic settlement. The project, funded by the Austrian Science...
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Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
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Greek Style Architecture Found In The Ancient Achaemenid City
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06/25/2008 5:43:33 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 8 replies · 285+ views
Cultural Heritage News | 6-25-2008
Archaeologists have used geological surveys in the south of Iran to reveal rectangular formations inspired by Greek architecture dating to the Sassanid era. Archeologists have said that the structures located in Fars Province are part of the urban planning of the ancient Achaemenid city of Istakhr during the Sassanid period (226-651 CE). The design is loaned from Hippodamus style of urban planning during a series of armed conflicts with Persias great rival to the west, the Roman Empire, said...
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Ancient Autopsies
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Frozen Siberian Mummies Reveal A Lost Civilization
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06/25/2008 5:16:28 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 22 replies · 969+ views
Discover Magazine | 6-25-2008 | Andrew Curry
Global warming may finally do in the bodies of the ancient Scythians. by Andrew Curry That the warrior survived the arrow's strike for even a short time was remarkable. The triple-barbed arrowhead, probably launched by an opponent on horseback, shattered bone below his right eye and lodged firmly in his flesh. The injury wasn't the man's first brush with death. In his youth he had survived a glancing sword blow that fractured the back of his skull. This injury was different. The man was probably begging for death, says Michael Schultz, a paleopathologist at...
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Rome and Italy
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Redating Caesar's Invasion Of Britain
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06/25/2008 5:22:56 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 22 replies · 660+ views
San Marcos record | 6-25-2008
TxSt astronomers come to bury long-accepted date, not to praise it -- Julius Caesar landed an invasion fleet on the shores of Britain in 55 B.C., expanding the boundaries of the so-called "Known World" and inadvertently sparking a dispute between historians and scientists for centuries to come. Now, astronomers from Texas State University have applied their unique brand of forensic astronomy to the enduring controversy surrounding the precise location of Caesar's landfall, concluding that the historically accepted date for the event -- Aug. 26-27, 55 B.C. -- is incorrect. The Texas State team's proposed new date of Aug....
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The Vikings
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Raiders Or Traders? (Vikings)
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06/25/2008 5:33:36 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 30 replies · 417+ views
Smithsonian Magazine | July 2008 | Andrew Curry
From his bench toward the stern of the Sea Stallion From Glendalough, Erik Nielsen could see his crewmates' stricken faces peeping out of bright-red survival suits. A few feet behind him, the leather straps holding the ship's rudder to its side had snapped. The 98-foot vessel, a nearly $2.5 million replica of a thousand-year-old...
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Bayeux, Nowhere Near London
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Campaign to bring the Bayeux Tapestry back to Britain
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06/24/2008 5:22:08 AM PDT · Posted by Renfield · 23 replies · 382+ views
Daily Telegraph (U.K.) | 6/24/08
A campaign has been launched to bring the Bayeux Tapestry, one of the world's great works of art, back to Britain for the first time centuries, and put it on display in Canterbury Cathedral. The famous embroidery of the 1066 Norman Conquest is the subject of a major conference of world experts being held at the British Museum next month......
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British Isles
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Medieval Boat Found On Suffolk Coast
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06/25/2008 10:12:32 AM PDT · Posted by blam · 12 replies · 597+ views
EADT24 | 6-25-2008 | Mark Lord
The unearthing of a medieval boat on the north Suffolk coast is of "great national importance", the archaeological team behind the discovery said last night. As reported in yesterday's EADT the remains were found during excavations at Sizewell in advance of the onshore works for the Greater Gabbard Wind Farm. The vessel, which was probably a small inshore fishing boat, was broken up sometime between the 12th and 14th Centuries and parts of...
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Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
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Museum of London's Skeleton Key to the Bodies Under City's Streets
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06/27/2008 4:02:52 PM PDT · Posted by Coffee200am · 31 replies · 877+ views
Times Online | 06.28.2008 | Jack Malvern
snip...Tens of thousands of skeletons that lie hidden beneath the streets, houses and offices of London have been revealed for the first time on a map, in a collaboration between the Museum of London and The Times. snip...Another skeleton was found with a metal spike lodged in its spine. Its owner, a man who was buried in Smithfield, East London, in about 1350, was probably hit with an arrow or spear, but the attack did not kill him. He survived only to catch bubonic plague in his late thirties or early forties. "Somehow the injury didn't cause an infection," Mr...
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Navigation
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Expert closing in on mystery shipwreck[Australia] {Possible Before Cpt. Cook}
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06/17/2007 5:26:33 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 11 replies · 878+ views
News.Com | 17 June 2007 | Lucy Carne
The mystery of a galleon believed to be buried in a North Stradbroke Island swamp could be solved within months. For a century, rumours have circulated that the remains of a 16th or 17th-century Spanish or Portuguese vessel lie in the snake-infested 18 Mile Swamp at the southern end of the Moreton Bay island. Tales persist of Aborigines finding gold coins and amateur explorers stripping the ship of its anchor, fastenings and planks. Brisbane archeologist Greg Jefferys has been searching for the wreck for nearly 20 years and is confident he is closing in. Last week he found three metal...
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Australia and the Pacific
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Ancient Australia Not Written In Stone
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06/25/2008 10:00:10 AM PDT · Posted by blam · 14 replies · 581+ views
ABC Science | 6-25-2008 | Fran Molloy
Has the life of Australia's Aborigines remained unchanged for 45,000 years? A new approach to archaeology challenges us to rethink prehistory. Some archaeologists argue that physical remnants such as this chert knife found in Djadjiling in WA give a more accurate view of life in ancient Australia than re-interpreting post-European contact history. Aboriginal people are thought to have inhabited the Australian continent for around 45,000 years before European contact, and are frequently cited as the oldest continuous living culture on Earth. However, written records of their lives exist...
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Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
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Evidence Of Ancient Farming Found (Canada)
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06/23/2008 1:30:34 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 4 replies · 287+ views
BC Local News | 6-20-2008 | Jeff Nagel
A 3,600-year-old native village site uncovered during road work for the new Golden Ears Bridge is being hailed as a globally significant find that suggests aboriginal people here were Canada's first recorded farmers. The ancient discovery has electrified archaeologists who say it may help reverse long-held notions of pre-contact natives as hunter-gatherers who didn't actively garden or otherwise manage the landscape. It also shines a new spotlight on the accelerating loss of First Nations heritage sites in the Lower Mainland to make way for new highways,...
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Discover Area's Primal Past at Indian Museum of Lake County
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06/23/2008 8:25:34 PM PDT · Posted by Pontiac · 10 replies · 143+ views
Cleveland Plain Dealer | June 03, 2008 | Deanna R. Adams
Did you know that if you live in Lake County, there is a chance you can still find an ancient Indian artifact in your own backyard? And if you lived in Eastlake in the 1970s, you most likely did. Thousands of artifacts including pipes, stones, shells, bone hair pins and beads, turned up in the area in 1973 when property on Reeves Road was sold to make way for condominiums. Pipes, in particular, were easy finds. "There were so many pipes in the area because there were a lot of tobacco patches there," says Ann Dewald, director of the Indian...
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PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
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Follow the Silt
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06/24/2008 2:03:54 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 26 replies · 1,443+ views
NY Times | June 24, 2008 | CORNELIA DEAN
Dorothy J. Merritts, a geology professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., was not looking to turn hydrology on its ear when she started scouting possible research sites for her students a few years ago. But when she examined photographs of the steep, silty banks of the West Branch of Little Conestoga Creek, something did not look right. The silt was laminated, deposited in layers. She asked a colleague, Robert C. Walter, an expert on sediment, for his opinion. "Those are not stream sediments," he told her. "Those are pond sediments." In short, the streamscape...
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Flood, Here Comes the Flood
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UW Scientist: Sea Level Changes a Driving Force in Mass Extinctions (of Humans!)
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06/21/2008 4:40:14 PM PDT · Posted by Diana in Wisconsin · 15 replies · 229+ views
Madistan.com | June 21, 2008 | Anita Weier
Watch out for the oceans.That's the lesson of an extensive study by University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor Shanan Peters published June 15 in the journal Nature. Peters looked at data gathered by scientists over many years and analyzed what they found at about 600 locations all over the continental United States and Alaska, going back more than 500 million years. Changes in ocean environments related to sea level exert a driving influence on rates of extinction, which animals and plants survive or vanish, and the composition of life in the ocean, he found. "This breakthrough speaks loudly to the future...
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Catastrophism and Astronomy
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Life Survived Catastrophic Space Rock Impact [Chesapeake Bay area]
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06/26/2008 8:04:37 PM PDT · Posted by ETL · 41 replies · 661+ views
Space.com | June 26, 2008 | Jeanna Bryner
The true impact of an asteroid or comet crashing near the Chesapeake Bay 35 million years ago has been examined in detail for the first time. The analysis reveals the resilience of life in the aftermath of disaster. The impact crater, which is buried under 400 to 1,200 feet (120 to 365 meters) of sand, silt and clay, spans twice the length of Manhattan. The sprawling depression helped create what would eventually become Chesapeake Bay. About 10,000 years ago, ice sheets began to melt and once-dry river valleys filled with water. The rivers of the Chesapeake region converged directly over...
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Panspermia
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Is Ice a Catalyst for Life Throughout the Universe?
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06/23/2008 1:33:10 PM PDT · Posted by LibWhacker · 9 replies · 365+ views
Daily Galaxy | 6/23/08
Ancient_antarctic_microbes_2_2 The unusual properties of frozen water may have been the ticket that made life possible. Over the decades, several notable scientists have began to suspect that life on Earth did not evolve in a warm primordial soup, but in ice -- at temperatures that few living things can now tolerate. The very laws of chemistry may have actually favored ice, says Jeffrey Bada, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. "We've been arguing for a long time," he says, "that cold conditions make much more sense, chemically, than warm conditions." If Bada and others are correct, it would...
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Lost Tribes
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Incredible pictures of one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes firing bows and arrows
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05/29/2008 2:59:10 PM PDT · Posted by LibWhacker · 124 replies · 4,641+ views
Daily Mail | 5/29/08 | Michael Hanlon
Skin painted bright red, heads partially shaved, arrows drawn back in the longbows and aimed square at the aircraft buzzing overhead. The gesture is unmistakable: Stay Away. Behind the two men stands another figure, possibly a woman, her stance also seemingly defiant. Her skin painted dark, nearly black. The apparent aggression shown by these people is quite understandable. For they are members of one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes, who live in the Envira region in the thick rainforest along the Brazilian-Peruvian frontier. Thought never to have had any contact with the outside world, everything about these people is, and...
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Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil
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05/30/2008 6:59:01 AM PDT · Posted by zeebee · 50 replies · 1,100+ views
BBC News | 5/30/08 | BBC
One of South America's few remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes has been spotted and photographed on the border between Brazil and Peru. The Brazilian government says it took the images to prove the tribe exists and help protect its land. The pictures, taken from an aeroplane, show red-painted tribe members brandishing bows and arrows. More than half the world's 100 uncontacted tribes live in Brazil or Peru, Survival International says. Stephen Corry, the director of the group - which supports tribal people around the world - said such tribes would "soon be made extinct" if their land was not protected. 'Monumental...
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Amazon tribe sighting raises dilemma
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05/30/2008 3:55:58 PM PDT · Posted by marthemaria · 113 replies · 1,742+ views
http://www.eleconomista.es
Dramatic photographs ofpreviously unfound Amazon Indians have highlighted theprecariousness of the few remaining "lost" tribes and thedangers they face from contact with outsiders. The bow-and-arrow wielding Indians in the pictures releasedon Thursday are likely the remnants of a larger tribe who wereforced deeper into the forest by encroaching settlement,experts said. Rather than being "lost", they have likely had plenty ofcontact with other indigenous groups over the years, saidThomas Lovejoy, an Amazon expert who is president of The HeinzCenter in Washington. "I think there is an ethical question whether you can inthe end keep them from any contact and I think...
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Uncontacted" Amazon Tribe Actually Known for Decades
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06/21/2008 1:17:49 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 43 replies · 1,127+ views
National Geographic News | 6-19-2008 | Kelly Hearn
Recent photos of an uncontacted tribe firing arrows at a plane briefly made these Amazon Indians the world's least understood media darlings. Contrary to many news stories, the isolated group has actually been monitored from a distance for decades, past and current Brazilian government officials say. No one, however, is known to have had a face-to-face meeting with the nomadic tribe, which lives along the Peru-Brazil border. And no one knows how much, if anything, these rain forest people know about the outside world. The tribe -- whose...
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'Lost' Amazon tribe a publicity stunt
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06/23/2008 10:16:06 AM PDT · Posted by Daffynition · 39 replies · 1,567+ views
News.com | June 23, 2008 | staff reporter
HE man behind photos of warriors from an "undiscovered" Amazon tribe that were beamed around the world has admitted it was a publicity stunt aimed at raising awareness of logging. Indigenous tribes expert, JosÈ Carlos Meirelles, said the tribe had been known of since 1910, and had been photographed to prove that they still existed in an area endangered by logging, The Guardian reported. Mr Meirelles, who was working for Funai, the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency dedicated to finding remote tribes and protecting them, said he spent three years gatheiring "evidence" about the tribe, and then planned the publicity to...
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The Not-So-Lost Tribe
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06/23/2008 10:05:43 PM PDT · Posted by Lusis · 20 replies · 1,147+ views
Yahoo Buzz | June 23, 2008 | Mike Krumboltz
Even in an age when cynical sleuths can hyper-analyze stories for truth and accuracy, the occasional hoax still slips through the cracks. Such was the case with a so-called "lost Amazon tribe."
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Photo of Amazon Tribe Not a Hoax
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06/24/2008 3:55:09 PM PDT · Posted by Daffynition · 35 replies · 722+ views
LiveScience | 24 June 2008 | Robin Lloyd
Recent photos of an "uncontacted tribe" of Indians near the Brazil-Peru border have sparked media reports of a hoax, but the organization that released the images defends its claims and actions. The photographs, which showed men painted red and black and aiming arrows skyward, were released in late May by Survival International, a London-based organization that advocates for tribal people worldwide. The release stated that "members of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes have been spotted and photographed from the air," and quoted the Brazilian government photographer saying, "there are some who doubt [the tribe's] existence" as justification for...
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Oh So Mysterioso
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Michelangelo 'hid secret code in Sistine Chapel'
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06/21/2008 6:57:45 AM PDT · Posted by yankeedame · 46 replies · 1,681+ views
Telegraph.uk | 20/06/2008 | Malcolm Moore
Michelangelo hid a secret code in the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel made up of mystical Jewish symbols... according to a new book. The Sistine Chapel was intended to be decoded, the authors believe The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,...is actually a "bridge" between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish faith", according to The Sistine Secrets: Unlocking the Codes in Michelangelo's Defiant Masterpiece. --snip-- Scanning...the arrangement of figures on the...14,000 square foot ceiling, the authors have found shapes that correspond to Hebrew letters. --snip-- For example, the...
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Love Stinks
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Primates Scent Speaks Volumes About Who he Is
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06/23/2008 4:56:17 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 11 replies · 324+ views
Physorg | Duke University
Perhaps judging a man by his cologne isn't as superficial as it seems.Duke University researchers, using sophisticated machinery to analyze hundreds of chemical components in a ringtailed lemur's distinctive scent, have found that individual males are not only advertising their fitness for fatherhood, but also a bit about their family tree as well. "We now know that there's information about genetic quality and relatedness in scent," said Christine Drea, a Duke associate professor of biological anthropology and biology. The male's scent can reflect his mixture of genes, and to which animals he's...
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Helix, Make Mine a Double
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Sex, cleaner of genomes
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06/22/2008 2:11:51 AM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 20 replies · 590+ views
Indiana University via biologynews.net | February 16, 2006 | NA
The water flea Daphnia pulex is a commonly used model organism among ecologists and other environmental scientists. When sexual species reproduce asexually, they accumulate bad mutations at an increased rate, report two Indiana University Bloomington evolutionary biologists in this week's Science. The researchers used the model species Daphnia pulex, or water flea, for their studies. The finding supports a hypothesis that sex is an evolutionary housekeeper that adeptly reorders genes and efficiently removes deleterious gene mutations. The study also suggests sexual reproduction maintains its own existence by punishing, in a sense, individuals of...
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Chromosome rearrangements not as random as believed
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06/22/2008 3:02:05 AM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 11 replies · 418+ views
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia via biologynews.net | February 16, 2006 | NA
As the human genome gradually yields up its secrets, scientists are finding some genetic events, such as rearrangements in chromosomes, are less random than they had previously thought. Originating as structural weaknesses in unstable stretches of DNA, abnormal chromosomes may, rarely, result in a disabling genetic disease one or two generations later. A report in the Feb. 17 issue of Science by genetics researchers at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania analyzes genetic predisposition to the translocation t(11;22), a swapping of genetic material between chromosomes 11 and 22. They found an unexpectedly high frequency of new...
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Paleontology
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Fossil is one of earliest four-legged creatures
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06/26/2008 8:24:22 AM PDT · Posted by Fractal Trader · 17 replies · 523+ views
Boston.com | 26 June 2008 | Seth Borenstein
Scientists unearthed a skull of the most primitive four-legged creature in Earth's history, which should help them better understand the evolution of fish to advanced animals that walk on land. The 365 million-year-old fossil skull, shoulders, and part of the pelvis of the water-dweller, Ventastega curonica, were found in Latvia, researchers report in a study published in today's issue of the journal Nature. Even though Ventastega is probably an evolutionary dead-end, the finding sheds new details on the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapods. Tetrapods are animals with four limbs and include such descendants as amphibians, birds, and mammals. While...
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Dinosaurs
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Myth of Dwarf Dinos in Dracula Country Confirmed
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06/24/2008 7:21:27 AM PDT · Posted by blam · 15 replies · 785+ views
Discovery News | 6-13-2008 | Jennifer Viegas
In 1900, the sister of an eccentric Austro-Hungarian aristocrat named Baron von Nopsca found a tiny bone on the baron's family estate in Transylvania, a historical region in present-day Romania. The baron, who was a dinosaur buff, identified the bone as belonging to a dwarf dino that likely once lived on an island in the region. The motorcycle-riding baron's outrageous theories were ridiculed and largely dismissed, but now new evidence suggests his proposed island of dwarf dinosaurs did indeed exist in the land of...
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Middle Ages and Renaissance
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Biblical Text-Writing May Have Poisoned Monks
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06/27/2008 3:48:57 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 35 replies · 572+ views
Discovery News | 6-27-2008 | Jennifer Viegas
Medieval bones from six different Danish cemeteries reveal that monks who wrote Biblical texts and other religious materials may have been exposed to toxic mercury, which was used to formulate just one of their ink colors: red. The study, which will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, also describes a previously undocumented disease, called FOS, which was like leprosy and caused skull lesions. Additionally, the researchers found that mercury-containing medicine had been administered to 79 percent of the...
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Cracked 4 Pounders Made an Awful Din
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Pirate legend's £200m treasure trove to be recovered live on TV
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05/22/2007 12:04:55 PM PDT · Posted by Renfield · 25 replies · 1,218+ views
Times (UK) Online | 5-19-07 | Helen Nugent
A hoard of pirate's treasure worth £200 million at today's prices is to be raised from the seabed. The notorious pirate ship the Whydah, which was captained by Devon-born "Black Sam" Bellamy, sank in heavy storms in the Atlantic off the coast of Massachusetts in April 1717. When the ship went down she was laden heavily with ingots of gold, valuable gem-stones and dozens of tusks of precious ivory. The booty was so vast that each member of the 180-man crew was entitled to 50lb (23kg) of the haul by weight......
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Underwater Archaeology
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Three shipwrecks located in the Great Lakes including S.S. Michigan
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07/12/2005 10:32:15 AM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 40 replies · 2,150+ views
Niles Daily Star | Monday, July 11, 2005 | Monday, July 11, 2005
HOLLAND - A recent expedition by Holland-based Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates has led to the discovery of the final location of the Great Lakes passenger steamer S.S. Michigan, the remains of the car ferry Ann Arbor 5 and an unnamed barge. The S.S. Michigan is one of MSRA's six most-sought-after shipwrecks and is the subject of a 2004 documentary called, "ICEBOUND! The Ordeal of the S.S. Michigan." The S.S. Michigan sank on March 19, 1885, just four years after her launch. The 30-man crew made it safely to shore after being stranded on the ice for 42 days. MSRA board...
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American Revolution
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Will the North Sea give up America's most prized naval treasure?[John Paul Jones]
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06/28/2007 8:59:42 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 28 replies · 1,523+ views
Yorkshire Post | 28 June 2007 | Martin Hickes
The Americans will be taking to the high seas off the Yorkshire coast this summer in search of their nautical "Holy Grail". Martin Hickes reports on an expensive obsession. THIS August, a flotilla of American scientists will mount a £175,000 expedition off Flamborough Head in search of a wreck, more than 200 years after it sank. Two US teams will plunge into the North Sea in search of the flagship of a Scottish captain, known to the Brits as little more than a pirate, but to the Americans as a hero of the American Revolution and the "Father of the...
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Early America
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Shots heard 'round the world fired near Charleston
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06/28/2008 4:40:54 AM PDT · Posted by PeaRidge · 34 replies · 700+ views
The Post and Courier | Saturday, June 28, 2008 | By R.L. SCHREADLEY
This is Carolina Day, the 232nd anniversary of the Battle of Fort Sullivan. If you are not a native of South Carolinian (and possibly even if you are), you likely have never heard of Fort Sullivan and the significance of this day. Most American school children have heard stirring stories of the battles of Concord Bridge and Lexington Green, relatively minor skirmishes fought by the Minutemen of Revolutionary lore. These were fought in April 1775, and at Concord Bridge was fired the "shot heard 'round the world." But it was at an unfinished, palmetto-log fort on Sullivan's Island where the...
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Civil War
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Did John Wilkes Booth survive?
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02/19/2007 8:23:24 AM PST · Posted by Borges · 116 replies · 3,368+ views
Chattanooga Free Press | 2/19/07 | Dick Cook
A signature in the Franklin County Courthouse and a mummy last seen in 1975 convinced two Tennessee men that John Wilkes Booth, the killer of Abraham Lincoln, escaped capture, traveled South and lived into the 20th century. Now one of those men is hoping to use DNA evidence to prove it. The other man, Arthur Ben Chitty, a historiographer at the University of the South who died in 2002, spent 40 years amassing anecdotal evidence that Mr. Booth married a Sewanee woman and lived there for a time, said his daughter Em Turner Chitty. And there was...
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Pages
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Review: Strange Fruit: Why both sides are wrong in the race debate by Kenan Malik
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06/27/2008 11:53:07 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 10 replies · 297+ views
New Scientist | Wednesday, June 18, 2008 | Ian Hacking
Take, for instance, this one: "The human race is too young for it to have evolved into distinct species-like units." No, it isn't, and Malik provides good, if not overwhelming, reasons why not. Or this one: "Distinctions between races are arbitrary." No, they aren't. In a famous experiment in 2002, a computer program was able to "blindly" sort genetic data from individuals around the world into five populations that were nearly identical to the traditional races... The middle section of Malik's book recaps his cultural history of the European concept of race, covered in his book The Meaning of Race...
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Let's Have Jerusalem
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The Arab Slaver (Arab racism)
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06/10/2008 2:09:30 PM PDT · Posted by PRePublic · 32 replies · 965+ views
Morton's two cents | June 08, 2008
My country is called the great Satan by many in the Islamic world. We were once called capitalist pigs or similar metaphors used by much of the communist world. It has been stated by a certain group of people living within America that we have white devils running the establishment. Far to many Black Americans have yet to move beyond the race issue while at the same time (unfortunately) racism is still practiced by just about every group within our borders. I have experienced racism in Asian restaurants. I have had...
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Faith and Philosophy
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The Myth of Mecca (oldie but goodie)
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01/04/2004 6:36:50 PM PST · Posted by dennisw · 40 replies · 4,537+ views
pol usa | 9/27/2001 | By Jack Wheeler
The most sacred spot on earth to all members of the Islamic religion is the Holy City of Mecca, revered as the birthplace of Mohammed. It is one of the five basic requirements incumbent upon all Moslems that they make (if their health will allow it) a pilgrimage to Mecca once in their lives (the other four: recognize that there is no god but Allah, that Mohammed is Allah's prophet, ritually pray five times a day, and give alms to the poor). The founding events of Islam are Mohammed's activities in Mecca and Medina,...
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Longer Perspectives
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Revising HIV's History
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06/28/2008 12:10:13 AM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 27 replies · 597+ views
ScienceNOW Daily News | 25 June 2008 | Elizabeth Pennisi
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) responsible for most of the AIDS cases in the world infected people approximately 100 years ago, more than 20 years earlier than previously believed, according to findings presented here this week at the Evolution 2008 meeting. Its lesser known cousin, HIV-2, jumped into humans decades later, from a monkey species that carried the virus for just a couple of hundred years, not the millions of years researchers had assumed, according to other research presented at the meeting. Researchers are trying to pin down the origins of both HIVs to understand how often new human...
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Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
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Inuit Oral Stories Could Solve Mystery Of Franklin Expedition
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06/26/2008 5:59:47 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 23 replies · 788+ views
The Gazette | 6-25-2008 | Randy Boswell
More than 150 years after the disappearance of the Erebus and Terror - the famously ill-fated ships of the lost Franklin Expedition - fresh clues have emerged that could help solve Canadian history's most enduring mystery. A Montreal writer set to publish a book on Inuit oral chronicles from the era of Arctic exploration says she's gathered a "hitherto unreported" account of a British ship wintering in 1850 in the Royal Geographical Society Islands - a significant distance west of the search...
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end of digest #206 20080628
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