[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #221 Saturday, October 11, 2008
Greece
Mycenaean warrior used 'imported sword'
	10/05/2008 3:49:14 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 13 replies · 442+ views Howrah News Service | Saturday, October3, 2008 | NEWSX A Mycenaean warrior who died in western Greece over 3,000 years ago was the proud owner of a rare gold-wired sword imported from the Italian peninsula, a senior archaeologist said on Thursday. "This is a very rare discovery, particularly because of the gold wire wrapped around the hilt," archaeologist Maria Gatsi told AFP. "To my knowledge, no such sword has ever been found in Greece," said Gatsi, head of the regional archaeological department of Aetoloakarnania prefecture. Tests in Austria have confirmed that the bronze used in the 12th century BCE, 94-centimetre (37-inch) sword came from the Italian peninsula, she said....
Epigraphy and Language
Earliest Reference Describes Christ as 'Magician' [ sez Ogoistais ]
	10/06/2008 11:02:05 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 48 replies · 802+ views Discovery News | Wednesday, October 1, 2008 | Jennifer Viegas A team of scientists led by renowned French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio recently announced that they have found a bowl, dating to between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D., that, according to an expert epigrapher, could be engraved with the world's first known reference to Christ... The full engraving on the bowl reads, "DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS," which has been interpreted by French epigrapher and professor emeritus Andre Bernand as meaning either, "by Christ the magician" or "the magician by Christ." ...He and his colleagues found the object during an excavation of the underwater ruins...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Sarcophagus fragment found near Jerusalem
	10/10/2008 6:50:51 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 158+ views Middle East Times | October 6, 2008 | Agence France-Presse Israeli archaeologists on Monday announced the discovery of a stone sarcophagus fragment with Hebrew script that was apparently taken from the original burial grounds and used for a Muslim building near Jerusalem. The discovery was made along the West Bank separation barrier north of Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement. The sarcophagus is believed to be that of a Jewish priest from about 2,000 years ago. The fragment of the limestone lid bears the carved inscription "Ben HaCohen HaGadol" which can be loosely translated as "the high priest." "It seems that the fragment was plundered from its...
Moderate Islam
The Shattered Crown: The Aleppo Codex, 60 Years After the Riots
	10/08/2008 3:00:04 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 10 replies · 264+ views Biblical Archaeology Review | Sep/Oct 2008 | Yosef Ofer On November 29, 1947, the very day that Hebrew University Professor E.L. Sukenik acquired the first three Dead Sea Scrolls and brought them back to Jerusalem, the United Nations passed by a two -thirds vote the resolution partitioning Palestine, effectively creating a Jewish state for the first time in two millennia. To Sukenik, it was almost as if the apocalypse had arrived: A 2,000-year-old Isaiah scroll -- which prophesied the return of Israel -- surfaced virtually on the same day that Jewish sovereignty was reestablished in the Holy Land. But within two days of that glorious day in Jewish history,...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Ancient Peru pyramid spotted by satellite
	10/06/2008 10:07:31 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 34 replies · 1,349+ views Discovery | 06 Oct 2008 | Rossella Lorenzi New remote-sensing technology reveals huge structure beneath surface A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru's Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome. Nicola Masini and Rosa Lasaponara of Italy's National Research Council (CNR) discovered the pyramid by analyzing images from the satellite Quickbird, which they used to penetrate the Peruvian soil. The researchers investigated a test area along the river Nazca. Covered by plants and grass, it was about a mile away from Cahuachi's archaeological site, which contains the...
Prehistory and Origins
"Space rock" reveals life's origins
	10/07/2008 3:06:26 AM PDT · Posted by LibWhacker · 22 replies · 360+ views Phenomenica | 10/6/08 A meteorite, which crashed into Australia 40 years ago, is telling researchers new things about how life may have started on Earth, and how that almost universal protein left-handedness came to be. For more than 150 years, scientists have known that the most basic building blocks of life - chains of amino acid molecules and the proteins they form - almost always have the unusual characteristic of being overwhelmingly "left-handed." The molecules, of course, have no hands, but they are almost all asymmetrical in a way that parallels left-handedness. This observation, first made in the 1800s by...
Biology and Cryptobiology
At 2.8 km down, a 1-of-a-kind microorganism lives all alone [descende, Audax viator ...]
	10/09/2008 2:26:18 PM PDT · Posted by Mike Fieschko · 13 replies · 314+ views physorg.com | October 09, 2008 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Desulforudis audaxviator is an organism that lives independently in total darkness and at high temperature by reducing sulfate and fixing carbon and nitrogen from its environment, deep within the Earth. It constitutes the first known single-species ecosystem. Illustration © 2008 Thanya Suwansawad Click here to enlarge image The first ecosystem ever found having only a single biological species has been discovered 2.8 kilometers (1.74 miles) beneath the surface of the earth in the Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa. There the rod-shaped bacterium Desulforudis audaxviator exists in complete isolation, total darkness, a lack of oxygen, and 60-degree-Celsius heat...
One is the loneliest number for mine-dwelling bacterium
	10/09/2008 11:01:43 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 13 replies · 416+ views Nature News | 9 October 2008 | Laura Starr Sole member of world's first single-species ecosystem depends on rocks and radioactivity for life. The rod-shaped D. audaxviator was recovered from thousands of litres of water collected deep in the Mponeng Mine in South Africa.Greg Wanger, J. Craig Venter Institute / Gordon Southam, University of Western Ontario Nestled kilometres down in the hot, dark vaults of Earth's crust, scientists have discovered a remarkably lonely bacterium species. The rod-shaped bacterium, Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator, lives independently of any other organism in a part of the Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa, some 2.8 kilometres beneath Earth's surface. There, water flows from...
Paleontology
Earliest Animal Footprints Ever Found -- Discovered In Nevada
	10/05/2008 3:02:45 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 22 replies · 419+ views Ohio State University | Oct 5, 2008 | Pam Frost Gorder Photos by Kevin Fitzsimons, Ohio State University -- The fossilized trail of an aquatic creature suggests that animals walked using legs at least 30 million years earlier than had been thought. The tracks -- two parallel rows of small dots, each about 2 millimeters in diameter -- date back some 570 million years, to the Ediacaran period. The Ediacaran preceded the Cambrian period, the time when most major groups of animals first evolved. Scientists once thought that it was primarily microbes and simple multicellular animals that existed prior to the Cambrian, but that notion is changing, explained Loren...
Ancient Art
Archaeologists Unveil Majestic Roman Ruins That Rival Riches of Pompeii
	10/08/2008 2:34:52 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 26 replies · 721+ views New York Times | September 30, 2008 | Elisabetta Povoledo Photo: Ostia Archeological Authority
The Subsidence Adventure
Roman statue remains found in submerged city
	10/08/2008 3:21:47 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 13 replies · 323+ views news.com.au/ | October 2, 2008 | correspondents in Athens Archaeologists in Greece have found Roman remains in a submerged ancient port on the Cycladic island of Kythnos, the Greek culture ministry said today. The archaeologists found the bearded head of a man and the torso of a warrior wearing a Roman-era breastplate at a depth of 2.5 metres underwater in the island bay of Mandraki last month. It is unclear whether the fragments were part of the same statue. They had apparently been used as building materials in a wall running along the harbour, the ministry said. The age of the fragments has not been certified. The Romans became...
Rome and Italy
Roman villa unearthed in Budapest's District III
	10/08/2008 6:00:16 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 3 replies · 219+ views All Hungary News | 06 Oct 2008 | All Hungary News One of the earliest villas in Budapest is being excavated at Becsiut 262 (District III), reports the Budapest History Museum. The site is of special importance, as it fits well into the line of villas previously found in the area, providing more information on the location and extension of villa farms around Aquincum, wrote Krisztian Anderko, the archaeologist leading the excavations, on the museum's website. Ruins of the Roman building complex were discovered following several months of excavation work at a plot destined to become a hypermarket. The Office of Cultural Heritage had ordered the excavation to be carried...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
mtDNA Evidence for a Diversified Origin of Workers Building Mausoleum for First Emperor of China
	10/10/2008 6:58:25 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 4 replies · 127+ views PLoS ONE | Received: June 23, 2008; Accepted: September 4, 2008; Published: October 1, 2008 | see topic Ying Zheng was the First Emperor of China, who ended the Warring States Period, established the first empire of China (Qin Dynasty) in 221 BC and died in 210 BC. According to historical records, it took 39 years and 720,000 workers to build an amazingly magnificent mausoleum... the population size of Qin Dynasty was twenty-two millions and it controlled a vast territory... Between February and March 2003, 121 human skeletons were excavated by a team from Archaeology Institute of Shannxi when cleaning up a Qin-Dynasty kiln 500 meters away from the site where Terra Cotta Warriors were found... Aiming at...
British Isles
Rock found to be prehistoric toy hedgehog[UK]
	10/08/2008 5:43:11 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 37 replies · 823+ views Metro | 08 Oct 2008 | Metro It may look like a grubby bit of rock but this ancient carving has caused a stir among archaeologists and hedgehog lovers. It is a prehistoric toy hedgehog and was unearthed from a three-year-old child's grave at Stonehenge in Wiltshire. Thought to be about 2,500 years old, it is the earliest known depiction of a hedgehog in Britain. 'Amid the aura of gloom that surrounds Stonehenge, it comes as a beam of light to find a child's toy,' said archaeologist Dennis Price. A rock found is believed to be a prehistoric toy hedgehog for a child
Ireland
Celtic Tiger threatens 'very soul of historic Ireland'[Hill of Tara]
	10/09/2008 8:19:10 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 35 replies · 574+ views The Star | 07 Oct 2008 | Mitch Potter It is a battle worthy of the old Irish legends, pitting history against modernity. But as a controversial highway creeps ever closer to the spiritual home of the early Celtic kings, it now appears both sides may lose. For advocates of the twin ribbons of asphalt called the M3 now under construction north of the Irish capital, there is no choice but to live pragmatically with the roar of a commuter corridor in the shadow of the sacred Hill of Tara, because getting to nearby Dublin is a nightmare without it. For opponents, the new toll highway...
The Vikings
Timbers from a Viking home found in Hungate dig[UK]
	10/09/2008 10:44:45 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 10 replies · 297+ views The Press | 09 Oct 2008 | Jeremy Small The remains of a Viking home have been discovered in York by archaeologists. York Archaeological Trust archaeologists have exposed what they believe to be a timber-lined cellar of a two-storey house, during excavations at the site of the new Hungate development, which is being built near Stonebow. The archaeologists say the home, which was uncovered about three metres below street level, would have been built in the mid to late tenth century. It appears that ships' timbers used in the building's construction -- the first discovery of its kind in York. Hungate excavations project director Peter Connelly said: "To find...
Faith and Philosophy
Swedish archaeologists uncover Viking-era church
	10/08/2008 3:58:07 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 14 replies · 437+ views The Local, Sweden | October 3, 2008 | David Landes The remains of a Viking-era stave church, including the skeletal remains of a woman, have been uncovered near the cemetery of the Lannas church in Odensbacken outside Orebro in central Sweden. "It' a unique find," said Bo Annuswer of the Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieambetet) to the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper. "The churches that have found earlier have been really damaged. Now archaeologists uncovered for posts which mark the church, and the burial site. Such an undisturbed site is unique." Stave churches, common in medieval northern Europe, are constructed with timber framing and walls filled with vertical planks. The...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Shakespeare and Pie
	10/07/2008 11:43:27 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 12 replies · 205+ views College News Some students join for pie. Others show up for the Bard. Whatever their reasons are for joining the new Shakespeare and Pie club at Hampshire College, first-year student and club founder Josh Parr is pretty happy with the response. Parr started reading Shakespeare in high school, and the idea to pair Shakespearean discussion and snacks came to him shortly after he arrived on the Hampshire campus. The addition of pie, he said, was something he hoped would boost the club's popularity. "I had a few friends who were interested in a Shakespeare club. But everybody loves pie,"...
Ancient Europe
Prehistoric cave paintings took up to 20,000 years to complete
	10/04/2008 6:50:29 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 50 replies · 821+ views Telegraph | 05 Oct 2008 | Telegraph It may have taken Michelangelo four long years to paint his fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,but his earliest predecessors spent considerably longer perfecting their own masterpieces. Scientists have discovered that prehistoric cave paintings took up to 20,000 years to complete. Rather than being created in one session, as archaeologists previously thought, many of the works discovered across Europe were produced over hundreds of generations who added to, refreshed and painted over the original pieces of art. Until now it has been extremely difficult to pinpoint when prehistoric cave paintings and carvings were created, but a pioneering technique...
World War Eleven
Underground World War II caves found below Caen in northern France
	10/10/2008 7:04:11 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 400+ views Telegraph | October 5, 2008 | Peter Allen Underground caves in which thousands of civilians took shelter from one of the heaviest Allied bombings of World War II have been re-opened in northern France. The time capsule labyrinth lies deep below the Normandy city of Caen, which was all but destroyed by British guns around D-Day, June 6th 1944. Largely undisturbed since, the makeshift bunkers still contain numerous reminders of a terrified population whose only thought at the time was survival. They include packed suitcases, tins of syrup, decaying maps and official passes, and even lady's make-up bags including nail varnish and lipstick. There are also children's magazines...
Bon Voyage
Last veteran of Hood sinking dies
	10/06/2008 6:10:48 AM PDT · Posted by Vanders9 · 48 replies · 730+ views BBC | 10/06/2008 The last remaining survivor of the sinking of WWII battle cruiser HMS Hood in May 1941 has died at the age of 85, his naval association has said.
Climate
Relics exposed in Lake Shasta (Drought Reveals Lost Artifacts)
	10/06/2008 11:09:05 AM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 15 replies · 797+ views Redding Record | Sunday, October 5, 2008 | Ryan Sabalow Hwy. 99 bridges, train trestles, town ruins emerge as water level drops There's more than just muddy flip-flops and busted lawn chairs emerging from the depths of Lake Shasta as the reservoir drops to its lowest levels in 16 years. Old bridges, train trestles, tunnels and the foundations from towns long-drowned have begun to pop out of the lake's muddy depths. One such relic from Shasta County's pre-lake past even has taken on a new life. A bridge from Highway 99, the precursor to Interstate 5, was being used last week as a makeshift low-water boat ramp at Antlers Resort...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Top Geneticist: Human Evolution Is Over
	10/07/2008 11:30:28 AM PDT · Posted by Sopater · 70 replies · 1,083+ views Fox News | Tuesday, October 07, 2008 Human evolution is grinding to a halt because of a shortage of older fathers in the West, according to a leading genetics expert. Fathers over the age of 35 are more likely to pass on mutations, according to Professor Steve Jones of University College London. Speaking Tuesday at a UCL lecture entitled "Human Evolution Is Over," Professor Jones will argue that there were three components to evolution -- natural selection, mutation and random change. "Quite unexpectedly, we have dropped the human mutation rate because of a change in reproductive patterns," Professor Jones told The Times. "Human social change often changes...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
The "Merkle Blunder" and baseball's most famous do-over (100 years ago today)
	09/23/2008 10:57:00 AM PDT · Posted by Charles Henrickson · 12 replies · 71+ views New York Daily News | September 23, 2008 | David Hinckley One hundred years ago this afternoon, the New York Giants and the Chicago Cubs played a game that can still be found on baseball's figurative Mount Rushmore, next to the Bobby Thompson home run game, the Sandy Amoros catch game, Don Larsen's perfect game, and the game where Carlton Fisk waved it fair. No one who played in or saw the game is alive. The Polo Grounds, where it was played, was demolished a half century ago. Doesn't matter. Some games just endure. More specifically, what happened on Sept. 23, 1908, was this. With the first breezes of autumn in...
end of digest #221 20081011

[SunkenCiv]

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #221 20081011 · Saturday, October 11, 2008 · 24 topics · 2102824 to 2088621 · 690 members ·
	Saturday Oct 11 2008 v 5 n 12 view this issue	Welcome to the 221st issue. What a nice weekend (so far). I'm feeling a good bit better. A week or so ago I picked up a household air purifier from Germ Guardian, frankly because it was small and compact, just plugged in a wall outlet, uses UV light and a small fan to purify 450 cf an hour, and (the real selling point for me) uses no filters. I got it at a category killer chain store, and have it running right where I sleep. It was $50. I want to get the whole-room version, and set it up maybe in the middle of the basement, but haven't found it locally. So, cheapskate that I am, I've been running the two ceiling fans elsewhere in the house. Many thanks to all those who contributed topics! I haven't counted 'em yet, but I suspect this issue will be of below-average size. I didn't post much, others did, but from what I saw in the sources I mine, there wasn't very much to post. There was the usual injection of archival topics that somehow slipped the dragnet in times past, but even few of those. President McCain. Vice-President Palin. November 2008 -- Be There. Visit the Free Republic Memorial Wall -- a history-related feature of FR.
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[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #222 Saturday, October 18, 2008
Africa
Which way 'out of Africa'?
	10/15/2008 6:33:31 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 16 replies · 221+ views University of Bristol | Monday, October 13, 2008 | Cherry Lewis The widely held belief that the Nile valley was the most likely route out of sub-Saharan Africa for early modern humans 120,000 year ago is challenged in a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A team led by the University of Bristol shows that wetter conditions reached a lot further north than previously thought, providing a wet 'corridor' through Libya for early human migrations. The results also help explain inconsistencies between archaeological finds... Well-documented evidence shows there was increased rainfall across the southern part of the Sahara during the last interglacial period (130-117...
Prehistory and Origins
Speed-Walking Across Asia
	10/11/2008 10:56:58 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 2 replies · 100+ views ScienceNOW Daily News | Tuesday, October 7, 2008 | Ann Gibbons Chinese paleontologists discovered the two incisors in 1965 and the relatively simple stone tools in 1973 in the Yuanmou Basin... and might be from the species Homo erectus, a direct ancestor of humans that may have been the first human to spread beyond Africa about 1.8 million years ago. Scientists have gotten mixed results for the age of the site because there were no volcanic crystals in the soils for reliable radiometric dating. Lacking solid dates, researchers thought until a decade ago that the earliest humans didn't reach Asia until 1 million years ago. But a series of dates for...
Ancient Europe
Archaeologists find bones from prehistoric war in Germany
	10/11/2008 11:17:03 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 1 replies · 261+ views EarthTimes | Thursday, October 9, 2008 | DPA Archaeologists have discovered the bones of at least 50 prehistoric people killed in an armed attack in Germany around 1300 BC. The signs of battle from around 1300 BC were found near Demmin, north of Berlin. They are the first proof of any war north of the Alps during the Bronze Age, said state archaeologist Detlef Jantzen on Thursday. One of the skulls had a coin-sized hole in it, indicating the 20- to 30-year-old man had received a mortal blow. A neurologist said he was probably hit with a wooden club and died within hours. Scientists plan DNA tests on...
Chalcolithic
Copper Age began earlier than believed, scientists say
	10/11/2008 2:14:49 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 220+ views Monsters and Critics | Tuesday, October 7, 2008 | Deutsche Presse-Agentur Serbian archaeologists say a 7,500-year-old copper axe found at a Balkan site shows the metal was used in the Balkans hundreds of years earlier than previously thought. The find near the Serbian town of Prokuplje shifts the timeline of the Copper Age and the Stone Age's neolithic period, archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic told the independent Beta news agency. 'Until now, experts said that only stone was used in the Stone Age and that the Copper Age came a bit later. Our finds, however, confirm that metal was used some 500 to 800 years earlier,' she said. The Copper Age marks the...
Climate
Prehistoric Disaster: An Alpine Pompeii from the Stone Age
	10/11/2008 1:51:16 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 26 replies · 565+ views Der Spiegel | Friday, October 10, 2008 | Matthias Schulz The people of the Mondsee Lake settlement were apparently relatively advanced within this cultural group. They had metallurgical skills, which were rare in Europe. They cleverly searched the mountains for copper deposits, melted the crude ore in clay ovens and made refined, shimmering red weapons out of the metal. In dugout canoes... they paddled along the region's river networks and sold their goods in areas of present-day Switzerland and to their relatives on Lake Constance. Even Otzi the Iceman had an axe, made of so-called Mondsee copper. At approximately 3200 B.C., says Binsteiner, the master blacksmiths were struck by a...
Paleontology
Researcher investigates ancient geology to understand human development, climate change
	10/11/2008 2:20:11 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 4 replies · 127+ views PhysOrg | Friday, October 3, 2008 | Provided by Georgia State University Daniel Deocampo, a Georgia State assistant professor of Geology, is investigating ancient lakes and volcanic ash to help scientists better understand the environment in which humans evolved, and eventually used ash and sediment to build infrastructure in ancient civilizations... His research into volcanic ash that formed sedimentary rocks in Italy and California helps scientists better understand the ways ancient societies, including the Romans, used rocks to create mortar and concrete that, in some cases, was actually more durable than the modern varieties. Over hundreds of years, Romans experimented with different volcanic ash layers to perfect the building materials which would...
Egypt
Raising Alexandria [ from 2007 ]
	10/11/2008 2:56:01 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 14 replies · 234+ views Smithsonian magazine | April 2007 | Andrew Lawler ...in the early 1990s Goddio began to work on the other side of Alexandria's harbor, opposite the fortress. He discovered columns, statues, sphinxes and ceramics associated with the Ptolemies' royal quarter -- possibly even the palace of Cleopatra herself... he has found that much of ancient Alexandria sank beneath the waves and remains remarkably intact. Using sophisticated sonar instruments and global positioning equipment, and working with scuba divers, Goddio has discerned the outline of the old port's shoreline. The new maps reveal foundations of wharves, storehouses and temples as well as the royal palaces that formed the core of the...
Ancient Autopsies
Ephesus necropolis yields rare jewelry find
	10/12/2008 7:04:59 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 280+ views Today's Zaman | Saturday, October 11, 2008 | unattributed New sites have been explored during this season's excavations in Ephesus. Archeologists have been exploring a necropolis housing 55 bodies and 18 pieces of 1,700-year-old golden jewelry in the ancient city of Ephesus, located in the Aegean province of Izmir. The deputy leader of the excavation team, Austrian Sabine Ladstätter, spoke yesterday to the Anatolia news agency and said they had found important archeological remains during this year's Ephesus excavation season, which finished at the end of September, and added that the jewelry they found had been a surprise. Ladstätter noted that they had found a necropolis this year with...
British Isles
Rare finds unearth Teesside link with royalty[UK]
	10/14/2008 7:54:53 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 15 replies · 529+ views Evening Gazette | 14 Oct 2008 | Karen Faughey RARE Anglo Saxon jewellery worth an estimated £250,000 has revealed a fascinating link between East Cleveland and the royal family of 1,400 years ago. Exciting archeological finds dating back to the seventh century have been ruled to be treasure during five separate inquests at Teesside Coroners' Court. Experts have described the finds as "unparallel in the North East' after historians discovered 109 graves near Loftus from around 650AD - one of which is thought to have contained the body of a princess. Though the acidity in the soil means the remains no longer exist, dozens of high status items have...
Rare finds near Loftus reveal royal link
	10/17/2008 1:31:03 AM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 3 replies · 169+ views Evening Gazette | Oct 14 2008 Rare Anglo Saxon jewellery worth an estimated £250,000 has revealed a fascinating link between East Cleveland and the royal family of 1,400 years ago. Exciting archeological finds, dating back to the 7th Century, have been ruled to be treasure during five separate inquests at Teesside Coroner's Court. Experts have described the finds as "unparalleled in the North-east' after historians discovered 109 graves near Loftus from around 650AD - one of which is thought to have contained the body of a princess. Though the acidity in the soil means the human remains no longer exist, dozens of high status items have...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Stonehenge 'was a cremation cemetry, not healing centre'
	10/11/2008 11:21:44 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 12 replies · 356+ views Telegraph | October 9, 2008 | Louise Gray Stonehenge was used as a cremation cemetry throughout its history, according to new evidence that divides archaeologists over whether England's most famous ancient monument was about celebrating life or death... The latest evidence is from a team of archaeologists from a number of British universities who have been carrying out excavations over the past five summers... The report said: "We propose that very early in Stonehenge's history, 56 Welsh bluestones stood in a ring 285 feet 6 inches across. This has sweeping implications for our understanding of Stonehenge." The second significant finding was from radiocarbon dating of human remains found...
Prehistoric child is discovered buried with 'toy hedgehog' at Stonehenge
	10/12/2008 11:11:14 AM PDT · Posted by Beowulf9 · 23 replies · 612+ views Mail Online | October 10 2008 | Daily Mail Reporter This toy hedgehog, found in a child's grave at Stonehenge, is proof of what we have always known - children have always loved to play. Archaeologists who discovered the grave, where the child was laying on his or her side, believe the toy - perhaps placed there by a doting father - is the earliest known depiction of a hedgehog in British history. The diggers were working to the west of Stonehenge in what is known as the Palisade Ditch when they made the remarkable discovery last month in the top of the pit in which the child was buried....
The Vikings
Archaeologists dig deep to shed new light on city's Viking heritage
	10/11/2008 11:12:34 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 163+ views Yorkshire Post | Thursday, October 9, 2008 | Paul Jeeves A thousand years ago York ranked among the 10 biggest settlements in Western Europe, but archaeologists have now found the remains of a Viking settlement at the Hungate dig close to banks of the River Foss. The discovery is less than a mile from the remains of similar buildings found during the world-famous Coppergate dig 30 years ago, providing further clues as to the true size of the Viking town of Jorvik... The timber-lined cellar of a two-storey Viking age structure was unearthed more than 10ft below the current street level at Hungate last week, and it is thought...
Faith and Philosophy
Fighting with Jaguars, Bleeding for Rain: Has a 3K-year-old ritual survived in the central Mexico?
	10/12/2008 6:53:48 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 242+ views Archaeology, v61 n6 | November/December 2008 | Zach Zorich In early May I went to the Guerrero highlands to see the celebrations that take place during the Catholic Holy week, which coincides with the beginning of the spring planting season. The people in several mountain towns practice a type of Catholicism that incorporates religious beliefs and rituals that pre-date the arrival of Europeans. The most spectacular of these rituals are the Tigr√© fights. Men in the village of Acatlan dress in jaguar costumes and box each other as a kind of sacrifice to the rain god, Tlaloc. (The goggle-like eyes on their headgear match ancient depictions of both Tlaloc...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Red ochre burials: Greater Nicoya and elsewhere
	10/11/2008 2:07:42 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 2 replies · 113+ views Guanacast Journal, Costa Rica | October 7th or 8th, 2008 | Frederick W. Lange I was only slightly surprised when, in 1978, during excavations at a badly pot-hunted cemetery at the site of Nacascolo on the Bay of Culebra in Guanacaste, we encountered the first Red Ochre burial ever reported from Greater Nicoya. The Nacascolo burial was from approximately 1,200 years ago, making it more than a millennium more recent than the Wisconsin red ochre burials. At Nacascolo, a central male figure was surrounded by carefully sorted piles of the arm and leg bones of previously buried males of apparently more or less the same age, who had been moved aside to make room...
Biology and Cryptobiology
World's Oldest Fossil Impression Of Flying Insect Found In Suburban Strip Mall
	10/15/2008 9:41:17 AM PDT · Posted by Soliton · 13 replies · 494+ views Science Daily | Oct. 15, 2008 paleontologists may scour remote, exotic places in search of prehistoric specimens, Tufts researchers have found what they believe to be the world's oldest whole-body fossil impression of a flying insect in a wooded field behind a strip mall in North Attleboro, Mass. During a recent exploration as part of his senior project, Richard J. Knecht, a Tufts geology major, and Jake Benner, a paleontologist and senior lecturer in the Geology Department, set out to hunt for fossils at a location they learned of while reading a master's thesis that had been written in 1929. With chisels and hammers, the team...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Outcry at scale of inheritance project - NIH launches multi-million-dollar epigenomics programme.
	10/12/2008 11:17:18 AM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 11 replies · 263+ views Nature News | 10 October 2008 | Helen Pearson The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) handed out the first payments in a multi-million-dollar project to explore epigenomics last month. But some researchers are voicing concerns about the scientific and economic justification for this latest 'big biology' venture. Epigenetics, described as "inheritance, but not as we know it"1, is now a blisteringly hot field. It is concerned with changes in gene expression that are typically inherited, but not caused by changes in gene sequence. In theory, epigenetic studies can help explain how the millions of cells in the human body can carry identical DNA but form completely different cell...
Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
Earliest confirmed TB case found (9,000 years)
	10/15/2008 9:11:40 AM PDT · Posted by Rebelbase · 6 replies · 276+ views BBC | 10/15/08 | staff The 9,000-year-old remains of a mother and her baby discovered off the coast of Israel provide the earliest concrete evidence of human TB, say researchers. The bones were excavated from Alit-Yam, an ancient Neolithic village near Haifa, which has been submerged in the Mediterranean for thousands of years.
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Did Volcanoes Spark Life on Earth?
	10/17/2008 11:08:42 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 22 replies · 425+ views ScienceNOW Daily News | 16 October 2008 | Phil Berardelli Enlarge ImageHumble beginnings. An experiment in the 1950s with primordial gases and sparks produced some of life's building blocks.Credit: Ned Shaw/Indiana University/Science A once-discarded idea about how life started on our planet has been given a new life of its own, thanks to a serendipitous find. The story traces back to the early 1950s, when chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago in Illinois tried to recreate the building blocks of life under conditions they thought resembled those on the young Earth. The duo filled a closed loop of glass chambers and tubes with water...
Cities of Vesuvius
Ancient Roman stadium open
	10/12/2008 7:28:39 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 20 replies · 410+ views UPI | October 10, 2008 | unattributed The Roman stadium where Emperor Antoninus Pius staged Rome's version of the Olympic Games will be open this weekend for the first time in almost 500 years. Archaeologists have so far excavated half of the stadium, which was built of volcanic rock around 142 A.D. near Naples, and was buried by volcanic ash in 1538 following an eruption by Mount Nuovo, ANSA reported Friday. "Like the great Italian culture capitals of Florence, Venice, Rome and Urbino, Pozzuoli can also take advantage of its illustrious past, which is reflowering from the bowels of the earth," said Pozzuoli Mayor Pasquale Giacobbe. In...
The Bloody Games
Tomb of Real 'Gladiator' Found in Rome
	10/17/2008 4:12:50 AM PDT · Posted by NCDragon · 16 replies · 1,022+ views FOXNews/Times | October 16, 2008 | FOXNews Staff Italian archaeologists have discovered the tomb of the ancient Roman hero said to have inspired the character played by Russell Crowe in the film "Gladiator." Daniela Rossi, an archaeologist based in Rome, said the discovery of the monumental marble tomb of Marcus Nonius Macrinus, including a large inscription bearing his name, was "an exceptional find." She said it was "the most important ancient Roman monument to come to light for twenty or thirty years." The tomb is on the banks of the Tiber near the via Flaminia, north of Rome. Cristiano Ranieri, who led the archeological team at the site,...
Rome and Italy
Archaeologists unearth place where Emperor Caligula met his end
	10/18/2008 2:30:11 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 6 replies · 549+ views Times Online | 17 Oct 2008 | Richard Owen Archeologists say that they have found the underground passage in which the Emperor Caligula was murdered by his own Praetorian Guard to put an end to his deranged reign of terror. Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (AD12-AD41), known by his nickname Caligula (Little Boots), was the third emperor of the Roman Empire after Augustus and Tiberius, and like them a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. His assassination was the result of a conspiracy by members of the Senate who hoped to restore the Roman Republic. However the Praetorian Guard declared Caligula's uncle Claudius emperor instead, thus preserving the monarchy. Maria...
Ancient Art
Italy tries to block sale of Bonhams antiquities linked to disgraced dealer
	10/12/2008 7:19:20 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 111+ views Times Online | October 10, 2008 | Dalya Alberge Francesco Rutelli, the former Italian Minister for Culture and Deputy Prime Minister, told the Italian Parliament he had believed that some of the antiquities to be auctioned in London next week had been exported illegally from Italy. In an "urgent question" to Sandro Bondi, his successor as Culture Minister, he accused the centre-right Berlusconi Government, which took power in May, of failing to take action over the illegal export of archaeological treasures. Mr Rutelli later told reporters that he was most concerned about an elaborately decorated Apulian 4th-century BC red krater or Greek vase that forms part of the Bonhams...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Grave Fragment Found: Son of Second Temple High Priest
	10/06/2008 2:11:25 PM PDT · Posted by Nachum · 18 replies · 445+ views arutz 7 | 10-06-08 | Hillel Fendel Archaeologists excavating north of Jerusalem have found a piece of a sarcofagus - a stone coffin - belonging to a son of a High Priest. The visible inscription reads, "the son of the High Priest" - but the words before it are broken off. It thus cannot be ascertained which High Priest is referred to, nor the name or age of the deceased. Many other findings in the excavation are from the late Second Temple period, and archaeologists assume that the High Priest in question lived between 30 and 70 C.E. Yoli Shwartz, Spokesperson for the Israel Antiquities Authority, notes...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Ground Breaking Dig Backs Jesus' Divinity
	10/15/2008 9:48:32 AM PDT · Posted by NYer · 113 replies · 1,455+ views SydneyAnglicans | October 8, 2008 | Mark Hadley The Life of Jesus film crew has gained rare access to an archaeological find that cements historical evidence early Christians worshiped Jesus as divine. Dr John Dickson, the series' host and co-founder of the Centre for Public Christianity, will guide viewers through the remains of an ancient prayer hall unearthed at Megiddo in central Israel. "The inscriptions on the mosaic floor are remarkable," Dr Dickson says. "One of them names a benefactor called Gaianus who is described as a centurion. Another mentions a woman called Akeptous who "offered this table in memorial of the God Jesus Christ'." The inscriptions cast...
Epigraphy and Language
History detective
	10/14/2008 1:57:19 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 6 replies · 202+ views The Daily Inter Lake | Sunday, Oct 12, 2008 | Michael Richeson Maybe it's a trick of the mind. Maybe it's conditioning from too many Indiana Jones movies, but Flathead County's records building has the same feel as a rare books collection in a library or a grandparent's attic. The gathering of history somehow reaches out from the stacked boxes and emits a feeling of mystery and depth. In less dramatic terms, the building is just a shell filled with metal shelves and white boxes. But standing in an aisle, surrounded by documents that date back to the late 1800s, the place does feel like Jones' warehouse. Harrison Ford, however, has never...
Civil War
Impact Of Geology On The U.S. Civil War: War From The Ground Up
	10/11/2008 11:27:10 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 44 replies · 473+ views ScienceDaily | October 7, 2008 | Geological Society of America Whisonant and Ehlen also studied the terrain at Antietam, the site of the bloodiest battle in the Civil War, where on 17 September 1862 up to 23,100 soldiers were killed, wounded, or declared missing. "What's so striking at Antietam," says Whisonant, is that "two geologic units underlie [that area]. One is a very, very pure limestone that as it erodes it literally melts. Mostly what you get with that is a very even, level, open surface -- there just aren't a lot of deep holes and high hills that give soldiers a place to hide." On one area of this...
Clef Notes
Manhattan's historic Tin Pan Alley is up for sale
	10/14/2008 11:28:16 AM PDT · Posted by weegee · 5 replies · 292+ views AP via Yahoo | Thu Oct 9, 9:32 AM ET | no byline Tin Pan Alley, the home of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and other great American songwriters, is up for sale. Five buildings on West 28th Street in Manhattan's Chelsea district are being offered as a group for $44 million. A listing on real estate Web site Loopnet recommends that the buildings be torn down and a high-rise take their place. Preservationists and tenants aren't happy... Tin Pan Alley housed a concentration of music publishers and songwriters from the 1890s to the 1950s.
Longer Perspectives
Vietnam Veterans Moving Wall is in Delafield (WI) Through Monday
	10/17/2008 2:44:57 PM PDT · Posted by Diana in Wisconsin · 3 replies · 69+ views JSOnline | October 16, 2008 | Mike Johnson Delafield, WI - Jeanette Dow and John Phillip Kronschnabel Jr. peer at a black wall containing name after name of fallen soldiers, their index fingers sliding over them in search of two men from Black River Falls who died in the Vietnam War. Dow, of Sullivan, knew the men and their parents. When she heard that the Moving Wall, a half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., was coming to Delafield, she and her grandson, Kronschnabel, decided to visit it Thursday to pay tribute to the two soldiers and honor the other men and women who made...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
In Israel, Remembering The Yom Kippur War
	10/08/2008 12:10:34 PM PDT · Posted by IsraelBeach · 10 replies · 286+ views Israel News Agency / Google News | October 8, 2008 | Joel Leyden In Israel, Remembering The Yom Kippur War By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem ----October 8, 2008 .....As I wrote the below account 5 years ago, the first time retracing steps taken thirty-five years ago during Yom Kippur in Israel and the US in October 1973, memories began to pour back along with the anxiety and tears that we all experienced at the time. For many of us, the scars of war will never heal. Nor should they. Sitting in the relative safety of a suburban Long Island home, I first heard news reports of Arab armies attacking Israel on...
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