Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #222 Saturday, October 18, 2008
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Africa
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Which way 'out of Africa'?
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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...
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Prehistory and Origins
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Speed-Walking Across Asia
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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...
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Ancient Europe
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Archaeologists find bones from prehistoric war in Germany
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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...
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Chalcolithic
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Copper Age began earlier than believed, scientists say
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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...
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Climate
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Prehistoric Disaster: An Alpine Pompeii from the Stone Age
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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...
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Paleontology
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Researcher investigates ancient geology to understand human development, climate change
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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...
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Egypt
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Raising Alexandria [ from 2007 ]
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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...
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Ancient Autopsies
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Ephesus necropolis yields rare jewelry find
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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...
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British Isles
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Rare finds unearth Teesside link with royalty[UK]
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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...
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Rare finds near Loftus reveal royal link
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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...
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Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
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Stonehenge 'was a cremation cemetry, not healing centre'
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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...
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Prehistoric child is discovered buried with 'toy hedgehog' at Stonehenge
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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....
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The Vikings
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Archaeologists dig deep to shed new light on city's Viking heritage
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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...
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Faith and Philosophy
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Fighting with Jaguars, Bleeding for Rain: Has a 3K-year-old ritual survived in the central Mexico?
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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 Tigrâ© 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...
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PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
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Red ochre burials: Greater Nicoya and elsewhere
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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...
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Biology and Cryptobiology
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World's Oldest Fossil Impression Of Flying Insect Found In Suburban Strip Mall
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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...
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Helix, Make Mine a Double
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Outcry at scale of inheritance project - NIH launches multi-million-dollar epigenomics programme.
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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...
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Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
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Earliest confirmed TB case found (9,000 years)
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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.
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Catastrophism and Astronomy
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Did Volcanoes Spark Life on Earth?
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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...
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Cities of Vesuvius
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Ancient Roman stadium open
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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...
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The Bloody Games
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Tomb of Real 'Gladiator' Found in Rome
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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,...
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Rome and Italy
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Archaeologists unearth place where Emperor Caligula met his end
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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...
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Ancient Art
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Italy tries to block sale of Bonhams antiquities linked to disgraced dealer
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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...
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Let's Have Jerusalem
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Grave Fragment Found: Son of Second Temple High Priest
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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...
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Middle Ages and Renaissance
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Ground Breaking Dig Backs Jesus' Divinity
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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...
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Epigraphy and Language
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History detective
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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...
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Civil War
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Impact Of Geology On The U.S. Civil War: War From The Ground Up
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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...
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Clef Notes
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Manhattan's historic Tin Pan Alley is up for sale
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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.
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Longer Perspectives
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Vietnam Veterans Moving Wall is in Delafield (WI) Through Monday
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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...
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Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
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In Israel, Remembering The Yom Kippur War
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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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end of digest #222 20081018
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