[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #236 Saturday, January 24, 2009
Paleontology
Dinosaur fossils suggest speedy extinction - Arctic find challenges the idea that the massive...
	01/22/2009 2:45:42 AM PST · Posted by neverdem · 21 replies · 729+ views Nature News | 19 January 2009 | Matt Kaplan Arctic find challenges the idea that the massive reptiles declined slowly. A new fossil find suggests the dinosaurs may have died out quickly.Ablestock / Alamy Fossils uncovered recently in the Arctic support the idea that dinosaurs died off rapidly -- perhaps as the result of a massive meteor hitting Earth. The finding contravenes the idea that dinosaurs were already declining by this time.Geological evidence indicates that an impact occurred near the Yucatan Peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago. But whether the event created an all-out apocalypse that wiped out the dinosaurs is still a matter...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Correlation demonstrated between cosmic rays and temperature of the stratosphere
	01/23/2009 11:14:46 PM PST · Posted by neverdem · 20 replies wattsupwiththat.com | 2009/01/22 | Anthony Watts This offers renewed hope for Svensmark's theory of cosmic ray modulation of earth's cloud cover. Here is an interesting correlation published just yesterday in GRL. Cosmic rays detected deep underground reveal secrets of the upper atmosphere Watch the video animation here (MPEG video will play in your media player) Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and led by scientists from the UK's National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), this remarkable study shows how the number of high-energy cosmic-rays reaching a detector deep underground, closely matches temperature measurements in the upper atmosphere...
Flood, Here Comes the Flood
Danube Delta Holds Answers to "Noah's Flood' Debate [science]
	01/23/2009 8:15:56 PM PST · Posted by Coyoteman · 19 replies Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution | January 22, 2009 | Media Relations Did a catastrophic flood of biblical proportions drown the shores of the Black Sea 9,500 years ago, wiping out early Neolithic settlements around its perimeter? A geologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and two Romanian colleagues report in the January issue of Quaternary Science Reviews that, if the flood occurred at all, it was much smaller than previously proposed by other researchers. Using sediment cores from the delta of the Danube River, which empties into the Black Sea, the researchers determined sea level was approximately 30 meters below present levels -- rather than the 80 meters others hypothesized. "We don't...
Climate
Natural disasters doomed early civilization (Supe Valley along the Peruvian coast)
	01/19/2009 7:57:00 PM PST · Posted by NormsRevenge · 16 replies · 486+ views AP on Yahoo | 1/19/09 | AP WASHINGTON -- Nature turned against one of America's early civilizations 3,600 years ago, when researchers say earthquakes and floods, followed by blowing sand, drove away residents of an area that is now in Peru. "This maritime farming community had been successful for over 2,000 years, they had no incentive to change, and then all of a sudden, boom, they just got the props knocked out from under them," anthropologist Mike Moseley of the University of Florida said in a statement. Moseley and colleagues were studying civilization of the Supe Valley along the Peruvian coast, which was established up to 5,800...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Rock shelter painting by American Indian likely circa 1000-1600[Tennessee]
	01/18/2009 5:51:10 PM PST · Posted by BGHater · 18 replies · 569+ views Knox News | 18 Jan 2009 | Morgan Simmons Finding an Aladdin's cave Cory Holliday almost didn't see the stick figure painted on the sandstone. His first impression was that it was a clever fake. A cave specialist for the Tennessee chapter of The Nature Conservancy, Holliday was searching for caves on a 4,200-acre tract in a remote part of Fentress County on the Cumberland Plateau. It was winter, and he heard water. Thinking there might be a cave nearby, he hiked down to the base of a bluff, where he discovered a rocky alcove bisected by a 10-foot waterfall. On the roof of a nearby south-facing rock shelter...
Australia and the Pacific
Pacific people spread from Taiwan
	01/23/2009 12:08:54 PM PST · Posted by BGHater · 10 replies The University of Auckland-New Zealand | 23 Jan 2009 | University of Auckland New research into language evolution suggests most Pacific populations originated in Taiwan around 5,200 years ago. Scientists at The University of Auckland have used sophisticated computer analyses on vocabulary from 400 Austronesian languages to uncover how the Pacific was settled. "The Austronesian language family is one of the largest in the world, with 1200 languages spread across the Pacific," says Professor Russell Gray of the Department of Psychology. "The settlement of the Pacific is one of the most remarkable prehistoric human population expansions. By studying the basic vocabulary from these languages, such as words for animals, simple verbs, colours and...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Tuatara fossil props up Moa's Ark theory for NZ animal live
	01/21/2009 2:23:18 AM PST · Posted by DieHard the Hunter · 8 replies · 326+ views TV3 (New Zealand) | Wed, Jan 21 2009 21h09 | NZPA Tuatara fossil props up Moa's Ark theory for NZ animal life Wed, 21 Jan 2009 9:09p.m. The discovery of a tuatara fossil in the South Island is helping prop up the "Moa's Ark" theory that some parts of New Zealand have always stayed above the sea surface. Scientists said the fossil provided strong evidence that the ancestor of the present-day tuatara covered the Zealandia landmass as it split from Gondwana, 82 million years ago.
India
In Pakistan, a site older than Mohenjodaro [INDUS VALLEY]
	01/23/2009 10:11:18 AM PST · Posted by MyTwoCopperCoins · 11 replies The Press Trust of India | 23 Jan 2009, 2320 hrs | The Press Trust of India An archaeological site dating back about 5,500 years and believed to be older than Mohenjodaro has been found in Sindh province. A team of 22 archaeologists found semi-precious and precious stones and utensils made of clay, copper and other metals during an excavation in Lakhian Jo Daro in Sukkur district on Thursday. "At present, we can say that it is older than Mohenjodaro", Ghulam Mustafa Shar, the director of the Lakhian Jo Daro project, said. Shar said the remains of a "faience" or tin-glazed pottery factory had been found at the site. It is believed to be of the era...
Pages
DNA Testing May Unlock Secrets Of Medieval Manuscripts
	01/18/2009 4:53:33 PM PST · Posted by decimon · 16 replies · 356+ views ScienceDaily | Jan. 17, 2009 | Unknown > Many medieval manuscripts were written on parchment made from animal skin, and NC State Assistant Professor of English Timothy Stinson is working to perfect techniques for extracting and analyzing the DNA contained in these skins with the long-term goal of creating a genetic database that can be used to determine when and where a manuscript was written. "Dating and localizing manuscripts have historically presented persistent problems," Stinson says, "because they have largely been based on the handwriting and dialect of the scribes who created the manuscripts -- techniques that have proven unreliable for a number of reasons." >
Archaeoastronomy and Megaliths
Militant Druids fight museum over a 4,000-year-old skeleton called Charlie[UK]
	01/18/2009 2:32:39 PM PST · Posted by BGHater · 28 replies · 382+ views Daily Mail | 18 Jan 2009 | Alun Rees and Jonathan Petre A group of militant Druids has forced an expensive official inquiry after demanding that a museum releases a 4,000-year-old skeleton called 'Charlie' so they can rebury it. They claim the bones of a young girl and seven other sets of prehistoric remains excavated near the ancient stone circle in Avebury, Wiltshire, are their 'tribal ancestors'. If their claim is rejected, they have threatened to take a test case to the High Court under the Human Rights Act. The row has triggered two years of meetings and reports by state-funded English Heritage and the charity The National Trust, which have been...
British Isles
Huge Iron Age haul of coins found
	01/18/2009 6:47:45 AM PST · Posted by csvset · 37 replies · 1,113+ views BBC | 17 January 2009 | BBC One of the UK's largest hauls of Iron Age gold coins has been found in Suffolk. The 824 so-called staters were found in a broken pottery jar buried in a field near Wickham Market using a metal detector. Jude Plouviez, of the Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, said the coins dated from 40BC to AD15. They are thought to have been minted by predecessors of the Iceni Queen Boudicca. Ms Plouviez said their value when in circulation had been estimated at a modern equivalent of between £500,000 and £1m, but they were likely to be worth less than that now....
Prehistoric gold coins found in Suffolk[UK]
	01/18/2009 2:24:46 PM PST · Posted by BGHater · 20 replies · 507+ views EDP 24 | 17 Jan 2009 | EDP 24 The largest hoard of prehistoric gold coins in Britain in modern times has been discovered by a metal detectorist in Suffolk, it emerged today. The collection of 824 gold staters was found in a broken pottery jar buried in a field near Wickham Market. Jude Plouviez, of the Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, said the coins dated from 40BC to AD15 and were thought to have been minted by predecessors of Boudicca - the Iceni Queen who spearheaded a revolt against occupying Roman forces. Their value when in circulation had been estimated at a modern equivalent of between £500,000 and...
Sweet Swan of Avon
Shakespeare and Deep England
	01/17/2009 2:09:39 PM PST · Posted by nickcarraway · 13 replies · 219+ views The Times (London) | January 7, 2009 | John Guy Jonathan Bate's eloquent evocation of the man from WarwickshireAt last we have a new kind of biography of Shakespeare. Starting from Ben Jonson's description of Shakespeare as "Soul of the Age", and shunning "the deadening march of chronological sequence that is biography's besetting vice", Jonathan Bate selects only the material that, he believes, will help to reveal Shakespeare's cultural DNA. Structuring this loosely around the theme of the Seven Ages of Man from Jaques's speech in As You Like It, Bate sweeps majestically backwards and forwards in time, moving between history and criticism, appropriating whatever best brings together Shakespeare's life,...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Secrets Of Stradivarius' Unique Sound Revealed
	01/22/2009 12:33:27 PM PST · Posted by decimon · 54 replies · 1,358+ views Texas A&M | January 22, 2009 | Unknown For centuries, violin makers have tried and failed to reproduce the pristine sound of Stradivarius and Guarneri violins, but after 33 years of work put into the project, a Texas A&M University professor is confident the veil of mystery has now been lifted. Joseph Nagyvary, a professor emeritus of biochemistry, first theorized in 1976 that chemicals used on the instruments -- not merely the wood and the construction -- are responsible for the distinctive sound of these violins. His controversial theory has now received definitive experimental support through collaboration with Renald Guillemette, director of the electron microprobe laboratory in the...
Not So Ancient Autopsies
Danish Experts Ask to Open Astronomer Tycho Brahe's Grave
	01/22/2009 2:48:03 PM PST · Posted by nickcarraway · 22 replies · 305+ views Radio Prague | 1/21/09 | Jan Richter A Renaissance mystery is beginning to unravel in Prague. A team of experts from Denmark have asked the authorities for permission to open and explore the grave of the Danish-born astronomer Tycho Brahe who died in Prague in 1601. They are hoping to learn more about one of the most famous scholars of the time -- and perhaps to throw more light on his mysterious death. Tycho Brahe story of alchemists and assassins might soon be added to the annals of one of the most glorious eras in the history of Prague. A team of experts from Denmark would like...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Even at 200, Poe endures in pop culture (Bicentennial today)
	01/19/2009 8:27:17 AM PST · Posted by Borges · 8 replies · 233+ views Yahoo - AP | 01/19/09 | BEN NUCKOLS "Lisa, that wasn't scary, even for a poem!" Bart Simpson complains after his sister reads Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" in a classic Halloween episode. "Well, it was written in 1845!" Lisa says. "Maybe people were easier to scare back then!" Jaded cartoon kids aside, Poe still does scare people -- even 200 years after his birth. His tales of gothic horror and grisly murder retain their grip on the imagination. His sad, short life and mysterious death feed his legend. Even the daguerreotypes of a pallid, death-haunted Poe burnish his image as a master of the macabre, a man...
Edgar Allan Poe at 200
	01/19/2009 11:34:53 AM PST · Posted by PurpleMan · 14 replies · 230+ views NYTimes | January 19, 2009 | WILLIAM S. NIEDERKORN Edgar Allan Poe reaches his second century mark today. The young United States was a strange place for literary genius to develop, and Poe's career was relatively short (he died at 40, on Oct. 7, 1849), but through his works he inspired generations of writers throughout the world, and there has been no letup in the 21st century.
The DNA of Detection (Poe7 & Mysteries)
	01/19/2009 11:43:32 AM PST · Posted by nickcarraway · 4 replies · 106+ views BBC As the bicentenary of Edgar Allan Poe is celebrated, fans should be thanking him for his invention of the modern detective genre, writes crime fiction author Andrew Taylor. Bestseller lists and library lending figures tell the same story - crime and detective stories are more popular than ever, and their success has spilled over into film and TV drama. It's remarkable how many of the genre's classic elements can be traced back to the feverishly fertile imagination of one man, Edgar Allan Poe. Once you start looking, the clues are everywhere. Born 200 years ago, on 19 January 1809, Poe...
Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
WSJ: Avian Virus Caused The 1918 Pandemic, New Studies Show
	10/06/2005 5:34:51 AM PDT · Posted by OESY · 24 replies · 1,246+ views Wall Street Journal | October 6, 2005 | BETSY MCKAY ...After nearly a decade of research, teams of scientists said yesterday that they had re-created the historic influenza virus that by some estimates killed 50 million people world-wide in 1918 and 1919. The scientists concluded that the virus originated as an avian bug and then adapted and spread in humans by undergoing much simpler changes than many experts had previously thought were needed for a pandemic. Some mutations of the 1918 virus have been detected in the current avian-flu virus, suggesting the bug "might be going down a similar path that led to 1918,".... The studies, published yesterday in the...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Ancient Persians 'Gassed Romans'
	01/19/2009 10:43:11 AM PST · Posted by Steelfish · 9 replies · 566+ views BBCNews | January 19, 2009 Ancient Persians 'gassed Romans' By Tanya Syed BBC News Remains in the city wall suggest toxic gases were used in a siege on the city Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical warfare against their enemies, a study has suggested. A UK researcher said he found evidence that the Persian Empire used poisonous gases on the Roman city of Dura, Eastern Syria, in the 3rd Century AD. The theory is based on the discovery of remains of about 20 Roman soldiers found at the base of the city wall. The findings were presented the Archaeological Institute of America's annual...
Moderate Islam
Al Qaeda hit by Black Death fear as medieval plague kills 40 terrorists at training camp
	01/19/2009 7:07:22 AM PST · Posted by Sammy67 · 199 replies · 4,412+ views DailyMail | 1/19/09 | DailyMailReporter Al Qaeda terrorists have been left fearing the Black Death plague after it wiped out at least 40 insurgents at an Algerian training camp, it was reported today. The horror disease, which killed 25 million people in medieval Europe, is understood to have been found in a militant's body dumped at a roadside. Terror group AQLIM (al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb) was forced to turn its shelter in the Yakouren forests into mass graves and flee, it has been claimed. Now al Qaeda chiefs are said to fear the plague has been passed into other cells...
Egypt
Nile Delta fishery grows dramatically thanks to run-off of sewage, fertilizers
	01/20/2009 12:43:08 PM PST · Posted by decimon · 20 replies · 305+ views University of Rhode Island | Jan. 19, 2008 | Unknown Considered pollutants in the West, discharges help to feed millions in Egypt -- While many of the world's fisheries are in serious decline, the coastal Mediterranean fishery off the Nile Delta has expanded dramatically since the 1980s. The surprising cause of this expansion, which followed a collapse of the fishery after completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1965, is run-off of fertilizers and sewage discharges in the region, according to a researcher at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. Autumn Oczkowski, a URI doctoral student, used stable isotopes of nitrogen to...
Greece
Ancient Greek homes doubled as pubs, brothels
	01/21/2009 12:58:41 PM PST · Posted by decimon · 27 replies · 662+ views Discovery Channel | Jan. 21, 2009 | Rossella Lorenzi A new analysis of archaeological remains might have solved the mystery of the elusive kapeleia, lively Greek taverns that have long puzzled archaeologists. Despite the kapeleia being featured prominently in classical plays, no tangible evidence of the drinking dens has ever been found.
Could the "Greenland example" help resolve the Parthenon Marbles dispute?
	03/03/2007 8:20:21 AM PST · Posted by aculeus · 4 replies · 318+ views The Art Newspaper | February 24, 2007 | By Martin Bailey LONDON. A possible solution to the Parthenon Marbles dispute between the British Museum and the Greek government has come from a most unlikely source -- a gathering in Greenland. Meeting in the depths of the Arctic winter, museum professionals and representatives of indigenous peoples recently assembled in the tiny capital of Nuuk (formerly Godthab) to discuss global strategies on repatriation of cultural heritage. The Greeks had originally decided to send Minister of Culture Georgios Voulgarakis, but when his officials examined the flight schedule, they realised that he would have to leave Athens for a whole week, missing too much government...
World War Eleven
Nazi angel of death Josef Mengele 'created twin town in Brazil'
	01/21/2009 7:24:39 PM PST · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · 20 replies · 649+ views telegraph.co.uk | January 21, 2009 | Nick Evans The steely hearted "Angel of Death", whose mission was to create a master race fit for the Third Reich, was the resident medic at Auschwitz from May 1943 until his flight in the face of the Red Army advance in January 1945. His task was to carry out experiments to discover by what method of genetic quirk twins were produced -- and then to artificially increase the Aryan birthrate for his master, Adolf Hitler. Now, a historian claims, Mengele's notorious experiments may have borne fruit. For years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Rethinking The Genetic Theory Of Inheritance: Heritability May Not Be Limited To DNA
	01/21/2009 4:17:24 AM PST · Posted by decimon · 9 replies · 334+ views Science Daily | Jan. 20, 2008 | Unknown ScienceDaily (Jan. 20, 2009) -- Scientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have detected evidence that DNA may not be the only carrier of heritable information; a secondary molecular mechanism called epigenetics may also account for some inherited traits and diseases. These findings challenge the fundamental principles of genetics and inheritance, and potentially provide a new insight into the primary causes of human diseases.
Longer Perspectives
Humans 'could evolve into two species'
	10/19/2006 7:10:22 AM PDT · Posted by presidio9 · 123 replies · 2,612+ views The Australian | October 17, 2006 | Mark Henderson HUMANS could evolve into two sub-species within 100,000 years as social divisions produce a genetic underclass. The mating preferences of the rich, highly educated and well-nourished could ultimately drive their separation into a genetically distinct group that no longer interbreeds with less fortunate human beings, according to British scientist Oliver Curry. Dr Curry, a research associate in the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science of the London School of Economics, speculated that privileged humans might over tens of thousands of years evolve into a "gracile" subspecies, tall, thin, symmetrical, intelligent and creative. The rest would be shorter and...
Early America
A Flag of Conviction
	01/17/2009 11:39:06 AM PST · Posted by markomalley · 17 replies · 276+ views The Claremont Institute | 5/31/2002 | Matthew Robinson Christopher Gadsden's face and name may not be immortalized on any bill or coin, but this firebrand designed a symbol which, even through the swirling mists of time, is a reminder of the birth of the nation and the spirit that carried it to freedom. June 14 is Flag Day. On that day, of course, we remember the Stars and Stripes and the men who fought under that banner for freedom. Gadsden gave us another great flag, one that flew prominently during the American Revolution, under which many men fought and died. Gadsden's was the blazing yellow banner that sports...
Framer of the Framers
	01/17/2009 4:58:51 PM PST · Posted by Coleus · 8 replies · 229+ views thenewamerican | 01.09.09 | John Eidsmoe John Witherspoon was not only a Founding Father, but in his roles as preacher and professor he taught and influenced many of the great men of the Founding era.On November 15, 1794, a 72-year-old Presbyterian preacher lay dying on his farm near Princeton, New Jersey. In some ways he may have welcomed death. His wife had died five years earlier, and for over two years he had been blind, so his associates had to lead him into the pulpit, where he still preached with his usual earnestness and perhaps with more than his usual solemnity and animation. Even though his...
Revolutionary War papers restored
	01/21/2009 9:59:55 AM PST · Posted by Pharmboy · 33 replies · 467+ views UPI | Jan. 20, 2009 | Anon UPI Stringer PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- After painstaking restoration, 5,400 Revolutionary War documents are ready to leave a Philadelphia conservation center for their home in New Jersey. The $700,000 project begun in 2005 has restored documents belonging to the New Jersey State Archives, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Tuesday. The 18th century papers, discolored, brittle and frayed, tell stories of patriots killed in battle, of spies for the British and of armies from both sides that destroyed property and stripped farms of crops and livestock. Using chemical baths and tissue-thin paper for repairs, snip... New Jersey saw more military engagements than any...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
DNA can reveal ancestors' lies and secrets
	01/18/2009 3:36:53 AM PST · Posted by decimon · 71 replies · 982+ views Los Angeles Times | Jan. 18, 2008 | Alan Zarembo In a search for their ancestors, more than 140 people with variations of the last name Kincaid have taken DNA tests and shared their results on the Internet. They have found war heroes, sailors and survivors of the Irish potato famine. They have also stumbled upon bastards, liars and two-timers. Much of it is ancient history, long-dead ancestors whose dalliances are part of the intrigue of amateur genealogy. But sometimes the findings strike closer to home.
end of digest #236 20090124

[SunkenCiv]

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #236 20090124 · Saturday, January 24, 2009 · 31 topics · 2165561 to 2166570 · 701 members ·
	Saturday Jan 24 2009 v 5 n 28 view this issue	Welcome to the 236th issue -- at 31 topics, it's back to a more usual size. The topics are very interesting. A big thank you goes to our rather large number of topic contributors. I barely lifted a finger. In fact, without checking first, I'll guess that I didn't actually post any topics this week. If I did any, it wasn't many. Worked out well for us all! We've hit 701 members, and it's still the Freepathon! Be sure to check Homer_J_Simpson's topics, many of which are based on archival newspaper articles, usually 70 years ago that day. Visit the Free Republic Memorial Wall -- a history-related feature of FR. Donate to FreeRepublic.
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[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #237 Saturday, January 31, 2009
Multiregionalism
Rewriting 'Out of Africa' theory [ 1.83 million years ago in Malaysia ]
	01/30/2009 9:15:11 PM PST · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 11+ views New Straits Times Online | Friday, January 30, 2009 | Melissa Darlyne Chow Universiti Sains Malaysia's (USM) Centre for Archaeological Research Malaysia has found evidence of early human existence in the country dating back 1.83 million years... The evidence was obtained from the discovery of artefacts in Bukit Bunuh, Lenggong, Perak... included stone-made tools such as axes and chopping tools. The artefacts were found embedded in suevite rock, formed as a result of the impact of meteorite crashing down at Bukit Bunuh. The suevite rock, reputedly the first found in Southeast Asia, was sent to the Geochronology Japan Laboratory three months ago and carbon dated using the fission track dating method... Based on...
Climate
New ideas emerge about old empires [ Jared Diamond wrong, sez Norman Yoffee ]
	01/29/2009 6:15:32 PM PST · Posted by SunkenCiv · 8 replies · 219+ views The Rebel Yell (UNLV) | Thursday, January 29, 2009 | Pashtana Usufzy "Collapse is not just a defeat but the failure of a belief system," anthropologist Norman Yoffee said Tuesday during his lecture on ancient civilizations. Yoffee, a professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, spoke at UNLV on the meaning of "collapse" and what he believes to be the false notion that early societies destroyed themselves by obliterating their surroundings... The lecture evaluated the correlation between the past and present and challenged what Yoffee views as inaccuracies in the 2005 book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by world-renowned geographer Jared Diamond. "The victims of cultural and physical...
Slipping the Surly Bonds of Earth
Apollo 1 Fire - 42 Years Ago
	01/27/2009 9:16:24 AM PST · Posted by Pyro7480 · 27 replies · 578+ views NASA | updated 2007 | n/a On January 27, 1967, tragedy struck the Apollo program when a flash fire occurred in command module 012 during a launch pad test of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle being prepared for the first piloted flight, the AS-204 mission. Three astronauts, Lt. Col. Virgil I. Grissom, a veteran of Mercury and Gemini missions; Lt. Col. Edward H. White, the astronaut who had performed the first United States extravehicular activity during the Gemini program; and Roger B. Chaffee, an astronaut preparing for his first space flight, died in this tragic accident. A seven-member board, under the direction of the NASA Langley Research...
Stages
Buddy Holly: The tour from hell
	01/25/2009 10:04:15 PM PST · Posted by ButThreeLeftsDo · 41 replies · 938+ views StarTribune | 1/25/09 | PAMELA HUEY The rickety old bus pulled out of the Duluth Armory late on Saturday, Jan. 31, 1959, and headed across St. Louis Bay into the frigid Wisconsin night. On board were some exhausted, stinky rock 'n' rollers and their harried manager. The Winter Dance Party tour had just finished its ninth gig in as many days and was headed east for Appleton and Green Bay, for shows 10 and 11 on Sunday. But as the temperature plunged to around 30 below and the wind howled, fate intervened. The southbound bus creaked to a stop as it struggled up an incline on...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Who is the woman buried beside Galileo?
	01/24/2009 4:51:38 PM PST · Posted by BuckeyeTexan · 69 replies · 478+ views The Guardian | 01/24/2009 | John Hooper WHEN he was buried - at the insistence of the Catholic Church in unconsecrated ground - Galileo Galilei left behind at least two conundrums: how could a man with impaired eyesight have made the observations that revolutionised astronomy; and did his faulty vision alter what he saw and recorded? When his body was moved to the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, some 100 years later on the initiative of local freemasons, it gave rise to a third riddle: who was the woman found buried alongside him? Scientists are planning now to solve all three questions with the help of...
Not So Ancient Autopsies
Locked in time... the 400-year-old mummies (and one little girl)
	01/29/2009 6:18:25 AM PST · Posted by PotatoHeadMick · 16 replies · 1,008+ views Daily Mail (UK) | 29th January 2009 | Jane Fryer With her crumpled yellow hairbow and grubby face, pretty little Rosalina looks as though she's just flaked out for a nap after a morning spent playing in the garden. In fact, she has been lying in her tiny, wooden, glass-topped coffin in the catacombs beneath the Capuchin monastery in Palermo, Sicily, for more than 90 years - skilfully and shockingly preserved to look just as she did when she died of a bronchial infection in December 1920, aged two. And she is not alone. In the vast, musty-smelling catacombs are nearly 2,000 mummified corpses, many of them more than four...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Archaeologists Discover Rare Figurine in Jerusalem
	01/26/2009 6:44:24 PM PST · Posted by nickcarraway · 18 replies · 482+ views The Star | Monday January 26, 2009 Israeli archaeologists say they have discovered a rare 1,800-year-old figurine in a Jerusalem excavation. Dating from the time of the Roman Empire, the five-centimeter (2-inch) marble bust depicts the head of a man with a short curly beard and almond-shaped eyes. A statement Monday from the Israel Antiquities Authority says nothing similar has been found before in the country. The archaeologists believe it could depict an athlete, possibly a boxer. They think it was used as a weight and might have belonged to a merchant. It was found in the ruins of a building destroyed by an earthquake in the...
Rare 1,800-year-old figurine found in Jerusalem
	01/27/2009 9:49:05 AM PST · Posted by Jet Jaguar · 6 replies · 244+ views AP via Breitbart | Jan 27, 2009 | KAREN ZOLKA n 1,800-year-old figurine believed to have originated from the eastern stretches of the Roman Empire has been discovered by archaeologists outside the walls of the old city, the Israeli Antiquities Authority said. The 2-inch (5-centimeter) marble bust depicts the head of a man with a short curly beard and almond-shaped eyes who may portray a boxer, the authority said. "The high level of finish on the figurine is extraordinary, while meticulously adhering to the tiniest of details," Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets, directors of the excavation, said in a joint statement released Monday. Nothing similar has ever been uncovered in...
Vanity: Questions about Jewish history
	01/26/2009 3:49:42 PM PST · Posted by no more apples · 72 replies · 644+ views I am taking a Western Civ class in college and we're about to study the beginnings of Jewish history. Being a good conservative and a Christian who highly respects my elder bretheren in my faith in God, I always question history books. Revisionist history has never been my cup of tea. I'm looking for someone who is VERY knowledgeable in Jewish history - especially as it pertains to early civilization. If you don't mind answering questions, please let me know.
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Resurrecting the ruins of Aqar Quf
	01/25/2009 4:45:34 PM PST · Posted by Jet Jaguar · 3 replies · 328+ views Stars and Stripes | January 25, 2009 | By Travis J. Tritten ABU GHRAIB, Iraq -- Shepherd boys scale the ancient tower at Aqar Quf with ease. The ziggurat's clay-brick walls have eroded into steep cliffs over the past 3,500 years, and the shepherds go hand over hand on a well-known path to the peak. There are no guards blocking the climb, no visitors to watch the spectacle. On the desert below, the shepherds' flock grazes among the gutted remains of a museum and restaurant. The Aqar Quf ziggurat is among the 10 oldest structures in Iraq and once drew hundreds of visitors each week from nearby Baghdad. But the ancient site...
Egypt
Finnish researchers dig through millennia in the Valley of the Kings
	01/28/2009 6:56:46 PM PST · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 163+ views University of Helsinki | Wednesday, January 28, 2009 | Sanna Agullana The hut village offers rare insight into everyday life in ancient Egypt. "In the early twentieth century, archaeologists were only interested in the tombs of kings. The workmen's huts they discovered were seen as a necessary evil in the quest for the real treasures." "Now several international research groups on different excavations are delving into everyday life and work in the Valley of the Kings. This seems to be a trend in archaeology right now," Toivari-Viitala says. Her research group wants to find out why the hut village was built on the slope of a mountain, halfway between the construction...
British Isles
Cave dig hopes to find signs of modern man [ Kents Cavern, Torquay, UK ]
	01/29/2009 6:23:24 PM PST · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 127+ views This is South Devon | Thursday, January 29, 2009 | unattributed An ultra modern search at Kents Cavern hopes to uncover clues missed by the Victorians. Two archaeologists are planning to excavate a small part of Kents Cavern, Torquay, to unravel their quest to see if modern man lived alongside Neanderthals... The dig is the first excavation at the cave in more than 80 years. A two metre by one metre trench is to be opened in the Great Chamber of the Cave, so named by Victorian archaeologist William Pengelly in the 1860s... They plan to use modern techniques of almost 150 years of improvements in archaeology to determine what conditions...
Ancient Autopsies
Doctors prove that the Iceman was shot to death in the Alps [ Oetzi ]
	01/28/2009 7:00:56 PM PST · Posted by SunkenCiv · 78 replies · 1,168+ views Earth Times | Wednesday, January 28, 2009 | DPA Doctors who studied the Iceman, a mummified Stone Age hunter found in Italy in 1991, announced conclusive proof Wednesday that he was shot to death with a flint-tipped arrow rather than dying of exposure as once thought. "He only lived for a short time after the arrow impact," said Andreas Nerlich, who headed a joint study by Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich and experts from Bolzano, Italy. Shortly before he was shot in the back, the Iceman suffered a non-lethal blow with a blunt object, possibly a stone from a slingshot, Nerlich's team said in a letter to the online...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
12,900 Years Ago: North American Comet Impact Theory Disproved
	01/27/2009 3:06:57 AM PST · Posted by decimon · 35 replies · 609+ views ScienceDaily | Jan. 27, 2009 | Unknown New data disproves the recent theory that a large comet exploded over North America 12,900 years ago, causing a shock wave that travelled across North America at hundreds of kilometres per hour and triggering continent-wide wildfires. Dr Sandy Harrison from the University of Bristol and colleagues tested the theory by examining charcoal and pollen records to assess how fire regimes in North America changed between 15 and 10,000 years ago, a time of large and rapid climate changes. Their results provide no evidence for continental-scale fires, but support the fact that the increase in large-scale wildfires in all regions of...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Area Mystery Mounds Delight Archaeologists
	01/25/2009 2:37:28 PM PST · Posted by nickcarraway · 19 replies · 865+ views News-Journal | Sunday, January 25, 2009 | WES FERGUSON Locked away and hidden from the nearby town of Longview, largely undisturbed for a thousand years, is an ancient and mysterious place that guards the secrets of a vanished people. It is a sacred place. It is a wide, grassy clearing set in the middle of a forest. the truly remarkable discovery -- what intrigues and inspires archaeologists -- cannot be found inside the clearing, but just beyond it. There, eight enormous, earthen structures rise from the forest floor, forming a giant ring around the open space. They are ceremonial mounds, remnants of a group of Caddo Indians who emerged...
Paleontology
Oklahoma Fossil Identified as New Species
	01/27/2009 7:05:07 PM PST · Posted by nickcarraway · 10 replies · 385+ views Fox23 | 1/27/09 An ancient skull found by an amateur Oklahoma paleontologist at an old rock quarry near Lawton turned out to be a new species unknown to scientists. Coweta accountant Tony Morris found the skull about three years ago in a pile of rubble with a group from the Tulsa Rock and Mineral Society. It's about the size of a shoebox with a single row of teeth protruding from one edge. Now researchers are ready to say the fossil is that of a previously unknown species and is a that from a lizardlike creature in the cacops family. The animal is described...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Epigenetics reveals unexpected, and some identical, results
	01/25/2009 11:03:50 PM PST · Posted by neverdem · 9 replies · 338+ views Science News | January 18th, 2009 | Tina Hesman Saey One study finds tissue-specific methylation signatures in the genome; another a similarity between identical twins in DNA's chemical tagging Tattoos on the skin can say a lot about person. On a deeper level, chemical tattoos on a person's DNA are just as distinctive and individual -- and say far more about a person's life history. A pair of reports published online January 18 in Nature Genetics show just how important one type of DNA tattoo, called methylation, can be. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University report the unexpected finding that most DNA methylation -- a chemical alteration that turns off genes...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Native U.S. Lizards Are Evolving To Escape Attacks By Fire Ants
	01/24/2009 10:35:28 AM PST · Posted by Salman · 67 replies · 305+ views Science Daily | Jan. 24, 2009 | Science Daily Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Tracy Langkilde has shown that native fence lizards in the southeastern United States are adapting to potentially fatal invasive fire-ant attacks by developing behaviors that enable them to escape from the ants, as well as by developing longer hind legs, which can increase the effectiveness of this behavior. "Not only does this finding provide biologists with an example of evolution in action, but it also provides wildlife managers with knowledge that they can use to develop plans for managing invasive species," said Langkilde. The results will be described in a paper to be published...
Australia and the Pacific
111-year-old reptile becomes a dad
	01/26/2009 6:42:34 PM PST · Posted by DogByte6RER · 31 replies · 411+ views Metro.Co.UK | Monday, January 26, 2009 | Metro.Co.UK 111-year-old reptile becomes a dad Monday, January 26, 2009 A reptile in New Zealand has unexpectedly become a father at the ripe old age of 111 - after receiving treatment for a cancer which had made him hostile toward prospective mates. That consummation that resulted in 11 babies being hatched on Monday. Tuatara are indigenous New Zealand creatures that resemble lizards, but are actually descended from a seperate lineage of reptiles that walked the earth with the dinosaurs 225 million years ago. An endangered species, the hatchlings born at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery will provide a badly needed...
Age of Sail
French Explorer's Shipwreck Found (Australia Might Have Been A French Colony)
	05/12/2005 12:16:47 AM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 34 replies · 816+ views CNN | Tuesday, May 10, 2005 One of the great mysteries of early European exploration of the Pacific Ocean has been solved with the confirmed identification of a sea-floor wreck as that of French seafarer La Perouse. The fate of Jean-Francois de Galaup de La Perouse has been a matter of speculation for more than 200 years after the experienced seaman disappeared following his departure from Botany Bay in Australia in 1788. It was thought La Perouse's two frigates had been shipwrecked during a storm off the coast of the Solomon Islands to the northeast of Australia, a theory which has now been confirmed by physical...
Nelson's Great Love Found At The Bottom Of The Ocean (Uruguay)
	03/27/2004 3:57:44 PM PST · Posted by blam · 21 replies · 517+ views The Scotsman | 3-27-2004 | Angus Howarth Nelson's great love found at the bottom of the ocean ADMIRAL Horatio Nelson's favourite ship, on which he is said to have seduced Lady Hamilton and lost an eye in battle, has been found off the coast of Uruguay. International treasure-divers said yesterday that they had found HMS Agamemnon, a 64-gun vessel which was the pride of Britain's naval fleet when it went down in 1809. Plans are now being made to lift the ship from its watery grave following the multi-million-pound deep-sea exploration. Uruguayan millionaire Hector Bado, the operation's backer, hailed the find as "akin to finding the Holy...
The Civil War
Reading Suggestions with Special Attention to the Civil War
	01/28/2009 4:55:40 PM PST · Posted by sonrise57 · 30 replies · 312+ views January 27, 2008 | me Hi All, I just finished reading "The Last Full Measure". I am putting together my 2009 reading plan and I want to start on another Civil War work. What are you all reading these days. Those of you who are civil war buffs . . . what should I put on my list for this year.
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Ohio, Kentucky Feuding Over Rock In A Hard Place
	01/26/2009 4:30:21 PM PST · Posted by Daffynition · 22 replies · 481+ views NPR | January 26, 2009 | Fred Kight The states of Ohio and Kentucky are battling over a most unlikely object: a graffiti-covered rock. From a distance, Indian Head Rock isn't much to look at, an unremarkable, brownish boulder about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. But a closer look reveals what makes the rock -- first written about in an archeological publication in 1847 -- more than just an ordinary boulder. The surface is etched with names, some scratched and difficult to read and others chiseled more clearly. There's also a face that "some have said looks like Charlie Brown," according to Randy Nichols, a local history...
Early America
Dutch to Help New York Celebrate Hudson's Journey
	01/29/2009 3:16:26 AM PST · Posted by Pharmboy · 9 replies · 145+ views NY Times | January 29, 2009 | SEWELL CHAN and MATHEW R. WARREN The mayor of Amsterdam, Marius Job Cohen, and the mayor of New York, Michael R. Bloomberg, joined forces on Wednesday to announce NYC 400, a yearlong celebration of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's arrival in New York Harbor in 1609 aboard the Half Moon. The fact that Hudson was English -- like the people who eventually conquered the Dutch colony in New Amsterdam, in 1664, and renamed it for the Duke of York -- and that New Amsterdam wasn't officially founded until 1625 -- making New York more like 384 years old than 400 -- did not seem to...
Underwater Archaeology
British shipwreck holds £2.6 billion treasure
	01/24/2009 3:48:32 PM PST · Posted by PotatoHeadMick · 18 replies · 246+ views Daily Telegraph (UK) | 24 Jan 2009 | Jasper Copping Undersea explorers claim to have found the world's richest wreck ñ a British ship sunk by a Nazi submarine while laden with more than £2.6 billion in gold, platinum and diamonds. In a project shrouded in secrecy, work is due to start on recovering the cargo, which was being transported to the United States to help pay for the Allied effort in the Second World War. The scale of the treasure trove is likely to unleash a series of competing claims from interested parties. Salvage laws are notoriously complex and experts say there could be many years of legal wrangling...
World War Eleven
Missing WWII Soldiers Are Identified
	01/26/2009 10:07:11 AM PST · Posted by Stonewall Jackson · 39 replies · 783+ views Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (Public Affairs) | Jan 22, 2009 | Staff The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of two U.S. servicemen, missing from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors. They are Pfc. Julian H. Rogers, of Bloomington, Ind, and Pvt. Henry E. Marquez, of Kansas City, Kan. Both men were U.S. Army. Rogers will be buried in the Spring in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C., and Marquez will be buried on May 30 in Kansas City, Mo. Representatives from the Army's Mortuary...
Pages
"The Real Leo Strauss" - The Wacky Left and the Fiction of Neo-Con-ism
	01/29/2009 1:45:36 PM PST · Posted by Tublecane · 3 replies · 146+ views The New York Times | Thursday, January 29, 2009 | Jenny Strauss Clay The Real Leo Strauss By JENNY STRAUSS CLAY Published: June 7, 2003 Recent news articles have portrayed my father, Leo Strauss, as the mastermind behind the neoconservative ideologues who control United States foreign policy. He reaches out from his 30-year-old grave, we are told, to direct a ''cabal'' (a word with distinct anti-Semitic overtones) of Bush administration figures hoping to subject the American people to rule by a ruthless elite. I do not recognize the Leo Strauss presented in these articles. My father was not a politician. He taught political theory, primarily at the University of Chicago. He was a...
Longer Perspectives
A colossal mistake? Art world baffled by 'Goya' masterpiece
	01/27/2009 5:49:26 PM PST · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · 15 replies · 539+ views timesonline.co.uk | Jan. 28, 2009 | Graham Keeley For almost 80 years it has been regarded as one of Francisco de Goya's towering glories. But yesterday it was revealed that The Colossus was not painted by the Spanish master at all, but by an understudy. After a seven-month investigation, experts at the Prado gallery in Madrid came to the reluctant conclusion that the masterpiece was probably the work of Asensio Juli·, one of Goya's assistants. They said that the painting, which has hung in the Prado for 78 years, was "Goyaesque but not by Goya". Manuela Mena Marquès, head of 18th-century art at the Prado, said: "Seen with...
Faith and Philosophy
Debunking the Galileo Myth
	01/25/2009 2:49:18 PM PST · Posted by NYer · 139 replies · 1,525+ views CERC | Dinesh D'Souza Many people have uncritically accepted the idea that there is a longstanding war between science and religion. We find this war advertised in many of the leading atheist tracts such as those by Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Every few months one of the leading newsweeklies does a story on this subject. Little do the peddlers of this paradigm realize that they are victims of nineteenth-century atheist propaganda. About a hundred years ago, two anti-religious bigots named John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White wrote books promoting the idea of an irreconcilable conflict between science and...
Asia
Archaeologists try to revive daily life of 2,000-year-old ancient Chinese capital [ Chang'an ]
	01/29/2009 6:32:05 PM PST · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 160+ views Xinhuanet / Chinaview | Thursday, January 29, 2009 | editor Yao Archaeologists are uncovering the details of city life as it was 2,000 years ago in the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an. As the capital of the Western Han Dynasty (202 BC to 8 AD), Chang'an was a metropolis with an area of 36 square kilometers, about four times the size of the contemporary Rome. Its ruins lay in the suburb of today's Xi'an, capital of northwestern Shaanxi Province. "After about five decades of work, we can map out the city's clear layout now, but we still know little about how its 240,000 residents lived," said Liu Zhendong, the head of...
Epigraphy and Language
A Prayer for Archimedes: ... he had begun to discover the principles of calculus.
	01/24/2009 6:43:23 PM PST · Posted by Daffynition · 75 replies · 261+ views ScienceNews | january 24 2009 | Julie Rehmeyer For seventy years, a prayer book moldered in the closet of a family in France, passed down from one generation to the next. Its mildewed parchment pages were stiff and contorted, tarnished by burn marks and waxy smudges. Behind the text of the prayers, faint Greek letters marched in lines up the page, with an occasional diagram disappearing into the spine. The owners wondered if the strange book might have some value, so they took it to Christie's Auction House of London. And in 1998, Christie's auctioned it off -- for two million dollars. For this was not just a prayer book....
Greece
By Zeus! (Greeks return to paganism)
	02/07/2007 8:11:30 AM PST · Posted by NYer · 49 replies · 676+ views Guardian | February 1, 2007 It was high noon when Doreta Peppa, a woman with long, dark locks and owlish eyes, entered the Sanctuary of Olympian Zeus. At first, tourists visiting the Athenian temple thought they had stumbled on to a film set. It wasn't just that Peppa cut a dramatic figure with her flowing robes and garlanded hair. Or that she seemed to be in a state of near euphoria. Or even that the group of men and women accompanying her - dressed as warriors and nymphets in kitsch ancient garb - appeared to have stepped straight out of the city's Golden Age.To the...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Legacy of Secrecy : Book Reveals Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Hoffa Murdered by Mob
	01/25/2009 5:58:27 AM PST · Posted by stillafreemind · 50 replies · 1,152+ views Associated Content | 1-25-2009 | Bobby Tall Horse Legacy of Secrecy also entails why and how Robert Kennedy tried to bring justice to his brother's killers and died in the process. Legacy of Secrecy shows how Carlos Marcello was involved with Martin Luther King's assassination. Legacy of Secrecy also goes so far as to link Jimmy Hoffa's murder to all of this too.
end of digest #237 20090131