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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #251
Saturday, May 9, 2009 |
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| Egypt |
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Famed Nefertiti bust a fake: expert
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05/06/2009 6:38:44 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 19 replies · 584+ views
The Australian | May 05, 2009 | Agence France-Presse
Swiss art historian Henri Stierlin, author of a dozen works on Egypt, the Middle East and ancient Islam, says in a just-released book that the bust currently in Berlin's Altes Museum was made on the orders of Germany archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt on site at the digs by an artist named Gerardt Marks... He said he believed it was made to test pigments used by the ancient Egyptians. The historian said the archaeologist had hoped to produce a new portrait of the queen wearing a necklace he knew she had owned and also carry out a colour test with ancient pigments...
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| Prehistory and Origins |
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Revealed: Face of first European as fragments of 35,000-year-old skull are made flesh
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05/04/2009 9:13:34 AM PDT · Posted by yankeedame · 70 replies · 1,743+ views
DailyMail.uk | 04th May 2009 | Daily Mail Reporter
This is the face of the first early European human which has been painstakingly constructed by scientists from bone fragments. The man or woman - it is still not possible to determine the sex - lived 35,000 years ago in the Carpathian Mountains that today are part of Romania. Their face was rebuilt in clay based on an incomplete skull and jawbone discovered in a cave where bears hibernated. Forensic artist Richard Neave made the model based on his measurements of the pieces of bone and his...
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| Mem- er, Embers of Prehistory |
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Stone age porn
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04/04/2005 5:23:48 AM PDT · Posted by pissant · 18 replies · 7,167+ views
ananova | 4/3/05 | staff
Archaeologists in Germany have found what could be the oldest pornographic scene in the world. They have unearthed what they believe to be the 7,200-year-old figurines of a couple having sex, reports the Guardian. The find, at an archaeological dig in Leipzig, shatters the belief that sex was a taboo subject in the stone age era. First, Harald Stäuble of the Archaeological Institute of Saxony, discovered the 8cm lower half of a man, which he named Adonis von Zschernitz. One month later, Dr Stäuble found what could be the matching female figurine. Dr Stäuble said: "Adonis is bent forward and...
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| Let's Have Jerusalem |
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Oldest patch of ground on earth discovered in Israel's Negev desert; unchanged for 1.8 million years
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05/05/2009 4:58:31 PM PDT · Posted by forkinsocket · 24 replies · 950+ views
Daily News | May 5th 2009 | Olivia Smith
If only they could pave highways with this stuff. Scientists have discovered a patch of the earth's surface that remains virtually the same as it was 1.8 million years ago - and it looks pretty good for its age. Researchers are calling an expanse of "desert pavement" in Israel's Negev Desert the oldest continuous surface on earth, the current issue of the journal GSA Bulletin reports.
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Oldest surface on Earth discovered
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05/05/2009 12:25:06 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 30 replies · 825+ views
Live Science | May 5, 2009 | Robert Roy Britt
Earth's surface is mostly fresh in geologic terms. Weathering -- wind and water, freezing and thawing -- takes its toll, and longer-term changes caused by volcanic activity and sliding crustal plates, known as tectonic activity, fold today's ground into tomorrow's interior. The constant makeover of the planet is typically fastest in the mountains, slower in the tectonically inactive deserts. A new study of ancient "desert pavement" in Israel's Negev Desert finds a vast region that's been sitting there exposed, pretty much as-is, for about 1.8 million years, according to Ari Matmon and colleagues at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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| Epigraphy and Language |
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Palestinians busted trying to sell 2,000 year-old Hebrew scroll
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05/06/2009 5:34:35 PM PDT · Posted by forkinsocket · 15 replies · 387+ views
Ha'aretz | 06/05/2009 | Jonathan Lis
Two Palestinians were arrested Tuesday for allegedly stealing a rare antique Hebrew scroll and attempting to sell it for millions of dollars. Police apprehended the two suspects in Jerusalem after an intelligence tip allowed police forces to trace their tracks and intercept the document's sale. The rare historical document, handwritten in Hebrew on papyrus paper and estimated to be more than 2,000 years old, is a bill surrendering property rights. The document was written by a widow named Miryam Ben Yaakov, and hails from a period in which the people of Israel were exiled from the area and very few...
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| The Vikings |
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Viking Legacy On English: What Language Tells Us About Immigration And Integration
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05/06/2009 6:04:34 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 34 replies · 468+ views
ScienceDaily | April 22, 2009 | University of Nottingham
Terms such as 'law', 'ugly', 'want' and 'take' are all loanwords from Old Norse, brought to these shores by the Vikings, whose attacks on England started in AD 793. In the centuries following it wasn't just warfare and trade that the invaders gave England. Their settlement and subsequent assimilation into the country's culture brought along the introduction of something much more permanent than the silk, spices and furs that weighed down their longboats -- words... The loanwords which appear in English -- such as 'husband' -- suggest that the invaders quickly integrated with their new culture. The English language soon...
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Church lot rock actually ancient runestone
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05/06/2009 6:16:08 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 367+ views
Moldova.org | April 24, 2009 | unattributed
An archaeologist says a rock used to mark a parking lot at a church in Sweden is actually a 1,000-year-old runestone. Stockholm County Museum runic expert Lars Andersson said a rock used to help mark the lot's boundaries is thought to date back to the Viking Age in Sweden, The Local said Friday. Andersson said in a museum statement the discovery of runic inscriptions on the rock thanks to rainy weather was akin to a "religious experience." "To read something that nobody else has read for 1,000 years is almost a religious experience," he said. The rock was found last...
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| Navigation |
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A historic deja vu: Phokaians taking civilization to Marseille
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05/06/2009 6:07:43 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 8 replies · 127+ views
Hurriyet Gazete Haberleri | May 2009 | unattributed
Foca will be linked to Marselle in a special project to revisit the history: A Turkish crew will travel the route from the Izmir district to the French city in the next two months, just as their ancestors did centuries ago. Building a replica of an ancient vessel, the group is set to sail to Marseille in as conditions as true to those in 600 B.C. as possible. The replica of an ancient vessel is retracing the historic route from Foca off the coast of Turkey to Marseille off France some 2,600 years later. The project "A Journey into History:...
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double |
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Gene Arrangement Makes Some Europeans More Fertile
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01/16/2005 10:00:45 PM PST · Posted by anymouse · 10 replies · 386+ views
Reuters | Jan 16, 2005
Researchers working in Iceland said on Sunday they identified a genetic pattern that makes some Europeans more fertile. The genetic pattern, known as an inversion, is a stretch of the DNA code that runs backwards in people who carry it. Usually, such rearrangements of a chromosome are harmful to carriers. But this one causes carriers to have more children each generation -- giving them what is known as a selective advantage, the researchers reported. The finding, published in Monday's issue of the journal Nature Genetics, opens some interesting questions about human evolution, the team at Iceland's DeCODE Genetics said. "We...
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| Hobbits |
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Ancient 'hobbit' humans new species after all: study
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05/06/2009 11:40:30 AM PDT · Posted by WL-law · 29 replies · 835+ views
Breitbart | 5-6-09 | not given
Diminutive humans whose remains were found on the remote Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 truly are a new species, and not pygmies whose brains had shrivelled with disease, researchers reported Wednesday. ... Many scientists have said H. floresiensis were prehistoric humans descended from homo erectus, stunted by natural selection over millennia through a process called insular dwarfing. Others countered that even this evolutionary shrinking, well known in island-bound animals, could not account for the hobbit's chimp-sized grey matter of barely more than 400 cubic centimetres, a third the size of a modern human brain. ... A team led by...
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| Oh So Mysteriouso |
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Namibia Bushmen were first people in "Garden of Eden'
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05/01/2009 10:19:20 PM PDT · Posted by bruinbirdman · 29 replies · 995+ views
The Times | 5/2/2009 | James Bone in New York
The Garden of Eden may not have looked much like its traditional image of a lush, fertile corner of the Earth. Instead, a genetic study of Africa suggests that the origin of humanity lies in a sandy, inhospitable region near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola. The area is populated by the Bushmen, or San people, who may be the closest thing to a biblical Adam and Eve. The study even gives the co-ordinates as 12.5∞ E and 17.5∞ S. Scientists suggest that the clicking sounds characteristic of the San's language may be a remnant of original human speech....
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Garden of Eden was in Today's Kalahari desert
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05/02/2009 9:38:13 AM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 18 replies · 580+ views
The Times of India | 2 May 2009
Locations for the Garden of Eden have been offered many times before, but seldom in the somewhat inhospitable borderland where Angola and Namibia meet. A new genetic survey of people in Africa, the largest of its kind, suggests, however, that the region in southwest Africa seems, on the present evidence, to be the origin of modern humans. The authors have also identified some 14 ancestral populations. The new data goes far toward equalizing the genetic picture of the world, given that most genetic information has come from European and Asian populations. But because it comes from Africa, the continent on...
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Gene scientists pinpoint 'Eden' near Kalahari
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05/03/2009 11:46:07 AM PDT · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · 11 replies · 487+ views
Scotsman.com | May 3, 2009 | Nicholas Wade
Locations for the Garden of Eden have been offered many times before, but seldom in the inhospitable borderland of Angola and Namibia. A new genetic survey of people in Africa, the largest of its kind, suggests that the region in the south-west of the continent seems to be the origin of modern humans. The authors have also identified some 14 ancestral populations. The new data goes a long way to towards equalising the genetic picture of the world, given that most genetic information has come from European and Asian populations. But because it comes from Africa, the continent on which...
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| Climate |
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Sun Oddly Quiet -- Hints at Next "Little Ice Age"?
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05/04/2009 8:20:01 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 66 replies · 2,129+ views
National Geographic News | May 4, 2009 | Anne Minard
A prolonged lull in solar activity has astrophysicists glued to their telescopes waiting to see what the sun will do next‚ and how Earth's climate might respond. The sun is the least active it's been in decades and the dimmest in a hundred years. The lull is causing some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age, an unusual cold spell in Europe and North America, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850. The coldest period of the Little Ice Age, between 1645 and 1715, has been linked to a deep dip in solar storms known as the Maunder Minimum. During that...
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| Catastrophism and Astronomy |
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Poison bacteria set up worst extinction
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05/04/2009 5:20:25 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 20 replies · 429+ views
Discovery | May 4, 2009 | Michael Reilly
In the ancient oceans, stagnant depths harbored poison-belching bacteria that crippled life on Earth, leaving it vulnerable to a knockout punch from volcanic eruptions, according to a new study. Three to four million years before the Permian-Triassic extinction, also known as the Great Dying, the seas were already becoming oxygen-starved and sour, said the study in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
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The Rise of Oxygen Caused Earth's Earliest Ice Age
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05/07/2009 6:11:46 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 20 replies · 396+ views
University of Maryland | May 5, 2009 | Unknown
Geologists may have uncovered the answer to an age-old question - an ice-age-old question, that is. It appears that Earth's earliest ice ages may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which consumed atmospheric greenhouse gases and chilled the earth. Alan J. Kaufman, professor of geology at the University of Maryland, Maryland geology colleague James Farquhar, and a team of scientists from Germany, South Africa, Canada, and the U.S.A., uncovered evidence that the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere - generally known as the Great Oxygenation Event - coincided with the first widespread ice...
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| Precolumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis |
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Ancient tsunami 'hit New York'
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05/03/2009 8:09:16 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 24 replies · 719+ views
bbc | Sunday, 3 May 2009
A huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River. The scenario, proposed by scientists, is undergoing further examination to verify radiocarbon dates and to rule out other causes of the upheaval. Sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate that some sort of violent force swept the Northeast coastal region in 300BC. It may have been a large storm, but evidence is increasingly pointing to a rare Atlantic Ocean tsunami. Steven...
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Giant Tsunami Once Washed Over New York Area
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05/04/2009 4:01:15 PM PDT · Posted by Joiseydude · 16 replies · 504+ views
FoxNews | Monday, May 04, 2009
Remember that huge tidal wave cresting over lower Manhattan in the 1998 asteroid-disaster movie "Deep Impact"? Well, it really may have happened, but long before any skyscrapers were built -- around 300 B.C., in fact. Researchers from Columbia, Harvard and Vanderbilt universities first presented the hypothesis at a geologists' conference in December, and spoke more recently to the BBC. Vanderbilt's Stephen Goodbred explained that an unusual eight-inch-thick layer of sea sand and gravel 2,300 years old lies along the shorelines and riverbanks of the entire New York metropolitan area. Such a formation, containing chunks of rock as big as a...
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| Mammoth Told Me... |
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A Mammoth Discovery (evidence of the flood?)
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05/05/2009 9:18:40 AM PDT · Posted by GodGunsGuts · 24 replies · 1,243+ views
AiG | May 4, 2009 | A.P. Galling
The frozen remains of a baby mammoth discovered in 2007 are stirring up talk -- especially because the mammoth is "remarkably preserved," National Geographic News reports. Found in the icy north of Siberia, the mammoth -- named Lyuba -- looks nearly lifelike. The photograph best shows how amazingly intact Lyuba is, with even eyelashes and clumps of brown wool remaining. Hers is the most complete woolly mammoth body to have ever been found. --snip-- According to the model of a post-Flood Ice Age (which Oard explains), the frozen mammoths we find today would have been preserved...
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| Paleontology |
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Rare prehistoric pregnant turtle found in Utah
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05/08/2009 5:57:53 PM PDT · Posted by george76 · 19 replies · 499+ views
AP | May 08, 2009 | MIKE STARK
Paleontologists say a 75-million-year-old turtle fossil uncovered in southern Utah has a clutch of eggs inside, making it the first prehistoric pregnant turtle found in the United States. At least three eggs are visible from the outside of the fossil, and ...studying images taken from a CT scan in search of others inside. the turtle was probably about a week from laying her eggs ...
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| Dinosaur, It's What's for Dinner |
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Oldest Dinosaur Protein Found -- Blood Vessels, More
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05/01/2009 11:43:11 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 30 replies · 625+ views
National Geographic | May 1, 2009 | John Roach
The fossilized leg of an 80-million-year-old duck-billed dinosaur has yielded the oldest known proteins preserved in soft tissue -- including blood vessels and other connective tissue as well as perhaps blood cell proteins -- a new study says. The research was led by the team behind the controversial 2007 discovery of protein from similar soft tissues in 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex bones. "It was not a one-hit wonder," said John Asara of Harvard Medical School, who led the protein-sequence analysis. (See a prehistoric time line) Well-Preserved Dinosaur The proteins were recovered from a hadrosaur femur that had been encased in sandstone, which appears to prevent...
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| The Underworld |
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Deep Core Tests for the Age of the Earth
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05/01/2009 10:11:09 AM PDT · Posted by mnehring · 60 replies · 1,220+ views
Reasons to Believe | Dr. Hugh Ross, Ph.D.
The clash between young-earth and old-earth creationists can seem bewilderingly technical at times. Is there any easy-to-understand scientific data for determining whether Earth is young or old? In recent months, new evidence has emerged that may be simple enough for everyone to understand, regardless of science background-as simple as counting tree rings. Scientists are learning much about Earth's past by drilling deep into its surface-both ice and rock-with specialized instruments to remove long cylinders, or "core" samples. Six deep ice cores and one sediment core now provide a clear and continuous record of Earth's history. The ice cores reveal hundreds of thousands...
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| Japan |
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Old Japanese maps on Google Earth unveil secrets
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05/02/2009 5:09:07 PM PDT · Posted by george76 · 37 replies · 1,636+ views
Associated Press | May 02, 2009 | JAY ALABASTER
When Google Earth added historical maps of Japan ...Google failed to judge how its offering would be received, as it has often done in Japan. The company is now facing inquiries from the Justice Ministry and angry accusations of prejudice because its maps detailed the locations of former low-caste communities. The maps date back to the country's feudal era, when shoguns ruled and a strict caste system was in place. At the bottom of the hierarchy were a class called the "burakumin," ethnically identical to other Japanese but forced to live in isolation because they did jobs associated with death,...
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| China |
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Virtual Forbidden City (From History Channel show)
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05/03/2009 5:26:26 AM PDT · Posted by Caipirabob · 17 replies · 469+ views
Beyond Space And Time | Unknown
I've finally found that link to the "Virtual Forbidden City" tour that was on that History Channel Special some years ago. It's downloadable software. I can't account for how secure it really is, so you'll need to assess that on your own. Cheers and enjoy! Forbidden City Virtual Walkthrough
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| X-Ray Spex |
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The Next Age of Discovery (fascinating stuff!!)
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05/08/2009 1:18:44 PM PDT · Posted by SonOfDarkSkies · 14 replies · 481+ views
Wall St Journal | 5/8/2009 | ALEXANDRA ALTER
In a 21st-century version of the age of discovery, teams of computer scientists, conservationists and scholars are fanning out across the globe in a race to digitize crumbling literary treasures. In the process, they're uncovering unexpected troves of new finds, including never-before-seen versions of the Christian Gospels, fragments of Greek poetry and commentaries on Aristotle. Improved technology is allowing researchers to scan ancient texts that were once unreadable -- blackened in fires or by chemical erosion, painted over or simply too fragile to unroll. Now, scholars are studying these works with X-ray fluorescence, multispectral imaging used by NASA to photograph...
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| Greece |
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Shocking Discovery: a PC in B.C.? (Antikythera Mechanism)
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05/02/2009 6:23:53 PM PDT · Posted by Maelstorm · 50 replies · 2,251+ views
http://www.kitsapsun.com | April, 30,2009 | By Roger Koskela
A little more than a century ago, in the year 1900, some Aegean sponge divers stopped on the barren Greek islet of Antikythera, between Crete and Greece, to seek shelter from a fierce storm. After things had calmed, they continued diving in the relatively shallow waters nearby and happened upon an ancient Roman shipwreck that contained confiscated Greek treasures of bronze and marble statues, jewelry, glassware and even a bronze throne. Also among the artifacts was what appeared to be a corroded lump of rock that, for some unknown reason, was dumped into a crate during the 10-month salvage recovery...
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| Rome and Italy |
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Shedding light on the Catacombs of Rome
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05/06/2009 12:00:41 PM PDT · Posted by GonzoII · 11 replies · 494+ views
bbc.co.uk | Sunday, 3 May 2009 | Duncan Kennedy
Rome's underground Christian, Jewish and pagan burial sites, the Catacombs, date back to the 2nd Century AD. There are more than 40 of them stretching over 170km (105 miles). But, until now, they have never been fully documented, their vast scale only recorded with handmade maps. That is now changing, following a three-year project to create the first fully comprehensive three-dimensional image using laser scanners.
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| Britain |
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Kemble mosaic site to be given national archaeological status
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05/04/2009 7:26:46 PM PDT · Posted by rdl6989 · 3 replies · 197+ views
Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard | 4th May 2009
A Cotswold field where a massive Roman mosaic was uncovered earlier this year is set to be declared a site on national archaeological significance. The mosaic was discovered by metal detector enthusiasts Paul Ballinger, 41 and John Carter, 53, in a field in Kemble back in January. It is believed to date back to the 4th Century and could be up to 40-foot in diameter. A square foot of the mosaic was uncovered by Paul and John, revealing the intricate floor tiles which showed the leg of an animal. Now English Heritage want to designate the site as an official...
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| Middle Ages and Renaissance |
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Forgotten music composed by Handel to be heard for first time in 250 years
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05/07/2009 4:50:48 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 24 replies · 313+ views
Telegraph | Thursday, May 7, 2009 | unattributed
The University of Portsmouth choir will play the funeral anthem which was originally commissioned by King George II to be played at the burial of his wife, Queen Caroline in 1737. After the performance Handel wanted to translate the 40-minute piece into Italian but the King refused and ordered the music be thrown away and never heard again. University music lecturer George Burrows will resurrect the long-lost version at Portsmouth's New Theatre Royal on Saturday after his father, Professor Donald Burrows, a leading expert on Handel, found the unfinished translation in a set of archives. Mr Burrows, who also leads...
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| Biology and Cryptobiology |
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Is The Channel Creature The Loch Ness Monster? Video
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05/02/2009 1:11:33 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 33 replies · 1,050+ views
allnewsweb | 2 May 2009 | Michael Cohen
Fifty years ago sightings of the Loch Ness Monster or "Nessie' were common and few Scottish locals doubted the presence of an exotic water creature in their locale which might have been the last living member an isolated relic Plesiosaur population. Sightings of Nessie have decreased over the last few years and extensive and thorough scanning of the Loch Ness by scientists and researchers have failed to produce any evidence of Nessie. This has led many to believe, sadly, that this gentle, secretive creature had passed on. Now, astonishingly, frequent sightings are being reported of a creature living in the...
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| Classic Blunders Revisited |
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Napoleon's lousy defeat revealed
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01/03/2006 4:48:06 PM PST · Posted by Aussie Dasher · 20 replies · 375+ views
Herald Sun | 4 January 2005
The history books say that after reaching Moscow in 1812, Napoleon's army was laid low by the Russian winter and then finished off by hunger, battle wounds and low morale as it straggled back to France. The truth, say scientists, is more intriguing but rather less poetic: the biggest destroyer of the Grande Armee was Pediculus humanus -- the human louse. A team led by Didier Raoult of France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) examined the remains of Napoleon's soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, 800km west of Moscow. Samples of...
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Napoleon's Lost Army: The Soldiers Who Fell
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01/04/2006 5:51:52 AM PST · Posted by libstripper · 13 replies · 1,427+ views
BBC | Jan. 4, 2006 | Paul Britten-Austin
Vilnius, venerable capital of Lithuania, is sometimes called 'the city built on human bones'. It stands in the main Berlin to Moscow corridor, which for over 200 years has been the battlefields of the armies of Napoleon, the Tsars of Russia, Hitler and Stalin, as well as Poles and Prussians - hence its sinister description. 'Thousands of skeletons were discovered there, laid out neatly in layers.' Early in 2002, while bulldozing some ugly Soviet barracks on the outskirts of Vilnius, municipal workers uncovered a mass grave. Thousands of skeletons were discovered there, laid out neatly in layers. Where did these...
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| Early America |
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How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims
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05/06/2009 12:11:40 PM PDT · Posted by Conservative Coulter Fan · 7 replies · 623+ views
Hoover Institution | 1999 | Tom Bethell
When the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they established a system of communal property. Within three years they had scrapped it, instituting private property instead. Hoover media fellow Tom Bethell tells the story. There are three configurations of property rights: state, communal, and private property. Within a family, many goods are in effect communally owned. But when the number of communal members exceeds normal family size, as happens in tribes and communes, serious and intractable problems arise. It becomes costly to police the activities of the members, all of whom are entitled to their share of the total product of the...
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| The Framers |
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the 12th Amendment
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05/07/2009 7:06:01 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 187+ views
Constitution of the United States, via FindLaw et al | proposed December 9, 1803, ratified June 15, 1804 | The Framers et al
FindLaw's commentary:This Amendment, which supersedes clause 3 of Sec. 1 of Article II, was adopted so as to make impossible the situation occurring after the election of 1800 in which Jefferson and Burr received tie votes in the electoral college, thus throwing the selection of a President into the House of Representatives, despite the fact that the electors had intended Jefferson to be President and Burr to be Vice- President. The difference between the procedure which it defines and that which was laid down originally is in the provision it makes for a separate designation by the electors of their...
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| Stonewall's Masterpiece |
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This Day in Civil War History May 3, 1863 Confederates take Hazel Grove at Chancellorsville
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05/03/2009 5:01:49 AM PDT · Posted by mainepatsfan · 30 replies · 367+ views
History.com
On this day, General Joseph Hooker and the Army of the Potomac abandon a key hill on the Chancellorsville battlefield. The Union army was reeling after Stonewall Jackson's troops swung around the Union right flank and stormed out of the woods on the evening of May 2, causing the Federals to retreat some two miles before stopping the Confederate advance. Nonetheless, Hooker's forces were still in a position to deal a serious defeat to Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia because they had a numerical advantage and a strategic position...
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| The Medal of Honor |
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Dr. Mary Edwards Walker...profile of courage (vanity)
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05/01/2009 10:03:44 PM PDT · Posted by ak267 · 3 replies · 128+ views
American Civil War.com | 05/01/2009 | ak267
Mary Edwards Walker, one of the nation's 1.8 million women veterans, was the only one to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor, for her service during the Civil War. She, along with thousands of other women, were honored in the newly-dedicated Women in Military Service for America Memorial in October 1997
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| The Civil War |
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Actor (Robert) Duvall enters battle to save Va. battlefield
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05/04/2009 11:12:18 AM PDT · Posted by Publius804 · 86 replies · 1,353+ views
Breitbart | May 4, 2009 | STEVE SZKOTAK
Academy Award-winning actor Robert Duvall has fired a verbal salvo against plans to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter near a Virginia Civil War battlefield where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee first fought the Union's Ulysses S. Grant. Duvall, who is a descendant of Lee, said he will help preservationists in "chasing out" the retailer from a site near the Wilderness Battlefield. At a news conference on Monday, Duvall said he has no grudge against Wal-Mart but believes in capitalism coupled with sensitivity. Duvall was joined...
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| Pandemics, Epidemics, Plagues, the Sniffles |
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Lincoln's Blood May Reveal Mysterious Maladies
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05/05/2009 1:25:59 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 25 replies · 543+ views
ABC News | 5/5/09
A museum in Philadelphia plans to submit a sample of Abraham Lincoln's blood to scientific analysis in hopes of shedding light on the mysterious ailments that afflicted the 16th US president. The Grand Army of the Republic Museum's board unanimously approved "further investigation into the sciences, legacy and history of the artefact," its vice-president Andy Waskie said. The artefact is a piece of bloodstained pillow taken from the Peterson house where Mr Lincoln died in 1985 after being shot by an assassin in Fords Theatre in Washington, said Mr Waskie, a historian and professor at Temple University. Acting on the...
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| Faith and Philosophy |
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Liberty v. Equality
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05/01/2009 7:21:14 AM PDT · Posted by TaxMe · 3 replies · 106+ views
American Bar Association Journal | Originally published as 46 ABA J. 873 (Aug 1960). | By R. Carter Pittman
Inequality will exist as long as liberty exists. It unavoidably results from that very liberty itself. --Alexander Hamilton ... Equality Ends at Birth So the "basis and foundation" of the first free government in America was equality of freedom and independence, while the Jefferson perversion was equality at creation. The Declaration of Independence does not say that all men are equal. It says that they were created equal. There equality ends. All America thought alike on the subject in 1776. Benjamin Franklin, a few days after the Declaration was...
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Open Letter to Freepers: The U.S. As You've Known It Is Already Dead
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05/02/2009 10:22:18 AM PDT · Posted by quesney · 102 replies · 2,981+ views
Reuters via The Star Online
While reading the following news story... I was reminded two very important quotes from John Adams about the American Revolution: * As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 - 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington. o Letter to Thomas Jefferson (1815-08-24),...
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| Longer Perspectives |
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Interesting Facts & Information About Swords
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05/04/2009 12:20:16 PM PDT · Posted by Notoriously Conservative · 49 replies · 796+ views
notoriouslyconservative.com | 05 04 09 | Notoriously Conservative
What does this have to do with conservatism? I don't know, I guess there have been conservatives that have used swords. Look, don't question it, swords are awesome, that's why. The Sword Defined:Sword weapon of offense and defense in personal combat, consisting of a blade with a sharp point and one or two cutting edges, set in a hilt with a handle protected by a metal case or cross guard. The sword may have developed from the dagger at the beginning of the Bronze Age. It was not, however, until the more durable iron sword was introduced in the early...
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| Skull of Caesar as a Boy |
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eBay has unexpected, chilling effect on looting of antiquities, archaelogist finds
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05/04/2009 2:58:48 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 9 replies · 520+ views
University of California - Los Angeles | May 4, 2009 | Unknown
Having worked for 25 years at fragile archaeological sites in Peru, UCLA archaeologist Charles "Chip" Stanish held his breath when the online auction house eBay launched more than a decade ago. "My greatest fear was that the Internet would democratize antiquities trafficking, which previously had been a wealthy person's vice, and lead to widespread looting," said the UCLA professor of anthropology, who directs the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. Indeed, eBay has drastically altered the transporting and selling of illegal artifacts, Stanish writes in an article in the May/June issue of Archaeology, but not in the way he and other...
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany |
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Iraq to Reopen Ancient City of Babylon
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05/03/2009 6:55:24 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 12 replies · 376+ views
PressTV | Sun, 03 May 2009
Iraq's local government is to reopen the Babylon archeological site, which had been closed since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country. The city, located 85 kilometers south of Baghdad, was transformed into a military camp by American and Polish troops and a heliport was built on its ruins. The reopening will take place despite archaeologists expressing their concerns about further damages to what remains of one of the world's first great cities which is pending registration on UNESCO's list of protected World Heritage sites. Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage now says Babil's provincial government has illegal control...
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Iraq archeology: Field Museum, University of Chicago training Iraqi archeologists
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05/07/2009 12:15:09 PM PDT · Posted by mentor2k · 13 replies · 201+ views
Chicago Tribune | May 6, 2009 | Jon Davis
Iraq was home to some of civilization's first outposts and hosted conquerors from Alexander the Great to Americans. Much of that priceless archeological heritage was lost and looted in the chaotic months after the U.S. invasion in 2003. Now, the Field Museum and the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute are part of an effort to turn things around: They're training Iraqi archeologists and cultural preservationists, who will return home to train their colleagues, in techniques that would wow Indiana Jones.
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| Wackadoo |
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Is Nature One Mean Mother? (the Medea Hypothesis)
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05/07/2009 11:36:22 AM PDT · Posted by presidio9 · 29 replies · 529+ views
MSNBC | May 06, 2009 | Alan Boyle
Swine flu? Global warming? Toxic oceans? Why does Mother Nature sometimes seem to be on the attack? According to the decades-old "Gaia hypothesis," it's because Earth is a self-regulating system that is responding to our own excesses. In a new book titled "The Vanishing Face of Gaia," British biologist James Lovelock says humanity is "Earth's infection." "Individuals occasionally suffer a disease called polycythaemia, an overpopulation of red blood cells. By analogy, Gaia's illness could be called polyanthroponemia, where humans overpopulate until they do more harm than good," Lovelock writes. He says the cure won't come until the human tribe is...
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| end of digest #251 20090509 |
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