Posted on 07/16/2004 11:27:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
(Excerpt) Read more at freerepublic.com ...
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #163
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Helix, Make Mine a Double
The Need for Speed
Posted by Maelstorm
On News/Activism 08/27/2007 9:19:11 PM EDT · 8 replies · 243+ views
The Sanger Institute | 12th July 2007 | The Human Epigenome Project (HEP)
A difference of only a few percent in DNA sequence is thought to separate the human and chimp genomes. New research published in Genome Biology identifies the subset of sequences that may have driven the evolution of our two species.The researchers propose that the key changes lie in regions of our genome that control the activity of genes. It is managers of the genome, rather than the workforce, that have been most responsible for differences between chimps and humans.A team led by scientists from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute looked at DNA elements called conserved non-coding regions (CNCs) in human,...
Africa
Migration of Early Humans From Africa Aided By Wet Weather
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/30/2007 1:15:20 PM EDT · 29 replies · 396+ views
Science Daily | 8-30-2007 | Geological Society of America
Source: Geological Society of America Date: August 30, 2007 Migration of Early Humans From Africa Aided By Wet Weather Science Daily - The African origin of early modern humans 200,000--150,000 years ago is now well documented, with archaeological data suggesting that a major migration from tropical east Africa to the Levant took place between 130,000 and 100,000 years ago via the presently hyper-arid Saharan-Arabian desert. This migration was dependent on the occurrence of wetter climate in the region. Whereas there is good evidence that the southern and central Saharan-Arabian desert experienced increased monsoon precipitation during this period, no unequivocal evidence...
Longer Perspectives
Mystery of the medieval skulls still has archaeologists scratching their heads
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 08/29/2007 8:24:41 AM EDT · 22 replies · 427+ views
Times (UK) | 8-25-07
A study into the mysterious changing skull shape of medieval man casts serious doubt on current theories. The peculiar shift from long narrow heads to those of a rounder shape, and back again, which took place between the 11th and 13th centuries, has been noted at sites throughout western Europe. But a study of skulls found at the deserted village of Wharram Percy, near Malton, North Yorkshire, suggests that the anatomical blip was not down to an influx of Norman immigrants, or climate change, English Heritage has said. It examined nearly 700 skeletons recovered from the village. Unlike other...
Mayor unearths two churches' hidden pasts
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 08/30/2007 6:39:12 AM EDT · 4 replies · 188+ views
Independent (NJ) | 8-29-07 | Karen Bowes
MIDDLETOWN - Christians go to church. Mayor Gerard Scharfenberger goes under them. He finds things one might not expect, a perfectly good dead cat, for instance, a 17thcentury witch's caldron, bullets and whiskey bottles - lots and lots of whiskey bottles. On Aug. 22, Scharfenberger, an adjunct professor at Monmouth University and senior archaeologist for Richard Grubb & Associates, Cranbury, appeared at Croydon Hall to present a slideshow highlighting some of his more unusual finds. The dead cat, for example, was found with a gunshot wound to the eye......
Let's Have Jerusalem
At Galilee Site, Solving A Mystery From The Time Of Solomon
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/28/2007 2:45:16 PM EDT · 12 replies · 897+ views
Haaretz | 8-28-2007 | Jack Khoury
Last update - 09:58 28/08/2007 At Galilee site, solving a mystery from the time of Solomon By Jack Khoury A wooden sign stands at the entrance to the dirt road leading to the Segev Forest in the Western Galilee, inscribed with the symbol of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Beneath it in fading green letters is the name "Rosh Zayit Ruin." Without perusing the entrance to the dirt road carefully, you might not see the weed-covered sign, and not realize that this is the entrance to a very special archaeological site. Only an all-terrain vehicle can reach the place because...
Possible remains of second temple found in Jerusalem: TV
Posted by West Coast Conservative
On News/Activism 08/30/2007 4:36:53 PM EDT · 39 replies · 1,225+ views
AFP | August 30, 2007
Remains of the Jewish second temple may have been found during work to lay pipes at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem, Israeli television reported Thursday. Israeli television broadcast footage of a mechanical digger at the site which Israeli archaeologists visited on Thursday. Gaby Barkai, an archaeologist from Bar Ilan University, urged the Israeli government to stop the pipework after the discovery of what he said is "a massive seven metre-long wall." Television said the pipework carried out by the office of Muslim religious affairs, or Waqf, is about 1.5 metres deep and about 100 metres long. The compound,...
Archaeologists Issue Urgent Warnings Against Temple Mount Dig
Posted by Nachum
On News/Activism 08/30/2007 3:52:22 PM EDT · 18 replies · 739+ views
Arutz 7 | Aug 30, 2007 | Hillel Fendel
(IsraelNN.com) Top Israeli archaeologists held an emergency press conference on Thursday, warning that a Second Temple courtyard wall is in danger of being destroyed by the Arab excavations there. Members of the Committee to Prevent the Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities warned that other artifacts could also be endangered by the unsupervised dig. (IsraelNN.com) Top Israeli archaeologists held an emergency press conference on Thursday, warning that a Second Temple courtyard wall is in danger of being destroyed by the Arab excavations there. Members of the Committee to Prevent the Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities warned that other artifacts could also...
Prehistory and Origins
Mesopotamian City Grew Regardless Of Kingly Rule
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/30/2007 6:39:12 PM EDT · 13 replies · 173+ views
New Scientist | 8-30-2007 | Roxanne Khamsi
Mesopotamian city grew regardless of kingly rule 19:00 30 August 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi Changes in pottery over the years allowed researchers to develop a timeline for the Tell Brak's expansion Contrary to the assumption that ancient cities always grew outwards from a central point, the urban site of Tell Brak in north-eastern Syria appears to have emerged as several nearby settlements melded together, according to researchers' analysis of archaeological evidence. Experts say that the findings lend support to the theory that early Mesopotamian cities developed as a result of grassroots organisation, rather than a mandate from a...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Paleolithic Residency Traced in Bushehr Province
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/26/2007 12:14:05 AM EDT · 9 replies · 175+ views
CHN Press | 8-26-2007
Paleolithic Residency Traced in Bushehr Province Parts of mountaneous region of Jam city in bushehr province Iranian archeologists have succeeded in tracing 40,000-year-old evidence of human beings residency in Jam-o Riz city in Bushehr province. Tehran, 25 August 2007 (CHN Foreign Desk) - For the first time, during excavating operations in city of Jam-o Riz in Bushehr province, Iranian archeologists have succeeded in tracing evidence of human beings settlement dating back to Paleolithic epoch to Middle Stone Age (40,000-10,000 years ago) in this region. Prior to this, some excavations were conducted by British archeologists in different parts of Bushehr province....
Agriculture
Section Of Ancient Canal Discovered In Northern Iran
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/27/2007 6:18:08 PM EDT · 5 replies · 233+ views
Mehr News | 8-25-2007
Section of ancient canal discovered northern Iran TEHRAN, Aug. 25 (MNA) -- A team of Iranian and British archaeologists have recently discovered a 50 kilometer section of an ancient canal near the Gorgan Great Wall in northern IranÃs Golestan Province. "The canal was used to transfer water from the Gorganrud River to the people who once lived in the vicinity of the wall, moats, castles, and brick kilns," the teamÃs Iranian director Hamid Omrani told the Persian service of CHN on Friday. This section of canal was still in use, but for a different purpose, up until the 1979 Islamic...
Faith and Philosophy
Zoroastrian fires and temples
Posted by freedom44
On News/Activism 08/25/2007 8:36:51 PM EDT · 49 replies · 842+ views
Press TV | 8/18/07 | Press TV
Fire, the source of heat and light is not only revered in ancient Indo-Iranian rituals but also in modern day Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. Zoroastrianism, which dominated the Sassanid Empire, is the religion ascribed to the ancient Persian prophet, Zarathushtra (Zoroaster), who lived 3500 years ago. Fire (Atar), together with clean water (Aban), are considered agents of ritual purity in the Zoroastrian religion. Despite the Zoroastrian respect for any form of fire, they do not worship it, rather it is used as a medium to communicate with God, whom they call Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom, the source of order...
Egypt
Paging Mr. Indiana Jones [Curse of the Mummy!]
Posted by BlackVeil
On General/Chat 08/26/2007 6:08:47 AM EDT · 3 replies · 57+ views
Yahoo News Page | Aug 22, 2007 | n/c
CAIRO (Reuters) - A German has handed in a package containing part of a Pharaonic carving to Egypt's embassy in Berlin, with a note saying his stepfather had suffered a "curse of the Pharaohs" for stealing it, Egypt said Wednesday. The note said the man felt obliged to return the carving to make amends for his late stepfather and enable his soul to rest in peace, Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities said. The stepfather had stolen the piece while on a visit to Egypt in 2004 and on his return to Germany suffered paralysis, nausea, unexplained fevers and cancer before...
Oh So Mysterioso
There could have been two sphinxes, argues one researcher
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 08/29/2007 3:34:54 PM EDT · 25 replies · 375+ views
Daily Star News | August 28, 2007 | Ahmed Maged
Egyptologist Bassam El Shammaa believes that the famed half-lion, half-man statue was an Egyptian deity that was erected next to another sphinx, which has since vanished without a trace. This contradicts what many have believed for centuries -- that a single colossal statue functioned as a guard to the Pyramids. The idea of two sphinxes is more in line with ancient Egyptian beliefs, which were mainly based on duality, the researcher said. He cited Ancient Egyptian records and mythology saying that lightening had destroyed part of the Sphinx. This may have been a reference to the second sphinx which was...
Greece
Prehistoric Greek Water Works Found [ Mycenaean citadel of Midea ]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 08/26/2007 3:18:53 PM EDT · 10 replies · 89+ views
PhysOrg / AP | August 25, 2007 | Nicholas Paphitis
Dating to the mid-13th century B.C., the stone passage passed under the massive walls of the Mycenaean citadel of Midea and probably led to a nearby water source, authorities said Friday. The passage would allow the people of Midea, about 93 miles south of Athens, safe access to drinkable water even in times of enemy attack... Only three such networks - major engineering feats requiring intensive labor - from Mycenaean times have been found so far. Excavations in late June and July at Midea revealed cut rock steps leading to the triangular passage, whose entrance was covered with a large...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Greece Is The Word For Volcanoes (Thera)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/25/2007 12:46:54 PM EDT · 37 replies · 470+ views
Star Bulletin | 8-25-2007 | Helen Altonn
Greece is the word for volcanoesA local professor is studying the ancient eruption of Thera By Helen Altonn haltonn@starbulletin.com Floyd McCoy, Windward Community College professor of geology and oceanography, hopes during a year and a half in Greece to resolve the "hugely controversial" question of when the Thera volcano erupted. He will investigate the Mediterranean's largest volcanic eruption in history as a Fulbright scholar. McCoy has spent the past 20 years studying geological evidence of the Late Bronze Age eruption of Thera volcano that led to the end of the Minoan culture on the island of Santorini. Geophysicists say the...
Sunken Civilizations
'Asian Atlantis' discovered[Japan]
Posted by BGHater
On News/Activism 08/28/2007 5:18:21 PM EDT · 41 replies · 1,069+ views
Reuters | 28 Aug 2007 | Reuters
A researcher investigating underwater rock formations off the coast of Japan believes they are the remnants of an Asian equivalent of Atlantis - an ancient civilisation swallowed up by the ocean. Marine geologist Masaaki Kimura says he has identified the ruins of a city off the coast of Yonaguni Island on the southwestern tip of Japan. He has worked for decades to prove the rocks found by scuba diving tourists in 1985 are from an ancient city, which he says may have sparked the fable of Mu - a Pacific equivalent of the tale of the lost city of Atlantis....
Biology and Cryptobiology
Diplomats destroy Egypt whale fossil
Posted by Brujo
On General/Chat 08/27/2007 9:10:26 AM EDT · 31 replies · 361+ views
AFP via Yahoo | 2007 Aug 26 | AFP
European diplomats in four-wheel drive cars have caused millions of dollars worth of damage to a fossilised whale lying for millions of years in the Egyptian desert, a security source said on Sunday. "Whale Valley officials have informed the authorities that people from two diplomatic corps vehicles destroyed the fossil," the source told AFP after the destruction was discovered around 150 kilometres (95 miles) south of Cairo. Two cars drove into the protected area on Friday and then refused to stop when asked to do so by wardens who nevertheless got the vehicles' registration numbers which the source said were...
Epigraphy and Language
A Minnesota Mystery: The Kensington Runestone
Posted by BGHater
On News/Activism 08/25/2007 3:21:22 PM EDT · 77 replies · 1,822+ views
WCCO.com | 18 Aug 2007 | Ben Tracy
It's one of Minnesota's greatest mysteries. It's something that puts settlers in America well before Columbus. A Minnesota geologist thinks the controversial Kensington Runestone is the real thing and there is evidence that he says backs up the theory. The Kensington Runestone is a rock found near Alexandria a century ago. It's inscription speaking of Norwegians here in 1362. It begs the question. Were Vikings exploring our land more than 100 years before Columbus? Or is it just an elaborate hoax? New research shows that the stone is genuine and there's hidden code that may prove it. It contains carved...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Why the skeleton found in the La Brea Tar Pits feels so familiar [ La Brea Woman ]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 08/27/2007 2:31:04 PM EDT · 44 replies · 523+ views
L.A. Times | August 20, 2006 | Amy Wilentz
Female bones excavated from the bubbling asphalt in 1914 used to be mounted in the museum, alongside a life-sized dummy purporting to resemble the woman to whom the bones had belonged. The exhibit was called La Brea Woman. La Brea means "the tar" in Spanish. La Brea Woman probably died from injuries inflicted by a blunt instrument: a piece of bone is missing from the top of her skull... Scientists believe that La Brea Woman died with her dog by her side, since canine bones were found near her remains. La Brea Woman is 9,000 years old, has a hole...
Navigation
Constructing The Solutrean Solution
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/28/2007 2:34:31 PM EDT · 20 replies · 430+ views
Clovis In The Southeast.Net (Smithsonian) | 8-28-2007 | Dennis Stanford - Bruce Bradley
Constructing the Solutrean Solution Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley Smithsonian Institution University of Exeter At the 1999 Clovis and Beyond Conference held in Santa Fe, we presented a hypothesis, now known as the "Solutrean Solution", to explain the origin of Clovis technology. The hypothesis is based on the fact that there is little commonality between Clovis and Northeast Asian technologies on the one hand, while on the other, there are many technological traits shared between Clovis and the Solutrean culture of Paleolithic Europe. In the past, scholars have rejected the idea of a historical connection between the two cultures because...
Ancient Autopsies
Researcher's Say Italy's 5,000-Year-Old Iceman Died From Head Trauma, Not Arrow (Oetzi)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/29/2007 12:26:19 PM EDT · 90 replies · 1,421+ views
IHT | 8-28-2007
Researchers say Italy's 5,000-year-old Iceman died from head trauma, not arrow The Associated PressPublished: August 28, 2007 ROME, Italy: Researchers studying Iceman, the 5,000-year-old mummy found frozen in the Italian Alps, have come up with a new theory for how he died, saying he died from head trauma, not by bleeding to death from an arrow. Just two months ago, researchers in Switzerland published an article in the Journal of Archaeological Science saying the mummy - also known as Oetzi - had died after the arrow tore a hole in an artery beneath his left collarbone, leading to massive loss...
Ancient Europe
Peoples Of Britain
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/29/2007 12:02:50 AM EDT · 24 replies · 479+ views
BBC | Dr Simon James
Peoples of Britain By Dr Simon James Did the Celts exist? Simon James asks just who were the Britons - and did the Celts ever really exist? Uncover the fascinating ethnic and cultural history of the peoples of Briton, and assess the impact of the many invaders of Britain's shores. Introduction The story of early Britain has traditionally been told in terms of waves of invaders displacing or annihilating their predecessors. Archaeology suggests that this picture is fundamentally wrong. For over 10,000 years people have been moving into - and out of - Britain, sometimes in substantial numbers, yet there...
British Isles
New Book Claims Merlin Had Scottish Roots
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/27/2007 9:40:48 PM EDT · 45 replies · 732+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 8-28-2007 | David Sapsted
New book claims Merlin had Scottish roots By David Sapsted Last Updated: 1:52am BST 28/08/2007 Merlin the magician - hirsute confidant of King Arthur and the architect of Camelot - was, in fact, Scottish, according to a new book. The English, Welsh and French have laid claim to Merlin the magician Not only Scottish but, to be precise, hailing from Ardery Street, just off the Dumbarton Road, in the Partick area of Glasgow. While the English, Welsh and even the French have laid claim to the wizard with the peaked hat for centuries, this is the first time that anyone...
Asia
Graves Of Ancient Russian Rulers Discovered At Altai
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/30/2007 1:04:09 PM EDT · 17 replies · 450+ views
Russia IC | 8-30-2007
Graves of Ancient Russian Rulers Discovered at Altai 30.08.2007 Rurik, legendary Russian rulerArcheologsts have recently discovered graves of ancient Russian family of Ruriks ("Rurik" means "famous ruler") in the town of Zmeinogorsk, reports famous Russian historian. The discovery was totally unexpected - fellows of local historical centre have taken children from historical society to perform diggings on the cityÃs cemetery, and among other pre-revolutionary burials they found graves of Ruriks. Now scientists start enormous research - they are going to identify the graves and bodies in them.
Numismatism
1.5 Tons Of Ancient Coins Discovered In North China
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/30/2007 1:11:43 PM EDT · 35 replies · 1,434+ views
People's Daily | 8-30-2007 | Xinhua
1.5 tons of ancient coins discovered in north China + - 21:20, August 30, 2007 A cellar containing 1.5 tons of ancient coins, including some 2,000-year-old ones, have been discovered by a villager in Changzi County, north China's Shanxi Province. The man in Qianwanhu village discovered the cellar with some 10,000 coins, ranging from 3 cm to 1 cm in diameter, on Aug. 23 when he was digging a channel to place pipes for tap water, said Li Lin, an official of the Changzi Center of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. The "money cellar" was 1.5 meters under the earth, with...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
NOAA vessel to explore undersea unknown
Posted by decimon
On News/Activism 08/25/2007 8:26:41 AM EDT · 15 replies · 536+ views
Associated Press | Aug. 24, 2007 | RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
WASHINGTON - Undersea explorer Robert Ballard leans back and smiles at the screens arrayed above his desk. One displays a view of a remote operating vessel, another scans along a seafloor never before viewed by humans. It's the Black Sea, not far from Ukraine, a region long closed to outsiders and now yielding a treasure trove of Byzantine vessels that met their ends 1,000 or more years ago. For Ballard the archaeologist, those vessels and their contents are a delight. For Ballard the explorer, the modern technology he's testing for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is pretty exciting, too....
Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues
Mass Plague Graves Found On Venice "Quarantine" Island
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/30/2007 1:22:50 PM EDT · 14 replies · 622+ views
National Geographic | 8-29-2007 | Maria Cristina Valsecchi
Mass Plague Graves Found on Venice "Quarantine" Island Maria Cristina Valsecchi for National Geographic News August 29, 2007 Ancient mass graves containing more than 1,500 victims of the bubonic plague have been discovered on a small island in Italy's Venetian Lagoon. Workers came across the skeletons while digging the foundation for a new museum on Lazzaretto Vecchio, a small island in the lagoon's south, located a couple of miles from Venice's famed Piazza San Marco (see a map of the Venetian Lagoon). The island is believed to be the world's first lazaret-a quarantine colony intended to help prevent the spread...
Venturing Into the Mines of Uganda, in Search of the Marburg Virus
Posted by neverdem
On News/Activism 08/29/2007 1:42:34 AM EDT · 35 replies · 523+ views
NY Times | August 28, 2007 | NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Researchers reported for the first time last week that they have found the Marburg virus in a nonprimate species - bats. Now, they have turned their attention to a bat-infested lead and gold mine in western Uganda, in an attempt to determine if bats harbor the disease between periodic outbreaks in southern Africa. One miner working in the mine died of Marburg disease on July 14, and several others apparently recovered from it. "WeÃre trying to see where this goes," Jonathan Towner, the lead author of the report, published Aug. 22 in the online journal PloS ONE, said in a...
Diet, Food, Recipes
17th Century Baldness Cure Is Chicken Dung Says Ye Olde Men's Goode Health
Posted by DogByte6RER
On News/Activism 08/30/2007 9:52:41 AM EDT · 22 replies · 368+ views
Daily Mail | 30th August 2007 | OLINKA KOSTER
17th century baldness cure is chicken dung says Ye Olde Men's Goode Health By OLINKA KOSTER 30th August 2007 In our age of gyms and jogging, dental floss and deodorants, mouthwash and moisturisers, a chap can waft along with ease every day feeling fit and fragrant. But back in 1654, with Oliver Cromwell ruling England, good health and grooming for men was somewhat more basic. Then, no self-respecting male's medicine chest was apparently complete without liberal supplies of cat's dung, snail's blood and chicken droppings - not to mention arsenic and brimstone. Gruesome as they may sound, they were recommended...
World War I
First World War Tunnels To Yield Their Secrets
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/26/2007 4:21:27 PM EDT · 35 replies · 1,372+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 8-26-2007 | Jasper Copping
First World War tunnels to yield their secrets By Jasper Copping, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:42am BST 26/08/2007 As battle raged across the fields of Flanders, British soldiers found brief respite from the horrors of the First World War in "underground towns" far below the mud and gore. Now, more than 90 years after the armies left and the extraordinary networks of tunnels were flooded, the task of finally revealing their secrets has begun. The Tunnels The prize, archaeologists and historians believe, is an unprecedented insight into the lives of British troops on the Western Front. They believe that, because...
Early America
Lafayette celebrates birthday of namesake [250th anniversary of birth]
Posted by Pharmboy
On General/Chat 08/27/2007 8:27:26 AM EDT · 7 replies · 67+ views
Purdue Exponent | 8-27-07 | Jenna Case
Adam Leonberger | Senior Photographer People in period dress are present during the announcement of events in Lafayette that will commemorate Marquis de Lafayette's birthday. The Greater Lafayette community is coming together this fall to celebrate the 250th birthday of the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette was a French statesman who inspired the names of Lafayette and West Lafayette. The community is arranging 24 events throughout the fall to commemorate his birthday. The Marquis de Lafayette Celebration Committee Chair Ramona Lawson said the birthday is an important milestone in the Lafayette community. "It's another opportunity for our community to come...
Coda
Expert: Beethoven inadvertently poisoned by doctor
Posted by RDTF
On News/Activism 08/28/2007 7:27:40 PM EDT · 10 replies · 353+ views
Cnn.com | August 28, 2007 | AP
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Did someone kill Beethoven? A Viennese pathologist claims the composer's physician did -- inadvertently overdosing him with lead in a case of a cure that went wrong. Other researchers are not convinced, but there is no controversy about one fact: The master had been a very sick man years before his death in 1827. Previous research determined that Beethoven had suffered from lead poisoning, first detecting toxic levels of the metal in his hair and then, two years ago, in bone fragments. Those findings strengthened the belief that lead poisoning may have contributed -- and ultimately...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Key that could have saved the Titanic
Posted by wagglebee
On General/Chat 08/29/2007 8:18:09 PM EDT · 21 replies · 306+ views
UK Telegraph | 8/29/07 | Graham Tibbetts
It looks for all the world like an ordinary key but this unremarkable piece of metal could have saved the Titanic from disaster. It is thought to have fitted the locker that contained the crow's nest binoculars, vital in detecting threats to the liner lurking in the sea in the pre-sonar days of 1912. Catastrophically for the Titanic and the 1,522 lives lost with her, the key's owner, Second Officer David Blair, was removed from the crew at the last minute and in his haste forgot to hand it to his replacement. Without access to the glasses, the lookouts...
Napeoleon's 'death mask' could be his butler's
Posted by bruinbirdman
On News/Activism 08/19/2007 5:25:34 AM EDT · 12 replies · 478+ views
breitbart.com | 8/18/2007
The purported death mask of Napoleon on show in a Paris museum is not that of the emperor, a historian alleged Saturday, with some reports suggesting it is really that of his butler. Bruno Rey-Henry said the real death mask had been auctioned in 2004 to an unidentified individual after being on display in London's Royal United Services Institute museum for some 25 years. Rey-Henry said the mask in Paris's military museum, close to Napoleon's tomb in the Invalides, does not display a scar on the left cheek which figures in a portrait of the emperor after his surrender in...
end of digest #163 20070901
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Issue 156 of the Gods, Graves, Glyphs ping list Digest inaugurated a different ping message format, and this is the first prototype of the ordinary ping message. |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #164
Saturday, September 9, 2007
Ancient Autopsies
The Mysterious Mummies of Mammoth Cave
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/02/2007 9:48:53 PM EDT · 14 replies · 414+ views
Unexplainable.Net | Friday, August 31, 2007 | Wm. Douglas Mefford
The Lost John mummy... [f]ound in 1935... a male approximately 45 years old and about 5' 3"... about the fourth century B.C.E... Little Alice has waited about 4,000 years to be seen. The Little Alice mummy is something of an enigma for more than just her place in time. She is small, barely three and a half feet tall when alive... later study indicated that it may have been a boy child of about nine... found over 9,000 feet below the earth and the artifacts found with the body, while unidentified by culture, showed the craft and workmanship of an...
Sunken Civilizations
Underwater Archaeologists Find Possible Mastodon Carving On Lake Michigan Rock
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/05/2007 1:26:08 PM EDT · 81 replies · 1,656+ views
AHN | 9-4-2007 | Nidhi Sharma
Underwater Archaeologists Find Possible Mastodon Carving On Lake Michigan Rock September 4, 2007 11:51 p.m. EST Nidhi Sharma - AHN News Writer Traverse City, MI (AHN) - Underwater archaeologists in Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay are speculating a boulder they found in a June ship wreck to be engraved with a prehistoric carvings. Mark Holley, a scientist with the Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve Council, believes that the granite rock, which was found hidden at a depth of about 12 metres, has markings that resemble a mastodon. A mastodon is an elephant-like creature that once inhabited parts of North America....
Diet, Food, Recipes
A serving of Philistine culture: Boar, dog and fine wine
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/03/2007 11:38:36 PM EDT · 15 replies · 174+ views
Ha'aretz | Monday, September 3, 2007 | Ofri Ilani
Research into the dispersal of Philistine cooking methods among various populations in Israel shows that the Philistines spread their culture beyond the areas under their control... Unlike most of the peoples living in the region in the biblical era, the Philistines were not Semites... They prepared meals in a characteristic sealed pottery vessel suited to long cooking times at low heat, while most inhabitants of Canaan at the time used open pots and faster cooking methods. The bones found at the Philistine cities showed that... the Philistines ate mainly pork, with an occasional meal of dog meat. The Philistines' wine...
Philistines, But Less And Less Philistine
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 03/13/2007 6:48:08 PM EDT · 12 replies · 441+ views
NYT | 3-12-2007 | John Noble Wilford
Philistines, but Less and Less Philistine Painted inscriptions on ceramic pieces unearthed at the ruins of a Philistine seaport are thought to represent a form of writing. By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Published: March 13, 2007 Archaeologists have applied more polish to the long-tarnished reputation of the Philistines. Leon Levy Expedition Recent excavations have raised the estimation of Philistines. In recent years, excavations in Israel established that the Philistines had fine pottery, handsome architecture and cosmopolitan tastes. If anything, they were more refined than the shepherds and farmers in the nearby hills, the Israelites, who slandered them in biblical chapter and...
Near East
Burial Clue To Early Urban Strife
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/31/2007 6:25:13 PM EDT · 15 replies · 376+ views
BBC | 8-31-2007
Burial clue to early urban strife Only a fraction of the burial pit has been excavated Archaeologists working in Syria have unearthed the remains of dozens of youths thought to have been killed in a fierce confrontation 6,000 years ago. According to Science magazine, the celebrating victors may even have feasted on beef in the aftermath. The findings come from northeastern Syria, near Tell Brak, one of the world's oldest known cities. More than 30 years of continuous excavation have revealed the site's remarkable sophistication. Studies by British and American archaeologists published in the journals Antiquity and Science suggest Tell...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Archaeologists: Muslim dig damaged Temple wall
Posted by West Coast Conservative
On News/Activism 08/31/2007 1:09:11 PM EDT · 18 replies · 625+ views
Jerusalem Post | August 31, 2007 | ETGAR LEFKOVITS
A month-old Islamic dig on Jerusalem's Temple Mount to replace faulty electrical cables has damaged an ancient wall that is likely a remnant of the Second Temple, Israeli archaeologists said Thursday. The work, which is being carried out with the approval of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the state-run Antiquities Authority, has been repeatedly condemned by independent Israeli archaeologists, who are calling for its immediate halt. "The Israeli Government is lending a hand to the destruction of one of the most important archaeological sites in the world," said Bar-Ilan University archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkai at a Jerusalem press conference. Barkai...
Muslims caught red-handed destroying Temple artifacts
Posted by Nachum
On News/Activism 09/03/2007 11:31:26 AM EDT · 29 replies · 1,346+ views
WND | September 2, 200 | Aaron Klein
JERUSALEM -- Islamic authorities using heavy machinery to dig on the Temple Mount -- Judaism's holiest site -- have been caught red-handed destroying Temple-era antiquities and what's believed to be a section of an outer wall of the Second Jewish Temple.
Agriculture
Hebrew University Excavations Reveal First Beehives In Ancient Near East In 'Land Of Milk And Honey'
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/03/2007 6:26:42 PM EDT · 14 replies · 499+ views
Alpha Galileo | 9-3-2007
03 September 2007 Hebrew University excavations reveal first beehives in ancient near east in 'Land of milk and honey' Archaeological proof of the Biblical description of Israel really as "the land of milk and honey" (or at least the latter) has been uncovered by researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archaeology. Amihai Mazar, Eleazar L. Sukenik Professor of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, revealed that the first apiary (beehive colony) dating from the Biblical period has been found in excavations he directed this summer at Tel Rehov in Israel's Beth Shean Valley. This is the earliest apiary...
Faith and Philosophy
'Decoding' the Bible (Movie: Exodus Decoded)
Posted by Between the Lines
On Religion 07/13/2006 10:10:31 AM EDT · 4 replies · 583+ views
Jerusalam Post | July 12, 2006 | Gershom Gale
There is a saying that when it comes to the Bible, "for those who believe, no explanation is necessary, while for those who don't believe, no explanation is possible." But what of the many people who fall somewhere between these two certainties? Such people owe it to themselves to see The Exodus Decoded, a 90-minute documentary by Canadians James Cameron (the director of Titanic, Aliens and The Terminator) and investigative journalist and producer Simcha Jacobovici. The film will be screened at 6 p.m. this evening as part of the Jerusalem Film Festival at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. The Exodus Decoded claims...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
In Iran, ancient rite links God and wrestling
Posted by freedom44
On General/Chat 09/06/2007 12:38:57 AM EDT · 22 replies · 535+ views
Yahoo News & Reuters | September 4, 2007 | Reuters
TEHRAN (Reuters) - For the men who practice it, it's about not just fitness but a connection with God. Zurkhaneh, an ancient Persian sporting ritual whose name means "House of Strength," is a historic breeding ground for wrestlers in Iran, and now enjoying something of a comeback. It looks to a Western eye like an exotic mixture of body-building and aerobics. But for the men whirling like dervishes to frenetic drumbeats, juggling heavy wooden clubs and doing push-ups in the pit of a "House of Strength" in northern Tehran, the ritual is about much more. "It is a holy thing,"...
Rome and Italy
Omens and Superstitions (Romans and Etruscans)
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 09/06/2007 9:18:31 AM EDT · 10 replies · 150+ views
Roman-Empire.net
A superstitious Society Compare to modern society, the Romans seem extremely superstitious. But then today's major religions have all throughout their past discouraged, even combatted, superstitions. Also our sciences and our technological world allows little room for superstition. The Romans lived in an era previous to this. Their world was full of unexplained phenomena, darkness and fear. To Romans these superstitions were a perfectly natural part in the relationship between gods and men. The Roman habit of interpreting natural phenomena as signs from the beyond stemmed from the Etruscans. The Etruscans, who developed reading omens and auspices into a form...
Ancient Europe
Revealedix: The Gaul Of Asterix Was No Joke
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/01/2007 10:55:57 PM EDT · 34 replies · 1,046+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 9-2-2007 | Justin Stares
Revealedix: the Gaul of Asterix was no joke By Justin Stares in Brussels, Sunday Telegraph> Last Updated: 12:17am BST 02/09/2007 Fighting with his bare fists, and massively outnumbered, France's cockiest Gaul, Asterix, led a brave rebellion against the Roman occupier. Not only was his little village encircled by Julius Caesar's troops, it was up against an expanding empire - unequalled in the art of warfare and determined to civilise a backward people who worshipped druids and believed in magic potions. Or so it was thought until now. But a discovery in central France has led to a significant reassessment of...
Art and Dawn Live Nextdoor
The Dawn of Art
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/02/2007 1:26:56 AM EDT · 9 replies · 107+ views
Archaeology | Volume 60 Number 5, September/October 2007 | Andrew Curry
American archaeologist Nicholas Conard is convinced Swabia's tradition of innovation goes back a long way: 40,000 years, give or take a few thousand. Excavating in caves east of Tubingen, a medieval town 20 miles south of Stuttgart, Conard has unearthed expertly carved figurines and the oldest musical instruments in the world... claims his finds are evidence of an intense flowering of art and culture that began in southwestern Germany more than 35,000 years ago... the figurines and instruments in Conard's caves are symbolic representations that reflect a state of mind with which modern humans can easily identify... Conard's conclusions have...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Did Prehistoric Man Come From Haifa
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/06/2007 5:26:33 PM EDT · 9 replies · 271+ views
Haaretz | 9-6-2007
Did prehistoric man come from Haifa?Last update - 23:34 06/09/2007 By Fadi Eyadat The audience, the stage and the set are ready. Only the guest of honor is missing - "and everyone is waiting for him," says Prof. Mina Evron, a researcher in the Archaeology Department of the University of Haifa and the codirector of excavations at Misliya Cave, southwest of Mt. Carmel. The 'guest' that she and a team of researchers are seeking in the cave area is a skeleton that could represent early humans. "We have found everything here: large quantities of the tools they used, hand-held stone...
Prehistory and Origins
It turns out we may not be 'big-brained apes' after all (Darwin shown to be wrong)
Posted by DaveLoneRanger
On News/Activism 09/01/2007 12:02:38 PM EDT · 316 replies · 4,260+ views
The Indianapolis Star | August 26, 2007 | Emily Brown
Link Only: It turns out we may not be 'big-brained apes' after all - Researcher says Darwin's theory overstated the similarities between human, animal brains
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Argentina museum displays Incan mummy
Posted by BenLurkin
On News/Activism 09/07/2007 5:23:51 PM EDT · 16 replies · 351+ views
Associated Press | Thu Sep 6, 6:44 PM ET | FEDERICO ESCHER,
SALTA, Argentina - Museumgoers gasped Thursday at the well-preserved mummy of an Inca maiden which is on display for the first time, a serene gaze etched on her face hundreds of years ago when she froze to death in the Andes. Hundreds of people packed a museum in Salta, Argentina, to see "la Doncella" -- Spanish for "the Maiden" -- a 15-year-old girl whose remains were found in 1999 in an icy pit on Llullaillaco volcano, along with a 6-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy. Scientists believe the so-called Children of Llullaillaco were sacrificed more than 500 years ago in...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Ancient yucca chaws yield ancient DNA
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 09/01/2007 12:01:21 PM EDT · 19 replies · 161+ views
physorg.com | 8-31-07
Prehistoric quid (wads of crumpled, masticated, shredded leaves) from dry caves in the American Southwest. Photo by Steven LeBlanc In a groundbreaking study, two Harvard scientists have for the first time extracted human DNA from ancient artifacts. The work potentially opens up a new universe of sources for ancient genetic material, which is used to map human migrations in prehistoric times. Before this, archaeologists could only get ancient DNA from relics of the human body itself, including prehistoric teeth, bones, fossilized feces, or -- rarely -- preserved flesh. Such sources of DNA are hard to find, poorly preserved, or unavailable...
Climate
North-West Passage is now plain sailing
Posted by Daffynition
On General/Chat 08/28/2007 8:58:22 PM EDT · 17 replies · 306+ views
Guardian Unlimited | August 28 2007 | Gwladys FouchÈ
The North-West Passage -- the sea route running along the Arctic coastline of North America, normally perilously clogged with thick ice -- is nearly ice-free for the first time since records began. "Since August 21 the North-West Passage is open to navigation. This is the first time that it happens," Nalan Koc, head of the Norwegian Polar Institute's climate change programme, told reporters in Longyearbyen, a town in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. "The Arctic ice sheet currently extends on 4.9m square kilometres. In September 2005 it measured 5.3m square kilometers."
Navigation
A New Paleolithic Revolution
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/06/2007 5:17:33 PM EDT · 14 replies · 299+ views
Minerva | 9-6-2007
A New Paleolithic Revolution Image Caption: The 'Rangki Papa' ('Father of all Rafts') built using Palaeolithic technology and approaching the coast of Komodo, Bali, having succeeded in crossing from Sumbawa, 7 October 2004. The vessel travelled 36.4km in 9 hours 22 minutes Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D. and Dr Sean KingsleyJuly/August 2007 For decades archaeologists have rightly respected the Neolithic period c. 8500 BC as a revolutionary era of the most profound change, when the wiring of mankind's brain shifted from transient hunter-gathering to permanent settlement in farming communities. Hearths, temples, articulated burials, whistling 'wheat' fields and security replaced the...
Australia and the Pacific
Captain Cook's claim questioned by coin find
Posted by DancesWithCats
On General/Chat 08/31/2007 12:05:16 PM EDT · 31 replies · 417+ views
London Daily Telegraph | august 31st, 2007 | DancesWithCats
An archeologist claims to have found a 16th century European coin in a swamp on Australia's east coast, raising new questions about whether Captain James Cook was beaten to the continent by the Spanish or Portuguese. The silver coin, which is inscribed with the date 1597, was discovered by a group led by amateur archeologist Greg Jefferys. A colleague was digging in the sand with a machete when he found the badly corroded coin on Sunday.It was buried a few inches below the ground in the middle of snake-infested Eighteen Mile Swamp on North Stradbroke Island, Queensland. If proved to...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Madagascar aye-aye color vision studied
Posted by Clint N. Suhks
On General/Chat 09/05/2007 3:53:29 PM EDT · 12 replies · 154+ views
UPI | Sept. 5, 2007
PHOENIX, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists studying one of the world's most rare primates have found the animal's genes involved in color vision haven't degraded as expected. The study involving the Madagascar aye-aye is part of a quest by Biodesign Institute researcher Brian Verrelli and colleagues at Arizona State University to gain a more complete understanding of color vision evolution. They have performed the first complete study of color vision in the aye-aye -- a completely nocturnal primate with a unique combination of physical features, including extremely large eyes. Verrelli, George Perry and Robert Martin analyzed genetic samples of...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Building Stonehenge: This man can move anything [Michigan man solves mystery?]
Posted by wolfinator
On General/Chat 09/06/2007 10:27:18 AM EDT · 36 replies · 655+ views
Youtube
I found this really interesting. This guy is building his own Stonehenge with simple handmade tools. http://youtube.com
Early America
America and the Barbary Pirates: An International Battle Against an Unconventional Foe
Posted by Brainhose
On General/Chat 09/06/2007 11:54:32 AM EDT · 18 replies · 200+ views
Library Of Congress | Today | Brainhose
Ruthless, unconventional foes are not new to the United States of America. More than two hundred years ago the newly established United States made its first attempt to fight an overseas battle to protect its private citizens by building an international coalition against an unconventional enemy. Then the enemies were pirates and piracy. The focus of the United States and a proposed international coalition was the Barbary Pirates of North Africa. Pirate ships and crews from the North African states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers (the Barbary Coast) were the scourge of the Mediterranean. Capturing merchant ships and holding...
History to come alive at Boron event
Posted by BenLurkin
On General/Chat 09/07/2007 12:34:11 AM EDT · 3 replies · 50+ views
Valley Press on | Wednesday, September 5, 2007. | BONNIE D. STONE
MOJAVE - More than a century ago, 20-mule teams labored out of Death Valley hauling borax over the steep Panamint Mountains to Mojave, the nearest railroad terminal, which was 165 miles away. Many older Americans remember "Death Valley Days," a weekly television show that ran from 1952 to 1970 with hosts such as Ronald Reagan, who went on to be governor of California, then president of the United States, as well as entertainers Robert Taylor, Dale Robertson and Merle Haggard. The show perpetuated the folklore of the 20-mule teams. A bit of history will come alive Saturday, Oct. 6 as...
Longer Perspectives
Museum Watchdog
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/02/2007 4:37:56 AM EDT · 5 replies · 82+ views
Archaeology | August 14, 2007 | interview of David Gill
David Gill, a professor of archaeology at the University of Wales Swansea, is the author of a number of studies on the antiquities market. With his colleague Christopher Chippendale, Gill has conducted detailed surveys on the origins of thousands of artifacts in private and public collections. His blog: www.lootingmatters.blogspot.com, explores the murky relationship between the museum world and illicit antiquities... "I was talking to Colin Renfrew about the Cretan collection at Cambridge, which was given to the university as a share of excavations. And he pointed out that Cambridge undergraduates have gone through these galleries for decades and been motivated...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Tomb raiders strip Bulgaria of its treasures
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/02/2007 10:02:17 PM EDT · 9 replies · 202+ views
Telegraph | Monday, September 3, 2007 | Malcolm Moore
Among the paperclips in the bottom drawer of a desk in Bulgaria's National History Museum is a small cardboard box packed with 5,000-year-old gold rings. "We found 25,000 of them when we went into a grocery shop a couple of months ago," said Svetla Tsaneva-Dimitrova, the head of the museum's restoration team. "A farmer's wife was wearing them as a necklace. Her husband had just dug them up in a field nearby. As you can imagine, we were stunned." Each tiny gold ring is 23-carat gold, but nobody knows how they were crafted. "Modern jewellers cannot make these things without...
end of digest #164 20070909
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Welcome to the 164th issue of the Gods, Graves, Glyphs ping list Digest. This week I finally rolled out the new ping message. You'll always remember where you were when first you laid eyes on it. Y'know, because you're always in that same chair facing the computer. |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #165
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Prehistory and Origins
Turns out Neanderthals had good oral hygiene
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 09/13/2007 7:14:34 AM EDT · 14 replies · 138+ views
MSNBC | 9-11-2007
Two molar teeth of around 63,400 years old show that Neanderthal predecessors of humans may have been dental hygiene fans, the Web site of newspaper El Pais reported on Tuesday. The teeth have "grooves formed by the passage of a pointed object, which confirms the use of a small stick for cleaning the mouth," Paleontology Professor Juan Luis Asuarga told reporters, presenting an archaeological find in Madrid. The fossils, unearthed in Pinilla del Valle, are the first human examples found in the Madrid region in 25 years, the regional government's culture department said.......
Dramatic climate shift didn't kill Neanderthals
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 09/13/2007 7:11:20 AM EDT · 26 replies · 203+ views
MSNBC | 9-12-07 | Michael Kahn
LONDON - Neanderthals probably fell victim to taller and superior Cro-Magnons rather than catastrophic climate change, researchers said on Wednesday. Using a new method to calibrate carbon-14 dating, the international team found the last Neanderthals died at least 3,000 years before a major change in temperatures occurred. This suggests either modern humans or a combination of humans and less severe climate change caused the species' demise some 30,000 years ago, said Chronis Tzedakis, a paleoecologist at the University of Leeds, who led the study published in the journal Nature.....
Climate
Studying Evidence From Ice Age Lakes
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/11/2007 7:25:24 PM EDT · 20 replies · 550+ views
Science Daily | 9-11-2007 | Geological Survey of Norway
Source: Geological Survey of Norway Date: September 11, 2007 Studying Evidence From Ice Age Lakes Science Daily -- During the last Ice Age, the ice dammed enormous lakes in Russia. The drainage system was reversed several times and the rivers flowed southwards. A group of geologists is now investigating what took place when the ice melted and the lakes released huge volumes of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean. 'The ice-dammed lakes in Russia were larger than the largest lakes we know today,' Eiliv Larsen, a geologist at the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU), tells me. He is in charge...
Ancient Europe
Prehistoric Find Located Beneath The Waves (Switzerland)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/11/2007 11:20:43 AM EDT · 21 replies · 734+ views
Swiss Info | 9-10-2007
September 10, 2007 - 12:35 PMPrehistoric find located beneath the waves Archaeologists have discovered traces of Switzerland's oldest known building, but it will never draw tourists: it lies underwater in the middle of a lake. Since it was made of wood scientists used dendrochronology -- the technique of dating by tree rings -- to give a precise figure of 3863 BC. The find in Lake Biel, northwest of the Swiss capital, Bern, was described as 'sensational' by Albert Hafner, who is in charge of underwater archaeology in the region. Divers working for the cantonal archaeological service came upon the site...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Barbarians Get Sophisticated (Nebra "Sky Disk")
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 11/16/2003 2:25:46 PM EST · 26 replies · 2,325+ views
US News | 11-16-2003 | Andrew Curry
Barbarians get sophisticated By Andrew Curry BERLIN--For something so small, the "sky disk" has made quite an impact here. Not even a foot across, the 5-pound bronze disk is embossed in gold leaf with intricate images of the sun, moon, and 32 stars. In the plate's center is a representation of the star cluster Pleiades, which appears in the sky around the autumnal equinox and signaled the arrival of harvest season. What's most amazing is its age. More than 3,500 years old, the sky disk may well be the most important Bronze Age find in decades. Treasure hunters found it...
Ancient Autopsies
Bog Mummies Yield Secrets
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/10/2007 1:27:42 PM EDT · 29 replies · 912+ views
Science Daily | 9-10-2007 | North Dakota State University
Source: North Dakota State University Date: September 10, 2007 Bog Mummies Yield Secrets Science Daily -- Human remains yield secrets. Researchers, including Dr. Heather Gill-Robinson, assistant professor of anthropology at North Dakota State University, are now probing the secrets of 'bog mummies' some dating back 2000 years, preserved from the Iron Age with amazing detail in peat bogs of Europe. Dr. Heather Gill-Robinson of North Dakota State University, Fargo, studies several peat bog mummies in her research, including Damendorf man, discovered near Damendorf, Germany in 1900. Using CT scanning and other technology, Dr. Gill-Robinson has identified five lower vertebrae, a...
The Vikings
Viking queen exhumed to solve mystery
Posted by NormsRevenge
On News/Activism 09/10/2007 1:23:45 PM EDT · 21 replies · 1,043+ views
Reuters on Yahoo | 9/10/07 | Alister Doyle
SLAGEN, Norway (Reuters) - Archaeologists exhumed the body of a Viking queen on Monday, hoping to solve a riddle about whether a woman buried with her 1,200 years ago was a servant killed to be a companion into the afterlife. As a less gruesome alternative, the two women in the grass-covered Oseberg mound in south Norway might be a royal mother and daughter who died of the same disease and were buried together in 834. "We will do DNA tests to try to find out. I don't know of any Viking skeletons that have been analyzed as we plan to...
Navigation
Builder Found Vikings Washed Up At Pub
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/09/2007 6:20:35 PM EDT · 34 replies · 1,565+ views
Timesonline | 9-10-2007 | Jack Malvern
September 10, 2007 Builder found Vikings washed up at pubJack Malvern Archaeologists believe they have found the only intact Viking boat in Britain beneath the patio of a Merseyside pub. The 10th-century vessel was discovered in the 1930s by builders excavating the basement of the Railway Inn on the Wirral peninsula, but they covered it up because they feared an archaeological dig would disrupt their work. The boat would have been forgotten had one of the builders not reported his discovery to his son, who passed the information on to academics at Nottingham University. Stephen Harding, of the university's archaeology...
Rome and Italy
Archaeologists Find Ancient Tunnel Used By Jews To Escape Roman Conquest Of Jerusalem
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/09/2007 6:30:54 PM EDT · 42 replies · 1,246+ views
IHT | 9-9-2007 | AP
Archeologists find ancient tunnel used by Jews to escape Roman conquest of Jerusalem The Associated PressPublished: September 9, 2007 JERUSALEM: Israeli archeologists on Sunday said they've stumbled upon the site of one of the great dramatic scenes of the Roman sacking of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago: the subterranean drainage channel Jews used to escape from the city's Roman conquerors. The ancient tunnel was dug beneath what would become the main road of Jerusalem in the days of the second biblical Temple, which the Romans destroyed in the year 70, the dig's directors, archaeology Professor Ronny Reich of the University of...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Trashing Jewish Holy Sites--The shameful Palestinian treatment of the Temple Mount.
Posted by SJackson
On News/Activism 09/14/2007 1:51:36 PM EDT · 7 replies · 198+ views
Frontpagemagazine | 9-14-07 | Steve Feldman
Every time someone daubs a swastika or anti-Semitic epithet on a synagogue in any American city, there is a quick, firm and loud condemnation from Jewish leaders, 'watchdog' agencies, even leaders of other faiths and usually government officials. Yet remarkably, as the holiest site in all of Judaism and its rich antiquities are deliberately and methodically desecrated and even obliterated, there is barely a peep, though mostly no outcry at all. How can this be? For those who may be unaware, the Temple Mount is the site in Jerusalem of both the First Temple and the Second Temple -- which...
OLMERT GOVERNMENT MUST STOP DESTRUCTION OF JEWISH ANTIQUITIES
Posted by SJackson
On News/Activism 09/09/2007 10:26:32 AM EDT · 3 replies · 98+ views
IMRA | 9-9-07 | Morton A. Klein
Zionist Organization of America Jacob & Libby Goodman ZOA House, 4 East 34th Street, New York, N.Y. 10016 (212) 481-1500 Fax: (212) 481-1515 email@zoa.org www.zoa.org September 7, 2007 Contact Morton A. Klein at: (212) 481-1500 Attn: NEWS EDITOR ZOA writes to Olmert ZOA: OLMERT GOVERNMENT MUST STOP DESTRUCTION OF JEWISH ANTIQUITIES ON JERUSALEM'S TEMPLE MOUNT BY MUSLIM AUTHORITIES New York -- The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has written to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert urging him to immediately take action to stop the wanton destruction of priceless Jewish antiquities on Jerusalem's Temple Mount by the Waqf, the Muslim religious...
Silence in the Face of Continued Temple Mount Destruction
Posted by SmithL
On News/Activism 09/07/2007 3:52:28 PM EDT · 6 replies · 382+ views
Arutz Sheva - IsraelNationalNews | 9/7/7 | Hillel Fendel
As an Arab bulldozer continues to dig away at the current Temple Mount floor, evidence is mounting that actual walls from the Second Temple are being destroyed. The world is silent, while Prime Minister†Olmert continues talks with the Palestinian Authority regarding future sovereignty over the holy area.The actual digging, under the auspices of the Moslem Waqf [religious trust to which Israel has assigned responsibility for the Temple Mount - ed.], has been ongoing for several weeks.†Only over the past 8-10 days, however, has attention been paid to the dangers of the barely supervised works.†The Waqf claims that the...
Fracas Erupts Over Book on Mideast by a Barnard Professor Seeking Tenure
Posted by Cincinna
On News/Activism 09/12/2007 4:01:09 AM EDT · 27 replies · 761+ views
The New York Times | September 10, 2007 | KAREN W. ARENSON
A tenure bid by an assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard College who has critically examined the use of archaeology in Israel has put Columbia University once again at the center of a struggle over scholarship on the Middle East. The professor, Nadia Abu El-Haj, who is of Palestinian descent, has been at Barnard since 2002 and has won many awards and grants, including a Fulbright scholarship and fellowships at Harvard and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Barnard has already approved her for tenure, officials said, and forwarded its recommendation to Columbia University, its affiliate, which has...
BAR: Finds or Fakes?
Analysis of Photographs, The Ivory Pomegranate Inscription
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/11/2007 10:46:24 AM EDT · 13 replies · 224+ views
Biblical Archaeology Review | May 2007 | Hershel Shanks
The microscopic image was projected onto a screen as all watched in darkness. It appeared that Lemaire was right. The letter extended into the break. Demsky and Ahituv admitted that the committee report was "mistaken" in concluding that the letter stopped artificially short of the break... But, alas, this letter is adjacent to one of the modern breaks, not the ancient break. Had the letter stopped short of the break, as originally argued by Ahituv, Demsky and Goren, this would have been clear evidence of a forgery. But because the applicable break was a modern break, the fact that the...
NYT: Israel Indicts 4 in 'Brother of Jesus' Hoax and Other Forgeries
Posted by OESY
On News/Activism 12/30/2004 1:01:34 PM EST · 24 replies · 807+ views
New York Times | December 30, 2004 | GREG MYRE
JERUSALEM, Dec. 29 - The Israeli police filed criminal indictments on Wednesday against four antiquities collectors, accusing them of forging biblical artifacts, many so skillfully that they fooled experts. Some were even celebrated briefly as being among the most significant Christian and Jewish relics ever unearthed. The police and the Israel Antiquities Authority said their investigation had focused on several major forgeries, including a limestone burial box, or ossuary, bearing an inscription that suggested that it held the remains of Jesus' brother James. The Antiquities Authority declared the ossuary a forgery last year. The authorities also described as counterfeit a...
Biblical forgery case in court...
Posted by crushelits
On News/Activism 12/29/2004 11:11:39 PM EST · 55 replies · 1,021+ views
msnbc.msn.com | Dec. 29, 2004 | AP
International News This undated photo released by the Israel Museum on Dec. 24 shows a forged†ivory pomegranate†that had been thought to be the only surviving relic from Solomon's Temple. Israel accuses 4 of forging trove of biblical artifacts Sophisticated fakes were hailed as important archeological discoveries. JERUSALEM - Israeli police indicted four antique dealers and collectors Wednesday for allegedly running a sophisticated forgery ring that created a trove of fake biblical artifacts, including some hailed as among the most important archaeological objects ever uncovered in the region.The forged items include an ivory pomegranate touted by scholars as the only relic...
Only Existing First Temple Relic May Be Forged
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 03/26/2004 10:48:44 PM EST · 14 replies · 244+ views
Haaretz Daily | 3-26-2004 | Amiram Barkat
Last Update: 26/03/2004 08:08 Only existing First Temple relic may be forged By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent Investigators for the Israel Antiquities Authority have been informed that a precious Ivory Pomegranate, on display at the Israel Museum since 1988, is a forgery. On the basis of an inscription it had been dated from the period of the First Temple, 10th century BCE. However, it is information on the origin of the inscription that has raised doubts about the authenticity of the item. The Antiquities Authority refused to reveal the origins and nature of the information it holds. The inscription, completed...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
In Lebanon, DNA may yet heal rifts
Posted by Pharmboy
On News/Activism 09/09/2007 11:12:40 PM EDT · 13 replies · 439+ views
Reuters via Yahoo | 9-9-07 | Anon
Lebanese geneticist Pierre Zalloua takes a saliva sample form a Lebanese man to test his DNA in a university laboratory near Byblos ancient city in north Lebanon, in this August 17, 2007 file photo. Zalloua following the genetic footprint of the ancient Phoenicians says he has traced their modern-day descendants, but stumbled into an old controversy about identity in his country. (Jamal Saidi/Files/Reuters) A Lebanese scientist following the genetic footprint of the ancient Phoenicians says he has traced their modern-day descendants, but stumbled into an old controversy about identity in his country. Geneticist Pierre Zalloua has charted the spread...
Asia
700-Year-Old Tree Coffin Discovered In Quang Tri
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/09/2007 6:25:29 PM EDT · 61 replies · 1,077+ views
Vietnam Net Bridge | 9-4-2007
700-year-old tree coffin discovered in Quang Tri 17:43' 04/09/2007 (GMT+7) VietNamNet Bridge -- The Quang Tri Museum has recently received an ancient coffin made from a tree trunk, according to the museum's director, Mai Truong Manh. The coffin was discovered on August 28 in Trung Chi village, Dong Luong ward, Dong Ha commune at 1.2 m underground when local residents were digging for the construction of an electricity post. The coffin is 2.25 m in length, 0.49 m in width and 0.28 m in height with the body and lid skillfully done. According to experts, burying the dead in tree...
Faith and Philosophy
1,300-Year-Old SKorean Buddha Unearthed Intact
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/12/2007 3:28:26 PM EDT · 11 replies · 437+ views
Yahoo.com | 9-11-2007
1,300-year-old SKorean Buddha unearthed intact Tue Sep 11, 2:05 AM ET SEOUL (AFP) - A 70-ton granite statue of Buddha, which toppled over face-down 1,300 years ago in South Korea, has been unearthed with its features intact. The 5.6-metre (18-foot) sculpture was in May found buried in the southeastern city of Gyeongju and has been partially unearthed after months of work, news reports said Tuesday. The nose missed a rock by only five centimetres when the statue toppled, the English-language JoongAng Daily quoted specialists as saying. "It was a miracle that the Buddha's face was saved by only five centimetres,"...
Sports Medicine
Ancient Humans Walked But 'Struggled To Run'
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/11/2007 10:51:26 AM EDT · 30 replies · 587+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 9-11-2007 | Roger Highfield and Nic Fleming
Ancient humans walked but 'struggled to run' By Roger Highfield and Nic Fleming Last Updated: 12:01pm BST 11/09/2007 Ancient humans almost certainly walked upright on two legs millions of years ago but may have struggled to run at even half the speed of modern man, according to computer simulations. A University of Manchester study - presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science Festival of Science in York- proposes that if early humans lacked an Achilles tendon, as modern chimps and gorillas do, then their ability to run would have been severely compromised. Our early ancestors preferred to...
Diet, Food, Recipes
Study Finds Evidence of Genetic Response to Diet
Posted by neverdem
On News/Activism 09/09/2007 10:48:53 PM EDT · 10 replies · 339+ views
NY Times | September 10, 2007 | NICHOLAS WADE
Could people one day evolve to eat rich food while remaining perfectly slim and svelte? This may not be so wild a fantasy. It is becoming clear that the human genome does respond to changes in diet, even though it takes many generations to do so. Researchers studying the enzyme that converts starch to simple sugars like glucose have found that people living in countries with a high-starch diet produce considerably more of the enzyme than people who eat a low-starch diet. The reason is an evolutionary one. People in high-starch countries have many extra copies of the amylase gene...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Ancient whale fall from California's Ano Nuevo Island one of youngest, most complete known
Posted by decimon
On News/Activism 09/13/2007 5:23:17 PM EDT · 10 replies · 561+ views
EurekAlert | 13-Sep-2007 | Robert Sanders
11 million to 15 million-year-old fossil whale puts limit on origin of oily, buoyant bones in whalesBerkeley -- A fossilized whale skeleton excavated 20 years ago amid the stench and noise of a seabird and elephant seal rookery on California's Ano Nuevo Island turns out to be the youngest example on the Pacific coast of a fossil whale fall and the first in California, according to University of California, Berkeley, paleontologists. Whale falls, first recognized in the 1980s, are whale carcasses that fall to the deep-ocean floor where, like an oasis in the desert, they attract a specialized group of...
Sunken Civilizations
Marine Team Finds Surprising Evidence Supporting A Great Biblical Flood
Posted by Ben Mugged
On News/Activism 09/10/2007 11:00:41 AM EDT · 25 replies · 1,284+ views
Science Daily | September 10, 2007 | Unattributed
Did the great flood of Noah's generation really occur thousands of years ago? Was the Roman city of Caesarea destroyed by an ancient tsunami? Will pollution levels in our deep seas remain forever a mystery? ~snip~ "When I was looking for a partner, I needed to find a team of marine scientists who were leaders in their fields," says Weil, a Swedish environmental philanthropist who helped conceive and fund the idea of giving a free, floating marine research lab to any scientist who needed it. "I didn't want us to be just another Greenpeace group of environmental activists. My dream...
Stone Age Redux
Sneak-Peek of the New 10,000 B.C. Movie Trailer
Posted by Red Badger
On News/Activism 09/10/2007 8:19:46 AM EDT · 18 replies · 1,117+ views
www.movieweb.com | 09/10/2007 | Staff
Coming in MARCH 2008, a movies about pre-historic times........
Longer Perspectives
Not quite real, but not junk either
Posted by Lorianne
On General/Chat 09/11/2007 8:11:04 PM EDT · 3 replies · 92+ views
Baltimore Sun | September 9, 2007 | Laura Vozzella
They're knock-offs. But knock-offs of priceless works of art, and the fickle world of fine art can't seem to decide where they belong. Main hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Or leaky warehouse in Queens? Hundreds of plaster replicas of Greek statues and Renaissance sculptures - made in the 1800s so American art students could see the great works without schlepping to Europe - have lived in climate-controlled glory and U-Haul hell as they've fallen in and out of fashion. Six of the pieces moved yet again, this time to a Baltimore art studio, where they're getting the type...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Medieval Women 'Had Girl Power'
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/11/2007 11:28:04 AM EDT · 42 replies · 1,118+ views
BBC | 9-11-2007
Medieval women 'had girl power' Books, songs and legal documents were studied A new study by an academic says that "girl power" was alive and kicking around 600 years ago. Dr Sue Niebrzydowski at Bangor university said medieval women enjoyed a golden era with a greater life expectancy than men. "We found women running priories, commissioning books, taking early package tours to visit the Holy Land," she said. She added women were also defending their property and property rights. Dr Niebrzydowski's research involving middle aged women in the middle ages will be discussed at a conference at the university on...
Bardic Transom
Coalition aims to expose Shakespeare
Posted by nickcarraway
On General/Chat 09/09/2007 12:31:03 AM EDT · 37 replies · 308+ views
Yahoo | Sat Sep 8 | D'ARCY DORAN
LONDON - The bard, or not the bard, that is the question. Some of Britain's most distinguished Shakespearean actors have reopened the debate over whether William Shakespeare, a 16th century commoner raised in an illiterate household in Stratford-upon-Avon, wrote the plays that bear his name. Acclaimed actor Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, the former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London, unveiled a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" on the authorship of Shakespeare's work Saturday, following the final matinee of "I am Shakespeare," a play investigating the bard's identity, in Chichester, southern England. A small academic industry has developed around...
Oh So Mysterioso
Michelangelo Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel Contain Divinely-Encoded Images of the Shroud of Turin
Posted by Between the Lines
On Religion 09/13/2007 12:14:42 PM EDT · 32 replies · 443+ views
Christian News Wire | Sept. 13, 2007
RALEIGH, Nc., Sept. 13 - A new discovery reveals a "mystery" never before seen. Investigative researcher Philip E. Dayvault, of Raleigh, NC, found in 2003 that the famed Sistine Chapel Ceiling fresco, painted by Michelangelo in 1512 and located at the Vatican in Rome, Italy, is also painted in allegory. Although the central panels of the Ceiling, or "historicals", are illustrated for literal interpretation, they also contain unique symbolic expression. Once decoded, Dayvault discovered that this expression graphically depicts the Shroud of Turin, in full and complete order. The Shroud of Turin is the traditional burial cloth of Jesus Christ....
Early America
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: The Battle of Lake Erie, Sept. 10, 1813
Posted by 1rudeboy
On General/Chat 09/10/2007 11:55:48 AM EDT · 10 replies · 136+ views
assorted | assorted
We have met the enemy and they are ours: Two Ships, two Brigs, one Schooner & one Sloop. Yours, with great respect and esteemO.H. Perry. With these words, 28 year old Oliver Hazard Perry gave notice that the British would never again be a naval power on the Great Lakes, and would be forced to resupply Fort Detroit (earlier lost by the U.S.--in fact, you could say that the British were kicking our butts up and down the continent) by land, through what now is Ontario. Apart from his decisive, and strategic, victory Perry is remembered for transferring his...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Joust married: Bride weds her knight in shining armour at medieval ceremony
Posted by Lorianne
On General/Chat 09/11/2007 11:58:14 PM EDT · 52 replies · 577+ views
Daily Mail | 11th September 2007 | Colin Fernandez
There hasn't been a wedding like it for quite some time. About seven centuries, in fact. The bride arrived riding side saddle on a white mare in a dress made from 270 feet of silk. And waiting for her was her knight in shining armour - £10,000 of hand-forged steel trimmed with brass and velvet. The scene was the wedding of Sian Jenkins and Rupert Hammerton - Fraser, who are so fascinated by the Middle Ages that they recreated a medieval ceremony down to the minutest detail - the bride even promised to be "bonny and buxom in bed", a...
And the Title of Indiana Jones 4 Is....
Posted by pcottraux
On General/Chat 09/10/2007 9:46:50 PM EDT · 54 replies · 459+ views
film.com | Sept. 10
Hot off the presses, the title for the new Indiana Jones 4 film starring Shia LaBeouf and Harrison Ford. Ready for it? Drum roll please... The title is: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Here at film.com let us be the first to call this "IJatKotCS" in the grand tradition of LOTR:FotR and POTC: At World's End. This title also gives me hope that there will be skulls everywhere on set, preferably crystal ones. Or will it just be one giant skull of the crystal variety? We'll keep you in the loop either way.
end of digest #165 20070915
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· Saturday, September 15, 2007 · 32 topics · 1896590 to 1893372 · still 652 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 165th issue of the Gods, Graves, Glyphs ping list Digest. There is less variety than usual, with more related groups of subjects, but there are more topics than usual. |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #166
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Prehistory and Origins
Evolutionary Theory Challenged By Fossils
Posted by SirLinksalot
On News/Activism 09/18/2007 11:47:54 AM EDT · 89 replies
CBS NEWS | 08/09/2007
Surprising research based on two African fossils suggests our family tree is more like a wayward bush with stubby branches, challenging what had been common thinking on how early humans evolved. The discovery by Meave Leakey, a member of a famous family of paleontologists, shows that two species of early human ancestors lived at the same time in Kenya. That pokes holes in the chief theory of man's early evolution -- that one of those species evolved from the other. And it further discredits that iconic illustration of human evolution that begins with a knuckle-dragging ape and ends with a...
Human ancestor had mix of primitive, modern traits
Posted by Dysart
On News/Activism 09/19/2007 6:45:17 PM EDT · 40 replies
Reuters-Yahoo! | 9-19-07 | Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The earliest-known human ancestors to migrate out of Africa possessed a surprising mix of human-like and primitive features, according to scientists who studied remains dug up at a fossil-rich site in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.Writing on Wednesday in the journal Nature, the scientists described remains of three adults and one adolescent dating from about 1.77 million years ago, excavated at Dmanisi, about 55 miles southwest of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.The remains shed light on a little-understood but critical period in human evolution -- the transition from the more ape-like creatures known as australopithecines to the...
Fossils Reveal Clues on Human Ancestor (transitional fossil alert)
Posted by Alter Kaker
On News/Activism 09/20/2007 10:51:35 AM EDT · 75 replies
New York Times | 20 September 2007 | John Noble Wilford
The discovery of four fossil skeletons of early human ancestors in Georgia, the former Soviet republic, has given scientists a revealing glimpse of a species in transition, primitive in its skull and upper body but with more advanced spines and lower limbs for greater mobility. The findings, being reported today in the journal Nature, are considered a significant step toward understanding who were some of the first ancestors to migrate out of Africa some 1.8 million years ago. They may also yield insights into the first members of the human genus, Homo.Until now, scientists had found only the skulls of...
Hobbits
Scientists: Hobbit Wasn't a Modern Human
Posted by Sub-Driver
On General/Chat 09/20/2007 4:34:19 PM EDT · 9 replies
breitbart.com
Scientists: Hobbit Wasn't a Modern Human Sep 20 04:18 PM US/Eastern By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID AP Science Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Scientists, wringing their hands over the identity of the famed "hobbit" fossil, have found a new clue in the wrist. Since the discovery of the bones in Indonesia in 2003, researchers have wrangled over whether the find was an ancient human ancestor or simply a modern human suffering from a genetic disorder. Now, a study of the bones in the creature's left wrist lends weight to the human ancestor theory, according to a report in Friday's issue of the...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Peruvian Archaeologists Find 40 1,200-Year-Old Mummies (Kuelap)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/20/2007 2:48:58 PM EDT · 7 replies
China View | 9-19-2007 | Xinhua
Peruvian archaeologists find 40 1,200-year-old mummies www.chinaview.cn 2007-09-20 10:55:40 LIMA, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- Archaeologists in Peru have found 40 mummies dating from the 1,200-year-old Chachapoyas culture in the Amazon fortress of Kuelap, project leader Alfredo Narvaez told local media on Wednesday. He said the mummies were discovered alongside Inca pottery, and that they showed signs of being affected by a fire in the archaeological complex, some 1,409 km northeast to the nation's capital. He said the bodies had been buried under a platform of 24 meters in diameter in the El Tintero structure during a dig of the Kuelap...
Japan
Archaeologists Granted Access To Japan's Sacred Tombs
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/20/2007 2:59:40 PM EDT · 7 replies
The Guardian (UK) | 9-20-2007 | Justin McCurry
Archaeologists granted access to Japan's sacred tombs The divine origins of Japan's imperial family come under scrutiny as it allows limited access to two burial sites. Justin McCurry in Tokyo Thursday September 20, 2007 Guardian Unlimited (UK) Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko attend the opening ceremony of the World Athletics Championships in Osaka last month. Photograph: Michael Steele/Getty Images Japan's imperial household agency is to open the doors to some of the country's mysterious imperial tombs early next year after decades of pressure from archaeologists, in a move expected to anger ultra-conservatives. Experts have long been denied access to the...
India
Until Proven, A Myth: Historians
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/15/2007 4:38:27 PM EDT · 14 replies · 492+ views
The Telegraph (India) | 9-12-2007 | CHARU SUDAN KASTURI & SUDESHNA BANERJEE
Until proven, a myth: Historians CHARU SUDAN KASTURI & SUDESHNA BANERJEE New Delhi/Calcutta, Sept. 12: Ram cannot be considered a historical figure despite references in ancient literature because crucial material evidence to authenticate his existence has not been found, historians have said. "A textual reference necessarily needs to be corroborated by inscriptions engraved in stone or other long-lasting material or by archaeological evidence," said Nayanjot Lahiri, professor of ancient history at Delhi University. Until such evidence is found, a character or event in texts or literature is considered mythological, historians said. Historians have traced the original texts of the Mahabharata...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Palace of Cyrus' Ancestor to Host Archeologists
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/20/2007 2:51:21 PM EDT · 4 replies
Cultural Heritage News Agency | September 19, 2007 | Soudabeh Sadigh
While the aerial pictures took from the Achaemenid site of Bardak Siah palace in Boushehr in 1978 revealed the existence of 5 historic hills in the area which were most probably denoted to palace of ancestor of Cyrus the Great, today only one fourth of one of these hills has been remained... Amongst the most prominent archeological achievements in Bardak Siah Palace is discovery of a large number of golden curly coins, more than 3 kilograms in weight, which were unearthed close to one of the columns of this Achaemenid palace... due to some problems they have not been examined...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Bronze Age building uncovered near Gaza
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/19/2007 2:00:58 PM EDT · 8 replies
Jerusalem Post | September 17, 2007 | Etgar Lefkovits
A building from the Late Bronze Age apparently constructed for Egyptian authorities before the Israelite settlement in the Land of Israel has been uncovered in an excavation on the edge of the Negev desert near the Gaza Strip, Ben-Gurion University announced Monday. The month-long summer dig on the eastern section of the Besor Stream, about 12 kilometers east of Gaza, revealed the 3,000-year-old site buried underneath a 7th century Philistine rural village from the Second Iron Age, said Ben-Gurion University archeologist Dr. Gunnar Lehmann... About 10-15 such buildings are known to exist off the Egyptian border, but most have been...
Faith and Philosophy
A thundering silence on Temple Mount's depredation
Posted by Convert from ECUSA
On News/Activism 09/17/2007 7:22:09 AM EDT · 21 replies · 132+ views
Jewish World Review | September 10, 2007 | Hershel Shanks
A thundering silence on Temple Mount's depredation By Hershel Shanks The "Jewish State" is allowing Judaism's holiest site to have its priceless artifacts destroyed and nobody seems to care No one really cares. But that puts me in an elite group: It includes two of Israel's most prominent Jerusalem archaeologists (Gaby Barkay and Eilat Mazar) -- and me. Meanwhile, the Muslim Waqf goes on tearing up Jerusalem's Temple Mount, where once the Jewish Temple stood. The week before last, they hit an ancient wall that might be the foundation of a wall from the Second Temple complex built by Herod...
Rome and Italy
Colosseum is menaced by vandals again
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/17/2007 1:31:11 PM EDT · 14 replies · 6+ views
Times Online | September 15, 2007 | Richard Owen
Visitors to the 1st-century amphitheatre are taking away "chunks of stone" as souvenirs despite the presence of guards and surveillance cameras, according to Angelo Bottini, the Superintendent of Archaeology for Rome. He said that most of the five million tourists who visited the Colosseum annually behaved responsibly. But others covered it in graffiti, left their rubbish behind and picked up bits of Ancient Roman wall or paving... He said he had started an inquiry and was asking police to reinforce patrols and closed-circuit television surveillance at the Colosseum and the adjoining Roman Forum, where tourists also pocketed souvenirs. At night,...
Ancient Europe
Bronze age settlement found at US Embassy site [ Malta ]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/17/2007 11:44:24 AM EDT · 4 replies
Times of Malta | Saturday, September 15, 2007 | Mark Micallef
A series of tombs and silos, probably dating back to the Bronze Age and early Roman period, have been discovered on the site set to become the new US Embassy, in Ta' Qali... During an onsite visit yesterday, Cultural Superintendent Nathaniel Cutajar said the findings had been given a C grade, which in layman's terms means they could now be buried again, but not destroyed. The US Embassy is not yet sure what it will do, yet it is possible the finds will remain exposed and incorporated in the landscaping since the embassy will only take up a small portion...
The Vikings
Rain Uncovers Viking Treasure Trove
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/15/2007 12:57:04 PM EDT · 51 replies · 1,691+ views
The Local | 9-14-2007
Rain uncovers Viking treasure trove Published: 14th September 2007 08:30 CET A bout of torrential rain left a surprising legacy in the garden of one Swede: a Viking treasure trove. Two coins were uncovered by the rain on the lawn of farmer Tage Pettersson, on the island of Gotland, in early August. He called in Gotland's archaeologists, who last week found a further 52 coins on the site. Most of the coins are German, English and Arabic currency from the late 900s and early 1000s. But archaeologists are most excited about the presence of six very rare Swedish coins, from...
Ancient Autopsies
Ancient Scots Mummified Their Dead
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/15/2007 12:49:52 PM EDT · 19 replies · 524+ views
Discovery | 9-14-2007 | Jennifer Viegas
Ancient Scots Mummified Their Dead Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Sept. 14, 2007 -- The ancient Egyptians were not the only ones to mummify their dead, according to a study in this month's Antiquity Journal that claims prehistoric Scottish people created mummies too. The researchers do not think the Egyptians influenced the Scots, but that mummification arose independently in the two regions. Initial evidence for Scottish mummies was announced in 2005, when archaeologists unearthed three preserved bodies -- an adult female, an adult male and an infant -- buried underneath two Bronze Age roundhouses in South Uist, Hebrides, at a site...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Dinosaur creche was a no-frills business [123 myr old PsitTACOsaurus fossils in lava floe]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/21/2007 11:48:54 PM EDT · 7 replies
The Times | September 20, 2007 | Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter
A dinosaur creche has been found entombed in the volcanic debris that engulfed it on a hillside 123 million years ago. Six young Psittacosaurus, all less than three years old, died side by side. It is the earliest known dinosaur nursery... Paul Barrett, of the Natural History Museum in London, one of the researchers, said that the fossilised juveniles appeared to have formed a creche but it was impossible to be sure if they were part of a larger herd or if they grouped together for protection. "This is the first time we've found a group of these dinosaurs together....
Biology and Cryptobiology
Mammoth graveyard may someday be open to public
Posted by Dysart
On News/Activism 09/20/2007 9:21:38 AM EDT · 49 replies
Star-Telegram | 9-20-07 | R.A. DYER
WACO -- Not far from modest suburban homes in the middle of some thick Texas woods lies a secret boneyard.Surrounded by a tall chain-link fence and covered by what looks like a red-and-white circus tent, the site contains the remains of towering monsters. Remains of at least 25 mammoths, signs of a big saber-toothed cat and a long extinct camel have been found at the site.This is the Waco Mammoth Site, a collection of prehistoric fossils embedded in the dirt not far from the Bosque River. The site could be a potent educational resource if it were not off-limits to...
Climate
Mammoth dung, prehistoric goo may speed warming
Posted by camerakid400
On News/Activism 09/16/2007 11:08:52 PM EDT · 36 replies · 59+ views
Reuters | Dmitry Solovyov
DUVANNY YAR, Russia (Reuters) - Sergei Zimov bends down, picks up a handful of treacly mud and holds it up to his nose. It smells like a cow pat, but he knows better. "It smells like mammoth dung," he says. This is more than just another symptom of global warming. For millennia, layers of animal waste and other organic matter left behind by the creatures that used to roam the Arctic tundra have been sealed inside the frozen permafrost. Now climate change is thawing the permafrost and lifting this prehistoric ooze from suspended animation. But Zimov, a scientist who for...
Longer Perspectives
Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins
Posted by shrinkermd
On News/Activism 09/18/2007 7:05:30 AM EDT · 18 replies
New York Times | 18 September 2007 | John Noble Wilford
In the study of human origins, paleoanthropology stares in frustration back to a dark age from three million to less than two million years ago. The missing mass in this case is the unfound fossils to document just when and under what circumstances our own genus Homo emerged. The origin of Homo is one of the most intriguing and intractable mysteries in human evolution. New findings only remind scientists that answers to so many of their questions about early Homo probably lie buried in the million-year dark age. It is known that primitive hominids -- human ancestors and their close...
Epigraphy and Language
Regions of dying languages named
Posted by Santa Fe_Conservative
On News/Activism 09/18/2007 5:35:30 PM EDT · 98 replies · 145+ views
Associated Press | 9/18/07 | RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
WASHINGTON - When every known speaker of the language Amurdag gets together, there's still no one to talk to. Native Australian Charlie Mangulda is the only person alive known to speak that language, one of thousands around the world on the brink of extinction. From rural Australia to Siberia to Oklahoma, languages that embody the history and traditions of people are dying, researchers said Tuesday. While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them.
Scientists: Many World Languages Are Dying
Posted by james500
On News/Activism 09/18/2007 11:34:19 PM EDT · 77 replies · 939+ views
AP via FOX News | Tuesday, September 18, 2007
When every known speaker of the language Amurdag gets together, there's still no one to talk to. Native Australian Charlie Mungulda is the only person alive known to speak that language, one of thousands around the world on the brink of extinction. From rural Australia to Siberia to Oklahoma, languages that embody the history and traditions of people are dying, researchers said Tuesday. While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them. Five hotspots where languages...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Rare medical, astronomical manuscripts found at Dar al-Kotob
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/17/2007 1:22:48 PM EDT · 11 replies
Egypt State Information Service | Sunday, September 16, 2007 | unattributed
A number of rare and invaluable medical and astronomical manuscripts have been found at the National Library of Egypt (also known as Dar al-Kotob). A senior official at Alexandria Library said Saturday that the ancient documents were just laying there in the forgotten Dar al-Kotob archieves for many years but thanks to his Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT) they were "technically rediscovered". "They are really priceless," he reiterated. The medical papers give prescription of the treatment of some chronic diseases, bone fractures and bruises and lessons in body and eye anatomy, CULTNAT chief Fathi Saleh said....
Gates of Eden
A quick history lesson: America is no Rome - The tired analogy of imperial decline and fall
Posted by neverdem
On News/Activism 09/14/2007 1:53:26 PM EDT · 115 replies · 1,891+ views
The Times (UK) | September 14, 2007 | Gerard Baker
The ethnic origins of General David Petraeus are apparently Dutch, which is a shame because there's something sonorously classical about the family name of the commander of the US forces in Iraq. When you discover that his father was christened Sixtus, the fantasy really takes flight. Somewhere in the recesses of the brain, where memory mingles hazily with imagination, I fancy I can recall toiling through a schoolboy Latin textbook that documented the progress of one Petraeus Sixtus as he triumphantly extended the imperium romanum across some dusty plain in Asia Minor. The fantasy is not wholly inapt, of course....
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
The Case of Classical v. Modern Comes to Federal Court
Posted by Lorianne
On General/Chat 09/18/2007 7:10:33 PM EDT · 10 replies · 7+ views
Washington Post | September 15, 2007 | Roger K. Lewis
What architectural design issues most concern you? Perhaps carbon emissions, universal accessibility or the challenge of preserving at-risk historic properties? Maybe you think less about buildings and architectural design, and more about the shape of your community and the broader public realm. However, you probably rarely worry about which architectural style is appropriate for which kind of building, about whether columns should be Doric, Ionic or Corinthian. Many architects, however, feel passionately about competing design philosophies, and one competition in particular persists: classicism versus modernism. Much of Washington's architecture, typified by use of classical motifs derived from Greek and Roman...
end of digest #166 20070922
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· Saturday, September 22, 2007 · 23 topics · 1900487 to 1897101 · still 652 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 166th issue of the Gods, Graves, Glyphs ping list Digest. A slow week, with a few interesting op-eds thrown in, but a decent selection and variety. |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #167
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Ancient Autopsies
DNA Extracted From Woolly Mammoth Hair
Posted by saganite
On News/Activism 09/28/2007 1:18:39 AM EDT · 51 replies
Science Daily | 27 Sep 07 | staff
Science Daily -- Stephan C. Schuster and Webb Miller of Penn State, working with Thomas Gilbert from Copenhagen and a large international consortium, discovered that hair shafts provide an ideal source of ancient DNA -- a better source than bones and muscle for studying the genome sequences of extinct animals. Their research achievement, described in a paper to be published in the journal Science on Sept. 28, includes the sequencing of entire mitochondrial genomes from 10 individual woolly mammoths. Schuster and Miller, working at Penn State's Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics, and Gilbert, from the Center for Ancient Genetics...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Where Do The Finns Come From?
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/26/2007 1:49:43 PM EDT · 75 replies
Sydaby | Christian Carpelan
WHERE DO FINNS COME FROM? Not long ago, cytogenetic experts stirred up a controversy with their "ground-breaking" findings on the origins of the Finnish and Sami peoples. Cytogenetics is by no means a new tool in bioanthropological research, however. As early as the 1960s and '70s, Finnish researchers made the significant discovery that one quarter of the Finns' genetic stock is Siberian, and three quarters is European in origin. The Samis, however, are of different genetic stock: a mixture of distinctly western, but also eastern elements. If we examine the genetic links between the peoples of Europe, the Samis form...
Prehistory and Origins
Myths Of British Ancestry
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/28/2007 10:42:35 AM EDT · 83 replies
Prospect | 10-2006 | Stephen Oppenheimer
Myths of British ancestry October 2006Stephen Oppenheimer Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands The fact that the British and the Irish both live on islands gives them a misleading sense of security about their unique historical identities. But do we really know who we are, where we come from and what defines the nature of our genetic and cultural heritage? Who are and were the Scots, the Welsh,...
Mediterranean
Ancient Fishermen Lured Fish With Fire
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/26/2007 6:02:02 PM EDT · 33 replies
Discovery | 9-25-2007 | Jennifer Viegas
Ancient Fishermen Lured Fish With Fire Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Sept. 25, 2007 -- Fishermen around areas mentioned in the New Testament worked the night shift, suggests fishing gear found in a 7th century shipwreck off the coast of Dor, Israel, west of Galilee, where Jesus is said to have preached. The standout item among the found gear is a fire basket, the first evidence for "fire fishing" in the ancient eastern Mediterranean. Early images and writings indicate fires were lit in such baskets, which were suspended in giant lantern devices from the end of fishing boats. Light emitted from...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Research Team Says Extraterrestrial Impact To Blame For Ice Age Extinctions (More)
Posted by blam
On General/Chat 09/25/2007 3:58:19 PM EDT · 56 replies
Eureka Alert | Northern Arizona University - Lisa Nelson
Contact: Lisa Nelson Lisa.Nelson@nau.edu 928-523-6123 Northern Arizona University Research team says extraterrestrial impact to blame for Ice Age extinctions A colorized scanning electron microscope image of a glassy carbon sphere that contains evidence of extraterrestrial impact. The sphere measures about .012 inches in width. What caused the extinction of mammoths and the decline of Stone Age people about 13,000 years ago remains hotly debated. Overhunting by Paleoindians, climate change and disease lead the list of probable causes. But an idea once considered a little out there is now hitting closer to home. A team of international researchers, including two Northern...
Cosmic blast may have killed off megafauna Scientists say early humans doomed, too
Posted by baynut
On News/Activism 09/25/2007 9:45:11 PM EDT · 49 replies
Boston Globe | September 27, 2007 | Colin Nickerson
Wooly mammoths, giant sloths, saber-toothed cats, and dozens of other species of megafauna may have become extinct when a disintegrating comet or asteroid exploded over North America with the force of millions of hydrogen bombs, according to research by an international team of scientists. The blast, which the researchers believe occurred 12,900 years ago, may have also doomed a mysterious early human culture, known as Clovis people, while triggering a planetwide cool-down that wiped out the plant species that sustained many outsize Ice Age beasts, according to research published online yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Climate
Ice Age Australians Sheltered In Caves
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/24/2007 1:07:17 PM EDT · 20 replies
ABC Science | 9-24-2007 | Anna Salleh
Ice age Australians sheltered in caves Anna Salleh ABC Science Online Monday, 24 September 2007 Why would Aboriginal Tasmanians flock to one of the coldest parts of the island during an ice age? One researcher says it was to shelter from the wind in caves and steep valleys (Image: Ian Gilligan) Ice age Aboriginal Australians protected themselves from bitterly cold winds by flocking to caves in one of the most inhospitable parts of the continent, says an archaeologist. Ian Gilligan, a postgraduate researcher from the Australian National University, lays out his argument in the current issue of the journal Antiquity....
Australia and the Pacific
Early Polynesians Sailed Thousands Of Miles For Trade
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/27/2007 6:46:25 PM EDT · 47 replies
National Geographic | 9-27-2007 | Dave Hansford
Early Polynesians Sailed Thousands of Miles for Trade Dave Hansford for National Geographic News September 27, 2007 Early Polynesians sailed thousands of miles for exploration and trade, suggests a new study of early stone woodworking tools. The analysis confirms traditional tales of vast ocean voyages and hints that a trading network existed between Hawaii and Tahiti as early as a thousand years ago. The work also bolsters research suggesting that the Polynesians were skillful sailors who rapidly expanded across the Pacific and journeyed as far as South America by the 1400s A.D. Kenneth Collerson and Marshall Weisler of the University...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Historians propose various theories on early migrations
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 09/27/2007 12:39:46 PM EDT · 6 replies
Helena Independent Record | September 23, 2007 | Marga Lincoln
European prehistoric artifacts similar to ones in North America, such as Clovis points, have led some scholars to suggest that European prehistoric people crossed the Atlantic Ocean in boats, said Vrooman. And research in Siberia, where the Bering land bridge supposedly originated, reveals no solid evidence of Clovis points originating there, he said... A site in Brazil yields possible evidence of human habitation 37,000 years ago, long before the land bridge is believed to have existed, said Vrooman... Helena Forest archaeologist Carl Davis said it's also likely that early people walked down the frozen coast from Alaska to Baja thousands...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Snake-Bird Gods Fascinated Both Aztecs And Pharaohs
Posted by blam
On General/Chat 09/25/2007 3:19:09 PM EDT · 38 replies
Reuters | 9-24-2007 | Robin Emmott
Snake-bird gods fascinated both Aztecs and pharaohs Mon 24 Sep 2007, 17:05 GMT By Robin Emmott MONTERREY, Mexico, Sept 24 (Reuters Life!) - Ancient Mexicans and Egyptians who never met and lived centuries and thousands of miles apart both worshiped feathered-serpent deities, built pyramids and developed a 365-day calendar, a new exhibition shows. Billed as the world's largest temporary archeological showcase, Mexican archeologists have brought treasures from ancient Egypt to display alongside the great indigenous civilizations of Mexico for the first time. The exhibition, which boasts a five-tonne, 3,000-year-old sculpture of Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II and stone carvings from Mexican...
Egypt
Update - Latvian Scientifique Mission In The Step Pyramid Of Saqqara (Egypt)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/22/2007 11:14:49 AM EDT · 12 replies
Archaeogate | 9-18-2007 | Bruno Deslandes
Update on the recent works carried out by the Latvian Scientifique Mission in the Step Pyramid of Saqqara (Egypt) Redazione Archaeogate, 18-09-2007 During its last campaign, the Latvian Scientific Mission, which has already worked more than two years in the Step Pyramid of Saqqara (Egypt) in the framework of its joint-venture with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and direct supervision from Dr. Zahi Hawass, has successfully carried out some additional documentation works, very important for the safeguarding and restoration of the oldest stone monument in the world. Resources allocated to this program (15 scientists) represent the largest scientific team...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Ancient wall unearthed in Iran
Posted by freedom44
On News/Activism 09/24/2007 1:01:05 AM EDT · 12 replies
Zeenews | 9/24/07 | Zeenews
Tehran, Sept 24: British and Iranian archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a 200 kilometre-long wall, the second longest wall in Asia after the Great Wall of China, in northern Iran. Experts believe the Gorgan Great Wall in northern Iran's Golestan Province was built at about the same time as the Great Wall of China and was used as a defence system against the invasions of the Ephthalites, a nomadic people who once lived in Central Asia. Archaeologists also discovered a 50-kilometre long stretch of a canal near the wall that was used to transfer water from the Gorganrud River...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Quarry Used For Jewish Temple Unearthed In Israel
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/24/2007 1:23:22 PM EDT · 26 replies
Yahoo News | 9-23-2007 | Rebecca Harrison
Quarry used for Jewish temple unearthed in Israel By Rebecca Harrison Sun Sep 23, 11:22 AM ETReuters Photo: Ultra-orthodox Jewish boys walk through a quarry in Jerusalem September 23, 2007. Israeli archaeologists have... JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Archaeologists have found an ancient quarry where King Herod's workers may have chiselled the giant stones used to rebuild the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago. The Israel Antiquities Authority said on Sunday experts believe stones as long as 8 meters (24 feet) were extracted from the quarry and then dragged by oxen to building sites in Jerusalem for major projects...
Japan
Israelites Came To Ancient Japan
Posted by pseudogratix
On Religion 03/27/2003 9:01:51 AM EST · 17 replies · 8,124+ views
5.ocn.ne.jp | Arimasa Kubo
Israelites Came To Ancient Japan Many of the traditional ceremonies in Japan seem to indicate that the Lost Tribes of Israel came to ancient Japan.Arimasa Kubo Ark of the covenant of Israel (left) and "Omikoshi" ark of Japan (right) Dear friends in the world, I am a Japanese Christian writer living in Japan. As I study the Bible, I began to realize that many traditional customs and ceremonies in Japan are very similar to the ones of ancient Israel. I considered that perhaps these rituals came from the religion and customs of the Jews and the Ten Lost Tribes of...
Agriculture
Stone Age Rice Farms Found In China
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/28/2007 10:04:14 AM EDT · 9 replies
Statesman | 9-27-2007
Stone Age rice farms found in ChinaScientists find evidence of mass rice cultivation 7,700 years ago. Thursday, September 27, 2007 Stone Age Chinese began cultivating rice more than 7,700 years ago by burning trees in coastal marshes and building dams to hold back seawater, converting the marshes to rice paddies that would support growth of the high-yield cereal grain, researchers plan to report today. New analysis of sediments from the site of Kuahuqiao at the mouth of the Yangtze River near Hangzhou provides the earliest evidence in China of such large-scale environmental manipulation, experts said. "It shows people were changing...
British Isles
Archaeologists Have Uncovered A Royal Palace Used By King Henry II
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/23/2007 4:38:57 PM EDT · 41 replies
Newbury Today | 9-23-2007
Archaeologists have uncovered a royal palace used by King Henry II AN ANCIENT royal palace near Kingsclere unearthed during recent excavations will be open to the public over the weekend (September 22-23). The Royal Palace of Fremantle has lain hidden under the Hampshire Downs at Tidgrove Warren Farm, in the parish of Hannington, for nearly 900 years. Over the last three years the site has been excavated by staff and students from the University of Southampton in association with the Kingsclere Heritage Association local volunteers. Explorations have revealed a medieval enclosed settlement surrounded by a massive ditch - larger than...
Anatasia Screamed In Vain
Alexei and Maria Romanov: I Possibly Know Where Bones Are in Russia
Posted by GermanBusiness
On News/Activism 12/25/2005 5:58:41 PM EST · 74 replies · 4,830+ views
I've been dating a woman in St. Petersburg, Russia for over a year whose grandfather was apparently given a lethal injection by the communists when he went in for a routine physical in the late 1940s. His name: Fyedor Korablyev, born 16 February 1907 Even before the apparent murder, the family has been afraid to talk about any relation to the Romanov Family but an older family member has just told me that Alexei Romanov died as a monk in Siberia in 1960. The world is aware that Alexei's bones were never found. He was not executed with this family...
Remains may be children of last czar
Posted by darkangel82
On News/Activism 09/28/2007 8:47:14 PM EDT · 17 replies
Yahoo | 9/28 | Mike Eckel
MOSCOW - There is a "high degree of probability" that bone fragments found recently near the Russian city of Yekaterinburg are those of a daughter and son of the last czar, forensics experts said Friday. If confirmed, the find would fill in a missing chapter in the story of the doomed Romanovs, who were killed after the violent 1917 Bolshevik Revolution ushered in more than 70 years of Communist rule. The fragments were found by archaeologists in a burned field near the Ural Mountains city where Czar Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, and their five children were held prisoner by...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
How Joan escaped the stake and lived happily ever after
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 09/22/2007 12:55:20 PM EDT · 27 replies
The Guardian (UK) | 9-22-07 | Angelique Chrisafis
New book angers historians with claims maid was not an illiterate peasant but a royal.... She was a peasant teenager inspired by voices from God to lead the French against the English, and burned as a witch before being recognised as a hero and saint. For centuries, France's cult of Joan of Arc has been seized on by politicians looking for patriotic martyr figures, including by Nicolas Sarkozy during his presidential campaign. Now a new book has sparked anger among historians by claiming the Maid of Orleans was not an illiterate peasant but a royal. She did not hear voices...
Longer Perspectives
Politically Correct Anthropology
Posted by bs9021
On News/Activism 09/25/2007 10:39:57 PM EDT · 21 replies
Campus Report | September 25, 2007 | Don Irvine
Politically Correct Anthropology by: Don Irvine, September 25, 2007 Political correctness which has been invading academia with a vengeance has a new target- Anthropology. An ad-hoc group calling themselves the Network of Concerned Anthropologists is now circulating a petition on the internet called the Pledge of Non-Participation in Counterinsurgency whose central theme says that "Anthropologists should not engage in research and other activities that contribute to counterinsurgency operations in Iraq or in related theaters in the 'war on terror.'"In other words it's an anti-war declaration for anthropologists. The organizers, two of whom are at George Mason University, feel that anthropologists...
Early America
Archaeologist takes 2nd look at cannon Found off Virginia coast. How did it get there?
Posted by Pharmboy
On General/Chat 09/25/2007 9:29:15 PM EDT · 13 replies
The Associated Press via MSNBC | Sept 25, 2007 | Anon
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - An archaeologist is taking a second look at a small cannon found by fishermen off the Virginia coast more than two decades ago in hopes of determining how it got to the bottom of the ocean -- and who left it there. Rod Mather, a professor of maritime history and underwater archaeology at the University of Rhode Island, has studied the 25-square-mile area surrounding the site where the cannon was found the past two summers. Some historians believe the 4-feet-long, 300-pound cannon, which was loaded when it was found 24 years ago, is an English cannon...
London, Paris, Fresno
Archaeologists Probe Secret Tunnels in California
Posted by decimon
On News/Activism 09/27/2007 5:46:36 PM EDT · 55 replies
Associated Press | September 27, 2007 | Unknown
FRESNO, Calif. -- Tunnels run beneath Chinatown in Fresno, Calif.: brick-walled passages that were once home to people and activities that couldn't be mentioned aboveground. Rick Lew knows, because he walked the passages as a child, entering through a trapdoor in his grandfather's liquor store. "There was a nightlife you couldn't see from the streets," he said. As late as the 1950s, when Lew was a boy, Chinatown was still thriving -- both its respectable establishments and as its shadier side. He remembers visiting the underground world with his father, first passing though a dark basement before descending into a...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Three-year Genghis Khan trek ends
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 09/25/2007 4:49:08 PM EDT · 13 replies
BBC News | 9-23-07
An Australian man has completed a three-year journey from Mongolia to Hungary, following in the footsteps of the Mongolian leader Genghis Khan. The journey took more than double the time Mr Cope anticipated When Tim Cope began his 10,000 km (6,200 mile) journey in June 2004 he expected it to take 18 months. However, a stint at home when his father died and other delays meant it took more than double that. Throughout the trek he travelled on horseback and relied on the hospitality of local people, including nomads. He travelled with three horses at any time, one to carry...
end of digest #167 20070929
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· Saturday, September 29, 2007 · 25 topics · 1903835 to 1900623 · now 653 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 167th issue of the Gods, Graves, Glyphs ping list Digest. Better week than last, a few more topics, some of which are updates to earlier stories and whatnot. Excellent selection, and a couple new headers, mostly for my own amusement. Happy autumn to all. |
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Viking Treasure Trove Discovered in Swedish Garden
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070924-vikings-treasure.html
James Owen
for National Geographic News
September 24, 2007
A thousand-year-old Viking treasure trove has been dug up in a garden in Sweden, archaeologists report.
The hoard of silver coins from Europe, central Asia, and the Middle East was unearthed earlier this month by a gardener tending his vegetable patch on the Baltic island of Gotland (see Sweden map).
So far 69 coins dating from the late 900s and early 1000s have been found, said archaeologist Dan Carlsson of Gotland University.
The find contains rare early Viking money and foreign currency from present-day England, Germany, Ireland, Iraq, and Uzbekistan.
Along with a similar cache recently discovered in England, the new find paints a picture of Vikings trading and looting their way across Europe and beyond.
The Anglo-Saxon coins were likely either plunder or protection money known as danegeld, which was paid by regional rulers to keep Vikings from attacking, experts said.
The Asian coins are products of the Vikings’ extensive trade, which the Norse conducted by sailing south along Russia’s long rivers to reach the Middle East.
Between 700 and 800 silver hoards have been discovered so far on Gotland, which was ideally located as a Viking trading center, Carlsson said.
(See a photo of a Viking stash of Arabic coins found in Gotland in October 2006.)
“Gotland was situated right in the middle between western and eastern Europe,” he said.
“Most of the coins [found on the island] were actually Arabic coins [that came] up the Russian rivers.”
“Remarkable” Discoveries
Gareth Williams, curator of early medieval coinage at the British Museum in London, said the concentration of early medieval coins in Gotland is “remarkable.”
“We’ve got more surviving late Anglo-Saxon coins from Gotland than we have from Britain, despite the fact it’s not a very big island and quite a way away,” he added
The newfound hoard, buried some 1,300 feet (400 meters) from the site of an ancient Viking settlement, also includes highly unusual coins minted for Olof Skötkonung, a regional Swedish king, Carlsson said.
“He was the first king that minted coins in Sweden,” he said.
“He obviously learned [coin-making] from England,” he added. “Many of the coins are copies of English coins, most of all Ethelred coins.”
Ethelred II was England’s monarch from 978 to 1016. Also known as Ethelred the Unready due to his lack of reliable counsel, he paid massive amounts of “tribute money” to the Vikings and is featured on Anglo-Saxon coins discovered in the garden cache.
Sihtric, the Viking ruler of Dublin, Ireland, was another king whose money turned up in the hoard.
Williams noted that a number of the Gotland coins show knife marks left by “pecking,” a practice used to test whether they were genuine silver or counterfeits made of lead.
“A huge amount of coinage was making its way through there, more than the locals could ever possibly have had a use for,” Williams added.
Many researchers believe these hoards functioned like safe deposit boxes: Viking cash deposits were hidden in the ground for safety until needed.
Other experts suggest that the caches had a religious significance and were saved up and buried by their owners for use in the afterlife.
(Read related story: “Vikings Filed Their Teeth, Skeleton Study Shows” [February 3, 2006].)
Huge Haul Found in England
The new find follows the discovery earlier this year of a major Viking hoard by amateur treasure hunters in northeast England.
That hoard was said by experts to be among the most important ever found in Britain.
Unearthed by amateurs using metal-detectors in a field near Harrogate, North Yorkshire (see map), the treasure included a rare gold armband, jewelery, and more than 600 coins collected from as far away as Afghanistan.
The hoard was stashed inside a decorated gilt silver vessel thought to have been looted from a monastery in France.
The treasure is dated to between 927 and 929, when the Anglo-Saxons regained control of northeast England from the Vikings.
A number of Viking hoards found in the region were buried around this period, according to Williams, of the British Museum.
“This was probably linked to the Anglo-Saxons pushing northwards,” he said.
The Harrogate treasure likely belonged to an important Viking chieftain, he added.
Researchers can only speculate why he never retrieved it.
“He could have been killed in battle, forced to leave the region, or died of old age before he had a chance to recover it,” Williams said.
Another GGG-worthy report:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/25/wbible125.xml
There were so many truly fascinating subjects this week. Thanks SunkenCiv for all you do.
You’re most welcome.
Thanks, I believe that Viking hoard story has been posted and was in digest #166. When the Viking was asked, “did you hoard all that money yourself?”, he replied, “no, my sister hoard half of it.”
Hmm, that Devil’s Bible story looks familiar as well.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #168
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Why Home Doesn't Matter
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/29/2007 12:53:22 PM EDT · 42 replies
Prospect | May 2007 | Judith Rich Harris
Why home doesn't matterMay 2007Judith Rich Harris The BBC series "Child of Our Time" assumes that studying children with their parents will help us understand how their personalities develop. But this is a mistake: parents influence their children mainly by passing on their genes. The biggest environmental influences on personality are those that occur outside the home During much of the 20th century, it was considered impolite and unscientific to say that genes play any role in determining people's personalities, talents or intelligence. But we're in the 21st century now, the era of the genome. So when Robert Winston informs...
Paleontology
Funny-Looking Dinosaur Found in China
Posted by decimon
On News/Activism 10/04/2007 7:32:47 PM EDT · 30 replies · 980+ views
Live Science | October 04, 2007 | Robin Lloyd
A strange, long-necked waddling dinosaur with massive arms and probably enormous claws has been discovered. It walked only on its hind legs like the carnivorous dinosaurs from which it evolved, but Suzhousaurus megatherioides, meaning "giant sloth-like reptile from Suzhou," was an herbivore, says researcher Daqing Li of the Third Geology and Mineral Resources Exploration Academy of Gansu Province in northwestern China, where the fossil specimen was found. The creature belongs to a group of dinosaurs called therizinosaurs, characterized by long necks capped by small heads, massive arms and claws, and flaring ribs and hips that made their bodies very wide.
Duck-billed dinosaur amazes scientists
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/05/2007 7:14:06 AM EDT · 12 replies · 119+ views
Yahoo News | 10-03-07 | BROCK VERGAKIS
SALT LAKE CITY - Scientists are amazed at the chomping ability of a newly described duck-billed dinosaur. The herbivore's powerful jaw, more than 800 teeth and compact skull meant that no leaf, branch or bush would have been safe, they say. "It really is like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of dinosaurs -- it's all pumped up," said Scott Sampson, curator of the Utah Museum of Natural History. The newly named Gryposaurus monumentensis, or hook-beaked lizard from the monument, was discovered near the Arizona line in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 2002 by a volunteer at the site. Details about the...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Giant Bones Challenged 18th-Century Intellectuals
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/29/2007 8:27:14 PM EDT · 31 replies
Cincy Post | Dan Hurley
Giant bones challenged 18th-century intellectuals By Dan Hurley Post columnist Today, the valley is dry, dusty and unremarkable, but 250 years ago it was one of the most fascinating spots ever discovered in the North America. From the very first time in 1739 that local Indians led a contingent of French explorers to the salt licks near the Ohio River in what is today Boone County, Ky., the spot raised intellectually troubling questions. European and American scientists understood the importance of salt licks and why thousands of modern buffalo, deer and elk beat broad paths to the marshy lick, but...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago
Posted by baynut
On General/Chat 09/30/2007 1:14:28 PM EDT · 55 replies
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 9, 2007, Vol. 104 | Setember 27, 2007 | R. B. Firestone, et. al.
A carbon-rich black layer, dating to 12.9 ka, has been previously identified at 50 Clovis-age sites across North America and appears contemporaneous with the abrupt onset of Younger Dryas (YD) cooling. The in situ bones of extinct Pleistocene megafauna, along with Clovis tool assemblages, occur below this black layer but not within or above it. Causes for the extinctions, YD cooling, and termination of Clovis culture have long been controversial. In this paper, we provide evidence for an extraterrestrial (ET) impact event at 12.9 ka, which we hypothesize caused abrupt environmental changes that contributed to YD cooling, major ecological reorganization,...
Neanderthal / Neandertal
Neanderthals Roamed As Far As Siberia
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 09/30/2007 6:03:36 PM EDT · 20 replies
New Scientist | 9-30-2007 | Roxanne Khamsi
Neanderthals roamed as far as Siberia 18:00 30 September 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi DNA extracted from skeletal remains has shown that Neanderthals roamed some 2000 kilometres further east than previously thought. Researchers say the genetic sequence of an adolescent Neanderthal found in southern Siberia closely matches that of Neanderthals found in western Europe, suggesting that this close relative of modern humans migrated very long distances. Svante Paabo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues examined skeletal remains found in the Okladnikov cave in the Altai Mountains and dated as between 30,000 and...
Go East old man: Neanderthals reached China's doorstep
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/01/2007 1:11:19 PM EDT · 5 replies
AFP | 9/30/07
PARIS (AFP) -- European Neanderthals, modern man's ill-fated cousins who died out mysteriously some 28,000 years ago, migrated much further east than previously thought, according to a study released Sunday. Remains from the slope-browed hominid have previously been found over an area stretching from Spain to Uzbekistan, but the new study extends the eastern boundary of their wanderings another 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) deep into southern Siberia, just above the western tip of what is today China. The fossils underpinning the study are not new, but the techniques used to analyse them are. Geneticist Svante Paabo of the Max Planck...
British Isles
The man who died half a million years ago
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/05/2007 7:25:03 AM EDT · 28 replies · 310+ views
Current Archaeology
Boxgrove The man who died half a million years ago In a gravel pit at Boxgrove, just outside Chichester, the remains of a man have been discovered, half a million years old. Only a shin bone and two teeth were discovered, but his position, under thick layers of gravel show that he is the oldest 'man' so far discovered in Britain. The Boxgrove quarry The discovery was made in a gravel quarry. The gravel was laid down in a later Ice Age on top of a chalk bed, which is visible in the upper squares. Originally a stream flowed from...
Navigation
Underwater survey nets traces of 2,400-year-old Greek wreck off southern Albania
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 10/05/2007 2:18:24 AM EDT · 5 replies · 41+ views
International Herald Tribune | September 12, 2007 | Associated Press
Encrusted with tiny shells and smelling strongly of the sea, a 2,400-year-old Greek jar lies in a saltwater bath in Durres Museum, on Albania's Adriatic coast. Part of a sunken shipment of up to 60 ceramic vessels, the 67-centimeter (26-inch) storage jar, or amphora, was the top find... Launched in July, the month-long survey was the first step in compiling an underwater cultural heritage map that could eventually plot the position of sunken fleets from ancient and mediaeval times believed to lie along Albania's 360-kilometer (220-mile) coastline... The light-brown clay amphora, probably used to store wine or oil, was found...
Greece
Even Without Math, Ancients Engineered Sophisticated Machines
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 10/02/2007 8:58:55 PM EDT · 59 replies · 184+ views
Science Daily | 10-2-2007 | Harvard University
Source: Harvard University Date: October 2, 2007 Even Without Math, Ancients Engineered Sophisticated Machines Science Daily -- Move over, Archimedes. A researcher at Harvard University is finding that ancient Greek craftsmen were able to engineer sophisticated machines without necessarily understanding the mathematical theory behind their construction. Recent analysis of technical treatises and literary sources dating back to the fifth century B.C. reveals that technology flourished among practitioners with limited theoretical knowledge. "Craftsmen had their own kind of knowledge that didn't have to be based on theory," explains Mark Schiefsky, professor of the classics in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences....
Prehistory and Origins
Senate Bill Could Untie Kennewick Man Bones
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 10/04/2007 8:36:07 PM EDT · 33 replies · 557+ views
Tricity Herald | 10-4-2007 | Annette Cary
Senate bill could untie Kennewick Man bones Published Thursday, October 4th, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer A Senate committee has approved a bill that could clear the way for Native Americans to claim the ancient bones of Kennewick Man. This is the third time the change has been proposed to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. It would ensure federally recognized tribes could claim ancient remains even if a direct link to a tribe can't be proven. Tribes have pushed for a change to the law since the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2004...
Ancient Europe
Archaeologists Stumble On Sensational Find (7,500 YO Metal Tools)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 10/04/2007 11:12:12 AM EDT · 20 replies · 1,007+ views
B92 | 10-4-2007
Archaeologists stumble on sensational find 4 October 2007 Prokuplje -- Serbian archaeologists found evidence of the what could be the oldest metal workshop in all of Europe. According to National Museum archaeologist Du?oan ?aljivar, experts found a "copper chisel and stone ax at a location near Prokuplje in which the foundation has proven to be 7,500 years old, leading us to believe that it was one of the first places in which metal weapons and tools were made in prehistory. Archaeologists hope that this find in southern Serbia will prove the theory that the metal age began a lot earlier..."
Scotland Yet
Burial chambers of the Neolithic
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/05/2007 7:31:41 AM EDT · 7 replies · 113+ views
Current Archaeology
Clava Burial chambers of the Neolithic In the Neolithic - the New Stone Age - the older you were, the more important you were, and thus logically the dead were the most important of all. Ancestor worship became the centre of people's lives, and great emphasis was placed on the burial of the dead. Magnificent tombs where therefore built as houses for the dead. Some of the finest of these are the Clava cairns, in North East Scotland, near Inverness. Here stone chambers were built, and then stones were built up around them to form a mound, and a long...
Agriculture
[Mesa Verde] M. Verde repairs ruins in alcove
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 10/05/2007 11:57:42 AM EDT · 9 replies · 114+ views
Cortez Journal | September 29, 2007 | Shannon Livick
[A]rchaeologist Jim Hampson... is part of a four-person team of archaeologists working this fall to repair a wall that was crushed in late 2006 when a large slab of rock sheered off the alcove above and crushed a 12-foot-high wall and pierced another wall of a kiva... The rock that fell was estimated to weigh about 4.5 tons. Crews spent several weeks breaking up the boulder and hauling it away so they could begin documenting the damage and planning a route to repair. "It was a huge slab," archaeologist Tim Hovezak said. "We lost most of the north wall. You...
Stripes and Solids
Sabre-Toothed Tiger Was A Pussycat
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 10/01/2007 9:57:03 PM EDT · 38 replies · 18+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 10-2-2007 | Roger Highfield
Sabre-toothed tiger was just a pussycat By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 12:01am BST 02/10/2007 It may have had some of the most ferocious teeth ever seen on a mammal but scientists say that the much feared sabre-tooth tiger was actually a bit of a pussycat. Smilodon, the sabre-tooth tiger, roamed across North and South America until 10,000 years ago Powerfully built, with upper canines like knives, the sabre-tooth tiger was a fearsome predator of Ice-Age America's lost giants, such as bison and horses, perhaps even mammoths. But while Smilodon ("knife tooth") may have had an impressive set of...
Sabretooth's surprising weak bite
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/05/2007 10:34:36 AM EDT · 5 replies · 79+ views
BBC News | 10-02-07
The sabretooth tiger may have looked a fearsome sight with its massive canines but its reputation takes something of a knock with a new piece of research. Scientists who have studied the extinct creature's skull in detail say it had a relatively weak bite - compared with, say, a modern lion. And although those fangs must have been amazing killing implements, they made for a very restricted hunting strategy.....
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Canary expedition in search of the white stone llamas
Posted by Fred Nerks
On News/Activism 10/03/2007 5:50:55 PM EDT · 39 replies · 566+ views
tenerifenews.com | updated August 11, 2007 | unattributed
A team of Canary investigators is currently in remotest Peru to study a startling new archaeological discovery which came to light recently in Choquequirao, an ancient Inca site which is being described in glowing terms as Machu Picchu's "twin town". The find consists of a line of white stone llamas embedded in massive terraced stone walls and which, it is thought, could well form part of the entrance to the sacred valley of the Incas. And make no mistake - the expedition to Choquequirao is no jolly. The three men and two women face a gruelling five days on foot...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Archeological Discovery in Ohio River Causes Debate [Indian's Head Rock]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 10/03/2007 1:14:10 PM EDT · 23 replies · 332+ views
WSAZ | September 27, 2007 | Randy Yohe
A recent river recovery of an eight ton treasure was followed by angry claims of arch[a]eological thievery... After years of planning and weeks of effort, a Portsmouth, Ohio Volunteer Recovery Team pulled the prehistoric, legendary Indian's Head Rock off the mighty Ohio River's bottom... In the 18 and early 1900's before the days of locks and dams, the boulder would pop up every decade or so, depending on river levels the rock became a popular tourist attraction, a gilded age photo op, featured in post cards. Some of Portsmouth's most prominent citizens scratched their names in the sandstone. Some think...
Egypt
Ancient Pharaoh Temple Discovered Inside Egypt Mosque
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 10/03/2007 11:06:56 AM EDT · 11 replies · 198+ views
National Geographic | September 27, 2007 | Steven Stanek
The previously concealed architectural elements reveal well-preserved hieroglyphics and unique scenes depicting the powerful pharaoh. The discovery is likely to touch a nerve among religious leaders, because the newly exposed reliefs contain representations of humans and animals, which are forbidden inside mosques, the experts said. The mosque was erected as a shrine to Muslim saint Abul Haggag in the 13th century A.D. on the site of an earlier Christian church, which was itself built on top of the ancient temple, the archaeologists explained... Christians, and later Muslims, frequently built their shrines on top of ancient Egyptian holy sites, said W....
Let's Have Jerusalem
Radio-dating authenticates Biblical tunnel
Posted by Aracelis
On News/Activism 09/23/2003 8:52:08 AM EDT · 15 replies · 239+ views
CBS News | Updated 10 Sep 2003 | CBC News Online staff
JERUSALEM - Scientists have found and radio-dated a tunnel described in the Bible. The books of Kings II and Chronicles II report the construction of the Siloam Tunnel during the reign of King Hezekiah, who ruled 2,700 years ago. It was built to move water from the Gihon spring into ancient Jerusalem, protecting the city's water supply in the event of an Assyrian siege. It has been difficult for scientists to verify modern equivalents of buildings mentioned in the Bible because specimens have been poorly preserved, hard to identify and access. Amos Frumkin of the geography department at the Hebrew...
Longer Perspectives
Earthquake Experts At Tel Aviv University Turn To History For Guidance
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 10/04/2007 11:05:51 AM EDT · 12 replies · 205+ views
Tauac | 10-2-2007
Earthquake Experts at Tel Aviv University Turn to History for Guidance Tuesday, October 2, 2007 Ancient documents reveal devastating earthquake may threaten Middle East's near future Damage in Jerusalem's Old City following a July 11, 1927, earthquake. One of the first earthquakes on the Dead Sea Fault to be recorded by modern seismographic techniques, it reached 6.2 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was in the northern part of the Dead Sea. Photo credit: American Colony Hotel, American Colony Collection. The best seismologists in the world don't know when the next big earthquake will hit. But a Tel Aviv University...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Tomb of Cyrus the Great under Threat in Iran
Posted by freedom44
On News/Activism 10/05/2007 4:52:58 PM EDT · 8 replies · 445+ views
Moscow Times | 10/05/07 | Fredrik Dahl and Reza Derakhshi-Salmasi
PASARGADAE, Iran -- For the people protesting against it, a new dam near these sun-drenched ruins may be more than an environmental upheaval: In it they see an affront to the country's pre-Islamic identity. For 2,500 years, the tomb of Cyrus the Great has stood on the plain at Pasargadae, in southern Iran, a simple but dignified monument to a king revered as the founder of the mighty Persian empire. But some fear the dam and reservoir pose a threat to the ancient structure. They say the project may increase humidity in the arid area near the city of Shiraz,...
Ancient Autopsies
10 Most Fascinating Tombs in the World
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/03/2007 5:44:57 PM EDT · 16 replies · 259+ views
Neatorama.com | 10-1-07
Throughout the history of human civilization, different cultures mourn and treat the dead differently. Some, like Tibetan Buddhists, have no use for burials as they dispose the dead by feeding corpses to vultures or by burning them in funeral pyres. Most cultures, however, show their respect by burying the dead, sometimes in complex and ornate tombs, crypts, and catacombs. This article takes a look at ten of the most fascinating final resting places around the world, from the largest prehistoric burial mound in Europe to the the tombs of pharaohs to the most beautiful mausoleum in the world:....
Rome and Italy
Ancient World Treasure Unearthed
Posted by blam
On General/Chat 10/05/2007 1:57:39 PM EDT · 12 replies · 423+ views
BBC | 10-5-2007 | David Willey
Ancient world treasure unearthed By David Willey BBC News, Rome The head of a satyr was discovered during the dig After seven hot summers of digging, an Italian archaeological team believe they have discovered one of the most important sites of the ancient world. Fanum Voltumnae, a shrine, marketplace and Etruscan political centre, was situated in the upper part of the Tiber river valley. It lies at the foot of a huge outcrop of rock, upon which is perched the mediaeval city of Orvieto. A walled sanctuary area, 5m-wide (16ft) Etruscan roads, an altar, and the foundations of many Roman...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Vatican paper set to clear Knights Templar
Posted by Daffynition
On General/Chat 10/05/2007 4:44:50 AM EDT · 6 replies · 184+ views
The Telegraph | 05/10/2007 | Malcolm Moore
The mysteries of the Order of the Knights Templar could soon be laid bare after the Vatican announced the release of a crucial document which has not been seen for almost 700 years. A new book, Processus contra Templarios, will be published by the Vatican's Secret Archive on Oct 25, and promises to restore the reputation of the Templars, whose leaders were burned as heretics when the order was dissolved in 1314. The Knights Templar were a powerful and secretive group of warrior monks during the Middle Ages. Their secrecy has given birth to endless legends, including one that they...
Vatican book on Templars' demise
Posted by NYer
On News/Activism 10/05/2007 4:44:55 PM EDT · 112 replies · 2,065+ views
BBC | October 5, 2007
The Vatican is to publish a book which is expected to shed light on the demise of the Knights Templar, a Christian military order from the Middle Ages. The book is based on a document known as the Chinon parchment, found in the Vatican Secret Archives six years ago after years of being incorrectly filed. The document is a record of the heresy hearings of the Templars before Pope Clement V in the 14th Century. The official who found the paper says it exonerates the knights entirely. Prof Barbara Frale, who stumbled across the parchment by mistake, says that...
Climate
Caribbean Forests Thrived In 'Little Ice Age'
Posted by blam
On General/Chat 10/01/2007 10:20:31 PM EDT · 4 replies
New Scientist | 10-1-2007 | Jeff Hecht
Caribbean forests thrived in 'Little Ice Age' 22:00 01 October 2007 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht Some Caribbean forests were at their densest for the past 2000 years during the 'Little Ice Age', new research shows. This forest growth was not expected, because other areas in the region were cool and dry, but the curious finding shows that the effects of climate change can vary from place to place, say researchers. From approximately 1350 to 1850, the Little Ice Age cooled low latitudes and dried the Caribbean including the Yucatan Peninsula. So you might expect to see evidence of this...
Was There a 15th-Century "Little" Medieval Warm Period?
Posted by PeaceBeWithYou
On News/Activism 07/04/2004 8:37:51 PM EDT · 18 replies · 1,358+ views
CO2 Science Magazine | June 30, 2004 | Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
Volume 7, Number 26: 30 June 2004 In one of the more intriguing aspects of his study of global climate change over the past three millennia - of which he amazingly makes no particular mention - Loehle (2004) presents a graph of the Sargasso Sea and South African temperature records of Keigwin (1996) and Holmgren et al. (1999, 2001) that reveals the existence of a major spike in surface air temperature that began sometime in the early 1400s. This abrupt and anomalous warming pushed global air temperatures considerably above the peak warmth of the 20th century, after which they fell...
Early America
Pony Express to ride again
Posted by SandRat
On General/Chat 10/01/2007 8:59:40 PM EDT · 3 replies
Sierra Vista Herald/Review | Adam Bernal
BENSON -- The Pony Express will ride again during Butterfield Stage Days on Oct. 13, and the U.S. Postal Service will issue a special postmark to commemorate the event. At noon, special Pony Express riders will be sworn in by Postmaster Lesley Tower in a ceremony in Lions Park. They will carry the mail from Benson to the Dragoon post office, arriving in Dragoon around 3:30 p.m. The Benson post office will offer a special postmark commemorating the 22nd Annual Pony Express Ride. The postmark, which features a Butterfield Overland Stagecoach design, will be available from 9 a.m. to noon...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Goodbye Mr Burns: Ken Burns' "The War"
Posted by american_ranger
On News/Activism 10/01/2007 8:59:05 PM EDT · 216 replies · 22+ views
Dear Mr Burns; I just turned off my TV. I have watched 5 of your episodes on WWII. I have defended your negativism by posting positive comments on several blogs. But tonight is the end. Your blatant anti-Americanism propaganda in repeating bullshit about a recent West Point graduate being a battalion commander and ordering American soldiers to execute German POWs is way over the line. Recent West Point graduates are 2nd Lieutenants (O1). Bn Commanders are normally LTC(O5) or Majors (O4). You sir, are a commie pinko. Maybe you should get a haircut and a real job. I will never...
end of digest #168 20071006
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 168th issue of the Gods, Graves, Glyphs ping list Digest. Thirty topics, and of sufficient diversity that the arrangement suggested itself. Membership has been stable for a month or so, which means (probably) that A) we've peaked, or B) we're about to gain a bunch of new members. It seems that a number of FReepers have been acting funky lately. Must be seasonal affective disorder. |
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #169
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Site Provides Evidence For Ancient Comet Explosion (Topper - SC)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 10/08/2007 1:07:52 AM EDT · 37 replies · 765+ views
The News Tribune | 10-7-2007 | Joey Holleman
Site provides evidence for ancient comet explosion JOEY HOLLEMAN; McClatchy Newspapers Published: October 7th, 2007 01:00 AM COLUMBIA, S.C. -- For the second time in less than a decade, a South Carolina river bluff holds evidence pointing to a theory with history-rewriting potential. Microscopic soil particles from the Topper site near Allendale might hold a tiny key to a big theory: that comet-caused explosions wiped out the mammoths and mastodons, prompted the last ice age and decimated the first human culture in North America about 12,900 years ago. The comet theory first began generating a buzz at an international meeting...
Climate
Newfound ancient African megadroughts may have driven the evolution of humans and fishes
Posted by decimon
On News/Activism 10/08/2007 8:31:23 PM EDT · 41 replies · 705+ views
University of Arizona | October 8, 2007 | Unknown
From 135,000 to 90,000 years ago tropical Africa had megadroughts more extreme and widespread than any previously known for that region, according to new research. Learning that now-lush tropical Africa was an arid scrubland during the early Late Pleistocene provides new insights into humans' migration out of Africa and the evolution of fishes in Africa's Great Lakes. "Lake Malawi, one of the deepest lakes in the world, acts as a rain gauge," said lead scientist Andrew S. Cohen of The University of Arizona in Tucson. "The lake level dropped at least 600 meters (1,968 feet) -- an extraordinary amount of...
Prehistory and Origins
Human Ancestors Walked Upright, Study Claims (Evolution in Reverse)
Posted by Dallas
On News/Activism 10/10/2007 3:15:58 PM EDT · 16 replies · 584+ views
Yahoo
The ancestors of humanity are often depicted as knuckle-draggers, making humans seem unusual in our family tree as "upright apes." In other words, "the other great apes we see now, such as chimps or gorillas or orangutans, might have descended from human-like ancestors," researcher Aaron Filler, a Harvard-trained evolutionary biologist and medical director at Cedars-Sinai Institute for Spinal Disorders in Los Angeles, told LiveScience. Filler analyzed how the spine was assembled in more than 250 living and extinct mammalian species, with some bones dating up to 220 million years old. He discovered a series of changes that suggest walking upright-and...
Pandemics, Epidemics, Disease
Origins of Syphilis [It was waiting for Columbus and his crew~~~NEW WORLD]
Posted by shield
On News/Activism 10/06/2007 9:04:49 PM EDT · 95 replies · 2,525+ views
Archaeology.org | January/February 1997 | Mark Rose
snip... Syphilis, it seems, developed in the New World from yaws, perhaps 1,600 years ago, and was waiting for Columbus and his crew. The Rothschilds are now examining skeletal collections from the Bahamas to look for evidence of syphilis nearer to Columbus' landfall.
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Ancient Boats Surface At Fla. Lake
Posted by stainlessbanner
On General/Chat 10/07/2007 12:19:42 AM EDT · 44 replies · 658+ views
local6 | October 6, 2007
IMMOKALEE, Fla. -- From a distance, the brown object near the bank of Lake Trafford looks like a log, or maybe a big alligator. Close up, though, it becomes identifiable as a large section of a dugout canoe, possibly more than 1,000 years old. As lake levels have dropped during the ongoing drought, normally submerged areas have become dry. Ten canoes, long buried in the sand, have been exposed. Click here to find out more! "They started showing up a couple of months ago, but I wanted to verify what they were," said Ski Olesky, owner of the Lake Trafford...
Bound and Beheaded
Ancient bodies had hands bound
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/08/2007 7:47:01 PM EDT · 13 replies · 219+ views
Canada.com | 10-06-07 | Robert Barron
A traditional burial ground, or the site of a massacre? Questions continue to surround the discovery of the remains of more than 80 First Nations people at an excavation site near Departure Bay beach in Nanaimo. Excavation for a condo development uncovered the remains at the ancient Snuneymuxw burial site. On Friday, Nanaimo media members received an anonymous tip suggesting that at least 60 of the bodies were uncovered, with their hands bound and their heads removed, suggesting a massacre had occurred. Calls to Madrone Environmental Services, conducting the archeological excavation of the site near Departure Bay Road's 7-Eleven store,...
and For Dessert, Lady Fingers
The Heart Rippers Killed Children for the Rain God
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/10/2007 7:58:20 AM EDT · 19 replies · 253+ views
Softipedia News | Stefan Anitei
Aztecs, Mayas and their preceding civilizations in Central America are famous for their appetite for blood. The cruel and megalomaniac sacrifice rites produce stupor amongst modern people and these people knew very well how to use it against their enemies. Would you have opposed them when you were risking to be sacrificed by ripping off your heart from your chest while still alive? A new discovery adds another gruesome aspect to the picture. Archaeologists have found the remains of 24 children who must have been sacrificed in the honor of the rain god a millennium ago. "The bones of the...
Navigation
1559 Shipwreck Found Off Pensacola, Fla.
Posted by RDTF
On News/Activism 10/11/2007 7:42:56 PM EDT · 23 replies · 863+ views
Breitbart | October 11, 2007 | AP
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) - In 1559, a hurricane plunged as many as seven Spanish sailing vessels to the bottom of Pensacola Bay, hampering explorer Don Tristan de Luna's attempt to colonize this section of the Florida Panhandle. Almost 500 years later and 15 years after the first ship was found, another has been discovered, helping archaeologists unlock secrets to Florida's Spanish past. The colony at the site of present-day Pensacola was abandoned in 1561, and no trace of it has been found on land. Teams of University of West Florida archaeology students last summer discovered what they thought was the...
Epigraphy and Language
Archaeologists in Portugal net haul of Roman coins
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 10/11/2007 1:51:04 PM EDT · 3 replies · 95+ views
PR-inside.com | Wednesday, October 10, 2007 | AP
Archeologists in Portugal have found more than 4,500 Roman coins bundled together inside the wall of a blacksmith's house dating from the fourth century. Antonio Sa Coixao, who is leading excavations in Coriscada in northeastern Portugal, said Wednesday by telephone the 4,526 copper and bronze coins were inside a hollow wall and covered by dirt and tools. The coins had apparently been put in a sack which had mostly disintegrated, he said... Archeologists excavating the site, which is believed to be a Roman village, came across the coins Friday, he said... The excavation site, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) from...
Rome and Italy
Report: Ancient Roman graveyard found in suburban Copenhagen
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 10/11/2007 2:55:59 PM EDT · 11 replies · 135+ views
IHT | October 10, 2007 | Associated Press / Roskilde Dagblad
Archaeologists have discovered a Roman cemetery from about 300 A.D. in suburban Copenhagen with about 30 graves, a newspaper reported Wednesday. "It is something special and rare in Denmark to have so many (ancient Roman) graves in one place," archaeologist Rune Iversen was quoted as saying by the Roskilde Dagblad newspaper. The graveyard's exact location in Ishoej, southwest of downtown Copenhagen, was being kept secret until the archaeologists from the nearby Kroppedal Museum have completed their work, the newspaper wrote... Archaeologists found necklaces and other personal belongings, as well as ceramics for containing food. "It shows that we're dealing with...
Greece
A Prayer for Archimedes
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/10/2007 8:15:21 AM EDT · 2 replies · 45+ views
Science News Online | 10-04-07 | Julie J. Rehmeyer
A long-lost text by the ancient Greek mathematician shows that he had begun to discover the principles of calculus. ~~~snip~~~ An intensive research effort over the last nine years has led to the decoding of much of the almost-obliterated Greek text. The results were more revolutionary than anyone had expected. The researchers have discovered that Archimedes was working out principles that, centuries later, would form the heart of calculus and that he had a more sophisticated understanding of the concept of infinity than anyone had realized. ~~~~snip~~~~
Anatolia
Diyarbakir Excavation Reveals Ancient Tomb Of Young Lovers (8,000 YO - Turkey)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 10/08/2007 1:23:17 AM EDT · 10 replies · 431+ views
Todays Zaman | 10-7-2007
Diyarbakir excavation reveals ancient tomb of young lovers Archaeologists discovered the tomb of a young couple locked in an embrace during their work in Hakemi Use in the Bismil district of the southeastern province of Diyarbakir on Saturday. The young couple, archaeological history's oldest buried lovers, was discovered by excavations in Bismil; they were still embracing one another. Archaeologists assert that the couple, who presumably died some 8,000 years ago, is likely to set a record as the oldest embracing couple in the history of archaeology. Diyarbakir was witness to an extraordinary discovery when archaeologists revealed the tomb of the...
Agriculture
'Oldest' Wall Painting Looks Like Modern Art
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 10/11/2007 4:31:49 PM EDT · 31 replies · 992+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 10-11-2007 | Roger Highfield
'Oldest' wall painting looks like modern art By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 6:56pm BST 11/10/2007 French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old work of art in northern Syria which is the oldest known wall painting, even though it looks like a work by a modernist. The painting resembles the work of Paul Klee The two square-metre painting, in red, black and white, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo. "It looks like a modernist painting," said Eric Coqueugniot, the team leader. "Some of those who saw it have...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Dutch Researcher Claims To Confirm Queen Jezebel's Seal
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 10/10/2007 9:40:14 PM EDT · 19 replies · 566+ views
Haaretz | 10-11-2007 | Cnaan Liphshiz
Dutch researcher claims to confirm Queen Jezebel's seal By Cnaan Liphshiz For some 40 years, one of the flashiest opal signets on display at the Israel Museum had remained without accurate historical context. Two weeks ago, Dutch researcher Marjo Korpel identified article IDAM 65-321 as the official seal of Queen Jezebel, one of the bible's most powerful and reviled women. Israeli archaeologists had suspected Jezebel was the owner ever since the seal was first documented in 1964. "Did it belong to Ahab's Phoenician wife?" wrote the late pioneering archaeologist Nahman Avigad of the seal, which he obtained through the antiquities...
Longer Perspectives
Ancient documents portend major earthquake
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/10/2007 7:03:53 AM EDT · 5 replies · 69+ views
Science Daily | 10-04-07
TEL AVIV, Israel, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- An Israeli scientist said ancient documents suggest a major earthquake triggered by the Dead Sea Fault is long overdue in the Middle East. Although seismologists don't know when the next big earthquake will occur, Tel Aviv University geologist Shmulik Marco said earthquake patterns recorded in historical documents indicate the region's next significant quake might be imminent. Based on the translations of hundreds of ancient records from the Vatican and other religious sources, Marco has helped determine a series of devastating earthquakes occurred across the Holy Land during the last 2,000 years. The major...
Ancient Autopsies
Unlocking the secrets of history [mummies in Yemen]
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 10/10/2007 12:17:45 PM EDT · 4 replies · 85+ views
Yemen Times | Issue: (1090), Volume 15, From 1 October 2007 to 3 October 2007 | Hamed Thabet
For the first time, Windol Fliees, the head of an American expedition group found samples in Ma'reb in 1951-1952 in the graveyard or cemetery of Awam Temple called Haied Bin Aqeed. But the important discovery was in 1983 in Shebam Al Garas by the archeology expedition department, which found 26 Mummies at a depth of 60 centimeters, and among all those, only one has survived. Moreover, in 1991 Mummies have been found in the Al Noman mountain in Al Mahweet governorate, and until today their work is not finished as there are many more. In 1994 in Saih Bani Matar,...
India
Guardian of the Dawn, documents the little-known Portuguese Inquisition in India
Posted by Arjun
On News/Activism 09/14/2005 2:56:19 PM EDT · 19 replies · 830+ views
us.rediff.com
Richard Zimler's novel, Guardian of the Dawn, documents the little-known Portuguese Inquisition in India, in 16th century Goa. He points out that, apart from their laws and religion, the Portuguese also imported and enforced their infamous methods of interrogation to subdue troublemakers. Zimler has won numerous awards for his work, including a 1994 US National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction and 1998 Herodotus Award for best historical novel. The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon was picked as 1998 Book of the Year by British critics, while Hunting Midnight has been nominated for the 2005 IMPAC Literary Award. Together with...
Australia and the Pacific
Scientist debunks nomadic Aborigine 'myth'
Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 10/11/2007 2:29:00 PM EDT · 3 replies · 101+ views
Guardian Unlimited | Tuesday October 9, 2007 | Barbara McMahon
Before white settlers arrived, Australia's indigenous peoples lived in houses and villages, and used surprisingly sophisticated architecture and design methods to build their shelters... Dwellings were constructed in various styles, depending on the climate. Most common were dome-like structures made of cane reeds with roofs thatched with palm leaves. Some of the houses were interconnected, allowing native people to interact during long periods spent indoors during the wet season... Dr Memmott said the myth that indigenous Australians were constantly on the move had come about because early explorers made their observations in good weather, when indigenous people were more mobile...
British Isles
Archaeologists Find Mystery Carved Stone At Whitby Abbey (UK)
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 10/12/2007 6:43:26 PM EDT · 11 replies · 488+ views
24 Hour Museum | 10-10-2007 | Museum Staff
ARCHAEOLOGISTS FIND MYSTERIOUS CARVED STONE AT WHITBY ABBEY By 24 Hour Museum Staff 12/10/2007 An archaeologist with the rare stone at the site at Whitby Abbey. © English Heritage Experts are studying a carved stone recently uncovered on Whitby Abbey Headland in North Yorkshire to see if it represents the first Bronze Age artefact from the site. St Hild founded an abbey on Whitby Headland in 657AD, which is now an important historical site. However, little was known about the site in the Anglo Saxon period in which it was founded until archaeologists carried out clifftop excavations in 2001 and...
British Archaeology (Latest News)
Posted by blam
On General/Chat 05/13/2002 7:56:46 PM EDT · 10 replies · 324+ views
British Archaeology | 5-13-2002
Anglo-Saxon 'planned town' revealed this month in Whitby House platforms, artefacts and a cemetry near the abbey Several years of intensive and often dangerous excavations by English Heritage on the eroding headland near Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire culminated in the opening of a new Lottery-funded visitor centre on the site this month. The excavations revealed that Anglo-Saxon settlements surrounding the royal abbey founded in 657 were far more extensive and well-planned than had previously been thought. An area of sloping ground north of the abbey, thought to have originally measured about 20 acres before centuries of cliff erosion, had...
Surnames That Reveal Pirate Ancestry
Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/16/2007 9:47:43 PM EDT · 67 replies · 2,298+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 8-17-2007 | Nick Britten
Surnames that reveal Pirate ancestry By Nick Britten Last Updated: 1:34am BST 17/08/2007 With all that pillaging and looting, it could be one of the bloodiest reunions in history when descendants of six of Britain's famous pirates are invited to a get-together. People with the surnames Morgan, Rackham, Bonny, Read, Kidd or Teach, are being invited to discover possible connections with the likes of Blackbeard and Calico Jack, in a series of events by English Heritage. Dressing as a sea dog is optional. Proving your lineage with a real-life buccaneer, however, may prove difficult. Abigail Baker, of the genealogy research...
Scotland Yet
Orkney arrowheads find points to Scotland's earliest settlement
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/08/2007 7:51:26 PM EDT · 7 replies · 87+ views
The Scotsman | 10-05-07 | John Ross
THEY may look like just a collection of broken stones, but the finds made in a field in Orkney might be evidence of the earliest settlement in Scotland. Two flint "tanged points" or arrowheads found on the island of Stronsay are thought to have been used by hunters between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, just after the Ice Age. The arrowheads were found among a collection of scattered artefacts, including bladed tools, on a farm by Naomi Woodward and a team of MA students on an archaeology course at Orkney College. The discoveries were made during a two-week research trip...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
This Day in History-The Battle of Lepanto
Posted by guinnessman
On General/Chat 10/07/2007 3:47:28 PM EDT · 20 replies · 378+ views
Crisis Mageazine | December 20, 2006 | H. W. Crocker III
Lepanto, 1571: The Battle That Saved Europe The clash of civilizations is as old as history, and equally as old is the blindness of those who wish such clashes away; but they are the hinges, the turning points of history. In the latter half of the 16th century, Muslim war drums sounded and the mufti of the Ottoman sultan proclaimed jihad, but only the pope fully appreciated the threat... The Ottoman Empire, the seat of Islamic power, looked to control the Mediterranean. Corsairs raided from North Africa; the Sultan's massive fleet anchored the eastern Mediterranean; and Islamic armies ranged along...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Knights Templar win heresy reprieve after 700 years
Posted by xzins
On Religion 10/12/2007 2:41:08 PM EDT · 45 replies · 321+ views
Yahoo | Thu Oct 11, 8:33 PM ET | By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Knights Templar, the medieval Christian military order accused of heresy and sexual misconduct, will soon be partly rehabilitated when the Vatican publishes trial documents it had closely guarded for 700 years. A reproduction of the minutes of trials against the Templars, "'Processus Contra Templarios -- Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars'" is a massive work and much more than a book -- with a 5,900 euros (4,125 pounds) price tag. "This is a milestone because it is the first time that these documents are being released by the Vatican, which gives a stamp...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
'Britain's Leonardo' rescued on safety net
Posted by Renfield
On General/Chat 10/10/2007 7:40:58 AM EDT · 2 replies · 31+ views
Times Online (UK) | 10-08-07 | Max Henderson
The papers of one of Britain's greatest scientists, which were lost for centuries and saved for the nation in a £1 million sale last year, become available to read online today. The innovative "digital folio" provides unprecedented public access to hundreds of pages of manuscript notes and minutes kept by Robert Hooke, who is sometimes described as Britain's Leonardo da Vinci. The remarkable collection contains Hooke's minutes of early meetings of the Royal Society, taken while he was curator of experiments and then secretary of the national academy of science, between 1661 and 1692. They record many of the scientist's...
end of digest #169 20071013
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· Saturday, October 13, 2007 · 26 topics · 1910516 to 1907673 · still 653 members · |
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 169th issue of the Gods, Graves, Glyphs ping list Digest. Thanks to all who contributed the 26 topics this week -- nice selection, nice job! One duplicate could have appeared this week, but wasn't in the "raw" file, and I figured I'd just add the keyword today and post it with #170. Have a great week, all. |
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