Posted on 07/16/2004 11:27:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
(Excerpt) Read more at freerepublic.com ...
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #245
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Dinosaurs
Census Of Modern Organisms Reveals Echo Of Ancient Mass Extinction
03/25/2009 6:53:33 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 10 replies · 282+ views
ScienceDaily | Sunday, February 8, 2009 | Science
Paleontologists can still hear the echo of the death knell that drove the dinosaurs and many other organisms to extinction following an asteroid collision at the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago... This conclusion followed a detailed global analysis of marine bivalves, one of the few groups plentiful enough in the fossil record to allow such a study, which was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Andrew Krug of the University of Chicago, Jablonski and James Valentine of the University of California, Berkeley, examined the geologic ages of every major lineage of living bivalves the...
Paleontology
Rare fossil octopuses found: 95 million-year-old
03/22/2009 9:35:19 AM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 31 replies · 615+ views
msnbc | March. 18, 2009
It's hard enough to find fossils of hard things like dinosaur bones. Now scientists have found evidence of 95 million-year-old octopuses, among the rarest and unlikeliest of fossils, complete with ink and suckers. The body of an octopus is composed almost entirely of muscle and skin. When an octopus dies, it quickly decays and liquefies into a slimy blob. After just a few days there will be nothing left at all. And that assumes that the fresh carcass is not consumed almost immediately by scavengers. The result is that preservation of an octopus as a fossil is about as unlikely...
An Amazing Fossil Find
03/27/2009 4:23:03 PM PDT · Posted by Ron Jeremy · 25 replies · 1,033+ views
WND | yesterday | Farah
2009 Scientists are baffled by the latest fossil find. It's an octopus they claim is 95 million years old. And, guess what? It looks just like a modern-day octopus -- complete with eight legs, rows of suckers and even traces of ink. In all that time, it seems, the octopus hasn't evolved -- not one tiny bit. What's rare about this find is that octopuses are almost all muscle and skin. When an octopus dies, it quickly decays and liquefies into the oozy slime from which evolutionary scientists claim life began. After just a few days, there's nothing left at...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Genetic changes outside nuclear DNA suspected to trigger more than half of all cancers
03/25/2009 11:03:27 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 8 replies · 365+ views
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions via biologynews.net | March 24, 2009 | NA
A buildup of chemical bonds on certain cancer-promoting genes, a process known as hypermethylation, is widely known to render cells cancerous by disrupting biological brakes on runaway growth. Now, Johns Hopkins scientists say the reverse process -- demethylation -- which wipes off those chemical bonds may also trigger more than half of all cancers. One potential consequence of the new research is that demethylating drugs now used to treat some cancers may actually cause new cancers as a side effect. "It's much too early to say for certain, but some patients could be at risk for additional primary tumors, and...
Climate
Hungry Crustaceans Eat Climate Change Experiment
03/26/2009 2:56:24 PM PDT · Posted by Lorianne · 40 replies · 836+ views
Slashdot | March 26, 2009
Earlier this month, an expedition fertilized 300 square kilometers of the Atlantic Ocean with six metric tons of dissolved iron. This triggered a bloom of phytoplankton, which doubled their biomass within two weeks by taking in carbon dioxide from the seawater. The dead phytoplankton were then expected to sink to the ocean bed, dragging carbon along with them. Instead they experiment turned into an example of how the food chain works as the bloom was eaten by a swarm of hungry copepods. The huge swarm of copepods were in turn eaten by larger crustaceans called amphipods, which are often eaten...
Man's contribution to climate change is negligible in geologic time
03/22/2009 1:15:11 AM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 26 replies · 656+ views
Examiner.com | March 21, 2009 | Lee Mossel
Most geologists, including those in the energy business, take a REALLY long view of the earth's history including global warming and cooling cycles. Within the framework of geologic time, i.e. the earth's history, man is a very late entry and relatively small contributor to climate changes. The current debate concerning global warming is well publicized. It features histrionic presentations of data on both sides of the issue usually by writers or politicians, with no scientific background, "interpreting" volumes of data gathered by true scientists. The arguments, for and against, have been going on for about 40 years. The earth is...
Prehistory and Origins
Orang-utan study suggests that upright walking may have started in the trees
03/25/2009 6:34:19 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 13 replies · 191+ views
Not Exactly Rocket Science 'blog | March 21, 2009 | Ed Yong
Walking on two legs, or bipedalism, immediately sets us apart form other apes. It frees our arms for using tools and weapons and is a key part of our evolutionary success. Scientists have put forward a few theories to explain how our upright gait evolved, but the 'savannah theory' is by far the most prolific... But this theory fails in the light of new fossils which push back the first appearance of bipedalism to a time before the forests thinned, and even before our ancestors split from those of chimpanzees. Very early hominins, including Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) and Millennium Man...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Clever as a Fox (genetic consequences of domesticating animals -- we're doing it to ourselves)
03/23/2009 1:53:09 PM PDT · Posted by LibWhacker · 36 replies · 820+ views
Geoff Milburn | 3/20/09 | Geoff Milburn
Sometimes we see things so often that we simply forget to ask "why are they like that?" For instance, let's take a closer look at domestic animals. Dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs - animals that we live with, and who couldn't live without us.Common Traits What do all these domestic animals have in common? Now this isn't a particularly subtle example, but that's kind of the point. You can see that all of these domestic animals have large white patches - they've lost pigment in their coats in some areas. Why do...
Hippity, Hoppity...
PHOTOS: Mountains fed Amazon's poison frog diversity
03/22/2009 6:49:33 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 20 replies · 708+ views
msnbc | March. 20, 2009 | Emily Sohn
The Amazon basin is well known for its wide variety of species, but the rainforest might owe some credit to the mountains as a source for that rich diversity. A new study found that populations of poison frogs made their way from the Andes to the Amazon about a dozen times over the last 10 million years. Scientists suspect that the mountains have long been supplying the jungle with other species of plants and animals, too.
PHOTOS: Coin-Size Frog Found -- One of World's Smallest
03/27/2009 1:52:52 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 11 replies · 401+ views
nationalgeographic | March 26, 2009
As the smallest known frog species in the world's second largest mountain range, this new amphibian is easy to miss. But scientists searching the Andes mountains' upper Cosnipata Valley in southern Peru, near Cusco, spotted the coin-size creature--a member of the Noblella genus--in the leaf litter of a cloud forest between 9,925 and 10,466 feet (3,025 and 3,190 meters). "The most distinctive character of the new species," scientists write in the February issue of the journal Copeia, "is its diminutive size." Females grow to 0.49 inch (12.4 millimeters) at most. Males make it to only 0.44 inch (11.1 millimeters). What's...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
10,000 cave paintings, pre-Incan cemetery and citadel found in Peru's Amazon jungle
03/25/2009 8:28:30 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 23 replies · 579+ views
Astigan | 24 Mar 2009 | Astigan
Archaeologists have discovered about 10,000 cave paintings dating back to more than 6,000 years, a pre-Incan cemetery and a citadel in Peru's Amazon region. 6,000 year old cave paintings Quirino Olivera, a Peruvian archaeologist working for the Andean country's jungle department of Amazons, has discovered about 10,000 cave paintings that are said to date back more that 6,000 years. The paintings were discovered in caves near the village of Tambolic, in the district of Jamalca, province of Utcubamba, writes Peruvian Times. Olivera said that most of the drawings show hunting scenes and were painted using red, brown, yellow and black...
Archaeoastronomy and Megaliths
Who's Afraid of the Mayan Calendar?
03/25/2009 7:23:15 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 44 replies · 725+ views
The London Free Press | March 25, 2009 | Thane Burnett
Did someone mention Doomsday? For those who miss the good old days of the easygoing 20th century, a shrill reminder of Y2K is back. At least the mounting fear that an upcoming date could be the death of us all. Late last week, Prof. John Beddington, the U.K. government's chief scientist, warned a sustainable development conference that a "perfect storm" of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources will land on the world's doorstep in 2030. But those souls who can't wait that long to panic, mark 2012 on your armageddon-out-of-here calendar. A growing number of books and blogs...
The Vikings
Sagas reveal Vikings were 'first oceanographers'
03/25/2009 2:07:14 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 19 replies · 443+ views
New Scientist | Mar. 24, 2009 | Eric Scigliano
OLD Kveldulf knew it was time to get out of Norway. He had pushed his luck by refusing to swear allegiance to Harald Tanglehair - a king not to be trifled with. When the king slew his son Thorolf, Kveldulf went berserk. He and his surviving son Skallagrim ambushed two of the king's emissaries, killing them and 50 companions, and fled to sea. Luckily, safer shores awaited them. This was the 9th century and Norsemen had lately begun to settle Iceland, a thousand kilometres to the west. As they sailed, though, father and son's ships became separated. Exhausted by his...
Faith and Philosophy
Paganism returns to the Holy Land .....
03/24/2009 1:03:00 PM PDT · Posted by TaraP · 12 replies · 436+ views
Haaretz | March 22nd, 2009
Like many other soldiers who took part in the Gaza operation, Omer, 20, occasionally took a few moments to pray, but he did not pray to the Lord of Israel. Omer considers himself pagan, and has sworn allegiance to three ancient gods. During combat, he says they appeared before him, giving him strength during the most arduous moments. Omer is still in the army, and therefore refused to be interviewed for this story. Yet he did say he belongs to a religion whose goal is to revive worship of ancient gods. In an online Hebrew-language paganism forum, Omer's accounts of...
Ancient Autopsies
Egypt unveils pharaonic 'brain drain' bed
03/25/2009 6:38:47 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 12 replies · 374+ views
Philipines Inquirer | March 19, 2009 | Agence France-Presse
Egyptian antiquities authorities on Thursday revealed an ancient pharaonic embalming bed unearthed from a mysterious tomb near Luxor used to prepare bodies for mummification more than 3,000 years ago. The wooden bed was painstakingly restored after being discovered in pieces in the KV-63 tomb in southern Egypt's famous Valley of the Kings, next to Tutankhamun's tomb, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said in a statement. The bed, featuring carved heads of a lion and a lioness at its foot, slopes downwards five centimeters (two inches) from head to toe to help drain bodies being prepared for mummification... Antiquities supremo Zahi...
Egypt
What Perfumes Did Ancient Egyptians Use? Researchers Aim To Recreate 3,500-year-old Scent
03/24/2009 6:59:05 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 32 replies · 422+ views
ScienceDaily | Wednesday, March 18, 2009 | Adapted from materials provided by University of Bonn
The Ancient Egyptians cherished their fragrant scents, too, as perfume flacons from this period indicate. In its permanent exhibition, Bonn University's Egyptian Museum has a particularly well preserved example on display. Screening this 3,500-year-old flacon with a computer tomograph, scientists at the university detected the desiccated residues of a fluid, which they now want to submit to further analysis. They might even succeed in reconstructing this scent... Pharaoh Hatshepsut... perfume is also presumably a demonstration of her power. "We think it probable that one constituent was frankincense -- the scent of the gods," Michael Höveler-Müller declares. This idea is not...
The Greeks
Greek fisherman nets 2,200-year-old bronze statue
03/23/2009 8:40:33 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 29 replies · 897+ views
Las Vegas Sun | Monday, March 23, 2009 | Associated Press
[paraphrased] The torso and right arm of a late 2nd century B.C. statue of a male rider wearing armor, tunic and a sheathed sword was brought up between the Aegean islands of Kos and Kalymnos.
Middle Ages...
Genius of medieval church builders rediscovered with a crucifix illuminated only twice a year
03/23/2009 6:50:18 AM PDT · Posted by NYer · 35 replies · 1,159+ views
World Mysteries | March 23, 2009
It is an unforgettable moment. As the sun traverses the sky its light is suddenly focused into an intense beam which illuminates a carving of Christ on the Cross. This is not a scene from an Indiana Jones film, however, but a stirring piece of visual synchronicity that dates from medieval times. At the spring and autumn equinox, the setting sun hits a window at Holy Trinity Church in Barsham, Suffolk, and illuminates the 5ft carving for four spellbinding minutes. The spectacle dates back to the 1300s, when the narrow window was built in the church tower, but it...
...and Renaissance
March 21, 2009 - 324th Birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach
03/21/2009 4:46:55 PM PDT · Posted by Pyro7480 · 57 replies · 550+ views
BBC (Wikipedia) | n/a | n/a
Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March 1685 [O.S. 21 March] -- 28 July 1750) was a German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, an unrivalled control of harmonic and motivic organisation in composition for diverse instrumentation, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France. Revered for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, Bach's works...
I Pay Thy Poverty, and Not Thy Will
17th century medical guide discovered in an attic
03/25/2009 6:29:55 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 33 replies · 487+ views
Daily Mail | March 4th, 2009 | unattributed
A handwritten book containing bizarre 17th century medical remedies including pike bones and dragon's blood is to go under the hammer tomorrow after spending more than 100 years buried in an attic. Written on fragile parchment bound between two pieces of thin card, the manuscript includes medical formulas as well as a variety of traditional recipes. Outlandish natural ingredients include ragwort, nightshade, venis turpentine, ferne roots, hoggs grease and the bizarrely-named 'earbagrace', which is probably Ambergris, a substance produced in the digestive system of sperm whales... The 64-page book is expected to fetch around £400 when it's auctioned at Bonhams...
The Framers
the 5th Amendment
03/22/2009 6:29:34 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 16 replies · 397+ views
Constitution of the United States, via Populist America et al | The Framers
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property...
Patrick Henry's Address To Congress
03/22/2009 7:20:34 AM PDT · Posted by Wpin · 23 replies · 967+ views God and Liberty | March 23rd, 1775 | Patrick Henry
No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope that it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen, if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part I consider it...
Early America
Bones may be from 19th-century gravesite[PA][Irish]
03/26/2009 2:29:20 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 8 replies · 246+ views
Philly | 25 Mar 2009 | Kristin E. Holmes
Clues to the mysterious deaths of 57 Irish immigrants came first from a secret file that had been locked in a vault until 1970. The men, who sailed from Ireland in 1832, arrived in Chester County to work on the railroad. They died about eight weeks later, most of cholera. Until the file was read six years ago by two brothers, both historians, the immigrants were the stuff mostly of legend and ghost tale. On Friday, another milestone in their story was found in East Whiteland Township. An archaeology research team based at Immaculata University in Chester County uncovered 90...
The Civil War
Southerners looking to share their Confederate holiday
03/21/2009 6:26:13 AM PDT · Posted by cowboyway · 991 replies · 5,863+ views
Hartford Courant | March 22, 2009 | Dahleen Glanton
ATLANTA -- In a cultural war that has pitted Old South against new, defenders of the Confederate legacy have opened a fresh front in their campaign to polish an image tarnished, they said, by people who do not respect Southern values. With the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States in 2011, efforts are under way in statehouses, small towns and counties across the South to push for proclamations or legislation promoting Confederate history.
The Party of Treason
Jimmy Carter: The Civil War Was 'Un-Christian'
03/24/2009 1:54:32 PM PDT · Posted by SkyDancer · 232 replies · 3,119+ views
US News | Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 11:06:08 am PDT | Ira Stoll
Here's the latest outrage from Jimmy Carter, the ex-President so many Americans love to hate: He claims the Civil War - which he calls, Southern-style, "The War Between the States" - was un-Christian and could have been avoided. The comments come in a new book, "In Lincoln's Hand: His Original Manuscripts With Commentary By Distinguished Americans." Carter comments on a passage by Lincoln in which Lincoln writes: "I am almost ready to say this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet." Carter writes that he finds the Lincoln writing "very...
Longer Perspectives
Charles Darwin's personal finances revealed in new find
03/22/2009 8:46:13 PM PDT · Posted by bruinbirdman · 19 replies · 543+ views
The Telegraph | 3/22/2009
Charles Darwin spent more money on expensive shoes than books while studying at Cambridge University, newly-discovered records show. Historians at Cambridge unearthed a series of six financial record books which reveal intriguing insights into the naturalist's day-to-day college life. They show that Darwin, who studied at Christ's College between 1828 and 1831, lived the life of a 19th century gentleman and paid people to carry out tasks such as stoking his fire and polishing his shoes. He also paid extra to buy vegetables to supplement his college meals, the records show. Darwin's college bills amounted to £636.0.91/2 over three years...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Bizarre Faces Carved Into Rock at Ute Valley Park
03/21/2009 10:26:50 AM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 25 replies · 812+ views
KOAA | Fri Mar 20, 2009 | Nicole Vandeputte
There's a bizarre sight in Ute Valley Park in Colorado Springs. One mans wants it explained. On two boulders, tucked in the park, are two faces. One isn't as easy to see, but the second is very clearly a face. Chuck Zukowski investigates the unknown. It's a hobby. He calls himself a UFO investigator, and attempts to explain away bizarre sights. He says the rocks could just be carvings from someone. The fun is looking beyond that. He says, "As a UFO investigator we always look at the 1% or 2% chance of what it could be." He didn't want...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Bigfoot Declassified: The Official Government Manual to Co-existing with the Now Documented Species
03/24/2009 2:41:05 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 23 replies · 662+ views
prnewswire | March 24 2009
In the new book "Bigfoot Declassified" by M.P. Raymond, life in America is beginning to change and the author takes us on a unique journey in a world where Bigfoot is real and becoming a part of American culture. Through modern secretive technology and the acquiring of several specimens, Bigfoot is now a documented species. This is the only approved government text that focuses on understanding and controlling the legendary creature. * Read harrowing stories of Bigfoot encounters throughout the world, and how this avalanche of information has overtaken man. See how it all started and why this government manual...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Amateur detectives fish for D.B. Cooper clues
03/24/2009 12:25:00 PM PDT · Posted by Dan B Cooper · 12 replies · 842+ views
oregonlive | Edward Walsh
Gary Larson looked out his window the other day and glimpsed perhaps the oddest scene he's seen in nearly 40 years of living beside the Little Washougal River in Clark County. There on the opposite bank stood a tall, bearded man, fishing pole in hand. Attached to his line was a bundle of $1 bills that he cast into the water and carefully watched as the river current washed over it. Larson was witnessing the latest chapter in the search for the elusive D.B. Cooper. Tom Kaye takes measurements along the banks of the Columbia River. Here he attempts to...
Pages
Researchers Focus on Weird Words
03/25/2009 11:49:00 AM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 19 replies · 341+ views
weau | Mar 24, 2009
After more than a century of tedious work, the end is finally near for a group of University of Wisconsin researchers. They're creating a regional dictionary, for the entire country and cataloging all of our similarities and our differences. It all started back in 1889, when the American Dialect Society began to write the Dictionary of American Regional English. Joan Houston Hall, the Chief Editor says, "there is nothing like it anywhere else." For eight decades, the project went virtually nowhere, until Professor Frederick Cassidy got involved. That's when the project picked up steam. "There will always be regional and...
British Isles
A Victorian Novel in Stone
03/24/2009 9:42:09 AM PDT · Posted by Lorianne · 6 replies · 193+ views
Wall Street Journal | March 21, 2009 | Rosemary Hill
The British Houses of Parliament stand beside the Thames, a symbol of London itself. Their silhouette, culminating in the great clock tower that houses Big Ben, is famous all over the world. Yet this is a building that came about by accident and whose precise authorship was for many years clouded by controversy. Its proper name is the Palace of Westminster, for it replaced the medieval palace, begun by Edward the Confessor, where from the 13th century onward Parliament habitually met. Over the years the old building was expanded, altered, filled in and divided until it had sprawled into a...
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Now Civ, why did you show me this fantastic bookstore? I may get lost in here and need a bailout!
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #246
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Egypt
"Beauty of the Nile" May Have Had Ancient Makeover
03/30/2009 11:08:28 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 19 replies · 467+ views
Reuters | Tue Mar 31, 2009
An ancient Egyptian queen regarded as the Mona Lisa of the ancient world may not have been such a looker after all, German scientists said on Tuesday. A delicately carved face in the limestone core of the famous bust of Nefertiti suggests the royal sculptor at the time may have smoothed creases around the mouth and fixed a bumpy nose to depict the "Beauty of the Nile" in a better light. The bust of Nefertiti was found in Egypt in 1912 at Tell el-Amarna, the short-lived capital of Nefertiti's husband, the Pharaoh Akhenaten. It is now housed in Berlin's Altes...
Nefertiti 'had two faces'
03/31/2009 8:25:44 PM PDT · Posted by bruinbirdman · 16 replies · 938+ views
The Telegraph | 3/31/2009
Researchers in Germany have uncovered a secret within one of ancient Egypt's most treasured artworks -- the bust of Nefertiti has two faces. A team led by Dr Alexander Huppertz, director of the Imaging Science Institute at Berlin's Charite hospital and medical school, discovered a detailed stone carving that differs from the external stucco face when they performed a computed tomography, or CT, scan on the bust. The findings, published in the monthly journal Radiology, are the first to show that the stone core of the statue is a highly detailed sculpture of the queen, Mr Huppertz said. Until we...
Climate
The African Source Of The Amazon's Fertlizer
11/18/2006 4:22:58 PM PST · Posted by blam · 22 replies · 738+ views
Science News Magazine | 11-18-2006 | Sid Perkins
In the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere, massive dust storms from the African Sahara waft southwest across the Atlantic to drop tons of vital minerals on the Amazon basin in South America. Now, scientists have pinpointed the source of many of those dust storms and estimated their dust content. ON THE WAY. Satellite photo shows dust (arrow), bound for the Amazon, blowing away from the Sahara's Bodèlè depression. NASA The Amazonian rainforest depends on Saharan dust for many of its nutrients, including iron and phosphorus (SN: 9/29/01, p. 200: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20010929/bob9.asp)....
Africa
Fancy shelling out £5,000 for a 400-year-old stale egg?
03/27/2009 7:33:58 PM PDT · Posted by Flavius · 21 replies · 673+ views
daily mail | 3/26/09 | daily mail
Its mother has long since departed the scene. As, indeed, has its entire species. But this giant egg is a great survivor. It was laid around 400 years ago by one of the great elephant birds of Madagascar. Before becoming extinct in the 17th century, the flightless creature was the world's largest bird, standing 10ft tall and weighing half a ton.
College of Unnatural Sciences
Classic behavioural studies flawed
03/27/2009 10:34:45 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 10 replies · 502+ views
Nature News | 24 March 2009 | John Whitfield
Nobel prizewinner took short cuts to show that the way gulls feed is instinctive. Herring gull chicks instinctively peck at red spots on their parents' bills to beg for food. One of the most famous experiments in biology isn't the solid piece of work it's usually portrayed as, say Dutch researchers who have replicated the study. Instead, it's more like an anecdote that became slightly more legendary each time its author retold the story.The work in question was done in 1947 by the Dutch researcher Niko Tinbergen on the begging behaviour of herring-gull chicks. At the time, the...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Single Gene Shapes the Toil of Ants' Fighter and Forager Castes
04/01/2009 10:48:46 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 2 replies · 227+ views
NY Times | March 31, 2009 | NICHOLAS WADE
Researchers studying the social behavior of ants have found that a single gene underlies both the aggressive behavior of the ant colony's soldiers and the food gathering behavior of its foraging caste. The gene is active in soldier ants, particularly in five neurons in the front of their brain, where it generates large amounts of its product, a protein known as PKG. The exact amount of the protein in the ants' brains is critical to their behavior. Low levels of PKG predispose both castes of ant to foraging; high levels make the soldiers fight and the foraging caste less interested...
British Isles
Victorian Flea Circuses: A Lost Art Form
04/01/2009 12:48:59 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 14 replies · 287+ views
DRB | 25 Mar 2009 | DRB
If you can make a flea cooperate with you, you're probably good at politics I have to say, this is probably the strangest subject we ever talked about on Dark Roasted Blend. However, it is such a rich showcase of miniature art and craftmanship, and the "wow" factor is there as well: A flea, with legs finer than a human hair, can pull up to 700 times its own weight! A flea can lift up to 60 times its own weight! A flea can jump over 150 times its own height! When we build circuses on Mars, or asteroids one...
Biology...
Big Blobs Change View of Evolution (Yes- Ted Kennedy next stage in man's development)
03/28/2009 1:16:33 PM PDT · Posted by puffer · 27 replies · 508+ views
Yahoo | 3-27-09 | Sarah Hoffman
The team collected specimens and identified the creatures as giant protozoans, Gromia sphaerica, each one a single large cell with an organic shell, or "test." When cleaned of sediment, the test feels like grape skin, but squishier, Matz says. Surprisingly, the tracks on the Bahamian seafloor resemble grooves found in sedimentary rocks formed as long as 1.8 billion years ago. The ancient grooves, bisected by a low ridge, had constituted the only evidence that multicellular, bilaterally symmetrical animals, such as worms, might have evolved so early in Earth's history. Matz's discovery [of modern tracks apparently left by G. sphaerica] suggests...
...and Cryptobiology
Russian scientists use Google maps to find yeti
03/30/2009 12:48:26 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 47 replies · 876+ views
newsfromrussia | 25.03.2009
The authorities of the Russian town of Kemerovo arranged a special expedition to find the yeti habitat which was discovered by Google maps. Recently there have been more than 20 claims from the local hunters who said they had seen strange creatures in the forests. These creatures resembled yeti. After the claims from the local hunters Kemerovo authorities decided to create the team of scientists for yeti searches. The expedition turned to be successful. Scientists managed to find "fresh' yeti footprints in the Azassky cave. Scientists found two identical yeti footprints. One of them was left on the rock and...
April Foolery
Strange Discovery on Table Mountain
04/01/2009 9:35:14 AM PDT · Posted by OneVike · 8 replies · 1,065+ views
Post Scripts, Chico Enterprise Record | 4/1/09 | Jack Lee
Strange Discovery on Table MountainJack Lee Mark Filcher woke up early in the morning, had a shower, put on his jeans and tee shirt and downed a strong cup of hot black coffee, as he prepared for another day at his pit mine. But, this one particular day would differ from all the rest in a most unusual and significant way. Mark owns a 12.5 acre parcel on Table Mt., where he's done some prospecting with modest results for the last 23 months. And he was back at work last Monday, scratching at the ground in his big yellow John...
Paleontology
'Supersize' lions roamed Britain
03/31/2009 11:38:03 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 62 replies · 1,048+ views
bbc.co | 31 March 2009
Giant lions were roaming around Britain, Europe and North America up to 13,000 years ago, scientists from Oxford University have found. Remains of giant cats previously discovered were thought to be a species of jaguar or tiger but after DNA analysis they were proved to be lions.
Anatolia
Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden? (Archeological find in Turkey)
03/31/2009 3:14:10 PM PDT · Posted by springtime4hillary · 51 replies · 1,920+ views
Mail UK | 3-05-09 | Tom Knox
Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University. David Lewis-Williams, professor of archaeology at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, says: 'Gobekli Tepe is the most important archaeological site in the world.' Some go even further and say the site and its implications are incredible. As Reading University professor Steve Mithen says: 'Gobekli Tepe is too extraordinary for my mind to understand.' So what is it that has energised and astounded the sober world of academia? The site of Gobekli Tepe...
The Greeks
The Tunnel of Samos (Over 1000 Meters Sixth Century BC)
04/03/2009 4:45:40 PM PDT · Posted by raybbr · 7 replies · 384+ views
Cal Tech Engineering and Science | N/A | Tom M. Apostol
One of the greatest engineering achievements of ancient times is a water tunnel, 1,036 meters (4,000 feet) long, excavated through a mountain on the Greek island of Samos in the sixth century B.C. It was dug through solid limestone by two separate teams advancing in a straight line from both ends, using only picks, hammers, and chisels. This was a prodigious feat of manual labor. The intellectual feat of determining the direction of tunneling was equally impressive. How did they do this? No one knows for sure, because no written records exist. When the tunnel was dug, the Greeks had...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Bent tectonics (How Hawaii was bumped off)
04/03/2009 1:11:37 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 16 replies · 430+ views
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München | Mar. 4, 2009 | Nein known
More than 80 undersea volcanoes and a multitude of islands are dotted along the Hawaii-Emperor seamount chain like pearls on a necklace. A sharp bend in the middle is the only blemish. The long-standing explanation for this distinctive feature was a change in direction of the Pacific oceanic plate in its migration over a stationary hotspot -- an apparently unmoving volcano deep within the earth. According to the results of an international research group, of which LMU Munich geophysicist Professor Hans-Peter Bunge was a member, however, the hotspot responsible for the Hawaii-Emperor seamount chain was not fixed. Rather it had...
Sunken Civilizations
Discovered: A sunken island, an Indian Ocean Atlantis?
04/03/2009 12:26:58 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 22 replies · 838+ views
groundviews | April Fools Day 2009 | Banyan News Reporters
Marine archaeologists have just discovered evidence of a large submerged landmass southeast of Sri Lanka. They believe it could be a legendary lost island closely linked to the culture and history of Sri Lankan people. The landmass is estimated to be between 450,000 and 475,000 square kilometres, which is about seven times the total land area of Sri Lanka. "This could well be the long lost island of Irisiyawa, which is euphemistically mentioned in our chronicles and hinted at in the writings of Greek historians," said Dr Godwin Samarawickrama, a maritime historian at the Indian Ocean Institute based in Melacca,...
PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
America's Nazca lines
04/04/2009 3:20:54 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 4 replies · 282+ views
Philip Coppens | 04 Apr 2009 | Philip Coppens
Along the Colorado River, a number of geoglyphs are carved out of the desert floor that are on par with the mysterious markings in the Peruvian desert near Nazca. However, the American "intaglios" are far less famous. The intaglios near Blythe, along the Colorado River along the California-Arizona border are the American equivalent of the Peruvian Nazca lines. Though never promoted as the airport for extraterrestrial beings, here are nevertheless the same geometric shapes, animals and humans, etched in the soil and best -- and some of them only -- visible from the sky. Geoglyphs can be found in a...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
VIDEO: Leonardo da Vinci Portrait Found?
04/03/2009 2:40:54 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 16 replies · 598+ views
nationalgeographic | April 3, 2009
A medieval historian in Italy found what is believed to be a portrait, hidden beneath another painting, of Leonardo da Vinci.
The Civil War
Getting Right with Lincoln: Why Lincoln's conservative critics are wrong
02/01/2002 1:42:15 PM PST · Posted by Jeff Smith · 699 replies · 1,226+ views
The Claremont Institute | 2/21/01 | Charles R. Kesler
The ideological hangover after Presidents' Day weekend is wicked, especially for conservatives, who in the cold light of the workweek have to make peace with all the intemperate things they said, and read, over the holiday. On a weekend that equally honors George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Bill Clinton, several contributors to an NRO symposium chose to complain about -- Abe Lincoln. I know it seemed like fun at the time ... but may I offer some sober second thoughts, along with the aspirin and ice water? Conservatives have been ambivalent about Lincoln for a long time, in fact, for as ...
This Day in Civil War History April 1, 1865 Battle of Five Forks
04/01/2009 6:10:38 AM PDT · Posted by mainepatsfan · 43 replies · 484+ views
History.com | April 1, [no year]
April 1, 1865 Battle of Five Forks Confederate General Robert E. Lee's supply line into Petersburg, Virginia, is closed when Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant collapse the end of Lee's lines around Petersburg. The Confederates suffer heavy casualties, and the battle triggered Lee's retreat from Petersburg as the two armies began a race that would end a week later at Appomattox Court House. For nearly a year, Grant had laid siege to Lee's army in an elaborate network of trenches that ran from Petersburg to the Confederate capital at Richmond, 25 miles north. Lee's hungry army slowly dwindled...
Civil War Cannonball Spent 30 Years as a Doorstop
04/01/2009 5:23:10 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 17 replies · 524+ views
Leighton Buzzard | 17 March 2009
A Civil War cannonball spent 30 years as a doorstop, until historians linked it to other Civil War finds in the town. Former postman David Windmill, 62, found the ball when he was working at the post office in Church Square more than three decades ago. He said: "The old post office was being pulled down and they were putting a new sorting office in. One of the builders found it and was going to throw it away, but I stepped in and took it home, and it's been a doorstop since then. "At a Christmas party, I got talking...
Early America
Celebrating 400th Anniversary of Henry Hudson's Historic Voyage
03/29/2009 6:35:03 AM PDT · Posted by Pharmboy · 23 replies · 497+ views
NY Times | March 29, 2009 | SAM ROBERTS
A 17th-century navigation journal at the Museum of the City of New York. Looking for something to celebrate? How about the commemoration of New York's 400th birthday beginning next Saturday? On April 4, 1609, the English navigator Henry Hudson left Amsterdam harbor to search for a shortcut to Asia. Hudson's instructions from the Dutch East India Company were to sail east, as he had on two earlier voyages that were thwarted by Arctic ice. Instead, inspired by insights gleaned from...
The Great Falls: Power for Another Revolution?
03/28/2009 7:25:05 AM PDT · Posted by Pharmboy · 27 replies · 615+ views
NY Times | March 29, 2009 | JACQUELINE MROZ
Mayor Josè Torres of Paterson [NJ] hopes the park will revitalize his city. More than 200 years ago, during the Revolutionary War, Alexander Hamilton was traveling with Gen. George Washington when the men stopped with their entourage to have a meal in front of a magnificent waterfall. As they ate and drank, the precocious 23-year-old Hamilton saw in the power of the falls an...
Pandemics, Plagues, Epidemics, the Sniffles
Mass grave found in downtown Montgomery
04/01/2009 6:20:56 PM PDT · Posted by GSP.FAN · 29 replies · 1,436+ views
KLTV 7 | March 31, 2009 | KLTV 7
MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - Construction workers at a city lot in downtown Montgomery stumbled upon numerous bodies Tuesday morning.
The Framers
the 4th Amendment
03/30/2009 5:33:28 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 25 replies · 385+ views
Constitution of the United States, via Populist America et al | The Framers
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Dagger makers survive fall of empire, struggle with GAM eviction notice
03/31/2009 2:56:28 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 7 replies · 282+ views
Jordan Times | 1/1/09 | Taylor Luck
A traditional Jordanian art may die out when the Abu Mohaisen family close down their shop in downtown Amman next week. For over one-hundred years, the family has produced daggers, or shibriyas, decorative knives in traditional bedouin and Hashemite styles, a longstanding Jordanian symbol of power, grace and resilience. "Back in the day, you weren't a man if you weren't wearing one. It is a symbol for all of Jordan," said Abed Abu Mohaisen, who along with his five brothers spent their entire lives making the blades. The 44-year-old said the trade is more than a family business, rather a...
Longer Perspectives
The lingering stench: airing Stalin's archives
04/03/2009 6:20:25 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 47 replies · 841+ views
The New Criterion | March 2009 | Gary Saul Morson
Inside the Stalin Archives by Jonathan Brent. As he wanders through the streets of St. Petersburg contemplating murder, the hero of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment notices "that special Petersburg stench" which seems to be everywhere. Somehow, that stench constitutes the atmosphere in which lethal and repulsive ideas arise.When Jonathan Brent arrived in Moscow, he detected the same stench. It was 1992, just after the fall of the Soviet Union, and Brent seized a unique opportunity that, if not for him, would doubtless have been missed. He came to negotiate a deal to publish sensitive and secret documents from the Central...
Pages
Hitler's Endgame (A historian brings his trilogy on the Third Reich to a close)
04/03/2009 6:20:22 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 6 replies · 344+ views
Wall Street Journal | APRIL 3, 2009 | MOIRA G. WEIGEL
Richard J. Evans's new book "The Third Reich at War," which covers 1939 through 1945, is the final installment of his critically acclaimed history of Nazi Germany. Mr. Evans, who holds the Regius Professorship of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, began his trilogy when he decided that there was no survey of the Nazi era that he could recommend. Like his previous books, "The Coming of the Third Reich" (2003) and "The Third Reich in Power" (2005), "The Third Reich at War" incorporates a wide range of primary sources, from the personal papers of German generals to the...
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #247
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Climate
Laser mapping may help solve the mystery of the Mima Mounds
04/06/2009 10:06:39 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 16 replies · 557+ views
Seattle Times | 03 Apr 2009 | Sandi Doughton
Mima Mounds: Scientists say new laser maps suggest glaciers as the architects of the mysterious humps, but one gopher proponent holds firm. From goofy to erudite, more than three dozen theories have attempted to explain the origins of grassy mounds that dot the prairies of Southwest Washington. The latest twist won't settle the debate, but it casts the mysterious hummocks in a different light. Laser light, that is. Scientists used airborne laser surveys to create topographic maps that reveal new details about the so-called Mima Mounds scattered across lowlands south of Olympia and Tacoma. The technique fires 23,000 pulses a...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
STEREO Hunts for Remains of an Ancient Planet near Earth
04/10/2009 4:04:43 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 28 replies · 381+ views
NASA | Apr. 9, 2009 | Dr. Tony Phillips
April 9, 2009: NASA's twin STEREO probes are entering a mysterious region of space to look for remains of an ancient planet which once orbited the Sun not far from Earth. If they find anything, it could solve a major puzzle--the origin of the Moon. "The name of the planet is Theia," says Mike Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's a hypothetical world. We've never actually seen it, but some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago -- and that it collided with Earth to form the Moon." Right: An artist's concept of one of the...
Rome and Italy
Digital images reveal the secrets of Roman painting
04/10/2009 7:16:10 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 344+ views
University of Southampton | April 3, 2009 | Joyce Lewis
The delicately painted statue, which was discovered in the ancient ruins of Herculaneum in 2006 and believed to depict an Amazon Warrior, is now the subject of a joint restoration project by the University of Southampton, the University of Warwick, and the Herculaneum Conservation Project. Highly sophisticated digital imaging is vital for the recording, subsequent analysis and restoration of cultural heritage material... A specially-designed rig, camera structure, and associated custom software was developed in the School of Electronics and Computer Science by Dr Kirk Martinez and the team in the Mechanical Workshop to enable very fast acquisition of PTM data,...
Central Asia
Beneath the ruins of Genghis Khan's capital city in Central Asia, archaeologists discovered artif...
04/10/2009 5:49:14 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 10 replies · 219+ views
Smithsonian | March 25, 2009 | Abigail Tucker
Of all the wonders in The Palace of the Great Khan, the silver fountain most captivated the visiting monk. It took the shape of "a great silver tree, and at its roots are four lions of silver, each with a conduit through it, and all belching forth white milk of mares," wrote William of Rubruck, a Franciscan friar who toured the Mongol capital, Khara Khorum, in 1254. When a silver angel at the top of the tree trumpeted, still more beverages spouted out of the pipes: wine, clarified mare's milk, a honey drink, rice mead -- take your pick... in...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Dog Sacrifices Found in Medieval Hungarian Village
04/10/2009 6:12:00 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 14 replies · 261+ views
National Geographic News | April 6, 2009 | Charles Q. Choi
Ten dogs, including the one above, buried in pits and four puppy skeletons in pots buried upside down are among the dozens of ritually sacrificed dogs recently found in a medieval Hungarian village, researchers announced in April 2009. [Photograph courtesy Gyorgy Terei]
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Clues to ancient invasion in DNA [ Scotland, Ireland, Picts, Vikings ]
04/06/2009 10:00:13 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 23 replies · 477+ views
BBC | Thursday, April 2, 2009 | unattributed
Scientific evidence of an ancient invasion of Scotland from Ireland may have been uncovered by DNA techniques. Researchers from Edinburgh University said studies of Scots living on Islay, Lewis, Harris and Skye found strong links with Irish people. Early historical sources recount how the Gaels came from Ireland about 500 AD and conquered the Picts in Argyll. Scientists said the study was the first demonstration of a significant Irish genetics component in Scots' ancestry. The research, which features work by geneticist Dr Jim Wilson, a specialist in population genetics, is being featured in programmes on Gaelic television channel BBC Alba....
Scotland Yet
Scotland's most ancient home found -- at 14,000 years old
04/10/2009 6:12:07 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 26 replies · 582+ views
The Scotsman | Apr. 10, 2009 | Jenny Haworth
AMATEUR archaeologists have uncovered evidence of Scotland's oldest human settlement, dating back 14,000 years. The team dug up tools that have been shown to date from the end of the last Ice Age. It is the first time there has been proof that humans lived in Scotland during the upper paleolithic period.
Prehistory and Origins
Bloody Stone Age: war in the Neolithic
04/10/2009 8:28:32 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 12 replies · 267+ views
Current Archaeology | April/May 2009 | unattributed
Then there are projectile wounds. This category is particularly unequivocal where fragments of arrowheads remain embedded in bone, although recent experimental research has revealed that it is sometimes possible to recognise such injuries even where the 'murder weapon' is no longer present. In a recent research project examining evidence of cranial trauma, Mick Wysocki, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Central Lancashire, and Rick Schulting, Lecturer in Scientific and Prehistoric Archaeology from Oxford University, produced a conservative estimate (based on the view that some examples might be misdiagnosed) that 26 out of 350 crania...
And for dessert, lady fingers
Germany's stone age cannibalism
04/06/2009 10:05:44 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 327+ views
The Guardian | Wednesday, March 25th 2009 | Pierre Le Hir (LeMonde)
All these human remains were found at the stone-age site at Herxheim, near Speyer. About 7,000 years ago farmers, who grew wheat and barley, raised pigs, sheep and cattle, settled here, building a village of four to 12 houses, the post holes of which have survived. At the time the first farmer-stockherders were moving into Europe, supplanting their hunter-gatherer predecessors. The Herxheim settlers came from the north (between 5,400 and 4,950BC) and belonged to the Linear Pottery culture... during a rescue dig just before the area was developed as an industrial estate, in some of the ditches archaeologists uncovered tens...
Australia and the Pacific
Shells Offer New Take on Human Evolution
04/06/2009 8:35:31 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 206+ views
Discovery News | March 30, 2009 | Anna Salleh
To understand human development, archaeologists tend to analyze either fossilized human bones or stone tools. In Africa and Europe stone tools are seen to increase in complexity over the last few million years. But in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Guinea, stone tools don't appear to develop until the last 4000 years. Katherine Szabo of the University of Wollongong in Australia has just taken up this issue, saying it "bears on questions of our history as a species." Szabo explained the lack of stone tools found in these regions has led some researchers to conclude that this region...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Early Agriculture Left Traces In Animal Bones
04/06/2009 9:47:28 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 1 replies · 120+ views
EurekAlert! | March 23, 2009 | Seth Newsome
The dog and pig bones, as well as bones of other animals analyzed in the study, come from an archaeological site in a region of northwest China considered to be a possible early center of East Asian agriculture. Chemical traces within the dog bones suggest a diet high in millet, a grain that wild dogs are unlikely to eat in large quantities, but that was a staple of early agricultural societies in northwest China. "If the dogs were consuming that much millet, their human masters were likely doing the same," says Seth Newsome, a coauthor on the study and a...
Neandertals / Neanderthals
Neandertal cannibalism? Maybe not
04/06/2009 9:23:50 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 14 replies · 344+ views
60 Second Science Blog, Scientific American | April 2, 2009 | Kate Wong
a new study suggests that the nicks seem to be the result of much more recent handiwork. Paleoanthropologist and archaeologist Jˆrg Orschiedt of the University of Hamburg in Germany reported yesterday at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society here that cut marks in the Krapina fossils he studied are randomly distributed and did not necessarily occur in spots that would permit de-fleshing (such as where muscles attach to bones). What's more, the scratches varied -- some were shallow and others deep. An alternative explanation to cannibalism dawned on him as he sifted through photos of the bones... he came...
Homo Heidelbergensis
Early humans may have cared for disabled young
04/06/2009 9:54:00 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 28 replies · 403+ views
New Scientist | March 31, 2009 | Ewen Callaway
A recently unearthed ancient human skull shows signs of a disorder that might have caused mental retardation. This offers the earliest evidence that ancestors of Homo sapiens did not abandon young with severe birth defects. The 500,000-year-old skeleton belonged to a five to 12-year-old child who suffered from craniosynostosis. The rare congenital condition occurs when two of the flat bones that make up the skull fuse together along their margins (sutures) too early during fetal development, hindering brain growth. Spanish researchers discovered the first pieces of the skull near Atapuerca, Spain, in 2001, but they only recently pieced enough of...
Faith and Philosophy
Did Early Man Have a Soul?
04/09/2009 8:33:10 AM PDT · Posted by GodGunsGuts · 61 replies · 985+ views
CEH | April 8, 2009
Some recent discoveries are surprising paleoanthropologists by how much some early ancestors seem -- well, human. We're talking about ancestors half a million years old in the evolutionary scheme. They were supposed to be prior to Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals, but they seem to exhibit intelligence and compassion. A report on New Scientist inferred that these early humans cared for the disabled. The skull of a child found in Spain suggests it was mentally retarded. To be able to live to age 12 indicates its parents or the social group...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Was a 'Mistress Of The Lionesses' a king in ancient Canaan?
04/10/2009 5:57:39 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 212+ views
PhysOrg.com | April 6th, 2009 | Tel Aviv University
The legend is that the great rulers of Canaan, the ancient land of Israel, were all men. But a recent dig by Tel Aviv University archaeologists at Tel Beth-Shemesh uncovered possible evidence of a mysterious female ruler... Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman... have uncovered an unusual ceramic plaque of a goddess in female dress, suggesting that a mighty female "king" may have ruled the city. If true, they say, the plaque would depict the only known female ruler of the region. The plaque itself depicts a figure dressed as royal male figures and deities once appeared in Egyptian...
The Conquest
Archaeological discovery in Jordan valley: Enormous 'foot-shaped' enclosures
04/06/2009 8:01:57 AM PDT · Posted by ConservativeMind · 12 replies · 1,048+ views
PhysOrg.com | April 6, 2009 | University of Haifa
"The 'foot' structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the People of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot," said archaeologist Prof. Adam Zertal of the University of Haifa, who headed the excavating team that exposed five compounds in the shape of an enormous "foot", that it were likely to have been used at that time to mark ownership of territory. On the eve of the Passover holiday, researchers from the University of Haifa reveal an exceptional and exciting archaeological discovery...
Archaeological discovery enormous foot-shaped enclosures in Jordan
04/07/2009 12:32:56 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 12 replies · 595+ views
University of Haifa | 06 Apr 2009 | University of Haifa
"The "foot' structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the People of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot," said archaeologist Prof. Adam Zertal of the University of Haifa, who headed the excavating team that exposed five compounds in the shape of an enormous "foot", that it were likely to have been used at that time to mark ownership of territory. On the eve of the Passover holiday, researchers from the University of Haifa reveal an exceptional and exciting archaeological discovery...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Turin Shroud 'could be genuine as carbon-dating was flawed' (Dying Scientist Reverses Self)
04/10/2009 4:24:42 PM PDT · Posted by GOPGuide · 17 replies · 646+ views
UK Daily Telegraph | 10 Apr 2009 | Stephen Adams
New evidence suggests the Turin Shroud could have been the cloth in which Jesus was buried, as experiments that concluded it was a medieval fake were flawed. Radio carbon dating carried out in 1988 was performed on an area of the relic that was repaired in the 16th century, according to Ray Rogers, who helped lead the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STRP). At the time he argued firmly that the shroud, which bears a Christlike image, was a clever forgery. snip "Sue and Joe were right. The worst possible sample for carbon dating was taken. "It consisted of different...
Knights Templar hid the Shroud of Turin, says Vatican
04/05/2009 12:20:47 PM PDT · Posted by BuckeyeTexan · 139 replies · 3,493+ views
Times Online | 04/05/2009 | Richard Owen
Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated The Holy Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said today in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic's missing years. The Knights Templar, an order which was suppressed and disbanded for alleged heresy, took care of the linen cloth, which bears the image of a man with a beard, long hair and the wounds of crucifixion, according to Vatican researchers. The Shroud, which is kept in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral, has long been revered as the shroud in which Jesus was...
Knights Templar hid the Shroud of Turin, says Vatican
04/05/2009 10:32:05 PM PDT · Posted by malkee · 12 replies · 659+ views
Times Online | April 6 2009 | Richard Owen
Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated The Holy Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said yesterday in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic's missing years. The Knights Templar, an order which was suppressed and disbanded for alleged heresy, took care of the linen cloth, which bears the image of a man with a beard, long hair and the wounds of crucifixion, according to Vatican researchers. The Shroud, which is kept in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral, has long been revered as the shroud in which Jesus was...
Base on Balls
Jesus played cricket as a child
08/09/2008 9:09:34 PM PDT · Posted by afraidfortherepublic · 44 replies · 130+ views
The Times of India | 8-10-08
MELBOURNE: It is possible that cricket, a game venerated all over the Commonwealth, is older than currently thought. In fact, Jesus may have played the game (or a similar bat-and-ball combination) as a child, according to an ancient Armenian manuscript. Long before the English launched cricket some 300 years ago, similar games were being played as early as the 8th century in the Punjab region, Derek Birley writes in his Social History of English Cricket. But an Armenian scholar says there is good reason to believe that similar games were played in the Middle East long before that time. Dr...
College of Unnatural Sciences
Modern life's pressures may be hastening human evolution (Human Evolution Speeding Up)
04/08/2009 6:19:32 PM PDT · Posted by GOPGuide · 51 replies · 802+ views
McClatchy | April 8, 2009 | Robert S. Boyd
snip It's even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer able to breed with our own species, Homo sapiens. "Someday in the far distant future, enough genetic changes might have occurred so that future populations could not interbreed with the current one,'' Sussman said in an e-mail message. snip It's also the topic of a new book, "The 10,000 Year Explosion,'' by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. "For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the...
Humans could evolve into all-new species
04/10/2009 1:57:18 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 47 replies · 556+ views
The Times of India | 10 Apr 2009
Human beings are not just evolving, the whole process has been put on the fast track by our genes responding to rapid changes in the world around us. The pressures of modern life may be speeding up the pace of human evolution, some anthropologists think. Nowadays, the idea that "human evolution is a continuing process is widely accepted among anthropologists", said Robert Wald Sussman, the editor of the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in St Louis. It's even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Chemical reaction that explains the appeal of the bacon sandwich (Scientific Breakthrough!)
04/06/2009 7:23:17 PM PDT · Posted by GOPGuide · 109 replies · 2,338+ views
Daily Telegraph | April 06 2009 | Daily Telegraph
It is a simple pleasure for millions of hungry Britons but researchers have uncovered the science behind the enduring appeal of the bacon sandwich. A complex chemical interaction in the meat is what produces the winning combination of taste and smell in a bacon buttie, according to an expert. The reaction between amino acids in the bacon and reducing sugars in the fat is what provides the simple snack with its appeal, according to Elin Roberts, science communications manager at the Centre for Life education centre in Newcastle. She explained that the chemical changes that take place when the bacon...
Egypt
The King Herself [ the pharaoh Hatshepsut ]
04/05/2009 7:42:11 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 460+ views
National Geographic | April 2009 | Chip "Brindle" Brown
In 1903 the renowned archaeologist Howard Carter had found Hatshepsut's sarcophagus in the 20th tomb discovered in the Valley of the Kings -- KV20. The sarcophagus, one of three Hatshepsut had prepared, was empty. Scholars did not know where her mummy was or whether it had even survived the campaign to eradicate the record of her rule during the reign of her co-regent and ultimate successor, Thutmose III, when almost all the images of her as king were systematically chiseled off temples, monuments, and obelisks... Zahi Hawass, head of the Egyptian Mummy Project and secretary general of the Supreme Council...
Pages
BookCrossing (free book exchange)
04/10/2009 9:02:29 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 164+ views
BookCrossing.com | unknown | unattributed
Welcome to BookCrossing, where 761,808 people in over 130 countries come to share their passion for books with the world. Where books take on a life of their own. How? It's easy. Simply click on the link below and sign up for free in less than 1 minute-- that's it! BookCrossing is earth-friendly, and gives you a way to share your books, clear your shelves, and conserve precious resources at the same time. Through our own unique method of recycling reads, BookCrossers give life to books. A book registered on BookCrossing is ready for adventure. Leave it on a...
Anatolia
Turkey: The Mediterranean at half the price
04/06/2009 11:57:18 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 326+ views
Telegraph | April 3, 2009 | Cassandra Jardine
World War Eleven
Australian library workers uncover original Schindler's list
04/06/2009 7:22:00 AM PDT · Posted by PotatoHeadMick · 12 replies · 383+ views
Daily Mail (UK) | 6th April 2009 | Mail Foreign Service
A list of Jewish people saved by Oskar Schindler that inspired the novel and Oscar-winning film has been found in a Sydney library. The list, which contains the names of 801 Jews saved in the Holocaust by the businessman, was found in a box belonging to author Thomas Keneally. The list was among the author's manuscript materials which he used to create the book Schindler's Ark. Keneally's book went on to become a major motion picture, Schindler's List, starring Liam Neeson as Schindler and Ralph Fiennes as the head of an SS-run camp The 13-page list, a carbon typescript copy...
Early America
What's so important about April 19, 1775 (history lesson)
04/02/2009 9:18:45 PM PDT · Posted by Neil E. Wright · 26 replies · 872+ views
Project APPLESEED website | UNKNOWN
What's so important about April 19,l 1775 Why April 19, 1775?The day prior, an “unimpeachable source” (believed to be British General Gage's American-born wife) informed Dr. Joseph Warren that British troops would deploy for Concord the night of April 18, in order to seize Colonial military supplies believed to be stored there. This wasn't the first time they had done so -- in September of the previous year they had seized 250 barrels of gunpowder from the Massachusetts Provincial Powder House in Charlestown. The route the British planned to take was not initially known: they might take boats from Boston to...
The Framers
the 3rd Amendment
04/05/2009 7:01:38 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 8 replies · 679+ views
Constitution of the United States, via Populist America et al | The Framers
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
end of digest #247 20090411
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #248
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Neandertals / Neanderthals
Three subgroups of Neanderthals identified
04/15/2009 4:53:54 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 23 replies · 525+ views
Live Science | April 14, 2009 | Clara Moskowitz
We tend to think of Neanderthals as one species of cavemen-like creatures, but now scientists say there were actually at least three different subgroups of Neanderthals. Using computer simulations to analyze DNA sequence fragments from 12 Neanderthal fossils, researchers found that the species can be separated into three, or maybe four, distinct genetic groups.
Africa
Ancestors Of African Pygmies And Neighboring Farmers Separated Around 60,000 Years Ago
04/17/2009 1:05:22 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 19 replies · 200+ views
ScienceDaily | April 11, 2009 | Public Library of Science
All African Pygmies, inhabiting a large territory extending west-to-east along Central Africa, descend from a unique population who lived around 20,000 years ago, according to an international study led by researchers at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. The research concludes that the ancestors of present-day African Pygmies and farmers separated ~60,000 years ago... Two groups of Pygmy populations live in the African rainforests: the "Western Pygmies" and the "Eastern Pygmies"... The researchers, led by Lluis Quintana-Murci, studied the genetic profile of twelve populations of Pygmies and neighboring farmers dispersed over the African continent, using sequence data from non-coding regions of...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Genes Show Limited Value in Predicting Diseases
04/16/2009 10:37:59 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 7 replies · 210+ views
NY Times | April 16, 2009 | NICHOLAS WADE
The era of personal genomic medicine may have to wait. The genetic analysis of common disease is turning out to be a lot more complex than expected. Since the human genome was decoded in 2003, researchers have been developing a powerful method for comparing the genomes of patients and healthy people, with the hope of pinpointing the DNA changes responsible for common diseases. This method, called a genomewide association study, has proved technically successful despite many skeptics' initial doubts. But it has been disappointing in that the kind of genetic variation it detects has turned out to explain surprisingly little...
Ancient Autopsies
Newly-found tomb mural depicts ancient Chinese medication
04/17/2009 1:11:12 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 4 replies · 121+ views
Hindu News Update Service | Wednesday, April 15, 2009 | Xinhua
A mural unearthed from an ancient tomb in the northwestern Chinese province of Shaanxi last week depicted how traditional Chinese medication was practised 1,000 years ago... Song Dynasty murals are not rare in and around the ancient Chinese capital Xi'an, but researcher Sun Bingjun at Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology said this was the first found to depict traditional Chinese medication, prevalent in China for nearly 5,000 years. The mural, about four meters square, had a man sitting on a chair, whom experts believed was the tomb owner... Two other men were sitting at the table, one of whom was...
China
Expert says terracotta army of servants, not warriors
04/17/2009 1:22:19 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 201+ views
Xinhua | Monday, April 13, 2009 | Wang Hongjiang (editor)
A Chinese professor is out with a theory that could turn one of the country's most important archeological discoveries on upside down. Liu Jiusheng at Shaanxi Normal University says the famed Terracotta Soldiers of Xi'an aren't soldiers at all -- they're royal servants and bodyguards, most likely modeled after high-ranking Qin dynasty officials. Most historians believe the 2,200-year-old clay statues buried near the emperor's tomb represent an army custom-made to guard him in the afterlife. But Liu argues ordinary soldiers weren't allowed to get close to the emperor, even in death. Furthermore, Liu says the figures stand at around 190 cm, much...
Egypt
Dig 'may reveal' Cleopatra's tomb
04/15/2009 6:43:13 PM PDT · Posted by re_tail20 · 10 replies · 277+ views
BBC | April 15, 2009 | BBC
Archaeologists are to search three sites in Egypt that they say may contain the tomb of doomed lovers Anthony and Cleopatra. Excavation at the sites, which are near a temple west of the coastal city of Alexandria, is due to begin next week. Teams working in the area said the recent discovery of tombs containing 10 mummies suggested that Anthony and Cleopatra might be buried close by.
Egyptians hope to find Cleopatra's tomb
04/15/2009 7:51:41 PM PDT · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · 8 replies · 235+ views
timesonline.co.uk | April 16, 2009 | Sheera Frenkel
Cleopatra and Mark Antony were immortalised as two of history's greatest lovers, but their final resting place has always been a mystery. Now archaeologists in Egypt are about to start excavating a site that they believe could conceal their tombs. Zahi Hawass, director of Egypt's Superior Council for Antiquities, said yesterday that there was evidence to suggest that Cleopatra and Mark Antony were buried together in the complex tunnel system underlying the Tabusiris Magna temple, 17 miles from the city of Alexandria. The dig, which begins next week, could reveal answers to the many myths surrounding the pair -- including...
Anatolia
Archaeologists Discover Temple That Sheds Light On So-called Dark Age
04/16/2009 2:23:43 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 12 replies · 571+ views
Science Daily | Apr. 16, 2009 | Unknown
The discovery of a remarkably well-preserved monumental temple in Turkey -- thought to be constructed during the time of King Solomon in the 10th/9th-centuries BCE -- sheds light on the so-called Dark Age. > Ancient sources -- such as the Homeric epics and the Hebrew Bible -- depict an era of widespread famine, ethnic conflict and population movement, most famously including the migrations of the Sea Peoples (or biblical Philistines) and the Israelites. This is thought to have precipitated a prolonged Dark Age marked by cultural decline and ethnic strife during the early centuries of the Iron Age. But recent...
Let's Have Jerusalem
The Power of Petra
04/15/2009 11:18:43 AM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 20 replies · 417+ views
Wall Street Journal | April 11, 2009 | Jamie James
No city ever made a more dramatic entrance. Petra, the capital of the ancient Nabataeans, in present-day Jordan, is accessible only by a chasm called the Siq, nearly a mile long. Its sandstone walls, gorgeously marbled in every vivid and delicate shade of red, pink and rose, occasionally veined in cobalt blue, rise more than 600 feet high. All monumental architecture, from the pyramids of Giza to the Empire State Building, acquires some of its power to inspire awe by making the visitor feel small; walking through the Siq leaves one feeling antlike. The chasm abruptly terminates in a small...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Evidence suggests ancient people were skilled horsemen [3rd m BC Iran]
04/17/2009 1:14:24 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 8 replies · 102+ views
Horsetalk | April 14, 2009 | unattributed
Archaeologists digging in northern Iran have unearthed evidence that the ancient people who lived there were skilled horsemen. Reports from Iran suggest studies of the pelvises and leg bones of skeletons recovered from excavations in the Gohar Tappeh region had taken on a special shape as a result of a lot of horse-riding. Ali Mahforouzi, who heads the archaeology team... noted that many horse statuettes, some shaped like drinking vessels, had been unearthed among the ruins of the area's religious monuments. The archaeological dig, comprising Iranian, German and Polish experts, is providing researchers with a rare opportunity to study human...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
The Search for the Solar System's Lost Planet
04/13/2009 12:21:37 PM PDT · Posted by Vaquero · 54 replies · 645+ views
yahoo/space.com | 4/13/09 | Clara Moskowitz
The solar system might once have had another planet named Theia, which may have helped create our own planet's moon. Now two spacecrafts are heading out to search for leftovers from this rumored sibling, which would have been destroyed when the solar system was still young. "It's a hypothetical world. We've never actually seen it, but some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago -- and that it collided with Earth to form the moon," said Mike Kaiser, a NASA scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland...
STEREO Hunts for Remains of an Ancient Planet near Earth...
04/15/2009 8:45:07 AM PDT · Posted by TaraP · 21 replies · 515+ views
NASA | April 9th, 2009
NASA's twin STEREO probes are entering a mysterious region of space to look for remains of an ancient planet which once orbited the Sun not far from Earth. If they find anything, it could solve a major puzzle -- the origin of the Moon. The name of the planet is Theia," says Mike Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's a hypothetical world. We've never actually seen it, but some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago -- and that it collided with Earth to form...
Incoming Asteroid Under Close Watch (in 2029)
04/13/2009 2:24:52 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 57 replies · 891+ views
Discovery | April 13, 2009 | Irene Klotz
April 13, 2009 -- Exactly 20 years from today, an asteroid about the size of a 25-story building will come closer to Earth than the networks of communications satellites orbiting the planet. The chance of an impact are extremely remote -- only about 1 in 45,000 -- but the asteroid, named Apophis, will be back. Analysis of the asteroid's orbit show it will return to Earth seven years later. Astronomers don't yet know if Apophis' second visit will be a rendezvous or a collision, as its orbit will be bent by Earth's gravity during the 2029 flyby.
Global Warming: The New Lysenkoism
An inconvenient film
04/11/2009 6:04:11 AM PDT · Posted by Scanian · 21 replies · 1,122+ views
FinancialPost.com (Canada) | April 11, 2009 | Peter Foster
Al Gore is about to feature in a new movie, but he's not going to like it very much. Titled Not Evil Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria, the film presents a devastating account of the shaky foundations and hefty price of Mr. Gore's brand of self-interested and hypocritical alarmism. Created by the Irish film making duo of Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney -- who made another excellent documentary about the "dark side of environmentalism" called Mine Your Own Business -- Not Evil provides the perfect rebuttal to Mr. Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Despite being chock a block...
Everyone Knows It's Windy
75 years later, peak feels 'Big Wind's' impact
04/12/2009 5:00:05 AM PDT · Posted by billorites · 29 replies · 783+ views
Manchester Union Leader | April 12, 2009 | LORNA COLQUHOUN
SARGENT'S PURCHASE -- On this date, a tremendous gust blew over the roof of New Hampshire, a huge breath of air created by a series of remarkable weather patterns merging over the summit of Mount Washington and huffing its way to a world record that remains unbroken 75 years later. "A lot of things came together on one day," said Mount Washington Observatory meteorologist Brian Clark, who has researched extensively what has become known simply as the "Big Wind." "This was a once-in-100-years event," Clark said. By early afternoon on April 12, 1934, the three observers at what was then...
Climate
Photo: Glacier "Bleeds" Proof of Million-Year-Old Life-Forms
04/16/2009 2:03:11 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 19 replies · 726+ views
nationalgeographic | April 16, 2009 | Mason Inman
Gushing from a glacier, rust-stained Blood Falls contains evidence that microbes have survived in prehistoric seawater deep under ice for perhaps millions of years, a new study says. The colony of microscopic life-forms may have been trapped when Antarctica's then advancing Taylor Glacier reached into the ocean 1.5 to 4 million years ago. What's more, the tiny organisms' feeding habits apparently give the falls their shocking color. Blood Falls, Scientists Jump For decades researchers have been intrigued by Blood Falls, which incongruously spills from one of the driest parts of Antarctica, the aptly named Dry Valleys. "The Dry Valleys are...
Million-Year-Old Microbe Colony Found Under Antarctic Ice
04/17/2009 5:49:00 AM PDT · Posted by SonOfDarkSkies · 32 replies · 517+ views
FoxNews.com | 4/17/2009 | Andrea Thompson
A living time capsule of sorts has been found buried under hundreds of feet of Antarctic ice -- a colony of microbes that have been sealed off from the rest of the world for more than 1.5 million years. The finding, detailed in the April 17 issue of the journal Science, could serve as a model for how life might survive on icy planets elsewhere in the galaxy. The microbes, which live without light or oxygen, were detected in meltwater flowing out from Taylor Glacier, one of the outlet glaciers of the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet in the otherwise...
Mammoth Told Me There'd Be Days Like These
Time to sequence the 'red and the dead'
04/14/2009 10:31:36 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 3 replies · 224+ views
Nature News | 14 April 2009 | Henry Nicholls
New projects could tackle the genomics of species both critically endangered and already extinct. On the first weekend in April, a couple of dozen leading molecular biologists, conservationists and museum curators gathered at Pennsylvania State University in University Park to brainstorm about ways of harnessing the power of the latest molecular sequencing techniques to conservation goals."The cost of genome sequencing is falling at an extraordinary rate," says workshop co-organizer Stephan Schuster of Penn State University, who was a driving force behind the 2008 sequencing of a woolly-mammoth genome, the first complete genome of an extinct animal. "Now it is possible...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Large Group of Orangutans Discovered (In Indonesia)
04/13/2009 8:49:00 AM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 8 replies · 289+ views
Gulf News | April 12, 2009
Conservationists have discovered a new population of orangutans in a remote, mountainous corner of Indonesia - perhaps as many as 2,000 - giving a rare boost to one of the world's most critically endangered great apes. A team surveying forests nestled between jagged, limestone cliffs on the eastern edge of Borneo island counted 219 orangutan nests, indicating a "substantial" number of the animals, said Erik Meijaard, a senior ecologist at the US-based The Nature Conservancy. "We can't say for sure how many," he said, but even the most cautious estimate would indicate "several hundred at least, maybe 1,000 or 2,000...
College of Unnatural Sciences
Bigfoot kin may have made tracks for sunny Arizona
04/12/2009 9:44:06 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 42 replies · 784+ views Apr. 3, 2009 | Clay Thompson
Today's question: When I was a kid in Phoenix in the early '60s, I spent a week every summer at a Boy Scout camp east of Pine, just below the Mogollon Rim. Sometimes late at night, around a campfire, the older scouts would regale us with tales of attacks on ranchers and campers by the "Mogollon Monster." Has anyone claimed to have seen hairy ape-men in Arizona recently? The Mogollon Monster is Arizona's version of Bigfoot. It supposedly lives, as you may have guessed, along the Mogollon Rim, although it has allegedly been spotted around Prescott and in the Grand...
Paleontology
Dinosaur herd buried in Noah's Flood in Inner Mongolia, China
04/14/2009 8:36:29 AM PDT · Posted by GodGunsGuts · 355 replies · 4,554+ views
CMI | April 14, 2009 | Tas Walker
An international team of scientists have uncovered graphic evidence of the deadly terror unleashed on a herd of dinosaurs as they were buried under sediment by the rising waters of Noah's Flood in western Inner Mongolia (figure 1).[1] Dinosaur bones were first discovered at the site, located at the base of a small hill in the Gobi Desert, in 1978 by a Chinese geologist. After about 20 years, a team of Chinese and Japanese scientists recovered the first skeletons, which they named Sinornithomimus,...
Rome and Italy
Romans and Pirates
04/12/2009 10:16:20 AM PDT · Posted by beebuster2000 · 19 replies · 403+ views Plutarch's Lives | may 12 2009 | beebuster2000
In the time of Pompey and Caesar, Pirates grew to a serious problem. Similar to today, the legal basis for pursuing Pirates was a problem. Romans tasked a military commander, Pompey, and passed a special law granting "government of the seas, sole sovereignty over all men, authority over all seas within the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar)". Passage of this law was not without controversy, and was opposed by leading men in the Senate as too much power. But the economy having been severely damaged by Pirates, the people favored it and it was passed. Having pretty thoroughly...
Epigraphy and Language
Dead Sea Scrolls stir storm at ROM
04/13/2009 11:06:05 AM PDT · Posted by forkinsocket · 31 replies · 957+ views
Toronto Star | Apr 09, 2009 | Oakland Ross
Palestinian PM wants Harper to scrap show, claims violation of international law JERUSALEM -- A planned Toronto exhibit of ancient Middle Eastern manuscripts is threatening to plunge Canada, along with the Royal Ontario Museum, into the thick of the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Beginning in June, the ROM will host a six-month exhibit of the famed Dead Sea Scrolls, organized in co-operation with the Israel Antiquities Authority. But top Palestinian officials this week declared the exhibit a violation of international law and called on Canada to cancel the show. In letters to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and top executives at...
Religion of Peace Alert
Where Thought Flowered (The West Owes a Great Debt to the Intellectual Scholarship of Arabs)
04/13/2009 8:59:52 AM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 47 replies · 660+ views
Baltimore Sun | April 5, 2009 | Stephen O'Shea
The House of Wisdom By Jonathan Lyons Bloomsbury / 272 pages / $26 Dust will never gather on Jonathan Lyons' lively new book of medieval history - the opening page of his The House of Wisdom cites a cleric scandalized by the Crusader ladies of Antioch and their penchant for the plunging neckline and the bejeweled merkin. If this is the Middle Ages, thinks the reader, bring it on! But this pleasure gradually gives way to another beguilement, to be found in Lyons' subtitle: "How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization." That phrase suggests a brave viewpoint for a historian nowadays,...
Longer Perspectives
Technology: What the Ancient Chinese Did Not Invent
04/13/2009 1:53:20 PM PDT · Posted by Cargon · 99 replies · 1,234+ views Poster | 4-13-09 | Cargon
China and its' contributions are so overhyped! That is because Multiculural Studies function as a form of 'affirmative action for cultures' at the expense of the Western Heritage. Sino-Culture did not invent 'movable type' , the Koreans did that. They did not invent paper, but they did creat new methods of making paper(in its' rudimentry elements, surives to this day). Chinese had a crude magnetic compass and ample sailing fleets side by side for centuries but never thought of using them together. Why? And why did not the Chinese and the Indians(Hindus) ever have an industrial revolution? One major reason,...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
PHOTOS: New Bead Cache Reflects Spanish Empire's Might
04/12/2009 7:38:23 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 15 replies · 691+ views
nationalgeographic | April 10, 2009-
A cache of 70,000 beads from all over the 17th-century world have been unearthed from Saint Catherines Island, Georgia, a stop along a Spanish trade route between China and the Philippine capital of Manila. The beads reflect a startling array of shapes, colors, sizes, and materials, hinting at the wide reach of the Spanish Empire in the 17th century, archaeologists report. So far, researchers with an ongoing project funded by the American Museum of Natural History have found roughly 130 different types of beads, some of which include as many as 20,000 samples. "We also have found perhaps the first...
The Framers
the 2nd Amendment
04/12/2009 7:57:36 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 28 replies · 607+ views
Constitution of the United States, via Populist America et al | The Framers
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Early America
Know your presidents?
04/11/2009 7:35:14 PM PDT · Posted by thecodont · 24 replies · 479+ views
Chicago Tribune / chicagotribune.com | April 11, 2009 | Chicago Tribune Staff
Know your presidents? If you need to brush up on your history before taking the quiz, check out our portraits of America's leaders.
The Civil War
Book Returned to Va. Library -- 145 Years Late
04/15/2009 1:13:58 PM PDT · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · 14 replies · 480+ views
Associated Press | April 15, 2009 | Susan Kinzie
Nearly 145 years after it was stolen by a Union soldier during a Civil War raid, a missing library book has been returned to the Washington and Lee University library by an Illinois man who inherited it from the soldier's descendants. The book was passed down through the soldier's family, then on to Mike Dau of Lake Forest, Ill., who tracked down the original library and returned it.
President Abraham Lincoln
April 14, 1865: Abraham Lincoln is Shot at Ford's Theater
04/14/2009 10:22:38 AM PDT · Posted by Non-Sequitur · 37 replies · 492+ views
History.Com | 4/14/09 | Anon
John Wilkes Booth shoots President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford's Theater in Washington. Five days earlier, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered his army to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The war was nearly over, although there were still Confederate forces yet to surrender. The president had recently visited the captured Rebel capital of Richmond, and now Lincoln sought a relaxing evening by attending a production of Our American Cousin starring Laura Keene. Ford's Theater, seven blocks from the White House, was crammed with people trying to catch a glimpse of Grant, who...
Exit, Stage Left
Our American Cousin Revisited
04/14/2009 2:22:18 PM PDT · Posted by Borges · 10 replies · 219+ views
Slate.com | 02/11/09 | Timothy Noah
Was the play that ended Lincoln's life any good? It's the hoariest sick joke in America: "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?" By now it isn't even a joke; it's become a familiar way to complain that undue attention is being given to some frivolous aspect of an otherwise grim and urgent matter. But we've had a century and a half to ponder the awful tragedy of Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theater and its effect on the post-Civil War Reconstruction, the presidency, and the American character. Surely that interval is sufficiently decent that we may...
Wings
CIA documents shine light on secretive Air America
04/15/2009 5:50:49 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 12 replies · 524+ views
Associated Press | Apr 15, 2009 | Jeff Carlton
Former naval aviator Don Boecker isn't too proud to say he was scared out of his wits on that July 1965 day in Laos when he dangled by one arm from a helicopter while enemy soldiers took aim below.
World War Eleven
Wonder Weapons of World War Two [Heavy Graphics]
04/11/2009 11:15:03 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 22 replies · 974+ views
DRB | 07 Apr 2009 | Simon Rose
Made in Germany, 1940-1945 The Second World War was a period of remarkable advances in technology and many new weapons were invented during this period, some of which entered production and actually saw service in the war, while others never left the drawing board. Most of us are familiar with the secret weapons the Nazis had at their disposal in the last months of the war that were expected to turn the tide against the Allies. However, Germany had a reputation as a scientifically advanced nation well before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. At the beginning of the war,...
VANITY: Doolittle Raid
04/14/2009 10:50:55 AM PDT · Posted by Retain Mike · 16 replies · 409+ views Retain Mike | April 14, 2009 | Retain Mike
One week after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt began pressing the U.S. military to immediately strike the Japanese homeland. Desires to bolster moral became more urgent in light of rapid Japanese advances. Victories in Malaya, Philippines, Wake Island, and Dutch East Indies included sinking British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse as Japanese invested Singapore. Only improbable ideas warranted consideration, because submarines confirmed Japan placed picket boats at extreme carrier aircraft range. One idea involved launching four engine heavy bombers from Outer Mongolia to strike Japan and fly on to Alaska. Captain Francis Law, a submariner, first broached the idea of...
Pages
Daring Adventures (Assistants Flesh out Life of British Explorer)
04/15/2009 4:53:29 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 8 replies · 164+ views
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Apr. 11, 2009 | Robert Allen Papinchak
The Collector of Worlds. By Iliya Troyanov; translated by Will Hobson. Ecco. 464 pages. $24.95.Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) has been variously identified as an explorer, linguist, writer, soldier, translator, diplomat and even a spy. Perhaps he is best known by many readers as the translator of "One Thousand Nights and A Night" and the "Kama Sutra." Another claim to fame was his journey to find the source of the Nile River. Now, Bulgarian writer Iliya Troyanov ("Along the Ganges") has imagined key elements of Burton's life in the fast-paced biographical, historical novel "The Collector of Worlds." Troyanov distills the...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Looking for an Adventure in Undiscovered Lands? Visit These Once Off-Limits Nations
04/14/2009 9:30:24 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 9 replies · 285+ views
The News Tribune | 04/08/09 | DOUG SCHNITZSPAHN
We were so far out in the desert that boundaries didn't matter anymore. Were we in Tunisia? Libya? Algeria? It didn't matter, our guide Massoud told us, pouring mint tea into my battered metal cup under a Saharan sky filled with stars. Didn't matter?! Libya supported the bombing of airplanes, and Algerians were killing tourists. "No countries matter out here," Massoud explained in French that was almost as mangled as his teeth. "We are all Sahara." It had been pure stupidity to come to the Sahara in the middle of August. During the day the temperatures rose above 120 degrees,...
end of digest #248 20090418
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 248th issue. Excellent selection this week, even though it's a bit heavy with DNA articles. At least two were penned by Clara Moskowitz. :') To everyone who contributed GGG topics or pinged me to one -- Thanks! I'm finishing up this week's digest while munching some microwaved edamame (young soy beans in pods, they're very similar to lima beans, which I love) and sipping Diet Coke with Splenda. :') |
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“...even though it’s a bit heavy with DNA articles”
You can’t get enough DNA articles on this site with all the Creationist nonsense that gets posted here.
jas3
[snip] We thank all the attendees for your patience. After a long wait, the conference DVDs are nearing completion. We should be able to start shipping them by the 30th of April. Alternatively the videos can be downloaded from our website starting April 20th . The cost of the 6-DVD box set is USD 60 plus shipment. The download (25GB) is priced at USD 15. Major credit cards and PayPal will be accepted.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #249
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Embers of Prehistory
Discovery of Fire Pushed Back 500,000 Years
10/28/2008 9:57:36 PM PDT · Posted by Goonch · 16 replies · 707+ views
foxnews
The discovery of fire took place half a million years earlier than thought, Israeli archaeologists have revealed. Digs at the Gesher Benot Ya'aqov site in northern Israel near a drained lakebed uncovered burnt flakes of flint dating back 790,000 years -- long before modern Homo sapiens evolved in eastern Africa.
Hobbits
Did Humans Learn From Hobbits?
04/20/2009 10:39:56 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 18 replies · 385+ views
ScienceNOW | April 17, 2009 | Elizabeth Culotta
Thousands of small, sharp-edged flakes of volcanic tuff and chert have been unearthed from the cave of the "hobbit," the roughly 1-meter-tall ancient human found on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The stone tools have puzzled researchers: How could a hominid with a brain the size of a grapefruit craft tools? Now a detailed analysis sheds light on the hobbit's technological capabilities and raises a new mystery: Why did the modern humans who arrived later on Flores make tools the same way hobbits did? Archaeologist Mark Moore of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, and his colleagues...
Egypt
New Ancient Egypt Temples Discovered in Sinai
04/22/2009 8:53:31 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 6 replies · 294+ views
AP | 4/21/09 | HADEEL AL-SHALCHI
Archaeologists exploring an old military road in the Sinai have unearthed four new temples amidst the 3,000-year-old remains of an ancient fortified city that could have been used to impress foreign delegations visiting Egypt, antiquities authorities announced Tuesday. Among the discoveries was the largest mud brick temple found in the Sinai with an area of 70 by 80 meters (77 by 87 yards) and fortified with mud walls 3 meters (10 feet) thick, said Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. The find was made in Qantara, 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) east of the Suez Canal. These...
Cleopatra VII
Is this Cleopatra's skull? The thrilling finds at the dig to discover Egypt's lost queen
04/20/2009 7:47:04 PM PDT · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · 57 replies · 884+ views
dailymail.co.uk | April 20, 2009 | James White
Archaeologists searching for the lost bodies of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony have made a number of important discoveries. In what could be the most thrilling finds since the tomb of Tutankhamun was unearthed in 1922, leading Egyptologists believe they are edging ever closer to the country's most fabled queen. The female skull was found during a radar survey of a temple close to Alexandria, Egypt, and workers are hopeful they will also find the remains of the celebrated Roman general. Egypt's top archaeologist Zahi Hawass was optimistic of making a significant find when the dig began last month....
Nefertiti
Egyptian Queen In Berlin -- Cairo Demands Clarification on Nefertiti Bust
04/20/2009 11:10:21 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 13 replies · 245+ views
Spiegel | 2009 | msm -- with wire reports
"This time I mean it very seriously," is how Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, characterized his fresh demand for the bust of Queen Nefertiti, which German archaeologists brought home in 1913... Hawass has long called on Berlin to return the bust of Nefertiti, which sits in the city's Egyptian Museum, but SPIEGEL revealed in this week's edition of the magazine that an obscure document from 1924 charged the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt with "cheating" to secure the bust for Germany... The secretary of the German Oriental Institute reported in 1924 on a 1913 meeting between Borchardt and a senior...
'Hands off my bust' says Egypt prof [If we give this to Egypt for 3 months they won't return it]
05/11/2007 10:26:39 AM PDT · Posted by bedolido · 25 replies · 1,157+ views
english.aljazeera.net | 5-10-2007 22:15 MECCA TIME | Staff Writer
The man responsible for protecting Egypt's antiquities has said he will "fight" for the return of an ancient bust of Nefertiti, an ancient Egyptian queen, now housed in a Berlin museum. Zahi Hawass also requested the temporary return of other ancient Egyptian artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone which is housed in London's British museum. "Some people say, 'If we give this bust to Egypt for three months they will not return it'." Hawass said, regarding the bust of Nefertiti, in an interview on Wednesday.Zahi Hawass is seeking "unique artifacts" from at least 10 museums around the world [AP]Germany says the...
Ancient Autopsies
The Scary Caterpillar
04/19/2009 7:43:42 PM PDT · Posted by forkinsocket · 30 replies · 724+ views
The NY Times | April 18, 2009 | JEFFREY A. LOCKWOOD
INSECTS have been conscripted as weapons of war, tools of terrorism and instruments of torture for thousands of years. So should we be surprised by the news that the C.I.A. considered using these creatures to instill fear in Abu Zubaydah, a terrorist suspect? Yes, and here's why. The earliest hypothesized uses of insects in human conflicts involved bees and wasps. During the Upper Paleolithic period, nests of stinging insects -- evidently contained within baskets or pottery -- were heaved into rocky caves or thorny stockades to drive an enemy into the open. Employing insects to destroy crops or transmit disease...
Get Ready to Rumble
Italy: Abruzzo quake unearths prehistoric dwellings
04/19/2009 2:45:45 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 6 replies · 454+ views
Adnkronos International | Apr. 17, 2009 | Unknown
ome, 17 April (AKI) - Last week's powerful earthquake in the central Italian Abruzzo regional capital L'Aquila has unearthed prehistoric dwellings there, according Italian daily La Stampa. Some of the vaulted caves measure up to five metres in height, according to Italian geologist Gianluca Ferretti, quoted by the daily.
Longer Perspectives
Can lunar cycles affect the taste of wine?
04/21/2009 2:39:45 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 20 replies · 210+ views
bbc | 20 April 2009
Supermarkets are arranging wine tasting sessions around "good" and "bad" days as dictated by the lunar calendar. So does the Moon really change the taste of wine? A German great-grandmother called Maria Thun is wielding huge influence on the British wine industry. A calendar she first published in the 1950s categorises days as "fruit", "flower", "leaf" or "root", according to the Moon and stars. Wine is best on fruit days, followed by flower, leaf and root days. The worst day is marked as "unfavourable" in the calendar. (See factbox below for forthcoming "good" and "bad" days). Tesco and Marks &...
Biology and Cryptobiology
PHOTO IN THE NEWS: All-Female Ant Species Found
04/18/2009 1:12:18 AM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 36 replies · 793+ views
nationalgeographic | April 17, 2009
This leaf-cutter ant species is all female and thrives without sex of any kind -- ever -- according to a new study. The ants have evolved to reproduce only when queens clone themselves. "They appear to have evolved a new mode of reproduction, and the genetic mechanisms have yet to be worked out," said lead study author Anna Himler, a research associate at the University of Arizona. In M. smithii the typical muscular reproductive organ of female ants has evolved into a "sort of a ghost of an organ at this point," Himler added. No male of the species has ever been found, and...
Mammoth Told Me There'd Be Days Like These
Waking the Baby Mammoth
04/17/2009 11:08:33 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 24 replies · 811+ views
nationalgeographic | SUN APR 26
Only a handful have ever been found before. But none like her. Her name is Lyuba. A 1-month-old baby mammoth, she walked the tundra about 40,000 years ago and then died mysteriously. Discovered by a reindeer herder, she miraculously re-appeared on a riverbank in northwestern Siberia in 2007. She is the most perfectly preserved woolly mammoth ever discovered. And she has mesmerized the scientific world with her arrival - creating headlines across the globe. Everyone wants to know... how did she die? What can she tell us about life during the ice age and the Earth's changing climate? Will scientists...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Scientists Unravel Genome of the Cow
04/24/2009 12:06:16 AM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 9 replies · 195+ views
washingtonpost | April 24, 2009 | David Brown
The genomes of man and dog have been joined in the scientific barnyard by the genome of the cow, an animal that walked beside them on the march to modern civilization. A team of hundreds of scientists working in more than a dozen countries yesterday published the entire DNA message -- the genome -- of an 8-year-old female Hereford living at an experimental farm in Montana. Hidden in her roughly 22,000 genes are hints of how natural selection sculpted the bovine body and personality over the past 60 million years, and how man greatly enhanced the job over the past...
Global Warming: The New Lysenkoism
Wetlands likely source of methane from ancient warming event
04/23/2009 12:35:43 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 13 replies · 166+ views
University of California - San Diego | Apr. 23, 2009 | Unknown
Analysis of Greenland ice led by Scripps researchers could allay fears about methane 'burp' accelerating current global warming trendAn expansion of wetlands and not a large-scale melting of frozen methane deposits is the likely cause of a spike in atmospheric methane gas that took place some 11,600 years ago, according to an international research team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. The finding is expected to come as a relief to scientists and climate watchers concerned that huge accelerations of global warming might have been touched off by methane melts in the past and could happen...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Meltdown! A solar superstorm could send us back into the dark ages - one is due in just THREE years
04/20/2009 11:23:02 AM PDT · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · 88 replies · 2,171+ views
dailymail.co.uk | April 19, 2009 | Michael Hanlon
The catastrophe, when it comes, will be beautiful at first. It is a balmy evening in late September 2012. Ever since the sun set, the dimming skies over London have been alive with fire. Pillars of incandescent green writhe like gigantic serpents across the skies. Sheets of orange race across the horizon during the most spectacular display of the aurora borealis seen in southern England for 153 years. And then, 90 seconds later, the lights start to go out. Not the lights in the sky - they will dazzle until dawn - but the lights on the ground. Within an...
Catastrophism...
Polar Meltdown? NOT!
04/22/2009 3:03:43 PM PDT · Posted by MaryFromMichigan · 16 replies · 445+ views
Bill Steffen's Blog | April 22nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm | Bill Steffen (Chief Meteorologist WOOD TV)
According to the University of Illinois (and my wife has a B.S. and M.S. from the Univ. of Illinois at Champaign and she¬'s pretty smart, so I¬'d believe them) Antarctic sea ice is nearly 1,000,000 square kilometers above the 1979-2000 normal. That means that the excess sea ice would cover an area about the size of Michigan and California combined! According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, CO - Antarctic sea ice has grown at the rate of over 4% per decade over the past 30 years and reached an all-time maximum in 2008. You haven¬'t...
...and Astronomy
Energy simulation may explain turbulence mystery
04/20/2009 9:40:18 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 4 replies · 192+ views
University of Alabama in Huntsville | February 23, 2009 | Phil Gentry
A new 3D model linking magnetic fields to the transfer of energy in space might help solve a physics mystery first observed in the solar wind 15 years ago. Scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville and Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, developed the simulation while studying turbulence and energy transfer in the plasma carried away from the sun in the solar wind... What Wind and the other spacecraft saw was particles in relatively small-scale solar wind eddies getting "hotter" than theories predicted they should get. A theory published in 1941 by mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov established a generally accepted...
Climate
Global Cooling Earth's Little-Known Threat
04/21/2009 12:59:26 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 30 replies · 1,128+ views
CBN News | April 20, 2009 | Dale Hurd
CBNNews.com - COPENHAGEN, Denmark and WASHINGTON - The Obama administration says climate change is a serious health issue and the EPA has even labeled carbon dioxide as pollution. Now, many fear global warming is the greatest threat to mankind, but what if the Earth was no longer warming, and began to cool? Warnings from Every Angle Many world leaders and UN climate experts believe that climate change is the most pressing issue of our time. "Climate change is coming in a much faster speed and much more devastating power that we ever thought," said Greenpeace Campaigner Thomas Henningsen. Climate change...
Japan
Museum curator breaks 2,200-year-old glass accessory
04/24/2009 4:43:36 PM PDT · Posted by GATOR NAVY · 39 replies · 751+ views
Japan Today | 25 Apr 09 | Kyodo News
OTSU -- A curator at a museum in Shiga Prefecture in western Japan accidentally dropped and broke an antique glass accessory estimated to be 2,200 years old, the museum said Friday. The item, designated by the government as an important cultural asset and believed to date back to the mid-Yayoi period, was unearthed in 1989 at the Yoshinogari Remains in Saga Prefecture, southwestern Japan. It was on loan for a special display scheduled to begin Saturday at the Shiga Prefectural Azuchi Castle Archaeological Museum. "It's a great pity,'' said Toshihiro Kawasaki, head of the Saga prefectural board of education in...
China
Great Wall of China 'even longer'
04/21/2009 9:09:51 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 14 replies · 360+ views
bbc | 20 April 2009
The Great Wall of China is even greater than previously thought, according to the first detailed survey to establish the length of the ancient barricade. A two-year government mapping study found that the wall spans 8,850km (5,500 miles) - until now, the length was commonly put at about 5,000km. Previous estimates of its length were mainly based on historical records.
Rome...
ROME'S TREMENDOUS TUNNEL
04/19/2009 4:27:23 AM PDT · Posted by Fred Nerks · 27 replies · 805+ views
SpiegelOnLine | 03/11/2009 | By Matthias Schulz
Roman engineers chipped an aqueduct through more than 100 kilometers of stone to connect water to cities in the ancient province of Syria. The monumental effort took more than a century, says the German researcher who discovered it. When the Romans weren't busy conquering their enemies, they loved to waste massive quantities of water, which gurgled and bubbled throughout their cities. The engineers of the empire invented standardized lead pipes, aqueducts as high as fortresses, and water mains with 15 bars (217 pounds per square inch) of pressure.
...and Italy
Cleveland Museum of Art Will Return Tainted Antiquities to Italy Wednesday
04/22/2009 9:23:27 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 2 replies · 125+ views
Cleveland Plain Dealer | April 22, 2009
The Cleveland Museum of Art on Wednesday will hand over to Italian authorities 14 artworks allegedly tainted by illegal activity in Europe. The transfer honors an historic agreement, reached last November, in which Italy said the objects had been looted, stolen or handled by traffickers before the museum innocently acquired them by gift or purchase between 1975 and 1996. Timothy Rub, director of the Cleveland museum, called the agreement with Italy "open and fair and equitable to all parties. I was pleased then, and still am, that we reached a conclusion that was just that."
Faith...
Abruzzo 'miracle' as fresco of Virgin Mary and Jesus appears
04/20/2009 8:24:28 AM PDT · Posted by NYer · 17 replies · 562+ views
TimesOnline | April 17, 2009 | Richard Owen
The aftermath of the Abruzzo earthquake has witnessed the miraculous survival of people beneath collapsed buildings - and even of a small black dog which scampered out of the ruins of a house on Easter Sunday after nearly a week under the debris. But residents of Rocca di Cambio, a village high in the Gran Sasso mountains of Abruzzo 25 kilometres from L'Aquila, are celebrating the emergence of a more longstanding survivor: a long-lost 11th Century fresco depicting the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus. "This is wonderful news at a time of so much destruction and sorrow," Antonio Pace, the...
...and Philosophy
Six Principles from Sun Tzu (Rules for Conservatives)
04/19/2009 7:11:15 PM PDT · Posted by TenthAmendmentChampion · 35 replies · 606+ views
The Sun Tzu Strategy Site | No date | Mark McNeilly
The Six Principles from Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare "The United States faces many potential adversaries, both in the form of nation states and terrorist organizations. Each day, as technology progresses, the ability of these adversaries to inflict harm on the U.S. military units, national infrastructure, or civilians increases." (p187) So writes Mark McNeilly in chapter seven, "Ancient Principles for Future Battlefields," of his new book, Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare. Using historical examples that span the centuries, McNeilly applies the six principles he developed from Sun Tzu's classic treatise on strategy, The...
Moderate Islam
Swastikas painted on Joseph's Tomb
04/23/2009 11:10:59 AM PDT · Posted by kellynla · 38 replies · 621+ views
worldnetdaily.com | April 23, 2009 | Aaron Klein
Jews who arrived last night to pray at Joseph's Tomb -- Judaism's third holiest site -- were stunned to learn the structure had been vandalized, with the headstone smashed in and swastikas painted on the walls. "Only barbarians could do such things. People who pathologically disgrace such a holy place don't deserve to be called human beings," said Gershon Mesika, head of the Jewish regional council in the West Bank. Joseph's Tomb is the believed burial place of the biblical patriarch Joseph, the son of Jacob who was sold by his brothers into slavery and later became viceroy...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Rare Magic Inscription on Human Skull
04/21/2009 5:23:59 PM PDT · Posted by BlackVeil · 9 replies · 328+ views
Biblical Archaeology Review | March/April 2009 | By Dan Levene
Not long ago, the well-known collector Shlomo Moussaieff acquired two earthenware bowls, the open ends of which were adjoined to form a kind of case -- inside the case was an ancient human skull. A magic incantation, written in Aramaic, was inscribed on the skull. BAR readers already know about the more than two thousand magic incantation bowls that have survived from third-seventh-century C.E. Jewish communities in Babylonia. The incantation bowls were made at the same time and in the very communities that produced the most intricate, complex and revered accomplishment of rabbinic Judaism, the Babylonian Talmud. Although some have deemed the...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Scientists: Incest Doomed European Royal Dynasty
04/23/2009 3:32:46 AM PDT · Posted by Loyalist · 104 replies · 1,824+ views
FOX News | April 16, 2009 | Andrea Thompson
The powerful Habsburg dynasty that ruled Spain for nearly 200 years came to an abrupt end in 1700 with the death of King Charles II, who left no heirs to the throne. The termination of that royal lineage may be the result of frequent inbreeding of the line, which may have left Charles II ill and infertile, a new study suggests. .... Historical data show that "in order to keep their heritage in their own hands, the Spanish Habsburgs began to intermarry more and more frequently among themselves," the authors of the new study wrote. Records show that the Spanish...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
DNA test to prove Bronze Age link (Wales)
04/21/2009 8:00:17 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 33 replies · 393+ views
BBC | Apr. 20, 2009 | Unknown
Men are needed for DNA tests to prove their distant ancestors moved from the Mediterranean to north west Wales as migrant workers 4,000 years ago. The researchers are building on previous work carried out in the area which found a much higher-than-average presence of a DNA marker that is commonly found in people from the Balkans and Spain.
Scotland Yet
In the footsteps of the Culloden night raiders
04/18/2009 10:01:55 AM PDT · Posted by sionnsar · 32 replies · 423+ views
TimesOnline | 4/17/2009 | Mike Wade
Click here to launch the picture gallery It was the dead of night and in a deep, dark forest six miles from the site of the Duke of Cumberland's camp at Nairn a squad of fearsome men dressed in plaids and carrying muskets gathered around an officer. Captain Ian Deveney's voice rang out: "Help yourselves lads. My sporran's full of Maltesers." A huge bearded man appeared out the darkness. "Why not? They'll keep the blood sugar up," said Callum Mitchell in a cheerful, sing-song voice. This ragged band of 20 men had set out to recreate one of the most...
Farty Shades of Green
3,000 year-old bracelet found in Tyrone field[Northern Ireland]
04/20/2009 10:14:52 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 21 replies · 665+ views
Belfast Telegraph | 16 Apr 2009 | Belfast Telegraph
A County Tyrone family could be in line for a reward after finding a rare Bronze Age gold bracelet on their land. Farmer Gary Sproule accidentally unearthed the precious artefact while ploughing over a field at Castlegore near Castlederg last April. The intricate item is believed to date from almost 1,000 years before the birth of Christ. An inquest was held yesterday in Belfast at which the item, which would have belonged to an important warrior or priest, was officially classified as treasure. Under the law, a "treasure trove' inquest must be held by the coroner to determine the significance...
Epigraphy and Language
Ancient flute found in Xinglongwa
04/20/2009 8:03:09 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 256+ views
China Central Television | April 16, 2009 | Zhao Yanchen, Editor
Traditional Chinese musical instruments are believed to have originated from the reign of Huangdi, or the Yellow Emperor, some two thousand years ago. But a recent discovery by the Chifeng Cultural Academy in Inner Mongolia suggests that Chinese musical instruments could be 3-thousand years older than previously calculated... The ancient flute has long been kept at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. It wasn't until recently that the flute was shown to the public. The ancient flute was made from the bones of bustard, a kind of bird usually seen in Northeast China. The tube is 18 centimeters...
Pandemics, Epidemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
Hospitals Owe Debt To Islam
09/10/2003 3:44:40 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 34 replies · 284+ views
Independent (UK) | 9-11-2003 | Steve Connor
Modern medicine owes much to the scholars of the medieval Islamic world, who pioneered the diagnosis and treatment of human disease, a science historian told the conference. The very first hospitals were built around AD800 in Baghdad and they were much more sophisticated than the simple monastic hospices that grew up in Western Europe several hundred years later, said Emilie Savage-Smith of St Cross College in Oxford. The largest Islamic hospitals were built in Egypt and Syria in the 12th and 13th centuries. Patients were treated in wards dedicated...
Rodent You Know?
Colony of rare red squirrels discovered in remote Welsh forest
04/20/2009 12:18:27 PM PDT · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · 58 replies · 801+ views
dailymail.co.uk | April 20, 2009 | Daily Mail Reporter
A remote part of Wales is home to the last remaining colony of rare red squirrels, conservationists have discovered. Since the introduction of the American grey squirrel in the 19th century, numbers of reds have declined after their colonies were forced to retreat. But new evidence suggests that the red squirrels of the Tywi Valley in the Cambrian Mountains of Mid Wales are among the purest left in Britain, thanks to a unique genetic code. Dr Lizzie Wilberforce of The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales said: 'Visually they are no different to any other red squirrels. 'But their...
Paleontology
From Fish To Landlubber: Fossils Suggest Earlier Land-water Transition Of Tetrapod
04/22/2009 10:13:59 AM PDT · Posted by Boxen · 18 replies · 327+ views
Sciencedaily | April 19, 2009
ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2009) -- New evidence gleaned from CT scans of fossils locked inside rocks may flip the order in which two kinds of four-limbed animals with backbones were known to have moved from fish to landlubber. Both extinct species, known as Ichthyostega and Acanthostega, lived an estimated 360-370 million years ago in what is now Greenland. Acanthostega was thought to have been the most primitive tetrapod, that is, the first vertebrate animal to possess limbs with digits rather than fish fins. But the latest evidence from a Duke graduate student's research indicates that Ichthyostega may have been closer...
'Missing link' fossil seal walked
04/22/2009 2:09:09 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 13 replies · 257+ views
bbc | 22 April 2009 | Richard Black
It may look like a cross between a seal and an otter; but an Arctic fossil could, scientists say, hold the secret of seal evolution in its feet. A skeleton unearthed in northern Canada shows a creature with feet that were probably webbed, but were not flippers. Writing in the journal Nature, scientists suggest the 23 million-year-old proto-seal would have walked on land and swum in fresh water. It is the oldest seal ancestor found so far and has been named Pujilla darwini.
The Evolution Interpreter: Generic Transition Form Fossil Discovery Article
04/22/2009 1:11:09 PM PDT · Posted by Liberty1970 · 90 replies · 644+ views
Vanity | 04/22/2009 | Liberty1970
Over the years I've read copiously on the subject of origins. I've noticed the media pronouncements on the subject of new fossils and evolutionary theory form a startlingly repetitive pattern. To save the over-worked and increasingly bankrupt news media I've undertaken to serve them with a generic news story that can be copy-and-pasted with few modifications and reused as frequently as desired. New Fossil Discovery Is Transition Form, Provides Proof of Evolution! University of ________ Scientists say they've found a "missing link" in the early evolution of ______ - the skeleton of a ______ that was evolving away from ______...
Precolumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
UAH casts eye on Maya mystery [global warming shills]
04/20/2009 9:52:16 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 10 replies · 339+ views
Huntsville Times | Monday, April 20, 2009 | Lee Roop
What destroyed the ancient Mayan civilization that built sophisticated calendars and ruled the Yucatan peninsula for millennia? The answer may be as simple as they cut down the trees. That's the theory from new scientific research developed in large part through University of Alabama in Huntsville satellite analysis technology, Vice President for Research Dr. John Horack says. The "satellite archaeology" technology and its uses in Central America were in the briefing package prepared for President Obama to take to the Conference of the Americas summit, Horack said... The Mayan findings will be presented to the Society of American Archaeologists meeting...
Early America
State of Franklin? The Lost State of America - Very Interesting
04/23/2009 7:46:03 AM PDT · Posted by Notoriously Conservative · 25 replies · 619+ views
notoriouslyconservative.com | 04 23 09 | Notoriously Conservative
Did you know that in 1786 there was a US State formed, by the name of Franklin? It's true: In August 1784 delegates from three of the eight western counties of North Carolina met in the town of Jonesborough. There was a vote (by no means unanimous, a gentleman by the name of Tipton was vocal in his opposition) and on the 23rd of the month they declared the lands independent. The state of Franklin was born. Opposition was immediate - North Carolina published a manifesto condemining the formation of the new state. In fact it brought about the first...
Franklin letters found (Copies, that is. In UK.)
04/23/2009 11:34:24 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 6 replies · 267+ views
University of California - San Diego | Apr. 23, 2009 | Unknown
A trove of Benjamin Franklin letters has turned up in the British Library. Discovered by University of California, San Diego professor Alan Houston, the letters are copies of correspondence that hasn't been seen in more than 250 years. All dating from the spring and summer of 1755, the 47 letters by, to and about Franklin are in the hand of one Thomas Birch, a contemporary of Franklin's who was a prodigious -- almost inveterate -- compiler and transcriber of historical documents. They are being published for the first time in the April issue of the William and Mary Quarterly. The...
First in War, First in Peace
God & George Washington
04/21/2009 9:09:42 AM PDT · Posted by bs9021 · 12 replies · 188+ views
Campus Report | April 21, 2009 | Alanna Hultz
God & George Washington by: Alanna Hultz, April 21, 2009 In Tara Ross and Joseph C. Smith Junior's book Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State they discuss George Washington's view of religion and how it played a role in church and state. They also examine Thomas Jefferson's views on religion and how they differed from George Washington's. Ross and Smith believe "George Washington knew that the miraculous care of Providence had enabled him to survive the French and Indian War." During the war Washington escaped unharmed even though he had 4 bullets in his coat...
The Framers
the 1st Amendment
04/19/2009 7:54:45 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 240+ views
Constitution of the United States, via Populist America et al | The Framers
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Tea for Texas
[Texas:]Artifacts shed light on San Jacinto battle
04/21/2009 7:06:35 AM PDT · Posted by SwinneySwitch · 29 replies · 693+ views
April 20, 2009 | April 20, 2009 | ALLAN TURNER
Time has taken its toll on the Mexican bayonets, but their rust-pocked remains still hint at a lust for blood. The balls Santa Anna's men loaded into their muskets fared better. Still round, they glisten like sinister grapes. A grenadier's badge gleams as proudly as it did when, 173 years ago today, Texans struck the winning blow for freedom at San Jacinto. Today, these and more than 400 other artifacts -- fruits of a recently completed archaeological project near the famed battlefield -- are helping fill the gaps in the oft-told story of Sam Houston's routing of the Mexican military....
The Civil War
An Interview with President Jefferson Davis
10/08/2003 1:34:33 PM PDT · Posted by Aurelius · 79 replies · 1,445+ views
Federation of StatesAN INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT JEFFERSON DAVIS
Gentlemen: I have transcribed this article from an English paper entitled "The Globe and Traveller" of September 2nd, 1864, of which I have an original in my possession. It is a negotiation interview between Jefferson Davis and Judah Benjamin of the Confederacy, and Colonel Jaques and J. R. Gilmore of the Union. I have emboldened a part that sums up what the South was all about. Warmest Regards ...Brian Lee Merrill... The Globe and Traveller (England) Friday Evening, September 2, 1864 AN INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT DAVIS The Atlantic Monthly in an article in the September number gives a narrative...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
WWI Camp Dodge [Iowa] - Living Statue of Liberty
04/22/2009 2:59:26 PM PDT · Posted by iowamark · 10 replies · 306+ views
Iowa National Guard | 1918 | Mole & Thomas
"On a stifling July day in 1918, 18,000 officers and soldiers posed as Lady Liberty on the parade [drill] grounds at Camp Dodge." [This area was west of Baker St. and is currently the area around building S34 and to the west.] "According to a July 3, 1986, story in the Fort Dodge Messenger, many men fainted-they were dressed in woolen uniforms-as the temperature neared 105 degrees Farenheit. The photo, taken from the top of a specially constructed tower by a Chicago photography studio, Mole & Thomas, was intended to help promote the sale of war bonds but was never...
end of digest #249 20090425
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #250
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Catastrophism and Astronomy
After the Codyssey, the Eeliad: an epic tale of survival and the sea
04/25/2009 8:09:18 PM PDT · Posted by bruinbirdman · 12 replies · 446+ views
The Times | 4/25/2009 | Frank Pope, Ocean Correspondent
Tracking device reveals for the first time how eels migrate 4,500 miles from European waters to the mid-Atlantic Every November, when the Moon is at its darkest, there's a stirring on riverbeds, lake bottoms and marshlands around Europe. Countless silver serpents respond to an ancient urge and turn towards faster-moving water, beginning a perilous, 4,500-mile journey down deep ocean trenches and across undersea mountain ranges. Anguilla anguilla elvers resting Until now nothing has been known about their incredible journey, only that the smallest larvae of the European eel are found in the mid-Atlantic Sargasso Sea. How the spawning adults get...
Epigraphy and Language
Indus Script Encodes Language, Reveals New Study Of Ancient Symbols
04/26/2009 9:29:41 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 280+ views
ScienceDaily | April 23, 2009 | University of Washington
A University of Washington computer scientist has led a statistical study of the Indus script, comparing the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and nonlinguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming language. The results, published online April 23 by the journal Science, found the Indus script's pattern is closer to that of spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an as-yet-unknown language... In 2004 a provocative paper titled The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis claimed that the short inscriptions have no linguistic content and are merely brief pictograms depicting religious or political symbols. That paper's lead...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Iraq to renovate tomb of prophet Ezekiel
05/01/2009 12:24:43 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 16 replies · 330+ views
Ha'aretz | Friday, May 1, 2009 / Iyyar 7, 5769 | Israel Radio
A spokesman for Iraq's tourism ministry stated that the Iraqi government plans to restore the tomb of the biblical prophet Ezekiel in the southern town of Kifl, Israel Radio said Friday. The spokesman said that the tourism ministry was intent on preserving all of Iraq's heritage sites, regardless of creed. As a result of insufficient funds the current restoration plans do not include the preservation of synagogues in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Fallujah, and other locations, the spokesman added. He estimated, however, that the renovation of those synagogues will be included in future restoration efforts.
China
Archaeologists Discover China's Earliest Known Carving
04/29/2009 10:24:55 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 4 replies · 249+ views
Hindustan Times | 4/29/09
Archaeologists in China have claimed the identification of the country's earliest known carving, which is a deer antler sculpted into the shape of a bird, dating back 12,000 to 15,000 years. The fossilized grey figurine, which is 2.1 centimeters long, 1.2 centimeters high and 0.6 centimeters thick, was found in Xuchang County in China's central Henan Province in March. It is made from evenly-heated antler, and vividly carved with amicrolithic cutting tool. "The carving technique is more exquisite than the western carvings of its time," said Li Zhanyang, head of the archeological team in Xuchang, and a researcher with the...
Rome and Italy
Tale of the Roman Empire (a warning to modern America)
04/25/2009 11:51:17 AM PDT · Posted by mainestategop · 7 replies · 520+ views
YOUTUBE
A story about the Roman Empire. (which was called Honoria) how it came about and how it eventually fell. Very eerily similar to America's history.
Britain
Rare Roman glass bowl found 1,700 years after it's buried next to merchant in East London
04/29/2009 9:32:43 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 35 replies · 822+ views
Daily Mail | Apr. 29, 2009 | Unknown
This beautiful translucent dish belonged to a wealthy East Londoner living in Roman Britain 1,700 years ago. The rare 'millefiori' bowl - meaning 'one thousand flowers' was unearthed by archaeologists in London and is thought to be the first find of its kind in the western Roman empire. Researchers believe it will give fresh insight into life in Roman Britain. The dish is made up of hundreds of translucent blue indented glass petals, bordered with white embedded in a bright red glass background.
Scotland Yet
History's Mystery: Did Boudicca's curse cause 6K Roman warriors to vanish without trace?
04/25/2009 9:25:45 AM PDT · Posted by yankeedame · 23 replies · 807+ views
DailyMail.uk | 24th April 2009 | William Napier
Legion of the Damned: Did Boudicca's curse cause 6,000 of Rome's fiercest warriors to vanish without trace? Over the course of its ...1,000-year history, Ancient Rome gave rise to many extraordinary stories which live on to this day. ...No wonder Hollywood has always loved Rome, whose ...sheer spectacle have given rise to great epic movies from Ben-Hur to Gladiator. Mystery: The unexplained disappearance of the 6,000 legionaires from Ninth Legion in Scotland is the inspiration behind two competing filmsYet the latest movies... comes not from the heart of Rome, but from a remote northern province...we now call Scotland, but which...
Cleopatra VII
Tomb of the century [Anthony and Cleopatra]
04/29/2009 4:03:39 PM PDT · Posted by SJackson · 18 replies · 564+ views
Al Ahram | 4-29-09
Archaeological traces found at Taposiris Magna west of Alexandria may indicate the tomb of one of the most famous couples in history, Queen Cleopatra and Mark Anthony, reports Nevine El-Aref A joint Egyptian and Dominican Republic archaeological mission working at Taposiris Magna, an area of great archaeological importance on the Mediterranean coast west of Alexandria and site of a temple dedicated to the god of prosperity, Osiris, and a number of Graeco- Roman catacombs, has discovered several Ptolemaic objects dating back to the reign of the famous Queen Cleopatra. The team was searching the site in the hope of locating...
Egypt
3,000-year-old arms storehouse uncovered in Sinai
04/25/2009 2:48:45 PM PDT · Posted by forkinsocket · 30 replies · 879+ views
Ha'aretz | 23/04/2009 | Ran Shapira/AP
Archaeologists exploring an old military road in the Sinai have unearthed four new temples amidst the 3,000-year-old remains of an ancient fortified city that could have been used as a stronghold during the Egyptian occupation of Mesopotamia and Canaan, and to impress foreign delegations visiting Egypt, antiquities authorities announced Tuesday. Archaeological findings have determined that a series of fortresses were built in the area and were used as weapons storehouses for soldiers traveling northwards. One source, a wall painting found in the Karnak temple in Luxor, depicts 11 strongholds built in northern Sinai Among the discoveries was the largest mud...
Ancient Autopsies
Cache of mummies unearthed at Egypt's Lahun pyramid
04/26/2009 9:49:12 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 312+ views
Reuters | Sunday, April 26, 2009 | Cynthia Johnston, ed by Angus MacSwan
Archaeologists have unearthed a cache of pharaonic-era mummies in brightly painted wooden coffins near Egypt's little-known Lahun pyramid, the site head said on Sunday. The mummies were the first to be found in the sand-covered desert rock surrounding the mud-brick Lahun pyramid, believed to be built by the 12th dynasty pharaoh Senusret II, who ruled 4,000 years ago. The team expects to announce more finds soon. The site was first excavated more than a century ago... Some of the tombs were built on top of graves from earlier eras, and Ayedi said archaeologists had found dozens of mummies, including around...
Egyptian archeologists unveil ancient burial ground near Cairo
04/27/2009 7:46:12 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 252+ views
Boston Globe | Monday, April 27, 2009 | Associated Press
An Egyptian worker brushed dust off a wooden coffin containing a linen-wrapped mummy near the Illahun pyramid. (Tarek Mostafa/ Egypt Society via Reuters)
Hobbits
A Tiny Hominid With No Place on the Family Tree
04/27/2009 9:45:55 PM PDT · Posted by rdl6989 · 17 replies · 550+ views
NY Times | April 27, 2009
STONY BROOK, N.Y. -- Six years after their discovery, the extinct little people nicknamed hobbits who once occupied the Indonesian island of Flores remain mystifying anomalies in human evolution, out of place in time and geography, their ancestry unknown. Recent research has only widened their challenge to conventional thinking about the origins, transformations and migrations of the early human family. Indeed, the more scientists study the specimens and their implications, the more they are drawn to heretical speculation. Were these primitive survivors of even earlier hominid migrations out of Africa, before Homo erectus migrated about 1.8 million years ago? Could...
Neandertal / Neanderthal
Neandertals Babies Didn't Do the Twist
04/28/2009 12:01:23 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 13 replies · 412+ views
ScienceNOW | April 20, 2009 | Ann Gibbons
Like many other researchers, paleoanthropologist Timothy Weaver of the University of California, Davis, thought the shift to this more complicated rotational birth predated the split between modern humans and Neandertals. That's because Neandertals, which lived until 30,000 years ago in Europe, also had big heads and, presumably, used the same evolutionary strategy to deliver their big-brained babies. But it has been difficult to test this idea. The only known female pelvis of a Neandertal, discovered in 1929 near Tabun, Israel, is fragmentary. Two earlier reconstructions of this partial pelvis suggested that Neandertals also had rotational birth, but the fossil is...
Embers of Prehistory
Ancestors may have used bone tools to make smoothies
04/28/2009 12:12:12 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 14 replies · 269+ views
New Scientist | April 22, 2009 | Ewen Callaway
Ancient humans might have used animal bones to grind fruit smoothies as well as dig up termites, a new analysis of mysterious 1 to 2 million-year-old tools suggests. Researchers discovered the bones belonging to large mammals at several sites in South Africa, and their intended use has been the subject of equal parts contention and speculation. Early 20th-century anthropologists who first uncovered the bones contended they were genuine tools and evidence for a bone-based tool culture in hominin species that predated early humans such as Paranthropus. Those interpretations fell out of fashion after researchers discovered that scavenging animals and natural...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
A Drug To Re-Awaken Ancient Human Genes And Fight HIV
04/29/2009 1:48:12 PM PDT · Posted by LibWhacker · 23 replies · 426+ views
io9 | 4/27/09 | Annalee Newitz
"Junk DNA" are inactive parts of your genome, switched off long ago in evolutionary history. Now scientists say there's a junk gene that fights HIV. And they've discovered how to turn it back on. What these scientists have done could give us the first foolproof HIV vaccine. They have re-awakened the human genome's latent potential to make us all into HIV-resistant creatures. This evening in PLoS Biology, they've published their ground-breaking research. A group of scientists led by Nitya Venkataraman and Alexander Colewhether wanted to try a new approach to fighting HIV - one that worked with the body's own...
Paleontology
Analysis finds strong match between molecular, fossil data in evolutionary studies
04/28/2009 2:29:44 PM PDT · Posted by Moonman62 · 10 replies · 385+ views
Eurekalert | 04/28/09 | University of Chicago
During a seminar at another institution several years ago, University of Chicago paleontologist David Jablonski fielded a hostile question: Why bother classifying organisms according to their physical appearance, let alone analyze their evolutionary dynamics, when molecular techniques had already invalidated that approach? With more than a few heads in the audience nodding their agreement, Jablonski, the William Kenan Jr. Professor in Geophysical Sciences, saw more work to be done. The question launched him on a rigorous study that has culminated in a new approach to reconciling the conflict between fossil and molecular data in evolutionary studies. For more than two...
Africa
Africans have world's greatest genetic variation
04/30/2009 11:50:36 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 7 replies · 339+ views
Associated Press | Apr 30, 2009 | Randolph E. Schmid
Africans have more genetic variation than anyone else on Earth, according to a new study that helps narrow the location where humans first evolved, probably near the South Africa-Namibia border.
Precolumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Native Americans Descended From a Single Ancestral Group, DNA Study Confirms
04/29/2009 6:13:15 AM PDT · Posted by Pharmboy · 143 replies · 2,681+ views
UC Davis | April 28, 2009 | Kari Schroeder and Liese Greensfelder
For two decades, researchers have been using a growing volume of genetic data to debate whether ancestors of Native Americans emigrated to the New World in one wave or successive waves, or from one ancestral Asian population or a number of different populations. Now, after painstakingly comparing DNA samples from people in dozens of modern-day Native American and Eurasian groups, an international team of scientists thinks it can put the matter to rest: Virtually without exception the new evidence supports the single ancestral population theory. "Our work provides strong evidence that, in general, Native Americans are more closely related to...
Climate
Ice at the North Pole in 1958 and 1959 - not so thick
04/27/2009 7:57:45 AM PDT · Posted by voveo · 10 replies · 657+ views
Watts Up With That | April 26, 2009 | Stephen Skinner, Crosspatch, and Glenn
What would NSIDC and our media make of a photo like this if released by the NAVY today? Would we see headlines like "NORTH POLE NOW OPEN WATER"? Or maybe "Global warming melts North Pole"? Perhaps we would. sensationalism is all the rage these days. If it melts it makes headlines. Some additional captures from the newsreel below show that the ice was pretty thin then, thin enough to assign deckhands to chip it off after surfacing.
Pandemics, Epidemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
K-STATE RESEARCHER FINDS THAT THE 1918 SPANISH...RESULTED IN CURRENT...H1N1 SWINE INFLUENZA VIRUSES
04/30/2009 10:14:24 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 29 replies · 760+ views
Kansas State University | April 30, 2009 | Kristin Hodges
MANHATTAN -- In 1918 a human influenza virus known as the Spanish flu spread through the central United States while a swine respiratory disease occurred concurrently. A Kansas State University researcher has found that the virus causing the pandemic was able to infect and replicate in pigs, but did not kill them, unlike in other mammalian hosts like monkeys, mice and ferrets where the infection has been lethal. Juergen A. Richt, Regents Distinguished Professor of Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology at K-State's College of Veterinary Medicine, studied the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic with colleagues from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, U.S....
1918 flu resulted in current lineage of H1N1 swine influenza viruses, study says
04/30/2009 5:06:52 PM PDT · Posted by markomalley · 5 replies · 325+ views
physorg.com | 4/30/2009 | Kansas State University
In 1918 a human influenza virus known as the Spanish flu spread through the central United States while a swine respiratory disease occurred concurrently. A Kansas State University researcher has found that the virus causing the pandemic was able to infect and replicate in pigs, but did not kill them, unlike in other mammalian hosts like monkeys, mice and ferrets where the infection has been lethal. Juergen A. Richt, Regents Distinguished Professor of Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology at K-State's College of Veterinary Medicine, studied...
The Underworld
'World's biggest' cave uncovered
05/01/2009 7:08:59 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 15 replies · 498+ views
The Sun (UK) | April 30, 2009 | Staff Reporter
A British caving team believe they've discovered the world's largest cave passage in the heart of the Vietnamese jungle. Measuring 200m high and 150m wide the new cave, called Hang Son Doong -- or Mountain River Cave -- is believed to be almost twice the size of the current record holder Previously unexplored, the team believe Hang Son Doong is larger than the Deer Cave in Sarwark, Malaysia, which is 100m high and 90m wide... Adam Spillane, a member of the 13-man expedition team, said... "Much of the passage width is over 100m but certain sections are over 150m...
Oh So Mysteriouso
Passages Under Bosnian Pyramid 5000 Years Old
04/28/2009 5:17:35 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 20 replies · 555+ views
Javno | April 27, 2009 | Unknown
The tested stalagmite formed in a collapsed part of the tunnel, which means that the age of the tunnel is far older than the stalagmite. The "Archaeological Park: Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation" reported that there is an underground network of a dozen tunnels under the pyramid in Visoko, Bosnia Herzegovina. A few hundred meters of tunnels lead towards the Bosnian pyramid. The tunnel has been cleared for tourists, and stalagmites and stalactites have been found in the side passages, from which samples have been taken for analysis in one of the leading laboratories in Poland, at the institute...
The Kludge
Science Still in the Dark about Dark Energy
04/28/2009 9:16:01 AM PDT · Posted by GodGunsGuts · 126 replies · 1,340+ views
ICR | April 28, 2009 | Brian Thomas, M.S.
Evolutionary astronomers have a problem. The universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, but if general relativity is an accurate cosmological model, and if the universe is made up of the kinds of matter and energy that are directly detectable (like atoms and light), then its expansion should be slowing. Astronomers "fixed" this problem by theorizing that "75% of the energy density of the universe exists as dark energy."[1] This non-detectable dark energy allows the man-made model to match astronomical observations. However, scientists are aware that dark energy itself...
Longer Perspectives
THE VOYAGE THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (new made for TV movie, exposes Darwin, MovieGuide: "fascinating")
05/01/2009 11:20:53 AM PDT · Posted by GodGunsGuts · 18 replies · 505+ views
MovieGuide
Fascinating and Profound Insights (CCC, Ev) Ultimately very Christian worldview that exposes and explores the true story of Darwin and presents his humanist, anti-Christian views with dignity and respect, but in the process reveals the flaws, confusion and falsehoods of his theories; and, nothing objectionable...
When We Get Behind Closed Doors
Evolution Of Human Sex Roles More Complex Than Described By Universal Theory
04/25/2009 8:57:12 AM PDT · Posted by steve-b · 20 replies · 548+ views
Science Daily | 4/24/09
A new study challenges long-standing expectations that men are promiscuous and women tend to be more particular when it comes to choosing a mate. The research suggests that human mating strategies are not likely to conform to a single universal pattern and provides important insights that may impact future investigations of human mating behaviors. In 1948, Angus J. Bateman's performed some now famous studies in fruit flies that showed that males exhibit greater variance in mating success (the number of sexual partners) and in reproductive success (the number of offspring) when compared to females. In addition, Bateman demonstrated that there...
Faith and Philosophy
College Student Alert: Beware of One-Party Classrooms
04/22/2009 7:37:03 PM PDT · Posted by ReformationFan · 14 replies · 520+ views
Eagle Forum | 4/22/2009 | Phyllis Schlafly
How can we explain continued public support for Barack Obama's extremist spending plans, even though it is painfully obvious that his much touted "remaking America" means mortgaging the financial future of young people with trillions of dollars in debt? Are the American people really willing to let the government be our nanny, manage our economy, federalize our schools, decide which businesses can keep their doors open, what health care we will be permitted, who will get new jobs, and how extravagant will be the foreign handouts as Obama "rejoins the world community"? One answer to these questions may be what...
Ex Post Facto
Tortured logic
04/25/2009 10:09:00 AM PDT · Posted by smoothsailing · 8 replies · 398+ views
Toledo Blade | 4-25-09 | Jack Kelly - OP/ED
AS ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury, William Laud (1573-1645) was a staunch political supporter of King Charles I and an ecclesiastical supporter of "high church" practices. Neither of these set well with Parliament, which was controlled by Puritans such as Oliver Cromwell. So Parliament passed a law declaring Archbishop Laud guilty of treason, and had him beheaded. The law was called a bill of attainder. Bills of attainder had two features. First, they bypassed the courts in declaring someone guilty of a crime. Second, they criminalized ex post facto actions that were not against the...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Joseph Haydn and the German Nation
04/30/2009 11:48:32 PM PDT · Posted by neb52 · 29 replies · 298+ views
History Today | March 31,2009 | Tim Blanning
Joseph Haydn was born on March 31st, 1732 in the village of Rohrau in Lower Austria, a province of the Habsburg empire. This was arguably the most multinational, multicultural, multilingual and generally diverse great power that Europe had ever seen. Its then ruler, Charles VI, held sway over a great conglomeration of territories stretching from Ostend to Belgrade and from Prague to Palermo. It included all or part of the following present-day countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. As Sir Harold Temperley observed, the Habsburg monarchy was not...
The Framers
the 11th Amendment
04/25/2009 7:30:42 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 365+ views
Constitution of the United States, via FindLaw et al | passed by the Congress on March 4, 1794 and was ratified on February 7, 1795 | The Framers et al
The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.
Early America
1824 PREZ NOTE FOUND
04/27/2009 7:39:01 PM PDT · Posted by Gomez · 8 replies · 350+ views
NY Post
Don't mess with the man on the $20 bill! A 185-year-old letter penned by President Andrew Jackson and swiped from the New York State Library was recently recovered by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo after a keen-eyed researcher spotted the document for sale on the Web, The Post has learned. The four-page correspondence sat on the block for $35,000 before Cuomo's investigators returned it to the state's collection. "New York is privileged to house one of the world's great archives of historic documents," Cuomo said. Jackson's "writings are precious artifacts that must be preserved for future generations.
The Great War
Solved: the Riddle of Executed First World War Soldier
04/29/2009 5:36:02 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 8 replies · 413+ views
The Times | April 29, 2009 | Robert Digby
Ben Macintyre thought he knew who condemned a fugitive British soldier to death in France in 1916, and wrote a book about it. Now, ten years later, an e-mail out of the blue has convinced him that he had the wrong man. Here, he sets the record straightHistory never stands still. Just when we think we understand the past, it moves on. Ten years ago, I set out to try to solve a murder mystery left over from the First World War. Two years later, thinking that I had done so, I wrote a nonfiction book about the case: part...
World War Eleven
This Week in History. The Battle of the Bulge (no, it's not about Oprah)
12/13/2008 9:27:10 PM PST · Posted by smokingfrog · 19 replies · 654+ views
via Google Video | 1944 | Army Pictoral Service Signal Corps
Early on the misty winter morning of 16 December 1944, over 200,000 German troops and nearly 1,000 tanks launched Adolf Hitler's last bid to reverse the ebb in his fortunes that had begun when Allied troops landed in France on D-day. Seeking to drive to the English Channel coast and split the Allied armies as they had done in May 1940, the Germans struck in the Ardennes Forest, a seventy-five-mile stretch of the front characterized by dense...
Great Escape gardener dies aged 97
04/30/2009 6:13:28 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 27 replies · 726+ views
AFP | Apr. 30, 2009 | Unknown
Lees - a gardener at the camp - helped dig the tunnels, but because he was not an officer he was not given the chance to escape himself. He used an ingenious system to dispose of the soil from the three tunnels, storing it in a bag hidden under his trousers and then dumping it on the camp's vegetable garden. Lees praised the filmmakers for producing an accurate version of events, telling the Paisley Daily Express newspaper: "It was just the way it was portrayed in The Great Escape movie".
Holocaust
Workmen in Poland Find Hidden Auschwitz Camp Letter
04/28/2009 12:27:53 AM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 9 replies · 819+ views
Hindustan Times | 28 Apr 2009
The note, written in pencil then rolled up and inserted in a bottle, contains the names of seven young people who probably thought they were doomed to die in the notorious Auschwitz death camp. A construction crew renovating a cellar near the Auschwitz site discovered the bottle hidden in a concrete wall, officials said on Monday. Dated September 9, 1944, the note bears the names, camp numbers and hometowns of the seven prisoners -- six from Poland and one from France. "All of them are between the ages of 18 and 20," the final sentence reads. "They were young people...
Wild Wild West
Wanderer's last trail found after 75 years
05/01/2009 9:09:33 AM PDT · Posted by AreaMan · 28 replies · 1,245+ views
Denver Post | 01 May 2009 | Kevin Vaughan
After Everett Ruess vanished in Utah's wilds in 1934, relatives tried to retrace his steps. But a few overheard words are what have now led to his bones. By Kevin Vaughan The Denver Post Posted:†05/01/2009 12:30:00 AM MDT Updated:†05/01/2009 08:46:05 AM MDT Archaeologist Ron Maldonado examines the crevice in the Comb Ridge area of southeastern Utah that held Everett Ruess' bones, above. The bones were from a man 19 to 22 years old who was roughly 5-feet-8, matching Ruess' age and size. (National Geographic Adventure magazine ) As the...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Home sweet home: The man who's lived in the same flat for 100 years
04/28/2009 8:02:06 PM PDT · Posted by Free ThinkerNY · 9 replies · 536+ views
dailymail.co.uk | April 27, 2009 | Daily Mail Reporter
A retired ice cream seller is celebrating today after living in the same flat for a century. The 107-year-old moved from Italy to the flat above the ice cream parlour his father ran when he was seven and has remained there for 100 years. Alfonso De Marco was born near the southern Italian city of Cassino in 1902 before joining his father Guiseppe in 1909 in Eastbourne, East Sussex. The great-great grandfather went on to run a number of successful parlours of his own until retiring in 1973. He was offered the chance to live with one of his three...
end of digest #250 20090502
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Saturday |
Welcome to the 250th issue. Last week we completed the countdown from 10 to 1 of the original Bill of Rights. This week we've started the Constitutional amendments with the 11th and will proceed to the end over the next four months or so. For those just joining us, check out the earlier Digest topics (above, if you're in the GGG topic) under the heading "The Framers". A ping-message welcome to this week's new GGG'ers. |
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Congratulations on the #250th issue!
Thank you so much for your dedication and work on all the lists you hold. :)
BGHater’s thread is dead now.
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