Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #14
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Ancient Europe
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Full Excavation Of Irish Viking Village?
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Posted by blam On News/Activism 10/20/2004 2:02:41 PM PDT · 27 replies · 562+ views
Discovery News | 10-19-2004 | Rossella Lorenzi Full Excavation for Irish Viking Village? By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News Oct. 19, 2004 ó Preliminary work to build a bypass road in an Irish village has yielded what could be the most significant piece of Viking history in Europe: a virtually intact town that some have already called Ireland's equivalent of Pompeii. Evidence for the ancient settlement was discovered last year by archaeologists testing areas ahead of road builders. Located near the banks of the river Suir at Woodstown, five miles from the city of Waterford, the potential Viking town lies below pasture fields commonly used for horse grazing....
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Kiln's 'Ancestor' Found In Greece
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Posted by blam On News/Activism 10/20/2004 2:11:40 PM PDT · 20 replies · 349+ views
BBC | 10-20-2004 Kiln's 'ancestor' found in Greece The structures bridge the gap between kilns and stone hearths Archaeologists have discovered the oldest clay "fireplaces" made by humans at a dig in southern Greece. The hearths are between 34,000 and 23,000 years old and were almost certainly used for cooking by prehistoric inhabitants of the area. Researchers found remnants of wood ash and phytoliths - a type of plant cell - in these hearths and lab tests show the clay was burnt. The study appears in the latest edition of the scholarly journal Antiquity. The discovery helps to bridge the gap between the...
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Neolithic ruins (6000 yrs old) found in Romania while building highway
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Posted by FairOpinion On News/Activism 10/19/2004 11:21:59 PM PDT · 13 replies · 384+ views
Yahoo News | Oct. 14, 2004 | AFP BUCHAREST (AFP) - Construction workers for the US firm Bechtel found neolithic ruins which are more than 6,000 years old while building a highway in Romania, archeologists said. "It is a surprising discovery of great importance for the region," Ion Stanciu, who heads a team of archeologists, told AFP. He said the ruins consisted of a funeral stone, the remains of several houses from the bronze age, and pieces of pottery. "We are going to suggest to officials from Bechtel to consider building a museum to house these exceptional discoveries," Stanciu said. "We expect to find more ruins, perhaps the...
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Roman roads in Britain
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/16/2004 5:46:24 PM PDT · 5 replies · 104+ views
Channel 4 | before 2004 | staff Ermine Street, the search for a stretch of which featured in the Cheshunt programme in the 2002 series, is far from being one of the longest Roman roads; those are to be found in mainland Europe. But it is one of the best known ñ and for the Romans, most important ñ in Britain. It linked London with Lincoln (passing through Ancaster, which also features in the 2002 series) before continuing on to the Humber, inland from the modern road bridge, at Winteringham. Long, straight stretches of it can still be plotted on a map; much the same route...
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Epigraphy and Language
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'Status' drives extinction of languages
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/17/2004 12:45:37 PM PDT · 28 replies · 196+ views
Australian Broadcasting Corp Online | Thursday, 21 August 2003 | Bob Beale The social status of a language is the most accurate way of predicting whether it will survive, argue researchers in a paper appearing today in the journal, Nature... "Thousands of the world's languages are vanishing at an alarming rate, with 90% of them being expected to disappear with the current generation," warned Dr Daniel Abrams and Professor Steven Strogatz, both of Cornell University in New York... The model is based on data they collected on the number of speakers of endangered languages - in 42 regions of Peru, Scotland, Wales, Bolivia, Ireland and AlsaÁe-Lorraine - over time. All have been...
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PreColumbian, Clovis, PreClovis
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Archaeologist Continues To Dig Up History (Meadowcroft, 16K Year Old)
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Posted by blam On News/Activism 10/17/2004 6:25:09 PM PDT · 10 replies · 471+ views
Pittsburglive | 10-17-2004 | Majorie Wertz Archaeologist continues to dig up history By Marjorie Wertz For The Tribune-Review Sunday, October 17, 2004 In the past 30 years archaeologists worldwide have visited the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County. The general public can now see what's involved in the archaeological dig that has proved the existence of early humans dating back 16,000 years. "The site was opened last year for the first time to the public," said David Scofield, director of Meadowcroft Museum of Rural Life. "We are now in the process of getting an architect to create a design for a permanent roof over the excavation. This...
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Finnish Find Sheds New Light On Prehistoric Andean Culture (Tiwanaku)
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Posted by blam On News/Activism 10/23/2004 4:03:27 PM PDT · 21 replies · 352+ views
Tehran Times/AFP | 10-23-2004 Finnish find sheds new light on prehistoric Andean culture HELSINKI (AFP) - Ceramic artifacts found by Finnish archeologists during a dig in Bolivia have shed new light on the prehistoric Tiwanaku people, of whom little is known, Helsinki University officials said. "The discovery demonstrates that the Tiwanakus made the highest quality ceramics in the Andean region, with very naturalistic portraits, and thanks to this we now know what they looked like," Martti Paerssinen, a professor from Helsinki University who led the excavations, told AFP. The Tiwanaku people settled on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca in the Andean mountains around...
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Kennewick man renains not protected
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Posted by djf On General/Chat 02/04/2004 12:12:38 PM PST · 49 replies · 41+ views
KING5 The courts have rules that the remains of Kennewick man, a 9,000 year old apparent caucasian skeleton found on the north shores of the Columbia river in Washington state, are not protected by the Native Americans act and must be turned over for scientific examination.
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Mysterious Pottery Shows True Face Of First Pacific Settlers
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Posted by blam On News/Activism 10/23/2004 2:48:19 PM PDT · 9 replies · 684+ views
ABC Net | 10-23-2004 Mysterious pottery shows true face of first Pacific settlers Staring out from an ancient piece of pottery, the mysterious face of a bearded man has given scientists a unique glimpse of what the first settlers of Fiji may have looked like. Researchers say the "extraordinary discovery" is a vital clue in mapping out how the South Pacific came to be inhabited some 3,000 years ago, suggesting the first direct link to islands some thousands of kilometres away. Thought to be the work of the Lapita people - a long-lost race which originated near modern-day Taiwan then migrated to Polynesia -...
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Romans in Brazil During the Second or Third Century?
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/17/2004 7:47:13 PM PDT · 7 replies · 137+ views
Mysterious Earth | June 20, 2003 | "Michael" This is a discovery that has received little to no examination, much less validation, from the realm of mainstream archaeology, no doubt in part because Marx is not a Ph.D. archaeologist. Scouring the web for more information about this finding, I did find a reference to the discovery in an article from Dr. Elizabeth Lyding Will, an expert on Roman amphoras (clay vessels used to store and ship goods during the Roman era). Dr. Will apparently has a piece of an amphora recovered from Marx's Brazil discovery. Of it, she says: The highly publicized amphoras Robert Marx found in the...
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Ancient Greece
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Deepest Wreck
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/17/2004 8:40:36 PM PDT · 5 replies · 59+ views
Archaeological Institute of America | March/April 2001 | Brett A. Phaneuf, Thomas K. Dettweiler, and Thomas Bethge The discovery of a 2,300-year-old shipwreck between the classical trading centers of Rhodes and Alexandria adds to the corpus of evidence that is challenging the long-held assumption that ancient sailors lacked the navigational skills to sail large distances across open water, and were instead restricted to following the coastline during their voyages. Four other possibly ancient wrecks lie nearby... Despite its depth, the site is typical for an ancient shipwreck. The vessel came to rest on the bottom and eventually listed over onto its side. In this case, the ship heeled over to port. As its wooden hull lost...
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The Porticello Wreck: A 5th Century B.C. Merchantman in Italy
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/17/2004 8:31:49 PM PDT · 1 reply · 32+ views
Institute of Nautical Archaeology | on web, January 2003 | Cynthia Jones Eiseman Unquestionably the most exciting object from the wreck is the bronze bearded head (Fig. 1). From black glaze bowls and lamps recovered from the stern of the ship, we can fix the time of the ship's sinking to the last quarter of the 5th century. The bronze head must, then, have been made no later than some time late in the 5th century, although some scholars, seeing the sculpture out of its archaeological context, would have placed it in the 4th century... Sculpture formed only a small part of the cargo, which included in addition amphoras containing wine and possibly...
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Ancient Middle East
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Archaeology Team Helps Find Oldest Deep-Sea Shipwrecks
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/17/2004 9:02:20 PM PDT · 3 replies · 78+ views
Harvard Gazette | September 16, 1999 | Alvin Powell They were found 1,000 feet down in June by a team made up of Harvard archaeologists led by Lawrence Stager, Dorot Professor of the Archaeology of Israel, and a crew from the Connecticut-based Institute for Exploration, headed by oceanographer Robert Ballard. The ships are the oldest ever found in the deep sea and may change the understanding of ancient Mediterranean commerce. Because many shallow-water wrecks have been found, historians and archaeologists believed that ancient sailors preferred routes that hugged the coastline. Modern technology, however, is opening a new field of deep-water archaeology, which is showing that ancient sailors did indeed...
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Calvin to show Petra exhibit
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Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 10/16/2004 6:27:42 PM PDT · 7 replies · 97+ views
Grand Rapids Press | Friday, October 15, 2004 | Matt Vandebunte (cont. by Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood) "Petra: Lost City of Stone" will be displayed from April 4 to Aug. 15. It will be the third American stop following its opening in New York and current stop in Cincinnati. To prepare for the exhibit, Calvin administrators plan to renovate the 2-year-old Prince Conference Center to include a museum-quality heating and cooling system, improved security and viewing spaces with special lighting... Bierling, an archaeologist, teacher and photographer, approached Calvin about sponsoring the multimillion-dollar exhibit that was turned down by other West Michigan venues, including the Van Andel Museum Center.
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Quest for the Phoenicians (National Geographic special)
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/17/2004 7:53:23 AM PDT · 10 replies · 87+ views
PBS | Oct 20 2004 | National Geographic In "Quest for the Phoenicians," three renowned scientists, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and oceanographer Robert Ballard, geneticist Spencer Wells and archaeologist Paco Giles, search for clues about the Phoenicians in the sea, in the earth and in the blood of their modern-day descendents... Ballard looks at ancient shipwrecks along Skerki Bank off the island of Sicily... Paco Giles excavates a cave at the bottom of the rock of Gibraltar... Spencer Wells collects DNA from a 2,500-year-old Phoenician mummy's tooth, to extract its unique genetic code and compare it with DNA samples collected from men and women from Lebanon to Tunisia.
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More Ancient Wrecks
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Mindell has role in ancient shipwreck discovery
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/17/2004 9:07:03 PM PDT · 1 reply · 43+ views
Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Sept 10 1997 | Denise Brehm "These wrecks are absolutely pristine. Of course there is biological decay of the ship itself, but things are arranged exactly as they were the day it sank, with the same physical relationship between objects in the cargo holds," Professor Mindell said. The wrecks included five ships from ancient Roman times; one Islamic ship, probably medieval; and two sailing ships from the 18th or 19th century. The oldest wreck, about 120 feet long, had two cargo holds containing bronze vessels, at least eight types of amphorae for carrying foodstuffs, an array of kitchen and other household wares and two large lead...
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The Shipwreck at Assarca Island, Eritrea
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/17/2004 9:22:14 PM PDT · 5 replies · 50+ views
Institute of Nautical Archaeology | Revised January 1996 | Ralph K. Pedersen, M.A. It is not known whether the wood fragments were wreck material, or if they were associated with the remains of a Stalin's Organ lying nearby. No other artifacts, including anchors, were found despite the digging of several small test pits approximately 15 cm. deep to determine the extent of the wreck. It is probable more artifacts lie under the sand, as well as concreted into the coral. My original opinion of the date of the pottery was 7th century...I believed, however, a date a few centuries earlier or later was also possible. Research has revealed that my initial dating...
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Let's Have Jerusalem!
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Three centuries before Christ's birth, people celebrated 25 December, archaeologists claim
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Posted by freedom44 On News/Activism 12/28/2003 10:32:36 PM PST · 8 replies · 72+ views
Indepedent UK | 12/25/03 | David Keys Archeologists say they have traced the origins of the first Christmas to be celebrated on 25 December, 300 years before the birth of Christ. The original event marked the consecration of the ancient world's largest sun god statue, the 34m tall, 200 ton Colossus of Rhodes. It has long been known that 25 December was not the real date of Christ's birth and that the decision to turn it into Jesus's birthday was made by Constantine, the Roman Emperor, in the early 4th century AD. But experts believe the origins of that decision go back to 283 BC, when, in...
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Asia
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Ancient Pillboxes In Dainba (Tibet)
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Posted by blam On News/Activism 10/19/2004 7:46:57 PM PDT · 9 replies · 303+ views
Tibet News | 10-19-2004 Ancient pillboxes in Dainba In Dainba County of Garze Prefecture, there are many °?skyscraping°± pillboxes. Dainba County is situated to the east of Khamba. It lies between Gonggar Mountain and Four-Girl Mountain, and is adjacent to Aba Prefecture°Øs Xiaojin County and Jinchuan County. On both sides of the Dadu River, there are lots of towering ancient pillboxes facing the boundless mountains and the tremendous strong winds by standing on those steep mountain slopes near to beautiful Tibetan villages. There are now nearly a thousand pillboxes still existing in Dainba County and more than 280 of them are the most intact...
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Archaeologists Unearth 3,000-Year-Old Tombs In Northwest China
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Posted by blam On News/Activism 10/20/2004 1:55:02 PM PDT · 17 replies · 307+ views
AFP/Yahoo | 10-19-2004 Archaeologists unearth 3,000-year-old tombs in northwest China Tue Oct 19, 1:19 PM ET Science - AFP BEIJING (AFP) - Chinese archaeologists are unearthing a group of tombs believed to be the family cemetery of the Duke of Zhou, a de facto imperial ruler who lived about 3,000 years ago, state media said. Big Screen Action The season's hottest new games, cool arcade classics, and handhelds you've got to have. Archaeologists discovered the group of 22 tombs in February at Qi Mountain in the northwestern province of Shaanxi. They cover an area of about 80,000 square meters (860,800 square feet), the...
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China's Golden Age, Over Five Crucial Centuries
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Posted by blam On News/Activism 10/23/2004 3:19:37 PM PDT · 5 replies · 121+ views
International Heral Tribune | 10-23-2004 | Souren Melikian China’s ‘Golden Age,’ over five crucial centuries Souren Melikian International Herald Tribune Saturday, October 23, 2004 NEW YORK As they walk through the Metropolitan Museum’s ‘‘China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 A.D.,’’ many people will marvel at the new portrait of Chinese art and culture over five crucial centuries that comes across almost instantly. The myth of a monolithic, self-absorbed China is swept aside once and for all. In a gripping introduction (sometimes difficult to follow because it is so packed with information), James Watt, the Met curator who masterminded this unforgettable exhibition, describes the intermingling of the...
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Origins and Prehistory
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Ancient dung reveals a picture of the past
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Posted by SteveH On News/Activism 04/23/2003 9:41:25 AM PDT · 35 replies · 102+ views
ABC Science Online (Australia) | 4/18/03 | Abbie Thomas News in Science 18/4/2003 Ancient dung reveals a picture of the past [This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au An arctic mound of soil covering a core of solid ice in northeastern Siberia (Pic: Science) The successful dating of the most ancient genetic material yet may allow scientists to use preserved DNA from sources such as mammoth dung to help paint a picture of past environments. An international research effort led by Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark reports in today?s issue of the journal Science it has extracted well preserved animal and plant DNA from...
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Donkey DNA Shows African Asses Were First Tamed
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Posted by Junior On General/Chat 06/17/2004 1:06:21 PM PDT · 19 replies · 50+ views
Science - Reuters | 2004-06-17 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - African wild asses were probably tamed not once but twice in locations far apart to become the willing donkeys that carry loads the world over, an international team of researchers reported Thursday. Their study of donkey DNA suggests that two separate female wild asses are the ancestors of today's domesticated donkeys. "Sparse archeological evidence from Egypt suggests that donkeys, like horses, were domesticated about 5,000 years ago," Albano Beja-Pereira of the French research institute CNRS in Grenoble and colleagues wrote in their report, published in the journal Science. "Exactly where this occurred is still unclear." They used...
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Extinct humans left louse legacy (Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens)
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Posted by TigerLikesRooster On News/Activism 10/16/2004 3:53:39 AM PDT · 26 replies · 529+ views
BBC News | 10/06/04 | Paul Rincon Extinct humans left louse legacy By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff The evolutionary history of head lice is tied very closely to that of their hosts Some head lice infesting people today were probably spread to us thousands of years ago by an extinct species of early human, a genetics study reveals. It shows that when our ancestors left Africa after 100,000 years ago, they made direct contact with tribes of "archaic" peoples, probably in Asia. Lice could have jumped from them on to our ancestors during fights, sex, clothes-sharing or even cannibalism. Details of the research appear...
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Astronomy and Catastrophism
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The Dark Ages: Were They Darker Than We Imagined?
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Posted by blam On General/Chat 09/24/2002 11:18:33 AM PDT · 28 replies · 132+ views
Universe | Sept 99 | Greg Bryant The Dark Ages : Were They Darker Than We Imagined? By Greg Bryant Published in the September 1999 issue of Universe As we approach the end of the Second Millennium, a review of ancient history is not what you would normally expect to read in the pages of Universe. Indeed, except for reflecting on the AD 837 apparition of Halley's Comet (when it should have been as bright as Venus and would have moved through 60 degrees of sky in one day as it passed just 0.03 AU from Earth - three times closer than Hyakutake in 1996), you may...
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Roman Comet 5,000 Times More Powerful Than A-Bomb
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Posted by freedom44 On News/Activism 10/17/2004 3:36:42 PM PDT · 50 replies · 1,608+ views
Scotsman | 10/17/04 | John von Radowitz People living in southern Germany during Roman times may have witnessed a comet impact 5,000 times more destructive than the Hiroshima atom bomb, researchers say. Scientists believe a field of craters around Lake Chiemsee, in south-east Bavaria, was caused by fragments of a huge comet that broke up in the Earthís atmosphere. Celtic artefacts found at the site, including a number of coins, appear to have been strongly heated on one side. This discovery, together with evidence from ancient tree rings and Roman reports of "stones falling from the sky", has led researchers to conclude that the impact happened in...
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The Eltanin Impact Crater
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/17/2004 9:46:13 PM PDT · 17 replies · 169+ views
Geological Society of America | October 27-30, 2002 | Christy A. Glatz, Dallas H. Abbott, and Alice A. Nunes An impact event occurred at 2.15±0.5 Ma in the Bellingshausen Sea. It littered the oceanic floor with asteroidal debris. This debris is found within the Eltanin Impact Layer. Although the impact layer was known, the crater had yet to be discovered. We have found a possible source crater at 53.7S,90.1W under 5000 meters of water. The crater is 132±5km in diameter, much larger than the previously proposed size of 24 to 80 km.
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Ice Age coming into Focus!
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Posted by cureforcancer On General/Chat 06/05/2004 2:32:35 PM PDT · 19 replies · 186+ views
The Neutrino Report | 1995, 2004 | Robert Texas Bailey(Tex) "In 1990 they found that the Earth goes through abrupt temperature changes from deep ice samples in Greenland of about 10,000 years ago the Earthís temperature dropped 19 degrees" (research found by weather channel) taking 5-10 years (weather channel) but from analytical data, I intend to show this could take for the most part one year (Robert T Bailey) and more shocking a large part of the temperature change will happen this year! The End of the World as we known it is coming; an ice Age will change the face of the Earth. We have a crisis here. In...
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Giant asteroid rocked Antarctica
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/17/2004 9:26:51 PM PDT · 12 replies · 185+ views
Near Earth Object Information Centre | 8/20/2004 | staff The collision happened around 870 000 years ago, a time when Homo erectus, manís early ancestor, was still roaming the planet. Molten asteroid slabs melted through more than 1.5 kilometres of ice and snow to reach the underlying bedrock... Billions of tons of ice, snow and rock would have been vaporised and thrown into the atmosphere. Rock particles that fell to the ground have been located more that 5 000 kilometres away in Australia. The impact was so immense that it is being considered as the cause of a reversal of the Earthís magnetic polarity around this time. One...
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Small Comets and Our Origins
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Posted by SunkenCiv On Bloggers & Personal 10/19/2004 11:13:25 PM PDT · 37 replies · 178+ views
University of Iowa | circa 1999 | Louis A. Frank Given the reality of the dark spots, which soon became known as "atmospheric holes" because of their appearance in the images, there is only one explanation which has endured over all these years to present. That is, the holes are due to the shadowing of the atmospheric light by an object above the atmosphere. This object simply cannot be a stony or iron meteor because the holes are very large, tens of miles in diameter. A rock of this size would provide a disastrous impact on the Earth's surface. As it turns out, water vapor is very good at absorbing...
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Miscellany
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Luther's lavatory thrills experts
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Posted by wagglebee On General/Chat 10/23/2004 12:38:21 PM PDT · 6 replies · 76+ views
BBC News | 10/22/04 | BBC News Archaeologists in Germany say they may have found a lavatory where Martin Luther launched the Reformation of the Christian church in the 16th Century.The stone room is in a newly-unearthed annex to Luther's house in Wittenberg. Luther is quoted as saying he was "in cloaca", or in the sewer, when he was inspired to argue that salvation is granted because of faith, not deeds. The scholar suffered from constipation and spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet seat. 'Earthy Christianity'The lavatory was built in the period 1516-17, according to Dr Martin Treu, a theologian and Luther expert based in...
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Medieval Houses Of God, Or Ancient Fortresses?
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Posted by blam On News/Activism 10/19/2004 5:52:31 PM PDT · 18 replies · 496+ views
Archaeology | November/December 2004 | David Keys Medieval Houses of God, or Ancient Fortresses? Volume 57 Number 6, November/December 2004 by David Keys Cambridge archaeologist has redated the church of the archangel Gabriel, previously believed to have been carved from the rock at Lalibela, Ethiopia, around A.D. 1200, to between A.D. 600 and 800. The church may originally have been built as a fortress. (Courtesy Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, Cambridge) Investigations in Lalibela, Ethiopia, are revealing that Africa's most important historical Christian site is much older than previously thought. Up until now, scholars have regarded the spectacular complex of 11 rock-cut churches as dating from around...
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Victorian trousers left in personal 'time capsule'
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Posted by martin_fierro On General/Chat 10/22/2004 7:10:59 PM PDT · 15 replies · 236+ views
AFP/Yahoo | Fri Oct 22, 1:34 PM ET Victorian trousers left in personal 'time capsule' Fri Oct 22, 1:34 PM ET LONDON (AFP) - Workers renovating a British theatre have uncovered a personal time capsule left the last time the building was spruced up, containing a letter and, more curiously, a pair of Victorian trousers. The note, written on March 6, 1901 by a man identifying himself as Frank Morrill, requests that the well-used workman's trousers be handed to a museum. The time capsule, also containing some tools, was found behind a ceiling panel this week at the 17th Century Sheldonian Theatre, part of Oxford University, a university...
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end of digest #14 20041023
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