Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #57
Saturday, August 20, 2005
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Medieval Europe
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Dig Reveals More Of Isles' Bloody History (Scotland)
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Posted by blam
On General/Chat 08/17/2005 4:54:27 PM PDT · 10 replies · 195+ views
Scotsman | 8-16-2005 | John Ross
Dig reveals more of isles' bloody history JOHN ROSS NEW evidence of bloody clan battles at a medieval stronghold in the Western Isles has been unearthed by archaeologists. A team from Glasgow University has revealed a fortified settlement on Dun Eistean, a sea stack on the north-east coast of Lewis, thought to have been a refuge and spiritual home for the Clan Morrison 400 to 800 years ago. The discovery of musket balls, a lookout tower and a defensive wall around the perimeter of the island points to battles with the Morrisons' fierce rivals, including the Macaulays. Rachel Barrowman and...
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Grave Of Egil Skalla-Grimsson Found? (Iceland)
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/18/2005 3:07:15 PM PDT · 62 replies · 962+ views
Iceland Review | 8-9-2005
08/09/2005 | 13:05 Grave of Egil Skalla-GrÌmsson found? Icelandic State Radio reports that the possible grave site of Egil Skalla-GrÌmsson, one of Iceland's most famous vikings, has been found under the altar of a church from the settlement period. No bones were found at the burial site. Jessie Byock, archeology professor at the University of California in Los Angeles who is in charge of the excavation, emphasizes that the work being done in Mosfellsdal is not directed at finding the grave site of Egil Skalla-GrÌmsson. The excavation has taken many years and the church at HrÌsbr? is the seventh dig...
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Anatolia
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Geologists investigate Trojan battlefield
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Posted by TigerLikesRooster
On News/Activism 02/07/2003 9:52:05 PM PST · 52 replies · 443+ views
BBC NEWS | 02/07/03 | N/A
Friday, 7 February, 2003, 11:42 GMT Geologists investigate Trojan battlefield The Greeks armies would have attacked from the west Homer's description of the Trojan battlefield in his classic poem the Iliad is accurate, say scientists. The subject of the story - the Greeks' 10-year siege of Troy and the wooden horse they used to bring it to an end - may have been a myth, but its geography was not. It was right in front of Troy that we were drilling a hole and seashells came out Chris Kraft The researchers drilled sediments in northwest Turkey to map how the...
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Ancient Egypt
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King of the Wild Frontier (Hyksos art and architecture in the Sinai)
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 08/15/2005 7:33:49 PM PDT · 11 replies · 144+ views
Al-Ahram Weekly | 2005 | Nevine El-Aref
A team of archaeologists digging at Tel-Habuwa, near the town of Qantara East and three kilometres east of the Suez Canal... chanced upon a cachet of limestone reliefs bearing names of two royal personalities and two seated statues of differing sizes. The larger statue is made of limestone and belongs to a yet unidentified personage, but from its size and features archaeologists believe that it could be a statue of Horus, the god of the city. In 2001 archaeologists unearthed remains of a mud-brick temple dedicated to this deity. The second is a headless limestone statue inscribed on the back...
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Reconstruction Reveals Mummy's Face
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Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 04/28/2005 11:56:04 PM PDT · 26 replies · 1,253+ views
Discovery Channel | April 27, 2005 | Jennifer Viegas
The face of "Bess," an Egyptian woman who died 3,000 to 3,500 years ago, is once again visible as technology brings to life what an artist's hand used to. "The Egyptians obviously put a huge amount of effort into preparing their bodies for eternal life," said Stephen Humphries, director of business development at Medical Modeling LLC of Golden, Colo., where the reconstruction took place. "Thanks to the technology that they developed to preserve their bodies over thousands of years, and to modern computer and manufacturing technology, it might be true that 'Bessy' has achieved eternal life." Bess was five feet...
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Ancient Greece
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Bulgarian Archaeologists Uncover Treasure Of Thousands Of Golden Ornaments
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/17/2005 4:37:50 PM PDT · 26 replies · 557+ views
Canadian Press | 8-17-2005
Bulgarian archeologists uncover treasure of thousands of golden ornaments Canadian Press Wednesday, August 17, 2005 SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) - Archeologists working a dig in central Bulgaria have unearthed some 15,000 miniature rings and other gold ornaments that date to the end of the third millennium BC - a find they say matches the famous treasure of Troy, scholars announced Wednesday. The 4,100- to 4,200-year-old golden ornaments have been gradually unearthed over the past year from an ancient tomb near the central village of Dabene, 120 kilometres east of the capital, Sofia, according to Prof. Vasil Nikolov, the consultant on the...
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Ancient Rome
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Historical Tiberias
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/19/2005 12:01:35 PM PDT · 10 replies · 344+ views
Israel Today | 8-19-2005
Historical Tiberias Excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) have been taking place in Tiberias at three different locations on the Sea of Galilee. Archaeologists discovered a Roman stadium dating back to the first century, which is also mentioned in the writings of Flavius Josephus. Inhabitants of this ancient town used the stadium for various events such as chariot racing and a gathering place for special occasions. In 67 AD, the Romans captured thousands of Jews and assembled them in the stadium. After a bloody battle between the Romans and Jews near Migdal, a town on the Sea of Galilee...
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Asia
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Ancient faces brought to life
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 08/17/2005 8:17:40 AM PDT · 6 replies · 217+ views
Vietnam News Agency | August 14 2005 | Viet Nam News
[caption] The faces of a 40-year-old man (first two photos from left) and a 17-years-old girl (last two photos) of the Mongol race are shown in completion. They are considered the first portraits of the Dong Son people in Viet Namís history of archaeology.
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Scientists unearth bronze casting centre (Vietnam)
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 08/17/2005 8:25:22 AM PDT · 2 replies · 77+ views
Vietnam News Agency | August 14 2005 | Viet Nam News |
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Let's Have Jerusalem
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Dig Backs Biblical Account Of Philistine City Of Gat
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/14/2005 8:20:53 PM PDT · 29 replies · 682+ views
Haaretz | 8-9-2005 | Amiram Barkat
Dig backs biblical account of Philistine city of GatLast update - 02:53 09/08/2005 By Amiram BarkatThe moat running around Gat that was to enforce the siege. David Bachar New evidence regarding the bitter end of Gat, the largest and most important Philistine city, was recently unearthed at a dig at Tel Zafit near the Masmia intersection in the Lachish region. According to Kings II (12:18), Gat was conquered by King Hazael of Aram. He intended to capture Jerusalem as well, but King Jehoash of Judah saved the capital while losing treasure taken from the Temple (Kings II 14:14). Findings at...
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King Hezekiah's Water System (Two recent excavations uncover ancient water systems)
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 08/15/2005 8:00:31 PM PDT · 13 replies · 146+ views
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs | 10-Aug-2005 | staff
Such a massive enterprise, archeologists deduce, could only have been a project undertaken by the kingdom of Judah, and it must have been used by the inhabitants of the nearby biblical town of Suba. The dig showed that the water system fell into disuse in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, although the reservoir-cave below was still being used for its water. During the Persian and Hellenistic periods the cave was still partially being used, but was eventually completely abandoned in the 2nd century BCE.
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PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
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Mexican footprints cause scientific stir
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Posted by gnarledmaw
On News/Activism 08/18/2005 9:21:43 AM PDT · 65 replies · 1,381+ views
MANBC | 2:01 p.m. ET July 5, 2005 | AP
AP LONDON - British scientists claimed on Tuesday to have unearthed 40,000-year-old human footprints in central Mexico, challenging previous studies that put the arrival of the first humans in the Americas at about 13,500 years ago. Scientists Silvia Gonzalez, from Liverpool John Moores University, and Matthew Bennett, of Bournemouth University, found the footprints in an abandoned quarry close to the Cerro Toluquilla volcano in the Valsequillo Basin...Continued at MSNBC
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Scientists Detail Study of Kennewick Man
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Posted by jazzo
On News/Activism 07/11/2005 11:48:33 AM PDT · 51 replies · 1,121+ views
Yahoo! News | 07/11/2005 | Melanthia Mitchell
SEATTLE - Cloistered around padded tables, scientists from around the country have been peering through microscopes and measuring bone fragments trying to unearth the history of an ancient skeleton found along the Columbia River. Researchers on Sunday offered details of their first comprehensive study of the 9,000-year-old Kennewick Man, one of the oldest and most complete skeletons ever found in North America. The team of anthropologists, geochemists and data analysts have been busy assembling the skeleton's more than 300 bones and bone fragments at the University of Washington's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, where the remains have been...
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Inca May Have Used Knot Computer Code To Bind Empire
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 06/22/2003 8:08:43 PM PDT · 19 replies · 121+ views
Independent (UK) | 6-23-2003 | Steve Conner
Inca may have used knot computer code to bind empire By Steve Connor, Science Editor 23 June 2003 They ran the biggest empire of their age, with a vast network of roads, granaries, warehouses and a complex system of government. Yet the Inca, founded in about AD1200 by Manco Capac, were unique for such a significant civilisation: they had no written language. This has been the conventional view of the Inca, whose dominions at their height covered almost all of the Andean region, from Colombia to Chile, until they were defeated in the Spanish conquest of 1532. But a leading...
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Incan Counting System Decoded?
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Posted by vannrox
On News/Activism 02/03/2004 6:04:59 AM PST · 95 replies · 862+ views
Discovery News | Feb 3 2004 | By Rossella Lorenzi
Incan Counting System Decoded? By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News Learn how to add 9+7 on the yupana abacus. Jan. 29, 2004 ? The Inca invented a powerful counting system that could be used to make complex calculations without the tiniest mistake, according to an Italian engineer who claims to have cracked the mathematics of this still mysterious ancient population. Begun in the Andean highlands in about 1200, the Inca ruled the largest empire on Earth by the time their last emperor, Atahualpa, was garroted by Spanish conquistadors in 1533. Long been considered the only major Bronze Age civilization without a...
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Scientists untangle Inca number-strings (Kept Track of Tax Payments)
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Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 08/14/2005 10:47:40 PM PDT · 19 replies · 474+ views
news@nature.com | 11 August 2005 | Andreas von Bubnoff
Knotted threads carry signs of ancient accountancy.Scientists have picked apart some 500-year-old calculations from the Inca empire. The team deciphered the maths from a series of 'khipus': elaborate structures of coloured, knotted strings. Researchers have long known that the Inca, who lived along the west coast of South America from AD 1400-1532, used such cords to record numbers. But this is the first mathematical relationship found between khipu. And that may help to work out what kind of information they stored. Khipus encode numbers as knots in strings hanging from a cord. The closer a knot is to the cord,...
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Biology and Cryptobiology
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Mitochondrial DNA Mutation Rates
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Posted by Ahban
On News/Activism 09/01/2002 4:20:09 PM PDT · 153 replies · 332+ views
University of North Carlolina Computer Science Department website | from 1997 to present | David Plaistid
Mitochondrial DNA Mutation Rates David A. Plaisted Recently an attempt was made to estimate the age of the human race using mitochondrial DNA. This material is inherited always from mother to children only. By measuring the difference in mitochondrial DNA among many individuals, the age of the common maternal ancestor of humanity was estimated at about 200,000 years. A problem is that rates of mutation are not known by direct measurement, and are often computed based on assumed evolutionary time scales. Thus all of these age estimates could be greatly in error. In fact, many different rates of mutation are...
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Study: "Jumping Genes" Create Ripples in the Genome- -and Perhaps Species' Evolution
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Posted by forsnax5
On News/Activism 08/17/2002 6:06:34 PM PDT · 547 replies · 184+ views
JHMI Office of Communications and Public Affairs | August 15, 2002 | Johns Hopkins, et al
Laboratory experiments led by Hopkins scientists have revealed that so-called "jumping genes" create dramatic rearrangement in the human genome when they move from chromosome to chromosome. If the finding holds true in living organisms, it may help explain the diversity of life on Earth, the researchers report in the current (Aug. 9) issue of Cell. "Jumping genes," or retrotransposons, are sequences of DNA that are easily and naturally copied from one location in the genome and inserted elsewhere, particularly in developing eggs and sperm. There are more than 500,000 copies in the human genome of the retrotransposon the scientists studied,...
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Prehistory and Origins
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Ice Age Engravings Found In Somerset (UK)
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Posted by blam
On News/Activism 08/18/2005 2:47:54 PM PDT · 27 replies · 548+ views
The Guardian (UK) | 8-18-2005
Ice Age engravings found in Somerset Press Association Thursday August 18, 2005 The Guardian (UK) A series of rare engravings, believed to date from the Mesolithic period, 10,000 years ago, have been discovered in a cave in Somerset. The three abstract squares, thought to have been made with stone tools, were found in Long Hole cave in Cheddar by the University of Bristol Speleological Society. The find follows the discover of ancient inscribed crosses at nearby Aveline's Hole cave in February this year. Experts have not been able to determine the meaning of the engravings yet, but say they are...
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The place of the Basques in the European Y-chromosome diversity landscape
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 08/15/2005 8:42:56 PM PDT · 21 replies · 254+ views
Nature (abstract only) | 2005 | Santos Alonso et al
There is a trend to consider the gene pool of the Basques as a 'living fossil' of the earliest modern humans that colonized Europe. To investigate this assumption, we have typed 45 binary markers and five short tandem repeat loci of the Y chromosome in a set of 168 male Basques. Results on these combined haplotypes were analyzed in the context of matching data belonging to approximately 3000 individuals from over 20 European, Near East and North African populations, which were compiled from the literature. Our results place the low Y-chromosome diversity of Basques within the European diversity landscape. This...
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Skulls Found in Africa and in Europe Challenge Theories of Human Origins
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Posted by vannrox
On News/Activism 08/11/2002 3:59:04 PM PDT · 465 replies · 377+ views
NY Times | August 6, 2002 | By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
August 6, 2002 Skulls Found in Africa and in Europe Challenge Theories of Human OriginsBy JOHN NOBLE WILFORD wo ancient skulls, one from central Africa and the other from the Black Sea republic of Georgia, have shaken the human family tree to its roots, sending scientists scrambling to see if their favorite theories are among the fallen fruit. Probably so, according to paleontologists, who may have to make major revisions in the human genealogy and rethink some of their ideas about the first migrations out of Africa by human relatives. Yet, despite all the confusion and uncertainty the skulls...
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Science and Creation Myth
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Posted by WaterDragon
On Religion 09/02/2002 10:25:23 AM PDT · 22 replies · 45+ views
Oregon Magazine | September 1, 2002 | Eric Blair
The creation vs evolution drama continues. From here it looks like the God people are winning. When you think about that, it's a logical outcome. A supreme court that opens with a prayer comes off as a bit hypocritical when it says that religion has no place in publicly-financed institutions. That's a bit like a fox passing a law against hawks eating chickens.....(snip)Please click here for complete article.
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Catastrophism and Astronomy
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Fossil hunter believes tsunami struck Florida
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Posted by nickcarraway
On News/Activism 08/17/2005 10:12:07 AM PDT · 24 replies · 1,201+ views
News Sentinel | Mon, Aug. 15, 2005 | NICHOLAS SPANGLER
Fossil Frank has a hypothesis - inspired by certain shells taken from deep in a limestone quarry abutting the Everglades - that a great tsunami hit Florida about two million years ago. It happened in the evening - and he can prove it. More of this later. Before Frank Perillo became Fossil Frank he was an unhappy mechanic. He hated every day he lay on his back in Ketcham's garage. Winter days were worst, because his hands turned to meat from the cold and the lacquer thinners he used to wash himself. When he jacked up cars, the ice on...
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Underwater Archaeology
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Atlantis expedition reveals structures
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Posted by jb6
On News/Activism 08/16/2005 2:42:44 PM PDT · 33 replies · 921+ views
Financial Mirror | 05/08/2005
The sonar scans of manmade structures one mile below water off the southeast coast of Cyprus were presented here Thursday by Robert Sarmast, head of the Cyprus/Atlantis Expedition project for the first time. Announcing the results of last yearís expedition to find one of humankindís greatest mysteries, the legendary Atlantis, Sarmast presented three dimension underwater side-scan sonar pictures of structures 1.5 km below sea level, 80 km off the southeast coast of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean. He said it was no coincidence that his team discovered a 3km long straight wall intersected at right angles by another wall, adding...
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Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
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Ancient Civilizations: Six Great Enigmas
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Posted by jb6
On News/Activism 08/16/2005 1:39:57 PM PDT · 71 replies · 1,890+ views
Disklosure | WILL HART & ROBERT BERRINGER
We stand today at an unprecedented turning point in human history. In recent years two versions of ancient history have formed. One, we shall call ëalternativeí history, the other we shall refer to as ëofficialí history. The former ponders over a variety of anomalies and tries to make sense out of the corpus of evidence, i.e., the pyramids and timelines, why they were built, by whom and when. The latter conducts digs, catalogues pottery shards, and tries to defend its proposal there are no enigmas, and virtually everything is explained. At one point perhaps as late as fifteen years ago...
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end of digest #57 20050820
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