Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #204
Saturday, June 14, 2008
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Let's Have Jerusalem
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Israeli on Arab TV: Jerusalem Was Ours When Muslims [still] Worshipped Idols
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06/11/2008 8:38:25 PM PDT · Posted by PRePublic · 41 replies · 712+ views
INN | 06/04/08,
Jerusalem is our city forever and is not an issue for you, for Al Jazeera or for anyone ...Dr. Kedar: "Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran even once. You can't rewrite the Koran on air on Al Jazeera."...
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Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
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Tree From 2,000-Year-Old Seed Doing Well (Methuselah)
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06/12/2008 5:51:19 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 31 replies · 28+ views
Physorg | 6-12-2008 | RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
Just over three years old and about four-feet tall, Methuselah is growing well. "It's lovely," Dr. Sarah Sallon said of the date palm, whose parents may have provided food for the besieged Jews at Masada some 2,000 years ago. The little tree was sprouted in 2005 from a seed recovered from Masada, where rebelling Jews committed suicide rather than surrender to Roman attackers. Radiocarbon dating of seed fragments clinging to its root, as well as other seeds found with it that...
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Tree Grown From Ancient Seed Found in Jewish Fortress
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06/13/2008 10:01:24 AM PDT · Posted by mware · 21 replies · 246+ views
Fox News | Friday, June 13, 2008 | By Clara Moskowitz
Scientists have grown a tree from what may be the oldest seed ever germinated. The new sapling was sprouted from a 2,000-year-old date palm excavated in Masada, the site of a cliff-side fortress in Israel where ancient Jews are said to have killed themselves to avoid capture by Roman invaders. Dubbed the "Methuselah Tree" after the oldest person in the Bible, the new plant has been growing steadily, and after 26 months, the tree was nearly four feet (1.2 meters) tall.
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Near East
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Acrobat's last tumble
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06/13/2008 12:03:42 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 28+ views
Science News | June 6th, 2008 | Bruce Bower
This discovery offers a unique view of the social world nearly 4,300 years ago at Nagar, a city that belonged to Mesopotamia's Akkadian Empire, say Joan Oates of the University of Cambridge in England and her colleagues. Nagar's remnants lie within layers of mud-brick construction known collectively as Tell Brak (SN: 2/9/08, p. 90). The earliest layers date to more than 6,000 years ago. Evidence suggests that this Nagar sacrifice immediately followed a brief abandonment of the site because of some sort of natural disaster. Residents appeased their gods by surrendering valued individuals, animals and objects in a building formerly...
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Ebla
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Royal Goddesses Of A Bronze Age State
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02/07/2008 3:43:36 PM PST · Posted by blam · 7 replies · 33+ views
Archaeology Magazine | January - Febuarary | Marco Merola
Its arms arranged in a gesture of prayer, the figurine at right probably depicts a living queen worshipping the statuette of a dead royal, left. (Courtesy Maura Sala) It's been more than 30 years since Italian archaeologists found a vast archive of 17,000 cuneiform tablets at the Bronze Age site of Ebla in northern Syria. But the ancient city is still surprising those who work there. Last year archaeologist Paolo Matthiae's team discovered two almost perfectly preserved figurines that confirm textual evidence for a...
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Faith and Philosophy
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Jordan archaeologists unearth 'world's first church'
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06/10/2008 7:48:00 AM PDT · Posted by Between the Lines · 24 replies · 797+ views
AFP | June 10, 2008
Archaeologists in Jordan have unearthed what they claim is the world's first church, dating back almost 2,000 years, The Jordan Times reported on Tuesday. "We have uncovered what we believe to be the first church in the world, dating from 33 AD to 70 AD," the head of Jordan's Rihab Centre for Archaeological Studies, Abdul Qader al-Husan, said. He said it was uncovered under Saint Georgeous Church, which itself dates back to 230 AD, in Rihab in northern Jordan near the Syrian border. "We have evidence to believe this church sheltered the early Christians -- the 70...
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Greece
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Roman horse skeletons, chariot dug up
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06/13/2008 1:03:59 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 22 replies · 70+ views
Herald Sun (Australia) | June 12, 2008 | AFP correspondents in Athens
Archaeologists have dug up the skeletons of 16 horses and a two-wheeled chariot in a grave dating back to the Roman Empire in north-east Greece, the culture ministry announced today. Half of the horses were buried in pairs, whilst two human skeletons were also discovered in a dig near Lithohori, in the Kavala region. Near to the remains of six of the horses archaeologists found a shield, weapons and various other accessories... diggers found a grave and four tombs covered with a ceramic lid, which contained four bronze coins dating back to the fourth century AD. The chariot, dating from...
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Rome and Italy
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Ancient laborer burial ground excavated near Rome
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06/09/2008 12:38:54 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 9 replies · 332+ views
Associated Press | Jun 9, 2008 | Frances D'Emilio
First-century burial grounds near Rome's main airport are yielding a rare look into how ancient longshoremen and other manual workers did backbreaking jobs, archaeologists said Monday. The necropolis near the town of Ponte Galeria came to light last year when customs police noticed a clandestine dig by grave robbers seeking valuable ancient artifacts, Rome's archaeology office said. Most of the 300 skeletons unearthed were male, and many of them showed signs of years of heavy work: joint and tendon inflammation, compressed vertebrae, hernias and spinal problems, archaeologists said. Sandy sediment helped preserve the remains well. Judging by the...
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Longer Perspectives
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The Axum Obelisk Coming Home to Ethiopia
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04/19/2005 3:24:24 AM PDT · Posted by nuconvert · 8 replies · 461+ views
yahoo news/AP | Apr 18, 2005
A teenage Abebe Alenayehu watched Italian soldiers haul away Axum's revered obelisk nearly seven decades ago and never thought he would live to see its return. But if the weather cooperates, he will see the dream he shares with his nation come true Tuesday when a giant cargo plane returns the monument's 82-foot top section to this wind-swept town that was the seat of the ancient Axumite Kingdom. "The memory still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth," Abebe said...
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Africa
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Endurance Running Is In East Africans' Genes
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12/02/2004 4:44:53 PM PST · Posted by blam · 9 replies · 478+ views
New Scientist | 11-29-2004 | Andy Coghlan
The long-distance running prowess of Ethiopia's elite male athletes is partly dictated by their genes. Researchers have established that such athletes are more likely to have certain variants of four Y chromosome genes compared with other Ethiopians. No one knows what the genes do, or how influential they are, but they are the first to be linked to east Africans' outstanding ability for endurance events. Ethiopian and Kenyan athletes have run 37 of the 40 fastest times recorded over 10,000 metres. Alongside dedication and training, there is no doubt...
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Ancient Autopsies
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Missing evolution link surfaces in Africa
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06/11/2003 3:31:46 PM PDT · Posted by aculeus · 213 replies · 1,583+ views
The Christian Science Monitor | June 12, 2003 | Peter N. Spotts
In a discovery that several colleagues describe as "spectacular" and "extraordinary," an international team of researchers has uncovered fossils in Ethiopia that fill a crucial gap in the record of human evolution. Judged by their physical characteristics, the 160,000-year-old-fossils - nearly complete skulls of two adults and a child found near the village of Herto - teeter on the razor-thin edge of change between anatomically early and modern humans. The team also found skull pieces and teeth from seven other individuals. The discoveries dovetail with an expanding body of genetic evidence indicating that modern humans first evolved in Africa about...
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Oldest Remains of Modern Humans Are Identified by Scientists
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02/16/2005 11:01:16 AM PST · Posted by Alter Kaker · 553 replies · 5,767+ views
New York Times (AP Wire) | February 16, 2005 | AP Wire
A new analysis of bones unearthed nearly 40 years ago in Ethiopia has pushed the fossil record of modern humans back to nearly 200,000 years ago -- perhaps close to the dawn of the species. Researchers determined that the specimens are around 195,000 years old. Previously, the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens were Ethiopian skulls dated to about 160,000 years ago. Genetic studies estimate that Homo sapiens arose about 200,000 years ago, so the new research brings the fossil record more in line with that, said John Fleagle of Stony Brook University in New York,...
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Redating Leakey's Ethiopian human finds: more problems for compromise
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02/20/2005 11:44:15 AM PST · Posted by DannyTN · 4 replies · 351+ views
AnswersinGenesis.com | 02/18/05 | Carl Wieland, AiG Australia
In mid-2003 we published an article on the finding of specimens named Homo sapiens idiltu near Herto, Ethiopia -- see Ethiopian "earliest humans' find -- pointing out how these finds were a serious blow to long-age compromise on Genesis history. As the main species name given to these fossils indicates, they were clearly human, in both our opinion and that of the bulk of the secular science community. The fact that they shared some so-called "primitive' characteristics with e.g. Homo erectus and/or Neandertal (and/or "archaic sapiens') specimens only confirmed our view that all of these so-called "earlier' types are part of the same biological...
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Ethiopia unveils 3.3 million-year-old girl fossil
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09/20/2006 10:56:22 AM PDT · Posted by governsleastgovernsbest · 29 replies · 1,076+ views
Reuters
Ethiopian scientists unveiled on Wednesday a 3.3 million-year-old fossil of a girl, which they believe is the most complete skeleton ever found. The fossil including an entire skull, torso, shoulder blade and various limbs was discovered at Dikaka, some 400 kms northeast of the capital Addis Ababa near the Awash river in the Rift Valley. "The finding is the most complete hominid skeleton ever found in the world," Zeresenay Alemseged, head of the Paleoanthropological Research Team, told a news conference. He said the fossil was older than the 3.2 million year old remains of "Lucy" discovered...
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Paleontology
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Woolly-Mammoth Gene Study Changes Extinction Theory
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06/10/2008 1:38:12 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 43 replies · 845+ views
Physorg | 6-10-2008 | Penn State
Ball of permafrost-preserved mammoth hair containing thick outer-coat and thin under-coat hairs. Credit: Stephan Schuster lab, Penn State A large genetic study of the extinct woolly mammoth has revealed that the species was not one large homogenous group, as scientists previously had assumed, and that it did not have much genetic diversity. "The population was split into two groups, then one of the groups died out 45,000 years ago, long before the first humans began to appear in the region," said Stephan C. Schuster, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn...
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Panspermia
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Meet the Intraterrestrials
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06/12/2008 1:00:33 AM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 14 replies · 177+ views
NY Times | June 10, 2008 | Olivia Judson
Some weeks ago, I wrote about microbes in the air and their possible role in helping clouds form, in causing rain and in altering the chemistry of the high atmosphere. This week, I want to go in the opposite direction and plunge down into the earth. For many bacteria live deep in the oceans and deep in the earth, far from light, far from what we normally think of as good, comfortable places to live. For example: the bottom of the Mariana Trench. This is a seam on the sea floor in the northwestern Pacific, not far from the island...
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Helix, Make Mine a Double
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Renowned Christian Geneticist to Retire from Human Genome Research Institute (Francis Collins)
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06/10/2008 12:45:14 PM PDT · Posted by mnehrling · 7 replies · 136+ views
The Christian Post
Francis S. Collins, the Christian geneticist who led the project to map the human genome, announced that he will be stepping down as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. After serving for 15 years at NHGRI -- part of National Institute of Health -- Collins said Wednesday it was time for him to pursue other professional opportunities such as writing projects that dealt with the future of personalized medicine. But he admitted that he did not have a clear game plan for now. "I am going to take a kind of sabbatical for a few months -- to...
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Navigation
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New research refutes myth of pure Scandinavian race (Midnight at the oasis)
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06/09/2008 4:48:39 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 30 replies · 500+ views
University of Copenhagen | Jun 3, 2008 | Unknown
A team of forensic scientists at the University of Copenhagen has studied human remains found in two ancient Danish burial grounds dating back to the iron age, and discovered a man who appears to be of arabian origin. The findings suggest that human beings were as genetically diverse 2000 years ago as they are today and indicate greater mobility among iron age populations than was previously thought. The findings also suggest that people in the Danish iron age did not live and die in small, isolated villages but, on the contrary, were in constant contact with the wider world. On...
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Ancient Europe
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Stone Age Axe Holds Hidden Human Figure (Sweden)
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06/10/2008 1:51:52 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 17 replies · 1,133+ views
The Local | 6-109-2008
An artifact from the Stone Age has been hiding in the plain sight of museum visitors and researches in western Sweden. But no one noticed until archaeologist Bengt Nordqvist suddenly discovered the form of a human body on a stone axe. "The axe has been in the museum's collection for more than 100 years. Anyone could have found the image," said Nordqvist, who had a hard time containing his excitement. The stone axe was found in connection with the building of a road near Stala...
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Epigraphy and Language
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Europe and the Indo-European Languages
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06/13/2008 8:39:09 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 1 replies · 8+ views
Brussels Journal | Friday, June 13, 2008 | Fjordman
If you believe Mr. Edward Said and his numerous supporters, Sir William Jones was actually a racist pig who invented comparative linguistics in order to establish his dominance over "the Other." It's strange that Muslims didn't think of this when they ruled other peoples for centuries. After all, Persian, which they knew, is an Indo-European language, as is Sanskrit, as well as Greek, Armenian and the tongues of many of their subjects. Muslim scholars had access to a number of Semitic languages, from Arabic and Hebrew to Aramaic, in addition to languages of other Afro-Asiatic branches in North and East...
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India
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Relics Of Three Civilizations Found
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06/09/2008 5:45:01 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 5 replies · 401+ views
The News | 6-9-2008 | Saadia Khalid
The remains of more than 2,400-year-old Buddhist era are nurturing silently under the lap of Margalla Hills as the murals of Buddha appeared on the walls of caves at Shah Allah Ditta. At the distance of 15 kilometres from the main Golra intersection, the site needs immediate attention of the Department of Archaeology and Museums as it possesses not only the relics of Buddhist era but also 8th century AD Hindu period and the 300-year-old Aurangzeb period. According to archaeologists, the cages belong to Buddhists where monks used to perform...
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Central Asia
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Tunguska, A Century Later
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06/09/2008 12:44:01 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 48 replies · 1,532+ views
Science News | 6-5-2008 | Sid Perkins
The Tunguska blast shook Siberia in 1908, but on-site investigations were delayed for two decades. One of the first photos showed a large area of flattened trees.Early on the morning of June 30, 1908, a massive explosion shook central Siberia. Witnesses told of a fireball that streaked in from the southeast and then detonated in the sky above the desolate, forested region. At the nearest trading post, about 70 kilometers away from the blast, people were reportedly knocked from their...
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Only You...
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Mystery of infamous 'New England Dark Day' solved by 3 rings
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06/08/2008 5:31:10 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 37 replies · 1,091+ views
University of Missouri-Columbia | Jun 6, 2008 | Unknown
At noon, it was black as night. It was May 19, 1780 and some people in New England thought judgment day was at hand. Accounts of that day, which became known as 'New England's Dark Day,' include mentions of midday meals by candlelight, night birds coming out to sing, flowers folding their petals,and strange behavior from animals. The mystery of this day has been solved by researchers at the University of Missouri who say evidence from tree rings reveals massive wildfires as the likely cause, one of...
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Catastrophism and Astronomy
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Fossils found in Tibet by FSU geologist revise history of elevation, climate
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06/11/2008 3:37:13 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 20 replies · 348+ views
Florida State University | Jun 11, 2008 | Unknown
About 15,000 feet up on Tibet's desolate Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau, an international research team led by Florida State University geologist Yang Wang was surprised to find thick layers of ancient lake sediment filled with plant, fish and animal fossils typical of far lower elevations and warmer, wetter climates. Back at the FSU-based National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes in the fossils revealed the animals' diet (abundant plants) and the reason for their demise during the late Pliocene era in the region (a drastic climate change). Paleo-magnetic study determined the sample's age (a very...
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Australia and the Pacific
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Oz dino bone defies drift theory
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06/13/2008 7:36:24 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 8 replies · 55+ views
AFP | June 12, 2008 | unattributed
A dinosaur bone discovered in Australia has defied prevailing wisdom about how the world's continents separated from a super-continent millions of years ago, a new study said. The 19-centimetre bone was found in southeastern Australia but it comes from a very close cousin to Megaraptor, a flesh-ripping monster that lorded over swathes of South American some 90 million years ago. The extraordinary similarity between the two giant theropods adds weight to a dissident view about the break-up of a super-continent, known as Gondwana, that formed the continents of the southern hemisphere, the authors said on Tuesday. Gondwana broke up during...
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Antarctica
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New Fossils Suggest Ancient Cat-sized Reptiles in Antarctica
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06/07/2008 7:53:24 PM PDT · Posted by NormsRevenge · 36 replies · 717+ views
LiveScience.com on Yahoo | 6/7/08 | Jeanna Bryner
Cat-sized reptiles once roamed what is now the icebox of Antarctica, snuggling up in burrows and peeping above ground to snag plant roots and insects. The evidence for this scenario comes from preserved burrow casts discovered in the Transantarctic Mountains, which extend 3,000 miles (4,800 km) across the polar continent and contain layers of rock dating back 400 million years. "We've got good evidence that these burrows were made by land-dwelling animals rather than crayfish," said lead researcher Christian Sidor, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Washington and curator at UW's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Ancient...
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Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
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'Cursus' Is Older Than Stonehenge: Archeologists Step Closer To Solving Ancient Monument Riddle
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06/10/2008 10:45:44 AM PDT · Posted by blam · 9 replies · 852+ views
Science Daily | 6-10-2008 | University of Manchester.
A team led by University of Manchester archaeologist Professor Julian Thomas has dated the Greater Stonehenge Cursus at about 3,500 years BC -- 500 years older than the circle itself.The recently discovered antler pick used to dig the Cursus. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Manchester) They were able to pinpoint its age after discovering an antler pick used to dig the Cursus -- the most significant find since it was discovered in 1723 by antiquarian William Stukeley. When the pick was...
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British Isles
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The invention of Scotland
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06/11/2008 11:26:42 AM PDT · Posted by forkinsocket · 24 replies · 694+ views
Telegraph.co.uk | 06/06/2008 | Adam Sisman
The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who died in 2003, was often depicted as hostile to the Scots (or 'Scotch', as he insisted on calling them). Yet, as he would sometimes remark, he had a long association with Scotland and its people. He was brought up in Northumberland, only 20 miles or so from the border. As a boy he had been cared for by a Scots nanny, before attending a preparatory school in Dunbar. After an interval, he married a Scots wife, and together they bought a home near Melrose, where he lived during the university vacations for almost 30 years....
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Highland Bagpipe Is A Recent Invention For Nostalgic Scotish Emigres, Expert Claims
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04/19/2008 7:19:17 AM PDT · Posted by blam · 30 replies · 949+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 4-19-1008 | Patrick Sawer
Whisper it if you dare, but the age-old Highland bagpipe - beloved of sentimental Scots and American tourists in search of their Highland roots - is in fact a recent invention. Queen Victoria appointed a 'personal piper to the sovereign' A controversial new study has claimed that far from being the time-honoured instrument which led the clans into battle against the Auld Enemy, the bagpipe as we know it was developed in the early 1800s. It now seems that, like...
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Middle Ages and Renaissance
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Act Repeal Could Make Franz Herzog von Bayern New King Of England And Scotland
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04/06/2008 8:51:47 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 33 replies · 1,396+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 4-7-2008 | Richard Alleyne and Harry de Quetteville
Gordon Brown is considering repealing the 1701 Act of Settlement as a way of healing a historic injustice by ending the prohibition against Catholics taking the throne. The Duke of Bavaria, with his niece Elisabeth, is a descendant of King Charles I But doing so would have the unforeseen consequence of making a 74-year-old German aristocrat the new King of England and Scotland. Without the Act, Franz Herzog von Bayern, the current Duke of...
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Travel
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Pupils step back in time at Tully Castle
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06/13/2008 12:16:56 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 8 replies · 16+ views
Fermanagh Herald | Wednesday, June 11, 2008 | unattributed
READY TO DEFEND TULLY CASTLE. . . . Armed and willing to assist "The Musketeeer" Aias Boyd Rankin to fight of the enemies of Tully castle are Matthew Armstrong, Derrygonnolly Primary and Shauna Gileece, St.Patrick's Primary, Derrygonnolly. The Castle will be the setting for a Living History event on Sunday where members of the public can meet the Musketeer and his wife.
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Pages
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Insider: Guardians of Antiquity?
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06/13/2008 12:31:30 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 2 replies · 12+ views
Archaeology | July/August 2008 | review by Roger Atwood
James Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, posits in his new book Who Owns Antiquity? (Princeton University Press, $24.95) that the UNESCO treaty and laws enacted around the world aimed at applying its principles have done nothing to stop looting and have succeeded only in inhibiting the global movement of art. UNESCO, he argues, has impoverished our understanding of one another and contributed to a stale, narrowly nationalistic view of culture. More specifically, these laws have prevented museums like his from acquiring antiquities as they have in the past. He calls them "nationalist retentionist cultural property...
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Victor Davis Hanson: War and Decision by Douglas Feith
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06/12/2008 8:37:47 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 14 replies · 21+ views
Commentary | June 2008 | Victor Davis Hanson
"The stupidest f--ing guy on the planet" is how General Tommy Franks, the head of U.S. Central Command, summed up Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Pentagon from July 2001 until his resignation in August 2005. Franks was cruder than most, but Feith was under almost continuously hostile scrutiny and controversy throughout his tenure. As the third-highest ranking civilian official in Donald Rumsfeld's wartime Pentagon, he oversaw the Defense Department's relations with foreign governments at...
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Return to Action
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06/11/2008 8:53:51 PM PDT · Posted by Dawnsblood · 5 replies · 291+ views
Michael Yon Online | 6/11/08 | Michael Yon
Some updates: I have left the United States and am heading back to the war. Heavy promotion of Moment of Truth in Iraq is over. I conducted approximately 100 radio, television, magazine and newspaper interviews, therefore was unable to do much more than track the war from afar. There are more radio interviews scheduled, but I'll be talking from downrange. Moment of Truth in Iraq hit #6 on the Amazon bestseller list, and #2 on Barnes and Noble, which greatly surprised me. Michael Moore has stopped the copyright infringement on my work, but his attorney has not responded to my...
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'Nixonland,' Chronicling a Political Sea Change
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06/08/2008 4:54:30 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 33 replies · 551+ views
NY Sun | May 29, 2008 | CHRISTOPHER WILLCOX
You don't have to agree with everything in this monumental account of politics in the 1960s and 1970s to find Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland" (Scribner, 896 pages, $37.50) interesting and even engrossing. The book is a masterful retelling of the turbulent period between the crushing defeat of Barry Goldwater by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and the equally stunning loss by George McGovern to Richard Nixon in 1972. Mr. Perlstein's use of the elections of 1964 and 1972 as ideological goalposts may be arbitrary, but it is easy to see why he selected them. Could two such different countries really be...
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Oh So Mysterioso
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On the Trail of the Ark
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09/21/2002 5:52:00 PM PDT · Posted by Cicero · 1 replies · 106+ views
Crisis Magazine | July-August 2002 | Raymond Matthew Wray
"He says you must go now," my translator told me. I looked from him to the official standing across from the old church ruins. "I thought I could stay until six o'clock?" I protested. He shrugged and got up to lead me out.While we were leaving!, three more visitors entered the compound. I pointed this out to him, waving my entrance ticket in the air. Finally, he opened up: "In the past, they have had some trouble with people here." In other words, I'd overstayed my welcome. I was being thrown...
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Raided Lost Ark Returns Home
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07/03/2003 9:09:12 PM PDT · Posted by MarMema · 3 replies · 111+ views
BBC News | Tuesday, 1 July, 2003 | Damian Zane
A replica of the Biblical Ark of the covenant, or tabot, has been taken back to Ethiopia and an Irish doctor was responsible. Dr MacLennan started shaking when he first saw the tabot But Indiana Jones he is not. No chiselled jaw line. No leather whip, no pistol. And this discovery did not require hacking through dense jungle or dodging dangerous rivals. In 1868 British soldiers looted the Maqdala fortress in the north of Ethiopia as part of a campaign to free some hostages. Royal treasures along with some valuable manuscripts and religious artefacts found their way into museums and...
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Diet and Cuisine
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Scientists find monkeys who know how to fish
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06/10/2008 7:14:30 AM PDT · Posted by null and void · 70 replies · 923+ views
APnewsmyway | Jun 10, 7:27 AM (ET) | MICHAEL CASEY
Long-tailed macaque monkeys have a reputation for knowing how to find food - whether it be grabbing fruit from jungle trees or snatching a banana from a startled tourist. Now, researchers say they have discovered groups of the silver-haired monkeys in Indonesia that fish. Groups of long-tailed macaques were observed four times over the past eight years scooping up small fish with their hands and eating them along rivers in East Kalimantan and North Sumatra provinces, according to researchers from The Nature Conservancy and the Great Ape Trust. A long-tailed macaque monkey looks for fish in...
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Hunting and Gathering
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Early Humans Experimented To Get Bow And Arrow Just Right, Findings Suggest
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06/10/2008 8:30:00 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 55 replies · 904+ views
Science Daily | 6-11-2008 | University of Missouri-Columbia.
Arrow points (top) were reworked and refined through experimentation, often using dart points (bottom) as a starting place. The difference between the two types of points (size and neck/stem width) can be observed in this photo. (Credit: University of Missouri) ScienceDaily (Jun. 11, 2008) -- In today's fast-paced, technologically advanced world, people often take the innovation of new technology for granted without giving much thought to the trial-and-error experimentation that makes technology useful in everyday life. When the "cutting-edge" technology of the bow and arrow was introduced to the...
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Mammoth Told Me There'd Be Days Like This
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Tracking Myth to Geological Reality
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11/05/2005 12:20:12 PM PST · Posted by Lessismore · 24 replies · 1,107+ views
Science Magazine | 11/4/2005 | Kevin Krajick*
Once dismissed, myths are winning new attention from geologists who find that they may encode valuable data about earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and other stirrings of the earth SEATTLE, WASHINGTON--James Rasmussen, owner of a funky used-record store called Bud's Jazz, and Ruth Ludwin, a seismologist at the University of Washington, Seattle, make an unlikely professional team. Late last year, they were walking down the beach near the bustling Fauntleroy ferry dock, searching for a reddish sandstone boulder. Native American legends-Rasmussen belongs to the local Duwamish people-say the boulder is haunted by a'yahos, a spirit with the body of a serpent and...
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PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
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Mexican Archaeologists Unearth Ruins Of (Montezuma) Aztec Palace
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06/10/2008 1:45:29 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 6 replies · 475+ views
IHT | 6-10-2008 | AP
Mexican archaeologists said Monday they have unearthed the remains of an Aztec palace once inhabited by the emperor Montezuma in the heart of what is now downtown Mexico City. During a routine renovation project on a Colonial-era building, experts uncovered pieces of a wall as well as a basalt floor believed to have been part of a dark room where Montezuma meditated, archaeology team leader Elsa Hernandez said. Montezuma's palace complex -- known as the Casas Nuevas, or New Houses to distinguish them from his...
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Never Goin' Back To My Old School
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Will Work At Allendale County Archaeological Dig (Topper) Rewrite Human History?
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06/08/2008 5:18:39 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 17 replies · 773+ views
Island Packet | 6-8-2008 | Liz Mitchell
Photo: Cynthia Curry of Charlotte holds up a piece of quartz she discovered at Topper on Wednesday. Jay Karr/The Island Packet More than 13,000 years ago, South Carolina was a wild kingdom alive with all sorts of beasts: saber-tooth tigers, beavers the size of Great Danes, camels, elephants and mastodons. Until recently, these animals were believed to have vanished before the first Americans -- called the Clovis people -- arrived about 13,000 years ago from Asia via the Bering Sea land bridge....
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Japan
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Bear-Worshipping Ainu To Flourish Again
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06/07/2008 8:29:49 AM PDT · Posted by blam · 36 replies · 684+ views
The Telegraph (UK) | 6-6-2008 | Julian Ryall
A bear-worshipping indigenous minority of northern Japan are to receive official recognition, a move that will end 140 years of enforced assimilation and discrimination. Representatives from Japan's minority Ainu people bow their heads after the Japanese parliament recognised their indigenous status The Ainu, the original inhabitants of Hokkaido island, were conquered by Japan in the mid-1800s and forcibly assimilated into Japanese culture. The Meiji government in Tokyo declared the Ainu language illegal, forced them to adopt Japanese names, redistributed their land to mainland settlers and...
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Oh Canada
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Explorers find 1780 British warship in Lake Ontario
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06/13/2008 4:20:50 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 30 replies · 561+ views
Associated Press | Jun 13, 2008 | William Kates
This handout image from video released Friday, June 13, 2008 by Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville, shows the crows nest and foremast of the sunken 228-year-old British warship HMS Ontario, a British warship built in 1780 that has been discovered in deep water off the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Kennard and Scoville used side scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible to locate the HMS Ontario, which was lost with barely a trace and as many as 130 people on board during a gale in 1780. (AP Photo/ courtesy of Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville) SYRACUSE -- A 22-gun British...
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Early America
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Hamilton's home moved to new spot in Harlem
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06/08/2008 11:45:24 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 12 replies · 374+ views
Associated Press | Jun 8, 2008 | Verena Dobnik
Two hundred and eighty tons of American history were on the move Saturday in Harlem. The home of Alexander Hamilton, who conceived the country's banking system and was killed in a duel with a political rival, rolled inch by inch down a Harlem hillside to its new location overlooking a park. "This was the only home Hamilton ever owned," said Steve Laise, a National Park Service official dressed in a vest, tie and pants typical of the 1800's. "It represented the consummation of Hamilton's lifelong dream -- a successful social position for a man who came to...
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Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
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'Sunken City' A Reminder Of An Ill-Fated Residential Area
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06/13/2008 5:43:39 AM PDT · Posted by blam · 4 replies · 24+ views
Daily Breeze | 6-11-2008 | Josh Grossberg
Jessica Bagwell of Walnut photographs the ruins at Sunken City as a school project on landscape architecture and plant resilience at Cal Poly Pomona. (Sean Hiller/Staff Photographer)But the property also features a less-savory aspect of life in Southern California: treacherous and unstable terrain. Now ominously known as "Sunken City," the 6-acre parcel overlooking the cliffs at the southernmost tip of Los Angeles, in San Pedro, was once dotted with homes - a community of bungalows owned by Harbor Area developer...
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end of digest #204 20080614
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