Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #214
Saturday, August 23, 2008
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Neandertal / Neanderthal
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Earliest Known Human Had Neanderthal Qualities
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08/22/2008 2:36:54 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 13 replies · 301+ views
Discovery News | Aug 22, 2008 | Jennifer Viegas
The world's first known modern human was a tall, thin individual -- probably male -- who lived around 200,000 years ago and resembled present-day Ethiopians, save for one important difference: He retained a few primitive characteristics associated with Neanderthals, according to a series of forthcoming studies conducted by multiple international research teams. The extraordinary findings, which will soon be outlined in a special issue of the Journal of Human Evolution devoted to the first known Homo sapiens, also reveal information about the material culture of the first known people, their surroundings, possible lifestyle and, perhaps most...
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Climate
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New climate record shows century-long droughts in eastern North America
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08/19/2008 2:01:30 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 14 replies · 451+ views
Ohio University | Aug 19, 2008 | ANDREA GIBSON
Weak sun created cool oceans, lowered rainfall seven times in 7,000 years -- A stalagmite in a West Virginia cave has yielded the most detailed geological record to date on climate cycles in eastern North America over the past 7,000 years. The new study confirms that during periods when Earth received less solar radiation, the Atlantic Ocean cooled, icebergs increased and precipitation fell, creating a series of century-long droughts. A research team led by Ohio University geologist Gregory Springer examined the trace metal strontium and carbon and oxygen isotopes in the stalagmite, which preserved climate conditions...
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Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
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Ancient stone chamber unearthed in garden
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08/17/2008 10:10:44 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 10 replies · 508+ views
Derry Journal | Friday, August 15, 2008 | Staff reporter
Discovered by Clonmany man Sean Devlin, the previously unrecorded structure appears to be an underground tunnel or souterrain. Mr Devlin revealed yesterday that he first discovered the underground chamber several years ago while landscaping his front garden, but didn't make much of a fuss about his amazing find at the time. The historic significance of the tunnel only became apparent recently after Mr Devlin showed it to amateur archaeologist friends... Souterrains are underground man-made drystone built structures roofed with large lintels, comprising of one or more chambers linked by tunnels called creepways. Their entrance is concealed at ground level. They...
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Britain
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Bronze age remains 'may be tribal chieftain'
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08/17/2008 10:28:11 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 2 replies · 155+ views
Telegraph | August 15, 2008 | Richard Savill
A 3,500-year-old bronze-age skeleton, found beside a beach, could be a tribal chieftain, archaeologists believe. The discovery of the middle-aged man's remains and burial casket, or cisk, was made by an amateur archaeologist, Trevor Renals, as walked on Constantine Island, North Cornwall. It was regarded as unusual because cremation rather than burial was popular in the bronze-age period and skeletons are not normally found in such a well preserved state... It is believed the man was from the middle bronze age, between 1380 and 1100BC, and he may have been an important member of his community... The discovery was made...
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Middle Ages and Renaissance
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Metal detector find dates back 1,500 years[UK]
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08/19/2008 8:10:18 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 11 replies · 1,012+ views
Kent Online | 19 Aug 2008 | Gerry Warren
When a Kent metal detecting enthusiast found something in a field of stubble he thought it looked interesting...and he was right! The gold pendant he discovered dated back more than 1,500 years and has been declared treasure trove. Fork lift truck driver Andy Sales, from Deal, found the ancient artefact near Worth. A coroner has declared the item treasure trove after an expert from the British Museum examined and dated it to between 491-518 AD. In his report to the hearing, the curator in early medieval coinage, Dr Gareth Williams, said it was a gold tremissis bearing the image of...
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Old silver cross found in field declared treasure[UK][15th Century]
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08/23/2008 8:40:28 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 7 replies · 735+ views
Yorkshire Post | 23 Aug 2008 | Andrew Robinson
A metal detector enthusiast unearthed a 15th century silver cross depicting the figure of Christ while working in a field he had searched many times before. Retired postal worker Philip Fletcher, 53, discovered the small cross in the Ackworth area of Pontefract in February last year. He said yesterday: "I had an inkling it might be a significant find as I had found things on this land in the past which indicated a past medieval presence." The value of the find -- which, once sold, will be divided between Mr Fletcher and the landowner, a farmer -- has yet to...
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Let's Have Jerusalem
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Amid war, a prophet's shrine survives
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08/17/2008 3:18:36 PM PDT · Posted by forkinsocket · 4 replies · 368+ views
Babylon And Beyond | Aug 17 2008 | Raheem Salman
Here on the plains of the Tigris River lies the shrine of Ezra, the Jewish prophet, who returned to Jerusalem at the end of the Babylonian exile. According to biblical scholars, Ezra died years later back in the Mesopotamia at age 120 in what is now called Uzair. Locals believe Ezra passed away while roaming through the area with his donkey. His shrine still exists in this predominantly Shiite district of Amarah province filled with supporters of young cleric Muqtada's Sadr late father, a grand ayatollah assassinated in 1999. Bashir Zaalan is the custodian of Ezra's shrine. Zaalan inherited the...
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Diet and Health
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Arsenic Linked to Diabetes
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08/20/2008 7:53:21 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 77 replies · 1,056+ views
WebMD Health News | Aug. 19, 2008 | Caroline Wilbert
Reviewed By Elizabeth Klodas, MD, FACC 13 Million Americans Are Exposed to Dangerous Levels of Arsenic Through Drinking Water Exposure to arsenic, typically through drinking water, is linked to diabetes, according a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Thirteen million Americans -- and millions more worldwide -- are exposed to drinking water contaminated with more inorganic arsenic than the Environmental Protection Agency has deemed safe. The EPA standard is 10 micrograms per liter. Researchers, led by Ana Navas-Acien, MD, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, studied 788 adults who had their urine tested...
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...and Cuisine
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The Inuit Paradox
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08/17/2008 12:31:54 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 416+ views
Discover | October 1, 2004 | Patricia Gadsby
Shaped by glacial temperatures, stark landscapes, and protracted winters, the traditional Eskimo diet had little in the way of plant food, no agricultural or dairy products, and was unusually low in carbohydrates. Mostly people subsisted on what they hunted and fished. Inland dwellers took advantage of caribou feeding on tundra mosses, lichens, and plants too tough for humans to stomach (though predigested vegetation in the animals' paunches became dinner as well). Coastal people exploited the sea. The main nutritional challenge was avoiding starvation in late winter if primary meat sources became too scarce or lean. These foods hardly make up...
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Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
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Survivors of 1918 Flu Pandemic Immune 90 Years Later
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08/17/2008 3:55:24 PM PDT · Posted by fightinJAG · 58 replies · 969+ views
USNWR | August 17, 2008 | Steven Reinberg
People who lived through the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 50 million worldwide are still producing antibodies to the virus 90 years later, researchers report. "Most people have a notion that elderly people have very weak immunity or they have lost immunity," said lead researcher Dr. James E. Crowe Jr., a professor of pediatrics, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt University. "This study shows that extremely elderly people have retained memory of being infected with the 1918 flu, even 90 years later," Crowe said. This is the first evidence that shows that people developed significant...
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Helix, Make Mine a Double
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The Genetic Map of Europe
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08/17/2008 2:13:47 PM PDT · Posted by forkinsocket · 72 replies · 2,167+ views
The NY Times | August 13, 2008 | NICHOLAS WADE
Biologists have constructed a genetic map of Europe showing the degree of relatedness between its various populations. All the populations are quite similar, but the differences are sufficient that it should be possible to devise a forensic test to tell which country in Europe an individual probably comes from, said Manfred Kayser, a geneticist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands. The map shows, at right, the location in Europe where each of the sampled populations live and, at left, the genetic relationship between these 23 populations. The map was constructed by Dr. Kayser, Dr. Oscar Lao and...
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Epigraphy and Language
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In search of Western civilisation's lost classics (Herculaneum)
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08/19/2008 4:37:00 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 9 replies · 328+ views
The Australian | August 06, 2008 | Luke Slattery
The unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, buried beneath lava by Vesuvius's eruption in AD79, is slowly revealing its long-held secrets -- Stored in a sky-lit reading room on the top floor of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples are the charred remains of the only library to survive from classical antiquity. The ancient world's other great book collections -- at Athens, Alexandria and Rome -- all perished in the chaos of the centuries. But the library of the Villa of the Papyri was conserved, paradoxically, by an act of destruction. Lying to the northwest of ancient Herculaneum, this...
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Greece
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Unearthed after 2,500 years, the gold earrings that could have been made yesterday[Bulgaria]
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08/19/2008 8:06:02 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 27 replies · 1,423+ views
Daily Mail | 17 Aug 2008 | Daily Mail
It's the sort of classic jewellery favoured by modern women except these earrings were worn 2,500 years ago. An archeologist discovered gold earrings, a ring and other funeral gifts dating back to the 5th century B.C. while excavating a Thracian tomb near the village of Kushare, about 280km from Sofia, Bulgaria.Some of the oldest examples of gold jewellery and artifacts have been discovered in Bulgaria and it's Black Sea coast is considered the birthplace of the world's metal production. Thracian bling: The gold earrings discovered during excavations of a tomb in Bulgaria What are Bulgaria's borders today were part of several...
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Anatolia
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New light on the history of Ephesus
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08/17/2008 9:22:18 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 220+ views
Turkish Daily News | Friday, August 8, 2008 | unattributed
The Austrian archeological team that has been carrying out excavations in Ephesus enlarged the scope of their activity in the past months to cover the nearby tumulus Cukuricihoyuk. The team has uncovered archeologically unique relics in the ancient tumulus[.] Traces of ancient settlements were unearthed during excavations of a tumulus located to the southeast of the ancient city of Ephesus. The Austrian archeological team that has been conducting excavations in Ephesus near the city of Izmir for more than a year expanded the scope of their activity in recent months to include the nearby tumulus of Cukuricihoyuk. Led by Dr....
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Rome and Italy
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Colossal Head of Roman Empress Unearthed
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08/17/2008 5:18:19 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 25 replies · 992+ views
Archaeology | Marc Waelkens | August 13, 2008
The head is 0.76 m in height (2.5 feet). It has large, almond-shaped eyes (only the tear ducts are rendered, not the iris or pupils as became usual during the reign of Hadrian) and fleshy thick lips. Its hair is parted in the middle of the front and taken in wavy strains below and around the ears toward the back. The rendering of the hair was done with only sparing sparing use of the drill, a feature characteristic for portraits of empresses in this, the Antonine, dynasty, in sharp contrast with the beards and curly hairs of their husbands. On...
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1700-year old Apollon statue unearthed in Turkey
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08/17/2008 10:27:34 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 368+ views
World Bulletin | Friday, August 15, 2008 | unattributed
Arch[a]eologists unearthed a 1,700-year old Apollon statue in Soloi Pompeipolis ancient city [founded in 65-66 B.C.] in the southern province of Mersin. Dr. Remzi Yagci, an archeologist from Dokuz Eylul University, told AA that the statue was made up of bronze in the first half of 3rd century, and belonging to Roman period. Yagci said that the statue of sun-god Apollon was 615 grams and 20 cm. He added that the statue would be given to officials of Mersin Museum.
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Egypt
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Sphinx statues found in Egypt
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08/17/2008 9:53:50 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 263+ views
Yahoo! | Friday, August 15, 2008 | AFP
Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed four small statues of the Sphinx, the mythological figure of a lion with a human head, the Higher Council of Antiquities said on Friday. The headless sandstone statues were found on a road linking the ancient temples of Luxor and Karnak in southern Egypt, antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass said in a statement. They were unearthed in an area once occupied by a police station that was demolished as part of a project to rescue artifacts, Hawass said. The statues date from the reign of King Nekhtnebef who founded the 30th Pharaonic dynasty (363-380 BC), Hawass added.
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Asia
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Bronze Age ancient artifacts unearthed in Myanmar
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08/17/2008 10:14:15 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 150+ views
Chinaview | August 16, 2008 | Xinhua
Ancient artifacts on Bronze Age and Iron Age were excavated in Thazi township in the central Mandalay division recently, proofing an evidence of transition from Bronze culture to Iron culture in Myanmar, according to state-run newspaper The New Light of Myanmar on Saturday. The Archaeological, Natural Museum and Libraries Department under the Ministry of Culture unearthed the ancient artifacts near Kanthitgon village in Thazi township, Mandalay division, in June this year, the paper said. Foreign archaeologists once considered that in the early history, Myanmar was transferred from Stone Age into the Iron Age without flourishing of Bronze culture, it said,...
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Central Asia
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1900-Year-Old Buddha Plaque discovered in Gujarat's Vadnagar
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08/17/2008 9:11:28 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 190+ views
Desh Gujarat | August 14th, 2008 | Japan K Pathak
Archaeological department of Gujarat has three different sites in Vadnagar where excavations are going on. So far around 2,000 pieces of archaeological importance including 2000 years old house, numerous clay utensils, silver coins, beads, ornaments, Roman style head sculpture, turbaned face clay plaque etc are unearthed from these sites. Ghaskol darwaja site from where Buddha plaque is found is also known as 'Mystery structure' site in archaeologists circles.
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Afghanistan
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Archeologists find vast ancient city in Afghanistan
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08/17/2008 1:59:17 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 12 replies · 473+ views
The Whig | Thursday, August 7, 2008 | Matthew Pennington, AP
Centuries-old shards of pottery mingle with spent ammunition rounds on a wind-swept mountainside in northern Afghanistan where French archeologists believe they have found a vast ancient city. For years, villagers have dug the baked earth on the heights of Cheshme-Shafa for pottery and coins to sell to antique smugglers.
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Chronological History of Afghanistan
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11/10/2001 9:08:09 PM PST · Posted by Cultural Jihad · 23 replies · 1,037+ views
Afghanistan Online | 04/2001 | Unknown
Chronological History of Afghanistan Part I (50,000 BCE - 652) 50,000 BCE-20,000 BCE Archaeologists have identified evidence of stone age technology in Aq Kupruk, and Hazar Sum. Plant remains at the foothill of the Hindu Kush mountains indicate, that North Afghanistan was one of the earliest places to domestic plants and animals. 3000 BCE-2000 BCE Bronze might have been invented in ancient Afghanistan around this time. First true urban centers rise in two main sites in Afghanistan--Mundigak, and Deh Morasi Ghundai. Mundigak (near modern day Kandahar)--had an economic base of wheat, barley, sheep and goats. Also, evidence indicates that ...
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Ancient Autopsies
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5000 years ago women in control of Burnt City [ women of Burnt City redux ]
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08/17/2008 10:36:46 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 210+ views
IranMania (yes, that's what it says) | Tuesday, August 12, 2008 | unattributed
Some paleo-anthropologists believe that mothers in the Burnt City had social and financial prominence, director of the team working at the Burnt City in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, southeastern Iran said recently. Addressing the archaeology students at Zabol University, Seyed Mansour Seyed Sajjadi said that 5000 year-old insignias, made of river pebbles and believed to belong only to distinguished inhabitants of the city, were found in the graves of some female citizens... In December 2006, archaeologists discovered the world's earliest artificial eyeball in the city's necropolis, thought to have been worn by a female resident of the Burnt City... Microscopic research has...
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Paleontology
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The Big Pig Dig is just about dug. (Paleo dig at Badlands Nat Park)
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08/18/2008 1:23:09 PM PDT · Posted by ApplegateRanch · 4 replies · 275+ views
SF Chronicle | Aug 17, 2008 | Carson Walker
Story via AP, so follow link to read. The fossil field formally known as the Pig Wallow Site at Badlands National Park will close for good at the end of this summer, 15 years after student paleontologists started unearthing prehistoric remains. "The main research of the site is to better understand how fossils are preserved and how bones accumulate in a particular setting. The main story also describes some of the fossil finds; gives the location and much more.
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Biology and Cryptobiology
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Horse teeth an intriguing find
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08/19/2008 9:53:04 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 29 replies · 505+ views
Brantford Expositor | Monday, August 18, 2008 | Joanne Miltenburg
Jarrod Barker... The Port Dover man has found several teeth in the shallow water along the shore of Lake Erie -- teeth that may be more than 10,000 years old. Barker is an avocational archeologist, someone who takes an interest in historic finds, but doesn't have a licence or formal training. He makes a habit of walking along the beach or in the surf with his head down, which is how he found the teeth... Barker's interest in archaeology was piqued after he dropped out of university and got a job on a ginseng farm... he took his finds to...
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PreColumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
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Two points from the same time period with strange attributes [ Dalton points ]
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08/17/2008 9:36:34 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 305+ views
Corsicana Daily Sun | Sunday, August 17, 2008 | Bill Young
If you will look at the two points illustrated in today's article, the overall outline of each one does not look like the other one. However, both are typical Dalton points. One point has a parallel shaped stem while the other has a concave stem with flaring ears on the base. If the sites of Sloan and Brand in Arkansas and the Big Eddy site in southwestern Missouri had not been successfully excavated, we would not know both types are typical Dalton points dating to the same time period. For instance at the Sloan site in Arkansas, the archeologists recovered...
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Peru
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Pre-Hispanic tombs and well-preserved textiles found in Machu Picchu, Peru
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08/17/2008 9:01:34 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 179+ views
Peru News Agency
Skeletal remains of around fifteen people along with well-preserved textiles and ceramic relics were found in pre-Hispanic tombs located at Machu Picchu Archeological Park, in Cusco, Peru... Astete said these remains were found a week ago by archeologist Francisco Huarcaya in a cave located at the 84th kilometer of the railway leading to Machu Picchu citadel, one of the new seven wonders of the world... [the] textiles display an orange colour shade, but experts have not identified the material used in knitting. Although excavation works have not yet been initiated, Astete mentioned that these remains will be exhumed in September...
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Captain Obvious
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Olmeca Waterproofing Technology Involved Tar
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08/17/2008 12:40:28 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 169+ views
INAH | August 7, 2008 | unattributed
Earliest evidence of tar used as waterproofing material was found in Veracruz and is more than 3,500 years old. Olmeca cultures that inhabited the Gulf of Mexico vicinity used it to protect soil, terracotta or wooden constructions, floor and wall covering, boat sealant, as well as glue. Earliest remains of containers with tar are those recovered in the municipality of Hidalgotitlan, Veracruz, as part of El Manati archaeological project. Containers found by INAH archaeologists may have been used to heat up tar... Contemporary inhabitants of the Gulf coast vicinity still use tar to flatten the entrance of their houses, patios,...
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Navigation
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Sharks and the Chumash : Santa Barbara's First People Relied Heavily on Our Finned Friends
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08/17/2008 3:00:35 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 202+ views
Independent | Thursday, August 14, 2008 | Matt Kettmann
According to the archaeological record, sharks (and rays, their close relative) were the number two source of protein for coastal Chumash after sardines, at least for the past 1,000 or so years... Specifically, the coastal Chumash were eating the easier-to-catch near-shore species such as leopard shark, angel shark, soupfin shark, and swell shark... The Chumash also ate many species of rays, but seemed to prefer the shovelnose guitarfish, which is wide like a ray in its torso but lanky and finned like a shark on the tail... The guitarfish, like other small sharks and rays, lives part of its life...
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Longer Perspectives
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Could the Western World of today develop anything resembling a new renaissance?
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08/22/2008 9:38:37 PM PDT · Posted by WesternCulture · 42 replies · 267+ views 08/22/2008 | WesternCulture
- YES! To begin with, let's try and fully understand what Renaissance Florence actually has accomplished, apart from making tourists feel like this: "I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty ... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations ... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves.' Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear...
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Ancient Science
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Do subatomic particles have free will?
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08/16/2008 6:40:10 PM PDT · Posted by LibWhacker · 40 replies · 955+ views
Science News | 8/15/08 | Julie Rehmeyer
If we have free will, so do subatomic particles, mathematicians claim to prove."If the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect -- what is the source of the free will possessed by living things throughout the earth?" -- Titus Lucretius Carus, Roman philosopher and poet, 99-55 BC. Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest...
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Oh So Mysteriouso
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Shroud of Turin stirs new controversy
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08/17/2008 9:13:02 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 42 replies · 1,415+ views
LA Times | 17 Aug 2008 | DeeDee Correll
A Colorado couple researching the shroud dispute radiocarbon dating of the alleged burial cloth of Jesus, and Oxford has agreed to help them reexamine the findings. The tie that binds John and Rebecca Jackson is about 4 feet by 14 feet, woven of herringbone twill linen. It once led to their romance; years later, it still dominates their thoughts and fills their conversations. It brought Rebecca, an Orthodox Jew, to the Catholic Church; it led John to suspend himself from an 8-foot-tall cross to study how blood might have stained the cloth. Together, the two have committed to memory every...
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Shroud of Turin stirs new controversy
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08/17/2008 1:36:36 PM PDT · Posted by Swordmaker · 6 replies · 449+ views
Los Angeles Times | 08/17/2008 | By DeeDee Correll, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
A Colorado couple researching the shroud dispute radiocarbon dating of the alleged burial cloth of Jesus, and Oxford has agreed to help them reexamine the findings.COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- The tie that binds John and Rebecca Jackson is about 4 feet by 14 feet, woven of herringbone twill linen. It once led to their romance; years later, it still dominates their thoughts and fills their conversations. It brought Rebecca, an Orthodox Jew, to the Catholic Church; it led John to suspend himself from an 8-foot-tall cross to study how blood might have stained the cloth. Together, the two have committed...
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Faith and Philosophy
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Questing lost manuscripts [Hungary's king, Matthias Corvinus]
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08/17/2008 8:33:49 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 169+ views
The Economist | July 17th, 2008 | unattributed
When Hungary fell to the Turks and the library was lost, its size in the minds of men grew exponentially. Figures of up to 50,000 books were bandied about. In fact there were probably never more than 2,500. Today some 216 of them are known to have survived. How they did, and how they became Hungary's quest for the holy grail, is a gripping tale, helped along by Mr Tanner's penchant for intriguing asides... Translations of Greek and Latin works were often of poor quality, even if they had been prepared for princes. Although Hungarians eventually built a cult of...
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Australia and the Pacific
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Captain Cook's boomerang to make a handsome return
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08/21/2008 3:34:58 PM PDT · Posted by xp38 · 9 replies · 396+ views
The London Times | August 21, 2008 | Lucy Bannerman
Captain Cook's boomerang has returned - and could bring its owner £60,000.
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Early America
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Naming the General Arnold's lost sailors
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08/21/2008 6:00:57 AM PDT · Posted by Pharmboy · 4 replies · 262+ views
Boston Globe | August 21, 2008 | Emily Wilcox
Bob Jannoni and Lou Cook at the Burial Hill monument to the General Arnold casualties. (Emily Wilcox/Globe Correspondent) The brigantine General Arnold was heading south out of Boston, carrying supplies and reinforcements to struggling Revolutionary War troops in the Carolinas, when, on Dec. 25, 1778, a northeaster hit the New England coast. Hurricane-force winds and blinding snow forced Captain James Magee to seek shelter in Plymouth Harbor. It was a mistake. The ship ran aground on White Flat, a treacherous sandbar half a mile from shore and safety. There, as the storm raged on over the long Christmas weekend,...
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Civil War
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Could Confederate surrender paper be original?
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08/17/2008 6:18:10 PM PDT · Posted by indcons · 44 replies · 1,205+ views
Inquirer | Edward Colimore
Ever since the document was examined several weeks ago, it's been a mystery. Initially, it appeared to be a reproduction of the terms and conditions of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender in Appomattox, Va., in 1865. But staff members of the Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum in Center City - who came upon the document while preparing for the museum's relocation - soon noticed pen indentations in the paper, and darker and lighter ink strokes consistent with handwriting. They also found a notation in a 1935 museum inventory identifying the document as an "original." Could this artifact, crudely...
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No-so-Ancient Autopsy
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The mystery of Flight 4422 (Severed hand helps scientists ID victim)
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08/16/2008 8:44:06 AM PDT · Posted by AlaskaErik · 23 replies · 1,316+ views
Anchorage Daily News | August 16, 2008 | By GEORGE BRYSON
It's said that dead men tell no tales. But a severed arm and hand that emerged from a Wrangell Mountain glacier nine years ago just might -- with the help of two pilots, several forensic and genetic scientists and a raft of state and federal officials. Their combined efforts, detailed at an Anchorage press conference Friday, have determined that the human remains belong to one of the passengers on board a DC-4 airliner that slammed into the side of Mount Sanford 60 years ago last spring. More specifically, they belong to Francis Joseph Van Zandt, a 36-year-old merchant marine from...
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World War Eleven
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A New Take on Earhart Mystery
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11/23/2003 5:11:32 PM PST · Posted by Canticle_of_Deborah · 43 replies · 1,437+ views
LA Times | November 23, 2003 | Cecilia Rasmussen
Amelia Earhart vanished nearly 70 years ago, but her fate remains one of the nation's great mysteries. The pioneering aviator disappeared on July 2, 1937, as she was flying an equatorial route around the globe. The official U.S. position is that she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ran out of gas and went down in the Pacific. But conspiracy buffs begin with the premise that she was a spy captured by the Japanese. Maybe she died. And maybe she survived, living out her life anonymously. Which brings us to Rollin C. Reineck and his new book. "Strange indeed for one...
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Swastika a Butt Pucker?
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Adolf Hitler's Aryan theory rubbished by science
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06/13/2008 9:38:51 PM PDT · Posted by bruinbirdman · 60 replies · 1,467+ views
The Telegraph | 6/13/2008 | Harry de Quetteville in Berlin
The theory of Scandinavian racial purity cherished by Hitler and the Nazis has been rubbished by new scientific research. The study found that bodies from 2000-year-old burial sites in eastern Denmark contained "as much genetic variation in their remains as one would expect to find in individuals of the present day". The findings, in an analysis by the University of Copenhagen which has just been published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, explodes the Nazis' much cherished concept of a 'superior' Nordic race. Adolf Hitler cherished the concept of a 'superior' Nordic race Hitler used pseudo-scientific research to back...
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Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
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Clueless About Columbus
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10/08/2007 10:11:47 AM PDT · Posted by William Tell 2 · 47 replies · 976+ views
The Bulletin | 10/05/2007 | Michael P Tremoglie
Columbus Day was originally celebrated Oct. 12, the day Christopher Columbus landed in the New World, but it is currently celebrated the second Monday in October. However, in some quarters, "celebrate" is not the appropriate term. Since about 1992, Columbus Day has been not only a celebration by Italian-Americans, but a day of protests by some - not all - Native Americans and by those who describe themselves as "multiculturalists." It is important to note who these "multiculturalists" are: people who think Western civilization is an evil culture. They want to portray the European/American culture as uniquely causing death and...
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end of digest #214 20080823
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