Hollow Earth Alert!
Posted on 10/13/2004 7:36:05 PM PDT by blam
Europe's oldest wooden staircase found in Austria
Tue Oct 12, 1:05 PM ET Science - AFP
VIENNA (AFP) - A 3,000-year-old wooden staircase has been found at Hallstatt in northern Austria, immaculately preserved in a Bronze Age salt mine, Vienna's Natural History Museum said.
"We have found a wooden staircase which dates from the 13th century B.C. It is the oldest wooden staircase discovered to date in Europe, maybe even in the world," Hans Reschreiter, the director of excavations at the museum, told AFP.
"The staircase is in perfect condition because the micro-organisms that cause wood to decompose do not exist in salt mines," he added.
The staircase is about one metre (three feet) wide and is made of pine and spruce.
It was used, the acheologist said, during the Bronze Age to go down into the saltmine and was found some 100 metres (300 feet) below the surface.
The saltmine lies about 200 metres from a necropolis which was the seat of the so-called Hallstatt Civilisation, one of the most important and advanced of the Iron Age, that lived around 700 B.C.
"For the moment we have uncovered a piece of only about seven metres, but the staircase extends further down and up," Reschreiter said.
He said previously the oldest known wooden staircase in Europe dated back to the fifth century B.C
rock salt is called HALITE!
Sheesh, they ought to post a sign or something. Not everybody wants to take the elevator, but the stairs can be so hard to find.
Zep rocks!
Hollow Earth Alert!
Thanks...Time sure passes fast, lol.
I took my younger brother to that concert and he became a life long Zepplin fanatic...he had every album and every thing Zepplin produced. He passed away about two years ago at the age of 51 and my sister came down recently and went through his 'stuff' and gave her 20 year old son all the original Zepplin things of my brother's. She said he son can't stop talking about all the original Zepplin material...He is a Zepplin fanatic too.
Alas, the story doesn't have all that happy an ending. The body was reverently interred in the local cemetery, where it has by now rotted to dust. Hope remains that one or more other unfortunate miners of ancient times will someday be found in the collapsed ancient galleries.Hallstatt Salt WorldsIn antiquity, Hallstatt was a thriving salt-mining and trading center. In 1734 the fully preserved body of a prehistoric miner was found in the Hallstatt Salt Mine, known today as the "Man in Salt".
Oetzi, the ice man, was found not to far away.
George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent
Election 2004 threads on FR
I offered to buy it, but they told me to go pound salt!
[rimshot!]
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