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<p>KISH ISLAND, Iran (AP) -- It started small -- a few babies named after the pre-Islamic heroes Darius or Cyrus, a bit more government money for preserving ancient sites, advertisers using the image of the ruins of Persepolis to sell salad dressing and motorbikes.</p>

The Dark Ages : Were They Darker Than We Imagined? By Greg Bryant Published in the September 1999 issue of Universe As we approach the end of the Second Millennium, a review of ancient history is not what you would normally expect to read in the pages of Universe. Indeed, except for reflecting on the AD 837 apparition of Halley's Comet (when it should have been as bright as Venus and would have moved through 60 degrees of sky in one day as it passed just 0.03 AU from Earth - three times closer than Hyakutake in 1996), you may...

Meteor clue to end of Middle East civilisations By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent (Filed: 04/11/2001) SCIENTISTS have found the first evidence that a devastating meteor impact in the Middle East might have triggered the mysterious collapse of civilisations more than 4,000 years ago. satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide impact crater caused by a meteor Studies of satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide circular depression which scientists say bears all the hallmarks of an impact crater. If confirmed, it would point to the Middle East being struck by a meteor with the violence equivalent...

KISH ISLAND, Iran (AP) -- It started small -- a few babies named after the pre-Islamic heroes Darius or Cyrus, a bit more government money for preserving ancient sites, advertisers using the image of the ruins of Persepolis to sell salad dressing and motorbikes. Now comes modern Iran's most audacious salute yet to a Persian past that Islamic fundamentalists would rather forget. It's a $125 million hotel built in the style of Persepolis, all graceful columns, statues of winged bulls with human faces and bas reliefs showing envoys bearing gifts for ancient Achaemenian kings -- decorations that violate Islam's ban...

Tablets that may reveal El Niño secrets are feared lost in Iraq By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent 09 June 2003 The secrets of El Niño, one of the most mysterious and destructive weather systems, could be unlocked by hundreds of thousands of ancient clay tablets now feared lost or damaged in the chaos of Iraq. Researchers believe the tablets, written using a cuneiform text, one of the earliest types of writing, form the world's oldest records of climate change and could give vital clues to understanding El Niño and global warming. Academics are demanding that ministers act to protect the...

June 08, 2003 Found: Queen Nefertiti’s mummy Jack Grimston BRITISH archeologists believe they may have identified the body of one of the most legendary beauties of the ancient world. They are confident a tattered mummy found in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings is probably Queen Nefertiti, stepmother of the boy king Tutankhamun and one of the most powerful women in ancient Egypt. The conclusion has been made after 12 years of research, using clues such as fragments of a wig and the piercing of the mummy’s ears. The breakthrough came after the Egyptian authorities allowed the 3,500-year-old...

Mammoth herds 'roamed fertile Bering Strait in Ice Age' Huge herds of mammoth, wild horses and bison once roamed the land bridge between North America and Siberia, new evidence suggests. Plant fossils have shown that 24,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, dry grassland covered much of region. The vegetation would have allowed large populations of mammals to survive all year round on the now-submerged landmass known as Beringia or the Bering Strait. Scientists writing in the journal Nature said the animals would have been sustained by a diet rich in prairie sage, bunch grasses, and other grass-like plants....

As in the geographical reference to Palestine, we have been compelled to be content with mere traces, the same will be the case in our historical account of this country. There are nowhere to be met with regular documents in respect to its history, states, and towns; the past seems to have been entirely forgotten; so that the whole country cared, so to say, only for the present, and took no cognizance of what had prededed or was to follow. It is true that some few Arabic historians have written something concerning Palestine, such as Abulfeda and Serif ibn Idrus;...

Marsh Arabs, modern Sumerians 05/14/03 JOE ROJAS-BURKE Amid the ruined temples of a civilization abandoned 4,000 years ago in southern Iraq, archaeologists on a 1968 expedition noted a striking parallel: Fragments of the long-extinct Sumerian civilization they were unearthing seemed to depict the present-day lives of the nearby tribal people. From Our Advertiser They speared fish from slender wooden boats, herded water buffalo and fashioned fantastic vaulted houses from the few building materials the marshes had to offer: reeds, clay and buffalo dung. Their secluded villages dotted the vast marshes and stream-braided lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers....

The buried palace of Gaur SUHRID SANKAR CHATTOPADHYAY in Malda Excavations in Malda throw light on the architecture and engineering of Gaur, the capital of the medieval Muslim rulers of north Bengal. PICTURES: SUSHANTA PATRONOBISH The Bais Gazi wall, which surrounds the palace area. IN his book Memoirs of Gaur and Pandua, the historian Khan Sahib Abid Ali, who himself hailed from Malda, wrote: "Excavations have been made in different parts of the ruined city by village cultivators in search of treasure, which have revealed traces of spacious halls, pavements, staircases, subterranean passages, and a good many other relics, all...

EVANGELICALS' ANTI-ISLAM REMARKS ARE TESTAMENT TO IGNORANCE WASHINGTON -- Evangelical Christianity's leaders, meeting here this week, performed a great service for the geopolitical health of the world. They denounced as "unhelpful" and even "dangerous" the outrageous anti-Islam remarks made by some of the movement's star preachers over recent months. The Rev. Franklin Graham was not there. He was in San Diego at a "mission." But his words of the last year and a half -- that Islam is a "very evil and wicked religion" -- clearly hung over the landscape. Nor was the Rev. Jerry Falwell at the conference, sponsored...

Ancient Pyramids Discovered in Italy 02-May-2003 On the Farshores website, Marco V. of Varese, Italy writes, "You may be interested in a discovery which has been recently made: three pyramids were discovered thanks to satellite and aerial imagery in northern Italy, in the town of Montevecchia… They are the first pyramids ever discovered in Italy and the dimensions are quite impressive; the highest pyramid is [500 feet] tall. They are stone buildings, as recent excavations have proved. However, they are now completely covered by ground and vegetation, so that they now look like hills. "The inclination degree of all the...

U.S. Museum to Return Ramses I Mummy to Egypt Hillary Mayell for National Geographic News April 30, 2003 A 3,000-year-old mummy that many scholars believe is ancient Egypt's King Ramses I is the star attraction of an exhibit at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta that will run from April 26 to September 14. How the mummy came to reside in North America for 140 years, and wound up in Atlanta, is a tale that includes the collapse of law and order in ancient Egypt, grave robbers, stolen antiquities, a two-headed calf and a five-legged pig, the wonders of...

Gilgamesh tomb believed found Archaeologists in Iraq believe they may have found the lost tomb of King Gilgamesh - the subject of the oldest "book" in history. The Epic Of Gilgamesh - written by a Middle Eastern scholar 2,500 years before the birth of Christ - commemorated the life of the ruler of the city of Uruk, from which Iraq gets its name. Now, a German-led expedition has discovered what is thought to be the entire city of Uruk - including, where the Euphrates once flowed, the last resting place of its famous King. "I don't want to say...

Gilgamesh tomb believed found Archaeologists in Iraq believe they may have found the lost tomb of King Gilgamesh - the subject of the oldest book in history. The Epic Of Gilgamesh - written by a Middle Eastern scholar 2,500 years before the birth of Christ - commemorated the life of the ruler of the city of Uruk, from which Iraq gets its name. Now a German-led expedition has discovered what is thought to be the entire city of Uruk - including, where the Euphrates once flowed, the last resting place of its famous King. "I don't want to say...

The Pope yesterday beatified a 17th-century friar credited with halting a Muslim invasion of Europe and in the process gave the world cappuccino coffee. More than 300 years after his death, Marco d'Aviano cleared the last step before sainthood, as the Pope recognised the friar's miraculous work, including curing a nun who had been bedridden for 13 years. When a vast Ottoman Turk army was marching on Vienna in 1683, d'Aviano was sent by the Pope to unite the outnumbered Christian troops. After a prayer meeting led by d'Aviano, they were spurred to victory. As the Turks fled, legend has...

Ishmael Ishmael, from the Hebrew word meaning God hears, was the son of Abraham and Hagar, the Egyptian maid of his wife Sarah. When Sarah had found herself not having children, she arranged to have a child with Abraham by Hagar acting as a surrogate mother (Genesis 16:1-4), even though God had specifically stated that a child would be born to Sarah in due time (see Isaac). The result was bitter conflict between Ishmael and Isaac, and their descendants, that has gone on right to the present day. Ishmael was born at Mamre, when Abraham was 86, 11 years...

<p>ROME, Italy (AP) -- Hundreds of gladiators sporting chain-mail, wolf-skins and swinging grappling nets marched by the ruins of ancient Rome on Monday in a birthday celebration for the city, which legend says was founded 2,756 years ago.</p> <p>The make-believe gladiators -- some from as far away as France and Hungary -- poured off buses, sporting steel helmets and daggers swinging from scabbards.</p>

News in Science 18/4/2003 Ancient dung reveals a picture of the past [This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s833847.htm] An arctic mound of soil covering a core of solid ice in northeastern Siberia (Pic: Science) The successful dating of the most ancient genetic material yet may allow scientists to use preserved DNA from sources such as mammoth dung to help paint a picture of past environments. An international research effort led by Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark reports in today?s issue of the journal Science it has extracted well preserved animal and plant DNA from...

<p>BABYLON, Iraq -- The roots of Western law and writing sprang from the Mesopotamian cradle of civilization here, the site of the resplendent Hanging Gardens of Babylon -- one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The palace of Hammurabi and King Nebuchadnezzar -- like antiquities throughout this country -- has met a fate that has devastated Iraqis and archeologists throughout the world.</p>