Free Republic

Dawn of American religion found By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 15/04/2003) The oldest image of a deity in the Americas has been discovered by archaeologists - pushing back the origin of religion there by 1,000 years. A 4,000-year-old gourd fragment bearing an image of the Staff God A 4,250-year-old gourd fragment found in a looted cemetery on the Peruvian coast, 120 miles north of Lima, bears an archaic image of the Staff God, which was the principal deity in the region for millennia. "Like the cross, the Staff God is a clearly recognisable religious icon," said Jonathan Haas, of...

Showdown: Is Dino Soft Tissue Just Bacteria? June 18, 2019 | David F. Coppedge By dismissing dinosaur soft tissue as bacteria, Field Museum scientists may have given creationists a selling point. Scientists at Chicago’s prestigious Field Museum of Paleontology have made a frontal assault on claims of original dinosaur proteins in dinosaur bones. The claims, made primarily by Mary Schweitzer at North Carolina State University, and by others, have invigorated young-earth creationists with alleged proof that the bones are only thousands of years old, not tens of millions. Are they wrong? Were they looking at bacterial biofilms masquerading as dinosaur...

About eight hundred years ago, a ship sank in the Java Sea off the coast of the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. There are no written records saying where the ship was going or where it came from -- the only clues are the mostly-disintegrated structure of the vessel and its cargo, which was discovered on the seabed in the 1980s. Since the wreck's recovery in the 1990s, researchers have been piecing together the world that the Java Sea Shipwreck was part of. In a new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science, archaeologists have demonstrated a new...

CHICAGO - You can kick back with a King Tuttini cocktail, learn to decipher hieroglyphs or indulge in an "Egyptian Golden Body Wrap" complete with exfoliating Dead Sea salts and a dusting of golden powder. Yes, King Tut is back, and Chicago is fired up for the pharaoh. The traveling exhibit "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" has opened at The Field Museum, attracting a line of ticket buyers. Organizers believe the show, which opened Friday, could draw 1 million visitors before it closes here on Jan. 1, 2007, and businesses, restaurants and universities are lining up special...