Joe Manning, associate professor of classics, with several volumes from the Erichsen library, which documents more than 1,500 years of Egyptian history, from approximately 650 B.C. to about 1000 A.D.

BY CYNTHIA HAVEN

Stanford has acquired the library of one of the foremost Egyptologists of the 20th century.

The collection of Wolja Erichsen (1890-1966), now at Stanford's Green Library, documents more than 1,500 years of Egyptian history, ranging from about 650 B.C. to about A.D. 1000. It includes Egypt's important transition from paganism to Christianity.

"The Erichsen library is one of the most significant and perhaps the last great Egyptology library in private hands," said Joe Manning, associate professor of classics. "It is difficult to overestimate the importance of acquiring this collection. Stanford's acquisition adds great momentum to our research and strengthens our profile as one of the very best places in the world to study ancient Mediterranean civilizations."

Manning, speaking at an Oct. 15 reception to celebrate the acquisition, emphasized that this contribution from the "heroic age" of Egyptology, which peaked between 1880 and 1920 and was centered in Berlin, is "a huge deal."

"The gift of a library is not the sexiest thing in the world—people prefer to build buildings—but this is much more important," he said, to laughter and scattered applause.

Erichsen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, was a specialist in demotic Egyptian, the script and language of Egypt from 650 B.C. to A.D. 200, and Coptic, the last stage of the ancient Egyptian language that has particular importance for the study of early Christianity, especially since Egypt was the location of the earliest organized church.

Read the rest here.

The seal of King of Yelang is on display at a press conference in Guiyang, Southwest China's Guizhou Province, October 30, 2007. Yelang was an ancient minor kingdom in present day Guizhou Province during the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD). The seal was made public by a Miao ethnic man who claimed to be the 75th generation descendant of the king.

See the rest here.

The chain will be put on display to the public

A 2,000-year-old bronze Iron Age chain has been discovered during work in Scatness.

The chain, with 20 double links and the remains of possibly the clasp, was recovered from a roundhouse wall by the Shetland Amenity Trust.

The chain is described as extremely well preserved and adds to the jewellery and other metal artefacts found at the site.

Shetland Archaeologist Val Turner said: "This discovery is quite rare."

Read the rest on the BBC.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - DNA scraped from inside clay vessels show that a ship that sank off the coast of Greece 2,400 years ago was carrying a cargo of olive oil, oregano, and probably wine, researchers reported on Friday.

The new research may offer a way to analyze the long-gone contents of hundreds of containers, said Brendan Foley of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Writing in the Journal of Archeological Science, Foley and colleagues at Lund University in Sweden said they were able to get DNA sequences from the insides of two amphoras recovered in 230 feet of water in 2005.

The clay containers appeared empty, but the researchers decided to try testing for DNA anyhow. To their surprise, they got some -- and not the DNA they were expecting.

The island of Chios where the shipwreck was found was well-known in the ancient world as a major exporter of highly prized wines. But the two amphora in fact carried DNA from olives and oregano.

Read the rest here.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The discovery of two albums detailing stolen French art that the Nazis were to take to Germany for Adolf Hitler's personal collection was announced Thursday at the National Archives.

The leather-bound albums created by a special unit of the Third Reich contain photographs of art by Hubert Robert and Francois Boucher.

Allen Wallenstein, chief archivist of the United States, called it, "One of the most significant finds related to Hitler's premeditated theft of art and other cultural treasures to be found since the Nuremberg trials."

American troops found 39 similar albums near the end of World War II and used them as evidence against Nazi war criminals during the trials, but historians think even more are out there.

"From the records, we believe there may have been up to 85 of these albums put together by the Nazis for Hitler and for their purposes. So these are the first two that have surfaced in, obviously, many decades," said Michael Kurtz, assistant archivist for records services at the National Archives.

The Nazis looted hundreds of thousands of cultural items throughout Europe over the span of the war, mostly confiscating art from world-renowned Jewish-owned art collections.

Art seizures from France totaled 21,903 objects from more than 200 collections, taking close to 9,000 pieces from the Rothschild, David-Weill and Kann family collections alone, according to documents.

Soldiers filled 30 rail cars for the first shipment from France to Germany. That initial shipment contained Vermeer's "Astronomer," now on exhibit at the Louvre in Paris.

Read the rest on CNN.

(LifeWire) -- Fifty years ago this Saturday, Laika -- a sweet-tempered stray plucked off the streets of Moscow -- was thrust into the global spotlight when she became the first living creature sent into space.

Sadly, Laika's history-making voyage ended prematurely: In their rush to be first, Soviet scientists had made no provisions for her safe return.

"She died before reaching orbit, and before any real data was gleaned about sustaining life in that environment," says Dr. Stanley Coren, professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and author of "The Pawprints of History: Dogs and the Course of Human Events."

But if little scientific knowledge was gleaned from Laika's journey, her mark on world events is undeniable. "We were behind the Russians," says Coren. "The U.S. quickly switched focus to putting a living being on the moon."

Laika is just one of the many canines to have left a furry legacy behind. Coren names 10 other dogs and the roles they played in history.

Nos. 1 and 2. Strelka and Belka's successful orbit

Laika was the first dog sent into space, but Strelka (Squirrel) and Belka (LIttle Arrow) -- launched on Sputnik 5 in 1960 for a one-day mission -- were the first to return alive. As a result, much more was learned from their mission. Strelka later gave birth to a litter of puppies, one of which, Pushinka, was given to President John F. Kennedy's daughter, Caroline.

No. 3. How Peritas saved civilization

Without his dog, Peritas, Alexander the Great might have been Alexander the So-So. When the warrior was swarmed by the troops of Persia's Darius III, Peritas leapt and bit the lip of an elephant charging his master. Alexander lived to pursue his famed conquest, forging the empire underlying Western civilization as we know it.

No. 4. Charlie, Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis companion

At the height of 1962's Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy had his son's Welsh terrier Charlie summoned to the chaotic War Room. The president held the terrier in his lap, petting him and appearing, by all accounts, to relax. Eventually he announced that he was ready to "make some decisions" -- those that de-escalated the conflict.

No. 5. Jofi, the first therapy dog

Sigmund Freud usually kept a chow named Jofi in his office during psychotherapy sessions, believing the dog comforted the patients. Freud's notes on these interactions, detailed in his diaries, form the basis of modern-day pet-assisted therapy.

No. 6. Urian bites Pope, separates church and state

Henry VIII sent Cardinal Wolsey to meet with Pope Clement VII, hoping the pontiff would grant the ruler an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. When the pope extended his bare toe to be kissed (as was the custom) by Wolsey, the Cardinal's dog, Urian, sprang forward and bit the pope. Clement flew into a rage, the divorce was off and Henry -- to ensure the annulment the Catholic Church refused to grant -- later established the Church of England.

Read the rest on CNN.

The burial site was in Goat's Hole Cave at Paviland on Gower

The Red Lady of Paviland has always been a little coy about her age - but it appears she may be 4,000 years older than previously thought.

Read the rest on the BBC.

FORT COLLINS, Colorado (AP) -- American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan may soon be playing cards with the ace of artifacts or the king of archaeological digs.

Read the rest on CNN.

By GLENYS ROBERTS

On a dusty November morning the explorers made their way down the steep slope into the ancient tomb in the eerie half-light.

Breathless with anticipation, they broke through the wall into the burial chamber itself. Then, as their eyes became accustomed to the dusk, they saw the glint of gold.

That was how, in 1922, the great Egyptologist Howard Carter and his wealthy sponsor, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, discovered the mummified body of the boy king Tutankhamun, who had lain undisturbed in Egypt's Valley of the Kings for 3,000 years, surrounded by the treasures which had been buried with him.

Read the rest on the Daily Mail.

The tombstone was found near the line of a Roman road

The first Roman tombstone found in Scotland for 170 years has been unearthed at Carberry, near Inveresk.

Read the rest on the BBC.

Shakespeare was writing plays when the clam was a juvenile

A clam dredged up off the coast of Iceland is thought to have been the longest-lived creature discovered.

Read the rest on the BBC.

• 

  Bettmann / CORBIS

  By Jess Blumberg for the Smithsonian.com, October 24, 2007

The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the Devil's magic—and 20 were executed. Eventually, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted. Since then, the story of the trials has become synonymous with paranoia and injustice, and it continues to beguile the popular imagination more than 300 years later.

Read the rest on Smithsonian Magazine.

The picture was completed at the height of the Raj

A historic painting of a meeting between British and Indian officials during the days of the Raj has sold for 12 times its estimated value.

The picture - painted by Indian artist Raja Ravi Varma in 1880 - sold for £602,400 ($1.24m).

It was sold by the London auctioneer, Bonhams, on Friday for a price which dwarfed the estimated sale price of £50,000-70,000.

It fetched three times what the next most expensive Varma painting went for.

The painting is of the Maharaja of Travancore and his younger brother welcoming Richard Temple-Grenville, governor-general of Madras, on an official visit to what is now the southern state of Kerala in 1880.

Read the rest on BBC.

by Clare Fitzsimmons

EVIDENCE of a what could prove to be a Roman farmstead has been uncovered in Bidford.
The discovery was made through an archaeological project set up to spark interest in digging up the past.

As part of Buried Under Bidford, run by Warwickshire County Council's Museum Field Services, volunteers from all walks of life have been treading a field at Wixford Lodge Farm over the past two weekends looking for evidence of any ancient settlements.

Read the rest on the Stratford Observer.

Archaeologists in the western Austrian province Tyrol unearthed the remains of a large-scale Roman villa, complete with extensive floor mosaics that may have been also a source for a number of local legends.

Read the rest here.

By DAVID DERBYSHIRE

They were short, stocky, large-nosed and had distinctive thick-set features.

And according to a new study, some Neanderthals were also fiery redheads.

Read the rest on the Daily Mail.

by Lee Winter AN IGLOO style building erected to defend Chatham Dockyard from French invasion has been uncovered at a Kent college campus. The nineteenth century Napoleonic listening post was found during work at the new Mid Kent College (MKC) site in Prince Arthur Road, Lower Lines, Brompton. The extraordinary domed structure would have been used as a monitoring station for soldiers to listen out for enemy sapping activity (tunnel digging). It has been confirmed by experts at English Heritage to be the only known exposed listening post of its type in the UK. The fascinating discovery was unearthed during construction works for the new £76 million college campus. The project, led by developer Kier Build began at the end of August. Read the rest here.

ROME - Analyzing 500-year-old bricks, engineers in California are searching for a lost Leonardo da Vinci fresco that some researchers believe is behind a wall in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio.

The hunt for the "Battle of Anghiari," an unfinished mural by Leonardo, has captivated art historians for centuries and is now being tackled by experts wielding state-of-the art scientific tools.

Laser scanners, thermal imaging, radar and neutrons will be employed in the project that Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said is expected to take about a year.

Art lovers want to get to the bottom of the mystery in the Salone del Cinquecento (Hall of the 1500s) in the Palazzo Vecchio, a fortress-like palace in the heart of Florence that now houses municipal offices.

Maurizio Seracini, an Italian engineer, said he and colleagues at the University of San Diego are studying bricks and stonework that were found in a storeroom in the Palazzo Vecchio and were once part of the huge hall. The bricks were hauled to California, where their structure and composition are being analyzed, Seracini said by telephone.

Some researchers believe a cavity in one of the hall's walls might have preserved the mural, which Leonardo began in 1505 to commemorate the 15th-century Florentine victory over Milan at Anghiari, a medieval Tuscan town. The work was unfinished when Leonardo left Florence in 1506.

Read the rest on Yahoo.

Archaeologists have resumed their search for a library of Greek and Latin masterpieces that is thought to lie under volcanic rock at the ancient Roman site of Herculaneum.

The scrolls, which have been called the holy grail of classical literature, are thought to have been lost when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79, burying the wealthy Roman city of Herculaneum and neighbouring Pompeii.

Previous digs have unearthed classical works at a building now known as the Villa of the Papyri, thought to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso, who was known to be a lover of poetry.

The villa was found by chance in the 18th century by engineers digging a well shaft. Tunnels bored into the rock brought to light stunning ancient sculptures — now in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples — and 1,800 carbonised papyrus scrolls. The writings were mainly works by the Epicurean Greek philosopher Philodemus, who was part of Piso’s entourage.

Ten years ago two floors of the villa were discovered, as well as the remains of nearby gardens, ornamental ponds, a bath-house and a collapsed seaside pavilion. The excavation was halted in 1998 as funds ran out and archaeologists protested at the use of mechanical diggers by a private builder to smash through the rock.

Read the rest on the TimesOnline.

NEW YORK — An abstract painting by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo, found lying in trash on the street on Manhattan's Upper West Side, could be worth up to $1 million.

The passer-by, who had no idea of what she was looking at, picked up the painting and brought it home because "it had a strange power."

It turned out that the 1970 painting, "Tres Personajes" (Three People), had been stolen more than 20 years ago and was the subject of an FBI investigation. It's now back in the hands of the rightful owners, who have decided to sell it at auction.

The auction house says it could bring up to $1 million when it is sold next month.

Sotheby's expert August Uribe had featured it on PBS's "Antiques Roadshow FYI" in 2005 as a missing masterpiece after it was stolen.

"I know nothing of modern art but it didn't seem right for any piece of art to be discarded like that," Elizabeth Gibson, who found the brightly colored work while on her morning walk four years ago, told Sotheby's.

She said she learned of the work's worth after doing some Internet research, which eventually led her to the Antiques Roadshow Web site.

Read the rest here.

"After five years of thorough research, we found no evidence of the legendary Epang Palace," said Li Yufang, head of the Epang Palace research team and staff researcher at the Institute of Archeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), at an international archeological workshop held recently in central China's Hunan Province, according to a report by Beijing Morning Post on October 21.

In the latest archeological excavation, the research team drilled in an area of 135 square kilometers, extending from the Zao River to the east, the Pei River to the west, the Wei River to the north, and the ruins of the Kunming Lake of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) to the south. A total of 14 historical sites were discovered, but none of them turned out to be the magnificent Epang Palace belonging to the Qin Dynasty (221 BC-206 BC). Li Yufang told the workshop that all of the ruins belonged to Shanglinyuan, another imperial palace belonging to the Qin and Han periods.

In the past five years, Li Yufang has conducted several excavations in places that were suspected to be the site of the Epang Palace. Up to now, however, researchers have only found a rammed earth terrace of the front hall of the palace. With a height of 12 meters, the terrace was 1,270 meters from east to west and 423 meters from north to south. Ruins of walls remained to the east, west and north of the terrace. In the area enclosed by the three walls, no Qin relics were discovered and there was also no trace of the famous fire that burnt the palace to ashes.

Read the rest on China.org.

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

The mystery behind the sudden death of Tutankhamun, the boy king who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago, may have been finally solved by scientists who believe that he fell from a fast-moving chariot while out hunting in the desert.

Speculation surrounding Tutankhamun's death has been rife since his tomb was broken into in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter. X-rays of the mummy taken in 1968 indicated a swelling at the base of the skull, suggesting "King Tut" was killed by a blow to the head.

More recent studies using a CT medical scanner, however, revealed he suffered a badly broken leg, just above his knee just before he died. That in turn probably led to lethal blood poisoning. Now further evidence has come to light suggesting that he suffered the fracture while hunting game from a chariot.

The new findings are still circumstantial but one of Egypt's leading experts on Tutankhamun will say in a television documentary to be screened this week that he believes the case is now solved on how the boy king met his sudden and unexpected end.

"He was not murdered as many people thought. He had an accident when he was hunting in the desert. Falling from a chariot made this fracture in his left leg and this really is in my opinion how he died," said Zahi Hawass, general secretary of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Until now, many historians had assumed that he was treated as a rather fragile child who was cosseted and protected from physical danger. However, Nadia Lokma of the Cairo Museum said that a recent analysis of the chariots found in the tombs of the pharaohs indicated that they were not merely ceremonial but show signs of wear and tear. Hundreds of arrows recovered from the tomb also show evidence of having been fired and recovered. "These chariots are hunting chariots, not war chariots. You can see from the wear on them that they were actually used in life," Dr Lokma said.

A cache of clothing found in Tutankhamun's tomb, which was stored in the vaults of the Cairo Museum, suggest that he was accustomed to riding these chariots himself. They include a specially-adapted corset which would have protected the wearer's abdominal organs from any damage from an accident or the heavy jostling of a chariot ride.

A final piece of evidence comes from a garland of flowers placed around the neck of Tutankhamun's mummy. Botanists found it included cornflowers and mayweed that were fresh at the time the decoration was made.

"The cornflower and mayweed on the garland around the mummy were in flower in March and April, which tells us the time of year he was buried," said Nigel Hepper of the Royal Horticultural Society at Kew Gardens.

Because the flowers could have been collected only between the middle of March and the end of April, and as the complex process of mummification lasted 70 days, this meant Tutankhamun probably died in December or January. That timing coincided with the middle of the winter hunting season.

Read the rest on the Independent.

Amid charges of mud-slinging, a group of archaeologists turned to dirt-digging — literally — in their fight against a controversial fellow academic.

On Monday night, Columbia University’s pro-Israel student group played host to the latest installment in a lecture series aimed, at least partially, at rebutting Nadia Abu El-Haj, whose work has been critical of the traditional narratives of Israeli archeology.

Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard since 2002, first gained notice with her 2001 book “Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society,” in which she argued that Israeli archaeologists use their research to validate a national origin myth. The book was praised in some quarters — it won the top award from the Middle East Studies Association — but was slammed by others as poor scholarship motivated by ideology. Columbia is currently deliberating whether Abu El-Haj should be given tenure, and the university has received petitions from her opponents and supporters.

Read the rest on Forward.com.

By Jeanna Bryner, Live Science

Newly discovered footprints made by carnivorous dinosaurs in Australia reveal the ancient beasts survived in polar climes when the outback was still joined to Antarctica and close to the South Pole.

The discovery of the three fossil tracks, each about 14 inches (36 centimeters) long and showing two to three partial toe-prints, was presented by Anthony Martin, senior lecturer in environmental studies at Emory U. Friday at a meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Austin, Texas.

The researchers estimate the tracks were made 115 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period by theropod dinosaurs, a group of bipedal carnivores that includes Tyrannosaurus rex.

Read the rest here.

Archaeologists examine remains at the Twyford School site.

WHEN workmen discovered human remains as they cleared a site for new classrooms at a Twyford school, staff briefly thought they had a crime scene on their hands.

The panic soon turned into a historical feast for pupils and teachers alike, however, when it turned out the bones found at Twyford School were more than 1,000 years old.

Now, work on the site has halted as archaeologists try to find out more about what they think is a Saxon burial site - a very rare find.

A full excavation of the area is underway to make sure all remains are recorded and taken away for further investigation.

Paul McCulloch, project manager for Wessex Archaeology, which is carrying out the work, said: "The first time Twyford, which means Two Fords', is mentioned in historical sources is the seventh century.

"We think the burials date right back to this time, about 1,300 years ago.

Read the rest here.

WHITBY FIND: Archaeologist Jess Tibber cleans the stone

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have unearthed what could be one of the earliest tribal markers ever found in this country.

Rock art experts are still to fully examine the mysterious carved stone, which dates back thousands of years and was found on the headland at Whitby.

But one theory is that the stone could have been an instantly recognisable "logo" with a specific meaning to the people that were around at the time.

Project director Sarah Jennings said: "It's possible it had some sort of symbolic importance that needed no explanation, in the same way that the well-known logos of today do."

Whitby's headland is regarded as one of the country's most important archaeological sites, with Iron Age finds dating from the period 500BC to 100AD.

However the carved stone found in the latest dig is much earlier and possibly dates from the Bronze Age period of 2000BC to 700BC.

Measuring 16ins by 20ins, it displays linear carved markings which have yet to be understood or deciphered, and was found in one of four trenches dug just to the east of Whitby Abbey.

Ms Jennings said: "It's potentially a very significant find as we have hardly any material from this period in the headland's past.

Read the rest here.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In one of the earliest hints of "modern" living, humans 164,000 years ago put on primitive makeup and hit the seashore for steaming mussels, new archaeological finds show.

Call it a beach party for early man.

But it's a beach party thrown by people who weren't supposed to be advanced enough for this type of behavior. What was found in a cave in South Africa may change how scientists believe Homo sapiens marched into modernity.

Instead of undergoing a revolution into modern living about 40,000 to 70,000 years ago, as commonly thought, man may have become modern in stuttering fits and starts, or through a long slow march that began even earlier. At least that's the case being made in a study appearing in the journal Nature on Thursday.

Researchers found three hallmarks of modern life at Pinnacle Point overlooking the Indian Ocean near South Africa's Mossel Bay: harvested and cooked seafood, reddish pigment from ground rocks, and early tiny blade technology. Scientific optical dating techniques show that these hallmarks were from 164,000 years ago, plus or minus 12,000 years.

"Together as a package this looks like the archaeological record of a much later time period," said study author Curtis Marean, professor of anthropology at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.

This means humans were eating seafood about 40,000 years earlier than previously thought. And this is the earliest record of humans eating something other than what they caught or gathered on the land, Marean said. Most of what Marean found were the remnants of brown mussels, but he also found black mussels, small saltwater clams, sea snails and even a barnacle that indicates whale blubber or skin was brought into the cave.

Read the rest on CNN.

By Caroline Lewis

One of the above ground prison cells at the Galleries of Justice. © Galleries of Justice

New evidence has been discovered that the medieval caves under Nottingham’s Galleries of Justice museum were once used by the Sheriff of Nottingham as a prison. The dark dungeon cells would have been in use when the Sheriff resided at the Shire Hall and County Gaol.

“It is an exciting discovery,” said Tim Desmond, Chief Executive at the Galleries.
“The cave has always been known as the ‘Sheriff’s Dungeon’, but until now we have
only been aware of its later use as a chapel for the Georgian prison.”

Read the rest here.

Read the rest on Malibu Surfside News

The unfinished Obelisk Quarry in Aswan, Egypt, has a canal that may have connected to the Nile and allowed the large stone monuments to float to their permanent locations, according to an international team of researchers. This canal, however, may be allowing salts from ground water to seep into what has been the best preserved example of obelisk quarrying in Egypt.

"Working deposits and surfaces exposed during excavation are being damaged by accumulation of salts," the researchers said at the Second International Conference on Geology of the Tethyr at the Cairo University. "These unique artifacts document quarry methods and should be preserved."

The granite quarry, located on the east bank of the Nile in the center of Aswan City, contains a very large unfinished obelisk that was not completed because of latent cracks. While the cracks were bad for the ancient Egyptian stone carvers, the unfinished monument provides the opportunity for archaeologists to understand how people worked hard stone quarries.

Excavations by the Aswan Office of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egypt, began in 2002 to prepare the site for tourists. Among the discoveries made were a trench at least 8.25 feet deep. Archaeologists were unable to reach the bottom because of groundwater incursion.

"Some researchers suggested that this trench linked the quarry with the Nile," says Dr. Richard R. Parizek, professor of geology and geo-environmental engineering at Penn State. "Transporting huge granite monoliths by boat to the Nile during the annual flood would appear to be easier than having to transport these blocks overland from the quarry to the Nile."

Salt incursion into layers of rock indicating how obelisks were mined.

Parizek, working with Adel Kelany, inspector, Supreme Council of Antiquities; Amr El-Gohary, geologist, National Research Centre,
airo; and Shelton S. Alexander, professor emeritus of geophysics; David P. Gold, professor emeritus of geology: Elizabeth J. Walters, associate professor of art history; and Katarin A. Parizek, instructor, integrated arts, all at Penn State, looked at minimally invasive ways to determine whether the canal, as suggested, existed.

Read the rest on Eurekalert.

Celebrated scientist attacked for race comments: "All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really"

By Cahal Milmo

One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion.

James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unravelling of DNA who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, drew widespread condemnation for comments he made ahead of his arrival in Britain today for a speaking tour at venues including the Science Museum in London.

The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.

The newly formed Equality and Human Rights Commission, successor to the Commission for Racial Equality, said it was studying Dr Watson's remarks " in full". Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

The furore echoes the controversy created in the 1990s by The Bell Curve, a book co-authored by the American political scientist Charles Murray, which suggested differences in IQ were genetic and discussed the implications of a racial divide in intelligence. The work was heavily criticised across the world, in particular by leading scientists who described it as a work of " scientific racism".

Read the rest on the Independent.

MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. — State underwater archaeologists on Monday raised a cannon from a sunken ship that could have belonged to the pirate Blackbeard.

The roughly 8-foot-long cannon weighs about 2,500 pounds and was pulled from an ongoing excavation at the presumed site of the Queen Anne's Revenge.

Fay Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Cultural Resources, said the crew finished bringing it to the surface early Monday afternoon.

Read the rest on FoxNews.

Campaign for return of Elgin marbles receives historic propaganda boost

Helena Smith in Athens
The Guardian

4,500 antiquities from the Acropolis will be moved by cranes to the new museum. Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

A collective gasp filled the air early yesterday as a blue crate containing a 2.5-tonne slab of marble universally viewed as one of the most important works of antiquity, was hoisted by a giant crane from the Acropolis. For those who had come to watch, this was history in the making, the first sculpture to officially leave the ancient citadel since Phidias carved the artworks, 2,500 years ago.

The moment, heavy in symbolism, was not lost on Greece's culture minister, Michalis Liapis. "For the first time, after 25 centuries, the sculptures are being transferred to the new Acropolis museum. It is awe-inspiring and deeply moving," he said after witnessing the metal crate make the 400-yard journey to the spectacular cement and glass building that will be the artworks' new home. "It naturally raises our demand for the reunification of the Parthenon marbles"

Read the rest on The Guardian.

by Eric H. Cline

Biblical archeology is too important to leave to crackpots and ideologues. It's time to fight back.

Eric Cline at Megiddo (Courtesy Eric Cline)

Noah's Ark. The Ark of the Covenant. The Garden of Eden. Sodom and Gomorrah. The Exodus. The Lost Tomb of Jesus. All have been "found" in the last 10 years, including one within the past six months. The discoverers: a former SWAT team member; an investigator of ghosts, telepathy, and parapsychology; a filmmaker who calls himself "The Naked Archeologist"; and others, none of whom has any professional training in archeology.

We are living in a time of exciting discoveries in biblical archeology. We are also living in a time of widespread biblical fraud, dubious science, and crackpot theorizing. Some of the highest-profile discoveries of the past several years are shadowed by accusations of forgery, such as the James Ossuary, which may or may not be the burial box of Jesus' brother, as well as other supposed Bible-era findings such as the Jehoash Tablet and a small ivory pomegranate said to be from the time of Solomon. Every year "scientific" expeditions embark to look for Noah's Ark, raising untold amounts of money from gullible believers who eagerly listen to tales spun by sincere amateurs or rapacious con men; it is not always easy to tell the two apart.

Read the rest on Archaeology.org.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — The skeleton of what could be a new dinosaur species — a giant, Patagonian plant-eater — has been uncovered in Argentina.

At more than 105 feet, it is among the largest ever found, scientists said Monday.

Scientists from Argentina and Brazil said the Patagonian donosaur appears to represent a previously unknown species because of the unique structure of its neck.

They named it Futalognkosaurus dukei after the Mapuche Indian words for "giant" and "chief," and for Duke Energy Argentina, which helped fund the skeleton's excavation.

"This is one of the biggest in the world and one of the most complete of these giants that exist," said Jorge Calvo, director of paleontology center of National University of Comahue, Argentina, lead author of a study on the dinosaur published in the peer-reviewed Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

Scientists said the giant herbivore walked the Earth some 88 million years ago.

Read the rest on FoxNews.

By Finlo Rohrer BBC News Magazine

The Mary Rose in dry dock

The raising of the Mary Rose in 1982 was greeted with feverish excitement, but what has this landmark find actually told us in the 25 years since?

At the tail end of 1982 it seemed like you couldn't switch on Newsround without seeing something to do with Mary Rose.

Our fascination with the ship that met a sticky end while firing at a French invasion fleet in 1545 has flared at times in the years since. It is almost a rite of passage for some school children to go and see this emblem of the Tudor age.

But as significant as the ship itself are the artefacts that were recovered (both from within and from the sea bed), providing an insight into the life of the Tudors; proving and disproving countless strands of conjecture about the period.

Historian David Starkey has described the Mary Rose as "this country's Pompeii, preserved by water not by fire". Unlike most archaeological sites it has not been significantly interfered with by subsequent generations.

The ship may have looked a little like this reconstruction

"It is a time capsule, literally frozen in time from the day she sank in 1545," explains Rear Admiral John Lippiett, chief executive of the Mary Rose Trust. "It has given us an insight into Tudor life that was unachievable."

Items recovered from the wreck have given alarming insights into the world of Tudor medicine. Looking at a urethral syringe that would have been loaded with mercury, one might wince. But this would have been used to treat syphilis in the sailors. We know now, of course, that mercury is a poison.

As well as the artefacts, the bodies recovered from the wreck have shown the state of health of some Tudor males. The average height of the sailors was 5ft 7ins, not perhaps as short as some might have supposed.

To Captain Christopher Page, head of the Naval Historical Branch, this is perhaps the most startling discovery.

"I'm a historian of the First World War and the average height of a soldier in that conflict was in the order of 5ft 6ins." Compared with their counterparts 350 years later, "the men in the Mary Rose were bigger, stronger and fitter," says Capt Page.

Read the rest on the BBC.

Henry Hopfe

By Beth Hillyer

WAIANAE (KHNL) - Despite a warning from the Department of Land and Natural Resources, city workers unearthed ancient Hawaiian remains on Oahu's leeward coast.

To make matters worse, some Makaha families say it's at a place where work crews should have known better.

They e-mailed our Talk Story link at khnl.com.

Family members maintain this is a well documented historical site. They claim the city is well aware of the burials, that's the reason the city bought the property back in the 1980's.

Pokii whose ancestors are buried here stands guard. He and other family members covered up and flagged each bone fragment.

Now they maintain a vigil.

This ground has a long history as hallowed to native Hawaiians including Henry Hopfe, "It's sacred to us especially this burial, our ancestors date back to Niihau."

Read the rest on khnl.com.

By GEORGE BRYSON
Anchorage Daily News

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Plumbing the shallows of Lower Cook Inlet near the tip of the Kenai Peninsula this summer, a team of divers located what authorities say is the oldest American shipwreck in Alaska.

It also marks a pivotal chapter in U.S. history.

The four-person party charted and photographed remnants of the Torrent, a huge, square-rigged sailing vessel that struck a reef and sank near Port Graham in 1868, less than a year after the U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia.

Aboard the vessel at the time were women, children and a battery of 130 U.S. soldiers, some of whom were veterans of the recent Civil War. They had been ordered to construct the first U.S. fort on the mainland of south central Alaska.

Before they found a suitable building site, however, their vessel, a 576-ton bark piloted by civilians, struck a reef near Dangerous Cape, partly due to the absence on deck of a captain who had been drinking. The castaway crew and passengers had to camp on an adjacent beach for 18 days awaiting rescue as the ship broke up offshore and sank.

Somewhere near the reef at the bottom of the sea the shipwreck remained unexamined for 139 years, until July, when a team of divers -- authorized by the state to conduct an archaeological survey of the site -- finally located significant pieces of the vessel at the end of a two-year search.

In addition to partly buried portions of the wooden hull (most of which had been swept away by powerful tides), the search team located the rudder, anchors, portholes, plumbing, pieces of rigging and two cannons.

"Like a jigsaw puzzle -- one piece at a time over the course of quite a number of dives -- we were able to find different distinctive pieces of wreckage," said team leader and local shipwreck historian Steve Lloyd, co-owner of Title Wave Books in Anchorage.

The group held back on announcing its discovery until this week so the state could take steps to preserve and protect the shipwreck, which is now being considered for listing in the National Registry of Historic Places.

"It's really quite an extraordinary wreck," said Dave McMahan, an archaeologist in the state Office of History and Archaeology.

"Ultimately this would be a great (exhibit) for a maritime museum. It's a very important part of Alaska's history."

Among the artifacts is the brass remnant of a mountain howitzer, a short-barreled, large-caliber cannon on wheels used extensively in the Civil War.

"I think that's pretty dramatic," said Alaska shipwreck historian Mike Burwell.

Read the rest on SHNS.com.

Reuters

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they believe is the oldest in the world.

The 2 square-meter painting, in red, black and white, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo, team leader Eric Coqueugniot told Reuters.

"It looks like a modernist painting. Some of those who saw it have likened it to work by (Paul) Klee. Through carbon dating we established it is from around 9,000 B.C.," Coqueugniot said.

"We found another painting next to it, but that won't be excavated until next year. It is slow work," said Coqueugniot, who works at France's National Centre for Scientific Research.

Rectangles dominate the ancient painting, which formed part of an adobe circular wall of a large house with a wooden roof. The site has been excavated since the early 1990s.

The painting will be moved to Aleppo's museum next year, Coqueugniot said. Its red came from burnt hematite rock, crushed limestone formed the white and charcoal provided the black.

The world's oldest painting on a constructed wall was one found in Turkey but that was dated 1,500 years after the one at Djade al-Mughara, according to Science magazine.

Read the rest on Reuters.

by Marco Merola

Fragments of ancient writing illuminate 3,000 years of life in an Egyptian oasis town.

The papyri found at Tebtunis illuminate many aspects of life, including religious rituals, reports of crimes, legal documents and contracts, and personal communications. (Marco Ansaloni)

Seventy-five miles south of Cairo, hidden by shifting sands on the edge of the desert, are the remains of the ancient oasis town of Tebtunis. Archaeologists and diggers clamber over the site, a collection of impressive ruins that sprawl across nearly 100 acres and more than 3,000 years. At dusk, the exposed walls and oblique light call to mind a giant desert labyrinth. At the south end of the site are the low ruins of a Greek settlement, including a massive temple to the crocodile god Sobek. To the north, later Byzantine and Islamic ruins once stood higher--10 to 12 feet in the 1930s--before unknown assailants knocked them down. But the true value of this old town is not in its remaining walls; it is in little flecks of paper that document three millennia of life here and across this region of Egypt.

The desert swallowed Tebtunis in the twelfth century A.D., so the town does not appear on any maps. We know its name, and a great deal more, from the tens of thousands of papyrus fragments found throughout the twentieth century by a succession of archaeologists, including those working at the site today. These records, which range from pieces found in ancient garbage dumps, to sheets recycled as wrappings for mummies, to five-yard-long scrolls, include literary texts and records of private contracts and public acts. "The papyri give us particular and historic information that cannot be found elsewhere," says Claudio Gallazzi, professor of papyrology at Milan University who has led the international effort here since 1988. The papyri and other archaeological finds are painting an ever more detailed picture of life in this ethnically mixed village over a long period of time. For example, Gallazzi says, they show that there was a strong Greek presence in the town at a time when most Greeks in Egypt were thought to have lived only in big cities. They also illuminate the surrounding areas with which Tebtunis interacted and traded. "When we find a treasurer's registry, I know it contains interesting economic matters from many villages in the Fayum area, not just Tebtunis. And when we find religious documents, we can understand more about previously unrecognized religious-magic rituals [surrounding the crocodile god] pertinent to all of Egypt," he adds.

Read the rest on Archaeology.org.

The Knights Templar, the medieval Christian military order accused of heresy and sexual misconduct, will soon be partly rehabilitated when the Vatican publishes trial documents it had closely guarded for 700 years.

A reproduction of the minutes of trials against the Templars, "'Processus Contra Templarios - Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars'" is a massive work and much more than a book - with a 5,900 euros (£4,113) price tag.

"This is a milestone because it is the first time that these documents are being released by the Vatican, which gives a stamp of authority to the entire project," said Professor Barbara Frale, a medievalist at the Vatican's Secret Archives.

"Nothing before this offered scholars original documents of the trials of the Templars," she said in a telephone interview ahead of the official presentation of the work on October 25.

The epic comes in a soft leather case that includes a large-format book including scholarly commentary, reproductions of original parchments in Latin, and - to tantalise Templar buffs - replicas of the wax seals used by 14th-century inquisitors.

Only 799 numbered copies of the work have been made.

One parchment measuring about half a metre wide by some two metres long is so detailed that it includes reproductions of stains and imperfections seen on the originals.

Pope Benedict will be given the first set of the work, published by the Vatican Secret Archives in collaboration with Italy's Scrinium cultural foundation, which acted as curator and will have exclusive world distribution rights.

The Templars, whose full name was "Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon", were founded in 1119 by knights sworn to protecting Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land after the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099.

They amassed enormous wealth and helped finance wars of some European monarchs. Legends of their hidden treasures, secret rituals and power have figured over the years in films and bestsellers such as "The Da Vinci Code".

The Knights have also been portrayed as guardians of the legendary Holy Grail, the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper before his crucifixion.

The Vatican expects most copies of the work to be bought up by specialised libraries at top universities and by leading medieval scholars.

The Templars went into decline after Muslims re-conquered the Holy Land at the end of the 13th century and were accused of heresy by King Philip IV of France, their foremost persecutor. Their alleged offences included denying Christ and secretly worshipping idols.

The most titillating part of the documents is the so-called Chinon Parchment, which contains phrases in which Pope Clement V absolves the Templars of charges of heresy, which had been the backbone of King Philip's attempts to eliminate them.

Read the rest on the Daily Mail.

By Cnaan Liphshiz

For some 40 years, one of the flashiest opal signets on display at the Israel Museum had remained without accurate historical context. Two weeks ago, Dutch researcher Marjo Korpel identified article IDAM 65-321 as the official seal of Queen Jezebel, one of the bible's most powerful and reviled women.

Israeli archaeologists had suspected Jezebel was the owner ever since the seal was first documented in 1964. "Did it belong to Ahab's Phoenician wife?" wrote the late pioneering archaeologist Nahman Avigad of the seal, which he obtained through the antiquities market. "Though fit for a queen, coming from the right period and bearing a rare name documented nowhere other than in the Hebrew Bible, we can never know for sure."

Avigad's cautious approach stemmed from the fact that the seal did not come from an officially-approved excavation. It was thought to come from Samaria in the ninth century B.C.E., but there was no way of knowing for certain where it had been found. And that has been the scientific hurdle that Korpel - a theologian and Ugaritologist from Utrecht University and a Protestant minister - set out to conquer.

In her paper, scheduled to appear in the highly-respected Biblical Archaeology Review, Korpel lists observations pertaining to the seal's symbolism, unusual size, shape and time period. By way of elimination, she shows Jezebel as the only plausible owner. She also explains how two missing letters from the seal point to the Phoenician shrew.

"As a minister, I never speak of coincidence, but my research happened by chance," Korpel told Haaretz last week. "I was asked to deliver a paper on female embodiment. I'm not much of a feminist, but I'd written on the imagery of the seal."

Korpel says she had probably seen the seal years before on a visit to the Israel Museum, but only much later did it spark her interest. "The missing letters on the top intrigued me. I was used to reconstructing broken texts from earlier research."

Upon hearing of Korpel's research, Dr. Hagai Misgav of Hebrew University said he believed the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Israel Museum have in their possession many more articles carrying unnoticed historical clues. "Not all the artifacts have been thoroughly examined," he said. "There are many discoveries waiting to be made." Misgav added he would have to study Korpel's work more thoroughly to further comment on it.

Read the rest here.

The ancestors of humanity are often depicted as knuckle-draggers, making humans seem unusual in our family tree as "upright apes."

Controversial research now suggests the ancestors of humans and the other great apes might have actually walked upright too, making knuckle-walking chimpanzees and gorillas the exceptions and not the rule.

In other words, "the other great apes we see now, such as chimps or gorillas or orangutans, might have descended from human-like ancestors," researcher Aaron Filler, a Harvard-trained evolutionary biologist and medical director at Cedars-Sinai Institute for Spinal Disorders in Los Angeles, told LiveScience.

Filler analyzed how the spine was assembled in more than 250 living and extinct mammalian species, with some bones dating up to 220 million years old.

He discovered a series of changes that suggest walking upright-and not with our knuckles-might actually have been the norm for the ancestors of today's great apes.

In most creatures with a backbone, the body is separated roughly in half by a tissue structure that runs in front of the spinal canal. This "horizontal septum" divides the body into a dorsal part (corresponding to the back side of humans), and a ventral part (or the front half).

A strange birth defect in what may have been the first direct human ancestor led this septum to cross behind the spinal cord in the lumbar or lower back region-an odd configuration more typical of invertebrates. This would have made horizontal stances inefficient.

Read the on LiveScience.

A row has erupted over a plan to dig up a third of a million bodies from an historic east London cemetery to make way for a new Muslim burial site.

Tower Hamlets council in London is considering reopening the Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park in Mile End to answer a long-running campaign for a Muslim graveyard in the area.

The park, off Bow Common Lane, was deconsecrated as a Church of England cemetery by Parliament in 1966, after being deemed full with about 350,000 bodies buried there.

It is not yet clear what the Council proposes to do with the remains, if they are ultimately removed from the graves and a new burial site built in their place.

Council sources have said the plans are not yet at a stage where this has been properly considered.

But already opponents to the proposal are lining up. They include the environmentalist and broadcaster, who is leading calls for the park to be kept as a wildlife haven.

The botanist, who is patron of a charity that acts as the guardian of the graveyard, said he will 'pray that the wisdom of all faiths' prevails in the decision over the cemetery's future.

The other options are to find land outside Tower Hamlets or redevelop the Bow Common gas works.

The Labour-controlled council had asked officers to find ways of opening a Muslim-only cemetery - but lawyers warned them that would be illegal.

The authority then examined the possibility of a multi-faith site, clearing existing graves to create a new cemetery with an area set aside for Muslim burials.

But now outraged East Enders have declared "there is no way we'll allow them to dig up our ancestors".

They have bombarded their local paper, the East London Advertiser, with protests against the plan to exhume 350,000 graves dating back to 1841, including those of the children of Dr Barnardo.

Religious leaders and politicians have also reacted angrily.

Tower Hamlets Tory group leader Peter Golds said no new cemetery had been opened in an inner city area for decades.

Cllr Golds insisted: "Of course, there must be respect for the recent dead and for those who mourn, but this proposal will cause untold damage to community cohesion in a borough that seriously wants for tranquil open space."

Labour's Poplar and Canning Town MP Jim Fitzpatrick said: "The cemetery is a very special piece of green space and I would personally want to examine very carefully any proposal to change that."

The Rev Alan Green, chair of the Tower Hamlets Inter-Faith Forum and dean for the borough, said the former Church of England graveyard was not an 'appropriate' place for a new cemetery.

Rev Green said: "The Church supports the move to ensure suitable future provision for the burial and cremation needs for all local residents.

"However, we do not believe that the Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park is an appropriate location due to the emotional, practical and ecological issues of removing thousands of bodies and destroying an important wildlife centre.

"Therefore, we hope that we can work with the council and other faith groups to find a more suitable alternative."

Performance artists are known for pushing the bounderies, but one Australian has astonished his contemporaries by having a third ear implanted onto his arm.

The Cypriot-born eccentric Stelios Arcadious spent 10 years searching for a surgeon willing to perform the controversial operation.

He got his wish after working as a Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University's Digital Research Unit. The ear was grown in a lab from cells and implanted into the 61-year-olds left forearm in 2006.

Mr Arcadious said he thought art "should be more than simply illustrating ideas." Once the ear has fully developed he hopes to get a microphone implanted as well.

"It is more of a relief at present than an ear but it is still recognisable as an ear," he said.

Read the rest on the Daily Mail.

BY DAVID DERBYSHIRE

Hidden away in a remote outcrop in America's badlands, it looks little more than a brown stain.

But according to a British dinosaur hunter, this peculiar mark in the rock is the Holy Grain of fossil hunters - the world's first footprint of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Dr Phil Manning, of Manchester University, believes the 29 inch long mark was made by the flesh-eating giant as it stomped over a prehistoric floodplain more than 65 million years ago.

He found the print last year during a field trip to the Hell Creek rock formation in Montana. Two other partial dinosaur footprints lie close by.

Although other scientists have claimed to have unearthed T. rex prints before, their claims have been impossible to prove.

"People have been trying to find T. rex tracks for a hundred years," said Dr Manning, who is keeping the location of the print secret until he can confirm its identity with more tests next year.

"Unless you come across an animal dead in its tracks you can't say for definite what left them. However with information available about the numbers of T. rex in the rocks of the Hell Creek formation means it is the closest we have got so far to discovering a tyrannosaur track."

Hell Creek is a massive rock formation that stretches over three states and which was formed around 65 to 67 million years ago, when T. rex stalked prehistoric North America.

Dr Manning said the footprint clearly was made by a three-toed giant predator that walked on two feet.

Given the age and location of the prints, they could have been made by just two dinosaurs - the T. rex or the smaller Nanotyrannus. He believes T. rex is the best candidate.

"All the best T. rex fossils in the world have come from Hell Creek. The frustrating thing is that we have never found their tracks.

"You have a choice of two dinosaurs. We know it was made by a big predator and we know that T. rex was in the area at the time so it seems likely."

In the early 1990s, scientists announced they had found a T. rex print in new Mexico. However, the researchers found no bones nearby and the identity of the prints has been disputed.

Dr Manning will return to the site next year and hopes to get permission to excavate more tracks. That would give clues about the speed and size of the dinosaur that made them.

Read the rest on the Daily Mail.

By DAVID DERBYSHIRE

The process beginned hundreds of years ago and bringed a huge change in our use of the language.

Now researchers believe more of the irregular verbs that make English such a rich and varied experience are heading for extinction.

In future, 'stank' will evolve into 'stinked', 'drove' will become 'drived' and 'slew' will turn into 'slayed', a team of linguists and mathematicians say. And if the simplification becomes really serious, 'begun' could change to 'beginned', 'brought' to 'bringed' and 'fell' to 'falled'.

The prediction comes from the first study of its kind into how irregular verbs have evolved in literature over the last 1,200 years.

Around 97 per cent of verbs in English are regular. That means in the past tense they simply take an '-ed' ending – so 'talk' becomes 'talked', and 'jump' becomes 'jumped'.

Irregular verbs, however, do their own thing. Some like 'wed' stay the same in the past tense while others like 'begin' take a different ending to become 'begun'.

The study, carried out at Harvard University, found that irregular verbs are under intense pressure to change into regular verbs as language develops.

The team identified 177 irregular verbs used in Old English and tracked their use over the centuries from the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf to the latest Harry Potter novel.

Read the rest on the Daily Mail.

By Hamed THabet

In ancient Yemen, people believed in life after death. Their belief in resurrection was essential to ensure a safe passage to the afterlife for their dead. Mummification was an important step to ensuring one's afterlife in ancient Yemen. However contradictory to their belief, not only the dead lost their way to the afterworld; sadly, the mummies have never crossed the boundaries of their tombs. So where did all the mummies go?

According to the researchers, In the ancient days, Yemen was one of the most famous countries in the world with its civilization and secrets. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that there are huge numbers of mummies in Yemen that have not been revealed and introduced to the international community

It is difficult to know exactly why this society practiced mummification, but it must surely reflect a desire to keep their dead with them since the mummies do not seem to have been buried immediately. Ancient Yemenis used to embalm their dead due to their belief that they would return to this world on the Day of Resurrection. Researchers confirmed that many mummies have been found in Yemen in several different places by accident in the last 20 years and many of them are still hidden in their tombs and unknown.

For the first time, ,Windol Fliees, the head of an American expedition group found samples in Ma’reb in 1951-1952 in the graveyard or cemetery of Awam Temple called Haied Bin Aqeed. But the important discovery was in 1983 in Shebam Al Garas by the archeology expedition department, which found 26 Mummies at a depth of 60 centimeters, and among all those, only one has survived. Moreover, in 1991 Mummies have been found in the Al Noman mountain in Al Mahweet governorate, and until today their work is not finished as there are many more. In 1994 in Saih Bani Matar, Mummies have been found in natural caves, but unfortunately, no one has examined them until this date; because there are no specialists and experts to study the tombs and the bodies. In 1999, another body was found in Shaoob and finally a local found a Mummy of a small child in Damar.

However, not all mummies that were found belong to Yemenis, “A Mummy has been found which belonged to the 6 century, however the body wasn’t preserved by humans, but by natural forces. We prsume this mummy belonged to one of the Ethiopian soliders who served in the Army of (Abraha) when they invaded Yemen. There are two theories about the solider’s death: the first theory was that he was killed in battle, the second theory was that he died because of suffocation by volcanic smoke,” said Dr, Abdul Hakim, who is a tutor at Sana’a University in the Archeology Department and also the storekeeper at the museum.

Abdul Hakim explained the ancient Yemeni steps of mummification , saying the theory and idea of Mummies in Yemen are the same as that of any other country but of course each have their own system of embalmment. On the basis of some researches on Mummies, a kind of plant called Al Ra’a, was found in all the bodies, and also chemical materials like oxides of iron and sulfur dioxide. Furthermore, camel oil was found to be the principle agent of embalming the dead.

During this process, they would tear the stomach, take out the bowels, and put the plant material and distribute the chemicals in a way that would fill the stomach in order to keep it preserved. The body was covered and painted with a color called Henna. Furthermore, the shrouding process in Yemeni Mummies took several steps. Firstly, rolls with silk and then leather were placed on the body and if the person was rich more money was spent for more rolls of silk and leather rolls. Nevertheless, some Mummies that were found in Shaoob in Sana’a were embalmed by shrouding, using cotton and straw. After putting the materials, the body was well dressed and adorned with new shoes, coats, and mineral rings in order to drive away evil spirits.

HOBBITS may have had long arms and tiny brains but our new-found cousins were agile and smart enough to make stone tools used to fashion other tools, probably for hunting and butchering animals.

What's more, they did so at least 40,000 years before modern humans arrived on their home island of Flores in Indonesia.

The discovery comes from Queensland scientists who have studied wear patterns and residue on about 100 stone tools found with the remains of hobbits (Homo floresiensis) in Liang Bua cave by Australian and Indonesian researchers.

University of Queensland and Southern Cross University archeologist and paleobotanist Carol Lentfer said: "We're talking about a creature that was fairly well advanced. It was able to use stone tools to make other tools - value-adding in a sense."

Working with University of Queensland colleagues Michael Haslam and Gail Robertson, Dr Lentfer found evidence of plant work and butchery on stone flakes and cobbles from archeological layers ranging from 12,000 to 55,000 years old.

They identified blood and bone on some tools, but more than 90 per cent of the residues were from woody and fibrous plants. That doesn't mean the metre-high people ate only a little meat, but rather that most of the tools studied so far were used for working with plants.

"Maybe they were making spear-shafts or traps or sharpening sticks," Dr Lentfer said.

"So far there's no evidence they used stone spear points for hunting. They probably used fire-hardened sticks."

Read the rest on The Australian.

Washington Post Staff Writer

by Richard Owen

Italian archeologists have uncovered the ruins of a 2,700 year old sanctuary which they say provides the first physical evidence of Rome at the time of Numa Pompilius, Rome’s legendary second king, in the 8th century BC.

Numa Pompilius, a member of the Sabine tribe, was elected at the age of forty to succeed Romulus, the founder of Rome. He reigned from 715-673 BC, and is said by Plutarch to have been a reluctant monarch who ushered in a 40-year period of peace and stability. He was celebrated for his wisdom, personal austerity and piety.

Clementina Panella, the archeologist from Rome’s Sapienza University who is leading the dig, said Numa Pompilius was also known to have established religious practices and observance in the emergent city state, instituting the office of priest or pontifex and founding the cult of the Vestal Virgins. She said the temple or sanctuary her team had uncovered lay between the Palatine and Velian hills, close to the Colosseum, the Arch of Titus and Via Sacra, and had probably been dedicated to the Goddess of Fortune.

The dig began a year ago, with the help of 130 students and volunteers. The wall of the temple was found seven metres below the surface, together with a street and pavement and two wells, one round and one rectangular. Both wells were “full of thousands of votive offerings and cult objects”, including the bones of birds and animals and ceramic bowls and cups.

Dr Panella said there was no doubt that the objects dated from the period of Numa Pompilius. However there were no statues or figures because Numa forbade images of the gods in his temples, arguing that it was “impious to represent things Divine by what is perishable”.

Numa Pompilius is also credited with dividing Rome into administrative districts, and according to Plutarch organised the city’s first occupational guilds, “forming companies of musicians, goldsmiths, carpenters, dyers, shoemakers, skinners, braziers, and potters”.

Corriere della Sera said the unearthing of the temple proved there were still “remarkable discoveries” to be made in the Forum and Palatine Hill areas. Last year Andrea Carandini, Professor of Archeology at La Sapienza, announced that he had discovered the remains of a royal palace dating to the time of Romulus.

Read the rest on the Times.