Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

Gods, Graves, Glyphs ^ | 7/17/2004 | various

[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #256 Saturday, June 13, 2009
Underwater Archaeology
Archeological evidence of human activity found beneath Lake Huron
	· 06/08/2009 2:21:10 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 26 replies · 703+ views · University of Michigan | Jun 8, 2009 | Unknown ANN ARBOR, Mich.---More than 100 feet deep in Lake Huron, on a wide stoney ridge that 9,000 years ago was a land bridge, University of Michigan researchers have found the first archeological evidence of human activity preserved beneath the Great Lakes. The researchers located what they believe to be caribou-hunting structures and camps used by the early hunters of the period. "This is the first time we've identified structures like these on the lake bottom," said John O'Shea, curator of Great Lakes Archaeology in the Museum of Anthropology and professor in the Department of Anthropology. "Scientifically, it's important because the...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Obama Flunks History at Cairo U
	· 06/07/2009 4:20:14 AM PDT · Posted by SonOfDarkSkies · 61 replies · 2,184+ views · PajamasMedia.com | 6/7/2009 | Frank J. Tipler In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, President Barack Obama claimed: "As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam -- at places like Al-Azhar University -- that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing." Obama is not much of a "student of history" if he believes this. Almost every advance he attributes to the Muslims was...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Prof explores journey of Dead Sea Scrolls
	· 06/12/2009 6:54:59 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 343+ views · Canadian Jewish News | Thursday, June 11, 2009 | Sheri Shefa Israeli archeologist and professor Dan Bahat... a lecturer in the Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology department at Bar-Ilan University and the former district archeologist for Jerusalem, addressed hundreds who gathered at Beth Tikvah Synagogue on June 3... "When I speak about the caves in the Judean desert where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, actually, all the scrolls we're talking about come from 11 caves only," Bahat said. He said the discovery of the first scrolls in 1947 was made on Nov. 29 -- the day the United Nations adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine... all that was yielded...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Did Comets Contain Key Ingredients For Life On Earth?
	· 06/06/2009 10:52:58 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 51 replies · 456+ views · ScienceDaily | April 29, 2009 | Adapted from materials provided by Tel Aviv University While investigating the chemical make-up of comets, Prof. Akiva Bar-Nun of the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University found they were the source of missing ingredients needed for life in Earth's ancient primordial soup. "When comets slammed into the Earth through the atmosphere about four billion years ago, they delivered a payload of organic materials to the young Earth, adding materials that combined with Earth's own large reservoir of organics and led to the emergence of life," says Prof. Bar-Nun.
Helix, Make Mine a Double
'Hunt ET on Earth'
	· 06/09/2009 4:15:42 AM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 31 replies · 614+ views · thesun SCIENTISTS looking for aliens in space should be hunting them on EARTH, it has been claimed. Prof Paul Davies said creatures totally different from life as we know it may exist on our planet. The UK-born cosmologist, now in Arizona, believes they might not have DNA - meaning they would not have been found by usual life-detection techniques. He called for searches for "weird life" in inhospitable places, such as hot, undersea vents. Prof Davies said finding alternative life "would be the biggest discovery in biology since Darwin and evolution".
Biology and Cryptobiology
New research on a really freaking weird animal
	· 06/11/2009 10:25:14 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 47 replies · 1,057+ views · scientificblogging | June 4th 2009 | Becky Jungbauer Is it a pig? A rhino? A zebra? Heck if I know. But it's really freaking weird looking, that's for sure. The headline in the NY Times article, "New Research on Malaysia's Odd, Elusive Tapir" caught my attention, mostly because I had no idea what the heck a tapir is. Still don't, really. The Wiki entry attempts to clarify: A large browsing mammal, roughly pig-like in shape, with a short, prehensile snout. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia. There are four species of Tapirs, being the Brazilian tapir, the Malayan tapir, Baird's...
Unuseology
Just why do unusual things persist?
	· 06/07/2009 8:59:01 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 9 replies · 479+ views · labnews. Rare traits persist in a population because predators detect common forms of prey more easily. Researchers writing in the journal BMC Ecology found that birds will target salamanders that look like the majority - even reversing their behavior if a trait that was previously in the minority becomes the majority. A team from the University of Tennessee studied the effects of the prevalence of a dorsal stripe among a group of model salamanders on the foraging behavior of a flock of Blue Jays. Lead researcher Benjamin Fitzpatrick, said: "Maintenance of variation is a classic paradox in evolution because both selection...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
New Research On How Dogs And Cats Became Man's Best Friends
	· 06/07/2009 2:50:13 AM PDT · Posted by Scanian · 46 replies · 969+ views · NY Post | June 6, 2009 | Maureen Callahan They have lived in our homes, been members of the family, slept on our laps for over 10,000 years. Yet it is only recently that science has begun to answer how it is that cats and dogs came to be our most prized companion animals - discovering, along the way, how the domestication of cats and dogs actively helped change the course of human history. "Domestication," says scientist Carlos Driscoll, "is evolution that we can see." Driscoll is a researcher at Oxford University and the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, where much of the world's leading work on cats has...
Climate
War and migration may have shaped human behaviour (Ya think?)
	· 06/06/2009 9:54:45 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 13 replies · 353+ views · Nature News | 4 June 2009 | Dan Jones Demographic factors could be behind diverse aspects of social evolution. Did wars make us the species we are today?Wikimedia Commons Explanations of the evolution of human behaviour often invoke crucial biological changes and revolutionary cultural innovations. Now two papers in Science instead put demography -- the size, density and distribution of populations -- centre stage.Samuel Bowles, a behavioural scientist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, tackles the puzzle of how humans acquired such unrivalled altruistic behaviour towards unrelated individuals -- tendencies that allowed humans to cooperate as groups and, ultimately, to colonize the planet. The answer, paradoxically, could...
The Hobbit
The people that forgot time
	· 06/08/2009 8:33:45 PM PDT · Posted by GodGunsGuts · 23 replies · 822+ views · Journal of Creation | David Catchpoole, Ph.D. Isolated hunter-gatherer tribes are often viewed in the West as being primitive (pre-agriculture), not-yet-fully-evolved relics of the Stone Age.[1,2] Such people are frequently dubbed "The People That Time Forgot' -- a concept widely recognized, even by those unfamiliar with Edgar Rice Burrough's classic 1924 novel (or the 1977 Hollywood movie).[3] However, faced with intriguing new evidence, anthropologists are having to completely rethink the "Primitive Worlds: People Lost in Time'[4] stereotype...
Flores 'Hobbit' Walked More Like A Clown Than Frodo
	· 04/16/2008 4:23:50 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 4 replies · 60+ views · New Scientist | 4-16-2008 | Ewen Callaway Flores 'hobbit' walked more like a clown than Frodo 12:30 16 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Ewen Callaway Henry McHenry, University of California, Davis American Association of Physical Anthropologists Tolkien's hobbits walked an awful long way, but the real "hobbit", Homo floresiensis, would not have got far. Its flat, clown-like feet probably limited its speed to what we would consider a stroll, and kept its travels short, says Bill Jungers, an anthropologist at the State University of New York in Stony Brook. "It's never going to win the 100-yard dash, and it's never going to win the marathon," he says....
Taking Sides In Battle Of The 'Hobbit'
	· 10/09/2006 5:07:07 PM PDT · Posted by blam · 11 replies · 601+ views · New Scientist | 10-9-2006 | Jeff Hecht Taking sides in the battle of the 'hobbit' 05:00 09 October 2006 Jeff Hecht The battle among paleaoanthropologists over Homo Floresiensis, popularly known as "the hobbit", threatens to become an epic of Lord of the Rings proportions. The debate rages on over whether the fossil, found on the Indonesian island of Flores, is a separate species or simply a modern human with stunted development. Now Robert Martin at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, US, claims the controversial fossil, discovered in 2004 was really a Stone Age Homo sapiens (modern human) with a mild form of the condition...
Hobit Dwarf Caveman
	· 03/04/2005 4:42:55 AM PST · Posted by discipler · 30 replies · 1,126+ views Professor Richard Roberts points to an artist impression of a hobbit-like dwarf, the astonishing discovery that could rewrite the history of human evolution, in Sydney, Australia, Oct. 28, 2004. A 3-foot-tall adult female skeleton found in a cave on a remote Indonesian island is believed 18,000 years old and smashes the long-cherished scientific belief that our species, Homo sapiens, systematically crowded out other upright-walking human cousins beginning 160,000 years ago.(AP Photo/Rob Griffith)Wow! Using powerful scanning devices look at what the artist was able to illustrate! Look how wise and thoughtful the little fella appears! Wow, wow, and triple wow: impressive...
Prehistory and Origins
Oëtzi the iceman: Up close and personal
	· 06/06/2009 11:06:00 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 24 replies · 716+ views · New Scientist | May or June 2009 | South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology / Eurac / Marco Samadelli / Gregor Staschitz Eight images.
Ancient Autopsies
Incan sacrifices found
	· 06/07/2009 4:10:50 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 25 replies · 494+ views · Straits Times | June 7, 2009 | Unknown Researchers at an archeological site in northern Peru have made an unusually large discovery of nearly three dozen people sacrificed some 600 years ago by the Incan civilisation. The bodies, some of which show signs of having been cut along their necks and collarbones, were otherwise found in good condition, said Mr Carlos Webster, who is leading excavations at the Chotuna-Chornancap camp.
The Andes
'Lost city of the Incas' was not a true city
	· 06/08/2009 11:54:45 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 27 replies · 592+ views · Discovery | Jun 8, 2009 | Rossella Lorenzi Machu Picchu, the "lost city of the Incas," was not a true city but rather a pilgrimage center symbolically connected to the Andean vision of the cosmos, an Italian study has concluded. The Inca, who ruled the largest empire on Earth by the time their last emperor, Atahualpa, was garroted by Spanish conquistadors in 1533, believed that the sun god was their ancestor. "Any interpretation is doomed to remain speculative. Machu Picchu remains a mystery. We do not know for sure what the Inca called it, we do not know when and why it was constructed, or why...
Precolumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Aztec temple promises to yield one of antiquity's great treasures
	· 06/10/2009 4:50:50 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 56 replies · 816+ views · Times Online | June 11, 2009 | Nancy Durrant and Ben Hoyle Archaeologists working amid the smog and din of Mexico City may be on the verge of unlocking an extraordinary time capsule. The leaders of a team exploring a site opened up by earthquake damage believe that they have found the first tomb of an Aztec ruler. If they are right the site may yield one of the great treasures of antiquity, the sort of haul that fires the imagination of people far beyond academic circles.
Diet and Cuisine
9,000-year-old brew hitting the shelves this summer
	· 06/10/2009 7:53:01 PM PDT · Posted by grey_whiskers · 91 replies · 1,139+ views · 60-Second Science Blog via Scientific American | 60-Second Science Blog | Brendan Borrell This summer, how would you like to lean back in your lawn chair and toss back a brew made from what may be the world's oldest recipe for beer? Called Chateau Jiahu, this blend of rice, honey and fruit was intoxicating Chinese villagers 9,000 years ago -- long before grape wine had its start in Mesopotamia. University of Pennsylvania molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern first described the beverage in 2005 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences based on chemical traces from pottery in the Neolithic village of Jiahu in Northern China. Soon after, McGovern called on Sam Calagione at the...
Asia -- China
Oldest known pottery found in China: 18,000 years old
	· 06/06/2009 2:05:09 AM PDT · Posted by 2ndDivisionVet · 24 replies · 836+ views · The Los Angeles Times | June 6, 2009 | Thomas H. Maugh II Chinese and Israeli archaeologists have discovered the oldest known pottery, remains of an 18,000-year-old cone-shaped vase excavated from a cave in southern China. The shards are about 1,000 years older than the previous record-holder, found in Japan. After flint tools, pottery is one of the oldest human-made materials, and tracing its development provides insight into the evolution of culture. The shards were discovered four years ago in Yuchanyan Cave in the Yangzi River basin by a team led by Elisabetto Boaretto of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. The cave shows signs of human occupation from about 21,000...
Chinese pottery may be earliest discovered
	· 06/08/2009 6:15:20 PM PDT · Posted by mnehring · 11 replies · 292+ views · AP Via Yahoo! WASHINGTON -- Bits of pottery discovered in a cave in southern China may be evidence of the earliest development of ceramics by ancient people. The find in Yuchanyan Cave dates to as much as 18,000 years ago, researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Asia -- Cambodia
Temple Watch: Ancient wheel turns again [Cambodia]
	· 06/12/2009 5:52:00 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 2 replies · 185+ views · Phnom Penh Post | Thursday, June 11, 2009 | Dave Perkes The old stone bridge, Spean Thma, is near the temple of Ta Keo and near the metal bridge on the road to Ta Prohm. The bridge was originally constructed in Angkorian times, but it has suffered badly through the centuries. Huge trees grow out of the stones with much of the masonry severely damaged. Travellers who stop and look can see the corbelled arches and the remains of a stepped embankment. The Siem Reap River flows about five metres below it. The river was originally canalised by the ancient Khmers and took a straight route north to south. The river...
Asia -- Afghanistan
Metropolitan Museum Exhibits Afghanistan's Dazzling Treasures
	· 06/12/2009 5:32:32 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 142+ views · Huliq.com | Friday, June 12, 2009 | ruzik_tuzik Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this summer, the traveling exhibition Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul, celebrates... diverse cultural elements and... distinctive styles of art from the Bronze Age into the Kushan period. The exhibition will be on view from June 23 to September 20, 2009, at Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall... All works belong to the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. Highlights include gold vessels from the Bronze Age Tepe Fullol hoard; superb works and architectural elements from the Hellenistic city of Ai Khanum; sculptural masterpieces in ivory, plaster medallions, bronzes, and...
The Great Sphinx
The Great Sphinx: Was the Great Sphinx Surrounded By a Moat?
	· 06/07/2009 6:58:42 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 42 replies · 748+ views · www.RobertSchoch.com | since March 2009 | Robert Milton Schoch According to Robert Temple, a moat theory explains the water weathering of the Sphinx without hypothesizing that it dates back to an earlier period of more rainfall than the present. I will not address his other hypotheses, which I do not find persuasive, that the Sphinx was the jackal [wild dog] Anubis and the face seen on the Sphinx is that of the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Amenemhet II, though I note the original Sphinx has been reworked and the head re-carved... Assuming the argument that the Sphinx sat in a pool, either the water level around the Sphinx was the...
Egypt
Discovery digs 'Egypt' series: Network gives show a six-episode run
	· 06/12/2009 6:06:59 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 15 replies · 188+ views · Variety | Thursday, June 11, 2009 | Jon Weisman Discovery Channel is giving world civilization series "Out of Egypt" a six-episode run over three Mondays beginning Aug. 17 and airing back-to-back episodes at 9 and 10 p.m. "Egypt" was co-created by archeologist and UCLA professor Kara Cooney with her husband, Neil Crawford. Cooney hosts and serves as lead researcher and writer for the show, which compares and contrasts patterns of far-flung cultures. Cooney told Daily Variety that the concept for the show sprang from a desire to essentially desensationalize the typical "mysteries of the Pharaohs" approach to ancient Egypt. Among the peoples and archeological sites profiled are the...
Navigation
Ship Over 2,000 Years Old Found in Novalja [off Croatia]
	· 06/06/2009 11:09:02 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 416+ views · Javno hrvatski | May 25, 2009 | Author: D.M. -- Translation: Joseph Stedul In the Caska Bay on the Island of Pag, near Novalja, an ancient sewn ship over 2,000 years old was found. This is the result of research done by the city of Novalja and the Zadar University, in cooperation with the French institute for scientific research (CNRS-CCJ University in Marseille) and numerous other foreign associates. The lower part of the ship was found, body panels, ship skeleton and stitches which the panels were connected with. Work on excavating the ship will last for around two years. Archaeologists have found a ancient sewn ship more than 2000 years old in Pag's...
Antiques and Collectibles
Recovered Italian Artifacts Headed Home
	· 06/11/2009 3:58:48 PM PDT · Posted by Larry381 · 2 replies · 329+ views · FBI Chicago | 06/11/09 | FBI Chicago In March 2007, members of the Berwyn, Illinois Police Department entered the home of a recently deceased man at the request of his son. What they found in that small house in a Chicago suburb eventually reverberated nearly 5,000 miles away: the late owner of the home -- John Sisto -- had been haphazardly storing more than 3,500 suspected antiquities from Italy in boxes, in piles on the floor, and on bookshelves. On Monday, some of those items were on public display for the first time in years during a press conference with our partners -- when Special Agent in Charge Robert Grant of our Chicago...
Rome and Italy
Italy: Ancient Roman wall in 'danger' of collapse
	· 06/12/2009 6:47:38 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 265+ views · Adnkronos International | June 10, 2009 | Giuseppe Marra Communications There are fears for the future of Rome's ancient Aurelian walls after chunks collapsed on Tuesday. A major street was closed in the Italian capital after bricks from the nearly 2000-year old wall fell down. The city's archaeological authorities want to save the historic treasure, but they claim protection and restoration is limited due to poor financial resources, according to the Italian daily, Il Messaggero. Authorities told the daily that whenever chunks of the walls collapse, the area is usually fenced off, but restoration work is almost never completed due to a lack of funds. "Their maintenance is a recurrent...
Epigraphy and Language
Roman era reveals expenses claims
	· 06/08/2009 6:57:25 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 319+ views · BBC | Friday, May 29, 2009 | unattributed Writing tablets uncovered near Hadrian's Wall detail hundreds of expenses claimed by Roman officials... Five of the translated tablets contain 111 lines detailing entertainment claims at the Roman camp of Vindolanda. The items include ears of grain, hobnails for boots, bread, cereals, hides and pigs. The wooden writing tablets - which date from the 2nd Century - were discovered at Vindolanda, the Roman encampment near Hadrian's Wall in 1973... Professor Tony Birley, who translated the tablets, said they detail hundreds of expense claims and "lavish parties" held for officers... The wooden tablets, which are held at the British Museum in...
British Isles
Ancient mass grave found on U.K. Olympics site
	· 06/12/2009 10:55:23 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 17 replies · 480+ views · Reuters | Jun 12, 2009 | Stefano Ambrogi An ancient burial pit containing 45 severed skulls, that could be a mass war grave dating back to Roman times, has been found under a road being built for the 2012 British Olympics. Archaeologists, who have only just begun excavating the site, say they do not yet know who the bones might belong to.
Archaeoastronomy and Megaliths
Stone circle in East Anglian village?
	· 06/12/2009 6:19:48 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 226+ views · Evening Star (UK) | Friday, June 12, 2009 | Laurence Cawley A qualified surveyor claims a picturesque village on the Essex/Suffolk border might boast the only proper stone circle outside the west of England. For generations the sarcen stones at Alphamstone near Sudbury have been at the centre of hot debate as to whether they were ever part of a stone circle. There are two stones marking the entrance to St Barnabas Church and a number of others further back near - and in - the church, but they form neither a circle nor part of a circle. But Paul Daw, a surveyor who has visited more than 300 of the...
Scotland Yet
Battle of Flodden remembered [1513, Scot King James IV vs an English army]
	· 06/12/2009 5:46:19 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 9 replies · 380+ views · The Journal [Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, Northumberland, County Durham] | Thursday, June 11, 2009 | Tony Henderson In just three hours of savage, face-to-face fighting in a Northumberland field, 15,000 men lost their lives in the most brutal of ways. The scale of the butchery in 1513 at the Battle of Flodden, near the village of Branxton, is astonishing in an age well before the mechanised killing capabilities of modern artillery. At the end, the Scots King James IV, most of his accompanying nobility and 10,000 of their countrymen lay dead. Now the first steps have been taken to plan how this momentous battle's 500th anniversary should be marked in just over four years' time. For the...
Early America
Centuries-old slate discovered at Jamestown dig[VA]
	· 06/08/2009 11:42:02 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 47 replies · 757+ views · AP | 08 June 2009 | ZINIE CHEN SAMPSON Archaeologists have pulled a 400-year-old slate tablet from what they think was an original well at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. The slate is covered with faint inscriptions of local birds, flowers, a tree and caricatures of men, along with letters and numbers, according to Preservation Virginia, which jointly operates the dig site with the National Park Service. It was found at the center of James Fort, which was established in 1607 along the James River in eastern Virginia. Research director William Kelso said the inscriptions were made with a slate pencil on the 4-inch-by-8-inch slate....
Mysterious Inscribed Slate Discovered at Jamestown
	· 06/12/2009 6:12:31 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 23 replies · 971+ views · nationalgeographic | June 8, 2009 | Paula Neely Archaeologists in Jamestown, Virginia, have discovered a rare inscribed slate tablet dating back some 400 years, to the early days of America's first permanent English settlement. Both sides of the slate are covered with words, numbers, and etchings of people, plants, and birds that its owner likely encountered in the New World in the early 1600s. The tablet was found a few feet down in what may be the first well at James Fort, dug in early 1609 by Capt. John Smith, Jamestown's best known leader, said Bill Kelso, director of archaeology at the site. If the well is confirmed...
American Revolution
Girl bravely rides to warn Colonials
	· 06/11/2009 8:08:56 AM PDT · Posted by Pharmboy · 37 replies · 585+ views · Washington Times | June 11, 2009 | Peter Cliffe Revere thoroughly deserves his place in American history, but another courageous American has been ill-served by those who write books about the Revolutionary War. Revere was 40 at the time of his journey, but she was a girl of 16. Born at Patterson, Putnam County, N.Y., on April 5, 1761, she was the eldest of 12 children born to Henry and Abigail Ludington. On the stormy night of April 26, 1777, she is said to have been putting her younger siblings to bed when the family had a visitor. Close to exhaustion, a messenger had come to tell her father...
The Framers
the 17th Amendment
	· 06/11/2009 5:33:16 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 217+ views · Constitution of the United States, via FindLaw et al | ratified by the states April 8, 1913 | The Framers et al Clause 1. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. Clause 2. When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of each State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the...
Nappy Headed
Napoleon and America (Review of museum exhibition)
	· 06/12/2009 4:40:50 PM PDT · Posted by mojito · 6 replies · 121+ views · WSJ | 6/11/2009 | Julia M. Klein Born on the French island colony of Corsica, Napoleon Bonaparte admired the American Revolution and wrote of George Washington: "His cause is that of humanity." But he modeled his reign after the Roman emperors', appropriating their imagery, pursuing European domination, and sponsoring great public works projects, a new legal code and a classical renaissance in the arts. Drawn from the extraordinary collection of Pierre-Jean Chalenáon, the exhibition "Napolèon" is rich in objects denoting Napoleon's imperial ambitions and stature: the gilded bronze sword used, in 1804, to proclaim him emperor; a red velvet coronation foot cushion embroidered with bees, his favorite...
The Great War
World War One Vet Celebrates 113th Birthday (Henry Allingham)
	· 06/05/2009 10:52:39 PM PDT · Posted by Deo volente · 43 replies · 920+ views · Sky News (UK) | June 6, 2009 The oldest survivor of the First World War, Henry Allingham, is celebrating his 113th birthday with a party organised by the Royal Navy. The veteran soldier also holds the record as the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, the last surviving member of the Royal Naval Air Service and the last surviving founding member of the Royal Air Force.
Cold War came in from the Spy
The spy who triggered the Cold War
	· 06/11/2009 6:32:01 AM PDT · Posted by MyTwoCopperCoins · 19 replies · 826+ views · The Times of India | 11 Jun 2009, 1656 hrs IST | The Times of India LONDON: Secret files have at last revealed the identity of the top spy who transferred Britain's atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union and paved the way for the nuclear standoff with the west, triggering the Cold War for nearly five decades. Though the MI5 suspected him, trailed him and monitored his every move, they were never able to get the man, codenamed "Eric" by the KGB, whose espionage campaign to steal the Allies nuclear bomb plans was codenamed Enormous. Declassified MI5 files have confirmed that the master spy, described as the "main source", was a Soviet mole at the...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
The Sounds of American Life and Legend Are Tapped for the Seventh Annual National Recording Registry
	· 06/11/2009 10:38:59 AM PDT · Posted by a fool in paradise · 5 replies · 99+ views · Library of Congress | June 9, 2009 | no byline Twenty-five culturally significant recordings -- including a 70-year-old radio broadcast of Marian Anderson's recital at the Lincoln Memorial, Dylan Thomas reading of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and Winston Churchill's post-World War II speech that coined the term Iron Curtain -- will be preserved in a special sound archive. Every year the Librarian of Congress selects sound recordings to include in the National Recording Registry. This year's batch, being announced Wednesday, also includes signature performances from several artists such as Etta James' "At Last!," The Who's "My Generation" and Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner doing their 2000-year-old man routine. The...
Three Piece Piracy
FBI Returns Medallions Plundered From 18th-Century Shipwreck
	· 06/05/2009 8:26:15 PM PDT · Posted by STARWISE · 6 replies · 595+ views · Art Info | 6-3-09 | Mitchell Martin The problem with stolen art is that once you start to sell it, word gets out. When the art involved is a hundred or more bronze religious medallions, each worth perhaps $1,000, eventually somebody will notice, call the FBI, and there go the profits. Which is apparently what happened with a haul of bronze medallions that took a 237-year journey from Spain to Anguilla to Vermont and then back to the Caribbean. Shortly after midnight on June 8, 1772, the Spanish vessel El Buen Consejo smashed into Anguilla in the Leeward Islands, stranding passengers and crew on a voyage to...
Faith and Philosophy
Baseless Bias and the New Second Sex
	· 06/11/2009 3:38:29 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 13 replies · 350+ views · The American | June 10, 2009 | Christina Hoff Sommers Claims of bias against women in academic science have been greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, men are becoming the second sex in American higher education.In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences released Beyond Bias And Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering, which found "pervasive unexamined gender bias" against women in academic science. Donna Shalala, a former Clinton administration cabinet secretary, chaired the committee that wrote the report. When she spoke at a congressional hearing in October 2007, she warned that strong measures would be needed to improve the "hostile climate" women face in university science. This "crisis,"...
Higher Education
Vandals destroy books at KU library
	· 06/12/2009 6:23:12 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 439+ views · Kansas.com | Friday, June 12, 2009 | Associated Press Rare books containing old and expensive artwork have been stolen or torn apart, resulting in thousands of dollars of damage at a University of Kansas library, according to campus police.
end of digest #256 20090613

[SunkenCiv]

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #256 20090613 · Saturday, June 13, 2009 · 56 topics · 2270758 to 2266058 · 718 members ·
	Saturday Jun 13 2009 v 5 n 48 view this issue	Welcome to the 256th issue, a.k.a. sixteen squared. It has been a spectacular week for articles, and the coming week looks like it is going to be at least as good. While I'm waxing in my hyperbole, I think last week's issue was great too, just so large that I ran out of gas before I could write any praise. And I think you've heard enough for now. :') A big thank you for all who contributed topics. Silly error on my part, the last issue should have given the link to Digest #255 as this instead of what I used. The topic shown in this digest under "Climate" was originally going under a new header, "What is it *Not* Good For?" but I changed my mind. AuntB posts M3Report topics pertaining to our national problems stemming from the tide of illegal aliens crossing the border. * Sandrat posts a lot (possibly most) of the topics pertaining to the War on Terror. Be sure to check Celebrimbor's and StarCMC's YouTube Smackdown topics, which are "Countering the cyber-jihad one video at a time". Be sure to visit the invisib1e hand's Founder's Quote Daily topics. Be sure to check Homer_J_Simpson's topics, many of which are based on archival newspaper articles, usually 70 years ago that day. Visit the Free Republic Memorial Wall -- a history-related feature of FR. Donate to FreeRepublic.
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[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #257 Saturday, June 20, 2009
Chip to m'lou
Haida Gwaii: Fossil Collecting at the Edge of the World
	· 06/14/2009 2:30:36 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 10 replies · 307+ views · Scientific Blogging | June 7th 2009 | Heidi Henderson | The Queen Charlotte Islands form part of Wrangellia, an exotic tectonostratiphic terrane, that includes parts of western British Columbia, Vancouver Island and Alaska. I'll be bringing my rock hammer and kayak to the mist-shrouded archipelago of Haida Gwaii next month to collect ammonites from the Middle Albian, Haida Formation. Over the years, my field work has yielded exquisitely preserved species marine specimens from the Middle Albian, including Desmoceras, Brewerikceras and Douvelliceras. This trip will be a return to some familiar sites, both because of the fossils found there and their sheer beauty, and forays to new outcrops seldom visited.
Diet and Cuisine
Human Presence May Be Increasing The Lifespan Of Earth
	· 06/15/2009 5:49:20 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 11 replies · 287+ views · Scientific Blogging | June 14th 2009 | News Staff Doom and gloom types always want to lament that the presence of people is killing the Earth. Not so, say California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists. At least on a cosmic scale, the presence of life may increase longevity for planets. In traditional thinking, a billion years from now the ever-increasing radiation from the sun will have heated Earth into inhabitability, causing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that serves as food for plant to disappear. The oceans will evaporate and all living things will disappear. Maybe not quite so soon, say researchers from Caltech, who have come up with...
Biology and Cryptobiology
Giant Sperm Is Ancient Evolutionary Tool, Study Finds
	· 06/19/2009 2:56:39 AM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 14 replies · 657+ views · nationalgeographic | June 18, 2009 | Kate Ravilious Size does matter, at least for the seed shrimp. The tiny creatures' giant sperm are an evolutionary strategy that stretches back at least a hundred million years, scientists discovered in a new study. The giant sperm can be up to ten times the animals' body lengths. By comparison an average sperm from a man is around 0.002 inch (0.05 millimeter) long, less than a thirty-thousandth of his height. To find out whether giant sperm is an ancient adaptation, researchers x-rayed the innards of five well-preserved seed shrimp, or ostracods, from hundred-million-year-old sediment from Brazil. Although the giant sperm had rotted...
Paleontology
How an Airplane-Sized Bird Replaced Its Feathers
	· 06/19/2009 4:31:56 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 18 replies · 389+ views · usnews. | June 16, 2009 | Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Bird size is limited by the time it takes to replace feathers. An extinct bird the size of a Cessna airplane and weighing as much as an average human was one of the largest birds to have ever flown the friendly skies. Scientists have wondered how the bird, called Argentavis magnificens, could balloon to such heft (more than 150 pounds, or 70 kg) and still replace its feathers during a molt. Now, new research reveals the bird, which lived 6 million years ago in the Miocene epoch, likely molted all of its feathers at once during a long fast.
Empty Nest
The 'Birds Come First' hypothesis of dinosaur evolution
	· 06/15/2009 6:27:50 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 222+ views · Tetrapod Zoology | June 8, 2009 | Darren Naish Here, we look at a rather different proposal: the decidedly non-standard, non-mainstream Birds Come First (or BCF) hypothesis proposed by George Olshevsky. Rightly or wrongly, BCF has never been discussed in the technical literature (I have at least alluded to it in historiographical articles (Naish 2000a, b)), and all of George's articles on it have been in the 'grey' or popular literature (Olshevsky 1991, 1994, 2001a, b). Thanks, predominantly, to his activity on the dinosaur mailing list (a popular discussion list for dinosaur aficionados and researchers), George's BCF hypothesis was once well known and much discussed, and perhaps considered seriously...
Dinosaurs
Fossil Solves Mystery of Dinosaur Finger Evolution
	· 06/17/2009 2:31:39 PM PDT · Posted by NormsRevenge · 51 replies · 454+ views · LiveScience.com on Yahoo | 6/17/09 | Jeanna Bryner Bird wings clearly share ancestry with dinosaur "hands" or forelimbs. A school kid can see it in the bones. But paleontologists have long struggled to explain the so-called digit dilemma. Here's the problem: The most primitive dinosaurs in the famous theropod group (that later included Tyrannosaurus rex) had five "fingers." Later theropods had three, just like the birds that evolved from them. But which digits? The theropod and bird digits failed to match up if you number the digits from 1 to 5 starting with the thumb. Theropods looked like they had digits 1, 2 and 3, while birds have...
New Dinosaur: Fossil Fingers Solve Bird Wing Mystery? [Dinosaur gives Creationists the finger]
	· 06/17/2009 3:50:48 PM PDT · Posted by xcamel · 54 replies · 598+ views · NatGeo | Wednesday, June 17, 2009 | John Roach "The fossil hand of a long-necked, ostrich-like dinosaur recently found in China may help solve the mystery of how bird wings evolved from dinosaur limbs, according to a new study. The ancient digits belonged to a 159-million-year-old theropod dinosaur dubbed Limusaurus inextricabilis. Theropods are two-legged dinos thought to have given rise to modern birds. Although it was a distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, the newfound dinosaur was a small herbivore, said study co-author James Clark, a biologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The animal was about 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) long and had relatively short, clawless...
New Dinosaur Species Found in India
	· 08/13/2003 9:02:05 PM PDT · Posted by nwrep · 3,125 replies · 14,846+ views · AP | August 13, 2003 | RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM U.S. and Indian scientists said Wednesday they have discovered a new carnivorous dinosaur species in India after finding bones in the western part of the country. AP Photo Missed Tech Tuesday? Check out the powerful new PDA crop, plus the best buys for any budget The new dinosaur species was named Rajasaurus narmadensis, or "Regal reptile from the Narmada," after the Narmada River region where the bones were found. The dinosaurs...
Gimme the Grip
Purpose of Fingerprints Is Questioned
	· 06/18/2009 3:39:31 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 11 replies · 718+ views · livescience | 17 June 2009 The bumpy ridges on the tips of our fingers are an evolutionary mystery. Scientists have long reasoned that fingerprints help humans grip objects by creating friction, since a few primates and tree-climbing koalas also have fingerprints. But a new study found that if fingerprints help people grip things, it's not because they create more friction.
Mammoths
Lost World Shropshire? Mammoths In England Found To Be Most Recent Yet
	· 06/18/2009 4:06:52 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 36 replies · 451+ views · Scientific Blogging | June 17th 2009 | News Staff "Mammoths are conventionally believed to have become extinct in North Western Europe about 21,000 years ago during the main ice advance, known as the 'Last Glacial Maximum'" said Lister. "Our new radiocarbon dating of the Condover mammoths changes that, by showing that mammoths returned to Britain and survived until around 14,000 years ago."
Climate
Microbe Wakes Up After 120,000 Years in Ice
	· 06/16/2009 3:11:21 AM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 35 replies · 659+ views · foxnews | Monday, June 15, 2009 | Jeanna Bryner After more than 120,000 years trapped beneath a block of ice in Greenland, a tiny microbe has awoken. The long-lasting bacteria may hold clues to what life forms might exist on other planets. The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce. "We don't know what state they were in," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "They could've been dormant, or they could've been slowly metabolizing, but we don't know for sure."
Microbe Wakes Up After 120,000 Years in Ice....
	· 06/15/2009 3:37:30 PM PDT · Posted by TaraP · 22 replies · 667+ views · Fox News | June 15th, 2009 After more than 120,000 years trapped beneath a block of ice in Greenland, a tiny microbe has awoken. The long-lasting bacteria may hold clues to what life forms might exist on other planets. The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce. "We don't know what state they were in," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "They could've been dormant, or they could've been slowly metabolizing, but we don't know for sure." Dormant would mean...
If You Knew Sushi Like We Know Sushi
Evolution can occur in less than 10 years
	· 06/11/2009 11:19:01 AM PDT · Posted by Pharmboy · 69 replies · 1,155+ views · UC Riverside/ Amercian Naturalist via Eureka Alerts | Iqbal Pittalwala Guppies are small fresh-water fish that biologists have studied for long. UC Riverside-led study shows wild Trinidadian guppies adapted in less than 30 generations to a new environment RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- How fast can evolution take place? In just a few years, according to a new study on guppies led by UC Riverside's Swanne Gordon, a graduate student in biology. Gordon and her colleagues studied guppies -- small fresh-water fish biologists have studied for long -- from the Yarra River, Trinidad. They introduced the guppies into the nearby Damier River, in a section above a barrier waterfall that excluded all...
Catastrophism and Astronomy
Oceans charge up new theory of magnetism
	· 06/16/2009 9:29:47 AM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 31 replies · 372+ views · Times Online | 14 June 2009 | Jonathan Leake A radical new idea may revolutionise our understanding of one of the most vital forces on Earth Earth's magnetic field, long thought to be generated by molten metals swirling around its core, may instead be produced by ocean currents, according to controversial new research published this week. It suggests that the movements of such volumes of salt water around the world have been seriously underestimated by scientists as a source of magnetism. If proven, the research would revolutionise geophysics, the study of the Earth's physical properties and behaviour, in which the idea that magnetism originates in a molten core is...
Megaliths and Archaeoastronomy
Huge Pre-Stonehenge Complex Found via "Crop Circles"
	· 06/16/2009 6:06:31 AM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 20 replies · 886+ views · nationalgeographic | June 15, 2009 | James Owen Given away by strange, crop circle-like formations seen from the air, a huge prehistoric ceremonial complex discovered in southern England has taken archaeologists by surprise. A thousand years older than nearby Stonehenge, the site includes the remains of wooden temples and two massive, 6,000-year-old tombs that are among "Britain's first architecture," according to archaeologist Helen Wickstead, leader of the Damerham Archaeology Project. For such a site to have lain hidden for so long is "completely amazing," said Wickstead, of Kingston University in London. Archaeologist Joshua Pollard, who was not involved in the find, agreed. The discovery is "remarkable," he said,...
British Isles
Yorkshire treasure stash unearthed after 1,000 years
	· 06/17/2009 12:40:19 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 23 replies · 997+ views · Yorkshire Evening Post | 17 June 2009 | Stuart Robinson MORE than a thousand years ago a Saxon thief, desperate to hide his plunder, stashed a hoard of stolen gold in what is today a nondescript West Yorkshire field. What became of the thief is lost to the ages and his precious loot lay safely buried in that same field for the next millennium. There it remained until a treasure hunter, out with his trusty metal detector last year, experienced the moment he will never forget when he unearthed the amazing find on the farmland near Leeds. Archaeological experts say they believe the three gold rings, half a gold ingot...
Wales
Humans worked the Welsh hills 10,000 years ago
	· 06/17/2009 4:26:34 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 21 replies · 292+ views · News Wales | Wednesday, June 17, 2009 | unattributed Hunters and farmers were using the Clwydian Hills in North Wales 10,000 years ago, new research has revealed. Analysis of a sample of earth extracted from the Clwydian Range has pieced together the timeline of human activity on the hills dating back almost 10,000 years. The sample was taken from Moel Llys y Coed near Cilcain, to provide a picture for the change in the landscape over the years to become the heather moorland seen today... Techniques used included analysis of the pollen present in the sample and radio carbon dating. Evidence of burning in the Mesolithic period (8000-4000BC) implies...
Ireland
Prehistoric gold source traced to Mourne mountains [ Ireland ]
	· 06/17/2009 4:22:38 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 23 replies · 392+ views · Irish Times | Wednesday, June 17, 2009 | Sean Mac Connell Ireland has a very high level of prehistoric gold objects especially from the early Bronze Age (2400-1800BC) when large quantities of it was used by skilled craftsmen. They turned out beautiful objects such as the gold collars or lunula similar to the one which turned up recently following a robbery in Co Roscommon. This led to speculation for centuries about the source of so much easily available gold and a belief there had to be lots of gold available locally to the craftsmen. Now archaeologists and geologists believe they have found that source, following a 14-year study which used not...
Corrib may have had 'major' settlement (Ireland)
	· 06/13/2009 10:36:12 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 9 replies · 192+ views · Irish Times | June 5, 2009 | LORNA SIGGINS A COnnemara archaeologist says that the recent discovery of two stone axes in Galway city and county points to a "major" hunter-gatherer presence on the Corrib catchment up to 9,000 years ago. The axes were found in Ballybane and in the garden of a private house in Clifden, Co Galway, and are the latest in a number of significant finds recorded by archaeologist Michael Gibbons in the last couple of months.
Underwater Archaeology
Sea gives up Neanderthal fossil [ dredged up from the North Sea ]
	· 06/15/2009 8:19:35 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 35 replies · 611+ views · BBC | Monday, June 15, 2009 | Paul Rincon Scientists in Leiden, in the Netherlands, have unveiled the specimen -- a fragment from the front of a skull belonging to a young adult male. Analysis of chemical "isotopes" in the 30,000-60,000-year-old fossil suggest a carnivorous diet, matching results from other Neanderthal specimens... The Neanderthal frontal bone is the first known "archaic" human specimen to have been recovered from the sea bed anywhere in the world. It was found among animal remains and stone artefacts dredged up 15km off the coast of the Netherlands in 2001. The fragment was spotted by Luc Anthonis, a private fossil collector from Belgium, in...
Prehistory and Origins
Skeleton challenge to Africa theory
	· 04/03/2007 9:25:22 PM PDT · Posted by fishhound · 15 replies · 1,009+ views · Sydney Morning Herald | April 4 2007 | na A 40,000-year-old skeleton found in China has raised questions about the "out of Africa" hypothesis on how early modern humans populated the planet. The fossil bones are the oldest from an adult "modern" human to be found in eastern Asia. They contain features that call into question the widely held view that all humans alive today are descended from a small group of sub-Saharan Africans who made their way out of the continent about 60,000 years ago. Gradually they colonised other parts of the planet, replacing older human species such as the Neanderthals, which became extinct. The older humans had...
Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
Oldest Evidence Of Leprosy Found In India
	· 06/14/2009 8:35:22 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 25 replies · 406+ views · Science News | Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | Public Library of Science, via EurekAlert! A biological anthropologist from Appalachian State University working with an undergraduate student from Appalachian, an evolutionary biologist from UNC Greensboro, and a team of archaeologists from Deccan College (Pune, India) recently reported analysis of a 4000-year-old skeleton from India bearing evidence of leprosy. This skeleton represents both the earliest archaeological evidence for human infection with Mycobacterium leprae in the world and the first evidence for the disease in prehistoric India. The study, published in the journal PLoS One, demonstrates that leprosy was present in human populations in India by the end of the mature phase of the Indus Civilization (2000...
Leprosy originated in Africa or Near East - study (ARMADILLOS HELP STUDY)
	· 05/15/2005 11:40:14 PM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 7 replies · 1,222+ views · Reuters | Thu May 12, 2005 | Maggie Fox Leprosy, a disease widely believed to have been spread out of India, in fact appears to have originated in Africa or the Near East, scientists said on Thursday. "The disease seems to have originated in Eastern Africa or the Near East and spread with successive human migrations," researchers reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science. This is not what historians had believed. "Leprosy is believed to have originated in the Indian subcontinent and to have been introduced into Europe by Greek soldiers returning from the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great. From Greece, the disease is...
Catholic, Crusader, Leper and King: The Life of Baldwin IV and the Triumph of the Cross
	· 07/21/2006 10:35:18 PM PDT · Posted by Coleus · 14 replies · 2,799+ views · TFP | July, 2006 | Michael Whitcraft Modern society obsessively avoids suffering, risk and danger. It secures everything with seatbelts and safety rails, air conditions the summer heat, prints warnings on coffee cups and advises that that safety glasses should be used while working with hammers. Certainly such precautions have prevented misfortune. However, since heroism and excellence are born from confronting rather than avoiding suffering and peril, the mania for safeguards has also diminished the notion of these qualities. This is unfortunate since only those intrepid souls who confront danger,...
Bones Raise Leprosy Doubts (Scotland)
	· 11/06/2002 6:58:11 PM PST · Posted by blam · 12 replies · 304+ views · BBC | 11-05-2002 Tuesday, 5 November, 2002, 16:28 GMT Bones raise leprosy doubts The bones were found in East Lothian Leprosy may have arrived in Britain 1,500 years earlier than first thought, according to evidence taken from an ancient grave in Scotland. The evidence was taken from bones which were found near Dunbar in East Lothian and which belonged to a child who lived 3,500 years ago. Julie Roberts, a biological anthropologist with Glasgow University's archaeological research division made the diagnosis. This find may be one of the earliest cases of leprosy in the world so far identified. Rod McCullagh, Historic Scotland She...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Italian archeologists find commoner's neighborhoods in Persepolis
	· 06/12/2009 10:07:21 PM PDT · Posted by StilettoRaksha · 3 replies · 187+ views · Italian Global Nation | June 5, 2009 | IGN Rome -- A joint Iranian-Italian archeological mission in Iran has made an exceptional discovery: the archeologists have found the first traces of the urban settlement in Persepolis, one of the five capitals of the Achaemenid Empire in ancient Persia, the construction of which began in 520 BC under the Emperor Darius the Great and lasted almost seventy years. In an interview with the "Tehran Times", translated by the magazine "Archeologia Viva" (Giunti Editore), the Italian director of the mission, Pierfrancesco Callieri, professor of Archeology and Iranian Art History at the University of Bologna, affirmed that the new findings at the...
History Becomes Bunk?
Great Caesar's Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?
	· 06/13/2009 7:32:51 AM PDT · Posted by reaganaut1 · 43 replies · 692+ views · New York Times | June 10, 2009 | Patricia Cohen To the pessimists evidence that the field of diplomatic history is on the decline is everywhere. Job openings on the nation's college campuses are scarce, while bread-and-butter courses like the Origins of War and American Foreign Policy are dropping from history department postings. And now, in what seems an almost gratuitous insult, Diplomatic History, the sole journal devoted to the subject, has proposed changing its title. For many in the field this latest suggestion is emblematic of a broader problem: the shrinking importance not only of diplomatic history but also of traditional specialties like economic, military and constitutional history. The...
Flood, Here Comes the Flood
Forbidden Arkeology: "The Riddle Of Ararat"
	· 06/13/2009 3:58:37 AM PDT · Posted by Fennie · 50 replies · 2,238+ views · Fortean Times | By Robin Simmons There's a well-known account of ten year old Georgie Hagopian, who saw Noah's Ark while climbing Ararat with his uncle in 1904. The date isn't precise but this was around the time my grandfather was in the region and heard convincing stories of the Ark, preserved in ice and snow, still occasionally visible. My grandfather died in 1980, aged 106. As a boy, I listened to his adventures as a doctor in Eastern Turkey and Russia between 1904 and 1910. He worked in the very shadow of Greater Ararat - the legendary Biblical landing place of Noah's ship. My grandfather...
Let's Have Jerusalem
Excavation reveals ancient aqueduct in Jerusalem
	· 06/17/2009 4:36:21 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 235+ views · The State of Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 | Israel Antiquities Authority Spokesperson In an archaeological excavation the Israel Antiquities Authority recently conducted prior to the construction of the Montefiore Museum, which the Jerusalem Foundation plans to build in Mishkenot Sha'ananim, an aqueduct was uncovered that conveyed water to the Temple Mount and also served as the principal water supply to the Sultan's Pool. The excavation, directed by Gideon Solimany and Dr. Ron Beeri of the Israel Antiquities Authority, focused on a section along the course of the low-level aqueduct, on the western side of Ben Hinnoam Valley above the Derekh Hebron bridge. According to Dr. Ron Beeri, excavation director on behalf of...
Faith and Philosophy
800 Year-Old Cancer Fighting Vitamin been Re-Discovered In Israel
	· 06/17/2009 2:52:05 PM PDT · Posted by Shellybenoit · 15 replies · 864+ views · Israel 21C/The Lid | 6/17/09 | The Lid Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, also known as Moses Maimonides or the Rambam was not only one of the greatest Torah scholars of all time, he was a rabbi, physician, and philosopher in during the Middle Ages. Much of his career he was in the personal doctor Saladin, the 12th Century Sultan of Egypt. Along with his great books on Jewish learning, he wrote 10 breakthrough medical books and had many medical cures that had been lost through time. One of them might have been found. A doctor at the University of Haifa has tested a compound based on an inedible...
Free Books Online
Classic Works in Economics by Ludwig von Mises - Free Downloads of Complete Books in PDF Format
	· 05/15/2009 1:43:24 AM PDT · Posted by GoodDay · 14 replies · 411+ views · The Ludwig von Mises Institute and George Reisman's Capitalism.net | 5/15/09 | GoodDay PDF downloads of complete works by Ludwig von Mises, including "Human Action" and "Socialism." A few of the works are in e-book format and can be read online. Interestingly, there is also an MP3 file of Mises speaking at Princeton University in 1958 (the lecture can also be read online at the same site). The audio is not pristine and Mises has a heavy accent, making the file a bit challenging to listen to. The lecture is entitled "Liberty and Property." Download the MP3 at: http://www.mises.org/libprop.asp
Epigraphy and Language
Decipherments of the Phaistos Disk: NOT!
	· 06/18/2009 5:16:25 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 16 replies · 375+ views · Examiner | Monday, June 8, 2009 | Diana Gainer My favorite undeciphered script is the one found on the Phaistos disk, the flat circle of clay about six inches across found in the Heraklion Museum on Crete. The disk itself was discovered in 1908 and it has been deciphered every few years ever since. Unfortunately, no two people agree on what it says, as I mentioned before. Since so many other people are interested in this topic, I thought I'd include a few of the decipherments, just to show how different they can be. The first one comes from German... In this version, it's a very involved calendar and...
Greece
New Acropolis Museum highlights missing marbles (Return Them Now!)
	· 06/19/2009 11:14:41 AM PDT · Posted by eleni121 · 47 replies · 628+ views · Associated Press | 6-19-09 | ELENA BECATOROS ATHENS, Greece -- Greece opens its long-anticipated new Acropolis Museum Saturday, boosting its decades-old campaign for the return of 2,500-year-old sculptures removed from the ancient citadel by a 19th century British diplomat.
Panspermia
DNA-like Molecule Replicates Without Help
	· 06/13/2009 1:07:46 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 95 replies · 916+ views · ScienceNOW Daily News | 11 June 2009 | Robert F. Service Pre-RNA? Hybrids between proteins and nucleic acids may have helped genetic molecules evolve.Credit: Science/AAAS Researchers pondering the origin of life have long struggled to crack the ultimate chicken-and-egg paradox. How did nucleic acids like DNA and RNA--which encode proteins--first form, when proteins are needed for their synthesis? Now, scientists report that they've cooked up molecular hybrids of proteins and nucleic acids that skirt the dreaded paradox. Although it's unknown whether such molecules existed prior to the emergence of life, they offer insight into a chemical pathway that might have helped life arise. DNA and RNA sport a backbone...
Junk in the Trunk
'Junk' DNA Has Important Role, Researchers Find
	· 05/21/2009 9:21:28 AM PDT · Posted by Maelstorm · 22 replies · 661+ views · http://www.sciencedaily.com | May 21, 2009 | Princeton University Scientists have called it "junk DNA." They have long been perplexed by these extensive strands of genetic material that dominate the genome but seem to lack specific functions. Why would nature force the genome to carry so much excess baggage? Now researchers from Princeton University and Indiana University who have been studying the genome of a pond organism have found that junk DNA may not be so junky after all. They have discovered that DNA sequences from regions of what had been viewed as the "dispensable genome" are actually performing functions that are central for the organism. They have concluded...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
New 'Molecular Clock' Aids Dating Of Human Migration History
	· 06/15/2009 8:38:26 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 13 replies · 380+ views · ScienceDaily | June 4, 2009 | University of Leeds, via EurekAlert Researchers at the University of Leeds have devised a more accurate method of dating ancient human migration -- even when no corroborating archaeological evidence exists. Estimating the chronology of population migrations throughout mankind's early history has always been problematic. The most widely used genetic method works back to find the last common ancestor of any particular set of lineages using samples of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), but this method has recently been shown to be unreliable, throwing 20 years of research into doubt... The new method has already yielded some surprising findings. Says archaogeneticist Professor Martin Richards, who supervised Soares: "We...
Precolumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Some scientists affirm early Native presence [ Americas, 33K before present ]
	· 06/16/2009 3:36:56 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 28 replies · 481+ views · Indian Country Today | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 | Carol Berry "Since Europeans came to the Americas, they have often been wrong about the Native inhabitants and Western science has not been immune to this problem," said one Denver scientist May 29. A perhaps-controversial 33,000 years ago, "and probably long before that," people lived here, according to Steven R. Holen, curator of archaeology in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science's Department of Anthropology. "Several scientists, me included, are producing evidence of a much older Native American occupation of the continent," he said, adding that, as has happened in the past, "the scientific establishment has underestimated the time depth of the...
Derision Quest
Meth linked to western Colorado artifact raids
	· 06/19/2009 1:28:21 PM PDT · Posted by GSWarrior · 20 replies · 461+ views · Grand Junction Sentinel | June 18 | Gary Harmon Easy money, sleepless nights lure users, cultural expert says Western Colorado is far from immune to the looting such as that alleged by federal agents after the arrests last week of 24 people in southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado. There's a modern twist, however, to the looting that western Colorado and other officials have noted of late: methamphetamine. Law enforcement officials declined to elaborate on incidents in which they have noted the connection between looted sites and meth use, but archaeologists and law enforcement officials said they are aware of the connections. Looting and methamphetamine use have more in common...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Those Medieval Monks Could Draw
	· 06/19/2009 9:06:13 AM PDT · Posted by Steelfish · 19 replies · 468+ views · NYTimes | June 18, 2009 Those Medieval Monks Could Draw By ROBERTA SMITH June 18, 2009 When you think of medieval art, drawing may not spring instantly to mind. Medieval ivories and enamels? Definitely. Medieval sculpture, metalwork and stained glass? Sure. Of course medieval artists -- many of whom were anonymous monks working as scribes in scriptoria -- drew. All those manuscript illuminations had to start somewhere. But did they actually make drawings that survived and were cherished as drawings, or that filled practical needs that only drawing can? To most of us, European drawing before the Renaissance and its emphasis on individual genius and...
The Great War
UK war veteran becomes oldest man in the world at 113
	· 06/19/2009 3:23:16 PM PDT · Posted by Daffynition · 12 replies · 165+ views · Guardian | 19 June 2009 | Maev Kennedy At the age of 113 Henry Allingham, the oldest surviving veteran of the first world war, has officially been proclaimed the oldest man alive by Guinness World Records, after the death today of Tomoji Tanabe in Japan. His friend Denis Goodwin, a founder of the First World War Veterans Association, who has escorted Allingham to innumerable parades, memorial services and presentations, said: "It's .......[snip] At St Dunstan's home for blind ex-service personnel, near Brighton, where Allingham has lived since he finally gave up his Eastbourne flat at the age of 110, chief executive Robert Leader sent sympathy to the family...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Plant Communication: Sagebrush Engage in Self-Recognition and Warn of Danger
	· 06/19/2009 1:20:30 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 15 replies · 159+ views · UC Davis Department of Entomology | June 19, 2009 | Kathy Keatley Garvey Richard "Rick" Karban DAVIS -- "To thine own self be true" may take on a new meaning -- not with people or animal behavior but with plant behavior. Plants engage in self-recognition and can communicate danger to their "clones" or genetically identical cuttings planted nearby, says professor Richard Karban of the Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis, in groundbreaking research published in the current edition of Ecology Letters. Karban and fellow scientist Kaori Shiojiri of the Center for Ecological Research, Kyoto University, Japan, found that sagebrush responded to cues of self and non-self without physical contact. The sagebrush communicated and cooperated with other...
American Revolution
Stamp Act of 1765: A Pivot Point In Our History. (Vanity:History Question)
	· 06/15/2009 6:39:32 PM PDT · Posted by devane617 · 22 replies · 353+ views me | 06/15/2009 | me Recently, with the Tea Parties taking center stage, I revisited my very old and dusty history books to take a look at that period of our history. Stepping back in time a few years to 1765 we have the incident that I feel was one of our major pivot points in history: The Stamp Act of 1765.From what I can find, the taxes that were to be levied via the required tax stamps were inconsequential if you consider the downside to not going along with England. The stamps were required on documents, so probably did not affect the common man....
The Framers
the 18th Amendment
	· 06/14/2009 7:14:06 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 14 replies · 277+ views · Constitution of the United States, via FindLaw et al | ratification certified on January 29, 1919 | The Framers et al Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from...
Early America
Indiana soldier to auction rare piece of history
	· 06/15/2009 6:38:39 AM PDT · Posted by bgill · 5 replies · 403+ views · AP | Mon Jun 15, 2009 | RICK CALLAHAN, Associated Press Indiana National Guard Capt. Nathan Harlan was a high school junior when he paid $7 for a 1788 first edition of volume one of "The Federalist" -- a two-volume book of essays calling for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
Second Fiddle in the History Books
Site Seen as Possible Home of Pocahontas
	· 05/07/2003 5:41:16 AM PDT · Posted by Pharmboy · 24 replies · 751+ views · NY Times | May 7, 2003 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD In American folk history, the Indian princess Pocahontas befriended English settlers and saved Captain John Smith from certain death at the hands of his Algonquin captors. It happened near the Jamestown colony in Virginia, within a year of its founding in 1607. Or it may be only a story. But Pocahontas really was a princess, daughter of the powerful Powhatan, whose chiefdom encompassed much of coastal Virginia. She got along so well with the English that she eventually married one of them, John Rolfe, and was received at the court of James I. Now Virginia archaeologists think they have found...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
Editor quits after journal accepts bogus science article
	· 06/19/2009 10:31:05 AM PDT · Posted by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus · 23 replies · 838+ views · The Guardian | 18 June 2009 | Jessica Shepherd The editor-in-chief of an academic journal has resigned after his publication accepted a hoax article. The Open Information Science Journal failed to spot that the incomprehensible computer-generated paper was a fake. This was despite heavy hints from its authors, who claimed they were from the Centre for Research in Applied Phrenology -- which forms the acronym Crap. The journal, which claims to subject every paper to the scrutiny of other academics, so-called "peer review", accepted the paper. Philip Davis, a graduate student at Cornell University in New York, who was behind the hoax, said he wanted to test the editorial...
Antiques and Collectibles
Ewww! Seattle gum wall a top germy attraction
	· 06/14/2009 5:40:52 AM PDT · Posted by Daffynition · 39 replies · 614+ views · KomoNews.com | Jun 13, 2009 | KOMO Staff SEATTLE -- A Seattle landmark has landed on a dubious list as one of the world's top five germiest attractions. The 'gum wall' outside the Market Theater at Pike Place Market comes in at number two on the list released by TripAdvisor. Starting in the 1990s, people would stick their gum on the wall as they waited for tickets. The wall was scraped clean twice, but people couldn't seem to stop sticking their gum up and down the wall, and now it's a tourist attraction. Ireland's Blarney Stone, which is kissed by up to 400,000 visitors each year, topped the...
Unuseology
Birds Didn't Evolve from Dinosaurs (Evos forced to invent an even older common ancestor!)
	· 06/09/2009 5:33:16 PM PDT · Posted by GodGunsGuts · 352 replies · 3,191+ views · CEH | June 9, 2009 "The findings add to a growing body of evidence in the past two decades that challenge some of the most widely-held beliefs about animal evolution." That statement is not being made by creationists, but by science reporters describing work at Oregon State University that cast new doubt on the idea that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs. The main idea: their leg bones and lungs are too different. Science Daily's report has a diagram of the skeleton showing...
end of digest #257 20090620

[SunkenCiv]

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #257 20090620 · Saturday, June 20, 2009 · 49 topics · 2275517 to 2270906 · 718 members ·
	Saturday Jun 20 2009 v 5 n 49 view this issue	Welcome to the 257th issue. Looks like a huge digest this week, I think 49 topics (didn't count to make sure), but perhaps half will be either archival topics added and not pinged, or will be topics to which I did not add the keyword and which don't belong here. Okay, now that I've posted it, it appears that no more oldies than usual are included. It was another great, busy week. Are You New To Free Republic? New Or Not- Fly Your State/Country Flag! AuntB posts M3Report topics pertaining to our national problems stemming from the tide of illegal aliens crossing the border. * Sandrat posts a lot (possibly most) of the topics pertaining to the War on Terror. Be sure to check Celebrimbor's and StarCMC's YouTube Smackdown topics, which are "Countering the cyber-jihad one video at a time". Be sure to visit the invisib1e hand's Founder's Quote Daily topics. Be sure to check Homer_J_Simpson's topics, many of which are based on archival newspaper articles, usually 70 years ago that day. Visit the Free Republic Memorial Wall -- a history-related feature of FR. Donate to FreeRepublic.
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[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #258 Saturday, June 27, 2009
Diet and Cuisine
The first Europeans were cannibals, say Spanish archaeologists
	· 06/26/2009 7:16:24 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 12 replies · 304+ views · Times of Malta | Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | Virginie Grognou, AFP A study of the remains revealed that they turned to cannibalism to feed themselves and not as part of a ritual, that they ate their rivals after killing them, mostly children and adolescents. "It is the first well-documented case of cannibalism in the history of humanity, which does not mean that it is the oldest," he said. The remains discovered in the caves "appeared scattered, broken, fragmented, mixed with other animals such as horses, deer, rhinoceroses, all kinds of animals caught in hunting" and eaten by humans, he said. "This gives us an idea of cannibalism as a type gastronomy,...
Ignacius Graybullianus
Humans Weren't Always 'So Special,' Expert Says
	· 06/25/2009 10:48:53 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 15 replies · 378+ views · Forbes.com | Jun 25, 2009 | Unknown THURSDAY, June 25 (HealthDay News) -- A 54-million-year-old skull has yielded the first detailed images of a primitive primate brain. The 1.5-inch-long skull was from an animal species called Ignacius graybullianus, part of a group of primates known as plesiadapiforms. They evolved in the 10 million years after dinosaurs disappeared from the Earth.
Reach Exceeds Grasp
How tools change the brain
	· 06/24/2009 6:43:54 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 37 replies · 486+ views · Nature | Monday, June 22, 2009 | Brendan Maher Researchers have found convincing evidence that using a tool for just a few minutes can have a lasting effect on how someone perceives the size and position of their body. A team led by Alessandro Farnè and Lucilla Cardinali of Claude Bernard University in Lyon, France, assessed the effects of using a grabber tool, similar to those used by litter collectors, on volunteers' body schema -- the brain's sense of where different body parts are in space... Farnè points out that the effects are subtle -- a difference of a few millimetres in estimated length -- and not enough to...
Family Tree Dwellers
Humans More Related To Orangutans Than Chimps, Study Suggests
	· 06/21/2009 2:43:01 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 54 replies · 776+ views · sciencedaily | June 18, 2009 New evidence underscores the theory of human origin that suggests humans most likely share a common ancestor with orangutans, according to research from the University of Pittsburgh and the Buffalo Museum of Science. Reporting in the June 18 edition of the Journal of Biogeography, the researchers reject as "problematic" the popular suggestion, based on DNA analysis, that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, which they maintain is not supported by fossil evidence.
Prehistory and Origins
The Mystery Ape of Pleistocene Asia [ from Longgupo in Sichuan province ]
	· 06/25/2009 2:52:53 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 218+ views · Nature 459, 910-911 | Wednesday, June 17, 2009 | Russell L. Ciochon Fossil finds of early humans in southeast Asia may actually be the remains of an unknown ape. Russell Ciochon says that many palaeoanthropologists -- including himself -- have been mistaken. Fourteen years ago, a Nature paper by my colleagues and I described a 1.9-million-year-old human jaw fragment from Longgupo in Sichuan province, China1. The ancient date in itself was spectacular. Previous evidence had suggested that human ancestors arrived in east Asia from Africa about 1 million years ago, in the form of Homo erectus. Longgupo nearly doubled that estimate. But even more exciting -- and contentious -- was our claim...
I Hear Music and There's No One There
Prehistoric flute in Germany is oldest known
	· 06/24/2009 12:40:02 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 42 replies · 564+ views · Associated Press | Jun 24, 2009 | Patrick McGroarty AP Photo/Daniel Maurer A bird-bone flute unearthed in a German cave was carved some 35,000 years ago and is the oldest handcrafted musical instrument yet discovered, archaeologists say, offering the latest evidence that early modern humans in Europe had established a complex and creative culture.
Ancient flutes more than 35,000 years old - world's oldest instrument
	· 06/24/2009 5:20:09 PM PDT · Posted by bruinbirdman · 24 replies · 576+ views · The Telegraph | 6/24/2009 Found in a German cave, suggesting humans were piping tunes from bone and ivory flutes more than 35,000 years ago, new research has shown. Scientists discovered remains of the instruments in a German cave once populated by some of the first modern humans to settle in Europe after leaving Africa. Instrument has five finger holes and two deep V-shaped notches at one end The finds suggest that our oldest ancestors in Europe had a well-established musical tradition. The most significant discovery was a complete flute made from a griffon vulture bone. Measuring 21.8cm, with a diameter of about 8mm, the...
Ice Ages
Carbon dioxide not to blame in ice age mystery
	· 06/20/2009 9:22:50 PM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 26 replies · 994+ views · Science News | June 18th, 2009 | Sid Perkins The reason why those cold spells now come less frequently is still unknown Scientists have peered back in time with a new analytical technique to see atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide more than 2 million years into the past. The findings indicate that a long-term decline in the levels of that greenhouse gas isn't to blame for a geologically recent shift in the frequency of ice ages, scientists say. The record of ice ages in North America stretches back 2.4 million years (SN: 2/5/05, p. 94). Until about 1.2 million years ago, ice ages in the Northern Hemisphere occurred about...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Study: Food storage began well before farming
	· 06/22/2009 6:14:49 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 15 replies · 252+ views · Associated Press | Jun 22, 2009 | Unknown People were storing grain long before they learned to domesticate crops, a new study indicates. The ability to store food is essential for the development of farming, the researchers said.
Mammoths
Neanderthals made mammoth jerky
	· 06/23/2009 2:21:15 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 34 replies · 514+ views · Discovery | June 23, 2009 | Jennifer Viegas Necessity compelled Neanderthals to wear tailored clothing and dry hunks of big game meat, according to a new study on the survival needs of these now-extinct prehistoric humans. Additional new research by Sorensen determined these sophisticated, rough-and-ready humans probably started to go extinct around 35,000 years ago due to diseases carried by modern humans, with whom they coexisted and may have mated with at the time.
Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs May Have Been Smaller Than Previously Thought (Svelteosaurus)
	· 06/24/2009 4:19:47 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 32 replies · 622+ views · ScienceDaily | June 22, 2009 | Unknown The largest animals ever to have walked the face of the earth may not have been as big as previously thought, reveals a paper published June 21 in the Zoological Society of London's Journal of Zoology.
Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles
The Most Humiliating Burial Method
	· 06/26/2009 10:20:55 AM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 52 replies · 1,172+ views · livescience | 23 June 2009 There are a lot of ways to dispose of humans when they die. There's the whole mummy thing, which is relatively mundane compared to some of the weird ways on our Top 10 list (including burials in trees, on ships and the latest fad: plastination and display). Meanwhile, green deaths are on the rise. But this may be the most humiliating: Face down burial. Apparently the custom has been used in many societies in history to disrespect or humiliate the dead, a new study finds. It's been used on criminals, war prisoners and simply those lacking social status, researchers concluded.
The Mediterranean
Woman's Skeleton Found at Bottom of Prehistoric Well
	· 06/25/2009 7:21:15 AM PDT · Posted by NCDragon · 46 replies · 977+ views · FOXNews.com | Wednesday, June 14, 2009 | AP via FOXNews.com Archeologists have discovered a water well in Cyprus that was built as long as 10,500 years ago, and the skeleton of a young woman at the bottom of it, an official said Wednesday. Pavlos Flourentzos, the nation's top antiquities official, said the 16-foot (5-meter) deep cylindrical shaft was found last month at a construction site in Kissonerga, a village near the Mediterranean island nation's southwestern coast. After the well dried up it apparently was used to dispose trash, and the items found in it included the poorly preserved skeleton of the young woman, animal bone fragments, worked...
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Burnt City women outlived their men
	· 06/24/2009 6:38:22 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 31 replies · 407+ views · PressTV Iran | Saturday, June 20, 2009 | unattributed Archeological studies have found that the female inhabitants of Iran's ancient site of Burnt City outlived the male members of their community. According to head of the Burnt City archeology team Farzad Forouzanfar, men died between the ages of 35 to 45, while women lived well into their 80s. Forouzanfar said that the area witnessed considerable population drops and that "the number of the female inhabitants of the area was more than the males." "The team also found that the remains of nearly 30,000 burials exist in Burnt City," he added. Demographical studies also showed that over 6,000 people lived...
Climate
Ancient Drought And Rapid Cooling Drastically Altered Climate
	· 06/24/2009 11:06:18 AM PDT · Posted by tricky_k_1972 · 25 replies · 593+ views · Space Daily - Terra Daily | Jun 23, 2009 | Staff Writers (SPX) Two abrupt and drastic climate events, 700 years apart and more than 45 centuries ago, are teasing scientists who are now trying to use ancient records to predict future world climate. The events - one, a massive, long-lived drought believed to have dried large portions of Africa and Asia, and the other, a rapid cooling that accelerated the growth of tropical glaciers - left signals in ice cores and other geologic records from around the world. Lonnie Thompson, University Distinguished...
Near East
Desert castle restorations unearth clues to missing historical link
	· 06/25/2009 3:24:21 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 10 replies · 380+ views · Jordan Times | Friday, June 26th, 2009 | Taylor Luck Qasr Al Hallabat, one of the Kingdom's so-called desert castles, a series of fortresses built by the Romans around the 2nd century to cement their presence in the Levant, is much more than the average castle, according to archaeologist and Spanish aid specialist Ignacio Arce. Arce, who has been working at the site since 2002, said the castle provides a missing link between the end of the Roman Empire's influence in the region and the Umayyad civilisation, a 100-year gap that has previously been left unaddressed... Arce was puzzled when he found evidence of restoration work on the mosaics within...
Rome and Italy
Marble head of Emperor Titus found (and more)
	· 06/24/2009 3:58:57 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 21 replies · 578+ views · Discovery | June 24, 2009 | Rossella Lorenzi Archaeologists have unearthed a hoard of ancient Roman treasures, including a marble head of the Roman emperor Titus, during an excavation outside the southern Italian city of Naples. The long-term digging effort in Rione Terra, a cliff in the port town of Pozzuoli, has yielded remains of 12 ancient statues, columns and fragments bearing inscriptions from what appear to be monuments from the Republican and Imperial periods of ancient Roman history.
The Roman Underworld
Huge Roman-era cave found by Jericho
	· 06/21/2009 3:03:27 PM PDT · Posted by EveningStar · 27 replies · 1,563+ views · The Jerosalem Post | June 21, 2009 | Jonah Mandel An artificial underground cave, the largest of its kind in Israel, was discovered in the Jordan Valley during excavations by the Haifa University's Department of Archaeology.
Underground Cave Dating From The Year 1 AD
	· 06/24/2009 10:42:29 AM PDT · Posted by tricky_k_1972 · 26 replies · 793+ views Space Daily - Terra Daily | Jun 23, 2009 | Staff Writers (SPX) Underground Cave Dating From The Year 1 AD A wheel-shaped engraving; it is assumed that this is the astrological Zodiac symbol. Photo courtesy University of Haifa. by Staff Writers Haifa, Israel (SPX) Jun 23, 2009 An artificial underground cave, the largest in Israel, has been exposed in the Jordan Valley in the course of a survey carried out by the University of Haifa's Department of Archaeology. Prof. Adam Zertal, who headed the excavating team, reckons that this cave was originally a large quarry during the Roman and Byzantine era and was one of its kind. Various engravings were uncovered in...
The Patriarchs
Intact ancient tomb uncovered in Bethlehem
	· 06/23/2009 1:39:58 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 10 replies · 577+ views · Associated Press | Jun 23, 2009 | NASSER SHIYOUKHI Workers renovating a house in the traditional town of Jesus' birth accidentally discovered an untouched ancient tomb containing clay pots, plates, beads and the bones of two humans, a Palestinian antiquities official said Tuesday.
Let's Have Jerusalem
'Ark of the Covenant' about to be unveiled?
	· 06/25/2009 6:10:48 AM PDT · Posted by NYer · 115 replies · 3,576+ views · wnd | June 24, 2009 The patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia says he will announce to the world Friday the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, perhaps the world's most prized archaeological and spiritual artifact, which he says has been hidden away in a church in his country for millennia, according to the Italian news agency Adnkronos. Abuna Pauolos, in Italy for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI this week, told the news agency, "Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God...
'Ark of the Covenant' about to be unveiled (Friday June 26th at 2p.m Italian time)
	· 06/25/2009 10:53:40 AM PDT · Posted by TaraP · 211 replies · 5,371+ views WND | June 25th, 2009 The patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia says he will announce to the world Friday the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, perhaps the world's most prized archaeological and spiritual artifact, which he says has been hidden away in a church in his country for millennia, according to the Italian news agency Adnkronos. Abuna Pauolos, in Italy for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI this week, told the news agency, "Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God...
'Ark' revelation: Can they dig it? (Ark of the Covenant announcement 8 AM eastern)
	· 06/26/2009 4:19:36 AM PDT · Posted by Perseverando · 203 replies · 8,095+ views · WorldNetDaily | June 25, 2009 | Chelsea Schilling Bible buzz begins as hunters wait to view Ten Commandments box Ark hunters and Bible enthusiasts are buzzing about a report that the Ark of the Covenant, the ancient container that holds the Ten Commandments, is expected to be unveiled in Rome today. As WND reported, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia says he will announce to the world the unveiling of the Ark, which he says has been hidden away in a church in his country for millennia, according to the Italian news agency Adnkronos. Abuna Pauolos, in Italy for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI this...
Real-life raiders hunt Ark of the Covenant
	· 08/18/2003 8:31:27 AM PDT · Posted by bedolido · 54 replies · 408+ views Relic searchers dig near Jesus' crucifixion site in quest for chest holding 10 Commandments For centuries, many have wondered whatever happened to the Ark of the Covenant, the box the Bible says contained the Ten Commandments of God. Now, a new quest is underway for the legendary chest featured in the film "Raiders of the Lost Ark," trying to prove the claim the Ark is buried below the purported site where Jesus Christ was crucified. An international team has just completed what it calls its first stage of exploration, spending two weeks beneath Mount Moriah outside the walls of ancient...
Ark Of Covenant Is In Jerusalem, And I Will Find It - Archaeologist
	· 01/24/2003 8:34:33 AM PST · Posted by blam · 45 replies · 763+ views · Halifax News | 1-23-2003 | Chris Lambie Ark of Covenant is in Jerusalem, and I will find it - archeologistIsraeli scholar tells Sackville audience hunt for relic is nothing like the movies By CHRIS LAMBIE The Daily News Thursday, January 23, 2003 The Ark of the Covenant is probably buried somewhere deep in the hidden catacombs under Jerusalem's Temple Mount, says a leading Israeli archeologist. The biblical ark was a wooden box containing the two tablets of the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. "If somebody will ever find the Ark of the Covenant, it will be me," Dan Bahat told about 50...
Faith and Philosophy
1,500 Year Old Hidden Record Of Christ's Words (Codex up for auction at Sotheby's)
	· 06/27/2009 4:28:45 PM PDT · Posted by NYer · 19 replies · 917+ views · Forbes | June 26, 2009 | Susan Adams Sotheby's might want to send a bidding paddle to Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. In its July 7 London manuscripts sale, the auction house is offering a 1,500-year-old biblical document that includes layers of text and meaning--in three languages. Known as the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, the piece was written over the span of three centuries and stowed in a sacred monastery until landing in the hands of a pair of British twins by way of local Egyptian dealers. Now an English college is cannibalizing its library and cashing out, to pay for some building renovations. The ancient manuscript could...
St Paul's tomb 'may be opened'
	· 06/27/2009 4:34:40 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 28 replies · 803+ views · Italy Mag | 27 June 2009 | Italy A Roman tomb believed to be that of St Paul may be opened for the first time in 2000 years, the archpriest of the cathedral where it is located said Friday. ''We've been thinking of opening St Paul's sarcophagus for a while and Pope Benedict XVI has not ruled out ordering a thorough analysis of the tomb,'' said Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo of St Paul's Outside the Walls. ''We've also studied how we could do it. You have to bear in mind that this sarcophagus has been there for 20 centuries and has never been opened,'' he said....
British Isles
The beep that made me leap: Housewife discovers £250,000 gold treasure after seven years
	· 06/27/2009 4:22:12 PM PDT · Posted by BGHater · 8 replies · 513+ views · Daily Mail | 24 June 2009 | Dalya Alberge After seven years of combing fields and beaches with a metal detector, the only thing housewife Mary Hannaby had to show for her hobby was an old dental plate. But all those efforts paid off when her first proper find turned out to be a 15th-century gold treasure valued at £250,000 or more. The find is thought to be part of a high-quality reliquary or pendant, and depicts the Holy Trinity. Mrs Hannaby, 57, from Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, heard her metal detector's tell-tale beep while out on one of her regular six-hour Sunday detecting walks with her son, woodcarver Michael,...
Longer Perspectives
Modernist minotaurs
	· 06/25/2009 5:52:26 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 163+ views · Times Online | June 3, 2009 | Tom Holland Arthur Evans, the eccentric Englishman who led the excavations, was, if anything, even more creative in his reconstruction of the Bronze Age than Schliemann had earlier been. The fabulously ancient palace of Knossos enjoys, as Gere points out in her arresting first sentence, "the dubious distinction of being one of the first reinforced concrete buildings ever erected on the island". The complex of buildings gawped at by thousands upon thousands of tourists every year owes less to the masons of the Minoan age than it does to the example of modernist architecture. On Crete, the archaic and the contemporary, both...
Epigraphy and Language
Phaistos Disk: Greek or Luwian?
	· 06/25/2009 3:16:34 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 13 replies · 288+ views · Examiner | Wednesday, June 24, 2009 | Diana Gainer Since this disk was found in Crete, and the people of Crete today speak Greek, that's a good language to assume was spoken by the maker of the disk. Still, that's a guess, or a hypothesis, not a fact. Besides that, we know that not everybody on Crete spoke Greek in the Bronze Age. The classical Greeks mentioned people they called Eteocretans who did not speak Greek. Further, we know that Linear A, written by the Minoans on Crete before the Mycenean Greeks came, did not represent Greek. Professor Hubert LaMarle considers it to be an early Indo-Iranian language, related...
Precolumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Carvings From Cherokee Script's Dawn
	· 06/23/2009 5:40:05 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 337+ views · New York Times | Tuesday, June 23, 2009 | John Noble Wilford The illiterate Cherokee known as Sequoyah watched in awe as white settlers made marks on paper, convinced that these "talking leaves" were the source of white power and success. This inspired the consuming ambition of his life: to create a Cherokee written language. Born around 1770 near present-day Knoxville, Tenn., he was given the name George Gist (or Guess) by his father, an English fur trader, and his mother, a daughter of a prominent Cherokee family. But it was as Sequoyah that around 1809 he started devising a writing system for the spoken Cherokee language. Ten years later, despite the...
Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs May Have Been Smaller Than Previously Thought (Svelteosaurus)
	· 06/24/2009 4:19:47 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 32 replies · 622+ views · ScienceDaily | June 22, 2009 | Unknown The largest animals ever to have walked the face of the earth may not have been as big as previously thought, reveals a paper published June 21 in the Zoological Society of London's Journal of Zoology.
Catastrophism and Astronomy
The World's Largest Fossil Wilderness (Coal mine)
	· 06/23/2009 5:28:07 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 44 replies · 825+ views · Smithsonian | July 2009 | Guy Gugliotta Finding a fossil in a coal mine is no big deal. Coal deposits, after all, are petrified peat swamps, and peat is made from decaying plants, which leave their imprints in mud and clay as it hardens into shale stone. But it was a different thing entirely when John Nelson and Scott Elrick, geologists with the Illinois State Geological Survey, examined the Riola and Vermilion Grove coal mines in eastern Illinois. Etched into ceilings of the mine shafts is the largest intact fossil forest ever seen -- at least four square miles of tropical wilderness preserved 307 million years ago. That's when an...
Flood, Here Comes the Flood
Wooden Beam Of Noah's Ark On Mount Ararat
	· 06/22/2009 7:52:45 AM PDT · Posted by Fennie · 122 replies · 3,798+ views · YouTube | 2002 On the 2nd December 2002 Claudio Schranz of our group and alpine guide has been able to film clearly a beam of Noah's Ark protruding out of the ice on Mount Ararat. It was found at 4000m between the beginning of the Parrot glacier.
Noah's Ark Found?
	· 06/24/2009 8:01:37 AM PDT · Posted by Fennie · 44 replies · 1,748+ views · YouTube Many believe that Mount Ararat in Turkey hold the remains of Noah's Ark.
Navigation
Obsidian 'trail' provides clues to how humans settled, interacted in Kuril Islands
	· 06/22/2009 11:18:35 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 11 replies · 325+ views · University of Washington | Jun 22, 2009 | Unknown Archaeologists have used stone tools to answer many questions about human ancestors in both the distant and near past and now they are analyzing the origin of obsidian flakes to better understand how people settled and interacted in the inhospitable Kuril Islands. Using X-ray fluorescence spectrometers, archaeologists from the University of Washington and the Smithsonian Institution have found the origin of 131 flakes of obsidian, a volcanic glass. These small flakes were discarded after stone tools were made from obsidian and were found at 18 sites on eight islands in the Kurils. The flakes were found with other artifacts that...
Paleontology
Extinct giant elephant skeleton discovered in Indonesia
	· 06/25/2009 3:29:09 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 17 replies · 421+ views · Times Online | Tuesday, June 9, 2009 | Sophie Tedmanson The accidental death of an elephant which had become bogged in mud 200,000 years ago led to the perfect preservation of its skeleton -- and a remarkable scientific discovery... the skeleton of the prehistoric ancestor to the modern Asian elephant which was fossilised in an abandoned sand quarry in East Java, Indonesia. The ancient bones were discovered after land collapsed at the sand quarry on the Indonesian island, adjacent to the Solo River, which killed two men in April. Researchers from the University of Wollongong in Australia and the Geological Survey Institute spent four weeks excavating the bones of the...
Bugs
Rabbit-Size Elephant Ancestor Found -- Oldest Known
	· 06/25/2009 10:10:39 AM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 53 replies · 659+ views · nationalgeographic | June 23, 2009 | Mark Anderson After the dinosaurs perished, life on Earth didn't take long to bounce back, a new study suggests. A newfound 60-million-year-old creature called Eritherium azzouzorum -- the oldest known elephant ancestor -- bolsters the case that whole new orders of mammals were already around less than 6 million years after global catastrophe ended the age of reptiles some 65.5 million years ago. Paleontologist Emmanuel Gheerbrant discovered the rabbit-size proto-elephant's skull fragments in a basin 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Casablanca, Morocco. Elephant ancestors, he said, now join the likes of rodents and early primates as some of the first known mammals to walk the...
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Spain's Renaissance armor, portraits on view in DC
	· 06/27/2009 10:35:12 AM PDT · Posted by decimon · 13 replies · 206+ views · Associated Press | Jun 27, 2009 | Brett Zongker The exhibit includes several full suits of armor, helmets and shields, as well as armor built for horses. The pieces, worn by such figures as Emperor Charles V, Philip the Handsome and Philip II, were sometimes used in battle but mostly were created for parades and pageantry.
Early America
Quote By Sam Adams in great corespondence between him and John adams
	· 06/25/2009 5:27:15 PM PDT · Posted by valiant4thetruth · 7 replies · 195+ views · http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2104&chapter=159941&layout=html&Itemid=27 Among the numbers of men, my friend, are to be found not only those who have "preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer, to liberty;" but others, who have eagerly sought after thrones and sceptres, hereditary shares in sovereignty, riches and splendor, titles, stars, garters, crosses, eagles, and many other childish playthings, at the expense of real nobility, without one thought or care for the liberty and happiness of the rest of mankind.
The Framers
the 19th Amendment
	· 06/22/2009 3:34:40 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 272+ views · Constitution of the United States, via FindLaw et al | ratified on August 18, 1920 | The Framers et al Section 1. The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Second Fiddle in the History Books
Lewis and Clark in murder mystery 200 years after their final expedition
	· 06/27/2009 12:07:48 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 23 replies · 561+ views · Telegraph | Jun 27, 2009 | Jacqui Goddard When explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark completed a trailblazing expedition across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean in 1806, they were revered as American heroes and their journals as literary classics. But Lewis's death three years later, at the age of 35, is now turning into a historical whodunnit as academics, scientists and generations of his descendants question whether he really committed suicide, as was accepted at the time, or whether he may have been felled by an assassin's bullets.
The Civil War
Like-new Confederate cash found in Ala. courthouse
	· 06/27/2009 6:04:31 AM PDT · Posted by Dawebman · 23 replies · 578+ views · NBC13.com | June 22, 2009 | Associated Press Officials in one Alabama county believe they've solved a mystery dating back to the Civil War. Morgan County archivist John Allison recently discovered $493 in mostly uncirculated Confederate currency in a county vault. Some of the serial numbers were in sequence, making it appear the money came straight from the Confederate Congress.
Imagine If This 1865 Penny Could Talk
	· 06/24/2009 9:35:04 AM PDT · Posted by nickcarraway · 20 replies · 744+ views · Wetaskiwin Times | 6/23/09 | Jerold LeBlanc PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS: Ever looked at your spare change before you spend it? There may be a treasure or two lurking about. Such was the case of a friend of mine who works in retail. Part of his job is to make sure the automatic change dispensers are working. Recently, however, he was called down after one of the dispensers became jammed. On closer inspection, he discovered at first glance what appeared to be a slug. Imagine his surprise when he pulled from the dispenser, an 1865 Indian head U.S. penny (see photos to the right). I must admit...
World War Eleven
"Hitler's Stealth Fighter" Re-created (NatGeo TV Sunday June 28th)
	· 06/26/2009 4:37:21 AM PDT · Posted by Dallas59 · 71 replies · 1,625+ views · National Geographic | 6/25/2009 | Nat Geo Top stealth-plane experts have re-created a radical, nearly forgotten Nazi aircraft: the Horten 2-29, a retro-futuristic fighter that arrived too late in World War II to make it into mass production. (See Hitler's stealth fighter in pictures.) The engineers' goal was to determine whether the so-called stealth fighter was truly radar resistant. In the process, they've uncovered new clues to just how close Nazi engineers were to unleashing a jet that some say could have changed the course...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
"Free Speech' Allowed Muslim Radical to Preach Hatred at an Israeli University
	· 06/21/2009 3:21:22 PM PDT · Posted by Avi Kane · 3 replies · 165+ views · Israel National News | June 18, 2009 | Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu & Avraham Zuroff The head of the radical Islamic Movement's northern branch told some 200 Arab students at Haifa University on Wednesday that Israel is tunneling underneath the Temple Mount in order to build the Third Temple. The claim is not new, but Haifa University officials said Thursday they could not prevent Sheikh Ra'ad Salah from repeating the charges. Salah added, "We welcome death" rather than "give up our principles and holy sites."
end of digest #258 20090627

[SunkenCiv]

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #258 20090627 · Saturday, June 27, 2009 · 45 topics · 2280915 to 2276460 · 717 members ·
	Saturday Jun 27 2009 v 5 n 51 view this issue	Welcome to the 258th issue. Last week the membership was only 716, not 717, I forgot to edit it. Back to 717 this week. Another great issue insofar as we continue on a roll with great topics. Many thanks to all who have been contributing by posting 'em, pinging me, and leaving me with much less to do. I was going to use "Against the Grain" as a header, but the topic for that is listed under the usual "Agriculture and Animal Husbandry" header. There's a load of topics about the Ark of the Covenant, most of them new and added to the catalog but not pinged. Next week we'll have the last issue of year five of the Digest, and it will be on July 4th. Expect something special. Dunno what it'll be, just expect it. :') Historic video footage can be viewed on the the National Archives on YouTube Check out the Troopathon keyword Are You New To Free Republic? New Or Not- Fly Your State/Country Flag! AuntB posts M3Report topics pertaining to our national problems stemming from the tide of illegal aliens crossing the border. * Sandrat posts a lot (possibly most) of the topics pertaining to the War on Terror. Be sure to check Celebrimbor's and StarCMC's YouTube Smackdown topics, which are "Countering the cyber-jihad one video at a time". Be sure to visit the invisib1e hand's Founder's Quote Daily topics. Be sure to check Homer_J_Simpson's topics, many of which are based on archival newspaper articles, usually 70 years ago that day. Visit the Free Republic Memorial Wall -- a history-related feature of FR. Donate to FreeRepublic.
· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·

[DollyCali]

wow.. love your index pings.. thanks for all your work!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!

[Cincinna]

Thanks, Civ. I always look forward to your articles. You are doing a great service here at FR, and I appreciate it very much.

[SunkenCiv]

My pleasure, and thanks for the kind remarks!

[beebuster2000]

btt

[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #259 Saturday, July 04, 2009
We Mutually Pledge to Each Other Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor
Rare and valuable copy of American Declaration of Independence found... in Surrey
	· 07/02/2009 6:15:45 AM PDT · Posted by naturalman1975 · 36 replies · 925+ views · Daily Mail (UK) | 2nd July 2009 A rare copy of the United States Declaration of Independence worth thousands of pounds has been discovered in Britain. The document, which is in perfect condition, is believed to be one of only 200 ever printed and was found among files at the National Archives in Kew. An American antiquarian bookseller carrying out research found the Dunlap print of the declaration which was printed on July 4, 1776. The discovery brings the total of known surviving copies worldwide to 26. The last discovery of a Dunlap print was at a flea market in 1989, and it sold at auction in...
The American Revolution
Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code
	· 07/01/2009 7:56:51 PM PDT · Posted by Pontiac · 27 replies · 1,158+ views · Wall Street Journal | 7/2/09 | RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now. The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them. There is no evidence...
The Framers
the 20th Amendment
	· 06/28/2009 4:30:00 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 4 replies · 278+ views · Constitution of the United States, via FindLaw et al | ratified on January 23, 1933 | The Framers et al FindLaw's commentary: As thus stated, the exact term of the President and Vice President was fixed by the Constitution, Art. II, Sec. 1, cl. 1, at 4 years, and became actually effective, by resolution of the Continental Congress, on the 4th of March 1789. Since this amendment was declared adopted on February 6, 1933, Sec. 1 in effect shortened, by the interval between January 20 and March 4, 1937, the terms of the President and Vice President elected in 1932. Similarly, it shortened, by the intervals between January 3 and March 4, the terms of Senators elected for terms ending...
Historical Technology
The first sound bites - The presidential campaign, 1908-style. Hear early phonograph recordings.
	· 06/29/2009 9:20:13 AM PDT · Posted by neverdem · 5 replies · 196+ views · Science News | September 26th, 2008 | Ron Cowen When Bryan speaks, then I rejoice. His is the strange composite voice Of many million singing souls Who make world-brotherhood their choice -- Vachel Lindsay, American poet, 1915 William Jennings Bryan was rarely at a loss for words. His impassioned oratory spellbound congressmen during his two terms in the U.S. House and thrilled thousands of voters during the presidential campaigns of 1896 and1900. But during his third run for the White House, 100 years ago, Bryan had trouble speaking in the intimacy of his own home. "Mr. Bryan seemed a little nervous when he first started, much more so, he...
In Tune
Patriotic Independence Day TV Programs: Set your DVR's
	· 07/02/2009 8:27:54 AM PDT · Posted by Perseverando · 1 replies · 196+ views Self | July 2, 2009 | Self There is some great patriotic programming on TBN over the next several days. Yes, it's primarily Christian in nature, but it's all incredibly patriotic, Independence Day related, and some incredible history lessons as well. Hey, what's on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, etc? Enjoy! TBN.org TBN TV schedule July 2nd (East coast): Note: Primary schedule is west coast, but you can change time zones. Some great programs (Eastern Time). Check schedule for additional broadcasts. 11:30 AM - A Nation Adrift * 1:30 PM - Medal of Honor * 5:00 PM - America's Godly Heritage * 6:00 PM -...
Monument Without a Tomb
The Five Greatest Americans? You might be surprised...
	· 06/30/2009 7:32:01 AM PDT · Posted by Publius772000 · 64 replies · 1,270+ views · The Constitutional Alamo | 06/29/09 | Michael Naragon While sitting in the Advanced Placement institute a week ago, the instructor posed a question to the history educators in the room. "Not counting presidents or their wives," he began, "who would you consider the five greatest, most influential Americans in history?" My mind began to cycle through the most important figures to grace the stage. My first choice was John Marshall. As the first significant Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he established the principle of judicial review, greatly expanding the power of the Court and making the Constitution, according to Jefferson, "a mere thing of wax in the...
Thoroughly Modern Miscellany
A Historian Is on a Quest to Locate Lost Events
	· 06/30/2009 5:03:01 AM PDT · Posted by Pharmboy · 29 replies · 371+ views · The New York Times | June 30, 2009 | SAM ROBERTS Richard Perry/The New York TimesKalustyan's, a market at 123 Lexington Avenue, is the only building still standing where a president was sworn in: Chester A. Arthur. Forlornly unidentified and altogether forgotten, these sites have been literally lost to history. ...on West 125th Street...nothing marks the place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed in 1958. Then there is the spot on Fifth Avenue where Winston Churchill, crossing against the light, was struck by a car in 1931 and nearly killed. snip Andrew Carroll, 39, an amateur historian, is embarking this week on a 50-state journey to...
Underwater Archaeology
New York City's harbors house 1,600 bars of silver, and 4-foot-long, wood-eating worms
	· 07/01/2009 6:58:24 AM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 15 replies · 1,094+ views · news.yahoo | Sun Jun 28 | Chuck Shepherd Using GPS and state-of-the-art sonar, Columbia University researchers recently made the first comprehensive map of the wonders submerged in New York City's harbors. Supplementing those findings with historical data, New York magazine reported the inventory's highlights in May: a 350-foot steamship (downed in 1920), a freight train (derailed in 1865), 1,600 bars of silver (unrecovered since 1903), a fleet of Good Humor ice cream trucks (which form a reef for aquatic life), and so many junked cars near the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges that divers use them as underwater navigation points. Of most concern lately, though, are the wildlife: 4-foot-long...
Word
Ancient Find Proves Christ's Words? (oldest christian church unearthed)
	· 07/02/2009 6:53:30 AM PDT · Posted by NYer · 14 replies · 1,199+ views · Netscape | July 2009 Ancient Find Proves Christ's Words?Archaeologists have unearthed in Jordan what they believe to be the first Christian church in the world. Dating back almost 2,000 years to sometime between 33 AD to 70 AD, the church, which is actually a cave, was found underneath Saint Georgeous Church, which itself dates back to 230 AD, in Rihab in northern Jordan near the Syrian border. Agence France Presse and The Jordan Times report that the church is thought to have sheltered the world's earliest Christians from persecution and certain death. "We have evidence to believe this church sheltered the early Christians--the 70...
Ancient Autopsies
Pope: Scientific analysis done on St. Paul's bones
	· 06/28/2009 4:07:41 PM PDT · Posted by Not gonna take it anymore · 32 replies · 1,024+ views · The Detroit News Online | Jun 28, 5:30 PM EDT | NICOLE WINFIELD ROME (AP) -- The first-ever scientific tests on what are believed to be the remains of the Apostle Paul "seem to conclude" that they do indeed belong to the Roman Catholic saint, Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday. Archaeologists recently unearthed and opened the white marble sarcophagus located under the Basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls in Rome, which for some 2,000 years has been believed by the faithful to be the tomb of St. Paul. Benedict said scientists had conducted carbon dating tests on bone fragments found inside the sarcophagus and confirmed that they date from the first or...
Pope: St. Paul's Remains Found in Basilica
	· 06/28/2009 9:11:39 PM PDT · Posted by conservativegramma · 69 replies · 1,193+ views · NewsMax | June 28, 2009 | NewsMax Pope Benedict announced on Sunday that fragments of bone from the first or second century had been found in a tomb in the Basilica of St Paul in Rome, which he said confirmed the belief that it housed the apostle's remains. "This seems to confirm the unanimous and undisputed tradition that these are the mortal remains on the Apostle Paul," the pontiff said at St Paul's-Outside-the-Walls, on the eve of the Feasts of St Peter and St Paul celebrated on Monday.
Have we found the body of St Paul?
	· 06/29/2009 8:30:16 PM PDT · Posted by naturalman1975 · 42 replies · 1,049+ views · Daily Mail (UK) | 30th June 2009 | A.N. Wilson Ruthless, half mad, he stoned Christians to death. He also founded modern civilisation. And until yesterday, his fate was one of history's great mysteries...Deeply moved, the Pope delivered the news on Sunday that fragments of bones found in the tomb traditionally considered to be that of Saint Paul did indeed date from the first or second century. Which means that, in all likelihood, they are the bones of the Apostle Paul - bones that have lain there for 1,950 years yet, astonishingly, have only been discovered in our time. You might say, so what? Aren't Roman Catholics always making claims...
Faith and Philosophy
Rome Catacomb Reveals "Oldest" Image of St Paul
	· 06/28/2009 4:20:19 PM PDT · Posted by marshmallow · 41 replies · 1,318+ views · Reuters | 6/28/09 ROME (Reuters) -- Vatican archaeologists using laser technology have discovered what they believe is the oldest image in existence of St Paul the Apostle, dating from the late 4th century, on the walls of catacomb beneath Rome. Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano, revealing the find on Sunday, published a picture of a frescoed image of the face of a man with a pointed black beard on a red background, inside a bright yellow halo. The high forehead is furrowed. Experts of the Ponitifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology made the discovery on June 19 in the Catacomb of Santa Tecla in Rome...
Rome Catacomb Reveals "Oldest" Image Of St Paul
	· 06/28/2009 3:06:32 PM PDT · Posted by Steelfish · 20 replies · 1,465+ views · Reuters | June 28, 2009 Rome catacomb reveals "oldest" image of St Paul Sun Jun 28 ROME (Reuters) -- Vatican archaeologists using laser technology have discovered what they believe is the oldest image in existence of St Paul the Apostle, dating from the late 4th century, on the walls of catacomb beneath Rome. Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano, revealing the find on Sunday, published a picture of a frescoed image of the face of a man with a pointed black beard on a red background, inside a bright yellow halo. The high forehead is furrowed. Experts of the Ponitifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology made the discovery...
Oldest Icon of St. Paul Discovered
	· 06/28/2009 11:54:12 AM PDT · Posted by Mighty_Quinn · 25 replies · 1,551+ views Oldest known icon of St. Paul discovered!
Let's Have Jerusalem
Reclaiming Biblical Jerusalem
	· 06/30/2009 8:06:52 PM PDT · Posted by Fred Nerks · 24 replies · 401+ views · aish.com | June 30, 2009 / 8 Tammuz 5769 | by Rachel Ginsberg The world of archeology is rocked by evidence of King David's palace unearthed in Jerusalem. How Jewish is Jerusalem? You might think that's a silly question, but in the world of academia, revisionist history and even biblical archaeology, scholars have cast the shadow of doubt over Judaism's intrinsic connection to Jerusalem. The Moslem Waqf, the religious authority that administers the Temple Mount -- the site of Judaism's First and Second Temples -- has been claiming for years that there was never a temple there. But the idea that Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and Jerusalem its...
Facts In the Ground
Did Hebron Disappear?
	· 06/30/2009 6:32:53 PM PDT · Posted by Fred Nerks · 25 replies · 480+ views · aish.com | June 30, 2009 / 8 Tammuz 5769 | by Rabbi Leibel Reznick Despite the overwhelming evidence, why do some archeologists claim that Hebron was uninhabited during the times of Moses and Joshua? The city of Hebron presents a unique problem to the Biblical archaeologist. Ancient Hebron, located a few miles west of the Dead Sea and about 20 miles south of Jerusalem, figures prominently in the Jewish Bible, mentioned more than 70 times. Hebron is known to be one of the oldest cities in the world. Josephus Flavius, the noted first century CE Jewish historian, stated that in his time Hebron was already 2,300 years old! The city with its rolling hills...
Torah Torah Torah
Egyptology in the Torah: Biblical Archeology
	· 06/30/2009 5:04:30 PM PDT · Posted by Fred Nerks · 15 replies · 320+ views · aish.com | June 30, 2009 - Tammuz 5769 | by Rabbi Leibel Reznick Contrary to popular Egyptologist belief, the Torah does contain numerous hints of contemporary life in ancient Egypt. The western world has a fascination with the culture of ancient Egypt. The image of the great stone sphinx guarding the lofty pyramiding tombs of the mummified pharaohs, as the once all-powerful king journeyed through the world of darkness, adds to the mysterious lure of ancient Egypt. Over 100,000 books have been written on this inscrutable land and its pharaohs, the first one being composed over 2000 years ago. By the time the Hellenistic historian, Manetho, composed his Aegyptiaca in the third century...
Egypt
Ancient military town dating back to 26th Dynasty discovered in Ismailiya
	· 06/30/2009 3:16:18 PM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 20 replies · 263+ views · Egypt State Information Service | Tuesday, June 30, 2009 | unattributed Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said an archeological mission discovered the remnants of an ancient military town in the governorate of Ismailiya. The discovered military town dates back to the 26th Dynasty (664-625 BC). It was found in Tel Defna between Al-Manzala Lake and the Suez Canal. The area had been chosen by king Rameses II to avoid attacks from the eastern borders. In addition, the area was used as crossing point by trade convoys coming from east. The discovered military city belongs to king Ibsemalik I.
'Excavating Egypt' shatters art museum records
	· 07/03/2009 5:23:14 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 79+ views · Lexington Herald-Leader | Thursday, July 2, 2009 | Mary Meehan A gold gilded (is that a redundancy?) mummy mask, 40-60AD, from the Roman period of Egyptian history, was being installed as part of the upcomng Excavating Egypt exhibit on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 at The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. The exhibit runs from March 22 to June 14. It is being touted, from the brochure, as "Great discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London." The exhibit highlights the story of pioneer archaeologist Sir William Petrie and his exploration of ancient Egypt between the 1880s and 1920s. More than 200 of his...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Burned grains hold clues to ancient farms [Assiros Toumba in Greece]
	· 07/01/2009 3:12:56 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 208+ views · Planet Earth online | 26 June 2009 | Natural Environment Research Council The granary at Assiros Toumba in Greece burnt to the ground around 1300 BC, during the Bronze Age, together with large quantities of grain stored in clay bins and jars. It was a large facility and the fire was 'undoubtedly a catastrophic accident for the people whose grain was stored there,' says Professor Glynis Jones, an archaeologist from the University of Sheffield. The reasons for the fire are unknown - it could have been accidental or may have happened in the aftermath of an earthquake, Jones suggests. But there is no solid evidence to support either theory... The exact proportion...
Diet and Cuisine
Excavation throws up earliest evidence of rice cultivation [ in Vietnam ]
	· 07/03/2009 5:39:16 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 70+ views · The Hindu | Friday, July 3, 2009 | a Hindu Excavation of an ancient Vietnamese site has thrown up the earliest evidence of rice cultivation, while shedding new light on how the death of young children was viewed by community members. The excavation, led by professor Peter Bellwood and Marc Oxenham from the Australian National University (ANU) School of Archaeology and Anthropology, studied the site, some 3,000-4,000 years old, named An Son. The findings suggest that death in young children was so common that community members were unlikely to revere the death of their offspring until they had survived for more than five years. "The burial of a new born...
India
Indus Valley's secrets to remain buried: Insecurity forces archaeologists to abandon excavations
	· 07/01/2009 3:01:11 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 1 replies · 136+ views · DailyTimes of Pakistan | Monday, June 29, 2009 | Afnan Khan Foreign archaeologists involved in excavation work to explore the Indus Valley Civilisation in Pakistan have left the country due to the war-like situation. The experts from the US, Europe and UK uncovered the mysteries of the Indus Valley Civilisation for the world during their research spanning decades. The teams, consisting of senior professors Dr Richard H Meadow, Professor JM Kenoyer, Dr Jean-Francois Jarrige and late Prof George F Dales, had conducted extensive research in different parts of Pakistan. A majority of the areas that were a part of the Indus Valley Civilisation became Pakistan after the partition of the sub-continent...
Ancient Europe
Bulgarian Archaeologists Discover 7 000-Years-Old Settlement
	· 07/03/2009 5:16:41 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 129+ views · Novinite / Sofia News Agency | Thursday, July 2, 2009 | unattributed Bulgarian archaeologists have discovered a 7 000-years-old settlement close to the northeast city of Shumen. The village dates back to the Stone-Copper Age, and is located in the locality of Chanadzhik, near the village of Sushina and the Ticha Dam. The archaeologists have discovered over 300 finds, most of which are made of marble. "These items are extremely rare. They were worn by very specific people. These are decorations that were not available to the masses. There are also others that are made of clay or bone," explained Stefan Chohadzhiev, an archaeology professor at the Veliko Tarnovo University, as quoted...
Scotland Yet
Scots fought 'in bright yellow war shirts not Braveheart kilts'
	· 06/28/2009 6:41:21 PM PDT · Posted by PotatoHeadMick · 113 replies · 1,768+ views · Daily Telegraph (UK) | 28 Jun 2009 | Simon Johnson Medieval Scottish soldiers fought wearing bright yellow war shirts dyed in horse urine rather than the tartan plaid depicted in the film Braveheart, according to new research. Historian Fergus Cannan states that the Scots armies who fought in battles like Bannockburn, and Flodden Field would have looked very different to the way they have traditionally been depicted. Instead of kilts, he said they wore saffron-coloured tunics called "leine croich" and used a range of ingredients to get the boldest possible colours.
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Skeleton reveals violent life and death of medieval knight
	· 06/29/2009 5:47:25 PM PDT · Posted by PotatoHeadMick · 16 replies · 1,128+ views · Daily Telegraph (UK) | 29 Jun 2009 | Auslan Cramb A 620-year-old skeleton discovered under the floor of Stirling Castle has shed new light on the violent life of a medieval knight. Archaeologists believe that bones found in an ancient chapel on the site are those of an English knight named Robert Morley who died in a tournament there in 1388. Radio carbon dating has confirmed that the skeleton is from that period, and detailed analysis suggests that he was in his mid-20s, was heavily muscled and had suffered several serious wounds in earlier contests. He appears to have survived for some time with a large arrowhead lodged in his...
Through the Looking Glass
Dig aims to uncover castle past [Oystermouth Castle in Mumbles]
	· 07/01/2009 3:06:53 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 5 replies · 244+ views · BBC | Tuesday, June 30, 2009 | unattributed The castle was founded by William de Londres in the early 12th Century and is considered one of the finest in the area. The first major archaeological dig to take place at a medieval castle near Swansea is underway. Experts and volunteers are hoping to uncover artefacts along with clues as the original layout... They will be on site digging and examining trenches for three weeks... The dig is focusing on an area outside the west tower where archaeologists are looking for an outer wall and a ditch. They are also examining the knoll after a geophysical survey commissioned by...
Precolumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
Connecting dots of migration in ancient Southwest [ Anasazi star orientation? ]
	· 07/03/2009 5:09:44 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 3 replies · 111+ views · George Johnson | Wednesday, July 1, 2009 | STL Today / St. Louis Post-Dispatch / Associated Press From the sky, the Mound of the Cross at Paquime, a 14th-century ruin in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, looks like a compass rose -- the roundish emblem indicating the cardinal directions on a map. About 30 feet in diameter and molded from compacted earth and rock taken near the banks of the Casas Grandes River, the crisscross arms point to four circular platforms. They might as well be labeled N, S, E and W...
Australia & the Pacific
Human role in big kangaroo demise
	· 06/27/2009 9:09:29 PM PDT · Posted by Fred Nerks · 15 replies · 397+ views · BBC Science and Technology | Monday, 22 June 2009 22:25 UK | By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News Debate has raged about the demise of "whopper hopper" P. goliah A fossil study of the extinct giant kangaroo has added weight to the theory that humans were responsible for the demise of "megafauna" 46,000 years ago. The decline of plants through widespread fire or changes toward an arid climate have also played into the debate about the animals' demise. But an analysis of kangaroo fossils suggested they ate saltbush, which would have thrived in those conditions. The research is in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. There has long been dissent in the palaeontology community about the cause...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Giant Moa Rebuilt Using Ancient DNA From Prehistoric Feathers
	· 07/02/2009 3:09:07 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 30 replies · 547+ views · sciencedaily Scientists have performed the first DNA-based reconstruction of the giant extinct moa bird, using prehistoric feathers recovered from caves and rock shelters in New Zealand.Researchers from the University of Adelaide and Landcare Research in New Zealand have identified four different moa species after retrieving ancient DNA from moa feathers believed to be at least 2500 years old. The giant birds -- measuring up to 2.5 metres and weighing 250 kilograms -- were the dominant animals in New Zealand's pre-human environment but were quickly exterminated after the arrival of the Maori around 1280 AD.
Prehistory and Origins
Primate ancestor may be from Asia, not Africa
	· 06/30/2009 6:48:32 PM PDT · Posted by decimon · 10 replies · 243+ views · Discovery | Jennifer Viegas Scientists spur debate by linking Myanmar fossil to humans, apes, monkeysA new Myanmar fossil primate, Ganlea megacanina, suggests the common ancestor of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from large-toothed primates in Asia and not Africa, according to new research published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B. If Myanmar, formerly called Burma, is confirmed as being the ancestral homeland of higher primates, or close to it, the discovery points to a circuitous migration route for some early primates, which must have gone to Africa and then come back to Asia. Christopher Beard, lead author of the study, told...
Paleontology
Fossil Fragments Reveal 500-million-year-old Monster Predato
	· 06/30/2009 2:38:44 PM PDT · Posted by JoeProBono · 15 replies · 495+ views · livescience Hurdia victoria was originally described in 1912 as a crustacean-like animal. Now, researchers from Uppsala University and colleagues reveal it to be just one part of a complex and remarkable new animal that has an important story to tell about the origin of the largest group of living animals, the arthropods. The fossil fragments puzzled together come from the famous 505 million year old Burgess Shale, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in British Columbia, Canada. Uppsala researchers Allison Daley and Graham Budd at the Department of Earth Sciences, together with colleagues in Canada and Britain, describe the convoluted history and...
Dinosaurs
"Dinosaur Mummy" Has Skin Like Birds' and Crocodiles'
	· 07/03/2009 6:50:11 AM PDT · Posted by SunkenCiv · 7 replies · 150+ views · National Geographic | June 30, 2009 | Christine Dell'Amore "This is the closest you're going to get to patting the animal," said excavation leader Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Britain's University of Manchester... Advanced imaging and chemical techniques revealed that the 66-million-year-old "mummified" duckbilled dinosaur had two layers of skin, as do modern vertebrates, including humans. Such a discovery was possible because the dinosaur's skin fossilized before bacteria had a chance to eat up the tissue. It is "absolutely amazing to be able to identify organic molecules from soft tissue that belonged to a beast that died over 66 million years ago," said Manning, whose work with the fossil...
Bugs
Ant mega-colony takes over world
	· 07/03/2009 5:48:39 AM PDT · Posted by Daveinyork · 12 replies · 258+ views · Earth News | July 1, 2009 | Matt Walker Matt Walker Editor, Earth News A queen and worker Argentine ant have many, many relatives A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered. Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination. What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together. Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America....
Flood, Here Comes the Flood
Virginia Man To Search For Noah's Ark In Turkey
	· 06/28/2009 5:17:15 AM PDT · Posted by Fennie · 45 replies · 1,227+ views · FOX News | February 2, 2009 | Associated Press Saddened by the wickedness of man, God directs the righteous Noah to build an ark for his family and two of each species of animal. Together, they ride the ark through 40 days and 40 nights of torrential rains that God unleashes upon the Earth. And when the waters subside, Noah and the animals return to land. "That seems almost like a fairy story," said archaeologist Randall Price, who is director of Liberty University's new Center for Judaic Studies. "But we believe it was an actual event." This summer Price, 57, plans to continue on a journey to prove just...
Longer Perspectives
Bio-Darwinist Beats Up On Psycho-Darwinists
	· 06/27/2009 7:55:19 PM PDT · Posted by Fichori · 127 replies · 1,181+ views · CEH | 06/26/2009 June 26, 2009 -- Evolution of rape? No way. Sharon Begley won't let the evolutionary psychologists get away with their tales about how rapists, molesters, and cheaters can't help themselves because evolution made them that way. The Science Magazine blog Origins seems to be cheering her on. Science writer Sharon Begley, who in 2007 returned to her old job at Newsweek after 5 years of writing the "Science Journal" column for The Wall Street Journal, has long reported skeptically about anything smacking of biological determinism. In the 29 June issue of Newsweek, she pens a 4300-word critique of evolutionary psychology,...
Oh So Mysteriouso
The Dashka Stone (Another Out-of-Place Artifact)
	· 07/01/2009 9:40:07 PM PDT · Posted by 2ndDivisionVet · 26 replies · 654+ views · The Epoch Times | February 18, 2009 | Leonardo Vintiñi An Oopart (Out Of Place ARTifact) is a term applied to dozens of prehistoric objects found in various places around the world that, given their level of technology, are completely at odds with their determined age based on physical, chemical, and/or geological evidence. Ooparts often are frustrating to conventional scientists and a delight to adventurous investigators and individuals interested in alternative scientific theories. In the Ural Mountains of Siberia, a stone tablet was found by a physics and mathematics professor of Bashkir State University, Alexandr Chuvyrov. Weighing in at nearly a ton, the three-layer tablet bears a striking topographical resemblance...
end of digest #259 20090704

[SunkenCiv]

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #259 20090704 · Saturday, July 04, 2009 · 37 topics · 2284768 to 2280990 · 717 members ·
	Saturday Jul 04 2009 v 5 n 51 view this issue	Welcome to the 259th issue. Once again, like an airhead, somewhere in recent issues of the Digest I managed to arf up the issue number for this volume. Issue 260 (next week) will be the last one of the fifth full year of Digest issues. There are some articles in the pipeline (basically, on the hard drive) that I'm saving for next week (basically, starting Sunday), and this issue is out a day early because I don't want to mess around on the computer tomorrow. Heard that before, eh? ;') This quarter's FReep-a-thon has begun. Now for the rest of the issue text: Happy Independence Day! Declaration of Independence [with Jefferson's original text] And, this was compiled May 31, some pertain to Memorial Day, but I didn't use this anywhere at that time, preferring to save it for today: Now might be a good time to Learn the ENTIRE National Anthem How many know the 2nd verse to the National Anthem? Our National Anthem -- the Other Prophetic Verses Asimov on all four stanzas of the National Anthem The Story behind the National Anthem All Four Stanzas (of the Star Spangled Banner, in detail) All Four Stanzas Star Spangled Banner -- Isaac Asimov March 3,1931,"The Star-Spangled Banner" became the national anthem of the United States All Four Stanzas The Star Spangled Banner (all 4 verses) The FReeper Canteen -- Star Spangled Banner -- 14Sept06 Our National Anthem: "The Forgotten Verse" No Room at the Rally for Our National Anthem For Memorial Day: The Star Spangled Banner like you've never heard it! Donate to FreeRepublic.
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[SunkenCiv]

Here's a sample of the new formatting I'm going to try in the Digest issue tomorrow, no need to post a reply, unless you want to heap extravagant praise, 'cause I kinda dig that.

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #260 Saturday, July 11, 2009
Rome and Italy
End of an empire? Blame it on the weather
· 07/10/2009 3:13:33 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 6 replies · · 57+ views · · New Scientist · · December 22, 2001 (issue 2322) · · Betsy Mason ·	Bad weather may have triggered the fall of the Roman Empire. When the Visigoths and other northern barbarians upped sticks and headed south into Roman territory in the 5th century it might have been to escape the cold and poor harvests. Waning sunspot activity is a symptom of a weakened Sun, which could make the world cool by around half a degree. Meteorologist Kevin Pang found that sunspots were conspicuously absent from the historical record. "That was just about the time the Roman Empire fell in 476," he says. The gaps in sunspot sightings coincided with high levels of carbon-14...
end of digest #260 20090711

[wagglebee]

I like it!

[fanfan]

I really like it!

Very nice.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!

[SunkenCiv]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs Weekly Digest #260 Saturday, July 11, 2009
We Mutually Pledge to Each Other Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor
Happy Independence Day
· 07/03/2009 11:30:47 PM PDT · · Posted by TBP · · 17 replies · · 199+ views · · USHistory.org · · 7/4/76 · · Thomas Jefferson, et. al. ·	When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,...
Happy Independence Day
· 07/03/2009 11:30:48 PM PDT · · Posted by TBP · · 17 replies · · 300+ views · · USHistory.org · · 7/4/76 · · Thomas Jefferson, et. al. ·	When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,...
The Framers
the 21st Amendment
· 07/06/2009 3:37:15 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 11 replies · · 243+ views · · Constitution of the United States,   via FindLaw et al · · proposed February 20, 1933,   ratified on December 5, 1933 · · The Framers et al ·	text of the Twenty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Section 1. : The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. Section 2. : The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited. Section 3. : This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the...
Early America
But Where's George? Vernon Downplays Its Lead Character
· 07/06/2009 11:05:16 AM PDT · · Posted by La Lydia · · 8 replies · · 338+ views · · Washington Post · · July 5, 2009 · · Brigid Schulte ·	Just about every American, from the time they're 6 or so, learns that Mount Vernon is Founding Father George Washington's home. They draw pictures of the grand farmhouse in art class. Study it in history. File onto buses and reverently visit the hallowed ground along the Potomac River. And right now, that's Mount Vernon's problem. There's just too much George, according to some international culture experts, who are considering whether the historic estate belongs on the United Nations' list of World Heritage sites. A group advising the U.S. government on getting American sites onto the prestigious list initially rejected Mount...
Second Fiddle in the History Books
American History Exhumed
· 07/10/2009 11:08:28 AM PDT · · Posted by bs9021 · · 8 replies · · 255+ views · · Campus Report · · July 10, 2009 · · Alana Goodman ·	On October 11, 1809, celebrated explorer Meriwether Lewis -- of Lewis and Clarke fame -- was found shot to death on the floor of an old tavern at the edge of Indian country in Tennessee. Witnesses and friends traveling with the explorer maintained that Lewis shot himself in the head and chest after a long bought of mental illness and depression. However, some of Lewis' family members argued that he was murdered in cold blood. Two-hundred years later his descendents are still dead-set on solving the mystery, even if it means digging up and studying...
World War Eleven
WWI naval veteran Stone dies (Last surviving veteran of both World Wars)
· 01/12/2009 10:23:58 AM PST · · Posted by presidio9 · · 14 replies · · 763+ views · · ITN · · January 12, 2009 ·	One of the four remaining British veterans of the First World War has died, his family has said. Skip related content William "Bill" Stone, 108, took part in the 90th Anniversary of the Great War Armistice in London in November 2008. Mr Stone's daughter, Anne Davidson, said: "William had a remarkable, long, healthy and happy life. "He thoroughly enjoyed going to events, meeting people and, whenever possible, regaling those around him with his fund of Naval stories and jokes. "He loved singing, knew most hymns by heart and had an amazing repertoire of old-time songs -- often with alternative words....
Africa
Archaeologists hit jackpot in Mali
· 07/10/2009 8:35:01 AM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 11 replies · · 288+ views · · SwissInfo · · July 9, 2009 · · Unknown ·	Archaeologists from Geneva University have discovered what they claim is Africa's oldest ceramic, dated at around 9,400BC, in eastern Mali."It's a tiny, ornate fragment that was made with great skill and the use of fire," said ethno-archaeologist Anne Mayor in Bamako, the Malian capital.
Egypt
Another cache unearthed in National Museum [ Egypt, Zahi "Zowie" Hawass ]
· 07/08/2009 6:07:46 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 3 replies · · 229+ views · · Egyptian Gazette · · Wednesday, July 8, 2009 · · unattributed ·	Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed another cache near the Western gate of the National Museum in Cairo, Culture Minister Farouq Hosni said yesterday.Zahi Hawass, the secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the cache contained a table made of limestone, a fragment of a slab with hieroglyphic inscriptions, some stones, and the base of a pharaonic pillar, which date back to the pharaonic period around 1,300 years BC."This type of slab was quite widespread during the era of the Pharaohs, who used it to mark a special occasion,
Elam, Persia, Parthia, Iran
Elamite Jar Burial Transferred to Haft-Tappeh Museum
· 07/06/2009 1:44:20 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 18 replies · · 179+ views · · Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies · · Wednesday, July 1, 2009 · · Mehr News ·	Iran's most intact jar burial, which dates back to the Elamite era, was transferred to the Haft-Tappeh Museum last week. Containing a skeleton in fetal position, the jar was discovered during the latest excavation carried out several months ago at Haft-Tappeh, a major Elamite site near Susa in Khuzestan Province, the Persian service of CHN reported on Tuesday. "This is the first time such an intact jar burial has been unearthed," director of the Restoration Department of the Haft-Tappeh and Chogha Zanbil Center Kazem Borhani said. "Urgent actions were taken to preserve the artefact in situ in order to safely...
Rome and Italy
End of an empire? Blame it on the weather
· 07/10/2009 3:13:33 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 6 replies · · 57+ views · · New Scientist · · December 22, 2001 (issue 2322) · · Betsy Mason ·	Bad weather may have triggered the fall of the Roman Empire. When the Visigoths and other northern barbarians upped sticks and headed south into Roman territory in the 5th century it might have been to escape the cold and poor harvests. Waning sunspot activity is a symptom of a weakened Sun, which could make the world cool by around half a degree. Meteorologist Kevin Pang found that sunspots were conspicuously absent from the historical record. "That was just about the time the Roman Empire fell in 476," he says. The gaps in sunspot sightings coincided with high levels of carbon-14...
Via Aurelia: The Roman Empire's Lost Highway
· 07/06/2009 7:27:25 AM PDT · · Posted by BGHater · · 15 replies · · 640+ views · · Smithsonian Magazine · · June 2009 · · Joshua Hammer ·	French amateur archaeologist Bruno Tassan fights to preserve a neglected 2,000-year-old ancient interstate in southern Provence At first glance, it didn't appear that impressive: a worn limestone pillar, six feet high and two feet wide, standing slightly askew beside a country road near the village of Pélissanne in southern France. "A lot of people pass by without knowing what it is," Bruno Tassan, 61, was saying, as he tugged aside dense weeds that had grown over the column since he last inspected it. Tassan was showing me a milliaire, or milestone, one of hundreds planted along the highways of Gaul...
The Etruscans
2,000-year-old cream shows aristocrat's taste (Etruscan)
· 07/10/2009 5:45:22 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 11 replies · · 334+ views · · Discovery · · Jul 10, 2009 · · Rossella Lorenzi ·	Archaeological Superintendency of Tuscany, Florence Italian archaeologists have discovered lotion that is over 2,000 years old, left almost intact in the cosmetic case of an aristocratic Etruscan woman. The discovery, which occurred four years ago in a necropolis near the Tuscan town of Chiusi, has just been made public, following chemical analysis which identified the original compounds of the ancient ointment. The team reports their findings in the July issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. Dating to the second half of the second century B.C., the intact tomb was found sealed by a large terracotta tile. The site featured...
Tuscans 'not descended from Etruscans'
· 07/05/2009 11:32:18 AM PDT · · Posted by BGHater · · 22 replies · · 607+ views · · Italy Mag · · 04 July 2009 · · Italy ·	The current population of Tuscany is not descended from the Etruscans, the people that lived in the region during the Bronze Age, a new Italian study has shown. Researchers at the universities of Florence, Ferrara, Pisa, Venice and Parma discovered the genealogical discontinuity by testing samples of mitochondrial DNA from remains of Etruscans and people who lived in the Middle Ages (between the 10th and 15th centuries) as well as from people living in the region today. While there was a clear genetic link between Medieval Tuscans and the current population, the relationship between modern Tuscans and their Bronze Age...
India
Folk wanderings in "the Heartland"
· 07/07/2009 7:51:36 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 16 replies · · 378+ views · · Gene Expression ScienceBlog · · Tuesday, July 7, 2009 · · Razib ·	Herodotus tells us of the Scythians, who ravaged the Middle East and Europe. The Romans later defeated Sarmatians on the plains of Pannonia. Even further back in history we know of the Indo-Aryan Mittani in Syria, while there are hints of a relationship between nomadic societies on the steppe of Eurasia and later settled populations in Eastern Europe, Iran & India. Because of the lack of literacy in most of the world before 500 B.C. we must rely on archaeology to connect the vaguest of these dots... Standard physical anthropological methods did yield results which suggested that populations of European...
Navigation & Trade
8th century Islamic vase found (in Japan)
· 07/10/2009 8:16:12 AM PDT · · Posted by TigerLikesRooster · · 15 replies · · 352+ views · · Asahi Shimbun · · 07/06/09 ·	Shards of an Islamic ceramic vase -- the oldest uncovered in Japan -- were excavated at the former site of Heijokyo palace, municipal researchers said. The 19 pieces of what is believed to be a vase more than 50 centimeters tall date back to the late eighth century, about 100 years earlier than Islamic ceramics found in Fukuoka Prefecture. The researchers believe the vase was used during maritime trade to carry spices from the Islamic world. Tatsuo Sasaki, a professor of archaeology at Kanazawa University, said the finding confirms that Nara was a terminus on...
China
Chinese archaeologists sketch out layout of KublaiKhan's capital
· 07/10/2009 10:07:46 AM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 10 replies · · 188+ views · · Xinhua · · Wednesday, July 8, 2009 · · Fang Yang (editor) ·	Chinese archaeologists said here on Wednesday that they have sketched out the layout of the first capital of Kublai Khan's empire, known as Xanadu in Marco Polo's Travel Notes, through a large-scale excavation... The capital Shangdu was built in 1256 under the command of Kublai Khan, the first emperor of Yuan Dynasty, who was enthroned there four years later. It became a summer resort after the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) moved its capital to present-day Beijing in 1276, and was destroyed during a peasant war at the end of the dynasty... the excavation program, the largest of its kind on the...
Helix, Make Mine a Double
Ant mega-colony takes over world
· 07/02/2009 4:17:52 PM PDT · · Posted by xcamel · · 44 replies · · 1,116+ views · · BBC/UK · · Wednesday, 1 July 2009 · · Matt Walker ·	A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered. Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination. What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together. Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica. These introduced Argentine...
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Fish on the menu of our ancestors
· 07/08/2009 6:02:11 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 23 replies · · 251+ views · · Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News · · Tuesday, July 7, 2009 · · Sandra Jacob ·	The isotopic analysis of the diet of one of the earliest modern humans in Asia, the 40,000 year old skeleton from Tianyuan Cave near Beijing, has shown that at least this individual was a regular fish consumer. Michael Richards of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology explains "Carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of the human and associated faunal remains indicate a diet high in animal protein, and the high nitrogen isotope values suggest the consumption of freshwater fish." To confirm this inference the researchers measured the sulphur isotope values of terrestrial and freshwater animals around the Zhoukoudian area and...
Neandertal / Neanderthal
Illness brought down early human rival: scientist [ Neandertal ]
· 07/08/2009 5:38:09 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 18 replies · · 316+ views · · Jyllands-Posten · · Tuesday, July 7, 2009 · · The Copenhagen Post ·	Infectious disease carried by Homo sapiens was responsible for the demise of the Neanderthal, according to a new theory Scientists seeking to uncover the mystery of what happened to the Neanderthals should look to the modus operandi of another great... Scientists seeking to uncover the mystery of what happened to the Neanderthals should look to the modus operandi of another great die-off 30,000 years later, argues a Danish expert in an article submitted to the Journal of Archaeological Science. In the article, professor emeritus Bent Sørensen of the University of Roskilde wrote that disease carried by Homo sapiens migrating out...
Prehistory and Origins
Explosive growth of life on Earth fueled by early greening of planet
· 07/08/2009 4:28:09 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 19 replies · · 349+ views · · Arizona State University · · Jul 8, 2009 · · Unknown ·	TEMPE, Ariz. -- Earth's 4.5-billion-year history is filled with several turning points when temperatures changed dramatically, asteroids bombarded the planet and life forms came and disappeared. But one of the biggest moments in Earth's lifetime is the Cambrian explosion of life, roughly 540 million years ago, when complex, multi-cellular life burst out all over the planet. While scientists can pinpoint this pivotal period as leading to life as we know it today, it is not completely understood what caused the Cambrian explosion of life. Now, researchers led by Arizona State University geologist L. Paul Knauth believe they have found the...
Climate
Ice Sheets Can Retreat 'In A Geologic Instant,' Study Of Prehistoric Glacier Shows
· 07/10/2009 2:41:08 PM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 22 replies · · 186+ views · · Science News · · June 22, 2009 · · University at Buffalo ·	Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo... The proof of such rapid retreat of ice sheets provides one of the few explicit confirmations that this phenomenon occurs. Should the same conditions recur today, which the UB scientists say is very possible, they would result in sharply rising global sea levels, which would threaten coastal populations...The researchers used a special dating tool at UB to study rock samples they extracted from a large fjord...
Catastrophism & Astronomy
'Uplift' baffles scientists, transforms area beach...
· 07/09/2009 3:10:20 PM PDT · · Posted by TaraP · · 44 replies · · 1,513+ views · · Homer News · · July 10th, 2009 ·	Like a giant fist punching through the earth, a 1,000-foot long section of the beach below Bluff Point rose up 20 feet from the tidelands sometime last Friday or late Thursday, pushing boulders up from the ocean bottom, cracking sandstone slabs and toppling rocks upside down. Below Bluff Point, a new fissure opened up at the base of the 800-foot high cliff. The uplift could be a re-activation of a landslide that happened perhaps 12,000 years ago. "There was just beach before," said Ron Hess, who lives on Bluff Road above the new uplift. "Now there are tidal pools." "You...
Australia & the Pacific
Australovenator -- Jurassic killer stalked Australia
· 07/03/2009 8:28:53 AM PDT · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 7 replies · · 392+ views · · news · · July 03, 2009 ·	THREE new species of Australian dinosaur have been discovered in a prehistoric billabong in western Queensland. Premier Anna Bligh announced the discovery in the central western town of Winton today as she opened the first stage of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History. The dinosaurs have been nicknamed after characters created by poet Banjo Paterson, who is said to have written Waltzing Matilda in Winton in 1885. Banjo (carnivorous theropod), Matilda and Clancy (giant plant-eating sauropods) were found in a vast geological deposit near Winton that dates from 98 million years ago. The first new sauropods to...
Paleontology
Armadillo-like Crocodile Fossil Found in Brazil
· 07/09/2009 5:38:33 AM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 17 replies · · 300+ views · · National Geographic News · · July 8, 2009 · · John Roach ·	An ancient fossil crocodile coated in armadillo-like body armor was unveiled yesterday at an environmental museum in Brazil. Dubbed Armadillosuchus arrudai, the newly described species of crocodile roamed the arid interior of Brazil about 90 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period, scientists said. It was 6.6 feet (2 meters) long, weighed about 265 pounds (120 kilograms), and had a relatively wide head with a narrow, toothy snout.
Let's Have Jerusalem
A Large Stone Quarry used to build Temple walls Exposed in Excavations
· 07/06/2009 5:36:12 AM PDT · · Posted by SJackson · · 6 replies · · 430+ views · · IMRA · · 7-6-09 ·	A Large Stone Quarry from the End of the Second Temple Period was Exposed in Excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is Conducting on Shmuel HaNavi Street in Jerusalem -- Dr. Ofer Sion, the excavation director, estimates, "The stones that were quarried here were used by Herod to build the walls of the Temple".An ancient quarry, c. 1 dunam in area and dating to the end of the Second Temple period (c. 2,030 years old), was uncovered in excavations being conducted on Shmuel HaNavi Street in...
Religion of Pieces Alert
What You Need Know, And What The Press Won't Tell You About Temple Mount
· 07/06/2009 12:10:26 PM PDT · · Posted by Shellybenoit · · 31 replies · · 902+ views · · CAMERA/The Lid · · 7/6/09 · · The Lid ·	Religion is at the heart of dispute over the Temple Mount, but maybe not the way you think. To the Jews it is the site of the Two Holy Temples erected to God. It is also one of only three places in the Tanach (the Jewish Scriptures) that talks about a financial transaction where a Jew purchased the land. Scholars believe the transaction was written about to show Jewish ownership of that land: King David then bought the site from the Jebusites, as it is written (II Samuel 24:24): "David bought the threshing-floor... for fifty pieces of silver." Ever since...
Longer Perspectives
Jerusalem launches debate on sharing holiest site (Temple Mt/Dome of Rock)
· 06/20/2009 8:59:12 PM PDT · · Posted by VRWCTexan · · 19 replies · · 541+ views · · Reuters · · June 18, 2009 · · Ari Rabinovitch ·	Espousing a dream of harmony that may stretch credibility among even the most fervent believers in dialogue among the great religions, clerics in Jerusalem launched a project on Thursday aimed at finding a way to share the city's holiest, and most fought over, site. Even the Jewish religious scholar promoting it acknowledges it might need divine intervention before a peaceful remapping of the area where Muslims built the 7th century Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque on the site of the biblical Jewish Temple.
Ancient Autopsies
(Muslims & violence) Ethnic riots spread in China's west; 140 killed
· 07/06/2009 9:18:37 AM PDT · · Posted by Righting · · 238 replies · · 4,074+ views · · news.yahoo ·	Ethnic riots spread in China's west; 140 killed... Police sealed off streets in parts of the provincial capital, Urumqi, after discord between ethnic Muslim Uighur people and China's Han majority erupted into violence. Witnesses reported a new, smaller protest Monday in a second city, Kashgar.
Faith and Philosophy
Historic Bible pages put online
· 07/05/2009 9:59:44 PM PDT · · Posted by JoeProBono · · 13 replies · · 499+ views · · bbc · · 6 July 2009 ·	About 800 pages of the earliest surviving Christian Bible have been recovered and put on the internet. Visitors to the website www.codexsinaiticus.org can now see images of more than half of the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript. Fragments of the 4th Century document -- written in Greek on parchment leaves -- have been worked on by institutions in the UK, Germany, Egypt and Russia. Experts say it is "a window into the development of early Christianity".
Middle Ages and Renaissance
The Great Famine, 1317
· 07/09/2009 4:36:09 PM PDT · · Posted by Little Bill · · 15 replies · · 436+ views · · Virtual Library · · Unk · · Lynn Harry Nelson ·	Lectures in Medieval History -- The Great Famine (1315-1317) and the Black Death (1346-1351) -- The 14th century was an era of catastrophes. Some of them man-made, such as the Hundred Years' War, the Avignon Papacy, and the Great Schism. These were caused by human beings, and we shall consider them a bit later. There were two more or less natural disasters either of which one would think would have been sufficient to throw medieval Europe into a real "Dark Ages": the Great Famine and the Black Death. Each caused millions of deaths, and each in its way demonstrated in...
Age of Sail
400 years later, explorer's death still a mystery (Henry Hudson)
· 07/07/2009 4:51:21 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 14 replies · · 548+ views · · Live Science · · Jul 7, 2009 · · Heather Whipps ·	It has been 400 years since English explorer Henry Hudson mapped the northeast coast of North America, leaving a wake of rivers and towns named in his honor, yet what happened to the famed explorer remains a mystery. Hudson was never heard from again after a mutiny by his crew during a later voyage through northern Canada. That he died in the area in 1611 is a certainty, and he may have even been killed in cold blood, according to new research.
Underwater Archaeology
Underwater exploration seeks evidence of early Americans
· 07/10/2009 7:10:01 AM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 14 replies · · 232+ views · · Eurekalert · · Thursday, July 9, 2009 · · Debbie Morton, Mercyhurst College ·	Where the first Americans came from, when they arrived and how they got here is as lively a debate as ever, only most of the research to date has focused on dry land excavations. But, last summer's pivotal underwater exploration in the Gulf of Mexico led by Mercyhurst College archaeologist Dr. James Adovasio yielded evidence of inundated terrestrial sites that may well have supported human occupation more than 12,000 years ago, and paved the way for another expedition this July. As part of their 2008 findings, the researchers located and mapped buried stream and river channels and identified in-filled sinkholes...
Diet and Cuisine
Maize may have fueled ancient Andean civilization [ update of sorts ]
· 07/10/2009 5:32:03 AM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 27 replies · · 204+ views · · Science News · · Bruce Bower ·	Prehistoric communities in one part of Peru's Andes Mountains may have gone from maize to amazingly complex. Bioarchaeologist Brian Finucane's analyses of human skeletons excavated in this region indicate that people living there 2,800 years ago regularly ate maize. This is the earliest evidence for maize as a staple food in the rugged terrain of highland Peru, he says. Maize agriculture stimulated ancient population growth in the Andes and allowed a complex society, the Wari, to develop, Finucane contends in the August Current Anthropology. Wari society included a central government and other elements of modern states. It lasted from around...
The Zapotec
Zapotec Digs in Mexico Show Clues to Rise and Fall
· 07/10/2009 10:11:11 AM PDT · · Posted by SunkenCiv · · 7 replies · · 173+ views · · National Geographic · · March 9, 2009 · · John Roach ·	For 1,500 years, the agrarian Zapotec state spanned 800 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) and was home to at least 100,000 people. The Zapotec were pioneers in the use of agriculture and writing systems. They were gifted weavers and ceramic artisans. They built Monte Albán, one of the earliest cities in the Americas, and established a remarkably organized bureaucratic structure. But their state collapsed, and no one is exactly sure why. One place where the story of Zapotec civilization is being uncovered is 25 miles (40 kilometers) outside the city of Oaxaca, at the site of an ancient town...
Peru, the Andes
Scientists Uncover Inca Children's Countdown To Sacrifice
· 10/01/2007 3:43:47 PM PDT · · Posted by blam · · 22 replies · · 597+ views · · Eureka Alert · · 10-1-2007 · · Craig Brierley ·	Hair samples from naturally preserved child mummies discovered at the world's highest archaeological site in the Andes have provided a startling insight into the lives of the children chosen for sacrifice. Researchers funded by the Wellcome Trust used DNA and stable isotope analysis to show how children as young as 6-years old were "fattened up" and taken on a pilgrimage to their death. A team of scientists led by Dr Andrew Wilson at the University of Bradford analysed hair samples taken from the heads and from...
Inca Sacrifice Victims "Fattened Up" Before Death (all Cultural Values are "equal" alert)
· 10/09/2007 9:31:46 AM PDT · · Posted by SirLinksalot · · 7 replies · · 775+ views · · National Geographic · · 10/03/2007 · · Kelly Hearn ·	Children selected for Inca ritual sacrifice were "fattened up" with high-protein diets in the months leading up to their deaths, a new study has found. Researcher Andrew Wilson and his team conducted DNA and chemical tests of hair samples taken from four child mummies found in the Andes mountains in the 1990s. (See a photo gallery of the frozen Inca mummies.) By studying the ratios of chemicals present in the hair, the team helped show how victims were prepared for death...
Precolumbian, Clovis, and PreClovis
The lost tribe of South Carolina
· 07/05/2009 11:49:30 AM PDT · · Posted by BGHater · · 15 replies · · 599+ views · · The State · · 05 July 2009 · · JOEY HOLLEMAN ·	Cofitachequi: We can't pronounce it, we don't know exactly where it is, but the importance of this Native American mound city is clear. North Carolina has the Lost Colony, a 16th-century legend that draws the curious to the longest running outdoor theater production in North America. The desert Southwest has the Anasazi, the native culture that vanished in the 14th century and is celebrated at a dozen National Park Service sites. South Carolina has a combination of the two -- Cofitachequi. Ever heard of it? Cofitachequi is mentioned in third-grade S.C. history books, and there's a diorama about it at...
Old Man River
Amazon River Up To 11 Million Years Old, Says Study
· 07/08/2009 12:55:12 PM PDT · · Posted by decimon · · 35 replies · · 506+ views · · Scientific Blogging · · July 7th 2009 · · News Staff ·	The Amazon River has been around for 11 million years ago and in its shape for the last 2.4 million years ago, according to a study on two boreholes drilled in proximity of the mouth of the Amazon River by Petrobras, the national oil company of Brazil. Until recently the Amazon Fan, a sediment column of around 10 kilometres in thickness, proved a hard nut to crack, and scientific drilling expeditions such as Ocean Drilling Program could only reach a fraction of it. Recent exploration efforts by Petrobras lifted...
Quit Comparing Hitler to Obama
Alternative Encryption Technologies of WWII
· 07/08/2009 3:52:05 AM PDT · · Posted by Osnome · · 12 replies · · 314+ views poster · · 7-8-09 · · poster ·	So many technologies of Code Encrption were used and could have been used in WW2 by both sides. David Kahn in his book THE CODEBREAKERS stated why did not the Germans, some of whom relaized that their Enigma Code Machine was far from infallible, did not adopt new dissimilar machines. Well his(Kahn's) answer was:"they did they not have another machine" That is far from true. The above are alternatives to Enigma: The Hitler-Muhle(Mill). Mill is German slang for 'typewriter'.
Oh So Mysteriouso
Czech: Rare Devil's Bible to return to Prague for exhibition (Codex Gigas)
· 04/24/2007 2:29:54 AM PDT · · Posted by TigerLikesRooster · · 16 replies · · 1,294+ views · · Ceske Noviny · · 04/17/07 ·	Rare Devil's Bible to return to Prague for exhibition Stockholm -- The rare Devil's Bible, which Swedish troops took away from Bohemia during the Thirty Years' War and which Czech PM Mirek Topolanek got acquainted with during his visit to Sweden today, will return temporarily to Prague this year and put on display in the National Library. Stockholm's Royal Library experts told Topolanek that the Devil's Bible (Codex Gigas) is one of the most valuable medieval manuscripts summarizing the period knowledge. The manuscript, weighing 75 kg, has a wooden cover in white leather of 92x50.5x22 centimetres. Its digitalisation is underway, the...
Return of Devil's Bible to Prague draws crowds
· 09/23/2007 4:38:02 PM PDT · · Posted by NYer · · 26 replies · · 431+ views · · AP · · September 21, 2007 ·	Codex Gigas, also known as the Devil's Bible -- a medieval manuscript said to have been written 800 years ago with the devil's help -- has returned to Prague after an absence of 359 years. And Czechs were eager to see it, officials said Friday.The priceless piece, considered the biggest medieval book, was taken from the Prague Castle by Swedish troops at the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648. It is in Prague on loan from Sweden's Royal Library in Stockholm. It was put on display under high security at the Czech National Library.Its...
Mysterious Book: Codex Gigas
· 07/07/2009 8:24:41 AM PDT · · Posted by BGHater · · 17 replies · · 829+ views · · Socyberty · · 06 July 2009 · · S. Hayes ·	A huge mysterious medieval book, penned by a Benedictine monk on animal skin with bizarre devilish illustration and incantation. But who has the missing pages, and why? Codex Gigas -- literally translated means "Giant Book", photograph below, with a box of matches resting on it, gives an idea of the scale of the almost metre long text, it takes two people to lift it, which makes it the largest medieval manuscript in the world. The book can be found in the National library in Stockholm -- it has 600 pages -- all made from animal (donkey) skin, the front and...
end of digest #260 20090711

[SunkenCiv]

Gods Graves Glyphs Digest #260 20090711 · Saturday, July 11, 2009 · 42 topics · 2290085 to 2284464 · 719 members ·
	Saturday Jul 11 2009 v 5 n 52 view this issue	Welcome to the 260th issue the last one of the fifth full year of Digest issues. Another welcome to the new GGG listmembers. I'm trying another format for the Digest (not this ping message, the actual issue). My idea is a sound one, I just hope I don't drive myself crazy with the goofy detailed tweaking that may be necessary to make everything look sharp. Basically, if it doesn't go that well, I'll revert to the formatting we've all no doubt enjoyed for the past year or so. That has sped up the editing of the issues, and minimized the amount of fooling around I've had to do each week. Take a look at it (I'm posting a test message just to tantalize and delight you ;') and just give me fair warning before you throw something at my head. Thanks. Donate to FreeRepublic.
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[Founding Father]

I didn’t think you could make this ping list any better, but you did with the new format. Thanks again for all your hard work!