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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #430
Saturday, October 13, 2012 |
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| Diet & Cuisine |
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Who Mastered Fire?
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· 10/06/2012 1:16:02 PM PDT ·
· Posted by presidio9 ·
· 34 replies ·
· Slate ·
· Friday, Oct. 5, 2012 ·
· L.V. Anderson · |
Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist at Harvard, claims that hominids became people -- that is, acquired traits like big brains and dainty jaws -- by mastering fire. He places this development at about 1.8 million years ago. This is an appealing premise no matter who you are. For those who see cooking as morally, culturally, and socially superior to not cooking, it is scientific validation of a worldview: proof that cooking is literally what makes us human. For the rest of us, it means we have a clever retort the next time one of those annoying raw-food faddists starts going on about how natural it... |
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| Biology & Cryptobiology |
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DNA has a 521-year half-life
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· 10/10/2012 8:32:08 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 135 replies ·
· Nature ·
· Wednesday, October 10, 2012 ·
· Matt Kaplan · |
By comparing the specimens' ages and degrees of DNA degradation, the researchers calculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. That means that after 521 years, half of the bonds between nucleotides in the backbone of a sample would have broken; after another 521 years half of the remaining bonds would have gone; and so on. The team predicts that even in a bone at an ideal preservation temperature of -5°C, effectively every bond would be destroyed after a maximum of 6.8 million years. The DNA would cease to be readable much earlier -- perhaps after roughly 1.5... |
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| Prehistory & Origins |
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Complex Brains Existed 520 Million Years Ago in Cockroach Relative
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· 10/11/2012 4:22:26 AM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 10 replies ·
· Scientific American 'blogs ·
· October 10, 2012 ·
· Katherine Harmon · |
Cockroaches and other insects belong to a group called the arthropods, which arose some 540 million years ago. A new Chinese fossil is yielding new insights into how the arthropod brain evolved and shows that within the first 20 million years of the group's emergence, the arthropod brain had already become surprisingly advanced. The new findings are based on a three-inch-long fossil arthropod known as Fuxianhuia protensa, found in what is now China's Yunnan Province and were described online October 10 in Nature (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group)... Fuxianhuia's body is understandably primitive, which is par for... |
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| Dinosaurs |
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How Did Dinosaurs Sleep?
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· 10/11/2012 1:09:07 AM PDT ·
· Posted by Renfield ·
· 33 replies ·
· Smithsonian Magazine (blog) ·
· 10-9-2012 ·
· Brian Switek · |
Bone by bone and study by study, paleontologists are learning more than ever before about dinosaurs. But there are still many aspects about prehistoric biology that we know little about. In fact, some of the simplest facets of dinosaur lives remain elusive. For one thing, we don't know much at all about how dinosaurs slept. Did Apatosaurus doze standing up or kneel down to rest? Did tyrannosaurs use their tiny, muscular arms to push themselves off the ground after a nap? And, given the discovery of so many enfluffled dinosaurs, did fuzzy dinosaurs ever cuddle up together to stay warm... |
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| Paleontology |
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A Fossilized Scene of a Spider Attacking a Wasp, Preserved for 110 Million Years
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· 10/09/2012 2:04:50 PM PDT ·
· Posted by DogByte6RER ·
· 67 replies ·
· IO9 ·
· October 9, 2012 ·
· George Dvorsky · |
Paleontologists have discovered beautifully preserved species trapped in amber before -- but this one is extraordinary. It features a parasitic wasp that has become ensnared in a spider's web, with the owner bearing down on it for an attack. But just before the spider was about to have its meal, a drop of resin flowed down from above, freezing the moment in time. Researchers date the scene to the Early Cretaceous between 97 to 110 million years ago in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar -- a... |
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| British Isles |
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A History of Celtic Britain (1of4) -- Age of Iron
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· 10/10/2012 8:25:07 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 8 replies ·
· BBC via YouTube ·
· July 22, 2011 ·
· Uploaded by PIETRASZE · |
A History of Celtic Britain (1of4) -- Age of Iron |
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| Scotland Yet |
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Neolithic discovery: why Orkney is the centre of ancient Britain
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· 10/07/2012 2:56:45 AM PDT ·
· Posted by Renfield ·
· 19 replies ·
· Guardian (UK) ·
· 10-06-2012 ·
· Robin McKie · |
Drive west from Orkney's capital, Kirkwall, and then head north on the narrow B9055 and you will reach a single stone monolith that guards the entrance to a spit of land known as the Ness of Brodgar. The promontory separates the island's two largest bodies of freshwater, the Loch of Stenness and the Loch of Harray. At their furthest edges, the lochs' peaty brown water laps against fields and hills that form a natural amphitheatre; a landscape peppered with giant rings of stone, chambered cairns, ancient villages and other archaeological riches. This is the heartland of the Neolithic North, a... |
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| Roman Empire |
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CSIC researchers find the exact spot where Julius Caesar was stabbed
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· 10/10/2012 8:46:06 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 50 replies ·
· EurekAlert! ·
· Wednesday, October 10, 2012 ·
· CSIC Comunicacion · |
A concrete structure of three meters wide and over two meters high, placed by order of Augustus (adoptive son and successor of Julius Caesar) to condemn the assassination of his father, has given the key to the scientists. This finding confirms that the General was stabbed right at the bottom of the Curia of Pompey while he was presiding, sitting on a chair, over a meeting of the Senate. Currently, the remains of this building are located in the archaeological area of Torre Argentina, right in the historic centre of the Roman capital... Classical sources refer to the closure (years... |
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Archaeologists Discover Murder Site Where Julius Caesar Was Assassinated in 44 B.C.
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· 10/11/2012 2:55:00 PM PDT ·
· Posted by DogByte6RER ·
· 8 replies ·
· Live Science ·
· October 11, 2012 ·
· Stephanie Pappas · |
Archaeologists believe they have found the first physical evidence of the spot where Julius Caesar died, according to a new Spanish National Research Council report. Caesar, the head of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a group of rival Roman senators on March 14, 44 B.C, the Ides of March. The assassination is well-covered in classical texts, but until now, researchers had no archaeological evidence of the place where it happened. Now, archaeologists have unearthed a concrete structure nearly 10 feet wide and 6.5 feet tall (3 meters by 2 meters)... |
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| Assyrians |
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Archeologists uncover new Assyrian site in northern Iraq
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· 10/07/2012 10:09:09 AM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 7 replies ·
· Al-Arabiya ·
· Tuesday, 02 October 2012 ·
· Al Arabiya · |
Archeologists working in northern Iraq have discovered a new Assyrian site in the vicinity of the historic Arbil city center, the head of the antiquities office in the Kurdish Province of Arbil, Haydar Hassan, was quoted as saying in an Iraqi newspaper. The Assyrian civilization flourished in northern Iraq between 1000-700 B.C., archeologists were led to discover the site when they exhumed a burial ground, complete with mud brick grave heads. To further unearth this site the foreign archeological team had to study and remove two more layers of civilization under which the Assyrian structure was buried, according to a... |
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| Minoans |
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Crete, 3500-year-old Minoan building found:
From same period as Knossos Palace, over 1,300 square m
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· 10/08/2012 7:06:47 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 13 replies ·
· Ansamed ·
· Thursday, October 4 , 2012 ·
· unattributed · |
In the past few years, the remains of an impressive and luxurious building from 3,500 years ago has seen the light. The building has two or three floors and some 80 rooms including workshops and storage rooms over a surface of 1,360 square metres and it is in excellent state. Sapouna-Sakellaraki told To Vima weekly that it is the first Minoan mountain settlement built in the same period as the Palace of Knossos. The archaeologist also said this is the largest summer residence found so far from the Minoan era. The structure of the building shows that it was not... |
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| Greeks |
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Messene, out from under the shadow of Sparta
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· 10/06/2012 9:52:36 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 10 replies ·
· Athens News ·
· August 17, 2012 ·
· John Leonard · |
Messene's 9.5km-long circuit of stoutly constructed defensive walls enclosed an extensive array of uniquely designed public and private structures... Mt Ithome and its southwestern slopes are soaked in history, their occupation dating back to at least the Early Bronze Age. The city of Messene, within the larger region of the same name, was only founded in 369BC, at the behest of the Theban leader Epaminondas, two years after Boeotian forces had defeated the Spartans at the Battle of Leuctra and ended their domination over the Peloponnese. Messene and its northeastern neighbour Megalopolis, established in 371BC, were intended as a pair... |
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| Climate |
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Ancient Romans, Chinese Helped Warm Planet
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· 10/04/2012 8:25:35 PM PDT ·
· Posted by Milagros ·
· 22 replies ·
· Newser ·
· Oct. 4, 2012 · |
(NEWSER) -- Human activity contributed to climate change long before the Industrial Revolution, according to new research. Scientists analyzing ice core samples from Greenland found a spike in emissions of the greenhouse gas methane during a 200-year period around 2,000 years ago, when the ancient Roman and Chinese empires were at their peak, reports the Los Angeles Times. Researchers believe the rise was caused by the widespread use of charcoal as fuel and the burning of... |
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| PreColumbian, Clovis & PreClovis |
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Mexican archaeologists discover the tomb of a pre-hispanic governor in Copalita
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· 10/12/2012 7:40:37 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 3 replies ·
· Art Daily ·
· Saturday, October 13, 2012 ·
· translator Cristina Perez Ayala · |
The sepulcher of an individual that (possibly) governed a place known today as Bocana del Río Copalita in Huatulco, Oaxaca, 1300 years ago, was discovered by investigators of the ceremonial area of this archaeological site. Here another 38 burials were found, some of which were individuals whom they believe part of the elite. ...archaeologists found a sepulcher made with masonry's stone blocks of about 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) high and 1 meter (3.28 feet) wide. The sepulcher contained the skeleton of an individual, presumably of the male sex who was between 20 and 23 years old at death... estimated to... |
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| Aztecs |
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Archaeologists find the largest amount of skulls at the most sacred temple of the Aztec empire
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· 10/06/2012 5:37:07 PM PDT ·
· Posted by Renfield ·
· 36 replies ·
· ArtDaily.org ·
· 10-7-2012 ·
· Adriana Perez Licon · |
MEXICO CITY (AP).- Mexican archaeologists said Friday they uncovered the largest number of skulls ever found in one offering at the most sacred temple of the Aztec empire dating back more than 500 years. The finding reveals new ways the pre-Colombian civilization used skulls in rituals at Mexico City's Templo Mayor, experts said. That's where the most important Aztec ceremonies took place between 1325 until the Spanish conquest in 1521. The 50 skulls were found at one sacrificial stone. Five were buried under the stone, and each had holes on both sides -- signaling they were hung on a skull... |
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| Ancient Autopsies |
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Kennewick Man bones not from Columbia Valley, scientist tells tribes
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· 10/10/2012 8:02:02 AM PDT ·
· Posted by oh8eleven ·
· 29 replies ·
· The Seattle Times ·
· 10 October 2012 ·
· Lynda V. Mapes · |
Owsley says study shows that not only wasn't Kennewick Man Indian, he wasn't even from the Columbia Valley, which was inhabited by prehistoric Plateau tribes.Tribal members listened for hours to Owsley's highly detailed presentation, but it did not budge their conviction that Kennewick Man is a part of their people's past -- and needs to be reburied. |
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| Megaliths & Archaeoastronomy |
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Mysterious Elk-Shaped Structure Discovered in Russia
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· 10/12/2012 7:13:56 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 25 replies ·
· LiveScience ·
· Thursday, October 11, 2012 ·
· Owen Jarus · |
A huge geoglyph in the shape of an elk or deer discovered in Russia may predate Peru's famous Nazca Lines by thousands of years. The animal-shaped stone structure, located near Lake Zjuratkul in the Ural Mountains, north of Kazakhstan, has an elongated muzzle, four legs and two antlers. A historical Google Earth satellite image from 2007 shows what may be a tail, but this is less clear in more recent imagery. Excluding the possible tail, the animal stretches for about 900 feet (275 meters) at its farthest points (northwest to southeast), the researchers estimate, equivalent to two American football fields.... |
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| Central Asia |
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Sky Caves of Nepal
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· 10/07/2012 3:21:14 AM PDT ·
· Posted by Renfield ·
· 15 replies ·
· National Geographic ·
· 10-2012 ·
· Michael Finkel · |
The skull, a human skull, was perched atop a crumbly boulder in the remote northern reaches of the Nepalese district of Mustang. Pete Athans, the leader of an interdisciplinary team of mountaineers and archaeologists, stepped into his harness and tied himself to a rope. He scrambled up the 20-foot boulder, belayed by another climber, Ted Hesser. ~~~snip~~~ But more intriguing than the skull itself was where it fell from. The boulder Athans scaled sat directly below a soaring cliff, tan rock streaked with bands of pink and white. Toward the top of the cliff were several small caves, painstakingly hand-dug... |
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| Epigraphy & Language |
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Maronite Christians Seek To Revive Aramaic Language
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· 10/12/2012 11:32:09 AM PDT ·
· Posted by marshmallow ·
· 35 replies ·
· The Jewish Daily Forward ·
· 10/12/12 ·
· Ksenia Svetlova · |
Ancient Israeli Minority Hopes To Win Community Recognition -- On a hot August day in the Galilee, a group of schoolchildren in the Arab Christian village of Jish counted diligently, from one to 10, after their instructor. But the words, though similar to Arabic and Hebrew, were neither. "Chada, tarteyn, telat, arba, khamesh," they recited, "shet, shva, tamney, teysha, asar."At this unique summer camp, some 85 children were being immersed in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke and in which the Gemara -- one of the Talmud's two major books -- was written. Once the Middle East's lingua franca, Aramaic is an almost... |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double |
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Research unearths Jewish roots in Colorado Indians
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· 10/09/2012 7:25:35 PM PDT ·
· Posted by Pharmboy ·
· 68 replies ·
· ynet news ·
· 06.01.12 ·
· Anon · |
Native American Indians from western United States found to have genetic mutation typical of Ashkenazi Jews; connection may date back to time of Christopher Columbus A population of Native American Indians from the US state of Colorado has been found to have a genetic mutation typical of Ashkenazi Jews. The finding suggests the presence of common roots that date back to the days of Christopher Columbus. According to RT news, the so-called "Ashkenazi mutation" is a deleterious modification in BRCA1 gene which increases risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. Researchers from the Sheba (Tel Hashomer) Medical Center in Israel... |
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| The Vikings |
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Happy Leif Erikson Day!
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· 10/09/2012 6:02:52 AM PDT ·
· Posted by KC_Lion ·
· 22 replies ·
· EIRÍKS SAGA RAUDA ·
· October 9th, 2012 ·
· Snorri Sturluson · |
1. kafli Óleifur hét herkonungur er kalladur var Óleifur hvíti. Hann var son Ingjalds konungs Helgasonar, Ólafssonar, Gudrödarsonar, Hálfdanarsonar hvítbeins Upplendingakonungs. Óleifur herjadi í vesturvíking og vann Dyflinni á Írlandi og Dyflinnarskíri og gerdist konungur yfir. Hann fékk Audar djúpúdgu dóttur Ketils Flatnefs Bjarnarsonar bunu, ágæts manns úr Noregi. fiorsteinn raudur hét son fleirra. Óleifur féll á Írlandi í orustu en Audur og fiorsteinn fóru flá í Sudureyjar. fiar fékk fiorsteinn fiurídar dóttur Eyvindar austmanns, systur Helga hins magra. fiau áttu mörg börn. |
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| Age of Sail |
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Anglosphere: Celebrating Wrong Italian? (Columbus vs. Cabot)
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· 10/13/2002 10:02:58 AM PDT ·
· Posted by Tancred ·
· 7 replies ·
· United Press Int'l ·
· October 12, 2002 ·
· James C. Bennett · |
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- A few years ago I chanced to be in Buenos Aires on Columbus Day. It is a major holiday there, during which no business is transacted. I spent the day wandering about town enjoying the celebrations. One plaza held a Columbus Day festival in which passersby could enjoy demonstrations and samples of music, dance, crafts and foods of all the various Latin American nations, and of many of the source-nations of Argentina's immigration. The interesting thing to me was the complete absence of anything representing the United States. This was not a coincidence. Columbus, and... |
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| Twentieth Century Art |
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The Discovery Of America By Christopher Columbus (painting by Dali)
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· 10/08/2012 5:54:22 PM PDT ·
· Posted by annalex ·
· 42 replies ·
· The Dali Museum · |
The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus Salvador Dalí 1959 oil on canvas 410 cm x 284 cm (161.4 in x 111.8 in) Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida Dalí completed his tenth masterwork, The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, in 1959. This work, which is almost 14 feet tall, is an ambitious homage to Dalí's Spain, combining Spanish history, religion, art and myth. This painting was commissioned for Huntington Hartford's Gallery of Modern Art on Columbus Circle in New York. At that time, some Catalan historians claimed that Columbus was actually from Catalonia, not Italy. From that... |
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| Longer Perspectives |
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"In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue"
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· 10/08/2012 4:11:00 PM PDT ·
· Posted by Starman417 ·
· 36 replies ·
· Flopping Aces ·
· 10-08-12 ·
· Wordsmith · |
"In fourteen hundred ninety-two/ Columbus sailed the ocean blue. "He had three ships and left from Spain/ He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain." -- Source Unknown I'm old enough to remember a time when Christopher Columbus Day was a national holiday that was widely celebrated rather than shamefully downplayed and derided. Columbus has become the symbolic white devil harbinger of all that is evil about America's founding: genocide and manifest destiny imperialism; slavery and racism; annihilation and exploitation of peaceful, "noble savages" living in harmony with the environment. President Obama seems to echo the sentiments of multiculturalist leftists... |
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Occupy anti colonial anti capitalist "[snip] Columbus" march results in 22 arrests
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· 10/08/2012 5:51:02 PM PDT ·
· Posted by massmike ·
· 24 replies ·
· citizenjournalistdotorg.wordpress.com ·
· 10/08/2012 ·
· n/a · |
Police arrested 22 people during an "anti colonial, anti capitalist" "F--k Columbus Day" march in San Francisco. As they marched, they vandalized cars, slashing the tires of one car and breaking the window of another. They also smashed a Starbucks window. About 15 minutes into the march, they began to throw flares and bags of paint with rocks in them at the police who were accompanying the march. |
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Professor mocks Columbus Day with list of "15 most overrated White people'
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· 10/08/2012 6:17:20 PM PDT ·
· Posted by oliverdarcy ·
· 122 replies ·
· Campus Reform · |
A prominent Ivy-League professor denounced Columbus Day and mocked those who celebrate it by releasing a list of individuals he deems are the "15 most overrated white people" on Monday. Marc Lamont Hill, Associate Professor of English Education at Columbia University, wrote that the holiday is one of America's "most bizarre cultural rituals" and that he finds it perplexing people "continue to praise the vicious conquistador as a hero." "To honor the true spirit of Columbus Day, I have created my own list of overrated white people," he wrote in his article published on the Huffington Post. The list includes... |
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| Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles |
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Diary From The HMNZ Tahiti During The 1918 Pandemic
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· 10/08/2012 12:00:43 PM PDT ·
· Posted by neverdem ·
· 19 replies ·
· Avian Flu Diary ·
· OCTOBER 08, 2012 ·
· Michael Coston · |
For years historians, epidemiologists, and virologists have been attempting to peel back the cobwebs of time in order to analyze the deadliest pandemic in human history; the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. John Barry's The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History, has probably done more to reawaken memories of that awful time than any other source, but many gaps in our knowledge remain. Jeffrey K. Taubenberger and David Morens - both researchers at NIAID -- have added considerably to our understanding of the H1N1 virus and the events surrounding its emergence. Taubenberger was the first to... |
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| Oh So Mysteriouso |
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World's most mysterious buildings
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· 10/11/2012 5:03:46 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 26 replies ·
· Yahoo! Travel ·
· Thursday, October 4, 2012 ·
· Adam H. Graham · |
Mysteries come in many forms: ancient, modern, unsolved, and unexplained. But the world's most mysterious buildings are a physical force to be reckoned with. They've become popularized on websites full of user-generated and editor-curated like Abandoned-places.com, weburbanist.com, and AtlasObscura.com, an exhaustive database of the unusual. "In an age where it sometimes seems like there's nothing left to discover, our site is for people who still believe in exploration," says AtlasObscura.com cofounder Joshua Foer. Our definition of mysterious is broad and varied. Some buildings on our list are being eaten alive by the earth, such as a lava-buried church in the... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany |
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"Let's Unlose This war"
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· 10/12/2012 3:26:13 PM PDT ·
· Posted by TexasBarak ·
· 11 replies ·
· Hatrack.com ·
· October 4, 2012 ·
· Orson Scott Card · |
The reason it is so depressing to read Alone, the middle volume of William Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill, is not because the British government was so obtuse in failing to listen to Churchill's constant warnings about the rising menace of Adolf Hitler. Why should that be depressing? After all, when Hitler finally got the war he had wanted for so long, Churchill was elevated at last to be prime minister of Britain, and in that position he saved Britain and, by the way, the world. So this is the prelude to a tale of triumph. It is sad to... |
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| Obituary |
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Keith Campbell, who cloned Dolly the sheep, dead at 58
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· 10/12/2012 12:18:38 PM PDT ·
· Posted by mojito ·
· 23 replies ·
· CNN ·
· 10/12/2012 ·
· Staff · |
Keith Campbell, the scientist who helped pioneer the birth of Dolly the sheep, the world's first mammal cloned from fully developed adult cells, has died, according to The University of Nottingham. Campbell, 58, died on October 5, according to a university statement released Thursday. His funeral has been scheduled for October 24. The university did not say how he died. Campbell was part of a team at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, that cloned Dolly in 1996. Her birth made headlines worldwide, capturing the scientific imagination of many while generating intense controversy over the ethics of cloning. While Campbell... |
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| end of digest #430 20121013 |
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