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The coastline and landscape of what would become modern Britain began to emerge at the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago. What had been a cold, dry tundra on the north-western edge of Europe grew warmer and wetter as the ice caps melted. The Irish Sea, North Sea and the Channel were all dry land, albeit land slowly being submerged as sea levels rose. But it wasn't until 6,100BC that Britain broke free of mainland Europe for good, during the Mesolithic period -- the Middle Stone Age. It is thought a landslide in Norway triggered one...

Underwater archaeologists are taking to Loch Tay to try to uncover more about a submerged prehistoric woodland. The stumps of about 50 trees were discovered in 2005 - some of them are thought to be about 6,000 years old. The experts are now aiming to find their root system and establish the depth to which the trees are buried. Meanwhile, a campaign has been launched to help restore the reconstructed crannog, an ancient loch dwelling, which attracts thousands of visitors. The Scottish Trust for Underwater Archaeology will spend the next two weeks inspecting the drowned forest. They will be focusing...

Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there is no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the country’s western and northern fringes. But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of...

Throughout the 19th century there have been reports and scholarly discussions of submerged forests and artefacts from now-submerged environments around the coasts and seas of Britain (Coles 1998). Since the publication of Doggerland: a speculative study by Prof. Bryony Coles in 1998, there has been significant progress in the active investigation of submerged prehistoric landscapes around the coasts of the UK. To date much of this progress has been focused around the coasts of England and Wales, partly as a consequence of the geographical distribution of available funding streams i.e. the Marine element of the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (MALSF)....

In this Timewatch special, historian Bettany Hughes unravels one of the most intriguing mysteries of all time. She presents a series of geological, archaeological and historical clues to show that the legend of Atlantis was inspired by a real historical event -- the greatest natural disaster of the ancient world. She is tracing the origins of the Atlantis myth and presenting evidence that the Thera eruption inspired Plato's account of the mystical land. 2,400 years ago Greek philosopher Plato wrote of an ancient island civilization of unparalleled wealth and splendor, which was struck by earthquakes and floods and was swallowed...

How an 1870s marine expedition changed oceanography and drove eight sailors insane When was the first voyage of the Challenger? No, not the Space Shuttle — the original Challenger, a sea ship that sailed in 1872. The HMS Challenger traversed the world's oceans for four years, drove some of its sailors completely insane, caused about a quarter of the crew to jump ship, and forever changed the face of ocean science. Is there a way to scroll past the nature channels without seeing one that describes the richness of the ocean and the life that teems in its depth? In...

The Marshall Islands is approaching extinction. The threat is not from a plague or a warring neighbor. It is the very ocean that surrounds this archipelago of islands and atolls located in the Pacific Ocean just above the equator. The math is as simple as it is deadly. As global temperatures rise, so will sea levels from three to six feet by the end of the century according to the Columbia University Earth Institute. The speckles of flat land that make up the Marshall Islands rise about seven feet above sea level. In a few decades, scientists predict that rising...

Abstract Background The use of human braincases as drinking cups and containers has extensive historic and ethnographic documentation, but archaeological examples are extremely rare. In the Upper Palaeolithic of western Europe, cut-marked and broken human bones are widespread in the Magdalenian (~15 to 12,000 years BP) and skull-cup preparation is an element of this tradition. Principal Findings Here we describe the post-mortem processing of human heads at the Upper Palaeolithic site of Gough's Cave (Somerset, England) and identify a range of modifications associated with the production of skull-cups. New analyses of human remains from Gough's Cave demonstrate the skilled post-mortem...

Semi-detached houses with gardens, clothes drying in the courtyards, walls and well-made streets - Pavlopetri epitomises the suburban way of life. Except that it's a Bronze Age port, submerged for millennia off the south-east coast of Greece.This summer it became the first underwater city to be fully digitally mapped and recorded in three dimensions, and then brought back to life with computer graphics. The result shows how much it has in common with port cities of today - Liverpool, London, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo or Shanghai - despite the fact that its heyday was 4,000 years ago. Covering an...

HE has flown warplanes, shot at tigers and ridden bare-chested on horseback, but Russia's macho prime minister Vladimir Putin is now preparing for his next challenge - diving for Russia's version of Atlantis. Putin, 58, traveled to the Taman Peninsula in the southwest of the country to publicise archaeological work at the ancient Greek city of Phanagoria, Ria Novosti news agency reported. Putin was expected to put on diving gear and head to the bottom of Taman Bay, part of the Kerch Strait leading into the northern edge of the vast Black Sea. Phanagoria was a major Greek colony in...

Today, early this morning at 5:56 AM, EDT, today, the United States NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis landed in Florida, marking the end of an era in space travel, exploration, and discovery. I was able to watch online the shuttle land, with brilliant early morning warm weather just before the sun was getting ready to make its appearance. Also had down a standing ovation and said THANKS for the memories of thirty years of space shuttle flight. The sad thing though about this las space flight is that it now has made me grow a bit older and much more sadden...

Well this is it folks.. It has been a fun ride. It is a shame that I didn't get to see those birds launch in person. Oh well should have moved to Florida.

Buried deep beneath the sediment of the North Atlantic Ocean lies an ancient, lost landscape with furrows cut by rivers and peaks that once belonged to mountains. Geologists recently discovered this roughly 56-million-year-old landscape using data gathered for oil companies. "It looks for all the world like a map of a bit of a country onshore," said Nicky White, the senior researcher. "It is like an ancient fossil landscape preserved 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) beneath the seabed." So far, the data have revealed a landscape about 3,861 square miles (10,000 square km) west of the Orkney-Shetland Islands that stretched above...

The last Space Shuttle just took off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission – crewed by NASA astronauts Chris Ferguson (commander), Doug Hurley (pilot), and mission specialists Rex Walheim and Sandy Magnus – will “deliver supplies, logistics and spare parts to the International Space Station.” Along with bringing stuff up for the space station, Atlantis will be bringing the first iPhone into space to help with some experiments during the 12 day mission.

When the NASA space shuttle Atlantis lifts off, either today or on the make-up day of July 16, 2011, it will mark the END of an era in space flight. For 30 years, the NASA space shuttle program blazed a path for increased scientific interest in out space. Even with the tragic endings to both the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles, it did not discourage interest of space related exploration. Where should NASA go from here? NASA should look at with interest in working with private space-related development companies and also branch out into other science tech areas. Work also...

A high school buddy of mine is in town for a while and we're headed for the cape to watch tomrrow's launch, or get rained on! I've never watched a launch when I had a good camera, maybe I'll get lucky.If we get rained out I want to try for some shots in the wildlife refuge.

2000x1330 pixels, 3000x1996 pixels. Via photo 22 at http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20051129.htm

Retired German math teacher Joachim Rittstieg says ancient Dresden Codex and Mayan priests guided him to the legendary Atlantis in eastern Guatemala. A retired German math teacher has spurred a national hubbub in Guatemala by claiming to have discovered an ancient underwater city laden with treasure. Joachim Rittstieg grabbed headlines in March with his visit to Lake Izabal in eastern Guatemala. Buried there, he claims, are eight tons of gold tablets in Plato’s legendary Atlantis. Instead of being dismissed, Mr. Rittstieg has garnered a lot of interest. Guatemalan newspapers called him a “German scientist” and followed his expedition with enthusiasm....

NORTHAMPTON, Mass (Reuters) – A U.S.-led research team may have finally located the lost city of Atlantis, the legendary metropolis believed swamped by a tsunami thousands of years ago in mud flats in southern Spain. "This is the power of tsunamis," head researcher Richard Freund told Reuters. "It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about," said Freund, a University of Hartford, Connecticut, professor who lead an international team searching for the true site of Atlantis. To solve the age-old mystery, the team used a satellite...

Dr. Richard Freund to be featured in a National Geographic Channel film; public invited to preview on Wednesday. Spend a little time with Dr. Richard Freund of the University of Hartford, and you might be convinced that the lost city of Atlantis is buried deep within a swamp in southern Spain. Freund, who directs the university's Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies, worked with a team of Spanish, American and Canadian scientists to examine a muddy swamp in Spain that was first noted as a possible location for Atlantis by a German scientist looking at satellite photos in 2003. Freund's 2009...