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Relics of three civilisations found By Saadia Khalid 6/9/2008 Islamabad The remains of more than 2,400-year-old Buddhist era are nurturing silently under the lap of Margalla Hills as the murals of Buddha appeared on the walls of caves at Shah Allah Ditta. At the distance of 15 kilometres from the main Golra intersection, the site needs immediate attention of the Department of Archaeology and Museums as it possesses not only the relics of Buddhist era but also 8th century AD Hindu period and the 300-year-old Aurangzeb period. According to archaeologists, the cages belong to Buddhists where monks used to perform...

Contact: Nan Broadbent press@seismosoc.org 408-431-9885 Seismological Society of America Unearthing clues of catastrophic earthquakes 'An inviting tale of destruction' SANTA FE, New Mexico -- The destruction and disappearance of ancient cultures mark the history of human civilization, making for fascinating stories and cautionary tales. The longevity of today’s societies may depend upon separating fact from fiction, and archeologists and seismologists are figuring out how to join forces to do just that with respect to ancient earthquakes, as detailed in new studies presented at the international conference of the Seismological Society of America. "It's an idea whose time has come, "...

DAKAR (Reuters) - World Muslim leaders on Friday condemned extremism and terrorism as incompatible with Islam and proposed a high-level international meeting to promote a "dialogue of civilizations" with the Christian world. Leaders of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which represents 1.5 billion Muslims from across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, made the "Dakar Declaration" after a two-day summit in Senegal's capital. "We continue to strongly condemn all forms of extremism and dogmatism which are incompatible with Islam, a religion of moderation and peaceful coexistence," the declaration said. "We believe that it is important to plan...

Source: University Of British Columbia Date: April 25, 2007 Studying Early China, To Learn Why Civilizations Rise And Fall Science Daily — In the Yellow River valley of northern China, Zhichun Jing digs through the remains of long-ago cities to find insights for modern survival. Over the past 10 years, Jing has been excavating the cities of the late Shang Dynasty. Flourishing between 1,200 and 1,050 BC, the Shang was one of the first literate civilizations in China and East Asia. Its last capital city was Yinxu, where the present-day city of Anyang now stands. Zhichun Jing studies the dynamics...

Collapse of civilisations linked to monsoon changes 11:13 04 January 2007 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic The downfall of the one of the greatest Chinese dynasties may have been catalysed by severe changes in climate. The same climate changes may have simultaneously led to the end of the Maya civilisation depicted in Mel Gibson's new film Apocalypto. So says Gerald Haug of the GeoForschungsZentrum in Germany and colleagues, who studied geological records of monsoons over the past 16,000 years. They have found a startling correlation between climate extremes and the fall of two great civilisations: the Tang dynasty in China...

Sheik: 'Only dialogue we want is when all religions agree to convert to Islam' Posted: 1:00 a.m. Eastern By © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com Pope Benedict XVI JERUSALEM – Pope Benedict XVI's meeting this week with a delegation of Muslim leaders and his calls for interfaith dialogue following earlier remarks about Islam are really "Crusader conspiracies" to subjugate the Islamic faith and force "Christian-Zionist" worldviews upon Muslims, a prominent Gaza Strip preacher told WorldNetDaily in an interview. Sheik Abu Saqer, leader of Gaza's Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, which seeks to make secular Muslims more religious, called the pope a "puppet" for...

Kissinger warns of possible "war of civilizations" Wed Sep 13, 1:23 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger warned that Europe and the United States must unite to head off a "war of civilizations" arising from a nuclear-armed Middle East. In an opinion column in the Washington Post, the renowned foreign policy expert said the potential for a "global catastrophe" dwarfed lingering transatlantic mistrust left over from the Iraq war. "A common Atlantic policy backed by moderate Arab states must become a top priority, no matter how pessimistic previous experience with such projects leaves one,"...

Scientists debate role climate change plays in creating civilizations Tuesday, July 04, 2006 BRADLEY T . LEPPER One of archaeology’s "big questions" is explaining the origins of civilization. In anthropology, "civilization" has a technical definition. To qualify as a civilization, a society must have all or most of the following characteristics: cities with large populations; a hierarchical social organization, with a king, pharaoh or president at the top of the organizational chart; an economy based on agriculture; monumental architecture; and a system of record-keeping. The earliest civilizations arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and northern China. Based on this...

Yeah, we're childish. But these are exactly the kinds of questions that pop into our head all the time -- especially as Cathy is forcing us to watch Extra or somesuch. So we decided to put this list together and welcome your input. Here are the ground rules: 1. By "countries," we mean current countries based on current boundaries. 2. Any past accomplishments are credited to the current country; modern Iraq, for example, gets credit for Mesopotamia. 3. Seminal achievements score the biggest points; however, some points are deducted for long periods of backwardness. 4. For our descriptions, our own...

We stand today at an unprecedented turning point in human history. In recent years two versions of ancient history have formed. One, we shall call ‘alternative’ history, the other we shall refer to as ‘official’ history. The former ponders over a variety of anomalies and tries to make sense out of the corpus of evidence, i.e., the pyramids and timelines, why they were built, by whom and when. The latter conducts digs, catalogues pottery shards, and tries to defend its proposal there are no enigmas, and virtually everything is explained. At one point perhaps as late as fifteen years ago...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations, acting after deadly suicide bombings apparently driven by Muslim extremism hit London, launched an initiative on Thursday to build new bridges between the West and Islam. The campaign's aim was to "bridge divides and overcome prejudice, misconceptions, misperceptions, and polarization which potentially threaten world peace," U.N. chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Recent events had "heightened the sense of a widening gap and lack of mutual understanding between Islamic and Western societies -- an environment that has been exploited and exacerbated by extremists in all societies," he said. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was pursuing the...

Does it Exist? A leading intellectual figure and stalwart fighter in America's confrontation with radical Islam, Daniel Pipes is perhaps best known for his idea that "radical Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution." As Pipes argues, radical Islam, though currently the dominant political force in the Muslim world, is supported by only 10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide, while moderate Islam represents the great, though so far mostly silent, majority of Muslims. He further points out that radical Islam, also known as militant Islam or Islamism, is a very recent phenomenon, having more in common with...

GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Los Angeles — NEW Year's weekend traditionally is a time for us to reflect, and to make resolutions based on our reflections. In this fresh year, with the United States seemingly at the height of its power and at the start of a new presidential term, Americans are increasingly concerned and divided about where we are going. How long can America remain ascendant? Where will we stand 10 years from now, or even next year? Such questions seem especially appropriate this year. History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse, they tend to do so quickly and...

Gene Savoy plunged into the Peruvian jungle half a century ago in search of the fabled El Dorado, a lost Incan city so wealthy that its king reputedly walked coated in gold dust. Now semiretired, Savoy never found El Dorado. But along the way, he became the world's foremost chronicler of a forgotten civilization known as the Chachapoya — and a blight to traditional archeologists. Savoy, 79, is among the last of a dying breed — the swashbuckling adventurer whose expeditions plow through the world's rain forests in search of lost history. The tension between Savoy and the archeological establishment...

Microscopic analysis, reported in the current issue of the journal Geology, revealed a 3-inch-thick layer of "shocked quartz" — a form of the mineral produced only under intense pressure like that of an impact — that dated to 35.5 million years ago, when a space rock slammed into the Earth about 120 miles southeast of present-day Washington.

IF IT had hit Central London, Britain would no longer have a capital city. The force of the meteorite that hit eastern Siberia last September destroyed 40 square miles of forest and caused earth tremors felt 60 miles away. An expedition from Russia's Kosmopoisk institute has only recently reached the site in a remote area north of Lake Baikal because of bad weather and difficult terrain, the Interfax news agency said yesterday. Fragments of the meteorite had apparently exploded into shrapnel 18 miles above the Earth with the force of at least 200 tonnes of TNT. At the time, Russian...

LUTON, England, April 24 — The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say. In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street. They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like...

Granada, Spain – As the fiery orange sun sinks behind the mountains, the stones of the 800-year-old Alhambra take on a rosy glow. Against the backdrop of the snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevada, the fortress' rugged towers stand out in the gathering dusk. As the lights of this long-ago capital of al-Andalus — Islamic Spain — blink to life, about 30 men kneel in neat rows inside a whitewashed mosque atop a hill facing the Alhambra. Palms held upward, they recite the evening prayers and bend forward until their heads touch the floor. Behind a thin screen, the shadowy...

The Atlantis between Spain and Morocco Revealing discoveries  Expedition: "The Ibero-Marroqui Atlantis '"   By Maria Fdez-Valmayor  A Scientific Expedition has started off at the end of this summer for the area of the Straits of Gibraltar in search of possible ruins of the well-known civilization like Atlantis by Plato. According to the project? Atlantis Ibero-Moroccan, between the coasts of southwest of the Iberian Peninsula and the northwest of Africa evidences of cities or submerged coastal villages of the Age of the Bronze would have to be, that could belong to the Island or Peninsula of Atlantis. The expedition...

© 1998 Ralph Peters When you leave the classroom or office and go into the world, you see at first its richness and confusions, the variety and tumult. Then, if you keep moving and do not quit looking, commonalties begin to emerge. National success is eccentric. But national failure is programmed and predictable. Spotting the future losers among the world's states becomes so easy it loses its entertainment value. In this world of multiple and simultaneous revolutions--in technology, information, social organization, biology, economics, and convenience--the rules of international competition have changed. There is a global marketplace and, increasingly, a global...

<p>"Today our nation saw evil."</p> <p>The air fills with prayer this weekend as worshipers, or at least church-goers, attend the rites of Holy Week and Passover. These rituals call forth traditions and ideas born centuries ago, not least the idea that mankind is redeemable. It seems, however, that one other idea that for centuries had been a constant through these few days has declined and is out of favor. That is the idea of evil. There is something about evil today -- the word, its implications -- that discomfits up-to-date sensibilities. I think modern discomfort with evil explains, in part, the opposition to making war against Saddam Hussein.</p>

<p>For a long time now it has been our practice in the modern Western world to define ourselves primarily by nationality, and to see other identities and allegiances—religious, political, and the like—as subdivisions of the larger and more important whole. The events of September 11 and after have made us aware of another perception—of a religion subdivided into nations rather than a nation subdivided into religions—and this has induced some of us to think of ourselves and of our relations with others in ways that had become unfamiliar. The confrontation with a force that defines itself as Islam has given a new relevance—indeed, urgency—to the theme of the "clash of civilizations."</p>

Comets, Meteors & Myth: New Evidence for Toppled Civilizations and Biblical Tales By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer posted: 07:00 am ET 13 November 2001 "...and the seven judges of hell ... raised their torches, lighting the land with their livid flame. A stupor of despair went up to heaven when the god of the storm turned daylight into darkness, when he smashed the land like a cup." -- An account of the Deluge from the Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 2200 B.C. If you are fortunate enough to see the storm of shooting stars predicted for the Nov. 18...

  Written about 1994 is my guess. An excerpt from:http://www.coloradocollege.edu/dept/PS/Finley/PS425/reading/Huntington1.html   The Clash of Civilizations?by Samuel P. HuntingtonSAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON is the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and Director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. This article is the product of the Olin Institute's project on "The Changing Security Environment and American National Interests."Almost without exception, Western countries are reducing their military power; under Yeltsin's leadership so also is Russia. China, North Korea and several Middle Eastern states, however, are significantly expanding their military capabilities. They are doing this by the import...