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GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Archeologists have uncovered carved stucco panels depicting cosmic monsters, gods and serpents in Guatemala's northern jungle that are the oldest known depictions of a famous Mayan creation myth. The newly discovered panels, both 26 feet long and stacked on top of each other, were created around 300 BC and show scenes from the core Mayan mythology, the Popol Vuh. It took investigators three months to uncover the carvings while excavating El Mirador, the biggest ancient Mayan city in the world, the site's head researcher, Richard Hansen, said on Wednesday. The Maya built soaring temples and elaborate...

The Greek god of thunder and lightning had Earthly beginnings, and scientists think they finally know where. Ancient Greeks first worshipped the omnipotent Zeus at a remote altar on Mount Lykaion, a team of Greek and American archaeologists now think. During a recent dig at the site, the researchers found ceremonial goods commonly used in cult activity and dated at over three millennia old, making them the earliest known "appearance" of Zeus in Greece. The discovery challenges the idea that Zeus worship began on the Greek island of Crete, which at least one classical historian names as the god's mythic...

ATHENS, Greece – Authorities say a hoard of 4,500-year-old copper weapons recovered off a northern beach is the largest of its kind ever found in Greece. A Culture Ministry statement says the discovery includes at least 110 ax and hammer heads, but several more should be extracted from compacted masses of corroded metal. The ministry says they were probably buried at a time of unrest or war. The hoard would have represented a fortune at the time.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Marine microorganisms have been found in amber dating from the middle of the Cretaceous period. The fossils were collected in Charente, in France. This completely unexpected discovery will deepen our understanding of these lost marine species as well as providing precious data about the coastal environment of Western France during the Cretaceous.This work was carried out by researchers at the Géosciences Rennes laboratory (CNRS/Université de Rennes 1), together with researchers from the Paléobiodiversité et Paléoenvironnement laboratory in Paris (CNRS/Muséum national d'histoire naturelle/Université Pierre et Marie Curie) and the Centre de Géochimie de la Surface in Strasbourg (CNRS/Université de...

Archaeologists excavating north of Jerusalem have found a piece of a sarcofagus - a stone coffin - belonging to a son of a High Priest. The visible inscription reads, "the son of the High Priest" - but the words before it are broken off. It thus cannot be ascertained which High Priest is referred to, nor the name or age of the deceased. Many other findings in the excavation are from the late Second Temple period, and archaeologists assume that the High Priest in question lived between 30 and 70 C.E. Yoli Shwartz, Spokesperson for the Israel Antiquities Authority, notes...

9/01/08 3:12PM EST: [UPDATES IN EXTENDED ARTICLE] Credible sources tell YWN that the missing body of 39-year-old Naftoli Smolyansky Z”L, who went missing while on a boating trip in Lake Piru, California has just been found. Naftoli was in a boat on the lake with his 9-year-old son and his two daughters, ages 5 and 7 last Monday afternoon, when his youngest daughter fell overboard. He jumped in to save her, and managed to push his daughter back into the boat, but he R”L went under and did not resurface. Hundreds of people joined the massive search by air, land,...

Oldest wheat found in Çatalhöyük The oldest known wheat was grown in Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, experts have found. A series of DNA analyses conducted on ancient wheat samples have led scientists to conclude that the oldest known wheat was grown in Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic settlement in southern Anatolia. Professor Mahinur Akkaya from the Middle East Technical University's (ODTÜ) department of chemistry says the world's oldest wheat found so far comes from Çatalhöyük, this according to a series of DNA analyses made on 8,500-year-old wheat samples. "Our discovery is of great importance as it gives us significant...

An armored fish was about to become a mom some 380 million years ago. Though the primitive fish perished, its fossilized remains remarkably reveal an embryo and umbilical cord inside the soon-to-be mother's body. The discovery marks the oldest evidence of an animal giving live birth, pushing the known record of such reproduction back by some 200 million years. It also supports the idea that internal fertilization in vertebrates (animals with backbones) originated in a group of primitive fish. "When I first saw the embryo inside the mother fish, my jaw dropped," said researcher John Long, a paleontologist at Museum...

Ancient poem found on wood strip The Yomiuri Shimbun NARA--A wooden strip unearthed in fiscal 1997 from remains of the eighth-century Shigarakinomiya palace in Koka, Shiga Prefecture, was found to be inscribed with a pair of waka poems, one of which is included in "Manyoshu" (The Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves), Japan's oldest existing collection of poems, a board of education announced Thursday. It is the first time that a wooden strip inscribed with a poem from the collection has been found. On one side of the strip is a poem about Mt. Asaka, in present-day Fukushima Prefecture, while the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers have found some matter that had been missing in deep space and say it is strung along web-like filaments that form the backbone of the universe. The ethereal strands of hydrogen and oxygen atoms could account for up to half the matter that scientists knew must be there but simply could not see, the researchers reported on Tuesday. Scientists have long known there is far more matter in the universe than can be accounted for by visible galaxies and stars. Not only is there invisible baryonic matter -- the protons and neutrons that make up atoms...

Astronomers have found a piece of the universe's puzzle that's been missing for awhile: a type of extremely hot, dense matter that is all but invisible to us. Engaging in something like cosmic accounting, astronomers have tried to balance the scant amount of matter that has been directly observed with the vast amount that remains unobserved directly. The latter constitutes about 90 percent of the universe's matter. Galaxies, the stars within them, the planet we live on and the chairs we sit on are made up of normal matter — the protons, electrons and neutrons that are collectively called baryons....

Megalithic period pottery found T.S. Subramanian Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department leads excavation Significant finds: Pottery with graffiti marks found at Sembiyankandiyur village in Nagapattinam district. CHENNAI: Pottery items including bowls, dishes and urns, from the Megalithic period, have been excavated at Sembiyankandiyur near Kuthalam in Mayiladuthurai taluk of Nagapattinam district by the Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department. An important finding: eight urns aligned in a particular manner, three of them with human bones inside. These might be of members of one family, according to department officials. The pottery included black-and-red ware, black ware and red ware. The site yielded a rich...

SEATTLE - The FBI says it's analyzing a torn, tangled parachute found by children in Washington state to see whether it was used by plane hijacker D.B. Cooper. Officials said Tuesday that children playing outside their home near Amboy, in southwest Washington, found the chute sticking up from the ground this month. FBI agent Larry Carr says they pulled on the fabric as much as they could, then cut the ropes. They had seen recent media coverage of the Cooper case and urged their father to call the FBI. Cooper hijacked a plane from Portland, Ore., to Seattle in 1971,...

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. - The last time cat-owner Kelly Levy saw her tiger-striped feline was before she took her husband to the airport. The 24-year-old came back to her house late Friday to find the bottom step, where Gracie Mae would usually be waiting, empty. Levy tore the house apart looking for the 10-month-old tabby who had been spayed just days before. She and her dad took out bathroom tiles and part of a cabinet to check a crawl space and papered the neighborhood with "lost cat" signs. Then she got a phone call. "Hi, you're not going to...

Scientists learn how we find our way By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 20/01/2008 Scientists have discovered why some people get lost more often than others when trying to pick a way through city streets. Researchers have found that two key parts of the brain work together to help humans plan and follow routes in a familiar city. A part of the brain called the hippocampus stores memories about key locations and landmarks while other brain cells - grid cells - provide our internal sense of space and distance, rather like a GPS system. The two parts...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — U.S. troops uncovered and destroyed a weapons cache containing seven pressure plates Nov. 16 and 17 in the area of Mahdiryia. The plates are used to detonate a form of improvised explosive device (IED) that is specifically targeted against Coalition and Iraqi troops on foot patrol. The cache find was the first indication of these “dismounted” IEDs being used in the area of Mahdiryia. They are already heavily used by al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) the communities of Hawr Rajab and Arab Jabour to the north. Soldiers from Battery B, 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery (FA)...

June 7, 2007 — The two heaviest stars ever have been discovered in the southern Milky Way galaxy. The double super heavyweights are actually in orbit around each other, and both break the record — 83 times the sun’s mass — for the most massive stars found to date. The heavier of the two weighs in at a whopping 114 "solar masses," while its little brother is 84 solar masses. The discovery was presented June 7 at the meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. The two big bruiser stars, which...

BLOOMFIELD, Conn. - A 15-year-old girl missing for nearly a year was found Wednesday locked in a small hidden room under the staircase of a West Hartford home, and two people who live there were arrested, police said. Bloomfield police said they found the girl alive in a room blocked from view by a cabinet. They had gone to the home with West Hartford police to serve search warrants for DNA and other evidence. Adam Gault, 41, was charged with second-degree unlawful restraint, second-degree reckless endangerment, second-degree custodial interference, interfering with an officer, risk of injury to a minor and...

They beamed him up and now, after a three-week search, they have found the rocket that had carried ashes of Star Trek actor James Doohan briefly into space. The remains of Doohan, whose Star Trek character Scotty inspired the television catch phrase "Beam me up, Scotty," were blasted off to the edge of space from New Mexico on April 29, two years after his death at the age of 85. The payload also included ashes of astronaut Gordon Cooper, who first went into space in 1963, and another 200 people. But the UP Aerospace Spaceloft XL rocket carrying the capsules...

THE tomb of the biblical King Herod the Great has been found, archeologists say. The final resting place of King Herod, who ruled Judea for the Roman empire from about 37BC, was found at the ruins of a magnificent palace he built near Jerusalem. King Herod was known for his role in the massacre of the innocents as described in the Gospel of Matthew, where he ordered the deaths of young males in Bethlehem to stop a new king of the Jews, whose birth had been prophesied by the three wise men. Herod was also known for expanding the second...