Free Republic

JERUSALEM, Israel – Archaeologists in Israel say they may have discovered the true location of Emmaus, the Biblical town where Jesus first appeared to two of his followers after being crucified and resurrected. Haaretz reports that researchers found the massive 2,200-year-old walls of a Hellenistic fortification believed to have been built by the Seleucid general who defeated Judah the Maccabee, the Jewish leader spoken of in the Hanukkah story. Since 2017, a Franco-Israeli team has been excavating a hill overlooking Jerusalem known as Kiriath Yearim, an area believed to be where the Ark of the Covenant was kept for 20...

Scientists have sequenced the oldest complete human genome. The DNA comes from an anatomically modern man who roamed Western Siberia 45,000 years ago. It provides experts with a more accurate timeline of when modern humans mated with their Neanderthal cousins as they moved from Africa into Europe, between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. Scientists have sequenced the oldest complete human genome. The DNA comes from an anatomically modern man who roamed Western Siberia 45,000 years ago. His remains were fund near the settlement of Ust’-Ishim in western Siberia in 2008. The male lived around the time the populations of Europe...

A 2,500-year-old human skull uncovered in England was less of a surprise than what was in it: the brain. The discovery of the yellowish, crinkly, shrunken brain prompted questions about how such a fragile organ could have survived so long and how frequently this strange type of preservation occurs. Except for the brain, all of the skull's soft tissue was gone when the skull was pulled from a muddy Iron Age pit where the University of York was planning to expand its Heslington East campus. [Britain's Oldest Brain Found] "It was just amazing to think that a brain of someone...

111-year-old reptile becomes a dad Monday, January 26, 2009 A reptile in New Zealand has unexpectedly become a father at the ripe old age of 111 - after receiving treatment for a cancer which had made him hostile toward prospective mates. That consummation that resulted in 11 babies being hatched on Monday. Tuatara are indigenous New Zealand creatures that resemble lizards, but are actually descended from a seperate lineage of reptiles that walked the earth with the dinosaurs 225 million years ago. An endangered species, the hatchlings born at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery will provide a badly needed...