Free Republic

Centre for Experimental Archaeology on Belfield campus is only one of its kind in the world.Brendan O’Neill at work on his early medieval round house on the UCD campus. How did our ancestors create the world they lived in? How did they survive without the modern accoutrements that make our lives easy? The question is at the heart of archaeology and forms the basis of a unique project in a quiet corner of University College Dublin’s sprawling Belfield campus. UCD is the only university in the world with a centre for experimental archaeology. It is not made of bricks and...

Steve Weidenkopf, lecturer at Christendom College’s graduate program, has written a readable, story-like book that provides a blow-by-blow account of the Crusades that simultaneously counters many of the myths that have sprung up around them.

It has been said that the period between 760 BCE to 656 BCE in Egypt was the 'age of the black pharaohs'. It was during this time that ancient Egypt was ruled by a dynasty or succession of kings from Nubia, the Kingdom of Kush, a rival African kingdom just to its south in what is today northern Sudan. Beginning with king Kashta's successful invasion of Upper Egypt, what became known as the 25th Dynasty achieved the reunification of Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt, and also Kush (Nubia), the largest Egyptian empire since the New Kingdom. They introduced new Kushite cultural...

Hundreds of tourists have been evacuated from Warwick Castle after a burning cannonball fired from the world's largest working siege machine destroyed a medieval boathouse by fire.

A Hawaii museum is getting ready to open an exhibit of artifacts from the shipwreck of a royal yacht that sank off the coast of Kauai 191 years ago. Hawaii shipwreck chaser Richard Rogers has worked with scientists from the Smithsonian Institution to dredge up the treasures from the ship owned by King Kamehameha II, the second king of Hawaii.

Paleontologists are calling a recent find in the Russian region of Yakutia a “sensation.” Last September, Aleksandr Banderov and his hunting party were traveling near the Semyulyakh River when they uncovered the preserved carcass of an adolescent wholly rhinoceros, a species that roamed the frozen landscapes of Europe and northern Asia during the last Ice Age. The hunters initially thought it was a reindeer frozen in the ice, but quickly realized it was something much older. “We were sailing past a ravine and noticed hair hanging on the top of it,’ Alexander told The Siberian Times. “At first we thought...

The surrender of Confederate Robert E. Lee to Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant 150 years ago Thursday was the definitive milestone of the end of the Civil War.

Bells will ring across the country and in Lynchburg on Thursday to mark the 150th anniversary of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox, the symbolic end of four years of bloodshed. A historic bell will be rung at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park at 3 p.m., the time the surrender occurred. People at historic sites, schools, parks, government buildings and within communities throughout Lynchburg and the country will join in at 3:15 p.m., ringing bells for four continuous minutes, representing the four years of fighting.

There’s something new about the very old Great Serpent Mound, the earthen snake effigy that stretches a quarter of a mile along the terrain in Adams County in southern Ohio... What is new about Serpent Mound is that it might be far more ancient than currently thought. Some archaeologists have recently discovered evidence that it was constructed around 300 B.C. by the Adena culture. That contrasts with the prevailing school of thought that it is about 920 years old and was built by the Fort Ancient culture... For instance, the massive head of the snake effigy points to where the...

On the edge of the solar system, the dwarf planet Pluto, which knows what it feels like to be banished from an exclusive club, may be cheering for the brontosaurus. While the long-necked dinosaur's name may be known by legions of fans and even made it on to a postage stamp in the 1980s, most paleontologists would be quick to correct people that the brontosaurus is not a dinosaur. But the iconic dinosaur name may finally be reinstated more than a century after researchers found the long-necked brontosaurus and apatosaurus likely belonged to the same genus, according to an analysis...

"The Black Book of Carmarthen," dating to 1250, contains texts from the ninth through 12th centuries, including some of the earliest references to Arthur and Merlin. "It's easy to think we know all we can know about a manuscript like the 'Black Book,' but to see these ghosts from the past brought back to life in front of our eyes has been incredibly exciting," Myriah Williams, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. "The drawings and verse that we're in the process of recovering demonstrate the value of giving these books another look." ... "The...

La Paz, Mar 27 (EFE).- The government of Bolivia announced it will start exploratory excavations this year at the ancient fortress of Tiahuanaco after a buried pyramid was detected. Ludwing Cayo, director of the Tiahuanaco Archeological Research Center, told Efe that the formation is located in the area of Kantatallita, east of the Akapana pyramid. In a presentation for the media, Cayo outlined a five-year for further research at Tiahuanaco, an archaeological site 71 kilometers (44 miles) west of La Paz that was the cradle of an ancient civilization predating the Incas. Excavations may start in May or June, depending...

Ice Age Magnetic Reversal Was Global Event And Linked With Super Volcano Eruption And Rapid Climate Variability, Says New Research October 17, 2012 in Geology & Climate During the last ice age, around 41,000 years ago, there was a very rapid and complete reversal of the Earth’s geomagnetic field, according to new research. There was already localized evidence of polarity reversals during this time, but with the new research, the theory that it was a global event is now strongly supported. And very interestingly, it is one that nearly coincided with the very fast, short-term climate variability of the last...

The scientific world is stunned by research which backs an Aboriginal legend about how palm trees got to Central Australia. Several years ago Tasmanian ecologist David Bowman did DNA tests on palm seeds from the outback and near Darwin. The results led him to conclude the seeds were carried to the Central Desert by humans up to 30,000 years ago. Professor Bowman read an Aboriginal legend recorded in 1894 by pioneering German anthropologist and missionary Carl Strehlow, which was only recently translated, describing the "gods from the north" bringing the seeds to Palm Valley. Professor Bowman said he was amazed....

Let me start black history month a few weeks early. Barack Obama has plans of running for President of the United States, But will he be the first Black President or the 8th Black President? I know this posting will stir controversty but George Washington was not the first President of the U.S. Let's take a look at history. A "Black" Man, A Moor, John Hanson Was the First President of the United States! 1781-1782 A.D.??? George Washington was really the 8th President of the United States! George Washington was not the first President of the United States. In fact,...

On this day, in POTUS history, In 1841, William H. Harrison died.

Much of a Pre-Columbian population in ancient Chile was poisoned by arsenic, say researchers. According to a recent study conducted by Jaime Swift of the Australian National University and colleagues from several other institutions in Australia and Chile, a significant part of a pre-Columbian population in northern Chile suffered from slow poisoning due to the intake of arsenic from water sources. The researchers performed plasma mass spectrometry trace element analysis of human bone and tooth samples from 21 burials excavated at the site of Caleta Vitor on the Pacific coast of northern Chile, a part of the ultra-dry Atacama Desert...

A team of researchers working in Italy has confirmed that Altamura Man was a Neanderthal and dating of pieces of calcite which were on the remains has revealed that the bones are 128,000 to 187,000 years old. In their paper published in the Journal of Human Evolution, the team describes how they extracted a small bone sample and examined it and what they found by doing so. Altamura Man was discovered in a cave in southern Italy in 1993 by cave explorers. The finding was reported to researchers at the University of Bari. The remains were embedded in rock and...

Characteristics passed between generations are not decided solely by DNA, but can be brought about by other material in cells, new research shows. Scientists studied proteins found in cells, known as histones, which are not part of the genetic code, but act as spools around which DNA is wound. Histones are known to control whether or not genes are switched on. Researchers found that naturally occurring changes to these proteins, which affect how they control genes, can be sustained from one generation to the next and so influence which traits are passed on. The finding demonstrates for the first time...

A new out-of-this-world theory links mass extinctions with exotic astrophysics and galactic architecture Every once in a great while, something almost unspeakable happens to Earth. Some terrible force reaches out and tears the tree of life limb from limb. In a geological instant, countless creatures perish and entire lineages simply cease to exist. The most famous of these mass extinctions happened about 66 million years ago, when the dinosaurs died out in the planet-wide environmental disruption that followed a mountain-sized space rock walloping Earth. We can still see the scar from the impact today as a nearly 200-kilometer-wide crater in...