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Ancient Navigators Could Have Measured Longitude -- in Egypt in 232 B.C. !by Rick Sanders Around the year 232 B.C., Captain Rata and Navigator Maui set out with a flotilla of ships from Egypt in an attempt to circumnavigate the Earth. On the night of August 6-7, 2001, between the hours of 11 PM and 3 AM, this writer, and fellow amateur astronomer Bert Cooper, proved in principle that Captain Rata and Navigator Maui could have known and charted their location, by longitude, most of the time during that voyage. The Maui expedition was under the guidance of Eratosthenes, the...

The Neolithic preceramic period is represented by the settlement of Khirokitia and about 20 other similar settlements, spread throughout Cyprus... This, the earliest known culture in Cyprus, consisted of a well-organised, developed society mainly engaged in farming, hunting and herding. Farming was mainly of cereal crops. They also picked the fruit of trees growing wild in the surrounding area such as pistachio nuts, figs, olives and prunes. The four main species of animals whose remains were found on the site were deer, sheep, goats and pigs... The village of Khirokitia was suddenly abandoned for reasons unknown at around 6000 BC...

Cornell archaeologists are helping to rewrite the early prehistory of human civilization on Cyprus, with evidence that hunter-gatherers began to form agricultural settlements on the island half a millennium earlier than previously believed... professor of classics Sturt Manning, director of Cornell's archaeology program... "Up until two decades ago, nobody thought anybody had gone to Cyprus before about 8,000 years ago, and the island was treated as irrelevant to the development of the Neolithic in the Near East," Manning said. "Then Alan Simmons (now at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas) discovered a couple of sites that seemed to suggest Epipaleolithic...

Previously it was believed that, due to the island's geographic isolation, the first Neolithic farming societies did not reach Cyprus until a thousand years after the birth of agriculture in the Middle East... However, the discovery of Klimonas, a village that dates from nearly 9000 years before Christ, proves that early cultivators migrated to Cyprus from the Middle Eastern continent shortly after the emergence of agriculture there, bringing with them wheat as well as dogs and cats... The archaeologists have found a few votive offerings inside the building, including flint arrowheads and green stone beads. A great many remnants of...

AYIA NAPA, Cyprus - An abattoir used by early Cypriots, a place where animals went to die, or a shelter that ultimately proved a death trap? Cypriot and Greek scientists are studying a collapsed cave filled with the fossilized remains of extinct dwarf hippopotamuses — descendants of hippos believed to have reached the island a quarter-million years ago. Paleontologists have unearthed an estimated 80 dwarf hippos in recent digs at the site just outside the resort of Ayia Napa on the island's southeastern coast. Hundreds more may lie beneath an exposed layer of jumbled fossils. Scientists hope the fossil haul,...

Archaeologists have discovered what they believe is the earliest evidence yet of long distance seafaring in the eastern Mediterranean, undermining beliefs that ancient mariners never ventured into open seas... The flints are unlike anything found in the geological make-up of Cyprus, and more than 1,000 years older than the timing of the first permanent settlers to the island. The discovery adds to a body of evidence contradicting the widespread belief that ancient mariners would never venture out of sight of land or had limited navigational capabilities... Its earliest inhabitants, dated from the 9th millennium BC, are believed to be from...

Thousands of prehistoric hippo bones found in Cyprus are adding to a growing debate on the possible role of humans in the extinction of larger animals 12,000 years ago. First discovered by an 11-year-old boy in 1961, a tiny rock-shelter crammed with hippo remains radically rewrote archaeological accounts of when this east Mediterranean island was first visited by humans. It has fired speculation of being the first takeaway diner used by humans to cook and possibly dispatch meat. It also adds to growing speculation, controversial in some quarters, that humans could have eaten some animals to extinction.

A Danish art conservator claims that the controversial Vinland Map of America, published prior to Christopher Columbus's landfall, may not be a forgery after all. "We have so far found no reason to believe that the Vinland Map is the result of a modern forgery," says Renè Larsen of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Reuters first publicized his results last week but provided none of the skepticism being voiced by veterans in the field. The map mysteriously emerged in a Geneva bookshop in 1957 depicting a "new" and "fertile" land to the west that Viking explorer Leif Eriksson...

Known by the scientific name Vanilla tahitensis, Tahitian vanilla is found to exist only in cultivation; natural, wild populations of the orchid have never been encountered... "All the evidence points in the same direction," Lubinsky said. "Our DNA analysis corroborates what the historical sources say, namely, that vanilla was a trade item brought to Tahiti by French sailors in the mid-19th century. The French Admiral responsible for introducing vanilla to Tahiti, Alphonse Hamelin, used vanilla cuttings from the Philippines. The historical record tells us that vanilla – which isn't native to the Philippines – was previously introduced to the region...

Floating A Big Idea: Ancient Use Of Rafts To Transport Goods DemonstratedMIT students built a small-scale replica of an ancient oceangoing sailing raft to study its seaworthiness and handling. (Credit: Donna Coveney/MIT) ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2008) — Oceangoing sailing rafts plied the waters of the equatorial Pacific long before Europeans arrived in the Americas, and carried tradegoods for thousands of miles all the way from modern-day Chile to western Mexico, according to new findings by MIT researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Details of how the ancient trading system worked more than 1,000 years ago were reconstructed...

Archaeologists in Cyprus have discovered what they believe could be the oldest evidence yet that organized groups of ancient mariners were plying the east Mediterranean, possibly as far back as 14,000 years ago... about 30 miles away from the closest land mass, may have been gradually populated about that time, and up to 2,000 years earlier than previously thought... The discovery at a coastal site on the island's northwest has revealed chipped tools submerged in the sea and made with local stone which could be the earliest trace yet of human activity in Cyprus. U.S. and Cypriot archaeologists conducting the...

LELYSTAD, Netherlands (Reuters) - A Viking ship made from ice-cream sticks set sail across the Netherlands' IJsselmeer lake on Friday and its stuntman builder hopes to cross the Atlantic later. The 15-metre (50-foot) Thor was made from 15 million recycled ice-cream sticks glued together by U.S.-born Robert McDonald, his son and more than 5,000 children. "Pick up your ice-cream stick, send them to me and I will put them to use," McDonald, 48, said on radio, hoping to auction the ship later and donate the proceeds to charity. "Kids from all over the world started mailing them to me. I...

Shipbuilders with handmade tools and methods used long ago are re-creating the Argo, the legendary vessel of Jason and the Argonauts. "It's extremely laborious work," said builder Stelios Kalafatidis in the small port of Volos. "We don't have large, proper, modern tools, only our hands and wooden mallets and chisels." ...The Naudomos Institute, a group of shipbuilders and historians heading the project, is using ancient Greek tools and techniques to build the new Argo. Once the ship is ready, they plan to retrace the mythical journey. The team had to ignore everything they knew about modern boatbuilding and use the...

A man who is convinced, despite a lack of evidence, that adventurers regularly crossed the Atlantic Ocean 14,000 years ago is using reeds and eucalyptus to build a raft so he can imitate their voyage. Dominique Gorlitz, 40, a former school teacher from Chemnitz, Germany, says the two-month journey he and 11 others will make on 41-foot-long craft will prove people could have traveled across the Atlantic Ocean in prehistoric times... More than 25 volunteers are working on the craft at Liberty Landing Marina. Gorlitz based the craft's design on a northeastern African drawing from 6,000 years ago. He said...

Voyage to prove pharaohs traded cocaine By Tom Leonard in New York Last Updated: 2:21am BST 30/05/2007 An adventurer who believes that ancient man regularly crossed the Atlantic Ocean 14,000 years ago plans to recreate such a voyage in a 41ft raft made of reeds and eucalyptus tree branches. Basing his theory on the thinnest of historical evidence, Dominique Gorlitz believes that the discovery of traces of tobacco and cocaine in the tomb of the pharaoh Rameses II proves that there was trade between the Old and New Worlds. He also claims that 14,000-year-old cave paintings in Spain show that,...

A Norwegian team that includes the Thor Heyerdahl's grandson paddled Friday into the Pacific Ocean to repeat the famed adventurer's journey aboard the balsa raft Kon-Tiki. "My personal motivation is to have a great adventure," 28-year-old Olav Heyerdahl told The Associated Press before he and five shipmates embarked for the trip across the Pacific on the balsa raft Tangaroa _ named for the Polynesian god of the ocean. In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and his team sailed their primitive raft 5,000 miles from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days to support Heyerdahl's theory that the South Sea Islands were settled by...

One of the greatest adventure stories of all time is about to end with the death of a controversial Norwegian explorer. Thor Heyerdahl, skipper of the famous raft Kon-Tiki. Thor Heyerdahl, 87, who won worldwide acclaim in 1947 for his daring Kon-Tiki expedition, is greeting his demise with all the eccentricity with which he lived his life. Heyerdahl lapsed into a coma on Tuesday, a week after he started refusing food, water and medical treatment. The scientist and adventurer had been taken to the Santa Conora hospital on the Italian Riviera over Easter after becoming ill during a family gathering...

Lake Chad, which once straddled the borders of Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, has shrunk by an estimated 95% since the mid 1960s, due to the growth of agriculture and declining rainfall. Image: Unep

Release Date: Aug. 31, 2005 Contact: Will Dube (585) 475-4954 or wjduns@rit.edu Groundbreaking Research Sheds Light on Ancient Mystery RIT researcher creates new population model to help predict and prevent societal collapse A researcher at Rochester Institute of Technology is unraveling a mystery surrounding Easter Island. William Basener, assistant professor of mathematics, has created the first mathematical formula to accurately model the island’s monumental societal collapse. Between 1200 and 1500 A.D., the small, remote island, 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile, was inhabited by over 10,000 people and had a relatively sophisticated and technologically advanced society. During this time,...

New 'Kon-Tiki' expedition postponedNorwegian organizers of a new expedition in a replica of the late explorer Thor Heyerdahl's famed "Kon-Tiki" raft were supposed to cast off from Peru this spring. Now they're aiming for the spring of 2006 instead.The group of adventurers, which included a grandson of Heyerdahl, had high hopes for their so-called "Tangaroa Expedition," named after a Polynesian god of the sea. They planned to set off April 28, on a 101-day voyage across the Pacific.The tsunamis that hit Asia on December 26, however, doused those plans. Important sponsors decided to redirect funding grants to tsunami victims instead...