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A journey to 9,000 years ago Thursday, January 17, 2008VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLU ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News Çatalhöyük Research Project Director Ian Hodder says goddess icons do not, contrary to assumptions, point to a matriarchal society in Çatalhöyük. Findings in Çatalhöyük show that men and women had equal social status. According to Hodder, who also has been following the Göbeklitepe excavations in Şanlıurfa, meticulous archaeological excavation in southeastern Anatolia can change all scientific archaeological assumptions Clues as to when mankind really began living in urban patterns lie in the Neolithic layers of Çatalhöyük. Çatalhöyük is within the borders of Cumra district...

The statue turned out to be part of a larger discovery: of a Neolithic temple. This and the statue have now been dated to 10,000BC, making the 'Snowman' possibly the oldest statue in the world. The veracity of this claim depends on semantics. What is a 'statue'? The Venus of Willendorf dates back to 20,000BC. But the Venus is just 11cm long: surely not a statue. So the Balikli Gol Snowman is the first sizeable sculpture of a man. Arguably, it is the oldest sculptural representation of humanity, the oldest self-portrait in stone. In the accepted sense of the word,...

An archaeological dig may have uncovered ‘Eden’ in Turkey, says sean thomas I am standing above an archaeological dig, on a hillside in southern Turkey. Beneath me, workmen are unearthing a sculpture of some sort of reptile (right). It is delicate and breathtaking. It is also part of the world's oldest temple. If this sounds remarkable, it gets better. The archaeologist in charge of the dig believes that this artwork once stood in Eden. The archaeologist is Klaus Schmidt; the site is called Gobekli Tepe. In academic circles, the astonishing discoveries at Gobekli Tepe have long been a talking...

Þanlýurfa to shed more light on history of civilization Saturday, June 24, 2006 Þanlýurfa to shed more light on history of civilization ANKARA - Turkish Daily News The southeastern Anatolian province of Þanlýurfa, considered to be the cradle of agriculture as well as hosting numerous examples of ancient architecture, promises new discoveries to shed light on the history of human evolution in the region. Harran University Assistant Professor Cihan Kürkçüoðlu noted that every archaeological excavation to be carried out in Þanlýurfa would provide new information on the history of civilization in the region. Kürkçüoðlu reminded the Anatolia news agency that...

German paper reports world’s oldest temple is in Þanlýurfa Saturday, January 21, 2006 ANKARA - Turkish Daily News One of Germany's leading newspapers, Die Welt, reported this week that the world's oldest temple, dating back around 12,000 years, is located on Göbekli Hill in Turkey's province of Þanlýurfa, said the Anatolia news agency. According to an article titled “Holy Hill of the Hunters,” the temple was discovered by German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, standing around 15 meters in height and located on a hill upon which a single tree stands. Defining the area as the “cradle of civilization,” the paper said...

But because of the spectacular female clay figures that the archaeologists have found in the excavated layers over the years, Çatalhöyük has become a draw for modern believers who hold to the idea that the neolithic people were ruled by a matriarchy whose central figure was a mother goddess... But to Ian Hodder of Stanford and Ruth Tringham of Berkeley, who will lead the expedition's 11th season at Çatalhöyük this summer, the evidence questions the notion of a mother goddess and a matriarchal society... Mellaart's mother goddess was found in a grain bin, and the Hodder team's 3-inch figurine was...

Italian Archeologist: Anatolia - Home to First Civilization on Earth Prof. Dr. Marcella Frangipane is trying to convince scientists that Anatolia is the source of civilization on earth, and not Mesopotamia, as historians have claimed. 20/06/2003 13:20 After 13 years of work in the Aslantepe Mound Orduzu, Malatya, Frangipane says the archefacts she uncovered prove that the first civilization was established in Anatolia. According to Frangipane, the swords he found in Aslantepe and the palace, are the oldest in the world. These findings contradict everything in history books. Frangipane held a seminar, accompanied by a slide show, entitled 'Anatolia and...

"Wow," exclaims the visitor from New Zealand, a place, after all, with a human history shorter than most. For from a wooden walkway we’re gazing down at an archaeological site of giddying age. Built about 9000 BC, it’s more than twice as old as Stonehenge or the Pyramids, predating the discovery of metals, pottery or even the wheel. This is Göbekli Tepe in south-eastern Turkey, generally reckoned the most exciting and historically significant archaeological dig currently under way anywhere in the world, and there are neither queues nor tickets to get in. Wow for a number of reasons, then, though...

Neanderthal skulls and brains were a bit larger than ours but they were not inventive like humans, and presumably not as bright. Their basic tool-kits and technology never changed from the first day they walked the Earth to the last. There has always been a question of what they were doing with the larger brains and new studies appear to shed some light on the question: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130319093639.htm http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21759233 ...Results imply that larger areas of the Neanderthal brain, compared to the modern human brain, were given over to vision and movement and this left less room for the higher level thinking...

An almost complete human skull fossil that could date back 100,000 years was unearthed in Henan last month, Chinese archaeologists announced yesterday... The Henan find was made after two years of excavation at the site in Xuchang. Archaeologists have worked on an area of 260 sq m, merely one-hundredth of the Paleolithic site... The fossil consisted of 16 pieces of the skull with protruding eyebrows and a small forehead. More astonishing than the completeness of the skull is that it still has a fossilized membrane on the inner side, so scientists can track the nerves of the Paleolithic ancestors... The...

The isotopic analysis of the diet of one of the earliest modern humans in Asia, the 40,000 year old skeleton from Tianyuan Cave near Beijing, has shown that at least this individual was a regular fish consumer. Michael Richards of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology explains "Carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of the human and associated faunal remains indicate a diet high in animal protein, and the high nitrogen isotope values suggest the consumption of freshwater fish." To confirm this inference the researchers measured the sulphur isotope values of terrestrial and freshwater animals around the Zhoukoudian area and...

Chinese challenge to 'out of Africa' theory 00:01 03 November 2009 by Phil McKenna The discovery of an early human fossil in southern China may challenge the commonly held idea that modern humans originated out of Africa. Jin Changzhu and colleagues of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing, announced to Chinese media last week that they have uncovered a 110,000-year-old putative Homo sapiens jawbone from a cave in southern China's Guangxi province.

Mainland archaeologists have discovered a fractured but almost complete skull in Xuchang , Henan province , that they believe is from an anatomically modern Homo sapiens nearly 100,000 years old. If the estimate is correct and if the skull, broken into 16 pieces seemingly by a powerful strike, demonstrates a feature of the East Asian population, then one of palaeoanthropology's paradigms - "Out of Africa" - may be shattered. Part of the Out of Africa theory holds that anatomically modern human beings first appeared in Africa. Then, about 100,000 years ago, they moved off the continent and took over the...

Earliest Shoe-Wearers Revealed by Toe Bones Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Shod? Look at the Toes Jan. 25, 2008 -- People started wearing shoes around 40,000 years ago, according to a study on recently excavated small toe bones that belonged to an individual from China who apparently loved shoes. Most footwear erodes over time. The earliest known shoes, rope sandals that attached to the feet with string, date to only around 10,000 B.C. For the new study, the clues were in middle toe bones that change during an individual's lifetime if the person wears shoes a lot. "When you walk barefoot,...

CHICAGO (AFP) - A new analysis of the dental fossils of human ancestors suggests that Asian populations played a larger role than Africans in colonizing Europe millions of years ago, said a study released Monday. The findings challenge the prevailing "Out of Africa" theory, which holds that anatomically modern man first arose from one point in Africa and fanned out to conquer the globe, and bolsters the notion that Homo sapiens evolved from different populations in different parts of the globe. The "Out of Africa" scenario has been underpinned since 1987 by genetic studies based mainly on the rate of...

New finding denies Chinese ancestor from Africa(Xinhua)Updated: 2007-04-03 09:48WASHINGTON -- Chinese and US researchers have reported the finding of an approximately 40,000-year-old early modern human skeleton in China, indicating that the "Out of Africa" dispersal theory of modern humans may not be as simple as was previously thought. Fossil of a mandible bone found in the Tianyuan Cave, Zhoukoudian, in suburs of Beijing. [Xinhua] The findings were published Monday on the online issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Hong Shang, from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Washington University,...

Skeleton holds key to origin of man By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 2:24am BST 03/04/2007 A skeleton of a possible hybrid between modern and more ancient humans has been found in China, which challenges the theory that modern man originated in Africa. Most experts believe that our ancestors emerged in Africa more than 150,000 years ago and then migrated around the world. However, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Prof Erik Trinkaus and colleagues provide details of a skeleton found in 2003 from Tianyuan Cave near Beijing. The skeleton is 42,000 to 38,500 years old,...

Danny Venderamini's main site.Vendramini thesis on Youtube. All Neanderthal images here courtesy of www.themandus.org This thing starts off with Danny Vendramini figuring out something which should have been figured out 100 years ago i.e.. that (other than for the larger brain area) a Neanderthal skull is a near perfect match for ape profiles and a very bad match for one of ours: That is consistent with what we know about Neanderthal DNA i.e. that it's no closer to ours than to an ape's. The funny thing is that Vendramini did not tell his artist to produce the world's scariest monster,...

The Sicevo Gorge is a rugged, picturesque river canyon cut into the Kunivica plateau in southeastern Serbia... contains a series of caves, at least one of which has yielded evidence of human presence during the shifting glacial times of the Ice Age of present-day Europe... in 2008, anthropologists uncovered a partial human mandible (lower jaw), complete with three teeth, while excavating in a small cave... a fossil specimen, definitely a human that, at least in terms of morphology, predated the Neanderthal and may have had more in common, physically, with Homo erectus, thought by many scientists to be the precursor...

Though people with autism face many challenges because of their condition, they may have been capable hunter-gatherers in prehistoric times, according to a paper published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology in May. The autism spectrum may represent not disease, but an ancient way of life for a minority of ancestral humans, said Jared Reser, a brain science researcher and doctoral candidate in the USC Psychology Department. Some of the genes that contribute to autism may have been selected and maintained because they created beneficial behaviors in a solitary environment, amounting to an autism advantage, Reser said. The "autism advantage," a...