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A team of scientists led by renowned French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio recently announced that they have found a bowl, dating to between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D., that, according to an expert epigrapher, could be engraved with the world's first known reference to Christ... The full engraving on the bowl reads, "DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS," which has been interpreted by French epigrapher and professor emeritus Andre Bernand as meaning either, "by Christ the magician" or "the magician by Christ." ...He and his colleagues found the object during an excavation of the underwater ruins...

A Mycenaean warrior who died in western Greece over 3,000 years ago was the proud owner of a rare gold-wired sword imported from the Italian peninsula, a senior archaeologist said on Thursday. "This is a very rare discovery, particularly because of the gold wire wrapped around the hilt," archaeologist Maria Gatsi told AFP. "To my knowledge, no such sword has ever been found in Greece," said Gatsi, head of the regional archaeological department of Aetoloakarnania prefecture. Tests in Austria have confirmed that the bronze used in the 12th century BCE, 94-centimetre (37-inch) sword came from the Italian peninsula, she said....

The two new species of bacteria found growing on the walls of the Roman tombs may help protect our cultural heritage monuments, according to research... The Catacombs of Saint Callistus are part of a massive graveyard that covers 15 hectares [37 acres], equivalent to more than 20 football pitches. The underground tombs were built at the end of the 2nd Century AD and were named after Pope Saint Callistus I. More than 30 popes and martyrs are buried in the catacombs. "Bacteria can grow on the walls of these underground tombs and often cause damage," said Professor Dr Clara Urzì...

Reconstructing the climate of the past is an important tool for scientists to better understand and predict future climate changes that are the result of the present-day global warming. Although there is still little known about the Earth's tropical and subtropical regions, these regions are thought to play an important role in both the evolution of prehistoric man and global climate changes. New North African climate reconstructions reveal three 'green Sahara' episodes during which the present-day Sahara Desert was almost completely covered with extensive grasslands, lakes and ponds over the course of the last 120.000 years. The findings of Dr....

Throughout human history, relatively few men seem to have had a greater input into the gene pool than the rest, suggests a study of variations in DNA. Tens of thousands of years of polygamy has left a mark on our genomes that is a signature that small numbers of males must have mated with lots of females. Over time, such a pattern will spawn more genetic differences on the X chromosome than other chromosomes. This is because women have two copies of the X, while men only one. In other words, the diversity arises because some men don't get to...

In his influential book, "Troy and Homer," German classicist Joachim Latacz argues that the identification of Hisarlik as the site of Homer's Troy is all but proven. Latacz's case is based not only on archeology, but also on fascinating reassessments of cuneiform tablets from the Hittite imperial archives. The tablets, which are dated to the period when the Late Bronze Age city at Hisarlik was destroyed, tell a story of a western people harassing a Hittite client state on the coast of Asia Minor. The Hittite name for the invading foreigners is very close to Homer's name for his Greeks...

They may not be man's best friend, but wolves in North America do have a little dog in them. Geneticists investigating the relationships between members of the dog family have found that wolves with black pelts owe their distinctive coloration to a mutation that first arose in domestic dogs. Domestic dogs were bred from the grey wolf Canis lupus, but exactly when and where that domestication took place, and how various modern breeds of dog relate to wolves, has been a matter of debate. Now Robert Wayne at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues are revealing these...

Archaeologists in Sardinia said Thursday they have found the port of the Phoenician city of Tharros, held by some to be the ancient people's most important colony in the Mediterranean after Carthage. Researchers from the University of Cagliari and Sassari found the submerged port in the Mistras Lagoon, several kilometres from the city ruins. Excavations have long been going on at the site of the city itself, on a peninsula overlooking the Bay of Oristano in western Sardinia, but this is the first time its waterfront has been located despite almost two centuries of hunting. As well as an impressive...

Swedish archaeologists have been captivated by a Bronze Age knife which was uncovered along with other artifacts from an excavation site near Falbygden in central Sweden. The knife was discovered at the Firse Sten tomb in Falkoping and is in remarkably good condition, despite having been buried for thousands of years. "It's a knife blade which ends in a handle that looks like the throat and head of a horse," said antiques expert Peter Jankavs from Falbygdens museum to Sveriges Radio. The knife was found near the entrance to a 5,000-year-old tomb, although the knife itself is thought to be...

One day this past June, Floyd McKee hauled a load of topsoil from near the bank of the Guadalupe River, on which his property sits, and dumped it on the grass in his yard. "It rained that night, and when I went out in the morning, the yard was covered with spear points," he said. "I got more dirt and sifted it and found a dozen more." Surprised, McKee contacted local archaeologists Bob Everett and Richard Kinz, both of whom soon declared that McKee's property, near Starcke Park, was among the richest Paleo-Indian archaeological finds they had ever seen. On...

Keeping with the arts theme, I went back to Staud for these two images of the Yellow Mountains of China. The linked page has a few more.

Spotted this on another forum. It may take a second to puzzle it out. :D

Remains of rotten fish entrails have helped establish the precise dating of Pompeii's destruction, according to Italian researchers who have analyzed the town's last batch of garum, a pungent, fish-based seasoning. Frozen in time by the catastrophic eruption that covered Pompeii and nearby towns nearly 2,000 years ago with nine to 20 feet of hot ash and pumice, the desiccated remains were found at the bottom of seven jars. The find revealed that the last Pompeian garum was made entirely with bogues (known as boops boops), a Mediterranean fish species that abounded in the area in the summer months of...

This story reads like something you'd see in a movie scene. It actually would make a good movie scene if you could build a movie around it. This funny tale came our way from Christopher Elliot's blog. Elliot, problem solver extraordinaire sometimes helps unhappy travelers find resolutions to their hotel and airline woes in order to get them a favorable outcome. In the case of Ted LeClair, a man who bought travel vouchers for Southwest Airlines tickets at Craigslist from someone who checked out as reputable--but wasn't, found his own happy ending from swinging a nine iron at the crook....

Scientists have found a new huge and well-preserved fossil of a goose and duck relative that swam around what is now England 50 million years ago flashing sharp, toothy smiles. The skull, discovered on the Isle of Sheppey off the southeast coast of England in the Thames Estuary, belonged to a huge ancient bird in the extinct genus Dasornis, which had a whopping 16-foot (5-meter) wingspan... Scientists had found fossils of other bony-toothed birds, or pelagornithids, in deposits called the London Clay, which underlies much of London, Essex and northern Kent in the southeast of England. This new fossil, from...

Here's a sample of what can be found at the link:

Dogs are no better than wolves at picking up on human cues... When tasked with choosing between two paint cans based on a trainer's hand signal, tamed wolves actually proved more adept at picking the right can. This casts doubt on the idea that domestication some 15,000 years ago imbued dogs with a window into the human mind, says Clive Wynne, an animal psychologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Rather, dogs -- and tamed wolves -- probably learn to associate human arm movements with treats, play and affection. Researchers who argue for a dog "theory of mind" are...

Dr. James W. Hardin and Dylan Karges of the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State University will present an upcoming lecture and host a reception for an exhibit of finds from excavations in southern Israel... [Hardin's] current research has focused mostly on materials from excavations at Tell Halif, a small, fortified village in the border country with Phillistia and on the northern fringe of the Negev Desert. This area was the buffer zone between the Coastal Plain and the Hill Country, which guarded the routes to Jerusalem. Excavations at Tell Halif have uncovered evidence of a major destruction that...

It's an old story of a terrible storm that some believed was the hand of God. It scattered and sank a French fleet led by Jean Ribault as it bore down on a handful of Spanish ships sheltering with Pedro Menendez in a harbor at today's St. Augustine. Hundreds of Frenchmen, mostly Protestants, died either in the tempest, or of starvation and exposure, or at the hands of Catholic Spaniards who hunted down survivors in a bloody autumn genocide. Despite the passing of 443 years, archaeologists say the remains of those galleons still lie beneath the sand and water, a...

Running until the end of October at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in the Vatican, the exhibition, "Cucuteni-Trypillia: A Great Civilization of Old Europe," introduces a mysterious Neolithic people who are now believed to have forged Europe's first civilization... Archaeologists have named them "Cucuteni-Trypillians" after the villages of Cucuteni, near Lasi, Romania and Trypillia, near Kiev, Ukraine, where the first discoveries of this ancient civilization were made more than 100 years ago. The excavated treasures -- fired clay statuettes and op art-like pottery dating from 5000 to 3000 B.C. -- immediately posed a riddle to archaeologists... "Despite recent extensive excavations, no...

Most historians consider 1839 as the year of the birth of photography. Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre's innovative method of image-making was placed before the French Academy of Sciences in the same year. The words ethnography and anthropology were also coined around the same time. It also signalled the beginnings of archaeology in a professional sense. The potential of using photography as a recording tool in the service of archaeology, engineering, medicine, science and technology was quickly appreciated. As early as 1840, Alexander Gordon lectured to the Institute of Civil Engineers on the advantages to the profession resulting from the discovery...

Georgi Kitov, who died on September 14 aged 65, led a Bulgarian archaeological team which unearthed a hoard of treasures from ancient Thrace, said to be as important as those of Agamemnon or Tutankhamun. The Thracians were Indo-European tribes which settled the Balkans in the third millennium BC and built a civilisation that, at its height 2,400 years ago, controlled what is now Bulgaria as well as parts of Romania, Macedonia, Turkey and Greece before finally being incorporated into the Roman Empire. Little is known of their culture because they had no written language. Greek and Roman writers tended to...

(excerpt) "She spun the wheels so fast that her tyres disintegrated and the metal rims sent a shower of sparks into the engine, igniting the brake fluid and setting the car on fire."

I always post these to the Arts/Photography group, even though I check to see if they're in the Science group. I decided to emphasize art for a couple of weeks. So don't get bored with the pictures from this site. I won't. (Note: current events may influence my choices). Rock formations and sea surf at Dyrholaey, Iceland

(Aircraft slices through roof and stairway, then exits front door) A helicopter carrying two people crashed into a Kenosha family’s home early Sunday, the rotor blades slicing through the two-story structure like a loaf of bread as the aircraft tumbled down a stairway before blowing out the front door and coming to rest on a neighbor’s driveway. While the two helicopter occupants were killed, a couple and their three young children survived unharmed as the cart-wheeling wreckage blew their bedroom doors off the hinges just before dawn. "It was God's hand in this," said Carla Wilson, who was awakened by...

We recently published a three stage model for the peopling of the Americas [1]. Specifically, we proposed that a recent, rapid expansion into the Americas was preceded by a long period of population stability in greater Beringia by the proto-Amerind population after divergence from their ancestral Asian population... Fagundes et al. have published a re-analysis of the data we used in developing our three stage model for the peopling of the Americas [1]. Specifically, they identified nine mitochondrial coding region sequences that we assumed were Native American sequences, but instead are likely to derive from Asian or European individuals. Fagundes...

The first humans to arrive on the Indian subcontinent from Africa about 65,000 years ago left a genetic imprint that can still be found in the tribes of India... "Whether the original inhabitants of India were replaced by more modern immigrants or contributed to the contemporary gene pool has been debated," says Michael Bamshad of the University of Washington in Seattle, who has studied the genetic diversity of India. One way researchers have used to figure this out is to use linguistic groups. The tribes speaking Indo-European languages, for instance, are known to be descendants of the people who migrated...

Eighty skeletons and stockpiles of textiles found in caves near the ancient Inca site of Machu Picchu may shed light on the role that the so-called lost city of the Inca played as a regional center of trade and power, scientists say. Researchers found the artifacts and remains at two sites within the Machu Picchu Archaeological Park in southeastern Peru, said Fernando Astete, head of the park (see map of Peru).

A newly-discovered Roman skeleton could be one of the earliest British victims of tuberculosis, experts believe... The man's remains - which date from the fourth century AD - were found on a construction site at York University. The first known case of TB in Britain is from the Iron Age - but finding cases from Roman times is still rare, especially in the north. Most finds have been confined to the southern half of England. If the new case is confirmed as TB it could provide scientists with a valuable tool to trace the movement of the disease as it...

It would be more than 100 years at least until Alexander the Great led the forces of Macedonia to conquer the Hellenistic world... A dig in an ancient burial ground in Alexander's birthplace of Pella, northern Greece, has unearthed the graves of 20 warriors in battle dress, a find which archaeologists say sheds fresh light on the development of Macedonian culture... The warriors, whose remains have been dated to the late Archaic period, between 580BC and 460BC, were among 43 graves excavated in the latest dig, with the other bodies ranging from 650BC to 279BC... Among the excavated graves, the...

Danish archaeologists say they have found a well-preserved Viking shield that is more than 1,000 years old.

However, as you might expect, there is a downside to belligerence and bravery. While both these traits offer advantages during war for a tribe, both traits are also considered high-risk social behaviors. An individual possessing the traits has a greater chance of dying, which means the tribe not only loses a warrior, but the death also opens a spot for another male to appropriate the first male's reproduction-enhancing resources. This trade-off leads to another question: if an individual himself does not benefit from belligerence and bravery, but only his tribe, why would humans evolve this altruistic trait? The scientists explain...

I am going to keep this short and to the point. I do a fair bit of air travel and have for the last decade or more pondered why CNN is the only station ever available in every airport in the US. Does anyone else ever question this media monopoly which is able to capture the attention of every air traveler in the country? I don't get it. Why does CNN have this exclusive monopoly in public airports? They have the lock on the attention of the millions of air travelers that move throughout the country. Why is CNN allowed...

Researchers at the University of Newcastle, England, and the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech in the United States have revealed a large reservoir of mitochondrial DNA mutations present in the general population. Clinical analysis of blood samples from almost 3,000 infants born in north Cumbria, England, showed that at least 1 in 200 individuals in the general public harbor mitochondrial DNA mutations that may lead to disease.... Mutations in mitochondrial DNA inherited from the mother may cause mitochondrial diseases that include muscle weakness, diabetes, stroke, heart failure, or epilepsy. In almost all mitochondrial diseases caused by mutant mitochondrial DNA,...

Early humans lived in northern China about 1.66 million years ago, according to research reported in the journal Nature this week. The finding suggests humans -- characterized by their making and use of stone tools -- inhabited upper Asia almost 340,000 years before previous estimates placed them there, surviving in a pretty hostile environment. The research team, including Richard Potts of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, reports the results of excavating four layers of sediments at Majuangou in north China. All the layers contained indisputable stone tools apparently made by early humans, known to researchers as "hominins."

Ancient Troy was much bigger than previously thought, and may have housed as many as 10,000 people, new excavations have revealed. The lower town, in which most of the population would have lived, may have been as large as 40 hectares (100 acres), according to Professor Ernst Pernicka... Excavations by the late Manfred Korfmann showed that this Troy was just the citadel and that a much larger lower town lay south of it enclosed by a rock-cut ditch (The Times, February 25, 2002). Professor Pernicka's continuation of Korfmann's work has confirmed the substantial nature of this defensive work, which was...

Archaeologists have found two groups of complete Neolithic human remains in peninsular Malaysia and on Borneo island that may better explain prehistoric human life, reports said Friday... the remains are more than 3,000 years old and were found within two months of each other, in prehistoric burial grounds surrounded by ceremonial beads, pottery, shells and animal bones... The first set of remains found in a mangrove swamp on the island of Pulau Kalumpang off northern Perak state consists of three Mongoloid males aged between 15 and 35 years old... The second set were of seven males and a female found...

Until recently researchers say the story of the origin of agriculture was one of a relatively sudden appearance of plant cultivation in the Near East around 10,000 years ago spreading quickly into Europe and dovetailing conveniently with ideas about how quickly language and population genes spread from the Near East to Europe. Initially, genetics appeared to support this idea but now cracks are beginning to appear in the evidence underpinning that model. Now a team led by Dr Robin Allaby from the University of Warwick have developed a new mathematical model that shows how plant agriculture actually began much earlier...

Fox Field Air Fair 2008 is scheduled to run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, so drive there, ride there, walk there, fly there. If you like flying and aircraft, you'll like the opportunity to see numerous aircraft up close. It's not an air show, mind you. The last air show at Gen. William J. Fox Airfield was in 1995. "We want people to know that Fox Field is here in the Antelope Valley and want people to see aircraft up close and personal," said pilot and aviation instructor Bob "Stambo" Stambovsky, spokesman for the event sponsored by the...

From the desert skies above Edwards Air Force Base to orbit around the moon, the five test pilots recognized by the city in the latest additions to the Aerospace Walk of Honor have made their marks in aviation history. Original Mercury 7 astronaut Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper Jr.; Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins; and the first female space shuttle commander, retired Air Force Col. Eileen M. Collins, will add their names to the 90 already honored with plaques along Lancaster Boulevard. The three astronauts will be joined by test pilots Irving L. "Irv" Burrows, who piloted the first...

Yeast strains used today to brew lager have two genetic ancestors, not one as previously thought. The discovery may explain the origins of the two major categories of lager today, described in the trade as the "Saaz" beers such as Pilsner and Budweiser, and the "Frohberg" beers such as Orangeboom and Heineken. It turns out that both probably owe their origins to laws in 16th-century Bavaria that banned brewing in the summer because scorching heat ruined the ale that was brewed before the emergence of lager. Forced to produce their beer in the winter, brewers accidentally created conditions favouring the...

The elixir of life may be a concoction of honey, cherries and secret herbs infused in a full Chianti wine, according to a centuries-old recipe discovered in one of Italy's oldest pharmacies. The 18th century-old recipe was discovered in an old manuscript found among the shelves of a pharmacy in Asciano near Sienna dating back to 1715. "My ancestors left several manuscripts with formulas for digestive drinks, but this one struck me because of its ingredients. I knew it had strong scientific basis," said pharmacist Giovanni De Munari, who found the old recipe from behind a small shelf in his...

Most notably among the new studies is what researchers say is the first ever direct evidence that a woolly mammoth was brought down by Neanderthal weapons. Margherita Mussi and Paola Villa made the connection after studying a 60,000 to 40,000-year-old mammoth skeleton unearthed near Neanderthal stone tool artifacts at a site called Asolo in northeastern Italy. The discoveries are described in this month's Journal of Archaeological Science. Villa, a curator of paleontology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, told Discovery News that other evidence suggests Neanderthals hunted the giant mammals, but not as directly. At the English...

Among the stag moose remains Bob Glotzhober is studying is this fossilized jaw bone. The teeth indicate that the animal was probably 4 or 5 years old... In August, Tyler Underwood was digging clay in Medina County when he unearthed remains of a stag moose, a mammal that became extinct 10,000 years ago. In all, 34 pieces were recovered. Most of the other stag-moose remains found in Ohio consist of one or two bones... a humerus, a long forelimb bone... [has] a hole on one side and grooves on the other... "If we can show the marks on this bone...

Dating to 300 A.D., when the Romans ruled Greece, the partially mummified remains belong to a middle-aged woman. Her Roman-type marble sarcophagus was unearthed in 1962 during archaeological excavations in the eastern cemetery of Thessaloniki, which was used from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine Periods for burials and other rituals. Wrapped in bandages and covered with a gold-embroidered purple silk cloth, the woman lay on a wooden pallet... [from page 2] Although there are no written accounts describing the practice of mummification in ancient Greece, it is known that the Greeks were familiar with the extraction of essential oils and...

The hidden ruins of an ancient lagoon city that was the ancestor of Venice have been unearthed by scientists using satellite imaging. The outlines are clearly visible about three feet below the earth in what is now open countryside... Paolo Mozzi, a researcher at the University of Padua geography department, said high-definition satellite photographs had revealed the ruins of an extensive town much closer to present day Venice at Altino -- known in Roman times as Altinum -- a little more than seven miles north of the city, close to Marco Polo airport... The newly identified ruins include streets, palaces,...

Clovis points are the hallmark of one of America's earliest cultures: the Paleoindians. Since archaeologists found Clovis points lodged in the skeleton of a mammoth, they have viewed Paleoindians as big-game hunters par excellence... This macho view of Paleoindian prehistory has prevailed even though surprisingly little evidence exists to support it. In a study published in the October issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, Kent State University archaeologist Mark Seeman and several co-researchers wrote of Paleoindian stone tools from the Nobles Pond site in Stark County. They reported the discovery of blood residue on eight Clovis points. Four were...

Authorities have rearrested a woman passenger who was busted on a flight diverted to Denver in June after she allegedly screamed racial slurs and punched a flight attended who stopped her smoking. Christina E. Szele, 35, of Woodside, NY, was arrested Monday by U.S. marshals in Brooklyn for violating her pre-trial release conditions, including twice testing positive for cocaine and an arrest for assault in Queens. She faces federal charges of assaulting a flight attendant and interfering with a flight crew during the the June 17 ruckus aboard a New York to San Francisco flight.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this location was in a Crocodile Dundee movie. I don't know if it was, but it sure seems like it could have been. This is NOT an easy place to get to, according to what I've read. And seen: Anyways, the falls: