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That’s a rare find in Florida! A giant bone of a Mammoth dating back to the Ice Age was just found in the Peace River near Arcadia this week. The 4-foot, 50-pound bone is well over 10,000 years old! For two Florida scuba divers, ancient history resurfaced when they discovered a 4-foot, 50-pound mammoth bone dating back to the ice age. Derek Demeter and Henry Sadler, both avid explorers and amateur paleontologists, made their big discovery when diving in the dark waters of the Peace River near Arcadia on April 25. “[Henry] came up, and he’s like, ‘Derek, I found...

An Oklahoma murder mystery has brought tourists to the town of Arcadia for decades. An old gas station has sat along Route 66 for about a century. If you stop by, Sam Gillaspy, who goes by “Mr. Sam,” is happy to share his story about the station's checkered past. Sam says that back in the 1930s, when two brothers owned the station, a salesman stopped by to ask if they wanted to make counterfeit bills. The illegal business took off. "The counterfeiters, they built a little room back there," Mr. Sam explained. "Then they had a table right here and...

It was high noon when Doreta Peppa, a woman with long, dark locks and owlish eyes, entered the Sanctuary of Olympian Zeus. At first, tourists visiting the Athenian temple thought they had stumbled on to a film set. It wasn't just that Peppa cut a dramatic figure with her flowing robes and garlanded hair. Or that she seemed to be in a state of near euphoria. Or even that the group of men and women accompanying her - dressed as warriors and nymphets in kitsch ancient garb - appeared to have stepped straight out of the city's Golden Age.To the...

A clutch of modern pagans honored Zeus at a 1,800-year-old temple in the heart of Athens on Sunday — the first known ceremony of its kind held there since the ancient Greek religion was outlawed by the Roman empire in the late 4th century. Watched by curious onlookers, some 20 worshippers gathered next to the ruins of the temple for a celebration organized by Ellinais, a year-old Athens-based group that is campaigning to revive old religious practices from the era when Greece was a fount of education and philosophy. The group ignored a ban by the Culture Ministry, which declared...

Virgil's demi-god city 'found'Castor and Pollux fought Aeneas at Amyclae (ANSA) - Rome, April 6 - Italian archaeologists believe they have found an ancient city where the demi-gods Castor and Pollux fought Aeneas, the Trojan hero whose descendants founded Rome . Lorenzo and Stefania Quilici of Bologna and Naples universities claim the large, massive-walled settlement dating from the VI to III Century BCE was the city of Amyclae, believed by Renaissance scholars to be somewhere near Lake Fondi between Rome and Naples . "The road there is a perfectly preserved stretch of the ancient Via Appia," said Lorenzo Quilici ....

By the power of Zeus, ancient gods are back Worship of the 12 gods of Mount Olympus associated with ancient Greece could, thanks to a decision by a first-instance court in Athens, become part of the country’s contemporary culture. In a ruling made public yesterday, the court allowed the formation of an association whose members claim to worship Zeus and the other 11 gods. “I support everybody’s right to practice their faith, whichever it may be, without hindrance,” said Apostolos Vrachiolidis, a journalist and one of the founding members of the association. Members of the group deny that they engage...

This year, Andrea Berman will watch the Olympics for the first time in her life. But she doesn't care who will jump the highest, run the farthest or swim the fastest. She'll be watching the games—being held this year in Greece, their ancestral home—for any mention of Zeus, Athena or Apollo. "I will watch it to see if anything even remotely resembles anything I would know as an ancient ritual and tradition," Berman said. "But I kind of have mixed feelings. On one hand it will be great to see ancient traditions represented. But on the other hand, I know...

A Greek and American team of archaeologists working on the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project believe evidence indicates that Zeus' worship was established on Mt. Lykaion as early as the Late Helladic period, if not before, more than 3,200 years ago... Over fifty Mycenaean drinking vessels, or kylikes, were found on the bedrock at the bottom of the trench along with fragments of human and animal figurines and a miniature double headed axe. Also found were burned animal bones, mostly of goats and sheep, another indication consistent with Mycenaean cult activity... Evidence from subsequent periods in the same trench...

NEW DISCOVERIES AT THE ASH ALTAR OF ZEUS, MT LYKAION, OFFER INSIGHTS INTO EARLY ORIGINS OF ANCIENT GREECE’S MOST POWERFUL GOD Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project Finds Early Activity Atop Arcadia’s Famous Mountain The Greek traveler, Pausanias, living in the second century, CE, would probably recognize the spectacular site of the Sanctuary of Zeus at Mt. Lykaion, and particularly the altar of Zeus. At 4,500 feet above sea level, atop the altar provides a breathtaking, panoramic vista of Arcadia. “On the highest point of the mountain is a mound of earth, forming an altar of Zeus Lykaios, and from...

The Greek god of thunder and lightning had Earthly beginnings, and scientists think they finally know where. Ancient Greeks first worshipped the omnipotent Zeus at a remote altar on Mount Lykaion, a team of Greek and American archaeologists now think. During a recent dig at the site, the researchers found ceremonial goods commonly used in cult activity and dated at over three millennia old, making them the earliest known "appearance" of Zeus in Greece. The discovery challenges the idea that Zeus worship began on the Greek island of Crete, which at least one classical historian names as the god's mythic...

The first stage of a five-year (2009-2013) excavation project in Ancient Tegea, near Tripolis, has been completed by an international team of archaeologists led by the Norwegian Institute in Athens in Collaboration with the Greek culture ministry's 38th Ephoria for Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and 25th Ephoria of Byzantine Antiquities. The area of excavation is a field located to the west of the theatre and the Basilica of Thyrsos, where magnetometer survey 2003-2004 documented the probable location of a major north-south street and a stoa bordering the agora... Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a...

The U.S. Justice and Education departments said Wednesday that a transgender California student who is anatomically female but lives life as a male must be able to use school bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities designed for boys. The first-of-its-kind decision from the agencies tasks the Arcadia school district outside Los Angeles to change district policies and practices to accommodate the rising ninth-grade student. Teachers and staff must be trained in how to prevent gender discrimination, and federal agencies will be keeping tabs on the district through at least 2016.

ARCADIA, Calif. (AP) -- Public works crews will finish clearing a grove of old oak and sequoia trees slated for removal as part of a dam project following the arrests of four tree sitters who hoped to stop the project. Two men, including veteran tree sitter John Quigley, and two women were escorted out of the trees Wednesday night and taken into custody,

The Carroll National Guard unit will train on urban military operations by holding a four-day exercise at Arcadia. The purpose of the April 2-5 drill will be to gather intelligence, then search for and apprehend a suspected weapons dealer, according to Sgt. Mike Kots, readiness NCO for Alpha Company. Citizens, law enforcement, media and other supporters will participate. Troops will spend Thursday, April 2, staging at a forward operations base at Carroll. The next day company leaders will conduct reconnaissance and begin patrolling the streets of Arcadia to identify possible locations of the weapons dealer. The primary phase will be...

The Carroll National Guard unit will train on urban military operations by holding a four-day exercise at Arcadia. The purpose of the April 2-5 drill will be to gather intelligence, then search for and apprehend a suspected weapons dealer, according to Sgt. Mike Kots, readiness NCO for Alpha Company. Citizens, law enforcement, media and other supporters will participate. Troops will spend Thursday, April 2, staging at a forward operations base at Carroll. The next day company leaders will conduct reconnaissance and begin patrolling the streets of Arcadia to identify possible locations of the weapons dealer. The primary phase will be...

DES MOINES, Iowa – Following publicized reports that the Army National Guard was planning a military training exercise on the streets of a rural Iowa town, the commanding officers have called off the mock "invasion." The Guard had planned a four-day urban military operation in tiny Arcadia, Iowa, population 443, sending troops to take over the town and search door-to-door for a suspected weapons dealer. The exercise was designed as a mock scenario to give soldiers the skills needed for deployment in an urban environment, and military officials stressed that only households that consented to be part of the drill...

ROBSTOWN, Tex. — Leon Little’s farm here near Corpus Christi would not be seized for Texas’s proposed $184-billion-plus superhighway project for 5 or 10 years, if ever. But Mr. Little was alarmed enough to show up Wednesday night with hundreds of his South Texas coastal neighbors to do what the Texas Department of Transportation has been urging: “Go ahead, don’t hold back.” Don’t worry. Texans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the...

Well, it seems as if the rank and file elitist Country Club Republicans are flexing their muscles in the High Desert, not to mention down the hill, too, when it comes to who backs whom for the 59th assembly district race and why. When it comes to the two most likely frontrunners in the Victor Valley—encompassing Hesperia and Apple Valley—longtime GOP grass-roots crusader and people’s champion, Barry Hartz, versus government bureaucracy insider and recipient of Supervisor (San Bernardino County First District) Postmus’ back-scratching political favors, Anthony Adams, the battle lines have clearly been drawn and it’s easy to see, when...