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The Israeli daily Ha’aretz is reporting that a bronze ring found 50 years ago at the Herodion excavation near Bethlehem has been discovered to bear the name of Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of Jerusalem and the man who ordered the crucifixion of Jesus, according to the New Testament. Ha’aretz reports that the name was discovered on the ring with the use of a special camera at the Israel Antiquities Authority labs. The letters on the ring spelled out in Greek writing “Pilatus.” The words surrounded a picture of a wine vessel. Hebrew University Professor Danny Schwartz told Ha’aretz that Pilatus...

Way more sex happened between Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans across Europe and Asia than scientists originally thought, a new study finds. Scientists initially thought that interbreeding among the two groups was more isolated to a particular place and time — specifically, when they encountered each other in western Eurasia shortly after modern humans left Africa. This idea stemmed from the fact that the genomes of modern humans from outside Africa are only about 2 percent Neanderthal, on average. Subsequent research, however, has found that Neanderthal ancestry is 12 to 20 percent higher in modern East Asians compared...

The airburst "in an instant, devastated approximately 500 km2 [about 200 square miles] immediately north of the Dead Sea, not only wiping out 100 percent of the [cities] and towns, but also stripping agricultural soils from once-fertile fields and covering the eastern Middle Ghor with a super-heated brine of Dead Sea anhydride salts pushed over the landscape by the event's frontal shock waves," the researchers wrote in the abstract for a paper that was presented at the American Schools of Oriental Research annual meeting held in Denver Nov. 14 to 17. Anhydride salts are a mix of salt and sulfates....

It seems we have all been guilty of defaming Neanderthal man. Research by a team based at the University of Bristol suggests that, far from being a lumbering, witless no-hoper, he was capable, 50,000 years ago, of producing forms of cosmetic adornment and even of primitive jewellery. In 1985, finds in Murcia, Spain, had suggested that this might be so; and now an expedition led by Professor João Zilhão of Bristol has uncovered a shell which shows "a symbolic dimension in behaviour and thinking that cannot be denied". All of which suggests some decent equivalence with the hitherto far more...

4.4 billion years ago, the Earth was in what is called the ‘Hadean Eon’. This time period is poorly understood, because there is no rock record dating from that time. This is where the zircon mineral grains come in. ... In a sense, these zircon grains are the missing pages. Zircon’s chemical name is zirconium silicate, and it’s found almost everywhere in the Earth’s crust. This study focuses on what’s called detrital zircon, which is formed in igneous rocks, but then survives over time until deposited in sedimentary rocks. Zircon grains are typically very small, about 0.1 to 0.3 mm...

The oldest whisky still in the world has been uncovered at a medieval abbey where William Wallace took refuge after defeating the English in battle. Archaeologists found what they believe to be an installation used for the distillation process at Lindores Abbey in Fife. The first ever written record of Scotch whisky distillation took place in the abbey in 1494, according to the exchequer rolls of King James IV.

Scientists have found that a "superheated blast from the skies" destroyed cities near the Dead Sea 3,700 years ago, which biblical analysts are saying echoes the destruction of Sodom.Science News reported that the new findings were revealed at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research last week by archaeologist Phillip Silvia of Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The scientists discovered radiocarbon dating and unearthed minerals that instantly crystallized at high temperatures at what used to be cities and farming settlements north of the Dead Sea, suggesting that a massive air-burst, possibly by a meteor, destroyed...

Israeli archeologist Ronit Lupu holds a rare stone mask dating to the Neolithic period which was found at the Pnei Hever region of southern Hebron mount, in this picture taken on November 28, 2018 ============================================================ JÉRUSALEM - The Israel Antiquities Authority on Wednesday unveiled what it said was a rare 9,000-year-old stone mask linked to the beginnings of agricultural society. The pink and yellow sandstone object was discovered in a field at the Jewish settlement of Pnei Hever, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said the IAA. The artefact was handed in to authorities in early 2018. "The mask is very...

"I lit three candles and stood awhile, to let my eyes accustom themselves to the dim light. There was everything, just as the last Bronze Age man (sic) had left it, three to four thousand years before. A light brownish dust covered all... There beads of stone, bone implements made from Red Deer antlers, and many fragments of much decayed pottery. On little raised recesses in the wall were flat stones, on which reposed the calcinated bones of young children." These are the words of R.S. Macalister who in 1911 was the first person in thousands of years to enter...

In June, 1992, a villager named Wu Anai, decided to pump the water out in one of the water holes of the area. Thus, they discovered that it was actually a cave, that was filled with water. The water presumably had been there for a long period of time. It took 17 days of continuous pumping to clear the cave. They found that it was a man made cave. The discovery of this cave encouraged Wu and his companions to pump the water out of another six caves. The caves were all next to each other. They found the caves...

A giant rhino that may have been the origin of the unicorn myth survived until at least 39,000 years ago - much longer than previously thought. Known as the Siberian unicorn, the animal had a long horn on its nose, and roamed the grasslands of Eurasia. New evidence shows the hefty beast may have eventually died out because it was such a picky eater. Scientists say knowing more about the animal's extinction could help save the remaining rhinos on the planet. Rhinos are in particular danger of extinction because they are very picky about their habitat, said Prof Adrian Lister...

Archaeologists have unearthed a sensual fresco depicting the Ancient Greek myth of Leda and the Swan on a bedroom wall in Pompeii. While the story might not appeal to modern sensibilities, the legend that Leda, the beautiful queen of Sparta, was seduced – or raped, depending on how you see it – by the king of the gods disguised as a swan was apparently a titillating subject for Ancient Romans. In an astonishingly well preserved fresco revealed to the public this week, the moment is depicted as a non-violent encounter: Leda reclines languidly, gazing directly at the viewer, as the...

Pieces of a renowned Roman mosaic that were looted and eventually sold to an American university are to be returned to Turkey, thetimes.co.uk reports. The twelve fragments once formed parts of the border of the "gypsy girl" mosaic in the ancient Roman settlement of Zeugma, close to the modern Turkish city of Gaziantep, and show human faces and birds. The near-complete main part of the mosaic, which has remained in Turkey, depicts a girl with windswept hair and an intense stare. It is on display in Gaziantep's Zeugma mosaics museum and has become an unofficial symbol of the city. The...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. STATESBORO, Ga. - Like a tiny gilded menagerie, 3,000 gold-covered ticks stand upright in active positions on dime-sized platforms. Nearby is one of the most complete repositories of written knowledge on the tick, dating back to Homer, 800 B.C. Hundreds of thousands more of the bloodsucking creatures are tucked away in government-issue metal filing cabinets. The Smithsonian's little-known U.S. National Tick Collection is stored in a former home-economics demonstration house at Georgia Southern University. The collection's curators, the world's foremost authorities of tick identification, are in charge of more than 1...

MtDNA exists separately from the rest of our DNA, inside the thousands of mitochondria within each cell, rather than the cell nucleus. It is so widely accepted as being from the mother's side it is sometimes known as the Eve Gene, the idea being that it can be traced back to some primeval mother of all living humans. Testing of mtDNA is used to identify maternal ancestry. However, all that will have to change after Dr Shiyu Luo of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. After testing of...

Volume 7, No. 3 - September 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE COLD WAR'S LONGEST COVER-UP: HOW AND WHY THE USSR INSTIGATED THE 1967 WAR By Isabella Ginor The Soviet warning to Egypt about supposed Israeli troop concentrations on the Syrian border in May 1967 has long been considered a blunder that precipitated a war which the USSR neither desired nor expected. New evidence from Soviet and other Warsaw Pact documents, as well as memoirs of contemporary actors, contradicts this accepted theory. The author demonstrates that this warning was deliberate disinformation, part of a plan approved at the highest level of Soviet leadership...

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. Beer required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture, about 9,000 years ago. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer and vice versa. These two were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of...

The newly-discovered region, named the endorestiform nucleus, is located within the inferior cerebellar peduncle, an area that integrates sensory and motor information to refine our posture, balance and fine motor movements. Professor Paxinos suspected its existence three decades ago but has only now been able to see it due to better staining and imaging techniques.“The endorestiform nucleus is intriguing because it seems to be absent in the rhesus monkey and other animals that we have studied,” Professor Paxinos said.“This region could be what makes humans unique besides our larger brain size.”“I can only guess as to its function, but given...

Imagine if you crossed a rhino with a giant turtle and then supersized the result: You might get something like Lisowicia bojani, a newly discovered Triassic mammal cousin that had a body shaped like a rhinoceros, a beak like a turtle, and weighed as much as an African elephant, about 9 tons. Paleontologists say this startling creature offers a new view of the dawn of the age of the dinosaurs. "Who would have ever thought that there were giant, elephant-sized mammal cousins living alongside some of the very first dinosaurs?" marvels Stephen Brusatte, a vertebrate paleontologist at The University of...

As to the missing cornerstone, this is a fascinating and little known part of history. Together with the cornerstone of the Capital, which is thought to have gone missing as well, the answer for this mystery has to do with the growth of the United States as it pertains to the relocation of the nation's capital. Major stuff! Just a little bit of early American history will help fill in the blank as to how this strangely unique question of why the cornerstones went missing has held significance throughout the years. Presidents have tried to answer this. Again, the destiny...