tagged w/ Archeology
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Two ancient Egyptian skulls which were found buried in a back garden in Manchester have been returned to Egypt.
Matthew McClelland, 28, unearthed the skulls while digging at his home on Ivygreen Road, Chorlton, last June. The skulls were confiscated by police and analysed by forensic experts at Oxford University, and have now been found to be 2,000-year-old and genuine Egyptian artefacts.
Greater Manchester Police said the skulls had now been returned to Egypt. An Egyptian Embassy spokesman said: "These skulls were taken back to Cairo a few weeks ago. They have been examined by the Head of the Antiquities Council and will need some restoration work."
The skulls were buried at the house two years ago, by a doctor who bought them as a teenager while on holiday in Sinai but when his wife said she did not like them in the house, he decided to bury them.
Dr Tom Higham, deputy director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, who examined the skulls, said they were extremely well preserved. He said: "They looked very good, but it's often difficult to tell as sometimes they do not have enough collagen to date them. The important point was that they were extremely old, and had no forensic significance - they were not from people who had died recently. It's a lovely turn of events that the long lost skulls have gone back home to Egypt."Two ancient Egyptian skulls which were found buried in a back garden in Manchester... more
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A pinkish tract of bedrock on the eastern shore of Canada's Hudson Bay contains the oldest known rocks on Earth, formed 4.28 billion years ago, not long after the planet was formed, scientists said on Thursday.
The rocks may be remnants of Earth's primordial crust, which formed on the planet's surface as it cooled following the birth of the solar system, according to Jonathan O'Neil of McGill University in Montreal.
"Maybe it was the original crust, and before that there was no stable crust on the Earth. That's a big question," O'Neil said in a telephone interview.
The expanse in northern Quebec, measuring about 4 square miles (10 square km), is made up of the volcanic rock basalt. To determine the age of the rocks, geochemists used isotopic dating methods analyzing the elements samarium and neodymium.
The scientists, who describe the discovery in the journal Science, said studying these rocks can give clues about what the planet was like early in its history. The solar system, including the Earth, was formed about 4.57 billion years ago. These rocks date from roughly 290 million years later.
Richard Carlson of the Carnegie Institution of Washington said certain characteristics of the rocks suggest that water was already present on the Earth's surface. Scientists debate when oceans first appeared and whether water formed on the planet or was brought here when icy comets struck it.
The nature of the rocks also give clues as to temperatures when they formed, Carlson said.
"Probably when the planet formed it was a cauldron, but even this early in Earth history it had cooled down to something not dramatically different from today -- probably hotter but not dramatically hotter," Carlson said. Continued...WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A pinkish tract of bedrock on the eastern shore of... more
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A new study has revealed that Neaderthals liked the odd bit of seafood and Medditeranean cuisine along with their mammoth steak, just as much as their homo sapien cousins, showing even closer links between the two groups.A new study has revealed that Neaderthals liked the odd bit of seafood and... more
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Spectacular fossil forests have been found in the coal mines of Illinois by a US-UK team of researchers.The group reported one discovery last year, but has since identified a further five examples.
The ancient vegetation - now turned to rock - is visible in the ceilings of mines covering thousands of hectares.
These were among the first forests to evolve on the planet, Dr Howard Falcon-Lang told the British Association Science Festival in Liverpool.
"These are the largest fossil forests found anywhere in the world at any point in geological time," he told reporters.
"It is quite extraordinary to find a fossil landscape preserved over such a vast area; and we are talking about an area the size of (the British city of) Bristol."[more]Spectacular fossil forests have been found in the coal mines of Illinois by a US-UK... more
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An archelogical dig has reportedly uncovered the site of the theatre where the Bard is said to have trodden the boards and first had his plays performed - in Shoreditch.
An archelogical dig has reportedly uncovered the site of the theatre where the Bard is... more
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Two foetuses found buried with Tutankhamun may have been his twin daughters, an expert has claimed.
Professor Robert Connolly, an anatomist who is working with Egyptian authorities to analyse the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh, says that preliminary tests on the mummified remains of the two still-born babies indicate that Tutankhamun may have fathered them both. He will present the new findings at the Pharmacy and Medicine in Ancient Egypt Conference at the University of Manchester today.
Professor Connolly, who first studied the remains of Tutankhamun in the Sixties, said: “The two foetuses in the tomb of Tutankhamun could be twins, despite their very different size and thus fit better as a single pregnancy for his young wife [Ankhesenamun]. This increases the likelihood of them being Tutankhamun's children.”
“I studied one of the mummies, the larger one, back in 1979, determined the blood group data from this baby mummy and compared it with my 1969 blood grouping of Tutankhamun. The results confirmed that this larger foetus could indeed be the daughter of Tutankhamun.
“Now we believe that they are twins and they were both his children.”
Professor Connolly, a physical anthropologist at the University of Liverpool, said: “It is a very exciting finding which will not only paint a more detailed picture of this famous young king's life and death, it will also tell us more about his lineage.”
The foetuses have been stored at the Faculty of Medicine in Cairo University since the archaeologist Howard Carter discovered them in the teenage king's tomb on the west bank of Luxor in 1922. Egyptologists have long debated whether they were his children or if they were placed in the tomb with the symbolic purpose of allowing the famous pharaoh to live on as newborns in the afterlife.
The answer to this hereditary puzzle is closer because the two foetuses are to undergo CT scans and DNA testing to determine possible diseases and their relation to Tutankhamun. The smaller foetus is about five months in gestational age and the larger foetus is estimated to be between seven and nine months. The results of the remaining tests are due in December.
“We are very proud to have Professor Connolly speaking at the conference and are extremely excited about his new findings,” said the conference director Rosalie David, of the University of Manchester's Faculty of Life Sciences.
“Tutankhamun is such an important figure in Egyptology. He was a fascinating character whose tomb and indeed body has given us so much information about life in Ancient Egypt, and it seems that he will continue to do so for some time yet.”
More than 100 delegates from ten countries will be attending the conference. It intends to bring together the two elements of Ancient Egyptian healthcare practices — pharmacy and medicine.
Two foetuses found buried with Tutankhamun may have been his twin daughters, an expert... more
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From ancient perfectly spherical orbs dated to before the known existence of humans to fossilised spark plugs and ancient Peruvian carvings of dinosaurs. This list presents the top ten most bizarre ancient artifiacts that science and archeology has not yet found answers to.From ancient perfectly spherical orbs dated to before the known existence of humans to... more
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More than 2,000 years after they were written, the Dead Sea Scrolls are going digital as part of an effort to better preserve the ancient texts and let more people see them than ever before.[more]More than 2,000 years after they were written, the Dead Sea Scrolls are going digital... more
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"Melting alpine glaciers are revealing fascinating clues to Neolithic life in the high mountains.
And, as a conference of archaeologists and climatologists meeting in the Swiss capital Berne has been discussing, the finds are also providing key indicators to climate change.
Everyone knows the story of Oetzi the Ice Man, found in an Austrian glacier in 1991. Oetzi was discovered at an altitude of over 3,000m.
He lived in about 3,300 BC, leading to speculation that the Alps may have had more human habitation than previously suspected.
Now, more dramatic findings from the 2,756m Schnidejoch glacier in Switzerland have confirmed the theory.
It all started at the end of the long hot summer of 2003, when a Swiss couple, hiking across a melting Schnidejoch, came across a piece of wood that aroused their curiosity.
They took it down with them, and gave it to canton Berne's archaeological department, where careful examination and carbon dating revealed the piece of wood to be an arrow quiver made of birch bark, dating from about 3000 BC.
"Finds in the Alps are very rare anyway," explains Albert Hafner, chief archaeologist with the canton of Berne. "But this is unique; we don't know of a quiver like this anywhere else in the world."
At first, the news of the find was kept quiet; historians feared treasure hunters on the Schnidejoch as the ice melted. But teams of archaeologists went up, and more and more artefacts were discovered.
Leather (University of Berne)
The ice has protected the leather for thousands of years
"We now have the complete bow equipment, quiver and arrows," says Mr Hafner "And we have, surprisingly, a lot of organic material like leather, parts of shoes and a trouser leg, that we wouldn't normally find."
And the finds are not confined to 3000 BC. Some of the leather found, and a fragment of a wooden bowl, date from 4500 BC, older even than Oetzi, making them the oldest objects ever found in the Alps.
And from later periods, a Bronze Age pin has been discovered, as well as Roman coins and a fibula, and items dating from the early Middle Ages.
What fascinates scientists about the age of the finds is that they correspond to times when climate specialists have already calculated the Earth was going through an especially warm period, caused by fluctuations in the orbital pattern of the Earth in relation to the Sun. ""Melting alpine glaciers are revealing fascinating clues to Neolithic life in the... more
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1) What is the Word of God concerning marijuana, or cannabis hemp ?
The hemp plant (scientific name: cannabis, slang name: marijuana) is but one of the many useful herbs "yielding seed after its kind" (Genesis 1:12, 29) blessed by God on the third day of creation for people to use in conjunction with our free will. The only place in the Bible where Cannabis was mentioned by name got switched into 'calamus' by the King James translators as part of a holy ointment (described in Exodus 30:23).
The Bible also predicted prohibition: "In the later times, some shall … speak lies in hypocrisy … commanding to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth." (Paul: 1 Timothy 1-4) Nowhere in the Bible does it say people cannot grow, possess, use or even smoke cannabis or that hemp is bad. In fact, quite the contrary: "God said, 'Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth.…To you it will be for meat.' … And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." (Genesis 1:29-31)
2) How was the cannabis plant used by people during Biblical times?
Cannabis was widely used throughout the world since earliest times. 'Cana' got its name from the same root word as "cannabis," indicating that hemp was grown there. The Bible also describes a common way of preparing marijuana for medicinal use: "The Lord said …Afore harvest, when the bud is perfect and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks and take away and cut down the branches." (Isaiah 18:4-5)
Cannabis was traditionally used in 12 different ways: as clothing, paper, cord, sails, fishnet, oil, sealant, incense, food, and in ceremony, relaxation and medicine. And it was written, "On either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare 12 manner of fruits, and yielding her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." (Rev. 22:1-2)
The leaves and flowers of cannabis are well known for their medicinal value, and the Thracians Scythians and Zoroastrians were just a few of the groups that were using cannabis socially during Jesus day.[more]1) What is the Word of God concerning marijuana, or cannabis hemp ?
The hemp plant... more
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Even if no warship ever rises from the mud at Pisa, the dig remains exciting to Boetto and her peers for the great variety of watercraft that it promises to reveal, from seagoing freighters to river-going canoes. Almost as rare as Roman warships, for instance, are fishing boats; the Fiumicino museum has only one that has been excavated and preserved. But in preservation it cannot match the one Bruni seems to have in ship C, a 33-foot boat that Bruni has tentatively dated to the first century b.c. With seven benches for the oarsmen, 14 tholepins that held the oars in place, and the futtocks that ribbed the ancient hull, ship C is close to being whole. Nearby, the diggers also found a winch and [ numerous hemp lines ], which may have been elements of the boat's rigging. "You never find rigging," says Casson. [More]Even if no warship ever rises from the mud at Pisa, the dig remains exciting to Boetto... more
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If you're a caveman, discovering fire and all that, what do you have for dinner? Do you hunt a saber toothed tiger, or go for an easier option?If you're a caveman, discovering fire and all that, what do you have for dinner?... more
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A Colorado couple researching the shroud dispute radiocarbon dating of the alleged burial cloth of Jesus, and Oxford has agreed to help them reexamine the findings. Read More...A Colorado couple researching the shroud dispute radiocarbon dating of the alleged... more
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A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert.
Researchers discovered the slender arms of the youngsters still extended to the woman in a perpetual embrace.
The remarkable cemetery is providing clues to two civilisations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when the region was moist and green.
Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and colleagues were searching for the remains of dinosaurs in the African country of Niger when they came across the startling find.
Some 200 graves of humans were found during fieldwork at the site in 2005 and 2006, as well as remains of animals, large fish and crocodiles.
'Everywhere you turned, there were bones belonging to animals that don't live in the desert,' said Sereno.
'I realized we were in the green Sahara.'
The graveyard, uncovered by hot desert winds, is near what would have been a lake at the time people lived there. It's in a region called Gobero, hidden away in Niger's forbidding Tenere Desert, known to Tuareg nomads as a 'desert within a desert.'
The human remains dated from two distinct populations that lived there during wet times, with a dry period in between.
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More at link.
Few people know that not all that long ago, a few thousand years ago, the Sahara was a lush green garden with girafes, lions, elephants, etc., roaming and prospering in it. There are cave-paintings and carvings on rocks in the Sahara depicting a rich fauna. A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in... more
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Daniela Agre said her team found the four-wheel chariot during excavations near the village of Borisovo, around 180 miles east of the capital, Sofia.
"This is the first time that we have found a completely preserved chariot in Bulgaria," said Agre, a senior archaeologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
She said previous excavations had only unearthed single parts of chariots — often because ancients sites had been looted.
In a separate pit, they unearthed skeletons of two riding horses apparently sacrificed during the funeral of the nobleman, along with well preserved bronze and leather objects, some believed to horse harnesses.
Some 10,000 Thracian mounds — some of them covering monumental stone tombs — are scattered across Bulgaria.
-VESELIN TOSHKOV, Associated Press Writer
Interesting find. I wonder what this will tell us about the history of the Thracian people..Daniela Agre said her team found the four-wheel chariot during excavations near the... more
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A keen treasure hunter has struck gold, after his metal detector guided him to a rare Anglo-Saxon cross in the middle of a muddy farmer's field....A keen treasure hunter has struck gold, after his metal detector guided him to a rare... more
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CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Egyptian scientists will carry out DNA tests on two mummified fetuses found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun to determine their link to the young pharaoh, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said in a statement Wednesday.
The two tiny female fetuses -- found in the tomb in Luxor as part of the 1922 King Tut discovery -- may be his stillborn children, the Council said.
The statement quoted Zahi Hawass, the head of the Egyptian antiquities, as saying that the tests will also try to determine Tutankhamun's family linage, a source of ambiguity among many Egyptologists.
"All of these results will be compared to each other, along with those of the mummy of King Tutankhamun," Hawass said.
More behind link...
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Sounds like alot of work just to ask, "Who's your daddy?"CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Egyptian scientists will carry out DNA tests on two mummified... more
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Paleontologists digging in a brickyard in southern Poland have discovered the remains of a dinosaur they say is a previously unknown ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The predator dinosaur, given the working name "the Dragon", lived around 200 million years ago, team member Doctor Tomasz Sulej of the Polish Science Academy, told Reuters.
It was five meters (yards) long and moved on two legs. Its longest teeth were 7 centimeters (2 inches) long.
"This is a completely new type of dinosaur that was so far unknown," Sulej said on Friday. "Nobody even expected that members of this group lived in that time, so this gives us new knowledge about the whole evolution of the T-Rex group."
The remains were excavated from a brickyard in Lisowice village about 200 km (125 miles) from Warsaw.
The paleontologists will continue examining the bones and fully document the discovery before they decide what name to give to the new dinosaur. They will exhibit the findings in Lisowice on August 7, Sulej said.
At the same site the group also found a dicynodon -- a reptile which was a direct predecessor of mammals.
"We are almost certain that "Dragon" hunted animals like this herbivorous dicynodon, which looked like hippopotamus but was much bigger," Sulej said."
Paleontologists digging in a brickyard in southern Poland have discovered the remains... more
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Discovery-News.com: Excavating ancient ruins can turn up strange items - such as preserved wood that's thousands of years old. Discovery News' Rossella Lorenzi sits down with an ancient wood expert in Ciaro, Eygpt to find out what it takes to be an ancient wood expert. Discovery-News.com: Excavating ancient ruins can turn up strange items - such as... more
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