Archaeology

[Khat]

Wow this is wonderful to read this! When I was a young girl we would always find arrowheads and then turn them over to the Park Rangers...
Years later I went on a 'site inspection' for the OEPA and from the historical study (2x2 squares!) they found an arrowhead that was dated way before Christ. There was something special when you hold a piece of history in your hand...
Way2Go!

[duchess of malfi]

New findings change thinking on human sacrifices
Archaeologists: Practice often involved children, brutal methods
Sunday, January 23, 2005 Posted: 5:07 PM EST (2207 GMT)

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- It has long been a matter of contention: Was the Aztec and Mayan practice of human sacrifice as widespread and horrifying as the history books say? Or did the Spanish conquerors overstate it to make the Indians look primitive?

In recent years, archaeologists have been uncovering mounting physical evidence that corroborates the Spanish accounts in substance, if not number.

Using high-tech forensic tools, archaeologists are proving that pre-Hispanic sacrifices often involved children and a broad array of intentionally brutal killing methods.

For decades, many researchers believed Spanish accounts from the 16th and 17th centuries were biased to denigrate Indian cultures. Others argued that sacrifices were largely confined to captured warriors, while still others conceded the Aztecs were bloody, but believed the Maya were less so.

"We now have the physical evidence to corroborate the written and pictorial record," archaeologist Leonardo Lopez Lujan said. "Some 'pro-Indian' currents had always denied this had happened. They said the texts must be lying."

The Spaniards probably did exaggerate the sheer numbers of victims to justify a supposedly righteous war against idolatry, said David Carrasco, a Harvard Divinity School expert on Meso-American religion.

But there is no longer as much doubt about the nature of the killings. Indian pictorial texts known as "codices," as well as Spanish accounts from the time, quote Indians describing multiple forms of human sacrifice.

Victims had their hearts cut out or were decapitated, shot full of arrows, clawed, sliced to death, stoned, crushed, skinned, buried alive or tossed from the tops of temples.

Children were said to be frequent victims, in part because they were considered pure and unspoiled.

"Many people said, 'We can't trust these codices because the Spaniards were describing all these horrible things,' which in the long run we are confirming," said Carmen Pijoan, a forensic anthropologist who believes butcher-like cut marks on bones from a pre-Aztec culture indicate cannibalism.

In December, at an excavation in an Aztec-era community in Ecatepec, just north of Mexico City, archaeologist Nadia Velez Saldana described finding evidence of human sacrifice associated with the god of death.

"The sacrifice involved burning or partially burning victims," Velez Saldana said. "We found a burial pit with the skeletal remains of four children who were partially burned, and the remains of four other children that were completely carbonized."

Although the remains don't show whether the victims were burned alive, there are depictions of people -- apparently alive -- being held down as they are burned.

The dig turned up other clues to support descriptions of sacrifices in the Magliabecchi codex, a pictorial account painted between 1600 and 1650 that includes human body parts stuffed into cooking dishes, and people sitting around eating, as the god of death looks on.

"We have found cooking dishes just like that," said archaeologist Luis Manuel Gamboa. "And, next to some full skeletons, we found some incomplete, segmented human bones."

However, researchers don't know whether those remains were cannibalized.

The Maya, whose culture peaked farther east about 400 years before the Aztecs founded Mexico City in 1325, had a similar taste for sacrifice, Harvard University anthropologist David Stuart wrote in a 2003 article.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, "The first researchers tried to make a distinction between the 'peaceful' Maya and the 'brutal' cultures of central Mexico," Stuart wrote. "They even tried to say human sacrifice was rare among the Maya."

But in carvings and mural paintings, he said, "we have now found more and greater similarities between the Aztecs and Mayas," including a Maya ceremony in which a costumed priest is shown pulling the entrails from a bound and apparently living sacrificial victim.

Some Spanish-era texts have yet to be corroborated with physical remains. They describe Aztec priests sacrificing children and adults by sealing them in caves or drowning them. But the assumption now is that the texts appear trustworthy in description, if not necessarily in number, said Lopez Lujan, who also works at the Templo Mayor site.

For Lopez Lujan, confirmation has come in the form of advanced chemical tests on the stucco floors of Aztec temples, which were found to have been soaked with iron, albumen and genetic material consistent with human blood.

"It's now a question of quantity," said Lopez Lujan, who thinks the Spaniards -- and Indian picture-book scribes working under their control -- exaggerated the number of sacrifice victims, claiming in one case that 80,400 people were sacrificed at a temple inauguration in 1487.

"We're not finding anywhere near that ... even if we added some zeros," Lopez Lujan said.

Researchers have largely discarded the old theory that sacrifice and cannibalism were motivated by a protein shortage in the Aztec diet, though some still believe it may have been a method of population control.

Pre-Hispanic cultures believed the world would end if the sacrifices were not performed. Sacrificial victims, meanwhile, were often treated as gods themselves before being killed.

"It is really very difficult for us to conceive," Pijoan said of the sacrifices. "It was almost an honor for them."

------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

[Kinslaughterer]

12,000-Year-Old Bones Found in Kansas

Tue Feb 15, 2:49 PM ET Science - AP



GOODLAND, Kan. - Scientists say mammoth and camel bones unearthed in northwest Kansas that date back 12,200 years could be part of "one of the most important archaeological sites in North America."



The bones, found last June in Sherman County near the Colorado border, were alongside a piece of stone that archaeologists say was the kind used in tools that humans once used to butcher animals.


Archaeological geologist Rolfe Mandel of the Kansas Geological Survey said carbon-14 dating completed last week shows the bones are between 12,200 and 12,300 years old, which could mean humans lived on the Great Plains 1,300 years earlier than previously thought.


Mandel said if excavations this summer verify the finding of the stone tool, it would make the archaeological site among the oldest in the New World.


"It would be one of the most important sites in North America," he said.


Researchers initially found mammoth bone and stone-tool flint next to each other in soil dating back 11,000 years at the site. Below that, they found mammoth and camel bone that were fractured in a way that they say could only have been caused by people who shattered bone with stone to either make flaked bone tools or get to the marrow.


"Some scientists won't be convinced that the older bones got here because of human hunters," said Mandel, who is leading the team that found the bones. "I'm not convinced, either. But I'm 75 percent convinced. There are few other ways the bones could be broken naturally the way they're broken."


Ancient and more modern stone-age hunters sharpened their butchering tools alongside the bodies of the animals they killed, flaking flint off dulled stone-knife blades and leaving traces of their sharpening work beside the bones.


Mandel said he's absolutely positive about the layer of 11,000-year-old bones and stone artifacts, which he said make the Sherman County dig the oldest site of verified human occupation and activity in Kansas, and among the oldest in North America.


The dig began after a landowner in the area found a mammoth tooth in 1976 and contacted the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. In the 1980s, a paleontologist who found animal bones there noted that the fracture patters on the bones were unusual.


Based on mammoth-kill sites in western North America, scientists previously dated the earliest confirmed evidence of humans on the Great Plains at 11,000 to 11,500 years ago. Mandel said the new evidence will add to the debate over when humans inhabited the Western Hemisphere.


Conventional wisdom has been that people came across the Bering Strait about 12,000 years ago. But Mandel said the northwest Kansas dig means "we're rethinking not only when people arrived, but where they came from."


Mandel said material at the site indicates a small family of nomads likely used it as a campsite. Those people would have drifted across the land, following herds of animals, he said.


"It would have been a very rough lifestyle," Mandel said

[Avatar]

Fascinating. And in case I've never mentioned it before, I love your signature(s)

--A

[Avatar]

Double post I know, but I found something interesting and on-topic today:

Tsunami Reveals Ancient Port
28/02/2005 07:47 - (SA)

Mahabalipuram - Indian archaeologists have found what they believe are undersea "stone structures" that could be the remains of an ancient port city off India's southern coast, officials say.

The archaeologists learnt of the structures after locals reported spotting a temple and several sculptures when the sea pulled back briefly just before deadly tsunamis smashed into the coastline December 26.

Divers discovered the stone remains close to India's famous beachfront Mahabalipuram temple in Tamil Nadu state, Alok Tripathi, an official from the state-run Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), said on Saturday.

"We've found some stone structures which are clearly man-made. They're perfect rectangular blocks, arranged in a clear pattern," he said aboard the Indian naval vessel Ghorpad.

Tripathi headed a diving expedition after the tsunamis uncovered the remains of a stone house, a half-completed rock elephant and two exquisite giant granite lions, one seated and another poised to charge in Mahabalipuram, 70km south of Madras.

The objects were found when the towering waves withdrew from the beach, carrying huge amounts of sand with them.

Tsunami 'gifts'
Experts say the tsunami "gifts" discovered in Mahabalipuram belong to the Hindu Pallava dynasty that dominated much of South India from as early as the first century BC to the eighth century AD.
Mahabalipuram is recognised as the site of some of India's greatest architectural and sculptural achievements.

Since February 11, Tripathi's team of a dozen divers have been scouring the seabed, diving three to eight metres, to examine rocks with "geometrical patterns".

"European mariners and travellers, who visited Mahabalipuram in the 18th century, wrote about the existence of seven pagodas (temples) here," he said.

"Some believed it was a myth, others thought six of the pagodas sank under the sea while one remained as a rock temple on the shore. "In fact, some scholars believe the entire city, barring a few rock structures and carvings, were submerged under the sea."

The divers have brought up pottery pieces and small stone blocks from the seabed. "We'll study everything to gain an insight into early settlement in this area," said Tripathi.

Indian Navy commodore Brian Thomas said "extensive diving" had taken place east of Mahabalipuram's shore temple with underwater cameras used to record findings.

"The sea was often rough due to the wind and underwater visibility was very poor," Thomas told AFP. "But we found that the area was strewn with a number of blocks of various shapes and sizes."

Coastline redrawn
The findings were expected to be presented at an international seminar on maritime archaeology in New Delhi between March 17-19, archaeology officials said.

Tripathi said experts would study how old the rocks were to fix the date of the ancient civilisation at Mahabalipuram.

Cartographers say the waves which left nearly 16 400 dead or missing in southern India and the country's far-flung Andaman and Nicobar islands have redrawn the entire Mahabalipuram coastline.
One of a clutch of temples is partially submerged. But the magnificent eighth century Shore Temple, a UN World Heritage Site famed for its carvings representing characters from Hindu scriptures, survived the sea's fury.

This was thanks to a move by India's then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, who ordered that huge rocks be piled around the building to protect it from sea erosion after visiting the site in the late 1970s, officials say.

[Kinslaughterer]

Lost society tore itself apart
By Nick Davidson
BBC Horizon



The largest pyramid constructed by the Moche, the Huaca del Sol
Two thousand years ago, a mysterious and little known civilisation ruled the northern coast of Peru. Its people were called the Moche.

They built huge and bizarre pyramids that still dominate the surrounding landscape; some well over 30m (100ft) tall.

They are so heavily eroded, they look like natural features; only close up can you see they are made up of millions of adobe mud bricks.


These pyramids are known as "huacas", meaning "sacred site" in the local Indian dialect. Several contain rich collections of murals; others house the tombs of Moche leaders.

As archaeologists have excavated these Moche sites, they have unearthed some of the most fabulous pottery and jewellery ever to emerge from the ancient world.


Archaeologist Dr Walter Alva with an elaborate Moche ear ornament
The Moche were pioneers of metal working techniques such as gilding and early forms of soldering.

It enabled them to create extraordinarily intricate artefacts; ear studs and necklaces, nose rings and helmets, many heavily inlaid with gold and precious stones.

Archaeologists have likened them to the Greek and Roman civilisations in Europe.

But who were these extraordinary people and what happened to them? For decades the fate of the Moche has been one of the greatest archaeological riddles in South America.

Now, at last, scientists are coming up with answers. It is a classic piece of archaeological detective work.

'Mud burials'

This week's Horizon tells the story of the rise and fall of a pre-Inca civilisation that has left an indelible mark on the culture and people of Peru and the central Andes Mountains.

One of the first important insights into this remarkable culture came in the mid-1990s when Canadian archaeologist Dr Steve Bourget, of the University of Texas in Austin, made a series of important discoveries.

Excavating at one of the major Moche huacas - a site known as the Huaca de la Luna - he came across a series of dismembered skeletons that bore all the signs of human sacrifice.


Archaeologist Luis Jaime Castillo holds a Moche ceramic depicting warriors engaged in ritual combat
He also found that many of the skeletons were so deeply encased in mud the burials had to have taken place in the rain.

Yet in this part of Peru it almost never rains; it could not have been a coincidence. Bourget speculated that the Moche, like many desert dwelling peoples, had used human sacrifice to celebrate or encourage rain.

The theory appeared to explain puzzling and enigmatic images of human sacrifice found on Moche pottery; it provided a new insight into Moche society; yet it did not explain why this apparently sophisticated civilisation had disappeared.

Then American climatologist Dr Lonnie Thompson, of Ohio State University, came up with a startling new find. Using evidence from ice cores drilled in ancient glaciers in the Andes, he found that at around AD 550 to 600, the coastal area where the Moche lived had been hit by a climatic catastrophe.

Internal collapse

For 30 years the coast had been ravaged by rain storms and floods - what is known as a Mega El Niño - followed by at least 30 years of drought. All the human sacrifices in the world would have been powerless to halt such a disaster.

It seemed a plausible explanation for the demise of a civilisation.

But then in the late 1990s, American archaeologist Dr Tom Dillehay revisited some of the more obscure Moche sites and found that they dated from after AD 650.


Thompson's ice cores have opened up the climate history book
Many were as late as AD 750, 100 years after the climatic double-whammy. He also found that at these later settlements, the huacas had been replaced by fortresses.

The Moche had clearly survived the climatic disaster but had they then been hit by an invasion? Dillehay cast around but could find no evidence for this.

He now put together a new theory, one that, in various guises, is now widely accepted by South American experts.

The Moche had struggled through the climatic disaster but the leadership - which at least in part had claimed authority from its ability to determine the weather - had lost authority and Moche villages and/or clan groups had turned on each other in a battle for scarce resources such as food and land.

Moche society had pulled itself apart.

[duchess of malfi]

Interesting...fits right in with Jared Diamond's new book, Collapse, which explores why some very powerful societies collapsed in the past.

[Kinslaughterer]

Fossil find could be first bipedal human ancestor
Team leader: Bones show it walked upright 4 million years ago
Saturday, March 5, 2005 Posted: 7:33 PM EST (0033 GMT)


ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) -- A team of U.S. and Ethiopian scientists has discovered the fossilized remains of what they believe is humankind's first walking ancestor, a hominid that lived in the wooded grasslands of the Horn of Africa nearly 4 million years ago.

The bones were discovered in February at a new site called Mille, in the northeastern Afar region of Ethiopia, said Bruce Latimer, director of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio. They are estimated to be 3.8-4 million years old.

The fossils include a complete tibia, parts of a thigh bone, ribs, vertebrae, a collarbone, pelvis and a complete shoulder blade, or scapula. There also is an ankle bone, which, with the tibia, proves the creature walked upright, said Latimer, co-leader of the team that discovered the fossils.

The bones are the latest in a growing collection of early human fragments that help explain the evolutionary history of man.

"Right now we can say this is the world's oldest bipedal [hominid] and what makes this significant is because what makes us human is walking upright," Latimer said. "This new discovery will give us a picture of how walking upright occurred."

Bipedal refers to an animal that walks upright on two feet. Hominids are humans and their extinct ancestors.

The findings have not been reviewed by outside scientists or published in a scientific journal.

Leslie Aiello, an anthropologist and head of the Graduate School at University College in London said, however, that the finds could be significant.

"It sounds like a significant find ... particularly if they have a partial skeleton because it allows you to speculate on biomechanics," Aiello, who was not part of the discovery team, told The Associated Press by telephone from Britain.

Paleontologists previously discovered in Ethiopia the remains of a hominid called Ardipithecus ramidus, a transitional creature with significant apelike characteristics that lived as far back as 4.5 million years. There is some dispute over whether it walked upright on two legs, Latimer and Aiello said.

Scientists know little about A. ramidus. A few skeletal fragments suggest it was even smaller than Australopithecus afarensis, the 3.2 million-year-old species widely known by the nearly complete "Lucy" fossil, which measures about 4 feet tall.

Scientists are yet to classify the new find, which they believe falls between A. ramidus and A. afarensis. The fossils would help "join the dots" between the two hominids, said Yohannes Haile-Selassie, an Ethiopian scientist and curator at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History as well as a co-leader of the discovery team.

"This discovery will tell us much about how our 4-million-year-old ancestors walked, how tall they were and what they looked like," he said. "It opens the door on a poorly known time period and [the fossils] are important in that they will help us understand the early phases of human evolution before Lucy."

The specimen is the only the fourth partial skeleton ever to be discovered that is older than 3 million years. It was found after two months of excavation at Mille, 37 miles from the famous Lucy discovery.

"It is a once-in-a-lifetime find," Latimer said.

[Kinslaughterer]

I'm not entirely convinced by his theorizing but its a very interesting idea. By the way great articles, Av and Duchess!

How prehistoric farmers saved us from new Ice Age

Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday March 6, 2005
The Observer

Ancient man saved the world from a new Ice Age. That is the startling conclusion of climate researchers who say man-made global warming is not a modern phenomenon and has been going on for thousands of years.
Prehistoric farmers who slashed down trees and laid out the first rice paddies and wheatfields triggered major alterations to levels of greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they say.

As a result, global temperatures - which were slowly falling around 8,000 years ago - began to rise. 'Current temperatures would be well on the way toward typical glacial temperatures, had it not been for the greenhouse gas contributions from early farming practices,' says Professor William Ruddiman of Virginia University.

The theory, based on studies of carbon dioxide and methane samples taken from Antarctic ice cores, is highly controversial - a point acknowledged by Ruddiman. 'Global warming sceptics could cite my work as evidence that human-generated greenhouse gases played a beneficial role for several thousand years by keeping the Earth's climate more hospitable than it would otherwise have been,' he states in the current issue of Scientific American.

'However, others might counter that, if so few humans with relatively primitive technologies were able to alter the course of climate so significantly, then we have reason to be concerned about the current rise of greenhouse gases to unparalleled concentrations at unprecedented rates.'

Elaborating on his theory, Ruddiman said: 'Rice paddies flooded by irrigation generate methane for the same reason that natural wetlands do - vegetation decomposes in the stagnant water. Methane is also released as farmers burn grasslands,' Ruddiman points out.

Similarly, the cutting down of forests had a major effect. 'Whether the fallen trees were burnt or left to rot, their carbon would soon have been oxidised and ended up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.'

Computer models of the climate made by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggest this rise in carbon dioxide and methane would have had a profound effect on Earth: without man's intervention, our planet would be 2C cooler than it is now, and spreading ice caps and glaciers would affect much of the world.

The idea that ancient farming may have had an impact on Earth's climate was given a cautious welcome by Professor Paul Valdes, an expert on ancient climate change based at Bristol University.

'This is a very interesting idea,' he told The Observer. 'However, there are other good alternative explanations to explain the fluctuations that we see in temperature and greenhouse gas levels at this time. For example, other gases interact with methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and changes in levels of these could account for these increases in greenhouse gases.'

[duchess of malfi]

Study: 'Hobbit' had unique brain
Imaging shows distinctive features
Thursday, March 3, 2005 Posted: 7:03 PM EST (0003 GMT)


HUMAN ANCESTOR
The discovery: The bones of a human dwarf species marooned on the remote Indonesian island of Flores between 95,000 and 12,000 years ago while modern humans rapidly developed elsewhere.
Best specimen: One tiny adult female, measuring about 3 feet tall.
Implications: Flores Man smashes the conventional wisdom that modern humans began to crowd out other upright-walking species 160,000 years ago.
Skeptics: Some researchers say Flores Man doesn't belong in the genus Homo at all, even if it was a recent contemporary.

(AP) -- Scientists working with powerful imaging computers say the spectacular "Hobbit" fossil recently discovered in Indonesia had distinctive brain features that could justify its classification as a separate -- and tiny -- human ancestor.

The new report, published Thursday in the online journal Science Express, seems to support the idea of a sophisticated human dwarf species marooned for eons while modern man proliferated.

The species has been named Homo floresiensis, after the Indonesia island on which it was found.

The new research produced a computer-generated model that compared surface impressions on the inside of the fossil skull with brain casts of modern and ancient humans, as well as chimps and other primates.

The scientists said the model shows that the 3-foot specimen, nicknamed Hobbit, had a brain unlike anything they had seen before in the human lineage. The brain is chimplike in size, about 417 cubic centimeters.

Yet the Hobbit's brain shared wrinkled surface features with the much larger brains of both modern humans and Homo erectus, a tool-making ancestor that lived in southeast Asia more than 1 million years ago. Some of those brain features are consistent with higher cognitive traits.

These brain features coincide with physical evidence of advanced behaviors, such as hunting, firemaking and the use of stone tools, which were found alongside the bones in a cave on the remote equatorial island of Flores.

To some, this suggests an organized society of tiny hunters flourished on the island for millennia at a time when modern humans dominated the planet.

"This is a unique creature," said Florida State University anthropologist Dean Falk, who led the study. "We found amazing, specialized features across the surface from front to back."

"These findings are consistent with the kinds of sophisticated behaviors that are hypothesized" for the Hobbit, Falk said, but she stopped short of saying the Hobbit was a tool-maker.

In October, scientists from Indonesia and Australia caused an international sensation with their report of a trove of tiny fossils. As many as eight individuals were represented in layers that were dated from 95,000 to 12,000 years ago. The Hobbit skeleton was the most complete specimen and contained the only skull.

In a project funded by the National Geographic Society, Falk and researchers from Washington University in St. Louis created a three-dimensional computer model of the brain using CT scans of the interior of the Hobbit's skull. Known as virtual endocasts, these images show the wrinkles, vessels and other surface features that made faint impressions on the skull's lining.

They compared that model with the brains of chimps, a female Homo erectus, a contemporary woman, a pygmy and a European specimen of a person with a small-brain syndrome known as microcephaly.

Scientists say its brain shape is most closely associated with that of Homo erectus. However, it also reflects some features of modern humans, including:

--A fissure near the back of the brain known as the lunate sulcus, similarly found in the modern human brain. "I almost fell over seeing this feature in something so small," Falk said.

--A swollen temporal lobe, the mid-brain area between the ears where hearing, memory, image identification and emotions are processed.

--A part of the frontal lobe near the eyes that is thought to be involved in planning and initiative-taking.

Such advanced brain features were especially surprising because the rest of the skeleton has more primitive traits like coarse teeth and an apelike pelvis similar to human ancestors that emerged in Africa some 4 million years ago.

"It's a really strange combination of traits," said Michael J. Morwood of the University of New England in Australia, one of the Hobbit's excavators. "It is a new, diminutive human species."

Whether the Hobbit evolved into a dwarfed form of Homo erectus or hails from another, older human cousin is unknown, he said.

Other human evolution specialists were split over the new report.

Katerina Semendeferi of the University of California-San Diego described it as a "cutting edge study." While the Hobbit brain does not fit neatly into an evolutionary pattern, she said it is too much to expect that all species would have brain sizes that would neatly transition in size from ape to modern human.

But some experts dismissed the brain-scan study as "trivial." Primatologist Robert Martin, provost of the Field Museum in Chicago, said the Hobbit probably was a modern human that suffered from a form of microcephaly.

But Falk said the Hobbit brain was quite different from the brain of a modern human with abnormal brain growth, or a human pygmy.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

[duchess of malfi]

New Tests Show King Tut Was Not Murdered
Leg Fracture May Have Caused Infection
By PAUL GARWOOD, AP



AP
Tutankhamun's short life has fascinated people since his tomb was discovered in 1922 in the fabled Valley of the Kings in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor.
Jump Below: A King's Mysterious Death

CAIRO, Egypt (March - The results of a CT scan done on King Tut's mummy indicate the boy king was not murdered, but may have suffered a badly broken leg shortly before his death at age 19 - a wound that could have become infected, Egypt's top archaeologist said Tuesday.

Zahi Hawass, secretary general if the Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced the results of the CT scan about two months after it was performed on Tut's mummy.

Hawass said the remains of Tutankhamun, who ruled about 3,300 years ago, showed no signs that he had been murdered - dispelling a mystery that has long surrounded the pharaoh's death.

''In answer to theories that Tutankhamun was murdered, the team found no evidence for a blow to the back of the head, and no other indication of foul play,'' according to a statement released Tuesday by Egyptian authorities.

''They also found it extremely unlikely that he suffered an accident in which he crushed his chest.''

Hawass said some members of the Egyptian-led research team, which included two Italian experts and one from Switzerland, interpreted a fracture to Tut's left thighbone as evidence that the king may have broken his leg badly just before he died.

''Although the break itself would not have been life-threatening, infection might have set in,'' the statement said. ''However, this part of the team believes it also possible, although less likely, that this fracture was caused by the embalmers.''

Some 17,000 images were taken of Tut's mummy during the 15-minute CT scan aimed at answering many of the mysteries that shrouded his life and death - including his royal lineage, his exact age at the time of his death and the reason he died.

''I believe these results will close the case of Tutankhamun, and the king will not need to be examined again,'' Hawass said. ''We should now leave him at rest. I am proud that this work was done, and done well, by a completely Egyptian team.''


A King's Mysterious Death




Tutankhamun's short life has fascinated people since his tomb was discovered in 1922 in the fabled Valley of the Kings in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor by a British archaeologist, Howard Carter. The find revealed a trove of fabulous treasures in gold and precious stones that showed the wealth and craftsmanship of the Pharaonic court

Hawass had long refused to allow DNA testing on Tut's remains and only agreed to perform a noninvasive CT scan on the mummy, which has since been returned to its tomb. The CT machine was brought from Germany and donated by Siemens and National Geographic.

The study, which was the first CT scan on a member of Egypt's ancient royalty, showed that Tut was of a slight build, well-fed and healthy and suffered no major childhood malnutrition or infectious diseases.

The boy king also had a slight cleft palate, which was not however associated with an external expression, like a hair-lip, or other facial deformities. He also had large incisor teeth and the typical overbite characteristic of other kings from his family. His lower teeth were also slightly misaligned.

Ruled out also were pathological causes for Tut's bent spine and elongated skull, which had been noted in earlier examinations. His head shape appeared normal and spine was bent as a result of how royal embalmers had positioned his body.

Tut's lineage also has long been in question. It's unclear if he is the son or a half brother of Akhenaten, the ''heretic'' pharaoh who introduced a revolutionary form of monotheism to ancient Egypt and who was the son of Amenhotep III.

He is believed to have been the 12th ruler of ancient Egypt's 18th dynasty and ascended to the throne at about the age of 8 and died around 1323 B.C.


AP-NY-03-08-05 0724EST

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

[Avatar]

Great article. I've always loved Ancient Egypt, as hould be obvious form my Edgetar, a stylised representation of the Eye of Horus.

--Avatar

[Kinslaughterer]

Viking sagas read through the lens of climate change

Ancient Icelandic sagas may be full of treachery, death and destruction, but the real villain behind all the foment could well have been climate change. According to a Canadian scientist, there's a direct link between changes in regional temperatures and the thematic content of the sagas.
The research is based on newly reconstructed temperature records gained from ocean sediment cores collected off the coast of Vestfirdir, the northwest peninsula of Iceland by scientists from the University of Colorado. Analysis of mollusc shells within these cores has provided an astounding, almost weekly, record of temperature changes in the region.

"The difficult social periods in the sagas and other histories correspond to periods when cooler winters were coupled with what were some of the coldest summers of the last 2,000 years," says Dr. William Patterson, an associate professor of geology at the University of Saskatchewan who is leading the research linking seasonal climate change and Norse sagas.

The new temperature record was gleaned from microscopically thin layers cut from the mollusc's growth rings, each layer representing a few days in the animal's submarine life. The layers were powdered and the oxygen and carbon isotope values measured to create a record of environmental stresses, that were primarily due to temperature, on the Icelanders.

The results of the research, funded by NSERC and the U.S. National Science Foundation, show that in Iceland during what's known as the Little Ice Age from about 1350 A.D. to 1850 A.D., there was an increase in what is termed "seasonality," with cooler winters, colder summers and increased temperature variability. On the other hand, temperatures were highest at 80 B.C., 850 A.D. (during Viking settlement), and during the 1740s.

These changes had a profound impact on early Icelanders, and they continue to have an impact today. A one-degree drop in average summer temperatures can result in a 15-per cent drop in crop yields.

"The sensitivity of these people living in this marginal environment is readily apparent when you reconstruct the temperature variation," says Dr. Patterson. "Prior to this research we could speculate that temperature was a cause, but now we can say there's a good correlation between summer temperatures and the social situation."

Dr. Patterson says the Norse sagas provide numerous points for climatological analysis and comparison. One of the early sagas (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar) provides clues to the climate of Norway and Iceland from 850 to 1000 A.D. Other sagas such as Edda depict the Ragnarok, a pagan tale of the twilight of the ancient gods, that starts with the fimbulvinter (mighty winter) in which much is destroyed during a period of many years without summer, heroes and even families turn against and kill each other, and the world is ruined. Though Edda was written in the 1200s by Snorri Sturluson, it is thought to represent a previous cold period in northern Europe about 2,800 years ago. Other less stylized records from the Middle Ages and later are easier to interpret in terms of the climate-society connection, says Dr. Patterson.

The findings are part of a larger research project that will document changes in North Atlantic temperatures over the past 16,000 years. This type of information is critical for the validation of existing climate change models.

Contact: Dr. William (Bill) Patterson (306) 966-5691 (office); (306) 717 7177 (cell phone); or Bill.Patterson@usask.ca.

Dr. Patterson's research results will be presented as part of the 35th Annual International Arctic Workshop at the University of Alberta on Thursday, March 10, at 2:00 p.m. Quantitative reconstructions of near-shore environments over the last 2000 years in Vestfirdir, NW Iceland: evidence from high-resolution stable isotope analyses of molluscs will be presented by Kristin Dietrich, the M.Sc. student doing the micromilling analysis.

Get an overview of all the research being presented at the conference and schedule at https://arcticworkshop.onware.ca:443/pr ... 1=27357566 (Note: Select abstracts from the top of the page to view the abstracts.)

MAJOR INTERNATIONAL ARCTIC RESEARCH CONFERENCE THIS WEEK AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA

More than a hundred leading Arctic researchers from Canada, the United States and Europe will gather in Edmonton this week for one of North America's major northern research conferences.

The 35th Annual International Arctic Workshop is hosted by Dr. John England, the NSERC Northern Chair at the University of Alberta, the Canadian Circumpolar Institute (CCI), and the University of Alberta's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

From its origins as an informal annual meeting at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Arctic Workshop has grown into an international meeting hosted by academic institutions worldwide.

"Canada has sovereignty over the largest area of tundra in the world, and has expansive northern marine coastlines and waters," says Dr. England. "So we are a major northern nation and the international community is interested in the scientific questions associated with that environment as well as the economic potential that it offers with its resources and potential transportation routes."

[Kinslaughterer]

Neanderthals sang like sopranos
Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Tuesday, 15 March 2005



Neanderthals spoke in a high-pitched, sing-song voice, says one researcher. But not everyone is convinced (Image: iStockphoto)
Neanderthals had strong, yet high-pitched, voices that the stocky hominins used for both singing and speaking, says a UK researcher.

The theory suggests that Neanderthals, who once lived in Europe from around 200,000 to 35,000 BC, were intelligent and socially complex.

It also indicates that although Neanderthals were likely to have represented a unique species, they had more in common with modern humans than previously thought.

Stephen Mithen, a professor of archaeology at the University of Reading, made the determination after studying the skeletal remains of Neanderthals.

His work coincides with last week's release of the first complete, articulated Neanderthal skeleton.

Information about the new skeleton is published in the current issue of the journal The Anatomical Record Part B: The New Anatomist.

Mithen compared related skeletal Neanderthal data with that of monkeys and other members of the ape family, including modern humans.

In a recent University College London seminar, Mithen explained that Neanderthal anatomy suggests the early hominins had the physical ability to communicate with pitch and melody.

He believes they probably used these abilities in a form of communication that was half spoken and half sung.

Mithen says he hopes people who are interested in his research will read his upcoming book The singing Neanderthal: the origin of language, music, body and mind, which will be published in June.

A head and neck for singing?

Jeffrey Laitman is professor and director of anatomy and functional morphology, as well as otolaryngology, the study of the ear, nose, and throats, at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

He is also an expert on Neanderthals, particularly in terms of analysing their head and neck regions.

"My curiosity is peaked by Mithen's theory that Neanderthals sang and had feminine-toned voices. But I think these attributes would be difficult to prove even with the recent Neanderthal reconstruction," Laitman says.

"No Neanderthal larynx exists because the tissue does not fossilise. We have to reconstruct it."

Laitman says he and other researchers often use existing portions of Neanderthal, and other early hominin skulls to build the voice box area.

Through such work, he has learned that Neanderthals, Australopithecines and other prehistoric hominins had a larynx positioned high in the throat.

"The structure is comparable to what we see in monkeys and apes today," Laitman says. "Apes do have language and culture, but the sounds they make are more limited than those produced by humans."

Due to the Neanderthal's impressive brain size, which was larger than the grey matter of most modern humans, Laitman emphatically believes they had linguistic abilities.

"They were not mute brutes just because they were not exactly like us," he says. "Neanderthals probably made different sounds because, in part, they could not have used all of the vowels we do. For example, they could not have said 'ooh', 'ahh' or 'eee'."

Since Neanderthals had distinctive nasal, ear and sinus anatomical features, Laitman believes they were specialised for respiration, which would have given them a 'nasally' voice.

It is unclear why the larynx of modern humans dropped lower in the throat around a million and a half years ago.

Laitman thinks the change might have been linked to desired extra air intake through the mouth for short-burst running.

A sing-song debate

Associate Professor Janet Monge, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and another Neanderthal expert, is sceptical about the new singing Neanderthal theory.

"[But] if we sing, then I am sure that all very modern looking ancient humans could too," she says.

She says that language and singing do not use the same neurosubstrates, so she questions how a link could be made between the two, especially since in humans, language can be melodious and high-pitched without literally moving into full song.

But Monge adds, "Certainly linking language to Neanderthals makes them more like modern humans."

Laitman believes Neanderthals were a separate species that modern humans actually helped to kill off.

"Their ear, nose, and throat anatomy would have made them very susceptible to respiratory infections and to middle ear infections," he says.

"We know they traded and were in contact with modern humans, so Neanderthals would have been in harm's way for germs.

"In the days before cures like penicillin, illness could have flown through their populations very quickly and contributed to their demise."

[Avatar]

Interesting. Whats you own take on the subject Kin? I don't know enough about the field to have an educated opinion, but I'm always wary of social/behavioural assumptions based on (equally assumptive) physical reconstruction.

Not saying that it can't be so, it clearly could be. But IMHO, to deduce local behaviour/ability from a theorised reconstruction of non-existant tissue is at the least, open to serious question.

(BTW, I'd like it to be true, I've always been a believer that the neandertal were more advanced than once given credit for, but there are a lot of things I'd like to be true, and liking don't necessarily make it so.)

--Avatar

[Kinslaughterer]

Well in terms of behavior, that is unpredictable. Physiologically, neaderthals probably had the ability to make sounds that represent communication. The great apes are capable of making distinct sounds that represent communication so I see no problem with neaderthals having a far more advanced communicative ability.
By the way, Neanderthals have a fairly advanced socio-cultural system including burials and religion symbology.

[Avatar]

Well in terms of behavior, that is unpredictable.

Pretty much what I think. In terms of physiology though, I certainly agree with you. Oh, and do know about the social/cultural aspects of Neandertals.

Actually, come to think of it, it's perhaps not unreasonable to guess that they may have sung, (in terms of the fact that they "practised" religion of a sort), but as you suggest, it's conjecture when we posit their actual behaviours.

--A

[Kinslaughterer]

CARPENTERSVILLE, Ill., March 29, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- In the cold murky depths of a Wisconsin lake lay mysterious rock structures wrapped in Native American folklore and local legend. These ancient underwater manmade structures may be the most significant and controversial North American archeological discovery of the twentieth century. In Archie Eschborn's fascinating new book The Dragon in the Lake, you will follow a small band of amateur archeologists led by Eschborn himself as they reveal new research opening up a new chapter in prehistoric North American history and ending decades of controversy on North America's most sacred and secret native American site.

In the book, the author provides compelling new evidence, along with countless professionals, scientists, geologists, researchers, archeologists, anthropologists and divers, who have challenged the status quo of the Wisconsin Historical Society who have clung to their erroneous pronouncements about the fabled "Rock Lake Pyramids" in the first half of the twentieth century.

The Dragon in the Lake takes readers on a wild ride to the coastal waters of Honduras, Mexico, Canada, and the United States to explore one of North America's most enigmatic underwater archeological sites. Investigated and researched by many in the past, none have covered this underwater archeological mystery firsthand like Eschborn. "This exciting, educational ride may soon have some Wisconsin state institutions in turmoil due to the explosive nature of its findings and their potential impact to change the thinking on pre-Columbian migration and trade routes between present-day Mexico and Wisconsin," according to some authorities.

About the Author

Archie Eschborn is a writer, filmmaker, scuba diver, and explorer. He also works full-time as vice president of sales and marketing for one of America's top ten aeronautical research and fan manufacturers for government, automotive, and commercial industries. He has been on Discovery Channel, ABC News, and A&E concerning his work about the underwater structures at Rock Lake as well as in national and international magazines and newspapers. Eschborn is currently working on a book about dome architecture and is researching several other projects on unusual history and archeology. To find out more about these mysterious underwater archeological treasures or to contact the author, visit www.rocklakeresearch.com.



The Dragon in the Lake -- By Archie Eschborn
North America's Most Controversial Underwater
Archeological Discovery of the 20th Century
Publication Date: December 17, 2004
Trade Paperback; $22.99; 375 pages; 1-4134-6032-1
Cloth Hardback; $32.99; 375 pages; 1-4134-6033-X

[Myste]

"This exciting, educational ride may soon have some Wisconsin state institutions in turmoil due to the explosive nature of its findings and their potential impact to change the thinking on pre-Columbian migration and trade routes between present-day Mexico and Wisconsin," according to some authorities.

Which authorities? The publicists who wrote the press release?

Sounds interesting, though.

[Kinslaughterer]

If there are any real authorites involved they would almost certainly mention them...Always be wary of anything written by "amateur" archaeologist. I'm not suggesting that one has to be a fully accredited Phd. but anyone can technically call themselves and archaeologist and often the psuedo-scientists do. Regardless I thought this was an interesting topic...