On Monday, the Smithsonian Institution hosted a discussion surrounding whether or not to go forward with the proposed spring 2012 exhibition Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds. The Chinese artifacts included in the exhibition were found among the remains of an ancient trade-vessel off the coast of the Indonesian island of Belitung in 1998.
At issue here is the fact that the artifacts were removed from the shipwreck by a commercial excavation company, a practice that many archaeologists deem unethical. On April 5, a group of archaeologists and anthropologists from the National Academy of Sciences, including former Smithsonian Secretary Robert McCormick Adams, signed a letter to current Smithsonian head G. Wayne Clough condemning the exhibition on the grounds that it would "severely damage the stature and reputation" of the institution. Other groups, both within and without the Smithsonian Institution, have also expressed concerns.
The Arab merchant ship, which sank in the Java sea twelve centuries ago, contains the largest group of Tang dynasty artifacts ever found at a single site, including cooking utensils, measuring weights, spice jars, bronze mirrors, silver and gold vessels, and glazed ceramic wares. The discovery offers new and surprising insights into maritime trade patterns between the Abbasid Empire in the Middle East and Tang dynasty China.
The shipwreck was salvaged by a commercial venture called Seabed Explorations, run by German engineer Tilman Walterfang, who moved to Indonesia in the early 1990s in the hopes of profiting from the excavation of local underwater heritage.
Secret History
© The Associated Press
Jordan's archaeology chief Ziad al-Saad speaks during a press conference in Amman on April 3, 2011.
Jordan's archaeology chief Ziad al-Saad speaks during a press conference in Amman on April 3, 2011.
Jordan's archaeology chief, Ziad al-Saad, said on Tuesday that security police have recovered seven ancient manuscripts from local smugglers.
The writings are part of 70 manuscripts that Jordanian archaeologists discovered five years ago in a cave in the north. Later, they were stolen and most were believed to have been smuggled into Israel.
© Ed Hille
Field archaeologist Amadeus Zajac screens dirt from the dig looking for artifacts belonging to American Indians.
Field archaeologist Amadeus Zajac screens dirt from the dig looking for artifacts belonging to American Indians.
And they're just getting started.
During the next few months, workers will continue to strip away layer after layer of rich brown soil on a small piece of what used to be farmland in Lower Makefield, and they could find artifacts dating to 8000 to 10,000 B.C.
"It takes a lot of patience," said John W. Lawrence, senior archaeologist at the excavation site along River Road, where a new bridge is scheduled to be built in the coming years to replace the Scudder Falls Bridge between Bucks County and New Jersey.
The $322 million Scudder Falls project is the largest ever undertaken by the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission. Such archaeological digs are required by federal law when a construction project may threaten historic and archaeological artifacts.
© Agence France-Presse
Parts of a statue are seen during the excavation of an area close to the Temple of Amenhotep III in western Luxor. Archaeologists have discovered a giant statue of Egypt's famous pharaoh Amenhotep III at his mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor, according to the antiquities authority
Parts of a statue are seen during the excavation of an area close to the Temple of Amenhotep III in western Luxor. Archaeologists have discovered a giant statue of Egypt's famous pharaoh Amenhotep III at his mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor, according to the antiquities authority
The 13-metre-tall (43-foot) statue was found buried in seven pieces at the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III at Kom al-Hitan.
It was one of two statues placed at the northern entrance of the temple, and was probably destroyed during an earthquake in 27 BC, the antiquities authority statement said.
"The archaeological team is now working to clean, restore and collect the seven pieces and find the head of the statue," the statement said.
It also said it was hoped the statue's twin would be unearthed soon.
Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt between 1390 and 1352 BC, is the father of Akhenaten, the "heretic pharaoh" considered a precursor of monotheism because he tried to impose the exclusive worship of Aten.
© AP/ Brian Skoloff
In this photo taken April 23, 2011, a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle published in 1493 is displayed at Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City. The Utah book dealer came across the 500-year-old German language edition while appraising items brought in by locals at a fundraiser for the town museum in Sandy, about 15 miles south of Salt Lake City. It's considered to be one of the earliest and most lavishly illustrated books produced after the invention of the printing press.
In this photo taken April 23, 2011, a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle published in 1493 is displayed at Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City. The Utah book dealer came across the 500-year-old German language edition while appraising items brought in by locals at a fundraiser for the town museum in Sandy, about 15 miles south of Salt Lake City. It's considered to be one of the earliest and most lavishly illustrated books produced after the invention of the printing press.
Book dealer Ken Sanders has seen a lot of nothing in his decades appraising "rare" finds pulled from attics and basements, storage sheds and closets.
Sanders, who occasionally appraises items for PBS's Antiques Roadshow, often employs "the fine art of letting people down gently."
But on a recent Saturday while volunteering at a fundraiser for the small town museum in Sandy, Utah, just south of Salt Lake, Sanders got the surprise of a lifetime.
"Late in the afternoon, a man sat down and started unwrapping a book from a big plastic sack, informing me he had a really, really old book and he thought it might be worth some money," he said. "I kinda start, oh boy, I've heard this before."
Then he produced a tattered, partial copy of the 500-year-old Nuremberg Chronicle.
Figure 1. Lithograph of Stela at Copan, Published in 1844 by Frederick Catherwood in Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan.
Our fascination with the Maya is credited to John Lloyd Stephens, a New York Lawyer who travelled to the Yucatan and Central America in the 1840s, and Frederick Catherwood, an Englishman whose mission was to visually document the journey, a talent that has inspired many of us in becoming archaeologists.
Along with multi-leveled stepped pyramids, ball courts, plazas and freestanding monuments called Stelae, the Maya also literally told the stories of their parents, ancestors, founders, foes, captured enemies and military alliances. Maya writing is a unique feature of this culture that along with the perfection of their calendar has intrigued and mystified the world. Their texts are expressions of a ruling class, however, the question remains, are we reading history, political propaganda or both?
© Abdullah Geelah/Wikipedia
Some of the paintings in the Laas Geel caves
Some of the paintings in the Laas Geel caves
Laas Gaal, Somalia (also known as Laas Geel), just outside of Haregeisa, the capital of Somalia's self-declared Somaliland state, contains 10 caves that show vivid depictions of a pastoralist history which dates back to some 5,000 years or more, reports AFP.
A French archaeology team was sent in 2002 to survey Somalia in search of rock shelters and caves that might contain stratified archaeological infills that could document the period when production economy appeared in this part of the Horn of Africa, according to Wikipedia.
During the survey, the Laas Geel cave paintings were discovered. The paintings were in excellent condition, depicting ancient humans who lived in the area raising their hands and worshipping humpless cows with large lyre-shaped horns.
Although the paintings were known to the local Somali people for centuries, it was not advertised to the international community until a team of experts returned to the area in November 2003 to study the paintings and their prehistoric context in detail.
Even with the history of Somalia wars, natural weathering, animals and other factors, the paintings have been well preserved and have retained their clear outlines and vibrant colors.
© Getty Images
One diary excerpt tells how Stalin was advised that the best way to win Churchill round was to get him drunk
One diary excerpt tells how Stalin was advised that the best way to win Churchill round was to get him drunk
It's one of the great questions of history, and indeed philosophy: what does it take to create a Hitler or a Stalin? What circumstances does it require to produce such evil? Newly released diaries from one of Joseph Stalin's personal doctors suggest that, in Stalin's case, illness could have helped to contribute to the paranoia and ruthlessness of his rule over the Soviet Union.
Alexander Myasnikov was one of the doctors called to Stalin's deathbed when the dictator fell ill in 1953, and, in diaries that have been kept secret up to now, he claims that Stalin suffered from a brain illness that could have impaired his decision-making.
"The major atherosclerosis in the brain, which we found at the autopsy, should raise the question of how much this illness - which had clearly been developing over a number of years - affected Stalin's health, his character and his actions," Dr Myasnikov wrote in his diaries, excerpts of which were published for the first time in the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets yesterday. "Stalin may have lost his sense of good and bad, healthy and dangerous, permissible and impermissible, friend and enemy. Character traits can become exaggerated, so that a suspicious person becomes paranoid," the doctor wrote.
© EPA
The moai, giant stone statues that line the Easter Island coasT
The moai, giant stone statues that line the Easter Island coasT
The debate has a modern political dimension. At stake is the central example, cited by Jared Diamond in his 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, of the dire consequences that threaten if humans don't take care of the planet.
The archaeological argument revolves around the moai, hundreds of stone statues that line the coast of the now treeless South Pacific island, known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui.
The almost-naked natives discovered by a Dutch expedition on Easter Sunday 1722 were considered too impoverished to have carved and moved the statues themselves.
The accepted theory is that a more advanced civilisation, numbering some 15,000 people, must have erected the statues, with hundreds of men hauling them to the shore and whole industries devoted to making ropes, rollers and sledges while the rest struggled to feed the workers.
Comment: Sometimes the theories about "ecological suicide" are a way to avoid the possibility of cycles of cosmic and planetary catastrophes at all.
For more about this subject the reader might wish to read:
The Hazard to Civilization from Fireballs and Comets
New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection
Impact Hazards on a Populated Earth?
Planet-X, Comets and Earth Changes by J.M. McCanney
And also it is interesting to notice the references about giants and cannibalism during times of changes and planet upheaval.
For more about that, read:
The Golden Age, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction
© davelin66
The Antikythera Mechanism at the Boston Museum of Science.
The Antikythera Mechanism at the Boston Museum of Science.
After the storm, the sponge-fishers explored the waters of Antikythera for sponges. One of the divers, Elias Stadiatis, discovered the remnants of an ancient ship full of statues - horses, men, women and vases.
Of several treasures, the most precious was a very small piece of metal with gears, which the archaeologists of the National Museum in Athens originally dubbed astrolabe, which in Greek means, "star catcher." Astrolabes helped figure out the position of the sun and the stars in the sky. Astrolabes were not complicated devices. However, the machine of Antikythera was complex and, eventually, Greek archaeologists renamed it the Antikythera Mechanism and dated it from 150 to 100 BCE.
The shipwreck probably happened in the middle of the first century BCE. The doomed Roman ship was sailing from Rhodes to Rome. It carried looted Greek treasure: more than 100 bronze and marble statues, amphorae and coins.
Comment: Could Stalin's "brain illness" be in fact a frontal characteropathy, as described by Andrew M, Lobaczewski in Political Ponerology (A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes)?