Bones, skull found in Vernon orchard now under study

Investigators have determined human remains found in a Vernon, B.C. orchard came from an old First Nations burial site.

One bone was found a week ago at the site by a contractor who was clearing an area to plant new trees in the 6000 block of Pleasant Valley Road.

An anthropologist was brought in and located several more bones on Thursday, including a skull.

It's not yet known how old the remains are.

Archaeologists in Prague say they've uncovered a Stone-Age man buried in a position usually reserved for women - but media claims of a "gay caveman" may be exaggerated, according to some researchers.

The skeleton, which dates back to about 2,500 to 2,800 B.C., was found in the outskirts of Prague. The culture the man belonged to (known as the Corded Ware culture for their pottery decorated with the impressions of twisted cord) was very finicky about grave rituals, reported Iranian news network Press TV, which visited the excavation site. According to the Czech news website Ceskapozice.cz, Corded Ware males were usually buried on their right sides with their heads facing east. This man, however, was buried on his left with his head facing west - a traditionally female position.

"We found one very specific grave of a man lying in the position of a woman, without gender specific grave goods, neither jewelry or weapons," lead archaeologist Kamila Remisova Vesinova of the Czech Archaeological Society told Press TV.

Not gay, not a caveman

Vesinova and her colleagues told reporters that the man may have belonged to a "third gender." This designation is for people who may be viewed as neither male nor female or some combination of both. In some cases, third-gender individuals are thought to be able to switch between male and female depending on circumstance. Modern examples include the Hijras of India and the Fa'afafine of Polynesia.

The skeleton has been trumpeted in the media as belonging to a "homosexual caveman," but some archaeologists are skeptical. For one thing, the complexity of the third-gender concept makes calling the skeleton "gay" an oversimplification, Kristina Killgrove, an anthropologist in at the University of North Carolina, wrote in her blog, Bone Girl.

Amazing new photographs released today show the remains, almost fully intact of a World War II German bomber, a Dornier 17 which crash landed in the sea off Kent in 1940.

Marine archaeologists have been aware of the existence of the plane since it crashed into the sea over seventy years ago but almost immediately after it crashed and turned turtle it was buried under the shifting Goodwin Sands. The consistency of the sand and the cold water helped to preserve it until a year ago it was discovered that the sands had shifted once more.

Now the archaeologists hope to raise the plane in one piece before it is restored and put on display.

The discovery and the future recovery efforts are being compared to that surrounding the discovery of the Mary Rose in the Solent.

Human remains that could be up to 7,000 years old have been discovered at a construction site in Des Moines.

They were found by a state archaeology team near a site where scientists think people harvested, cooked and ate clams thousands of years ago.

State archaeologist John Doershuk said that it's a unique site to Iowa and the Midwest.

The site's exact location is not being disclosed, lest looters ravage it.

But the discovery and archaeological dig is delaying a $37.8 million sewer project for at least six months. It's estimated the Wastewater Reclamation Authority will have to spend an estimated $1.5 million or more because of the delay.

To a certain degree, the anti-LGBT activists are correct about the fact that homosexuality has never existed throughout the history of the world, and gay marriage never actually existed. This is because the term homosexual and the identity of it only came into being within the last hundred and fifty years. Prior to that, same-sex couples existed, though they often did not exist in what we could call same-gender relationships.

Native American tribes have a long and noted history of 'third and fourth gender' individuals. These are women who live their lives as men and often take women as their spouses and men who live their lives as women and who often take men as their spouses. Today, the term two-spirit tends to be used to describe them, though once each nation and tribe had their own name for these individuals. There were often mythological reasons given for their existence, and they were often treated as special individuals.

Evidence is emerging that Europe had this concept for some time as well. The skeletal remains of a male third gender was found in the Czech Republic buried in the same manner that a woman would be. The skeleton dates to between 2900 BCE and 2500 BCE. He was not, as many sources say, a cave man. By this time, the Egyptian unification had already happened, and agriculture was well known. In fact, it is likely that this culture, which was a blend of stone and copper age in their tool and grave goods use, was likely rather sophisticated.

What is more, this skeleton is not the only two-spirit found. A woman's skeleton was found last year buried in the same manner as a man.

New research may change long-held views on early North American inhabitants

Summit County -- New archaeological research in Texas suggests that humans lived in North America thousands of years earlier than previously believed.

For about 100 years, archaeologists have dated the earliest human artifacts to the Clovis people, about 13,000 years ago. The new finds push this date back by about 2,500 years, into the pre-Clovis era, according to a press release from Baylor University.

"This find really rewrites history, so to speak, and changes our collective thought on the early colonization of North, Central and South America," said Dr. Lee Nordt, professor of geology at Baylor and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who is an author on the study. "What sets this study a part is that we were able to show using geological methods that the buried artifacts dating to pre-Clovis times were in their original state. This demonstrates unequivocally that the peopling of the Americas occurred much earlier than previously thought."

The first known case of clogged arteries, or atherosclerosis, has been found in the mummy of an Egyptian princess, said a study presented Sunday at a major US cardiology conference.

Researchers have long known that ancient Egyptians suffered from plaque build-up in the arteries that supply the heart, but the latest finding suggests that the syndrome may be more prevalent, and mysterious, than previously thought.

"Commonly, we think of coronary artery or heart disease as a consequence of modern lifestyles, mainly because it has increased in developing countries as they become more westernized," said Gregory Thomas of the University of California, Irvine.

"These data point to a missing link in our understanding of heart disease, and we may not be so different from our ancestors," he said.

Researchers performed computerized tomography (CT) scans on 52 Egyptian mummies to determine whether they had atherosclerosis.

It's known as the Antikythera mechanism, a metal gear driven device found over a century ago on a sunken Roman ship, near the island of Antikythera, that for just as many years has had scientists analyzing, scratching their heads and offering suggestions as to its purpose.

Some have called the device the first analog computer; other's the first mechanical computing device. Either way, the device very clearly demonstrates that the Greeks of 150 to 100 BCE knew far more about gears and calculating machines than had been thought possible just a decade or so ago.

After careful analysis with an x-ray tomography machine which allowed the device to be seen as a series of slices that could then be used to see all the way through the mechanism slice by slice (as is done with the same machine when analyzing organs inside a living human being) researchers, particularly Michael Wright, now of Imperial College, London, have come to believe they have almost a full understanding of what the machines was built to do; and that, was to calculate the position of celestial bodies.

The image is eerily familiar: a bearded young man with flowing curly hair. After lying for nearly 2,000 years hidden in a cave in the Holy Land, the fine detail is difficult to determine. But in a certain light it is not difficult to interpret the marks around the figure's brow as a crown of thorns.

The extraordinary picture of one of the recently discovered hoard of up to 70 lead codices - booklets - found in a cave in the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee is one reason Bible historians are clamouring to get their hands on the ancient artefacts.

If genuine, this could be the first-ever portrait of Jesus Christ, possibly even created in the lifetime of those who knew him.

The tiny booklet, a little smaller than a modern credit card, is sealed on all sides and has a three-dimensional representation of a human head on both the front and the back. One appears to have a beard and the other is without. Even the maker's fingerprint can be seen in the lead impression. Beneath both figures is a line of as-yet undeciphered text in an ancient Hebrew script.

Astonishingly, one of the booklets appears to bear the words 'Saviour of Israel' - one of the few phrases so far translated.

In a study to be published this month in the Proceedings of the Athens Archaeological Society, archaeologist Michael Cosmopoulos of the University of Missouri-St. Louis shares his discovery of a clay tablet showing the earliest known writing in Europe.

Located in the southwestern corner of Greece, the town where this discovery took place is Iklaina. This town dates back to the Mycenaean period of 1500 BC to 100 BC, and around 1400 BC was conquered by King Nestor.

Cosmopoulos has been actively excavating this site for 11 years and has found evidence of a Mycenaean palace, including colorful murals, Cyclopean walls, and an elaborate drainage system made from clay pipes. However, this tablet has been his most unexpected find.

Tablets of this nature were made from clay which was allowed to dry in the sun, making them very brittle and easily destroyed. The tablet they discovered however, had been thrown in a garbage pit and burned, thus firing the clay and leaving it preserved.