© BUX DEAN
Frontal view of the "Bode-Skull", discovered in June 2011 in Berlin
Frontal view of the "Bode-Skull", discovered in June 2011 in Berlin
Secret History
Berlin - Only a few days ago, photographer Bux Dean made an astonishing find at a flea market in the German capitol Berlin: If confirmed to be authentic this newly discovered crystal skull could once have been owned by the eminent German art historian and curator Arnold Wilhelm von Bode, one of the most influential figures for modern science museum curatorship.
"It was remarkable, but this skull was standing between antique objects and was without a box" its finder Bux Dean told the German paranormal and fringe science newsblog grewi.de.
© Getty Images
A 7,700-year-old fire pit is revealing how our ancestors put on a BBQ.
A 7,700-year-old fire pit is revealing how our ancestors put on a BBQ.
The remains, found in the valley of the River Tjonger, Netherlands, provide direct evidence for a prehistoric hunting, butchering, cooking and feasting event. The meal occurred more than 1,000 years before the first farmers with domestic cattle arrived in the region.
Although basic BBQ technology hasn't changed much over the millennia, this prehistoric meal centered around the flesh of an aurochs, a wild Eurasian ox that was larger than today's cows. It sported distinctive curved horns.
Another big difference is how meat was obtained then.
Home belonging to an uncontacted Indian tribe are surrounded by crops in a clearing in the Javari Valley of the western Amazon.
Brazilian officials have confirmed the existence of approximately 200 Indians who live in the western Amazon with no contact with the outside world.
This uncontacted tribe is not "lost" or unknown, according to tribal advocacy group Survival International. In fact, about 2,000 uncontacted Indians are suspected to live in the Javari Valley where the tribe's homes were seen from the air. But confirming the tribe's existence enables government authorities to monitor the area and protect the tribe's way of life.
In 2008, Survival International released photos of another uncontacted tribe near the Brazil-Peru border. The striking images revealed men aiming arrows skyward at the plane photographing them. Uncontacted Indian groups are aware of the outside world, a Survival International spokesperson told LiveScience at the time. But they chose to live apart, maintaining a traditional lifestyle deep in the Amazon forest. The latest images reveal that the newly confirmed tribe grows corn, peanuts, bananas and other crops.
© Kenneth Olsen / WUSTL
Analysis of coconut DNA revealed much more structure than scientists expected given the long history of coconut exploitation by people. Written in the DNA are two origins of cultivation and many journeys of exploration and colonization.
Analysis of coconut DNA revealed much more structure than scientists expected given the long history of coconut exploitation by people. Written in the DNA are two origins of cultivation and many journeys of exploration and colonization.
The coconut (the fruit of the palm Cocos nucifera) is the Swiss Army knife of the plant kingdom; in one neat package it provides a high-calorie food, potable water, fiber that can be spun into rope, and a hard shell that can be turned into charcoal. What's more, until it is needed for some other purpose it serves as a handy flotation device.
No wonder people from ancient Austronesians to Captain Bligh pitched a few coconuts aboard before setting sail. (The mutiny of the Bounty is supposed to have been triggered by Bligh's harsh punishment of the theft of coconuts from the ship's store.)
So extensively is the history of the coconut interwoven with the history of people traveling that Kenneth Olsen, a plant evolutionary biologist, didn't expect to find much geographical structure to coconut genetics when he and his colleagues set out to examine the DNA of more than 1300 coconuts from all over the world.
"I thought it would be mostly a mish-mash," he says, thoroughly homogenized by humans schlepping coconuts with them on their travels.
© National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH)
A stepped ceiling and the thick slab gateway of the burial chamber.
A stepped ceiling and the thick slab gateway of the burial chamber.
The room, decorated with paintings of nine figures, also contains pottery, jade pieces and shell, archaeologists from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) reported Thursday (June 23).
The tomb is located in Palenque, an expansive set of stone ruins in the Mexican state of Chiapas. According to the INAH, the tomb was discovered in 1999 under a building called Temple XX. But the stonework and location prevented exploration.
© Smithsonian/AP Photo
Scientists think this bone fragment with the carved image of a mammoth or mastodon is at least 13,000 years old.
Scientists think this bone fragment with the carved image of a mammoth or mastodon is at least 13,000 years old.
While prehistoric art depicting animals with trunks has been found in Europe, this may be the first in the Western Hemisphere, researchers have reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
"It's pretty exciting, we haven't found anything like this in North America," said report co-author Dennis J. Stanford, curator of North American Archaeology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
They hunted these animals, Stanford explained, and "you see people drawing all kinds of pictures that are of relevance and importance to them."
"Much of the significance of such finds is in the tangible, emotional connection they allow us to feel with people in the deep past," said Emory University anthropologist Dietrich Stout.
© Assen Tonev
During excavations of the grave park, scientists found a preserved Thracian tumulus from 2nd century CE full of rich funeral artifacts.
The sites yielded unique discoveries - six leaves of a golden wreath and bronze figurines - and provided more proof of the continued importance of the town of Opeka in northeastern Bulgaria.
"The man buried must have been a prominent and wealthy Thracian public figure. As these golden and bronze jewellery and figurines are put only in the graves of the richest," archaeologist and historian Stamen Stanev from Popovo History Museum told bTV.
The body in the grave was burnt but the funeral objects around it had been preserved - glass, bronze and ceramic artifacts.
Archaeologists believe that all these funeral objects had been imported from abroad.
There were two ancient Thracian towns near the newly found tumulus, which altogether form a larger tumulus acropolis.
All findings will be restored and transferred to a museum.
© stock.xchng
The ancient site of Khan al-Umdan in the old city of Acre in Israel.
The ancient site of Khan al-Umdan in the old city of Acre in Israel.
The newly excavated city adds to Israel's many heritage sites. It is believed to be last inhabited by residents in 1291, the year the crusader state power fell to a Muslim army from Egypt.
The existing Acre city, which was reduced to ruins by the end of seventeenth century, was built by the Ottoman Turks around 1750.
Preserving the newly discovered ruins of the older town is yet to be named and lay preserved under Acre's crust for hundreds of years.
"It's like Pompeii of Roman times - it's a complete city. It is one of the most exciting sites in the world of archaeology," Eliezer Stern, the Israeli archaeologist in charge of Acre, told the Associated Press.
The site will open to public later this year, he said.
Archaeologists disclosed some of the features of the new town that includes an arched passageway underground, graffiti of medieval times on walls, a cobblestone street and a row of shops that probably sold souvenirs for pilgrims, ampoules for holy water, clay figurines and more.
Acre was ruled by rules of many religions. The city houses fortresses, castles, churches and mosques that are evidences of its diverse history. Buildings from the Hellenistic-Roman period and the Crusader and Ottoman periods, Turkish baths, walled port and a Bahai temple suggest that the UNESCO World Heritage Site has strong Holy implications.
© liveinternet.ru
French queen Anna from Kyiv left a manuscript in the 11th century, on which French kings took oath for centuries.
French queen Anna from Kyiv left a manuscript in the 11th century, on which French kings took oath for centuries.
Guides at Kyiv's famed St. Sophia Cathedral like to tell a story about this architectural wonder from the Kyivan Rus period.
Sometime in the 1920s, when tyrant Josef Stalin was demolishing churches throughout the Soviet Union, the government decided to tear down the 11th century cathedral.
The plan was to transform its grounds into a park commemorating a 1917 Crimean Red Army victory.
Along with others who lobbied the dictator to leave the cathedral alone were the French. St. Sophia, they said, also had important cultural meaning for them: Their 11th century queen, Anna, hailed from Kyiv and a book she carried to her new home was the one on which French
kings for generations had taken their oath.
The Soviets relented and St. Sophia was saved.
Now, a millennium after Anna left Kyiv, Ukrainians are able to get a better understanding of what all the fuss was about with the 2010 publication of the Reim's Gospel of Anna Yaroslavivna.
© Domenico Camardo, Herculaneum Conservation Project
Now excavated, an ancient Roman chamber once held tons of decayed garbage and human waste.
Now excavated, an ancient Roman chamber once held tons of decayed garbage and human waste.
You might turn your nose up at sifting through hundreds of sacks of human excrement, but researchers are doing just that in Italy - and happily.
The unprecedented deposit is said to be yielding new insights into everyday life in the ancient Roman Empire.
Admittedly, at 2,000 years old, the feces "isn't remotely unpleasant," Roman historian Andrew Wallace-Hadrill said. "There's absolutely no scent. It's exactly like earth compost."
Ten tons of the stuff has been excavated from a cesspit beneath the ancient town of Herculaneum, near Naples.
Flushed down sewers from apartment blocks and shops, the deposit - the largest collection of ancient Roman garbage and human waste ever found, researchers say - dates to about A.D. 79. That year a catastrophic volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried Herculaneum, along with its more famous neighbor, Pompeii.
Lost jewelry, coins, and semiprecious stones from a gem shop have been found, along with discarded household items such as broken lamps and pottery, according to Wallace-Hadrill, director of the Herculaneum Conservation Project, a Packard Humanities Institute initiative.
And, coming from a onetime district of shopkeepers and artisans, the organic material has revealed just what your run-of the-mill Roman might have eaten in this coastal town, according to project scientists, who collaborated with the British School at Rome and the archaeological authorities for Naples and Pompeii.
