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French demand Crown Jewels from the Queen to compensate for 1499 murder of Edward Plantagenet

Peter Allen
Daily Mail, UK
Sun, 15 Jul 2012 01:42 UTC
  • French city of Angers in Loire Valley provided some of the greatest monarchs in British history
  • When Edward Plantagenet was murdered in Tower of London in 1499 house's legitimate male line came to an end
  • City believes it is owed an apology - and 513 years' worth of compensation
  • Sum would amount to billions in today's currency, but city is prepared to accept the coronation jewels
Image
© unknown
The French city of Angers, France, have said they want to be compensated for the 'murder' of Edward Plantagenet

A French city which produced 14 English kings is demanding the Crown Jewels as compensation from the Queen for the murder of its last pretender to the throne.

Angers, which is in the Loire Valley west of Paris, was once the capital of the Anjou province and the House of Plantagenet.

It ruled England from 1154 until 1485, providing some of the greatest monarchs in British history, including Richard the Lionheart and Henry V.
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Butterfly

Stone Age Fashionistas: World's Oldest Purse Found

Andrew Curry
National Geographic
Wed, 27 Jun 2012 17:12 UTC
stone age purse dog teeth
© Klaus Bentele, LDA Halle
The find is studded With a hundred dog teeth. "It seems to have been very fashionable at the time."
The world's oldest purse may have been found in Germany - and its owner apparently had a sharp sense of Stone Age style.

Excavators at a site near Leipzig uncovered more than a hundred dog teeth arranged close together in a grave dated to between 2,500 and 2,200 B.C.

According to archaeologist Susanne Friederich, the teeth were likely decorations for the outer flap of a handbag.

"Over the years the leather or fabric disappeared, and all that's left is the teeth. They're all pointing in the same direction, so it looks a lot like a modern handbag flap," said Friederich, of the Sachsen-Anhalt State Archaeology and Preservation Office.

The dog teeth were found during excavations of the 250-acre (100-hectare) Profen site, which is slated to become an open-pit coal mine in 2015.

So far the project has uncovered evidence of Stone and Bronze Age settlements, including more than 300 graves, hundreds of stone tools, spear points, ceramic vessels, bone buttons, and an amber necklace.

Thousands of finds from later periods - including the grave of a woman buried with a pound (half a kilogram) of gold jewellry around 50 B.C. - have also turned up.
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Info

Alexander The Not so Great: History Through Persian Eyes

Prof Ali Ansari
BBC
Sat, 14 Jul 2012 18:48 UTC
Alexander the Great
© BBC
Circa 330 BC, Alexander the Great King of Macedonia, on his horse Boucephalus.
Alexander the Great is portrayed as a legendary conqueror and military leader in Greek-influenced Western history books but his legacy looks very different from a Persian perspective.

Any visitor of the spectacular ruins of Persepolis - the site of the ceremonial capital of the ancient Persian Achaemenid empire, will be told three facts: it was built by Darius the Great, embellished by his son Xerxes, and destroyed by that man, Alexander.

That man Alexander, would be the Alexander the Great, feted in Western culture as the conqueror of the Persian Empire and one of the great military geniuses of history.

Indeed, reading some Western history books one might be forgiven for thinking that the Persians existed to be conquered by Alexander.

A more inquisitive mind might discover that the Persians had twice before been defeated by the Greeks during two ill-fated invasions, by Darius the Great in 490BC and then his son, Xerxes, in 480BC - for which Alexander's assault was a justified retaliation.

But seen through Persian eyes, Alexander is far from "Great".

He razed Persepolis to the ground following a night of drunken excess at the goading of a Greek courtesan, ostensibly in revenge for the burning of the Acropolis by the Persian ruler Xerxes.

Persians also condemn him for the widespread destruction he is thought to have encouraged to cultural and religious sites throughout the empire.

The emblems of Zoroastrianism - the ancient religion of the Iranians - were attacked and destroyed. For the Zoroastrian priesthood in particular - the Magi - the destruction of their temples was nothing short of a calamity.
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Question

Ancient Pre-Inca Tomb Found in Northern Peru


Agence France-Presse
Fri, 13 Jul 2012 16:51 UTC
Ancient Tomb
© AFP/BRUNING MUSEUM/File
Archeologists have discovered a tomb about 1,200 years old, from the pre-Inca Sican era, in northern Peru.
Lima - Archeologists said Friday they have discovered a tomb about 1,200 years old, from the pre-Inca Sican era, in northern Peru.

Human remains and jewelry were found July 4 along with the tomb, likely that of a member of the aristocracy of the Sican or Lambayeque elite, head researcher Carlos Wester La Torre told AFP.

A gold earflap, a silver-plated crown, and some 120 silver and copper ornaments that served as emblems of power, along with 116 pieces of pottery and seashells were found in the tomb.

The tomb was located in a burial chamber some six meters (20 feet) deep in the Chotuna-Chornancap sanctuary near Chiclayo, at the same location where the remains of a Sican priestess were found in October.

"This discovery is very important because we now know one of the elite classes of Lambayeque culture," said Wester La Torre, speaking from Chiclayo, capital of the Lambayeque region.

The Sican culture, also referred to as the Lambayeque culture, worshipped the Sican Lord. It emerged between 700 and 750 AD, remaining in force until 1375, reaching its high point between 900 and 1100.

At that time, there were about seven to eight "Sican lords" representing heavenly powers on Earth, complete with masked face, upturned eyes and pointed ears.
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Magnify

Early Human Ancestor, Australopithecus Sediba, Fossils Discovered in Rock


ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Jul 2012 07:15 UTC
Image
© University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
This is the tooth of a hominid embedded in a rock containing significant parts of a skeleton of an early human ancestor. The skeleton is believed to be the remains of "Karabo", the type skeleton of Australopithecus sediba, discovered at the Malapa Site in the Cradle of Humankind in 2009.
Scientists from the Wits Institute for Human Evolution based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg have just announced the discovery of a large rock containing significant parts of a skeleton of an early human ancestor. The skeleton is believed to be the remains of 'Karabo', the type skeleton of Australopithecus sediba, discovered at the Malapa Site in the Cradle of Humankind in 2009.

Professor Lee Berger, a Reader in Palaeoanthropology and the Public Understanding of Science at the Wits Institute for Human Evolution, will make the announcement at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum in Shanghai, China on 13 July 2012.

"We have discovered parts of a jaw and critical aspects of the body including what appear to be a complete femur (thigh bone), ribs, vertebrae and other important limb elements, some never before seen in such completeness in the human fossil record," says Berger. "This discovery will almost certainly make Karabo the most complete early human ancestor skeleton ever discovered. We are obviously quite excited as it appears that we now have some of the most critical and complete remains of the skeleton, albeit encased in solid rock. It's a big day for us as a team and for our field as a whole."
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Info

Identity of First Americans Questioned

Wynne Parry
LiveScience
Thu, 12 Jul 2012 13:01 UTC
Ancient Tools
© Jim Barlow
Displayed in the hand of University of Oregon archaeologist Dennis Jenkins are three bases for Western Stemmed projectiles from the Paisley Caves in Oregon. The bases date to some 13,000 years ago.
Ancient stone projectile points discovered in a Central Oregon cave complex have cast new light on the identity of the first Americans.

While scientists agree they crossed the Bering Strait during an ice age, no one knows the identity of the first people to spread across the North American continent.

For some time, these first Americans were believed to have belong to a single group, called the Clovis culture, named for the New Mexican site where their distinctive, 13,000-year-old projectile points were first found.

However, some have questioned this theory, and these newly discovered projectile points, the sort of stone tips added to spears, appear to add weight to these questions.

These stone points, a type known as Western Stemmed points, are narrower and lack the distinctive flute, or shallow groove, found on Clovis points. Researchers believe the two types of points represent different technologies, produced by different cultures.

"This brings into focus the concept that other people or perhaps even multiple waves of people bringing other technologies were certainly involved in the first colonization [of the Americas]," said researcher Dennis Jenkins, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon, in a podcast issued by the journal Science, where the work is published.
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Info

Study: Native Americans came to the New World in three waves

Dan Vergano
USA Today
Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:27 UTC
Immigration
© Nature
Native Americans arrived in Americas in three waves of Ice Age migration, suggests a new genetic study in the journal Nature.
Native Americans streamed into the New World in at least three waves of migration starting more than 15,000 years ago, a gene study released Wednesday suggests.

North and South America were totally empty of people until the first arrivals from Siberia crossed a land bridge into Alaska, spreading in a few thousand years to the tip of South America.

The genetic study may help settle a debate between a long-held view that the peopling of the continents came as one event instead of the more recently supported notion, backed by this study in the journal Nature, that the migration happened in three distinct waves. .

"Our study makes clear that mixing of these three ancient populations is the story of Native American arrival," says geneticist David Reich of Harvard Medical School, lead author of the study.

It finds a "First American" wave starting more than 15,000 years ago that first moved into North and then South America from Asia. Migration halted by Ice Age glaciers resumed after that time from Siberia, with two surges: one that we know today as the Eskimo-Inuit population and the other a group that today represents the Canadian "Na-Dené" language-speakers, Reich says. ."

The study looked at genetic data from 52 Native American and 17 Siberian groups collected over the last 30 years and screened against populations from elsewhere.
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Sherlock

Lake Ontario - Ancient 'New York City' of Canada Discovered

Owen Jarus
Live Science
Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:39 UTC
Today New York City is the Big Apple of the Northeast but new research reveals that 500 years ago, at a time when Europeans were just beginning to visit the New World, a settlement on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in Canada, was the biggest, most complex, cosmopolitan place in the region.
Image
© Unknown
A model of a longhouse at the Royal Ontario Museum.
Occupied between roughly A.D. 1500 and 1530, the so-called Mantle site was settled by the Wendat (Huron). Excavations at the site, between 2003 and 2005, have uncovered its 98 longhouses, a palisade of three rows (a fence made of heavy wooden stakes and used for defense) and about 200,000 artifacts. Dozens of examples of art have been unearthed showing haunting human faces and depictions of animals, with analysis ongoing.
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Igloo

Tree-rings prove climate was warmer in Roman and Medieval times than it is now - and world has been cooling for 2,000 years

Rob Waugh
Daily Mail
Wed, 11 Jul 2012 12:09 UTC
Image
© Unknown
The annual growth rings in trees are the most important witnesses over the past 1,000 to 2,000 years as they indicate how warm and cool past climate conditions were.
Rings in fossilised pine trees have proven that the world was much warmer than previously thought - and the earth has been slowly COOLING for 2,000 years. Measurements stretching back to 138BC prove that the Earth is slowly cooling due to changes in the distance between the Earth and the sun. The finding may force scientists to rethink current theories of the impact of global warming.

It is the first time that researchers have been able to accurately measure trends in global temperature over the last two millennia.

Over that time, the world has been getting cooler - and previous estimates, used as the basis for current climate science, are wrong.

Their findings demonstrate that this trend involves a cooling of -0.3°C per millennium due to gradual changes to the position of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and the sun.

'This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant,' says Esper, 'however, it is also not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1°C.

Comment: Here is a fascinating read on the subject of climate change: Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow

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Sherlock

19th Century Shipwreck Becomes A Buried Time Capsule

John Shanks
Sci-News
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 00:00 UTC
Australian archaeologists have transformed the wreck of a 16 meter colonial ship - the Clarence - into a buried 'time capsule'.

Image
© Heritage Victoria
Divers on the Clarence shipwreck
According to the University of Western Australia (UWA), the Clarence sank in five meters of water and was declared a protected zone in 1985, prohibiting access by divers and anglers. The site remained popular with local anglers whose anchors and fishing equipment had been damaging the site for decades.

"Constructed of native timbers in New South Wales in 1841, Clarence is one of the best examples of small early colonial-built vessels," said Prof Peter Veth of UWA, who led the conservation and reburial of the wreck.
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