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Bulgarian Archaeologists Uncover Story of Ancient Thracians' War with Philip II of Macedon


novinite.com
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
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© National History MuseumThe freshly uncovered section of the northeastern wall of the Thracian kings' residence.
Bulgarian archaeologists have made crucial discoveries at the residence of the rulers of the Odrysian Kingdom, the state of the most powerful tribe of Ancient Thrace, including details about its sacking by the troops of Philip II of Macedon.

The discoveries have been made within the project of Bulgaria's National History Museum, whose team started in early June 2011 the largest alpine expedition in the history of Bulgarian archaeology in order to excavate the residence of the rulers of the Odrysian Kingdom.

Bulgarian archaeologists uncovered the unique residence of the rulers of the Odrysian Kingdom in July 2010, after its location was initially detected in 2005.

The residence is located on the Kozi Gramadi mount in the Sredna Gora mountain, in the village of Starosel, close to the resort town of Hissar in central Bulgaria, at about 1 200 m above sea level.

The National History Museum announced Tuesday that its archaeologists have uncovered in full the northeastern wall of the Thracian kings' residence; it is 13 m long, and has been preserved at a height of 2 m, according to the head of the expedition, Prof. Ivan Hristov.

Not unlike the facade of the building uncovered in 2005, the northeastern wall is made with "perfectly prepared stone blocks with encarved decorations." The building is believed to have hosted the treasury of the Odrysian rulers. It was erected by Ancient Greek architects between 354 BC and 342 BC, which is also when the Thracian kings' residence is dated, during the rule of Odrysian king Teres II (351 BC-341 BC).
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Iraq's Ancient Ur Site in Danger

Jacques Clement
Agence France-Presse
Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:20 UTC
Ur City
© Getty ImagesThe Ur archeological site, where Abraham was supposedly born, as shown in 2008 when Coalition Forces used it as one of their bases.

Standing before the imposing ziggurat which was once part of a temple complex at the Sumerian capital of Ur, Iraqi archaeologist Abdelamir Hamdani worried about the natural elements that are eating away at one of the wonders of Mesopotamia.

"Is there anybody thinking about preserving these monuments?" asked the doctoral student from New York's Stony Brook University who is one of the leaders of a nascent project to conserve the few unearthed remains of ancient Mesopotamia, one of the cradles of civilization.

The buried treasures of Ur still beckon foreign archaeologists who have begun cautiously returning to Iraq, but experts like Hamdani say that preserving the sites is more urgent than digging for more.

Ur, the Biblical birthplace of Abraham, and which more than 4,000 years ago was the capital of a prosperous empire ruling over Mesopotamia, is believed to have so far relinquished only a fraction of its buried antiquities.
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Researchers Explain Ancient Copper Artifacts

Erin White
usnews.com
Wed, 15 Jun 2011 09:41 UTC
Northwestern University researchers ditched many of their high-tech tools and turned to large stones, fire and some old-fashioned elbow grease to recreate techniques used by Native American coppersmiths who lived more than 600 years ago.

This prehistoric approach to metalworking was part of a metallurgical analysis of copper artifacts left behind by the Mississippians of the Cahokia Mounds, who lived in southwestern Illinois from 700 until 1400 A.D. The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in May.
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Cyprus: Excavations shed light on ancient Paphos city


Cyprus Mail
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:48 UTC
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Aarchaeological investigations at the edges and to the south of the Hellenistic-Roman theatre of Nea Paphos have identified significant structures of the ancient city, according to an official announcement by the Department of Antiquities yesterday.

The investigations were carried out October 6 to November 17 of last year by the University of Sydney, under the direction of Emeritus Professor Richard Green, Dr Craig Barker and Dr Smadar Gabrieli.
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Morocco: University of Pennsylvania Team Uncovers Skeleton of "World's Oldest Child"

Faye Flam
philly.com
Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
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© UnknownPaleoartist Viktor works on the model of Bouchra, which means "good news" in Arabic. Some say it's possible this child's people were part of our ancestry.
Last year, while a Penn team of archaeologists was working in Morocco, members uncovered a treasure beyond anything they'd imagined - a skeleton of a child from 108,000 years ago.

They don't know what killed him at about age 8, but his remains are believed to be one of the most complete ever found of this period.

The skeleton promises to open a window into a pivotal time in human evolution when Neanderthals still ruled Europe, and Africans were inventing art and symbolic thought.

One of the earliest sites where people left evidence of artwork and symbolism is in Morocco, where a team led by Penn Museum's Harold Dibble found the child.

One of Dibble's students was the first to notice a piece of bone the size of a quarter, said Dibble, who is a curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. To everyone's surprise, the bone was part of a remarkably complete skull and upper body of a child that died 108,000 years ago, as shown by various dating techniques.
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Archaeologists discover evidence of prehistoric settlement on remote Scottish island


STV
Sat, 18 Jun 2011 03:50 UTC
Scottish Ancient Settlement
© Doc SearlsIsolated: The tiny island of Boreray is remote but beautiful.

'Incredibly significant find' on tiny island of Boreray is 'is further evidence of the international importance of the St Kilda archipelago'.

Evidence of a permanent Iron Age settlement on one of Europe's most inhospitable islands has been uncovered by archaeologists.

It had been thought that the St Kildan island of Boreray, 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides in the Atlantic Ocean, had never been populated.

Inhabitants of nearby Hirta island only visit Boreray in the summer to hunt birds and gather wool.

But the new discovery suggests that people may have lived on the steep slopes of the island back in prehistoric times.

The last 36 inhabitants of the St Kilda archipelago left the islands in 1930.

Archaeologists from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and the National Trust for Scotland made the discovery on an eight-day research trip to Boreray.
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'Biggest Porcelain Haul' Found in Indonesia


Agence France-Presse
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:33 UTC
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© Agence France-PresseThis undated recent handout picture released by Portugal-based salvage company Arqueonautas Worldwide (AWW) shows a diver inspecting stacked porcelain at a shipwreck in the Java sea. A $70-million haul of Ming Dynasty porcelain has been found in a 16th-century shipwreck off the Indonesian island of Java, a Portugal-based salvage company said
A $70-million haul of Ming Dynasty porcelain has been found in a 16th-century shipwreck off the Indonesian island of Java, a Portugal-based salvage company said Friday.

Arqueonautas Worldwide (AWW) and its Indonesia-based partner RM Discovery Inc. said an "archaeological reconnaissance operation" had confirmed the discovery of the "biggest shipwreck cargo of Ming porcelain ever found".

"The Chinese merchant ship from the time of the Wanli Emperor sank around 1580 in over 50 metres (600 feet) depth approximately 150 kilometres (93 miles) off the Indonesian coast," the company said in a statement.

Fishermen found the wreck in mid-2009 and the Indonesian government contracted AWW and RM Discovery to carry out the delicate task of recovering its historically significant cargo, the company said.
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UK: Prehistoric stone circle discovered in Yorkshire

Sean McLachlan
Gadling
Sun, 12 Jun 2011 15:51 UTC
Mölndal cairn in Sweden
© Wikimedia CommonsPhoto of Mölndal cairn in Sweden. No image of the Ilkley Moor cairn is available. It's not as well preserved as the Mölndal cairn.
A stone circle that was once part of a prehistoric cairn has been discovered by a group of amateur archaeologists on Ilkley Moor, Yorkshire, England.

A cairn is a large pile of stones that marked the grave of an important individual in prehistoric times. These stones were often taken away by later farmers for building walls or cottages, and sometimes all that's left is a circle of stones from the base, as is the case here. The team says the cairn measures 27 by 24 feet. It would have been pretty high back in its glory days.

One stone had a man-made circular impression archaeologists call a cup mark. These are found all over prehistoric Europe singly or in groups, but nobody knows what they mean.
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Best of the Web: The Devastating Effects of Agriculture: We're Getting Shorter NOT Taller and Our Brains are Shrinking, So is Farming to Blame?

Damien Gayle
The Daily Mail
Sun, 12 Jun 2011 13:39 UTC
People have got shorter and our brains have shrunk - and scientists believe farming could be to blame.

Modern humans are about 10 percent smaller and shorter than our hunter-gatherer ancestors, scientists have found, and our brains have fallen in size by the same proportion.

Most of that decline in physical size has occurred since the advent of farming about 10,000 years ago.

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© AlamyEasy life: Human beings have have shrunk 10 percent in the 10,000 years since the advent of farming
The findings run contrary to the popular notion that humans are growing progressively larger and taller.

Research shows that declines in height occurred in 19 of 21 societies that switched from hunter-gathering to farming - perhaps the greatest change in lifestyle in human history.

The findings pose a puzzle since societies that switch to farming usually experience a population boom as food becomes more plentiful.

Comment: Intelligent like this individual, for example?

Another thing to consider, in light of this recent article about human beings being *behold the hubris!* "extinction proof" due to the "benefits" of agriculture, is that the advent of agriculture led to humans eating a predominantly carbohydrate-based diet, which in modern times has resulted in the consumption of copious quantities of chemical-laden pseudo-foods based on grains. The result is a population that is so full of toxins that they have literally, physically lost the ability to think.

This fundamental inability to think has, in more recent decades, led to a total 'coup-de-monde' by utterly corrupt individuals and groups who found it rather easy to get the world to believe in lies and illusions.

A global population immersed in illusion and ruled by corrupt leaders, more than anything else, makes the human race eligible for an extinction level event.

In short, if you act like a bunch of dumbed-down idiots, 'creation' tends to do the merciful thing and wipe the slate clean.

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Sherlock

Archaeologists search for ancient Chinese ship off African coast


archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com
Tue, 14 Jun 2011 22:20 UTC
Chinese Ship Kenyan Coast
© Global PostWorkers clean a model of a Chinese ship sailed by Chinese explorer Zheng He. He led seven seven voyages in which he sailed from China to more than 30 countries and regions throughout the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf from 1405 to 1433

Did the Chinese come to East Africa before the Europeans? China says yes, as do a growing number of Western historians. To prove the theory, Chinese and Kenyan archaeologists are now searching the African coast for the fabled wreck of a Ming dynasty junk - an ancient Chinese sailing vessel - from the fleet of legendary 15th-century explorer Zheng He.

A new report, obtained by GlobalPost, reveals that the researchers have identified several shipwrecks of interest off the Kenyan coast near the World Heritage site of Lamu.

Despite years of excitable hype by China's state media, the underwater archaeologists involved in the search are warning that the newly discovered wrecks could be from any era or country - and even if a sunken Chinese ship is found, it may no longer be intact or even identifiable.

Some reports in the Chinese and Kenyan media have implied that the wreck of a ship from Zheng He's fleet has already been found - and by extension, irrefutable historical proof that Chinese explorers visited Kenya before the Europeans. Evidence that China had friendly trading relations with Africa before the colonialists arrived would add luster to the Asian giant's rapidly expanding presence on the continent.
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