An ancient archaeological site, dating back to Ancient Iraq's Sumerian Era, was discovered in southern Iraq's Nassiriya city, the center of Thi-Qar Province, the Director General of the High Commission for Archaeology &Heritage, Qais Rashid Hussein said on Sunday.
"Our excavation teams have discovered an important site in a Sumerian position, dating back to the Dawn of the Ancient Strains - Third Century BC, south of Nassiriya city," Hussein told Aswat al-Iraq news agency, adding that "the site, carrying the name 'Umm al-Aqarib (Mother of Scorpions) consists of a worshipping position, housing units and about 600 archaeological antiques, that were handed over to the Iraqi Museum."
The archaeological sites in Thi-Qar Province, comprising amazing ancient archaeological sites, date back to the ancient historic eras of Misopotamia (Ancient Iraq), some of them dating back to the Somerian era and others to the Acadian, Babylonian, Firthian, Akhmenian, Sasanian or Islamic eras, whilst it comprises the world's most ancient archaeological hill, called "Al-Obali Hill", dating back to 6,000 BC.
Secret History
© Unknown
He believes that the work of art incorporates images inspired by the literary works of Roman poet Horace and Florentine poet Petrarch, a technique called 'invention'.
"The composition of the Mona Lisa is striking. Why does Leonardo have an attractive woman sitting on a balcony, while in the background there is an entirely different world that is vast and barren?" asks Ross Kilpatrick.
According to Kilpatrick, the painting alludes to Horace's Ode 1. 22 and two sonnets by Petrarch, all of which celebrate a devotion to a smiling young woman, with vows to love and follow the woman anywhere in the world, from damp mountains to arid deserts - the regions portrayed in the background of Mona Lisa.
© S. Deiries/ESO
The other day a reader sent us an article link that he found on another alt.news website: Bad news - we are way past our 'extinct by' date
Since we had run the same story back when it first came out, we thought "yeah! Flashback!" After all, with all the talk about Global Warming, it served to remind readers that human caused CO2 levels are not all there is to what is going on here on the BBM today.
Chinese archaeologists have discovered the Terracotta and Painted Pottery Culture, which flourished around 4000 B.C., during excavations of the Laohudun Site in Gaohu, Jing'an of Jiangxi Province. An important collection of late Neolithic remains and cultural relics were discovered in the dig.
Xu Changqing, the excavation team leader, stated that in the bottom of the site where the Terracotta Pottery Culture relics sit they excavated some stoneware, including hatchets, adze, stone ploughs and stone walls as well as some pottery ware. The items have been preliminarily estimated to be 6,000 years old.
Xu Changqing, the excavation team leader, stated that in the bottom of the site where the Terracotta Pottery Culture relics sit they excavated some stoneware, including hatchets, adze, stone ploughs and stone walls as well as some pottery ware. The items have been preliminarily estimated to be 6,000 years old.
© Stephen Hird/Reuters/Corbis
Digging deep into history: A model of a hobbit-sized species' skull, whose teeth researchers will drill into for DNA.
Digging deep into history: A model of a hobbit-sized species' skull, whose teeth researchers will drill into for DNA.
Scientists are planning an attempt to extract DNA from the "hobbit" Homo floresiensis,the 1-meter-tall extinct distant relative of modern humans that was unearthed in Indonesia, following a study that suggests problems in standard sampling methods in ancient-DNA research could have thwarted previous efforts.
This year, geneticists at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) at the University of Adelaide hope to recover DNA from a roughly 18,000-year-old H. floresiensis tooth, which was excavated in 2009 from the Liang Bua site on the Indonesian island of Flores.
The premolar has been kept cold, and has been handled as little as possible to prevent contamination with modern DNA. But little, if any, of the ancient DNA is likely to have survived the heat and moisture of the tropics, and any that has may be highly fragmented.
Tony Djubiantono, director of the Indonesian National Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta, where the tooth is held, says that developments in DNA extraction techniques could overcome previous sampling problems, and have exciting potential for understanding the evolutionary history of H. floresiensis.
If the DNA can be extracted, comparing its sequence to that of other species could settle disputes over classification. For instance, Peter Brown, a paleoanthropologist at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, who described and named the species in 2004, is rethinking his initial classification. At first he put the species in the human genus Homo, but he now suspects that the hobbit's ancestors left Africa before Homo evolved so the species could belong to a different or new genus.
© eltercero via flickr.com
A rock cave at Preveli in the island of Crete
A rock cave at Preveli in the island of Crete
According to the Greek Culture Ministry, archaeological experts from Greece and the United States discovered along the southern coast of the island rough axes and other tools believed to be between 130,000 and 700,000 years old during a survey of the caves and rock shelters located in the areas of Plakias and Preveli, calling the said discovery made by the archaeologists working with the American School of Classical Studies based in Athens as "the most ancient sign of early navigation worldwide."
The tools that have been discovered were described to be simple hand tools that were made out of stone. Archaeologists found a similarity between these tools and those associated to the Homo heidelbergensis (also referred to as the Heidelberg Man) and Homo erectus, early ancestors of modern humans that lived in Africa 200,000 years ago.
"Up to now, we had no proof of Early Stone Age presence on Crete," Maria Vlazaki--Senior Ministry Archaeologist--told the Associated Press, referring to the conclusive evidence previously found on the island that humans settled and inhabited Crete no earlier than the Neolithic Period.
© Michael Lavin/AP Photo
Fragments of pipes and pottery containers used in kilns during ceramic firing that was unearthed during a recent excavation at the Jamestown settlement in Jamestown, Va.
Fragments of pipes and pottery containers used in kilns during ceramic firing that was unearthed during a recent excavation at the Jamestown settlement in Jamestown, Va.
The white clay pipes - actually, castoffs likely rejected during manufacturing - were crafted between 1608 and 1610 and bear the names of English politicians, social leaders, explorers, officers of the Virginia Company that financed the settlement and governors of the Virginia colony. Archeologists also found equipment used to make the pipes.
Researchers believe the pipes recovered from a well in James Fort were made to impress investors and the political elite with the financial viability of the settlement. They are likely the rejects that failed to survive the ceramic firing process in a kiln.
The find comprises more than 100 pipes or fragments. More than a dozen are stamped with diamond shapes and inscribed with the names or initials of luminaries including explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, who dispatched the colonists to the territory he named Virginia. He also is credited with popularizing tobacco in England and is said to have smoked a pipe just before being executed for treason in 1618.
Other names include Capt. Samuel Argall, a major Virginia Company investor and governor of Virginia; Sir Charles Howard, Lord High Admiral of England; and Earl of Southampton Henry Wriothesley, a Virginia Company official who was also William Shakespeare's major patron.
© Dp-News
Head of the mission Hussein Zen-Eddein said the tombs and finds uncovered belong to a family cemetery, adding that they contain clay lanterns and bronze bracelets and earrings.
Former excavation works at the site uncovered a basalt pillar on which Nabatean words dedicated to a Nabatean god were engraved.
In addition, two other phrases (one in Latin and the other in Greek) were engraved on a basalt stone, referring to God Jupiter.
© AP Photo/Greek Culture Ministry
This undated hand out photo provided by the Greek Culture Ministry on Monday, Jan. 3, 2011, shows four Early Stone Age axes discovered by a US-Greek team of archaeologists on the southern island of Crete. A ministry statement said Monday that these and other similar finds, dating back at least 130,000 years, point to what may be one of the earliest signs of human seafaring.
This undated hand out photo provided by the Greek Culture Ministry on Monday, Jan. 3, 2011, shows four Early Stone Age axes discovered by a US-Greek team of archaeologists on the southern island of Crete. A ministry statement said Monday that these and other similar finds, dating back at least 130,000 years, point to what may be one of the earliest signs of human seafaring.
Athens - Archaeologists on the Greek island of Crete have found startling evidence that early humans could navigate across open water thousands of years earlier than previously thought, officials said Monday.
A team of US and Greek archaeologists reached that conclusion after finding stone tools and axes dating from at least 130,000 years ago on Crete, which was already an island at the time, the Greek culture ministry said.
"The findings not only prove marine travel in the Mediterranean existed tens of thousands of years prior to what was known until today, but they also change calculations about early man's cognitive abilities," the ministry said.
It noted that the chiseled shards found in the areas of Plakia and Preveli in 2008 and 2009, and attributed to the Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus species, "constitute the most ancient sign of early navigation worldwide."
© ImageBroker
A reconstruction of a celtic settlement at the Heuneburg hill fort site
A reconstruction of a celtic settlement at the Heuneburg hill fort site
An ancient hill fort at Heuneburg found the 13-by-16-foot burial chamber in an excellent state of preservation and still containing gold and amber jewellery placed there seven years before the birth of Christ.
The jewellery allowed archaeologists to pinpoint a precise date - the first time they've been able to do so with early Celtic remains. It also strongly suggests that the tomb belonged to a noblewoman of the fort's early period of Celtic habitation, the 7th century BC.
The Heuneburg hill fort site is one of the oldest settlements north of the Alps and a major source of information about Iron Age Celtic culture at a time when wealth and population were increasing rapidly in a few population centres.
The Celtic citadel was first enclosed with a wood and earth wall in 700 BC a standard Celtic building technique.
Comment: We posted an article yesterday from Ivan Eland where he said: As you can see from the article above, Mr Eland knows not of what he speaks. But how many people on the planet do? How many of your fellow citizens have any idea that the human species has passed its due date? Think about that the next time you see a shooting star or read about a fireball in the newspaper...