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Archaeologists dig up intact graves in ancient Roman city

Baelo Claudia site in Spain among the best preserved; funerary monuments, goods found
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© University of AlicanteA team digs for beachside buried treasure in trenches at Baelo Claudia.

Archaeologists are digging up the necropolis of Baelo Claudia, one of the best preserved Roman cities in Spain, and they report that they've already uncovered several intact graves that likely date back more than 2,000 years.

Founded in the late second century B.C., Baelo Claudia lies near today's town of Tarifa at the southernmost tip of Spain, separated from Morocco by the Strait of Gibraltar.

Since 2009, scientists at the University of Alicante have led excavations at the site, which is considered by some the best preserved city from the high imperial Roman period of the Iberian Peninsula.

During this summer's digging season, archaeologists at the ancient coastal town turned their focus to Baelo Claudia's graveyard. In a blog post, Fernando Prados Martínez, a University of Alicante professor who is leading the project, wrote that Monday began the last week of excavations. But his team has already made several finds.

They've uncovered funerary monuments as well as cremation graves and intact graves, complete with their grave goods, according to a statement from Asociación RUVID, a Valencian nonprofit research association. The team hopes to learn more about the ancient funeral rituals of the city through their excavations.

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Heavenly Egyptian Charm Found in Israeli City

Egyptian fortification gate
© Martin Peilstöcker + The Jaffa Cultural Heritage ProjectScorched mud bricks from an Egyptian fortification gate in Jaffa.
A rare scarab amulet newly unearthed in Tel Aviv reveals the ancient Egyptian presence in this modern Israeli city.

Archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, have long uncovered evidence of Egyptian influence. Now, researchers have learned that a gateway belonging to an Egyptian fortification in Jaffa was destroyed and rebuilt at least four times. They have also found the scarab, which bears the cartouche of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who ruled from 1390 to 1353 B.C. Scarabs were common charms in ancient Egypt, representing the journey of the sun across the sky and the cycle of life.

Jaffa was the site of major trading activity since the second millennium B.C. Excavations in the 1950s uncovered the Egyptian fortification, which dates back to the dynasty of Ramses II between 1279 and 1213 B.C. Mud brick architecture and household pottery also point to Egyptian influence, according to researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany and the University of California, Los Angeles, who have been conducting new explorations at the site.

Jaffa has long been a crossroads for international influence. The city is also the site of a rare marble slab from the era of the Crusades. The slab, which dates back 800 years, bears an inscription in unusual Arabic script referring to Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Frederick II led the Sixth Crusade in 1228 in an effort to conquer the Holy Land, and managed to gain the territory through diplomacy instead of violence.

Crusader

16th-Century Trial Records Reveal Priest's Magic 'Superpowers'

Fray Juan de Zumarraga
© WikimediaThe man who prosecuted Calderon was Fray Juan de Zumarraga (his statue is shown here), the archbishop of Mexico and Apostolic Inquisitor of New Spain. For reasons unknown he gave Calderon a light sentence, prohibiting him from saying mass for two years and exiling him back to Spain.
On Jan. 30, 1540, in Mexico City, at a time when Spain was carving out an empire in the New World, an epic trial got under way.

An ordained Catholic priest named Pedro Ruiz Calderón was being prosecuted for practicing black magic. The priest actually bragged about the powers he had acquired according to records a researcher is working on publishing.

He claimed to be able to teleport between continents, make himself invisible, make women fall in love with him, predict the future, turn metals into gold, summon and exorcise demons and, most importantly, discover buried treasure.

"He really typifies all of the major types of learned magic, from summoning and conjuring demons, to exorcising demons to the powers of cloaking himself, making himself invisible," said John Chuchiak IV, a professor at Missouri State University who translates and publishes documents recording the opening of the trial in his new book The Inquisition in New Spain 1536-1820 (John Hopkins University Press, 2012). [See Photos of the Trial Records]

"He could hypnotize people, too; it's one of the earliest, I think, descriptions of hypnotism, mesmerizing people."

At the start of the trial, Calderón was denounced in a speech by Miguel López de Legazpi, the Secretary of the Holy Office, who would later become a conquistador in the Philippines. In translation, the trial records state that "many persons have made it known before him [Legazpi] that the said Calderón knows of the Black Arts and that he learned them from others." The records go on to claim that Calderón is able to make himself invisible and can travel across great distances in a short amount of time. "It's just fascinating. The story just goes on and on," Chuchiak told LiveScience of the more than 100 pages of trial records.

The prosecutor Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the Franciscan archbishop of Mexico and apostolic inquisitor of New Spain, was known for his extreme punishments. "Other people he had their tongue split for very minor blasphemy," said Chuchiak. In the end, for reasons unknown, the bishop gave Calderón only a minor punishment - exile back to Spain and a prohibition from giving Catholic services for two years; Zumárraga may have wanted to get rid of him without publicly executing a priest. What happens to Calderón after he is exiled is not known.

Bulb

Why doesn't everyone know who Nikola Tesla was?

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© Getty Images
Fans have rallied to buy the lab of inventor and electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla to turn it into a museum. But why do so few people appreciate the importance of Tesla's work?

Lots of people don't know who Nikola Tesla was.

He's less famous than Einstein. He's less famous than Leonardo. He's arguably less famous than Stephen Hawking.

Most gallingly for his fans, he's considerably less famous than his arch-rival Thomas Edison.

But his work helped deliver the power for the device on which you are reading this. His invention of the induction motor that would work with alternating current (AC) was a milestone in modern electrical systems.

Mark Twain, whom he later befriended, described his invention as "the most valuable patent since the telephone".

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Counterfeit Fossils Undermine Research Projects

Counterfeit Fossil
© The Archaeology News Network
Fake fossils are duping scientists and museums, a senior paleontologist has warned, after a scholar was forced to retract a controversial essay that stated the cheetah originated in China.

According to Li Chun, associate researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, counterfeits are now widespread and have become a serious risk to genuine study projects.

"I believe many scholars are victims of fake fossils," he said, before estimating that more than 80 percent of marine reptile specimens on display in Chinese museums "have been altered or artificially combined to varying degrees".

"Without professional training in paleontology, it's impossible for researchers to recognize fakes from the real thing."

Li's alert follows the debunking last month of an essay co-authored by Huang Ji, a Chinese scientist, and Danish researcher Per Christiansen in 2008 about an alleged new species of cheetah.

The key piece of evidence was a fossilized skull unearthed in Gansu province that dated back 2.5 million years.

"Primitive Late Pliocene Cheetah, and Evolution of the Cheetah Lineage," which appeared in 2009 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, an international journal, stated the "new species" was the oldest cheetah ever found, which overturned people's belief that the animal originated in North America.

On Aug 21, the journal published a retraction.

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Ancient Mayan Theater Was Political Tool

Mayan theater
© Luis Alberto Martos/INAHThe remains of the Mayan theater.
A unique Mayan theater has been unearthed in Mexico, according to researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

Found at the archaeological site of Plan de Ayutla, in Ocosingo, Chiapas, the 1,200-year-old theater did not seem to be a place for art and culture, but was rather used by Mayan elite to legitimize their power and subjugate local minority groups.

"It was a unique theater, since it was found in an acropolis, 137 feet above the other plazas. The stage lay within a palace complex," Luis Alberto Martos López, director of the research project, said in a statement.

Located near the North Acropolis, the theater was enclosed by buildings dating to 250-550 B.C. on all sides. A 26-foot-long façade of one of these buildings was torn down around 850 A.D. to create the forum and make it work as an acoustic shell.

According to Martos López, the unusual architecture makes the theater stand out.

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Lost Medieval Church Discovered Beneath Parking Lot

Richard III
© University of LeicesterRichard III and his queen, Anne of Neville, appear in a stained glass window in Cardiff Castle.
The hunt for King Richard III's grave is heating up, with archaeologists announcing today (Sept. 5) that they have located the church where the king was buried in 1485.

"The discoveries so far leave us in no doubt that we are on the site of Leicester's Franciscan Friary, meaning we have crossed the first significant hurdle of the investigation," Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the dig, said in a statement.

Buckley and his colleagues have been excavating a parking lot in Leicester, England, since Aug. 25. They are searching for Greyfriars church, said to be the final resting place of Richard III, who died in battle during the War of the Roses, an English civil war. A century later, Shakespeare would immortalize Richard III in a play of the same name.

After his death in the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richard III was brought to Leicester and buried at Greyfriars. The location of the grave, and the church itself, was eventually lost to history, though University of Leicester archaeologists traced the likely location to beneath the parking lot for the Leicester City Council offices.

The team announced last week that their first two trenches turned up glazed floor-tile fragments, medieval roof tile and other building fragments, suggesting that they were digging in the right place to find Greyfriars. Now, a third trench has revealed the alignment of the building's walls.

Question

World's Oldest Pyramid Found in Crimea?

Simferopil/Aqmescit - A Ukrainian scientist discovered the oldest pyramid in the world. Most interestingly, it was found in the most beautiful corner of the country, in Crimea.

As the ICTV channel reported, the finding was revealed by accident, when during his test alternative methods of finding water Ukrainian scientist Vitalii Goh discovered underground unknown object, which proved to be a giant pyramid of 45 meters in height and a length of about 72 meters. Goh said that the pyramid was built during the time of the dinosaurs.

"Crimean pyramid" has a truncated top, like a Mayan pyramid, but its appearance is more like an Egyptian. It is hollow inside, and a mummy of unknown creature is buried under the foundation.

"Under the foundation is a small body in the form of a mummy long 1.3-1.4 meters with a crown on his head."

"There is a resonance chamber of so-called Sphinx. The pyramids were built in the era of the dinosaurs," says the scientist in an interview with ICTV.

It remains unknown who build the pyramid. The unique building is the oldest on the planet, says Vitalii Goh.

Pharoah

Denisovan Genome: Relationships Between Ancient Denisovans and Present-Day Humans Revealed

Denisovan hominin
© MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology This is a replica of the finger bone fragment of a Denisovan hominin on a human hand.
Max Planck researchers have described the Denisovan genome, illuminating the relationships between Denisovans and present-day humans.

The analyses of an international team of researchers led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, show that the genetic variation of Denisovans was extremely low, suggesting that although they were present in large parts of Asia, their population was never large for long periods of time. In addition, a comprehensive list documents the genetic changes that set apart modern humans from their archaic relatives. Some of these changes concern genes that are associated with brain function or nervous system development.

In 2010 Svante Pääbo and his colleagues sequenced DNA that they isolated from a finger bone fragment discovered in the Denisova Cave in southern Siberia. They found that it belonged to a young girl of a previously unknown group of archaic humans that they called "Denisovans." Thanks to a novel technique which splits the DNA double helix so that each of its two strands can be used for sequencing, the team was able to sequence every position in the Denisovan genome about 30 times over. The thus generated genome sequence shows a quality similar to genomes that have been determined from present-day humans.

In a new study, which is published in this week's issue of the journal Science, Svante Pääbo and his colleagues compare the Denisovan genome with those of the Neandertals and eleven modern humans from around the world. Their findings confirm a previous study according to which modern populations from the islands of southeastern Asia share genes with the Denisovans. In addition, the genomes of people from East Asia, and South America include slightly more genes from Neandertals than those of people in Europe: "The excess archaic material in East Asia is more closely related to Neandertals than to Denisovans, so we estimate that the proportion of Neandertal ancestry in Europe is lower than in eastern Asia," the Leipzig researchers report.

"This is an extinct genome sequence of unprecedented accuracy," says Matthias Meyer, the lead author of the study. "For most of the genome we can even determine the differences between the two sets of chromosomes that the Deniosovan girl inherited from her mother and father." From this the researchers can tell that genetic variation of the Denisovans was lower than in present-day humans. This is likely due to that an initially small Denisovan population that grew quickly while spreading over a wide geographic range. "If future research of the Neandertal genome shows that their population size changed over time in similar ways, it may well be that a single population expanding out of Africa gave rise to both the Denisovans and the Neandertals," says Svante Pääbo, who led the study.

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Dating of New Zealand Wreck Suggests Visitors Pre-Dated Cook

Ancient Shipwreck
© Ripiro BeachOne of many shipwrecks along the Kaipara Coast
While speculation may still remain as to the identity of a shipwreck found 30 years ago by locals at Pouto Point, near Dargaville, recent radio carbon dating of wood reveals it is New Zealand's oldest shipwreck.

The preliminary findings suggest the ill-fated ship sank around 1705, pre-dating Captain Cook's voyages by some 65 years .

Speaking at the Dargaville Museum this week, dendrochronologist, Dr Jonathan Palmer cautioned that his findings required further work before his research could be confirmed and published.

The wreck was discovered in 1982 by a local team led by Kaipara shipwreck explorer Noel Hilliam. A portion of a cross-member and rib was salvaged by the team, before the wreck was lost back to the sea under 30 metres of sand.

The wood (complete with iron nails) has been confirmed as teak (tectona grandis) and crepe myrtle (lagerstromei spp), both tropical woods, likely used for refitting at either Genoa or Java.

Dr Palmer said carbon-dating varied due to radio carbon fluctuations in the atmosphere at any given time.

However, when combined with tree ring sequencing (which gives a better idea of the dates), a series of radio carbon dating on each wood over 10-year periods, the calibration of wiggle matches of the carbon dating, the time allowed for sapwood to be removed and building and rebuilding of the ship, dates become more definitive.

He said the evidence highlighted the possibility of the area being frequented earlier than previously thought.