CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's ancient pyramids are probably a byproduct of a decision to build walls around the tombs of kings, a leading expert on early Egyptian royal burials said Wednesday.
Guenter Dreyer, director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, said he based his theory on similarities between Egypt's first pyramid, built at Saqqara south of Cairo for the Pharaoh Zozer in about 2650 BC, and the structure of the tomb of one of his immediate predecessors.
The Saqqara pyramid, known as the Step Pyramid because of its unique shape, began as a flat mound about eight meters (25 feet) high built over the burial chamber of the pharaoh.
At the slightly earlier tomb of the Pharaoh Khasekhemwy, at the old royal cemetery at Abydos in southern Egypt, German excavators found evidence of a similar flat mound covering the central part of the underground burial complex.
Basically, he is arguing that adding an enclosure wall around a mastaba caused the central mound of the mastaba to be hidden from view, thus creating the need to build the central mound higher and forming something like the familiar pyramid shape. It seems reasonable, but why keep building several mounds upwards after you've already made the central mound visible once again?
Bronze Age may halt modern fad for wind power
THE PROPOSED site for seven huge wind turbines on Denshaw Moor is home to more than 200 archaeological remains, with many more, including a Roman road, still waiting to be discovered.
Saddleworth Archaeological Trust has registered an objection to the windfarm application which will be discussed at a public meeting on Wednesday, April 28, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
An in-depth report, which took four days to compile, has already been submitted to the borough planning department by honourary secretary of the trust David Chadderton, who claims that the area is an important archaeological site.
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Ken Booth, Trustee of the Saddleworth Archaeological Trust, said: “We do not oppose all wind farms but we do object when they are going to destroy archaeological landscapes."
“A wind turbine will last 20 years, but once you destroy a site like this it will be gone forever.”
Fossil Jaw Grows Orangutan Family Tree, Scientists Say
Researchers believe a jawbone found in Khorat, Thailand, and dating to the Late Miocene era between seven and nine million years ago belongs to a newly discovered relative of orangutans.
The jawbone from the new hominoid, named Khoratpithecus piriyai, is similar to the lower jaw, or mandible, of modern orangutans. And like today's orangutans, the ancient jawbone shows no evidence of anterior digastric muscles, the tell-tale muscles used to lower the jaw in most other primates.
This ought to have at least some implications for the study of human evolution since many of the same problems are involved, specifically, how related hominoids developed after about 7 millions years ago. The fossil record for the great apes (orangs, chimps, and gorillas) is incredibly sparce and learning how they adapted from our common ancestor could reveal the kinds of selective pressures applied to the two groups (apes and us) and how each responded.