Friday, March 26, 2004

Conservation update Archeological sites fade

LYON TOWNSHIP — A school to be built along 10 Mile Road will eventually provide an environment for young minds to be exposed to the world’s wonders.

What people may not know is that it’s being partly built over a 4,000-year-old archeological site that may have provided information about some of the area’s prehistoric residents.

The site is one of 12 in Lyon Township little examined by archaeologists, and where either human remains or artifacts have been found over the years. History buffs and even state officials acknowledge such sites are disappearing quickly.


The truth about an epic tale of love, war and greed

The legend of Troy has an enduring grip on the imagination. Aidan Laverty talks to the scientists who say they have proved that a siege really took place

It's one of the greatest stories ever; the tale of a war fought over the love of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world.

Now as Hollywood breathes fresh life into the myth, archaeologists have uncovered new evidence from the site of Troy that brings us closer than ever to the truth behind this ancient legend.


Good article. Further illustrates the power of remote sensing to assist in locating buried structures and deciding the most productive places to dig.

Move to restore city's 'lost castle'

Excited archaeologists in Newry have been given a grant to bring Bagenal Castle back to its former glory.

The 12th Century building was hidden under a former bakery in the County Down city.

The former Cistercian Abbey was converted into a castle in the 16th Century during the Plantation.

The Heritage Lottery Fund has given a £1.5m grant towards the £2.3m project, which will also see the refurbishment of an adjoining 19th Century warehouse - set to become the new home of the city's museum.

Project manager, architect Kevin Baird, said: "This is a wonderful story of finding something which the people of Newry thought they had lost hundreds of years ago," he said.


Cue, Indiana Jones theme College students to search for lost city

Students in Professor Michael Kolb's archeology course this summer face a single assignment - digging through a hilltop for a lost city.

In May, the Northern Illinois University professor will lead students to western Sicily to search of artifacts of indigenous people.

For the monthlong trip, the students get six credit hours. They also get experience they couldn't find in a textbook.

"You get to learn what it's like to be a real archeologist, working with your interpretive skills," said master's student Michael Kamin of Hanover Park, who went to Sicily twice as an undergraduate.



Iraq Museum update Reopening of Iraq's National Museum in a year

Iraqi culture minister says Iraqis must see National Museum's treasures first before they are sent abroad.

Iraqi culture minister Mufid al-Jazairi says Iraqis should first have a chance to view the archeological treasures held by a reopened National Museum before they are sent abroad.

"The reopening of the museum will take place within a year to show Iraqis the treasures of Nimrod, which the people have never seen because Saddam Hussein hid them," Jazairi said.


PR concerns should dictate using the 'Nimrud spelling. Otherwise, our view of the ancient Nimrodians will be somewhat colored:



And for those interested in the most obtuse trivia imaginable, this is also a Nimrod:




Another battle over Zeugma’s heritage

March 26 - The ancient city of Zeugma located on bank of the biblical Tigris River is once more making news but this time it is not over the dam lake that inundated most of the city but efforts to move many of its famous mosaics.

Once a Roman frontier garrison town, Zeugma has acclaimed as having the best surviving examples of ancient mosaic work in the world. Once trodden on by Roman warriors, now the peerless mosaics are at the centre of a legal battle between authorities and those who seek to preserve what is left of the city’s heritage.


Remote sensing II Scientists to look for lost mass grave at development site

ORMOND-BY-THE-SEA, Fla. --

Scientists are set to use ground-penetrating radar to search for the lost mass grave of more than 60 passengers of a doomed steamship that sank in 1880 in the waves of a powerful hurricane.

No one knows where the victims of the City of Vera Cruz disaster lie, although neighbors have long believed they rest underneath a vacant 7-acre parcel between Sandpiper Ridge and Beau Rivage drives.


Forgery news Only existing First Temple relic may be forged

Investigators for the Israel Antiquities Authority have been informed that a precious Ivory Pomegranate, on display at the Israel Museum since 1988, is a forgery.

On the basis of an inscription it had been dated from the period of the First Temple, 10th century BCE. However, it is information on the origin of the inscription that has raised doubts about the authenticity of the item. The Antiquities Authority refused to reveal the origins and nature of the information it holds.


Cue, Indiana Jones music once again! Indiana Jones and the Lost Ivory Pomegranate coming soon to theaters near you.

Centuries of Culture Vanish in Kosovo City

Bishop Atanasije Jevtic dusted ashes away from the base of the fresco in the 14th-century cathedral gutted during recent mob violence in Kosovo.

He then softly placed two fingers on the image of Virgin Mary in the soot-covered fresco. But his visit to the cathedral to assess the damage would last but four minutes: a U.N. police officer acting as his bodyguard, a semiautomatic shotgun at the ready, hustled him away, shouting, "It's not safe! It's not safe!"

Orthodox Christian Serbs and symbols of their culture and history were targeted throughout Kosovo in violence last week, exposing the underlying tensions with the mostly Muslim ethnic Albanian majority that led to a war that ended in 1999.


Gene Mutation Said Linked to Evolution

Igniting a scientific furor, scientists say they may have found the genetic mutation that first separated the earliest humans from their apelike ancestors.

The provocative discovery suggests that this genetic twist — toward smaller, weaker jaws — unleashed a cascade of profound biological changes. The smaller jaws would allow for dramatic brain growth necessary for tool-making, language and other hallmarks of human evolution on the plains of East Africa.

The mutation is reported in the latest issue of the journal Nature, not by anthropologists, but by a team of biologists and plastic surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.


See a related article here. Note especially this sentence:

Geneticists have shown that a gene called FOXP2 may be required for the fine-tuning of speech. Studies suggest that this gene may have evolved in its present version around 50,000 years ago, Poinar said.


Viewed in the context of the reducing-jaw mutation, one can see that there probably were a series of mutations that all cascaded over a period of time to differentiate us from earlier primates and from modern apes. I.e., not a single magic bullet that made us human, but a series that all depended on one another. I suspect it is possible that one or a very few key mutations were all that were required to make the others possible. Most likely, the final story will involve a long series of genetic changes that, along with the behavioral results of these changes (for example, tool making), allowed subsequent changes to take place. This is the sort of thing SJ Gould referred to as contingency based evolutionary explanation.