– Terrestrial Archaeology, Marine Archaeology & Astro-Archaeology – News Headlines Archive – April 2011 – new archaeological discoveries on land and underwater – with emphasis on the ancient sciences reflected in astro-archaeology and archaeoastronomy from new discoveries revealing its practice in ancient societies under ancient skies
The events of July 16th – 22nd 1994, when the remnants of a fragmenting comet, P/Shoemaker-Levy 9, bombarded the
surface of Jupiter causing fireballs many times the size of our own planet, were an abrupt wake-up call even for those
who were aware of them. The historical sciences generally, and archæology in particular, have collectively painted
a picture of the past as if our planet ‘stands alone in empty space’. Nothing could be further from reality. Our resilient planet exists in a solar system that has had a very dynamic history over the past 20,000 years or so and it is only from this wider solar system perspective that the true history of human civilisation can ever
be fully understood. Therefore, The Morien Institute archive contains information from many disciplines
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“New fossil finds in South Africa continue to stir the pot in world-wide scientific efforts to fill the gaps between the earlier more ape-like hominids known as australopithecines and the later Homo genus of the human evolutionary family tree.
The finds may represent, according to researchers, a new species of early humans that could be directly ancestral to our own genus, Homo.
The latest reported research now provides additional grist for the discussion mill, opening new questions about the anatomical evolutionary path that humans took to become what we are today.”
“The discovery of a 5,000-year-old skeleton that was buried in a peculiar way has researchers suggesting the prehistoric man found outside modern-day Prague could have been gay or transsexual.
But archaeologists and anthropologists are urging those in the media who have dubbed the skeleton a “gay caveman” not to rush to any neanderthal-like assumptions.
Kamila Remisova Vesinova, a researcher with the Czech Archaeological Society, has said the male skeleton is believed have been a member of the Corded Ware culture, which proliferated in northern Europe between 2500 and 2900 BCE.
Corded Ware societies were known for burying men with their heads facing west and with weapons of war, typically a battle axe. But this find was positioned facing east and surrounded by domestic items, such as the pots from which the culture takes its name — the same way women from the society were buried.”
“Tombs of the Sa Huynh civilization of more than 2,000 years ago have been dug up in Tre village in Tay Tra district, in the central province of Quang Ngai.
The tombs were unearthed at a depth of 1 meter. The site is only 2-5m from the bank of Tang River, around 5km from a famous archaeological site in the Tang River valley.
Archaeologists have worked for over two months on Tang riverbed. They unearthed a prehistoric archeological site which can shed new light on an ancient civilization that once flourished in Quang Ngai province.
In a part of the river where water was dried up to build a water reservoir for a nearby dam, they excavated tools that date back to 4,000 years ago. The tools could have been used in daily life and in production activities.”
“They have lain undisturbed for thousands of years, harbouring the grisly rituals of an ancient race. But the long-kept secrets of a vast network of underground animal catacombs is starting to unravel.
A team of academics from Cardiff University have begun the process of exploring a labyrinth of underground desert tunnels in Egypt packed with the remains of millions of mummified dogs.
The team – led by Dr Paul Nicholson – are excavating an ancient catacomb at Saqqara, in the desert beside the Nile Valley about 16 miles south of the famous Giza pyramids at Cairo. They claim it could contain up to eight million canine offerings..”
[In October 1900, Captain Dimitrious Kondos was leading a team of sponge divers near the the island of Antikythera off the coast of Greece. They noticed a shipwreck about 180 feet below the surface and began to investigate. Amongst the artifacts that they brought up was a coral-encrusted piece of metal that later archaeologists found was some sort of gear wheel.
The rest of the artifacts, along with the shape of the boat, suggested a date around 2000 years ago, which made the find one of the most anomalous that had ever been recovered from the Greek seas. It became known as The Antikythera Mechanism.
In 2006 the journal “Nature” published a letter, and another paper about the mechanism was published in 2008, detailing the findings of Prof. Mike G. Edmunds of Cardiff University. Using high-resolution X-ray tomography to study the fragments of the anomalous Antikythera Mechanism, they found that it was in fact a bronze mechanical analog computer that could be used to calculate the astronomical positions and various cycles of the Moon – as seen from the Earth: – Ed]
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