Global- Pyramids/Stonehendge/Ancient Discoveries Options

[ABLAT Staff]

Boiled bones show Aztecs butchered, ate invaders By Catherine Bremer
Wed Aug 23, 4:23 PM ET



Skeletons found at an unearthed site in Mexico show Aztecs captured, ritually sacrificed and partially ate several hundred people traveling with invading Spanish forces in 1520.

Skulls and bones from the Tecuaque archaeological site near Mexico City show about 550 victims had their hearts ripped out by Aztec priests in ritual offerings, and were dismembered or had their bones boiled or scraped clean, experts say.

The findings support accounts of Aztecs capturing and killing a caravan of Spanish conquistadors and local men, women and children traveling with them in revenge for the murder of Cacamatzin, king of the Aztec empire's No. 2 city of Texcoco.

Experts say the discovery proves some Aztecs did resist the conquistadors, led by explorer Hernan Cortes, before the Spaniards attacked the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City.

History books say many indigenous Mexicans welcomed the white-skinned horsemen in the belief they were returning gods but turned against the Spaniards once they tried to take over the Aztec seat of power in a conflict that ended in 1521.

"This is the first place that has so much evidence there was resistance to the conquest," said archaeologist Enrique Martinez, director of the dig at Calpulalpan in Tlaxcala state, near Texcoco.

"It shows it wasn't all submission. There was a fight."

The caravan was apparently captured because it was made up mostly of the mulatto, mestizo, Maya Indian and Caribbean men and women given to the Spanish as carriers and cooks when they landed in Mexico in 1519, and so was moving slowly.

The prisoners were kept in cages for months while Aztec priests selected a few each day at dawn, held them down on a sacrificial slab, cut out their hearts and offered them up to various Aztec gods.

Some may have been given hallucinogenic mushrooms or pulque -- an alcoholic milky drink made from fermented cactus juice -- to numb them to what was about to happen.

TEETH MARKS

"It was a continuous sacrifice over six months. While the prisoners were listening to their companions being sacrificed, the next ones were being selected," Martinez said, standing in his lab amid boxes of bones, some of young children.

"You can only imagine what it was like for the last ones, who were left six months before being chosen, their anguish."

The priests and town elders, who performed the rituals on the steps of temples cut off by a perimeter wall, sometimes ate their victims' raw and bloody hearts or cooked flesh from their arms and legs once it dropped off the boiling bones.

Knife cuts and even teeth marks on the bones show which ones had meat stripped off to be eaten, Martinez said.

Aztec warriors whitened the bones with lime and carried them as amulets. Some were used as ornaments in homes.

In Aztec times, the site was called Zultepec, a town of white-stucco temples and homes where some 5,000 people grew maize and beans and produced pulque to sell to traders.

Priests had to be brought in for the ritual killings because human sacrifices had never taken place there, Martinez said.

On hearing of the massacre, Cortes renamed the town Tecuaque -- meaning "where people were eaten" in the indigenous Nahuatl language -- and sent an army to wipe out its people.

When they heard the Spanish were coming, the Zultepec Aztecs threw their victims' possessions down wells, unwittingly preserving buttons and jewelry for the archaeologists.

The team began work in 1990 and is only now finishing its investigation. It found remains of domestic animals brought from Spain, like goats and pigs.

"They hid all the evidence," said Martinez. "Thanks to that act, we have been allowed to discover a chapter we were unaware of in the conquest of Mexico."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060823/sc_nm/...ico_aztecs_dc_5

[ABLAT Staff]

Maya civilization collapsed upon learning kings weren't gods
Madrid, Aug 26 (EFE).- The decline of the Maya civilization began some 1,100 year ago when millions of Indians working on the contruction of tall pyramidal temples and palaces learned that their kings weren't gods, Spanish anthropologist Andres Ciudad told EFE.

The collapse of this culture with its brilliant mathematicians, astronomers and engineers, came when monarchs stopped being immortal in the eyes of their subjects, said Ciudad, who is deputy dean of the Faculty of Geography and History at Madrid's Universidad Complutense.
The inhabitants of Mayan lands, which extended through much of what is now Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, Honduras and Mexico, at some point understood there was no sense in working themselves to death building pharaonic edifices and temples destined for the burial of kings who had no "heavenly privileges." That is one of the conclusions drawn by the team of archaeologists led by Ciudad in the town of Machaquila, 150 kilometers (93 miles) south of Tikal in Guatemala, the city most representative of the Mayan world that was named by its founders "the city of voices." The study, which weakens theories that attribute the death of this civilization to tribal warfare or prolonged drought, has also led to confirmation that the Mayas did not build an empire as such, but rather forged a series of decentralized states in which a noble caste governed together with the kings.
The collapse of this civilization, known for perfecting a calendar associated with movements of the moon, the sun and Venus, was slow and took centuries, according to the archaeologist.
The slow spread of the decay, which began in the west, explains why human activity in large urban centers like Tikal, Yaxha or Uaxactun could end in the 9th century, yet continued on in other places like Copan in what is now Honduras until the 13th century. The fruit of all that is the diversity and riches of the Mayan heritage that can be appreciated in Santa Rita de Corozal or in Lamanai, the land of the "submerged crocodile" in northern Belize where the culture survived longer.
It also explains why the ruins in Lamanai, which remained active until well into the 14th century, differ significantly in form from the archaeological remains of Copan, renowned for its "sumptuous altar" of sculptured stone.
At the same time, the ruins of both towns are different from those of the early city of Tikal in the Peten region, where, the archaeologist believes, harmony governs a space of prominent pyramidal temples that stretch toward the sky in an attempt to reach the Corn God, the Mayas' principal divinity.
The beauty of landscapes along the "Maya Route" is for the Guatemalan ambassador in Spain, Roberto Gereda, the best tourist advertisement in Central America, where, he says, "the wisdom of the pre-Columbian people lives on." Gereda told EFE that a journey through this region, where in Guatemala alone as many as 21 indigenous languages are spoken, is sufficient to understand the need to protect the identities of the groups that now maintain that diversity.
In his opinion, not only the culture of the Mayan communities is threatened by the "new globalized world," but also their heritage and environment because of "the ambition" of looters of treasure, wood and endangered animals like the jaguar and the quetzal, the Indians' sacred bird.
Nonetheless, the ambassador pointed to the "serious efforts" underway for sustainable development in Central America. EFE mjm/cd

http://www.efenews.com/detalleFrontPage.as...&id=1458214

[ABLAT Staff]

Secrets and Lies Shroud Origins of Giant Swastika

Pictured: A window in Tash-Bashat looking out on a mountainside emblazoned with a 600-foot wide, fir-tree swastika. Who planted the trees this way and why is a mystery obscured by legend, politics and conflicting memories.

By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: September 16, 2006
TASH-BASHAT, Kyrgyzstan — The forest stands overhead in the dusty mountain air, a dense composition of fir trees on a slope, planted by labor gangs decades ago.

Its right angles are sharp and clear, forming a square cross with an upraised arm on one side and a turned-down arm on the other. Viewed from this remote village, the effect strongly suggests a living swastika, a huge and chilling symbol, out of place and time.

This is the so-called Eki Naryn swastika, a man-made arrangement of trees near the edge of the Himalayas. It is at least 60 years old, according to the region’s forestry service, and roughly 600 feet across.

Legend has it that German prisoners of war, pressed into forestry duty after World War II, duped their Soviet guards and planted rows of seedlings in the shape of the emblem Hitler had chosen as his own.

More than 20 years later, the trees rose tall enough to be visible from the village beneath. Only then did the swastika appear, a time-delayed act of defiance by vanquished soldiers marooned in a corner of Stalin’s Soviet Union.

For all the tidiness of legend, however, the tale is not quite true. The provenance of these trees presents a more complicated mystery than a silent subterfuge in a forgotten prison camp. The theory about the prisoners has survived for years, in part because about 1.3 million German soldiers have been missing in the former Soviet Union since the war, according to the German Red Cross. Many were forced to work. They mined uranium and coal, toiled on farms, erected buildings and built roads, railways and canals.

As many as 30,000 of them were sent to Central Asia, the German Red Cross says. The symmetry in the tree line, evidence of their defiance, by this telling, may be the Third Reich’s only practical joke.

But aside from the presence of the tree formation itself, unraveling the origins of the lost Nazis’ presumed insubordination is a chore undercut by time. History has become malleable, a yarn by turns sinister, wry, clever and Soviet. It is also warped by errors, a cover-up, competing theories and lies.

Yedil Musayev, a teacher, said the trees were planted in the 1940’s by Kyrgyz laborers from the sprawling Lenin Collective Farm, which managed the region’s high plateau. The farm’s managers consisted of Russians and Europeans, he said, sent to distant posts to battle illiteracy and improve efficiency.

Unbeknownst to the Kyrgyz laborers, he said, their forestry supervisor was an ethnic German who had been exiled to the east, as were many Germans during the war. He was a Nazi sympathizer, Mr. Musayev said. The forest was his design.

Sultanbek Kandibayev, director of the regional forestry service, gave a different version, saying the trees were planted in 1953, after Stalin’s death, under the supervision of a woman who was a German nationalist.

Ulambek Sheripov, a deputy director, added detail, saying the woman hid her plans by having the slope planted a patch at a time. But he disagreed with his director about when the plantings occurred, saying a survey in 1991 estimated the trees were 50 years old at the time, meaning they were most likely planted before 1953.

Bekbosun Uskumbayev, another forestry official, said the truth has been hard to establish because the service’s archives are in disarray. (A check with the archives found records back only to 1960.)

Moreover, fresh myths and mistakes continue to confuse the tale.

Mr. Uskumbayev recalled an article in the late 1990’s in Vecherniy Bishkek, a Kyrgyz newspaper. The story said a man called “the professor” planted the trees in the 1960’s and then disappeared with a forester — a fate suggesting they had been arrested by the K.G.B.

The article was accompanied by a clearly doctored photograph, showing a lower arm on the formation that does not exist. “Their version was not true,” Mr. Uskumbayev said, sighing.

Into this confused history, Vladimir Yashchuk, a local guide, offered yet another account. He said when he was schoolboy his teachers told him the trees were planted in the late 1930’s, as Stalin and Hitler were approving the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact.

“It was the friendship of peoples at that time,” he said. “Stalin made this deal with Germany, and this swastika was planted in the framework of that agreement.”

Or so said the lessons in Soviet schoolhouses, Mr. Yashchuk added. No one is really sure. “Every guide has his own variation,” he said.

The mystery’s persistence is in its way surprising, given that as a Nazi swastika the symbol is imperfect, whether by design or because of uneven terrain. Hitler’s swastika was tilted 45 degrees; the formation here is almost level. Moreover, the arms do not mimic the Third Reich’s symbol, but its mirror image — a swastika in reverse.

No matter the flaws, the trees of Tash-Bashat long ago drew the interest of the People’s Council of Germans in Kyrgyzia, a private organization in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital. As part of a hunt for missing Germans and their graves, the council researched whether prison gangs planted the formation, said Valery Dill, the council’s chairman.

It was a frustrating search. “The Soviet power did everything to hide all of the evidence, all of the truth,” he said.

Eventually the S.N.B., the Kyrgyz successor to the K.G.B., told the council that German prisoners worked from two camps: one near Bishkek, another near the southern city of Osh. Further searches led Mr. Dill to episodes of brutality and callousness.

He found an elderly former P.O.W. near Osh, he said, who was one of more than 100 Germans who had been forced to dig in uranium mines at Maili-Suu. One day a rumor circulated that Stalin would allow German prisoners who had not married in the Soviet Union to be repatriated, Mr. Dill said the man had told him.

Soon after, the K.G.B. brought lines of Kyrgyz women to the mine, he said, and told the Germans to choose a bride or be shot.

As he dug deeper for the Germans’ fate and the origins of the trees, Mr. Dill said, his research suggested that a prisoners with a background in hydrology was sent to Tash-Bashat, then known as Kalinin.

He was ordered to direct plantings to protect the basin’s watershed. The hydrologist likely supervised the formation’s planting, Mr. Dill said. He added a caveat. “It is hard to know whether it is a legend or not,” he said.

On one point almost all in the valley agree: No prison gangs worked here. Four elders in the village said only Kyrgyz planters labored on these hills. Three of them, including Baken Kizekbayev, 69, and Asambek Sulambekov, 71, said they planted the trees themselves. Their supervisor, they recalled, was a white, female forester.

“My mother worked for the forester and I helped her,” Mr. Sulambekov said. “They gave us a plan: how many hectares had to be prepared, planted and so forth. One year we prepared it. The next year we planted it. Then the forest grew.”

Mr. Sulambekov said he joined the army and returned years later. The swastika surprised him when it emerged, he said. As for the tales of prisoner work gangs, he said: “It never happened. There were no German prisoners or even Russian prisoners. Only locals.”

Mr. Sulambekov and Mr. Kizekbayev could not remember exactly when they helped plant the trees, but agreed it was in the 1940’s or 1950’s.

More than a half century later, they represented the split over the formation’s significance. Mr. Sulambekov said it is a curiosity. Mr. Kizekbayev said it is an offense. “I do not like it, this fascist sign,” he said. “It should be cut down.”

Then he flashed a mischievous smile. Whoever designed this may have taken a dangerous risk. “You do not think I am guilty, do you?” he asked, eyes twinkling. “Will they take me to a prison?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/world/as...amp;oref=slogin

[ABLAT Staff]

'Oldest' New World writing found
By Helen Briggs
Science reporter, BBC News



Ancient civilisations in Mexico developed a writing system as early as 900 BC, new evidence suggests.
The discovery in the state of Veracruz of a block inscribed with symbolic shapes has astounded anthropologists.

Researchers tell Science magazine that they consider it to be the oldest example of writing in the New World.

The inscriptions are thought to have been made by the Olmecs, an ancient pre-Colombian people known for creating large statues of heads.

Co-author Stephen Houston of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, US, said it was a "tantalising discovery".

"I think it could be the beginning of a new era of focus on Olmec civilisation," he said.

"It's telling us that these records probably exist and that many remain to be found. If we can decode their content, these earliest voices of Mesoamerican civilisation will speak to us today."

Chance find

The slab has been dated to the early first millennium BC. It appears to have been made by the Olmec civilisation of Mesoamerica, a geographical region located between the Sinaloa River valley in northern Mexico and the Gulf of Fonseca south of El Salvador.


I think it's a hugely important and symbolic find
Mary Pohl, Florida State University

The area, once home to the Aztecs, Mayas and their predecessors, covers much of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and western Honduras.
The Olmecs appeared on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico around 1,200 BC. They are known to have carved glyphs - a symbolic figure or character that stands for a letter, sound, or word - since around 900 BC, but scholars are divided over whether this can be classified as true writing.


The stone slab, named the "Cascajal block", was first uncovered by road builders digging up an ancient mound at Cascajal, outside San Lorenzo, in the late 1990s.
It weighs about 12kg (26lbs) and measures 36cm (14in) in length, 21cm (8in) in width and 13cm (5in) in thickness. Its text consists of 62 signs, some of which are repeated up to four times.

Mexican archaeologists Carmen Rodríguez and Ponciano Ortíz were the first to recognise the importance of the find, and it was examined by international archaeologists earlier this year.

Precious object

The team says the text "conforms to all expectations of writing" because of its distinct elements, patterns of sequencing, and consistent reading order.

Commenting on the discovery, Mary Pohl, of Florida State University in Tallahassee, said she believed the authors had made a good case.


"I think it's a hugely important and symbolic find," she told the BBC News website. "It's new and further evidence that [the Olmecs] had writing and had text."
The block was carved from precious serpentine rock, suggesting it was probably a holy object used by high orders of society for some kind of ritual activity, she said.

The inscription is indecipherable but scientists hope that further excavations at the site could give clues to its content.

"I think more things will be found," said Dr Pohl. "We can make some progress although I don't think we'll ever be able to decipher it completely."

The Sumerians, who lived in Mesopotamia, what is now southern Iraq, are generally regarded to be the first people to develop a form of writing around 5,000 years ago; although there have been even older claims made for Chinese inscriptions.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/scie...ure/5347080.stm

Published: 2006/09/14 19:48:41 GMT

© BBC MMVI

[ABLAT Staff]

Ancient nuclear blasts and levitating stones

The great ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, contains numerous legends about the powerful force of a mysterious weapon...

The archaeological expedition, which carried out excavations near the Indian settlement of Mohenjo-Daro in the beginning of the 1900s, uncovered the ruins of a big ancient town. The town belonged to one of the most developed civilizations in the world. The ancient civilization existed for two or three thousand years. However, scientists were a lot more interested in the death of the town, rather than in its prosperity.

Researchers tried to explain the reason of the town's destruction with various theories. However, scientists did not find any indications of a monstrous flood, skeletons were not numerous, there were no fragments of weapons, or anything else that could testify either to a natural disaster or a war. Archaeologists were perplexed: according to their analysis the catastrophe in the town had occurred very unexpectedly and it did hot last long.

Scientists Davneport and Vincenti put forward an amazing theory. They stated the ancient town had been ruined with a nuclear blast. They found big stratums of clay and green glass. Apparently, archaeologists supposed, high temperature melted clay and sand and they hardened immediately afterwards. Similar stratums of green glass can also found in Nevada deserts after every nuclear explosion.

A hundred years have passed since the excavations in Mohenjo-Daro. The modern analysis showed, the fragments of the ancient town had been melted with extremely high temperature - not less than 1,500 degrees centigrade. Researchers also found the strictly outlined epicenter, where all houses were leveled. Destructions lessened towards the outskirts. Dozens of skeletons were found in the area of Mohenjo-Daro - their radioactivity exceeded the norm almost 50 times.

The great ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, contains numerous legends about the powerful force of a mysterious weapon. One of the chapters tells of a shell, which sparkled like fire, but had no smoke. "When the shell hit the ground, the darkness covered the sky, twisters and storms leveled the towns. A horrible blast burnt thousands of animals and people to ashes. Peasants, townspeople and warriors dived in the river to wash away the poisonous dust."

Astounding mysteries of India's ancient times can be found in the town of Shivapur. There are two enigmatic stones resting opposite the local shrine. One of them weighs 55 kilograms, the other one is 41 kilograms. If eleven men touch the bigger stone, and nine men touch the smaller stone, if they all chant the magic phrase, which is carved on one of the walls of the shrine, the two stones will raise two meters up in the air and will hang there for two seconds, as if there is no gravitation at all. A lot of European and Asian scientists and researchers have studied the phenomenon of levitating stones of Shivapur.

Modern people divide the day into 24 hours, the hour - into 60 minutes, the minute - into 60 seconds. Ancient Hindus divided the day in 60 periods, lasting 24 minutes each, and so on and so forth. The shortest time period of ancient Hindus made up one-three-hundred-millionth of a second.

http://www.ancientx.com/nm/anmviewer.asp?a=60&z=1

[ABLAT Staff]

Time capsule to be beamed from Mexican pyramid
Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:48am ET

By Cyntia Barrera Diaz

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's Teotihuacan, once the center of a sprawling pre-Hispanic empire, is set to become the launch pad for an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.

Starting on Tuesday, enthusiasts from around the world will have a chance to submit text, images, video and sounds that reflect human nature to be included in the message.

Those contributions -- part of media company Yahoo's "Time Capsule" project -- will be digitalized and beamed with a laser into space on October 25 from the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, now an archeological site near Mexico City.

Archeologists say a culture centered in Teotihuacan, known as the City of the Gods, dominated Mesoamerica for hundreds of years during the first millennium. It is unclear what led to the society's collapse.

"We have this incredible ancient site and from that site we can project contemporary content," Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo's editor in chief, told Reuters. "What is new is the ability to capture this information in such scale."

In the 1970s, astronomer Carl Sagan compiled a record with sounds and images, including a mariachi band and greetings in an ancient Sumerian language, to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

His record was sent out with the Voyager spacecraft in the hope that extraterrestrial life forms would eventually find it.


© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews....=rss&rpc=22

[ABLAT Staff]

Mexican archeologists find largest Aztec figure
Fri Oct 13, 2006 7:42pm ET

By Gunther Hamm

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican archeologists unveiled the largest Aztec idol ever discovered on Friday and said it could be a door to a hidden chamber at a ruined temple under the heart of Mexico City.

The Aztecs, a warlike and deeply religious people who built numerous monumental works, ruled an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and encompassing much of modern-day central Mexico.

The 12.4 tonne stone slab, 46 feet in surface area, was partially uncovered this month at the main Templo Mayor on the edge of the capital's central Zocalo square. Aztecs used the temple for worship and human sacrifice.

Excavators have been astonished by the size of the piece and its elaborate engraving of the earth god Tlaltecuhtli as they uncovered more of the slab in recent days.

Asked on Friday if it was the most important Aztec piece found, anthropologist Alvaro Barrera said: "For its size, yes, for the importance ... we have to wait to see what we discover and its context."

When it was discovered, officials said the monolith and an adjacent 15th century altar comprised the most significant Aztec find in decades.

Now, with the realization that the monolith is likely a giant stone idol, some are calling it one of the greatest archeological finds in a country that also boasts pyramids like Chichen Itza and Teotihuacan.

Last year scientists found a 2,600-year-old, 30-tonne idol in Tamtoc, San Luis Potosi, belonging to an older culture.

"These two finds, Tamtoc and this stone, on a national level are the most important ever. We still haven't completely uncovered it, but we are getting very excited," said Alberto Diez, a member of the archeological team.

The scientists believe the monolith could cover the entrance to a chamber and may soon announce more finds.

"Most likely we will find an enormous offering below it. If there is a chamber, we will find a series of impressive offerings," Diez said.

The Aztecs' often bloody reign began in the 14th century and ended when they were subjugated in 1521 by the Spanish, led by Hernan Cortes.

Aztec rulers began building the pyramid-shaped Templo Mayor in 1375. Its ruins are now yards from downtown's choking traffic.

The temple was a center of human sacrifice. At one ceremony in 1487, historians say tens of thousands of victims were sacrificed, their hearts ripped out.

Spanish conquistadors destroyed the temple when they razed the city and used its stones to help build their own capital. Archeologists say the Spaniards came within feet of discovering the idol.

Now the site is surrounded by Spanish colonial buildings like Mexico City's cathedral and the historical National Palace as well as convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews....C1-ArticlePage1

[ABLAT Staff]

Stonehenge makes list in new seven wonders vote

Tue Oct 17, 8:34 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Only one of the ancient wonders of the world still survives -- now history lovers are being invited to choose a new list of seven.

Among 21 locations shortlisted for the worldwide vote is Stonehenge, the only British landmark selected.

The 5,000-year-old stones on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, will be up against sites including the Acropolis in Athens; the Statue of Liberty in New York; and the last remaining original wonder, the Pyramids of Giza in Cairo.

An original list of nearly 200 sites nominated by the public was narrowed to 21 by the organizers and experts, including the former director general of Unesco Professor Federico Mayor.

The vote is organized by a non-profit Swiss foundation called New7Wonders which specializes in the preservation, restoration and promotion of monuments, and the results will be announced on July 7, 2007, in Lisbon.

About 20 million votes have already been lodged, including many from India, for the Taj Mahal; China, for the Great Wall and from Peru for Machu Picchu, the fortress city of the Incas.

The other original seven wonders of the ancient world were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; the Statue of Zeus at Olympia; the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus; the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus; the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

Tia Viering, spokeswoman for New7Wonders, said: "Apart from the Pyramids, the seven ancient wonders of the world no longer exist."

The only criteria for the new list is that the landmarks were built or discovered before 2000.

"People of England, it is now your turn to be heard," added Viering. Support Stonehenge to become one of the New Seven Wonders of the World."

Votes can be made online, at www.new7wonders.com.

The 21 finalists for the New Seven Wonders of the World, alphabetically:

1 Acropolis, Athens, Greece

2 Alhambra, Granada, Spain

3 Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia

4 Chichen Itza Aztec site, Yucatan, Mexico

5 Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

6 Colosseum, Rome

7 Easter Island Statues, Chile

8 Eiffel Tower, Paris

9 Great Wall, China

10 Hagia Sophia church, Istanbul, Turkey

11 Kyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan

12 Kremlin/St.Basil's, Moscow

13 Machu Picchu, Peru

14 Neuschwanstein Castle, Fussen, Germany

15 Petra ancient city, Jordan

16 Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

17 Statue of Liberty, New York

18 Stonehenge, Amesbury, United Kingdom

19 Sydney Opera House, Australia

20 Taj Mahal, Agra, India

21 Timbuktu city, Mali

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061017/od_nm/...n_stonehenge_dc

[ABLAT Staff]

Eleven-millennium-old building discovered in Syria


www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-17 23:48:42


DAMASCUS, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Archaeologists have unearthed an 11-millennium-old building on the banks of the Euphrates River in northern Syria, the official SANA news agency reported on Tuesday.

The building, which dates back to 8,700 B.C., "may represent the oldest ritual practices related to the holy ox," said Dr. Yousef Kanjo from the Archeological Department of Aleppo, in northern Syrian.

The ancient building, shaped like a wild ox skull, consists of a rectangular forepart with geometrical drawings in red, black and white colors, said the report, quoting a statement by the Aleppo Archeological Department.

On the two sides of the rectangle, two semi-circle walls representing the two horns of the ox were also found, said the report, adding that the house still keeps it original shape, colors and decoration works.

The site was discovered by the French-Syrian Archeological Mission for Excavations, SANA said. Enditem

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/...ent_5218069.htm

[ABLAT Staff]

Thieves Lead to Discovery of Egypt Tombs
Oct 23 5:54 PM US/Eastern

By SIERRA MILLMAN
Associated Press Writer

SAQQARA, Egypt

The arrest of tomb robbers led archaeologists to the graves of three royal dentists, protected by a curse and hidden in the desert sands for thousands of years in the shadow of Egypt's most ancient pyramid, officials announced Sunday.
The thieves launched their own dig one summer night two months ago but were apprehended, Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told reporters.

That led archaeologists to the three tombs, one of which included an inscription warning that anyone who violated the sanctity of the grave would be eaten by a crocodile and a snake, Hawass said.

A towering, painted profile of the chief dentist stares down at passers-by from the wall opposite the inscription.

The tombs date back more than 4,000 years to the 5th Dynasty and were meant to honor a chief dentist and two others who treated the pharaohs and their families, Hawass said.

Their location near the Step Pyramid of King Djoser _ believed to be Egypt's oldest pyramid _ indicate the respect accorded dentists by Egypt's ancient kings, who "cared about the treatment of their teeth," Hawass said.

Although their services were in demand by the powerful, the dentists likely did not share in their wealth.

The tombs, which did not contain their mummies, were built of mud- brick and limestone, not the pure limestone preferred by ancient Egypt's upper class.

"The whole point of a tomb was to last forever," said Carol Redmount, associate professor of Egyptian archaeology at the University of California at Berkeley. "So you wanted to make it out of materials that would last forever. And mud-brick ... didn't last forever."

During a visit to the site, Hawass pointed out two hieroglyphs _ an eye over a tusk _ which appear frequently among the neat rows of symbols decorating the tombs. He said those hieroglyphs identify the men as dentists.

The pictorial letters also spell out the names of the chief dentist _ Iy Mry _ and the other two _ Kem Msw and Sekhem Ka. Hawass said the men were not related but must have been partners or colleagues to have been buried together.

Figures covering the pillars in the doorway of the chief dentist's tomb tell archaeologists much about his life and habits, Hawass said.

They depict the chief dentist and his family immersed in daily rituals _ playing games, slaughtering animals and presenting offerings to the dead, including the standard 1,000 loaves of bread and 1,000 vases of beer.

These would "magically provide food and sustenance for the spirit of the dead person for all eternity," Redmount said.

Just around the corner of the doorway is a false door, its face painstakingly inscribed with miniature hieroglyphics. A shallow basin was placed below it.

"That was sort of the interface where the dead person in the tomb would come up and interact with the living," Redmount said.

The tomb robbers were the first to discover the site two months ago, and began their own dig one summer night, before they were captured and jailed. "We have to thank the thieves," Hawass said.

Although archaeologists have been exploring Egypt's ruins intensively for more than 150 years, Hawass believes only 30 percent of what lies hidden beneath the sands has been uncovered. Excavation continues at Saqqara, he said, and his team expects to find more tombs in the area.

Saqqara, about 12 miles south of Cairo, is one of Egypt's most popular tourist sites and hosts a collection of temples, tombs and funerary complexes.

The Step Pyramid is the forerunner of the more familiar straight-sided pyramids in Giza on the outskirts of Cairo, which were believed to have been built about a century later.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/23/D8KUJK7O0.html

[ABLAT Staff]

Malta Temple’s and Tombs

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_malta02.htm

[ABLAT Staff]

'Tower of Babel' translator being developed

A "Tower of Babel" device that gives the illusion of being bilingual is being developed by US scientists.

Users simply have to silently mouth a word in their own language for it to be translated and read out in another. The researchers said the effect was like watchi ng a television programme that had been dubbed.

The system, detailed in New Scientist, is not yet fully accurate, but experts said it showed the technology was "within reach". The idea is that you can mouth words in English and they will come out in Chinese or another language" The translation systems that are currently in use work by using voice recognition software.

But this requires people to speak out loud and then wait for the translation to be read out, making conversations difficult. But the new device, being created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, is different. Electrodes are attached to the neck and face to detect the movements that occur as the person silently mouths words and phrases.

Using this data, a computer can work out the sounds being formed and then build these sounds up into words. The system is then able to translate the words into another language which is read out by a synthetic voice. The tea m currently has two prototypes: one that can translate Chinese into English and another that can translate English into Spanish or German.

If the prototypes used a small vocabulary of about 100-200 words they worked with about 80% accuracy, researcher Tanja Schultz said.
Professor Schultz said: "The idea is that you can mouth words in English and they will come out in Chinese or another language." The ultimate goal, the researchers said, was to be in a position where you can just have a conversation.

Chuck Jorgensen, a researcher at Nasa's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, told New Scientist: "This is showing the technology is really within reach."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/health/6083994.stm

[ABLAT Staff]

Stonehenge 'No Place for the Dead', Says Expert

Professor Geoff Wainwright (left) and Professor Tim Darvill share the view that Stonehenge is a place of healing and not of death. Credit: Bournemouth University
Professor Timothy Darvill, Head of the Archaeology Group at Bournemouth University, has breathed new life into the controversy surrounding the origins of Stonehenge by publishing a theory which suggests that the ancient monument was a source and centre for healing and not a place for the dead as believed by many previous scholars.

After publication of his new book on the subject - Stonehenge: The Biography of a Landscape (Tempus Publishing) - Professor Darvill also makes a case for revellers who travel to be near the ancient monument for the summer solstice in June to reconsider. Instead, Professor Darvill believes that those seeking to tap into the monument’s powers at its most potent time of the year should do so in December during the winter solstice when our ancestors believed that the henge was ‘occupied’ by a prehistoric god - the equivalent of the Roman and Greek god of healing, Apollo – who ‘chose’ to reside in winter with the Hyborians, long believed to be the ancient Britons.

The basis for Professor Darvill’s findings lies in the Preseli Mountains in west Wales where he and colleague Professor Geoffrey Wainwright have located an exact origin for the bluestones used in the construction of Stonehenge some 250 km away.

“The questions most people ask when they consider Stonehenge is ‘why was it built?’ and ‘how was it was used?’” says Professor Darvill. “Our work has taken us to the Preseli Mountains to provide a robust context for the source of the bluestones and to explore various ideas about why those mountains were so special to prehistoric people”.

“We have several strands of evidence to consider. First, there have folklore in the form of accounts written in the 14th century which refer to a magician bringing the stones from the west of the British Isles to what we know as Salisbury Plain,” he continues. “It was believed that these particular stones had many healing properties because in Preseli, there are many sacred springs that are considered to have health-giving qualities; the water comes out of the rocks used to build Stonehenge and it’s well established that as recently as the late 18th century, people went to Stonehenge to break off bits of rock as talismans.

“Also, around the Stonehenge landscape, there are many burials, some of which have been excavated and amongst these there are a good proportion of people who show sings of being unwell – some would have walked with a limp or had broken bones – just the sort of thing that in modern times pressurises people to seek help from the Almighty.

“In the case of Stonehenge, I suggest that the presiding deity was a prehistoric equivalent of the Greek and Roman god of healing, Apollo. Although his main sanctuary was at Delphi in Greece, it is widely believed that he left Greece in the winter months to reside in the land of the Hyborians – usually taken to be Britain.

“Altogether, and with the incorporation of the stones from Wales, Stonehenge is a very powerful and positive place of pilgrimage, although whether the monument’s healing power actually worked is a matter for further discussion,” he concludes.

Source: Bournemouth University

http://www.physorg.com/news82898170.html

[ABLAT Staff]

Ancient Greek computer reveals its secrets
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 2:00am GMT 30/11/2006

A bronze calculating machine salvaged from a shipwreck a century ago is finally yielding up its secrets, revealing a Greek computer of remarkable sophistication for a device constructed long before the birth of Christ.


How the back dials of the supercomputer would have looked


Scholars have been baffled by the 80-plus fragments of the ancient mechanism found in 1901 by sponge divers in a Roman shipwreck near the island of Antikythera, midway between the Peloponnese and Crete.

Around the size of a discus, the device was so badly corroded that it had the consistency of flaky pastry and was encrusted with deposits. Yet it seemed to be the earliest-known machine involving an arrangement of gear-wheels, built centuries before such technology became commonplace.

Was it a rich man's toy? Or was it an orrery or an astronomical clock? Or something else that reflected an ancient interest in astrology?

In the wake of a study of its workings published today in the journal Nature, the "Antikythera Mechanism" will transform the way we think about the technological capabilities of the ancient world.

An international team unveils a new reconstruction of the way its gears worked and has doubled the number of deciphered inscriptions on the casing. It reveals a spectacular and ancient astronomical calculator that may even have been designed by Hipparchos (190BC-120BC) himself, arguably the greatest astronomical observer of antiquity, or by his followers.

Prof Mike Edmunds and Dr Tony Freeth of Cardiff University and colleagues in Greece and America say it was used to chart the movement of the Moon and Sun, along with eclipses and perhaps even the passage of Mercury and Venus.

The hand-driven mechanism was not a true computer, since its "program" could not be changed. Nonetheless, it would have been a wonder of its age, the supercomputer of its day, which could do multiplication, division, addition and subtraction.

Although the wreck has been dated to 65 BC, the device itself was probably built around the end of the second century BC. One of the provocative issues raised by this machine, said Prof Edmunds, is what other mechanical devices the ancient Greeks managed to construct.

"It does raise the question what else were they making at the time," he said.

Another profound question is how this extraordinary technology was lost when the Roman Empire came to dominate the Mediterranean. "In terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa," he added.

The new study vindicates pioneering work carried out from the late 1950s to the early 1970s by late British historian of science, Prof Derek De Solla Price. After studying the mechanism with X rays, he wrote in his book Gears from the Greeks that it had been used as an astronomical calendar.

But because his analysis demanded a complete rethink of the capabilities of ancient Greek technology, it came under attack from academics who put alternative ideas forward.

Today, although details of his work are clearly wrong, Price's overall thesis is vindicated. The new glimpse of this ancient celestial apparatus dates back to last year, when the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project - an international collaboration - was given access to the remains the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and used modern techniques to pry into its workings.

Dr Yanis Bitsakis of the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, Prof Edmunds and colleagues used imaging techniques that could shed new light on apparently impossible to decipher inscriptions, not helped by how the Greeks left no gaps between words.

Analysis of the now much clearer lettering indicates a construction date of between 150 BC and 100 BC, slightly earlier than had been assumed, describes how it was made and used, and information on various motions of the heavens. Because it is so fragile, a 7.5 ton X-ray tomography scanner - akin to the kind used on patients - had to be taken to the museum to study the device.

This revealed a complicated arrangement of 30 precision, hand-cut bronze gears, housed inside a wooden case covered in inscriptions.

From their studies, they have inferred that there were at least seven more gears, along with iron or steel axles, marking a major departure from the pioneering work of Prof Price.

Overall, the mechanism is technically more complex than any comparable known mechanical device for at least a millennium afterwards. "It is as complicated as a clock," said Prof Edmunds. "It is only when you get Medieval astronomical clocks that you go beyond this in complexity."

Francois Charette of Ludwig-Maximilians-University, said that scholars are "stunned at the ingenuity of the ancients" but there will be plenty more speculation about how this marvel was used.

To help answer these questions, the team is now building a virtual version in a computer. The Antikythera Mechanism also reveals that the history of technology is far from linear, since the ancient Greeks achieved a level of instrument-making not surpassed until the Renaissance.

Prof Edmunds said: "It makes you wonder what they would have achieved if they'd have carried on, and the Romans hadn't taken over and put a stop to things. Would they have had a man on the Moon by AD 300?

"It sounds ridiculous, but if they were able to construct something as technically brilliant as this, it's not complete fantasy," said Prof Edmunds.

"The Romans were great at the stuff like building sewers and getting things done, but it was the Greeks who were the thinkers, and came up with real innovative technology."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...9/ugreek129.xml

[ABLAT Staff]

"At other sites in the city the archaeologists have uncovered medieval churches dating from the 11th to the 16th centuries, as well as graveyards with more than 1,600 burial sites."

Roman "Curse Tablet" Discovered in England
Kate Ravilious
for National Geographic News

December 5, 2006
Archaeologists in Leicester, England, have recently uncovered a treasure trove of Roman and medieval artifacts, including a 1,700-year-old Roman "curse tablet."

Curse tablets were metal scrolls on which ancient Romans wrote spells to exact revenge for misdeeds, often thefts of money, clothing, or animals.

Such tablets have been discovered previously in Britain, often near ancient Roman temple sites, but this is the first one to be found in Leicester (see United Kingdom map).

The Leicester tablet, which was uncovered near the ruins of a large Roman townhouse dating from the second century A.D., was found unrolled. Curse tablets were typically rolled up and nailed to posts inside temples or shrines.

The newfound tablet appears to have been written by, or on behalf of, a man named Servandus, whose cloak had been stolen.

The writer inscribed a curse into a sheet of lead, asking the god Maglus to destroy the thief.

Measuring around 8 inches (20 centimeters) long and 3 inches (7 centimeters) wide, the tablet reads:

"To the god Maglus, I give the wrongdoer who stole the cloak of Servandus. Silvester, Roimandus … that he destroy him before the ninth day, the person who stole the cloak of Servandus …" A list of the names of 18 or 19 suspects follows.

Richard Buckley, co-director of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services, which is conducting the excavation, said the discovery provides crucial clues about life in Roman Britain. The names on the lead sheet are of particular interest, he noted.

"Some of [the names] are Celtic, and some are Roman. It helps us to understand the cultural makeup of the population," he said.

The tablets are thought to have been issued by ordinary people, rather than the wealthy, Buckley added, which helps explain why a missing garment called for action from the gods.

"If a cloak is all that you have, then it is pretty important," he said.

The excavations are part of a major dig involving a team of 60 archaeologists from the University of Leicester.

Over the last three years nearly 10 percent of the city center has been excavated prior to the construction of new commercial and residential development.

The dig has produced a wealth of artifacts from the period when the Roman Empire ruled Britain, from about A.D. 43 to 410.

In addition to Servandus' curse tablet, the Roman townhouse excavation has produced another curse tablet that has yet to be translated, along with thousands of shards of pottery, Roman weighing scales, coins, brooches, gaming pieces, animal bone, and hairpins.

At other sites in the city the archaeologists have uncovered medieval churches dating from the 11th to the 16th centuries, as well as graveyards with more than 1,600 burial sites.

The archaeologists also found a medieval street frontage of four properties, one of which had evidence of a brewery in its backyard.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...oman-curse.html

[ABLAT Staff]

"Despite the dreadful tales, peace and tranquility inside the crater provides Christians visiting the area a conducive environment to pray and fast. But there are claims that some of them have committed suicide, like the two catholic priests who jump to their deaths into the dormant volcano."


The Mysterious Menengai Crater

The East African Standard (Nairobi)
NEWS
December 13, 2006
Posted to the web December 13, 2006

By Alex Kiprotich
Nairobi

Despite the serene and breathtaking marvel that is the Menengai Crater, locals believe that evil spirits haunt it.

Boys living around the Menengai Crater go on hunting expeditions despite the risks.

They claim that the evil spirits capture human beings and confuse them while touring the crater with beautiful walls.

People have lost their lives while others have disappeared never to be seen again. Some have died through accidents and others have committed suicide.

However, the crater continues to attract hundreds of people curious to explore the mystery cave. Guides who earn a living by escorting the visitors tell of strange happenings that leave visitors shocked.

The stories are perplexing as they are scary with strange things happening inside the cave.

People have strayed and lost direction in the cave only for them to be found hours later unable to explain how they lost their way.

"So many strange things happen here even though people do not seem to believe them," says Paul Ndung'u.

The locals have named the place "kirima kia ngoma" (Devil's place) as they claim it is under the control of evil spirits.

No one knows how the crater came to be called Menengai but the locals say the name is a Maasai word meaning a place of corpses.

"It is believed the name means the place of the dead in the Maasai because many of them died here in the 19th century when they fought among themselves," says Daniel Kanyingi.

Woman slipped and fell into the crater

He said that it is alleged that one of the battles took place at the crater and morans, from one of the warring clans were thrown in the calderas.

The second meaning, "devils residence" relates to a story that mysterious people once lived in the crater.

"The sound of the crater sometimes gives the impression of cow bells. And because of the hot spots in the crater, they said the inhabitants must be devils because animals cannot kindle fire," adds Ndung'u.

Recently, a woman slipped and fell into the crater as she tried to rescue her son.

Magdalene Waithera was in a group that had gone to rescue her son, 12, who had been trapped in the ravine.

Mr Johnstone Kamau, a witness, said the woman was trying to look into the crater after she called her son and he responded.

"When she heard him respond, she moved forward and attempted to look inside, but she slipped and fell," he said.

The child was, however, rescued later alive by the police.

Last year, a man who had gone to graze his animals in the crater failed to find his way out despite knowing the area for a long time.

Peace and tranquility inside the crater

John Kirutu, 12, is rescued days after he plunged into the crater while playing with friends.

A search was mounted and two days later, he was found wandering deep into the crater.

Kanyingi says a young boy also went missing in the crater and was found after seven days in the crater staring at birds but he was in good health.

"Some do not find their way for days but when they are found they do not show signs of fatigue or hunger," he says.

He says that the boy told the search party that he had been watching a beautiful vision without realising the passage of time.

Despite the dreadful tales, peace and tranquility inside the crater provides Christians visiting the area a conducive environment to pray and fast. But there are claims that some of them have committed suicide, like the two catholic priests who jump to their deaths into the dormant volcano.

Ndung'u says the incident happened in November last year, when a catholic priest plunged his vehicle into the 900-metre crater.

"He drove straight to the view point without breaking and in a matter of seconds what remained was a mangled wreck of the twisted metal and his lifeless body," he says.

Tales of ghosts

But pilgrims still flock the site to pray. Recently, The Standard met Mr Paul Walingo from Kakamega, who has spent almost two weeks in the cave praying and fasting.

He says the place is perfect to drown life's hostilities and get in touch with one's inner soul.

Relatives and friends could not hold their tears back after they received information of the death of Magdaline Waithera, who died while attempting to save her son. Pictures by Lucas Thuo

"I feel very close to God whenever I come to pray here. It is a perfect place to reflect on one's life," he says.

He dismisses the tales of ghosts as rich imaginations.

"I usually pray till late in the evening and have never seen what the locals are talking about," he says.

But Mr Simon Kamenju, 69, says the existence of demons is real. He says during the planting season, they plough the land towards the southern end of the crater and plant wheat and maize, which are soon harvested by the ghosts.

"Things happen so fast. You will see some crops, people harvesting and before long, the flurry of activities are over and the land would revert back to its former state of grassland and the people would also disappear," he says.

Kamenju recalls that in the 1960s, ghosts used to practice agriculture on the floor of the crater in large scale.

"What we are seeing is small scale farming by the ghosts who reside in the floor of the crater unlike 40 years ago," he alleges.

Flying umbrella

He says these ghosts are responsible for capturing human beings and hiding them in the underworld.

However, the spirits capture only those who attempt to destroy the fauna in the crater.

"Some of those who wander, do so after harvesting firewood inside the cave. But as soon as they drop the firewood, they find their way back," he says.

Although the volcano is dormant, residents say that the crater has some hot spots where steam jets fill it with vapour at times.

The latest mystery about the crater is a "flying umbrella" that appears whenever it rains. But no one knows where the umbrella goes after the rains.

"When it rains, there is a huge formation of what looks like an umbrella that seem to shield the crater from the rain but disappears as soon as the rain subsides," says Kamenju.

As the site puzzles the visitors, residents fear for their children. The cliff is not fenced off and hence poses danger to children playing around the area.

"We fear for our children's safety, especially when there is no one to watch over them," says Mrs Sarah Maina.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2006 The East African Standard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200612131234.html

[ABLAT Staff]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5163115220367330351

Ancient pyramids discovered in Bosnia

By Mark Whitehorn → More by this authorPublished Tuesday 26th December 2006 10:02 GMTFree White Paper Download - Data Protection Tips for SMBs The Great Pyramid of Giza is the sole survivor of the Seven Wonders of the World. An Arab proverb says that: "Man fears time, yet time fears the Pyramids", a reference to the fact that the pyramid has survived for about 4,500 years and, in that time, has lost a mere 10 metres off its incredible 145 metre height.

Composed of two million blocks of stone, each weighing more than two tonnes, this was not erected by George Wimpey and Co in a fortnight. For approximately 43 centuries it was the world's tallest man-made structure.

Or so we thought. Reports are emerging from Bosnia-Herzegovina of structures that make the pyramid of Giza look like a scale model (see http://www.bosnianpyramids.org/, http://www.bosnianpyramid.com/, and http://www.bosnian-pyramid.com/).

At 267 metres tall, the Pyramid of the Sun blows the Egyptian opposition into the weeds. If that wasn't enough, it is simply one of a number of pyramids located in the same region - there are also the Pyramids of the Sun, the Dragon and, most recently discovered, Love.

These revelations are not simply about who has the biggest bragging rights for historic civil engineering projects. Structures like these take colossal man power to create – estimates for a single Egyptian pyramid run into tens of millions of man hours.

Such a workforce means, in turn, huge logistical organisation – land cultivation, food transport, housing, water, waste disposal etc. The simple existence of these gigantic man-made structures in Europe means the entire history of the development of human civilization will have to be rewritten with Bosnia-Herzegovina at its centre.

All of which appears to be just fine by Semir Osmanagić who is at the centre of these discoveries. He is referred to on bosnianpyramid.com as "Bosnia's Indiana Jones" which is either a reference to the hat and boots that he affects or his extraordinary archaeological discoveries. Not a man who appears to eschew modesty, he is quoted as saying: "My discovery will change human history".

As might be imagined, this is a very big deal in Bosnia-Herzegovina where it forms the focus of a nightly reality TV show. We strongly recommend that you visit the web sites and that you examine the other evidence that is accumulating daily on the web, such as this video, where you can see, and weigh, for yourself the evidence that this is a man-made structure.

Of course, the cynical sceptics amongst you may feel that claims like these are so fantastic as to be unbelievable, but that is not the case. We believe the reason the claims are unbelievable is more simple; they are wrong.

How can we be so sure? We have been talking to Professor John Parker of Cambridge University, the director of the Botanic Garden and also Professor of Botany at St Catharine's College. He's actually travelled there and seen the evidence first hand.

El Reg: How did you come to visit the site?

Professor Parker: I visited the site in August this year as part of a visit to Sarajevo with one of the professors there. My colleague in Sarajevo invited me to come and see this phenomenon so we made our way to the site and climbed to the top of one of the hills which was being referred to as the Pyramid of the Sun. As we climbed the hill we passed, as you would expect, Nefertiti's café and stalls selling little models of the pyramids. I must admit I began to wonder where we were.

The top of the hill was being cleared and they were digging away the surface to the depth of about a metre, exposing what looked for all the world like concrete spilling down the slopes of the hill. These inclined, flat sheets consisted of aggregate in a matrix and I gathered that these were being put forward as a man-made phenomenon. It was quite impressive: large slabs, some of them up to 50 or 60 metres long. It was explained to me as man-made concrete that had been cast as slabs with shuttering between them. This is exactly the way in which, today, we cover large areas with concrete. We use shuttering to limit the size of the slabs and the spaces left when the shuttering is removed allow for expansion.

So, having seen that, we went across the valley to the Pyramid of the Moon, a slightly lower hill, and again we went through a mass of little stalls selling this time, Mayan step pyramid models.

In contrast to the Pyramid of the Sun, where the slabs of concrete lie parallel to the side of the hill, the material that makes up the Pyramid of the Moon lies in horizontal sheets. The flat sheets of exposed material have a sort of ripple effect on the top and the whole surface broken by regular lines into what looks like crazy paving with most of the fracture lines of the crazy paving roughly parallel to each other. It is broken up into rough rectangular blocks but laid so closely together that they look just as if they have been laid by human hand.

El Reg: But you weren't convinced?

Professor Parker: Well, no, because I'd seen this kind of thing before. It is a perfect example of a fossilised beach, essentially little mud ripples on a beach which then becomes fossilised. What they were doing was cutting into the hillside to expose this beautiful raised beach.

As you looked at the profile that they had cut you saw the layers above it and every time they came to a slightly harder layer that showed that phenomenon, so they exposed it back. They were cutting the side of the hill into a series of steps, each one about a metre and a half or two meters. Hence the Pyramid of the Moon is described a stepped pyramid, as opposed to the Pyramid of the Sun where the sides are flat.

El Reg: So, what about the "concrete" on the Pyramid of the Sun?

Professor Parker: It is a natural material. When you looked at the whole site there was a very turbulent river which came down (and they are really turbulent in Bosnia) which had cut a deep valley through the mainly limestone area in which we found ourselves. However, the river rises in the mountains to the West which are mainly acidic. So the "concrete" is made of the embedded stones that were washed down from the acidic mountains deposited in an alkaline substrate.

El Reg: What about the marks of the shuttering?

Professor Parker: As the conglomerate formed and then subsequently cracked, the cracks were filled in with calcite which would be crystallised from the calcium carbonate and dolomite which makes up the matrix. If you looked at the cracks between the slabs carefully – and this is what told me straight away that it was natural – you could see that individual stones that were embedded in the matrix were shattered through.

In other words, you regularly find single stones, embedded in two slabs, cut neatly through by the "shuttering" lines. It seems highly unlikely that human beings would split stones and place the two halves neatly on either side of a piece of shuttering. But natural cracks will run through both the stones and the matrix. So the cracks are clearly a post-construction phenomenon, not a pre-construction one.

El Reg: Ok, that explains the materials found on the two hills, but how did it get there in the first place?

Professor Parker: Remember that turbulent river. You've got the aggregate which came from the acidic mountains and it came down into a calcareous lake where the big stones had settled out with the calcareous substrate to make the aggregate on one side of the valley. That explains the "concrete". On the other side of the valley the mud was left and was depositing out as beaches which were obviously a drying lake surface and I should think alternately wetting and drying. It was quite obvious that it was part of one kind of system, probably a delta type system.

Geologically it was absolutely fascinating. I've never seen a better example of this. At the same time one of my colleagues, Dr Mary Edmunds, found the most perfect fossils in the material they'd excavated on the Pyramid of the Moon. They were simply beautiful – you broke open every piece of this supposedly man-made material and inside were things like pine seeds perfectly preserved with their wings so you could even identify the species of pine – Pinus nigra that grows there still – and also birch leaves: it was full of just wonderful sub-fossil material. That alone told us that it was clearly a post-glacial phenomenon, relatively recent – less than 12,000 years old.

El Reg: So, if the "concrete" is natural, and formed in a lake, why is it now at such an angle, forming the sloping sides of a hill?

Professor Parker: The way I was thinking about the conglomerate – why it looked like a triangle – was that if you think about the river constantly undermining soft substrate with a hard crust it becomes rather like a crème brulée. As soon as you take away the cream from below there's nothing to hold the upper material and it will collapse, and of course it will tend to shatter, if it is a flat plate, into triangular slabs. I think what you'd got is this material shattered into one of these triangular slabs which gives you the triangular shape and when you excavate it of course the conglomerate is now facing down the hill.

El Reg: So, the site is worthless?

Professor Parker: Absolutely not. I spent considerable time looking at the fossils because I've never seen any so good from a post-glacial site. It's very sad because you could have got the most detailed and intimate knowledge of the changes in vegetation patterns from the post-glacial era. It is so clearly a natural phenomenon that it should be investigated as a natural phenomenon rather than being shrouded in all this magic and mystery.

I am worried about it because the Bosnian people deserve better than this. They are a wonderful people who have suffered so much. In this site they have a fabulous natural phenomenon and the danger is that the people and the country could become a laughing stock if the site continues to be interpreted in this way. ®


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/26/bosnian_pyramids/

[ABLAT Staff]

400-Year-Old Telescopes Appear in the Strangest of Places

CHICAGO -- Like cell phones or the Internet in recent history, the telescope's introduction in the early 17th Century had a swift and lasting impact on the world. Telescopes revolutionized military strategy and within months showed the father of astronomy, Galileo Galilei, that Earth is not the center of the universe.

Until recently, scholars thought only 8 or 10 of these important early telescopes _ made between 1608 and 1650 of tightly rolled paper and crudely ground lenses _ had survived to the present day.

Then two historians on a visit to a museum in Berlin last fall had an "aha!" moment. One of the oldest known surviving telescopes at the German museum gave them an idea of places to look for other, as yet undiscovered examples.

Their insight apparently was correct. According to Marvin Bolt of Chicago's Adler Planetarium, he and his colleague found a previously unreported 1627 telescope in a Dresden museum storage room within 24 hours of their brainstorm. Less than a day later, they found a second, slightly earlier telescope that had lain unnoticed in the storage room of a museum in Kassel.

"This discovery is exciting, because it suggests further places to look for more old telescopes," said Bolt, who made the discovery with Michael Korey, a museum conservator in Germany.

Finding more early telescopes will help scientists and historians better understand who made them and how they evolved and improved over time, said Eugene Rudd, an emeritus University of Nebraska professor of physics who is a world authority on old telescopes.

"I've seen the photographs of the two Marvin has located in Germany, and they certainly have the characteristics of the very early ones," said Rudd. "I know of only eight telescopes that date before 1650 that still survive, so to find two more is extraordinary, a remarkable find."

Bolt is a technology historian at the Adler, which boasts the largest and finest collection of old scientific instruments in the Western Hemisphere, including an exquisite, leather-covered, trumpet-shaped device made in Italy around 1630.

Korey is a conservator at the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon in Dresden. The museum has one of the world's oldest and most renowned collections of historic scientific instruments.

Through an American Association of Museums program sponsored by the U.S. State Department, Korey visited the Adler collection last summer, working in areas in which Bolt lacks expertise. Then, late in September, Bolt flew to Dresden to help Korey with his museum's collection of 18th Century and late-17th Century telescopes.

"I also wanted to visit some other museums that have the really old telescopes," Bolt said, "hoping I might learn some things that might tell me more about our old telescope. We know very little about it."

On Oct. 2, he and Korey visited Berlin's Decorative Arts Museum to see a well-known telescope dating to 1617. It had been part of a collection of 17th Century scientific instruments found in a finely crafted cabinet built for a royal family to display scientific instruments _ a kunstschrank.

Such cabinets were important status symbols in wealthy 17th Century households. The idea was that, by owning a kunstschrank and its contents, the owners showed they were learned and knowledgeable as well as generous sponsors of scientists and their work.

Seeing the 1617 telescope and the elaborate cabinet it came from, Bolt said a bell went off in his head. Probably there were other old cabinets scattered around Europe that nobody had ever looked into for old telescopes.

"In a decorative arts museum," he said, "curators aren't aware of the history of telescopes, and if they have one belonging to one of these cabinets, they regard it more as a beautiful object rather than an example of early technology.

"On the other hand, I don't think any technology historians had ever thought of a decorative arts museum as a place to hunt for early telescopes."

He and Korey excitedly began thinking about canvassing museums that might own the cabinets. That night, while attending the opera back in Dresden, Korey noticed a poster advertising the loan of a 17th Century kunstschrank from Dresden's own decorative arts museum to a Budapest museum.

The following morning Korey and Bolt visited the Dresden museum director who had loaned out the cabinet. Why yes, the director said, there was an artifact belonging to the cabinet that might have been some sort of looking device, but it was in such poor shape that it was not being displayed.

"In an early inventory of the cabinet's contents, it simply listed a `perspective glass,'" not a telescope, Korey said.

Under Bolt's guidance, a technician at Korey's museum took the paper-tube telescope apart and found the lenses wadded up in balls of paper inside. Bolt spent until 1:30 the next morning examining the glass and the grinding techniques to estimate their age.

"Michael knew the year of construction of the cabinet the telescope came out of, but he wouldn't tell me, as a sort of double-blind test of how accurate my age estimate might be," Bolt said. "I finally guessed the lenses dated to the 1620s or the 1630s."

The cabinet is positively dated to 1627.

At 5 a.m. that same morning, he and Korey boarded a train for a museum in Kassel devoted to scientific instruments, including many old telescopes, though none that were thought to date to pre-1650. It was Bolt's last full working day in Germany before returning home, and he wanted to study several unique telescopes there.

"About mid-afternoon, I mentioned what I had seen the night before and characteristics of really early ones," Bolt said. "One of the curators said he thought they had something like that in storage, and they took me there to show it to me.

"There it was on the shelf _ a beautiful early one, dating around the 1630s, in much better shape than the one in Dresden. It had decorative gold fleur de lis tooling on the leather covering of the barrel, suggesting it was Italian or French-made."

Bolt will return to Germany in 2007 to do more research on the old Kassel telescope, evaluating its lenses and investigating if it, too, originally was made to equip a kunstschrank.

Eager to see how technology evolved, science historians have missed important information by ignoring what roles the early telescopes played in society at the time they were built, especially as status symbols for the rich, Bolt said.

"Nobody has looked at them as cultural objects," he said. "We're going to continue to explore this genre, because it has the potential to offer so much information. If we find one associated with a well-known piece of furniture, it gives us a specific date for when it was made and possibly accurate information on who made it, where it was made and who owned it."

Such information on the known early telescopes is hard to come by, he said. Historians even disagree about how many are known to have survived. Some say there are 10, counting two telescopes in Florence thought to have been used by Galileo. Others don't count those two, believing they were made after more sophisticated lenses were developed in 1650.

"If you only have 8 or 10 examples of them," Bolt said, "it's not a large enough sample size to know all the characteristics of the early ones."

Nobody knows for certain who invented the telescope, but an obscure Dutch spectacle maker, Hans Lipperhey, is generally credited with demonstrating the first working model, at the court of Prince Maurice in the Netherlands in September 1608.

It was the middle of the savage Eighty Years' War. Maurice and his realm were in the Protestant camp that fought throughout Europe against Roman Catholic partisans led by Spain. Lipperhey's telescope caused a sensation, as Maurice and his courtiers saw it as a miraculous military tool to spy on enemy troops from long distances.

Unfortunately, Maurice talked so freely about the astounding new technology that the Spanish found somebody to build working telescopes almost immediately. Lipperhey never got the royal patent he had been seeking.

"The telescope is one of those revolutionary ideas that spread like wildfire," said Bolt. "Just months after Lipperhey showed off his device, you could buy telescopes in Paris."

Early that same year, Galileo began building his own telescopes after having read descriptions. By the end of 1609, he had pointed them into the night skies and discovered that other planets had orbiting moons. That profoundly shattering news would eventually tear apart scientific and theological dogma holding that the rest of the universe rotated around Earth. Humans began to see they live in a tiny corner of a vast cosmos rather than at the center of things.

Bolt and Korey are preparing a paper for academic publication on their discovery. During his 2007 visit to Germany, Bolt said, he and Korey will search out more kunstschrank cabinets in hopes of finding telescopes.

"We feel there is a good chance we may find some more in the next couple of years," said Bolt.



Source: Chicago Tribune

http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/789516/...?source=r_space

[ABLAT Staff]

Ancient Roman road found in Netherlands
Artery, which connected two forts, was in use from A.D. 50 to A.D. 350
By Toby Sterling
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:35 p.m. MT Jan 5, 2007
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Archaeologists in the Netherlands have uncovered what they believe is part of the military road Roman soldiers patrolled nearly 2,000 years ago while guarding against hostile Germanic tribes at the Roman Empire's northern boundary.

Known in Latin as the "limes," the road was in use from roughly A.D. 50 to A.D. 350, before it fell into disrepair and eventually disappeared underground, said archaeologist Wilfried Hessing, who is leading the excavations in Houten, about 30 miles southeast of Amsterdam.

The stretch of road discovered in Houten is believed to have connected two forts — Traiectum, which gives its name to the modern city of Utrecht, and Fectio, modern Vechten. Wooden poles were discovered at the site that were used to protect the roadsides from erosion, and experts hoped to use tree-ring counting techniques to determine the exact date they were cut, Hessing said.

"It was used for trade, but it was first and foremost part of a military strategy to guard the border," he said. With a road "you can respond more quickly, so you need fewer troops, just like today."


The road was discovered by the Dutch train company Prorail during preparations to add extra rail lines in the area. Hessing and Prorail will complete excavations of a short stretch in the coming weeks, then carry out exploratory digs to determine the road's route farther to the east, the city of Houton said in a statement.

"It's in very good condition," said city spokeswoman Marloes van Kessel.

Excavations of other parts of the limes are also being conducted in other European countries, and the United Nations is considering declaring it a world heritage site.

Hessing said the road was built of a sloping mound of sand and clay, interspersed with layers of gravel and smashed seashells, which would have stood about a yard above nearby fields. The top layer of hard-packed gravel is unusually well-preserved at the site.

Pottery shards were used as filler material and will help experts in dating the road, Hessing said. The road was also flanked by drainage channels, and the wooden poles were used to shore up the foundation.

Hessing said examinations of a cross-section of the road indicated it had been repaired several times. "It will be interesting to see if we can tell whether those repairs correspond with known military campaigns or were just part of standard maintenance," he said.

Romans first entered this part of the Netherlands under Julius Caesar in the year 53 B.C.

According to the Roman historian Tacitus, an uprising began in A.D. 69 when a local Germanic tribe captured two coastal forts. Roman soldiers may have retreated eastward along the road to more heavily protected forts in present-day Germany.

A year later, after first losing a battle on a flooded, marshy field near Nijmegen, the Romans pacified the Batavians, the tribe that was the main instigator of the rebellion.

Although the limes' course is known from medieval copies of ancient maps, only several segments have been found intact in the Netherlands. Archaeologists previously had been unable to determine the exact location of the limes along the Kromme, or "Crooked" Rhine, south of Utrecht because the river had changed course over time.

The find is the latest of several near Utrecht. In 2002, archaeologists found the remains of a watchtower on the Rhine where detachments of three or four Roman soldiers would have served as lookouts. Near the tower, they found bones and other remains of food the soldiers ate, as well as a spear point, coin, ax, sickle and an ancient pen.

In 2003, they uncovered a 25-yard-long barge, complete with covered living quarters and a decorated chest with lock and key. Archaeologists believe it may have been used by a paymaster to sail upriver carrying supplies to military camps and bases.

Among the items found with the barge were a knife, saw, wooden shovel, shears, copper pot, clay cups and pots, paddle with traces of blue paint, iron crowbar, leather shoe soles with studded bottoms for extra strength, and a piece of wood with Roman numbers on it.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16489022/

[ABLAT Staff]

Climate change killed off dynasties in China, Mexico
Michael Sheridan
January 08, 2007

NEW research suggests climate change led to the collapse of the most splendid imperial dynasty in China's history and to the extinction of the Mayan civilisation in Central America more than 1000 years ago.
There has never been a satisfactory explanation for the fall of the Tang emperors, whose era is viewed as a high point of Chinese civilisation, while the disappearance of the Maya world perplexes scholars.
Now a team of scientists has found evidence a shift in monsoons led to drought and famine in the final century of Tang power. The weather pattern may also have spelt doom for the Maya in faraway Mexico at about the same time, they say.

Both ruling hierarchies at the start of the 10th century were victims of poor rainfall and starvation among their peoples when the harvests failed.

The martial arts honed during the fall of the Tang still provide a staple of modern Chinese epic films and video games, while Mel Gibson, the actor-director, has just released Apocalypto, a blood-drenched film set in the last days of the Maya. The Maya practised human sacrifices to please the gods of rain, and Chinese soothsayers were employed by the court to divine the seasons, yet neither could have predicted the slow-motion catastrophe resulting from the changing weather patterns.

The cause was to be found in the migration of a band of heavy tropical rain, which moves in response to phenomena such as El Nino, scientists have argued in an article in Nature.

The effect was to end two golden ages that existed in ignorance of one another on opposite sides of the world.

The scientific team, led by Gerald Haug of Germany's national geosciences research centre, found a massive movement in tropical rainfall took place in early 900 in both regions.

The scientists discovered that titanium sediment and deposits of magnetic minerals in a lake in southeast China indicated that the period was one of intense climate change that left northern China a desolate waste.

They reported a remarkable similarity between titanium deposits in the Huangyan Lake, in Guangdong province, and in the Cariaco basin, in Venezuela.

According to the scientists, the 8th and 9th centuries saw a worldwide drought in many regions. They conclude that it ruined entire societies.

Chinese chroniclers recorded the decay that set in during the late Tang dynasty, which ended in 907. These correlate with the new scientific evidence.

"On the basis of our new data, Chinese dynastic changes tended to occur when the summer monsoon was weak and rainfall was reduced," the scientists reported.

Trade, literature and the arts flourished under enlightened rule by the Tang. However, Chao-tsung, the last Tang emperor of stature, was murdered by an upstart warlord in 904.

His 12-year-old son was placed on the throne but the boy and the dynasty vanished from history just three years later amid chaos and peasant rebellions.

As the weather changed, Tang mandarins extorted ever heavier taxes and religious "offerings" from the suffering peasantry.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...5-30417,00.html

[ABLAT Staff]

Modern Pagans Honor Zeus in Athens

Jan 21 4:26 PM US/Eastern

By PARIS AYIOMAMITIS
Associated Press Writer

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- A clutch of modern pagans honored Zeus at a 1,800-year-old temple in the heart of Athens on Sunday _ the first known ceremony of its kind held there since the ancient Greek religion was outlawed by the Roman empire in the late 4th century.
Watched by curious onlookers, some 20 worshippers gathered next to the ruins of the temple for a celebration organized by Ellinais, a year- old Athens-based group that is campaigning to revive old religious practices from the era when Greece was a fount of education and philosophy.

The group ignored a ban by the Culture Ministry, which declared the site off limits to any kind of organized activity to protect the monument. But participants did not try to enter the temple itself, which is closed to everyone, and no officials sought to stop the ceremony.

Dressed in ancient costumes, worshippers standing near the temple's imposing Corinthian columns recited hymns calling on the Olympian Zeus, "King of the gods and the mover of things," to bring peace to the world.

"Our message is world peace and an ecological way of life in which everyone has the right to education," said Kostas Stathopoulos, one of three "high priests" overseeing the event, which celebrated the nuptials of Zeus and Hera, the goddess of love and marriage.

To the Greeks, ecological awareness was fundamental, Stathopoulos said after a priestess, with arms raised to the sky, called on Zeus "to bring rain to the planet."

A herald holding a metal staff topped with two snake heads proclaimed the beginning of the ceremony before priests in blue and red robes released two white doves as symbols of peace. A priest poured libations of wine and incense burned on a tiny copper tripod while a choir of men and women chanted hymns.

"Our hymns stress the brotherhood of man and do not single out nations," said priest Giorgos Alexelis.

For the organizers, who follow a calendar marking time from the first Olympiad in 776 B.C., the ceremony was far more than a simple recreation.

"We are Greeks and we demand from the government the right to use our temples," said high priestess Doreta Peppa.

Ellinais was founded last year and has 34 official members, mainly academics, lawyers and other professionals. It won a court battle for state recognition of the ancient Greek religion and is demanding the government register its offices as a place of worship, a move that could allow the group to perform weddings and other rites.

Christianity rose to prominence in Greece in the 4th century after Roman Emperor Constantine's conversion. Emperor Theodosius wiped out the last vestige of the Olympian gods when he abolished the Olympic Games in A.D. 394. Several isolated pockets of pagan worship lingered as late as the 9th century.

"The Christians shut down our schools and destroyed our temples," said Yiannis Panagidis, a 36-year-old accountant at the ceremony.

Most Greeks are baptized Orthodox Christians, and the church rejects ancient religious practices as pagan. Church officials have refused to attend flame ceremony re-enactments at Olympia before the Olympic Games because Apollo, the ancient god of light, is invoked.

Unlike the monotheistic religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the old religion lacked written ethical guidelines, but its gods were said to strike down mortals who displayed excessive pride or "hubris" _ a recurring theme in the tragedies of Euripides and other ancient writers.

"We do not believe in dogmas and decrees, as the other religions do. We believe in freedom of thought," Stathopoulos said.


http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/01/21/D8MPTL900.html

[ABLAT Staff]

Religious complex unearthed near Stonehenge
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer
January 31, 2007

Archeologists working near Stonehenge in England have discovered what appears to be an ancient religious complex containing a wealth of artifacts that may finally illuminate the lives and religious practices of the people who built the mysterious monument 4,600 years ago.

The circle of massive stone blocks on Salisbury Plain southwest of London is one of the most famous archeological sites in the world, but researchers know surprisingly little about the people who built it and lived in the region.

The discovery, reported Tuesday in a teleconference organized by the National Geographic Society, reconfigures the geometry of Stonehenge, indicating that it is not an isolated monument but part of a larger religious complex that may have encompassed the area.

It also casts the people who built the monument in an unexpected light, indicating that they were not only the somber worshipers of Stonehenge but also a raucous, hard-partying group who gathered for regular festivals.

"To see the everyday lives of these people, to see people living in their houses, is filling in really important gaps in the record," said archeologist Mary Ann Owoc of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., who was not involved in the research. "We had some evidence, but this is so much richer."

The discovery is also destined to change archeologists' views of how the ancient people used the site. Stonehenge is typically thought of as a cemetery and an astronomical observatory that was used for pagan celebrations at the summer solstice.

The monument comprises concentric circles of massive stones, some weighing as much as 50 tons, surrounded by a circular earthen bank and a ditch. Some of the stones were imported from Wales, about 150 miles away, and others were quarried about 24 miles north of Stonehenge at Marlboro Downs. It was constructed about the same time as the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.

The discovery at Durrington Walls, two miles northeast of Stonehenge, indicates that the region was a religious center where people gathered in midwinter for raucous feasts and solemn ceremonies before sending their deceased on a voyage to the afterlife.

Although Stonehenge was a monument to the dead, the complex at Durrington Walls was "very much a place of the living," said archeologist Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University, who led the team along with archeologist Julian Thomas of Manchester University.

Archeologists already knew there was a henge — a circular banked enclosure with an internal ditch — at Durrington Walls, but the wide excavations carried out in 2006 placed it in a new light.

"Such intensive subsurface research has never been attempted on this scale before" near Stonehenge, said archeologist Ruth Tringham of UC Berkeley.

The henge, about 1,400 feet in diameter, enclosed a series of concentric rings of huge timber posts. The team said the posts mimicked Stonehenge in all particulars except one — its orientation.

Stonehenge is aligned with sunrise at the summer solstice and sunset at the winter solstice. The henge at Durrington Walls is the opposite, aligned with sunrise at the winter solstice and sunset at the summer solstice.

Artifacts found in the houses indicate there were massive midwinter celebrations marking the solstice to complement the summer celebration at Stonehenge.

The team excavated eight houses, and magnetic anomalies show there are at least 25 more nearby, Pearson said.

"My guess is that there are many more than that," he said. In fact, the entire valley appears to have been densely populated, he said.

The houses' relatively flimsy wattle and daub walls are long gone. What remains are densely packed clay floors.

"These are the first ones we have found with intact clay floors from this period," Pearson said.

"The houses are virtually square, no bigger than the average sitting room — about 14 feet by 14 feet," he said. They feature a central fireplace, an oval hearth sunk into the floor. Slight indentations around the walls mark the locations of timber fittings for boxbeds and a dresser that stood opposite the door.

The houses are almost identical to a few houses previously discovered at Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands off the northern tip of Scotland, he said. Those houses, from the same period, were constructed of stone because the islands had been deforested.

Durrington Walls "is either the richest site or the filthiest that we have ever found for this period," Pearson said. "It's absolutely stuffed full of trash or rubbish: broken pots, chips, flints, burned stones used for cooking and animal bones. Many were thrown away half-eaten, a sign of conspicuous consumption. This is an enormous feasting assemblage. People were here to have a really good time."

Significantly, there was no evidence regarding the processing or baking of grain, and little evidence of crafts.

"This was not a full-time, year-round community, but one for specialized activities," Pearson said.

Owoc noted that people during this period tended to move from place to place as the seasons changed. It was not until 1700 BC to 1200 BC that they began to settle down in walled towns.

Teeth from pigs found at the site indicate the animals were about 9 months old when they were slaughtered. Assuming they were born in the spring, that would place the celebration near the winter solstice. Arrowheads embedded in the pigs suggest there were archery and other competitions before the feast.

Closer to the rims of the henge, on a terrace overlooking it, the team found more buildings. They were the same size as the others but not as close together, and each was surrounded by its own bank and ditch.

Most important, they were swept clean.

"These may have been special people, perhaps chiefs, living in seclusion," Thomas said. The cleanliness may suggest that they were not houses but shrines or cult centers, he said. "The contrast is really fascinating."

As the timber posts in the henge rotted away, he said, people dug out the holes and placed deposits of animal bones, pottery and stone tools.

"They were creating an architecture of memory, a commemoration of what had been there," Thomas said. "This was clearly a place of enormous importance that was remembered over a long period of time."

The team also unearthed a broad roadway or avenue that led from the settlement to the Avon River. The avenue was 90 feet wide and 510 feet long and very similar to an avenue at Stonehenge but much shorter. At the river, there is a near-vertical drop of about 12 feet.

"This is some kind of ceremonial roadway, and we know many people used it because it was flattened by the trampling of many feet," Thomas said.

He speculated that after the feasts, the celebrants would proceed down the avenue and drop the bodies of the deceased, or their ashes, into the river. People of importance were cremated and their remains taken down the river and buried at Stonehenge. At least 250 burials are known to have occurred there.

The interpretation of the road's use "is more speculative but pretty interesting," said archeologist Curtis N. Runnels of Boston University, editor of the Journal of Field Archaeology. "It will create quite a bit of discussion in the field."

The research was sponsored by the National Geographic Society, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, English Heritage and Wessex Archaeology.


http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/l...mostemailedlink

[ABLAT Staff]

3,000-year-old tombs discovered in Egypt


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 20, 2007

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Archaeologists on Tuesday unveiled the tombs of a pharaonic butler and scribe that have been buried for more than 3,000 years - proof, one says, that Egypt's sands still have secrets to reveal.

Although archaeologists have been exploring Egypt intensively for more than 150 years, some estimate only one-third of what lies underground in Saqqara, site of the country's most ancient pyramid, has been uncovered.

"The sands of Saqqara reveal lots of secrets," said Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, as he showed reporters a 4,000-year-old mud brick tomb that belonged to a scribe of divine records, Ka-Hay, and his wife.

The tomb, along with the butler's 3,350-year-old limestone grave and two painted coffins, were discovered earlier this year at Saqqara near the famous Step Pyramid of King Djoser - the oldest of Egypt's more than 90 pyramids.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...Article/Printer

[ABLAT Staff]

Ancient towers in Peru were a 'solar calendar'
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 02 March 2007
Scientists have discovered the oldest solar observatory in the Americas and, in the process, may have solved a centuries-old puzzle about the purpose of an ancient stone fort on a remote hilltop in Peru.

The researchers have shown that an enigmatic wall of 13 stone towers within the Chankillo complex, a 2,300-year-old ruin nearly 250 miles north of Lima, worked as a solar calendar to monitor the winter and summer solstices.

They believe that the solar observatory proves the existence of a sophisticated Sun cult in the region more than 1,000 years before the Inca civilisation built its famous Sun temple in the Peruvian mountain city of Cusco, prior to the Spanish conquest.

Ivan Ghezzi of the Pontificia Universiadad Catolica del Peru in Lima and Clive Ruggles of Leicester University have found that the line of 13 towers at Chankillo can be used to precisely observe the Sun as it rises and sets at different positions along the horizon throughout the year.

Historical accounts suggest that the Inca Sun pillars at Cusco - which have vanished without trace - were used until the 16th century AD to mark planting times of crops and to observe seasonal ceremonies, Ghezzi and Ruggles say in their study published today in the journal Science.

They believe that the discovery means that the massive Chankillo complex - dated to the 4th century BC - must have played an important role in the ceremonial rituals associated with the annual cycles of the Sun.

Archaeologists have puzzled over the purpose of Chankillo since it was first discovered in the 19th century. They suggested it may have been used as a fort, a temple or even a setting for ceremonial battles.

One of the biggest mysteries of Chankillo was the purpose of a low ridge composed of 16 relatively small stone towers which together formed an artificial toothed horizon for no apparent reason.

However, Ghezzi and Ruggles show that the gaps formed between the towers match the annual rising and setting arcs of the Sun while it dips below the horizon during the winter and summer solstices.

The line of towers, which range in height from about 6ft to 20ft, were built along a north-south axis and can be viewed full-on from two other stone positions, one to the east and one to the west of the ridge.

"Viewed from the two observing points, the spread of the towers along the horizon corresponds very closely to the range of movement of the rising and setting positions of the sun over the year," say Ghezzi and Ruggles in their study.

"This in itself argues strongly that the towers were used for solar observation," they say.

In their study, the scientists demonstrated that the setting sun at the winter solstice can be viewed from the eastern observation point as it falls to the left side of the southernmost tower.

Meanwhile, from the western observing point, the same midwinter sun the following morning could be viewed rising from the last tower on the right of the observer. During the course of the year, the setting and rising sun moves through the different "teeth" of the artificial horizon until finally it reaches its next furthermost point at the summer solstice in June - when it can be observed rising and setting beyond the last tower to the north.

"The towers are relatively well preserved; their corners have mostly collapsed, but enough of the original architecture survives to allow a reconstruction," the researchers say.

The towers are regularly spaced and each has a pair of stone staircases leading up to the summit, one on the north and one on the south side.

"Most of the tower summits are well preserved; no artifacts remain on these surfaces, though it is clear from the staircases that the summits were the foci of activity," they say.

Archaeologists have found evidence to suggest that the ceremonial practices took place at the two observing positions. The western point has offerings of pottery, shells and lithic artifacts whereas the eastern site was probably a site of ceremonial feasting, the scientists said.

The gaps between the towers may have been used to mark out the days of a solar calendar. For instance, the sunrises between the gaps in the central towers are separated by a time interval of 10 days, implying that a 10-day "week" may have been important in the solar calendar.

"Once the Sun had begun to move appreciably away from either of its extreme positions a few days after each solstice, the various towers and gaps would have provided a means to track the progress of the Sun up and down the horizon to within an accuracy of two or three days," say Ghezzi and Ruggles in their research.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americ...icle2318720.ece

[ABLAT Staff]

Towers point to ancient Sun cult

The Thirteen Towers constitute an ancient solar observatory

The oldest solar observatory in the Americas has been found, suggesting the existence of early, sophisticated Sun cults, scientists report.
It comprises a group of 2,300-year-old structures, known as the Thirteen Towers, which are found in the Chankillo archaeological site, Peru.

The towers span the annual rising and setting arcs of the Sun, providing a solar calendar to mark special dates.

The study is published in the journal Science.

Clive Ruggles, professor of archaeoastronomy at Leicester University, UK, said: "These towers have been known to exist for a century or so. It seems extraordinary that nobody really recognised them for what they were for so long.

The towers have inset staircases

"I was gobsmacked when I saw them for the first time - the array of towers covers the entire solar arc."

The Thirteen Towers of Chankillo run from north to south along the ridge of a low hill within the site; they are relatively well-preserved and each has a pair of inset staircases leading to the summit.

The rectangular structures, between 75 and 125 square metres (807-1,345 sq ft) in size, are regularly spaced - forming a "toothed" horizon with narrow gaps at regular intervals.

About 230m (750ft) to the east and west are what scientists believe to be two observation points. From these vantages, the 300m- (1,000ft-) long spread of the towers along the horizon corresponds very closely to the rising and setting positions of the Sun over the year.

When viewed from the western observation point, the Sun appears to the left of the left-most tower

"For example," said Professor Ruggles, "if you were stood at the western observing point, you would see the Sun coming up in the morning, but where it would appear along the span of towers would depend on the time of the year."

"So, on the summer solstice, which is in December in Peru, you would see the Sun just to the right of the right-most tower; for the winter solstice, in June, you would see the Sun rise to the left of the left-most tower; and in-between, the Sun would move up and down the horizon."

This means the ancient civilisation could have regulated a calendar, he said, by keeping track of the number of days it took for the Sun to move from tower to tower.

Sun cults

The site where the towers are based is about four square kilometres (1.5 square miles) in size, and is believed to be a ceremonial centre that was occupied in the 4th Century BC. It is based at the coast of Peru in the Casma-Sechin River Basin and contains many buildings and plazas, as well as a fortified temple that has attracted much attention.

The authors of the paper, who include Professor Ivan Ghezzi of the National Institute of Culture, Peru, believe the population was an ancient Sun cult and the observatory was used to mark special days in their solar calendar.

The site contains a number of interesting structures

Professor Ruggles said: "The western observing point, and to some extent, the eastern one, are very restricted - you couldn't have got more than two or three people watching from them. And all the evidence suggests that there was a formal or ceremonial approach to that point and that there were special rituals going on there.


"This implies that you have someone special - the priests perhaps - who watched the Sun rise or set, while in the plaza next door, the crowds were feasting and could see the Sun rise, but not from that special perspective.

Written records suggest the Incas were making solar observations by 1500 AD, and that their religion centred on Sun worship.

"We know that in Inca times, towers were used to observe the Sun near the solstices, which makes you speculate that there are elements of cult practice that go back a lot further," Professor Ruggles told the BBC News website.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6408231.stm

Mystery Of Thirteen Towers Is Solved

Archeologists said they've solved the mystery of Peru's Thirteen Towers, a line of stone towers erected on the Peruvian coast 2,400 years ago.

The Los Angeles Times reported that researchers determined the towers near Chankillo make up a huge solar observatory.

"It seems extraordinary that an ancient astronomical device as clear as this could have remained undiscovered for so long," Clive Ruggles, a professor of archeo-astronomy at the University of Leicester told the Times.

Ruggles is one of the authors of a paper on the Thirteen Towers in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

The archeologists said the towers can be used to mark the solstices, the days of the week and the weeks of the year, the Times reported.

The Thirteen Towers is not the oldest such observatory. There is a 4,200-year-old observatory in Lima, Peru, the newspaper said.

"Unlike all the other sites, however, (Chankillo) contains alignments that cover the entire solar year," Ivan Ghezzi, who was a graduate student at Yale University when he helped research the towers but is now archeological director of the National Culture Institute in Lima, told the Times.

http://www.playfuls.com/news_005130_Myster..._Is_Solved.html