With the help of archaeologist Gustavo Ramirez from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Tamaulipas, the specialist (Martha Garcia) carried out the investigation: The Cave Paintings of the Municipality of Burgos, which enlighten the existence of 4,926 cave paintings made by at least three different hunter and collector groups of the region: guajolotes, iconoplos, and pintos; although there is evidence that proves these moved through the Sierra de San Carlos region and nearby areas to the cadimas, conaynenes, mediquillos, mesquites, cometunas and canaimes, among others.

Archaeologists found more than 1,500 paintings in one cave of the Burgos region – Credit: INAH

The paintings have anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, astronomical and abstract characteristics, and “their importance resides in the fact that thanks to them we can document the presence of pre Hispanic groups in Burgos, where we had earlier believed there hadn’t been any”, she said.

The images provide a glimpse of nomadic activities focused on hunting, fishing and gathering – Credit: INAH

“At Cueva de los Caballos –she added as an example–, we registered more than 1,550 images; but we still have to analyze the cultural components of the paintings because they are representing myths. In Cueva del Indio, we found representations of an atlatl (pre Hispanic weapon used for hunting), which hadn’t been found in cave paintings in Tamaulipas”.

The images, she explained, let us observe the nomads’ activities. They would focus on hunting, fishing and collecting, also the creation of anthropomorphic, religious and astronomical images, along with temporary homes (tipis: tents made with skin that have a cone like shape) and flora and fauna of the region, such as deers, lizards and centipedes.

The images, drawn by hunter-gatherers, have been found in hollows and ravines – Credit: INAH

In this sense, archaeologist Gustavo Ramirez, from the INAH Center Tamaulipas, pointed out that it hasn’t been possible to give the cave paintings a date “because we haven’t found any ancient objects associated with this context and because these manifestations are in the ravine’s walls and, also because in rainy seasons the stream’s current takes all the sediment and we are left with gravel”.

He added that there is a possibility of taking samples from the pigments, “which could allow us to determine the approximate date by means of a chemical analysis or radiocarbon”.

Technique and meaning
Archaeologist Martha Garcia pointed out that in order to identify possible authors they made an investigation in archives, chronicles and reports of the colonial era, such as the General Archive of the Nation, the General Archive of Nuevo Leon and the General Archive of Tamaulipas, as well as the municipal and parish of Burgos, “but there are no registries of these nomadic groups. However, we do have information on tlaxtecan Indians or Indians from Nuevo Leon, Spanish, criollos, and also French, which would (in said epoch) reach the coast”.

These groups escaped Spanish dominion for almost 200 years, explained the investigator as she dwelled on the fact that the evangelization of Burgos started halfway through the XVIII century (1750) because they were unmanageable, “they ran to Sierra de San Carlos where they had water, plants and animals to feed on. The Spanish however, didn’t go though the ravines and gullies”. During the Colonial period, the Spanish offered 25 pesos for every head of hair or 60 pesos for every “rescued” captive, which is why we know so little about their language, rites and customs.

Source: INAH via Art Daily [May 24, 2013]

Eyewitness states:
Observing the sky with the green filter of it panoramic camera, the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit came across a surprise: a streak across the sky.

The streak, seen in the middle of this mosaic of images taken by the navigation and panoramic cameras, was probably the brightest object in the sky at the time.

Scientists theorize that the mystery line could be either a meteorite or one of seven out-of-commission spacecraft still orbiting Mars.

Because the object appeared to move 4 degrees of an arc in 15 seconds it is probably not the Russian probes Mars 2, Mars 3, Mars 5, or Phobos 2; or the American probes Mariner 9 or Viking 1.

That leaves Viking 2, which has a polar orbit that would fit with the north-south orientation of the streak. In addition, only Viking 1 and 2 were left in orbits that could produce motion as fast as that seen by Spirit. Said Mark Lemmon, a rover team member from Texas A&M University, Texas,

“Is this the first image of a meteor on Mars, or an image of a spacecraft sent from another world during the dawn of our robotic space exploration program? We may never know, but we are still looking for clues.” Mark Lemmon – Mars Rover Team Member ( NASA Photo Link: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040311a/12-ml-03-streak-A067R1_br.jpg )

Here is a video, what do you think?

It’s thousands of years old – a conical, manmade behemoth weighing hundreds of tons, practically begging to be explored.

The problem is – it’s at the bottom of the biblical Sea of Galilee. For now, at least, Israeli researchers are left stranded on dry land, wondering what finds lurk below.

The monumental structure, made of boulders and stones with a diameter of 70 meters (230 feet), emerged from a routine sonar scan in 2003. Now archaeologists are trying to raise money to allow them access to the submerged stones.

The circular structure was first detected in a sonar survey of part of the sea in the summer of 2003 – Credit: Shmuel Marco

“It’s very enigmatic, it’s very interesting, but the bottom line is we don’t know when it’s from, we don’t know what it’s connected to, we don’t know its function,” said Dani Nadel, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa who is one of several researchers studying the discovery. “We only know it is there, it is huge and it is unusual.”

Archaeologists said the only way they can properly assess the structure is through an underwater excavation, a painstakingly slow process that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And if an excavation were to take place, archaeologists said they believed it would be the first in the Sea of Galilee, an ancient lake that boasts historical remnants spanning thousands of years and is the setting of many Bible scenes.

In contrast, Israeli researchers have carried out many excavations in the Mediterranean and Red Seas.

Much of the researchers’ limited knowledge about this structure comes from the sonar scan a decade ago.

Initial dives shortly after that revealed a few details. In an article in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology published earlier this year, Nadel and fellow researchers disclosed it was asymmetrical, made of basalt boulders and that “fish teem around the structure and between its blocks.”

The cone-shaped structure is found at a depth of between three and 12 meters (nine and 40 feet) beneath the surface, about half a kilometer (1,600 feet) from the sea’s southwestern shore. Its base is buried under sediment.

The authors conclude the structure is man-made, made of stones that originated nearby, and it weighs about 60,000 tons. The authors write it “is indicative of a complex, well-organized society, with planning skills and economic ability.”

The rest is a mystery.
Yitzhak Paz, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority who is involved in the project, said that based on sediment buildup, it is between 2,000 and 12,000 years old, a vast range that tells little about it. Based on other sites and artifacts found in the region, Paz places the site’s origin some time during the 3rd millennium B.C., or about 5,000 years ago, although he admits the timeframe is just a guess.

“The period is hard for us to determine. No scientific work was carried out there, no excavations, no surveys. We have no artifacts from the structure,” Paz said.

Archaeologists were also cautious about guessing the structure’s purpose. They said possibilities include a burial site, a place of worship or even a fish nursery, which were common in the area, but they said they wanted to avoid speculation because they have so little information.

It’s not even clear if the structure was built on shore when the sea stood at a low level, or if it was constructed underwater. Paz reckons it was built on land, an indication of the sea’s low level at the time.

In order to fill in the blanks, archaeologists hope to inspect the site underwater, despite the expense and the complexities.

Nadel noted that working underwater demands not only a skill such as scuba diving, but also labor-intensive excavations that are particularly difficult in the Sea of Galilee, which already has low visibility and where any digging can unleash a cloud of sediment and bury what’s just been uncovered.

Also, divers can remain under water only for a limited amount of time every day and must choose the best season that can provide optimal conditions for excavating.

“Until we do more research, we don’t have much more to add,” Nadel said. “It’s a mystery, and every mystery is interesting.”

Author: Tia Goldenberg | Source: Associated Press [May 23, 2013]

“Most research in physics is continuations of things that have gone before,” said Wilczek, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This, he said, was “kind of outside the box.”

Wilczek’s idea met with a muted response from physicists. Here was a brilliant professor known for developing exotic theories that later entered the mainstream, including the existence of particles called axions and anyons, and discovering a property of nuclear forces known as asymptotic freedom (for which he shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 2004). But perpetual motion, deemed impossible by the fundamental laws of physics, was hard to swallow. Did the work constitute a major breakthrough or faulty logic? Jakub Zakrzewski, a professor of physics and head of atomic optics at Jagiellonian University in Poland who wrote a perspective on the research that accompanied Wilczek’s publication, says: “I simply don’t know.”

Now, a technological advance has made it possible for physicists to test the idea. They plan to build a time crystal, not in the hope that this perpetuum mobile will generate an endless supply of energy (as inventors have striven in vain to do for more than a thousand years) but that it will yield a better theory of time itself. Continue, Simons Foundation

Archaeologists working on the site now believe they have uncovered the remains of a family crypt having found bones from three fully grown adults, four infants and a skull.

The exciting discovery comes one month after experts ­excavated the burial site of a medieval knight – affectionately christened Sir Eck – within the grounds of the new Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI) at High School Yards, off Infirmary Street.

Carvings of the Calvary Cross on an elaborate sandstone tomb and an ornate sword found beside the remains led archaeologists to believe it was the burial plot of a high-status individual such as a knight or nobleman.

Archaeologist Ross ­Murray, of city-based Headland Archaeology, who first uncovered the grave, said: “This site just keeps on getting more and more interesting – it is turning out to be a real treasure trove of archaeology. We just can’t seem to stop finding skeletons and bones. These new finds look likely to be the possible relations of the suspected medieval knight we found earlier this year.

An elaborately decorated sandstone slab with the telltale markings of a member of the nobility – Credit: Scotsman

“The skull of the skeleton found immediately beneath the location of the knight looks like that of a female and the remains found on the other side of the ornate slab belong to an infant from the same period.”

The fruitful dig centres on the site of three historic former buildings: Old High School founded in the 1700s, the 16th-century Royal High School and Blackfriars Monastery, established in 1230 by Alexander II and destroyed during the ­Reformation.

It has been described as one of Edinburgh’s most significant recent archaeological finds. Once complete in the summer, the ECCI will open as an ­innovation and skills hub for the University of Edinburgh.

The car park has been demolished to make way for a rainwater-harvesting tank, – one of a host of low-carbon measures designers hope will help create a sustainable construction – which is expected to achieve a green building rating of ­“outstanding”.

In February, a skeleton found beneath a Leicester car park was confirmed as that of English king Richard III.

Author: David O’Leary | Source: Scotsman [April 25, 2013]

The discovery was found during routine excavation work at the archaeological site of Tell Abu-Seifi, located east of the Suez Canal and south of Qantara East.

The industrial area includes of a number of workshops for clay and bronze statues, vessels, pots and pans as well as a collection of administrative buildings, store galleries and a whole residential area for labours. Amphora, imported from south of Italy, was also unearthed.

“It is a very important discovery that highlights Egypt’s economical and commercial relation with its neighbouring countries on the Mediterranean Sea,” MSA Minister Mohamed Ibrahim told Ahram Online. He added that it also gives a complete idea of the Egyptian labours’ daily life.

For his part, Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, supervisor of the excavation mission, pointed out that among the newly discovered objects is a very important Roman engraving that provides detailed information on the military importance of Tell Abu-Seifi and the army divisions in this area.

The fully furnished Graeco-Roman industrial area discovered on Thursday in Tell Abu-Seifi area, east of Egypt’s Suez Canal – Credit: Ahram

Tell Abu-Seifi is one of the most important historical military sites of Egypt on the Al-Bilozi Nile branch, where three Ptolemaic and Roman military castles are located.

The archaeological site of Tell Abu-Seifi is found on Egypt’s eastern gate, where a great military group was once located, Abdel Maqsoud told Ahram Online in a telephone interview.

The newly discovered engraving shows how and where soldiers were divided and distributed in different locations inside the castles, he explained.

A collection of bronze coins dated to the eras of King Ptolemy II and IV were also unearthed as well as terracotta (burned clay) statues of the god of war Bes.

This discovery came within the framework of routine excavations along the Belozi Nile branch, which is now non-existant, to discover the Horus Ancient Military Road once used by King Ahmose to expel the Hyksos.

Abdel Maqsoud pointed out that Egypt’s MSA is applying a new training system for junior archaeologists and approximately 200 have joined the excavation mission to train them in excavations and restorations.

Until now, our mission has trained 600 archaeologists in five years, Abdel Maqsoud concluded.

Author: Nevine El-Aref | Source: Ahram Online [April 24, 2013]

Bruno Escribano and colleagues explain that scientists know surprisingly little about brinicles, which are hollow tubes of ice that can grow to several yards in length around streamers of cold seawater under pack ice. That’s because brinicles are difficult to study. The scientists set out to gather more information on the topic with an analysis of the growth process of brinicles.

They are shown to be analogous to a “chemical garden,” a standby demonstration in chemistry classes and children’s chemistry sets, in which tubes grow upward from metal salts dropped into silicate solution. But brinicles grow downward from the bottom of the ice pack.

The analysis concluded that brinicles provide an environment that could well have fostered the emergence of life on Earth billions of years ago, and could have done so on other planets. “Beyond Earth, the brinicle formation mechanism may be important in the context of planets and moons with ice-covered oceans,” the report states, citing in particular two moons of Jupiter named Ganymede and Callisto. The article appears in ACS’ journal Langmuir.

Source: American Chemical Society [April 24, 2013]

The oldest ruins at the site date to 9,000 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority said, but it was still inhabited thousands of years later. The location was excavated in a salvage dig ahead of the construction of new train tracks from Haifa to Carmiel.

The findings include the most complete buildings from that time discovered so far in Israel, and some of the oldest evidence of organized legume agriculture in the Middle East, archaeologists Yitzhak Paz and Yaakov Vardi said in a statement.

The objects discovered at the site also show that residents traded with faraway cultures, they said.

A prehistoric stone fertility object in the shape of a phallus, found on the route of a planned rail line in
northern Israel – Credit: Israel Antiquities Authority

“The large number of tools made from obsidian, which is not found in Israel, shows trade ties with Turkey, Georgia and other areas as long ago as this period,” read the statement, released earlier this month.

The fertility objects, like the small stone phallus, “also represented the fertility of the land,” they said. The archaeologists link those findings to a civilization that existed in what is now Israel between 5500 and 4500 BCE.

The civilization, known as the Wadi Rabbah culture, was named for the first site at which it was discovered northeast of Tel Aviv in the 1950s.

Author: Matti Friedman | Source: The Times of Israel [March 26, 2013]

If further analysis proves the study correct, the remains belong to the first known such hybrid, providing direct evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred.

The present study focuses on the individual’s jaw – unearthed at a rock-shelter called Riparo di Mezzena in the Monti Lessini region of Italy. Both Neanderthals and modern humans inhabited Europe at the time.

Co-author Silvana Condemi, an anthropologist and CNRS research director at the University of Ai-Marseille, told Discovery News that from the morphology of the lower jaw, the face of the individual may have looked somehow intermediate between classic Neanderthals, who had a rather receding lower jaw (no chin), and the modern humans, who have a projecting lower jaw with a strongly developed chin.

The mandible from Mezzena. show more Frontal view : A, internal view : B, lateral view: C, superior view : D), inferior view – Credit: doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059781.g001 Silvana Condemi, Aurelien Mounier, Paolo Giunti, Martina Lari, David Caramelli, Laura Longo

She and her colleagues studied the remains via DNA analysis and 3D imaging and compared the results with the same features from Homo sapiens.

The genetic analysis showed that the individual’s mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is Neanderthal and since this DNA is transmitted from a mother to her child, they conclude that it must have been a female Neanderthal who mated with a male Homo sapiens.

Condemi and her colleagues wrote that it supports the theory of a slow process of replacement of Neanderthals by the invading modern humans.

The research team also hinted that the modern humans may have raped female Neanderthals.

The paper has been published in PLoS ONE.

Source: ANI [March 28, 2013]

A small team of archaeologists working from satellite images hinting at a buried structure have uncovered the corner of a monumental complex with rows of rooms around a large courtyard, believed to be about 4,000 years old.

“The size is breathtaking,” says Jane Moon, a University of Manchester archaeologist who heads the expedition. Ms. Moon says the walls of the structure are almost nine feet thick, indicating that the building was of great importance or indicated great wealth.

The discovery is even more significant because of its location more than 10 miles from Ur, on what would then have been the banks of the Euphrates River – the first major archaeological find that far from the city.

Ruins of Ur, Southern Iraq – Credit: Wikipedia/M.Lubinsk

Ur, the last capital of the Sumerian empire, was invaded and collapsed in about 2000 BC before being rebuilt. The city was dedicated to the moon god and is famous for its ziggurat (a stepped temple). Many believe it is the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, known as the father of monotheistic religion.

Modern methods
The last major excavation at Ur was performed by a British-American team led by Sir Charles Leonard Woolley in the 1920s and the 1930s. After the 1950s revolution, which toppled Iraq’s monarchy, a nearby military air base put the area off limits to foreign archaeologists for the next half century.

“What Woolley found were these tremendous monumental buildings, but it’s difficult to tell a coherent story about them because they were restored again and again and again, and what you see is neo-Babylonian, 7th century BC – very much later,” says Moon. “He wasn’t able to see what they were really used for and that’s where I’m hoping our modern methods might be able to say something.”

At Ur, Woolley also discovered a spectacular treasure trove that rivals King Tut’s tomb. At least 16 members of royalty were buried at Ur with elaborate gold jewelry, including a queen’s headdress made of gold leaves and studded with lapis lazuli. Other objects included a gold and lapis lyre, one of the first known musical instruments.

In the 1930s, the treasures were split between the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, which funded Woolley’s work, and the newly created Iraq museum.

Moon says it’s impossible to tell whether the new site might contain similar finds.

“Ultimately we’re not looking for objects we’re looking for information.… I guess it’s always a possibility. In archaeology you can always be surprised.”

A learning opportunity
She says modern methods, such as examining very thin slices of soil hardened with resin under a microscope, can shed light on details like whether there were carpets on the floor or whether a surface was used for cutting. Putting samples of earth through a wet sieving machine can provide information about climate and agriculture by revealing bone fragments from rodents or lizards.

“You can really look at the ancient economy and that’s the kind of thing they couldn’t do when they last found big buildings like this,” says Moon, who last worked in Iraq in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, documenting archaeological sites in the north before they were submerged by Saddam Hussein’s dam-building projects.

Her team, which has struggled for both funding and visas, consists of six British archaeologists, an Iraqi archaeologist, and two Iraqi trainees. It is funded mostly by a Swiss benefactor, with participation by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, the successor to an organization founded in 1932 in honor of Gertrude Bell. “Miss Bell,” as she is still known in Iraq, was the British administrator of Iraq after World War II and the founder of the Iraq Museum.

A law passed in 1932 bars archaeologists from removing antiquities from the country, but Moon believes making the knowledge about the antiquities available is as important as the objects themselves. “There’s always been a sense of taking the intellectual property away,” she says, adding that all the information, including drawings, was being done electronically to make it easier to compile and to share.

“We want to make this as public as possible so we can give this information to anyone who wants it. We have no reason to hang on to it and we have the means to spread it around, so that’s what we’re doing,” she says.

Author: Jane Arraf | Source: The Christian Science Monitor [March 27, 2013]