Tag: Historical Sites

Christmas Eve Post–2016

It is Christmas Eve and I would like to share the historic and archaeologic finds of this past year…..gifts to extend our knowledge of our ancestors.

We’ve learned quite a bit about the past in the past 12 months. Heritage Daily rounds up the top archaeological discoveries of 2016, from an ancient Greek city to a shrine dedicated to a Viking king:

  1. A well-preserved Bronze Age settlement of wooden homes on stilts in England
  2. The ancient Greek city of Vlochós, which hit its peak around 2,400 years ago
  3. A 1,600-year-old shipwreck in Caesarea, Israel
  4. A lost city first established 5,000 years ago in Iraq
  5. An Iron Age monument built 2,500 years ago in Britain
  6. A shrine to a Viking saint-king in Norway
  7. Structures in a French cave likely made by Neanderthals 176,500 years ago

Click for the full list, which includes the mummy of an Egyptian queen.

Some great finds but it does not include some far more reaching discoveries….after years of speculation it is now confirmed….some dinosaurs had feathers.

Researchers were perusing an amber market in Myanmar when they stumbled across a truly extraordinary specimen, National Geographic reports. Trapped inside a golden piece of amber—already partially shaped to be sold as jewelry—was a fully feathered section of a dinosaur’s tail. According to the Los Angeles Times, the person selling the amber thought it was some kind of plant. While scientists have found evidence of feathered dinosaurs, not to mention feathered prehistoric birds, this piece of amber is the first time feathers have been found perfectly preserved and attached to what is unmistakably a dinosaur. The find was published Thursday in Current Biology.

The tail section is believed to belong to a young, sparrow-sized coelurosaur that lived 99 million years ago. Researchers know the tail belongs to a dinosaur because of its articulated vertebrae; birds have vertebrae that are fused together. And because of the way the features are structured, researchers believe they were useless for flight. It remains unclear exactly what purpose the feathers served, though researchers theorize dinosaurs may have used them for camouflage, regulating their body heat, or signaling to other animals. Now that researchers can see how feathers actually appeared on a dinosaur’s body, they hope to learn how they evolved for flight in modern-day birds. They also believe that, given access to Myanmar’s amber mines, they may one day find a whole preserved dinosaur.

Finally another find of our first ancestors…..Lucy and the bunch…..

Famous footprints of nearly 3.7-million-year-old hominids, found in 1976 at Tanzania’s Laetoli site, now have sizable new neighbors.

While excavating small pits in 2015 to evaluate the impact of a proposed field museum at Laetoli, researchers uncovered comparably ancient hominid footprints about 150 meters from the original discoveries. The new finds reveal a vast range of body sizes for ancient members of the human evolutionary family, reports an international team led by archaeologists Fidelis Masao and Elgidius Ichumbaki, both of the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Source: New footprint finds suggest range of body sizes for Lucy’s species | Science News

Some great finds to extend our knowledge of our ancestors……

Go now and start enjoying your Christmas break from school or work or just life…..

I thank everyone for their loyalty and their comments it has been a good year…..so….Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays (whichever you prefer)…..

Peace!  Out!

Hanging Gardens Of Babylon

But first…..speaking of gardens……

These are the first batch of tangerines for this season……a little sweet and tart at the same time….very yummy…..now begins the chore of making tangerine jelly and other assorted delicacies….

My Sunday begins and I am recovering from the annual meeting of the Psi Phi Society Round Table…..the discussion group that I am a member of….and it has NOTHING to do with the scifi genre at all….we meet once a month for discussion of stuff….like history and politics and philosophy……

The first part of the evening was spent debating the value of the Trump election….and what it could mean to the country and the world….but I will let that go for my readers get enough of that speculation during the week.

We all have heard of the seven wonders of the ancient world….6 of these items can be proven by archeological evidence….there is only one that has eluded us for centuries…the hanging gardens of Babylon.

I am part of a program that inspects satellite photos looking for possible historical sites…..I was looking at a photo of N. Iraq around Mosul when I spotted what looked like a massive ancient ditch…..running NW out of the old city of Nineveh….

This was the area of the old Assyrian kingdom and if I remember my history lessons they were masters at water management…..of course it has to do what I do best….research…..and found something that deals with my thoughts…..(a little history can never hurt)……

The heart of ancient Assyria was situated along the Tigris River, in what is now northern Iraq. The Two Rivers were vital to farming in what would otherwise be a desert, but they also carry six times the silt of the Nile River. This means that their river beds are shallower and fill up faster, and therefore the rivers change courses more often. They also flow faster, and the Tigris flows even faster than the Euphrates. While the Nile flooded regularly and predictably and gently inundated Egypt’s fields every year, the shallow beds, fast rate of flow and heavy silt load meant that the Tigris and Euphrates were prone to violent, unpredictable floods that spilled over their banks and washed away fields rather than replenished them.

Source: Assyrian Agricultural Technology | Gates of Nineveh: An Experiment in Blogging Assyriology

Then I started thinking could the Hanging Gardens have been in Assyria and not Babylon…..and back I went into research mode……

Mythology shrouds each of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but none has been more mysterious than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Archaeologists have never unearthed evidence of the soaring gardens, and scholars have questioned its very existence. Now, however, an Oxford University researcher says she knows why the Hanging Gardens of Babylon have proven so elusive. It’s because they weren’t in Babylon at all.

Source: Hanging Gardens Existed, but not in Babylon – History in the Headlines

It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World for which the location has for centuries remained elusive.

Now, though, an academic from Oxford University believes she has solved one of the world’s last great archaeological mysteries by identifying the precise spot on which the Hanging Gardens of Babylon once stood.

Dr Stephanie Dalley focused her search hundreds of miles north of the site of the ancient city of Babylon, now near Hillah, in central Iraq, to support her theory that the lush, elevated marvel was in fact built near the city of Ninevah, in the north of the country.

Source: Pictured: the ‘real site’ of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – Telegraph

Eureka!  I do believe the mystery of the Hanging Gardens has been solved.

Of course we will not be able to confirm until the latest conflicts are over….God knows when that will be….

But I think this is a better place to search than around the old kingdom of Babylon in the South of Iraq….

Meeting over……

Enjoy your weekend…..I will return to the mundane tomorrow….peace out my friends.

When Is The Death Penalty Needed

In most cases I am against the death penalty…..in most cases but there are a few that I think should be mandatory……that being when someone knowingly destroys a heritage site or a cultural site……

This guy for instance…….

The trial of a Malian jihadist, charged with war crimes for orchestrating the 2012 destruction of nine Timbuktu mausoleums and a section of a famous mosque, opened  Monday at the International Criminal Court

Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi asked for forgiveness as he pleaded guilty to the 2012 attacks on the fabled city of Timbuktum in Mali, Africa, and urged Muslims not to follow such “evil” ways at his unprecedented war crimes trial.

“Your honor, regrettably I have to say that what I heard so far is accurate and reflects the events. I plead guilty,” he said as his trial opened, admitting a sole war crimes charge of cultural destruction.

Source: Muslim extremist pleads guilty to 2012 destruction of Timbuktu treasures | Public Radio International

This prick is sorry?  He knew what he was doing….there is NO excuse!  He should fry!

This destruction was NOT an isolated situation….

The following are examples of world cultural heritage destroyed or damaged during recent conflicts.

– Mali –

The fabled desert city of Timbuktu, named as the “City of 333 saints” and listed by UNESCO, was for months attacked by jihadists bent on imposing a brutal version of Islamic law.

In June 2012, Al-Qaeda-linked militants destroyed 14 of the northern city’s mausoleums, important buildings that date back to Timbuktu’s golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries as an economic, intellectual and spiritual hub.

The reconstruction of the shrines began in March 2014, relying heavily on traditional methods and employing local masons. Several countries and organisations financed the reconstruction, including UNESCO.

Work finished on the site in July 2015, and a ceremony marking the completion was held on February 4, 2016.

– Syria –

More than 900 monuments or archeological sites have been looted, damaged or destroyed by the regime, rebels or jihadists in Syria, where a devastating war has raged since 2011, according to APSA, the association charged with protecting Syrian architecture.

In September 2015, Islamic State (IS) fighters destroyed two of the most important temples in the UNESCO-listed Syrian city of Palmyra as they pressed a campaign to wipe out some of the Middle East’s most important heritage sites.

They include the ancient city’s most famed shrine, the 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel, blown up a week after the destruction of the temple of Baal Shamin.

Other notable sites damaged or looted include Dura-Europos in eastern Syria, once known as the “Pompeii of the desert”, Apamea, Ebla and Tal Ajaja.

However, the IS group is not the only one responsible for ravaging Syria’s heritage, with all sides in the fighting looting and destroying ancient sites.

“Two thirds of the ancient city of Aleppo have been bombarded and set on fire,” according to UNESCO.

– Iraq –

IS has carried out a campaign of “cultural cleansing”, razing part of ancient Mesopotamia’s relics and looting others to sell valued artefacts on the black market.

In a video released by IS on February 26, 2015 militants were shown using sledgehammers to smash pre-Islamic treasures in the museum in the country’s second city Mosul, sparking global outrage.

Thousands of books and rare manuscripts were also burned in February in Mosul’s library.

According to the Iraqi government, IS militants on March 5, 2015 bulldozed and blew up Nimrud, an ancient Assyrian city south of Mosul.

They also attacked Hatra, a Roman-period site, in the northern Niniveh province.

– Libya –

Several mausoleums have been destroyed by Islamist extremists since the overthrow of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

In August 2012, Islamist hardliners bulldozed part of the mausoleum of Al-Shaab Al-Dahman, close to the centre of the Libyan capital.

The demolition came a day after hardliners blew up the mausoleum of Sheikh Abdessalem al-Asmar in the western city of Zliten.

In 2013 suspected Islamic extremists destroyed the centuries-old mausoleum of Murad Agha in Tripoli, but the tomb inside withstood the attack.

Afghanistan –

In March 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of two 1,500-year-old Buddha statues in the eastern town of Bamiyan, because they were judged to be anti-Islamic.

Hundreds of members of the Taliban from across the country spent more than three weeks demolishing the gigantic statues carved into the side of a cliff.

In 2003 the cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley were put on UNESCO’S world heritage list.

– Algeria –

Armed Islamic groups in the 1990s destroyed several sanctuaries which dotted Algerian soil.

(yourmiddleeast.com)

There must be consequences when you destroy a nation’s cultural and historic sites…execution would suit me just fine.

 

3 Things Threatening Cultural Heritage in Syria and Iraq

When I was lucky enough to work in the Middle East I got to visit some fabulous historical sites in my off time…..Carthage ruins in Tunisia, Pyramid complex in Egypt, Petra in Jordan, Palmyra in Syria, Nineveh in Iraq and Baalbek and Byblos in Lebanon…..sadly the conflict in Syria and Iraq is giving the world the destruction of some interesting historic sites…..

These conflicts could endanger even more sites…..

The Islamic State and other radical groups engaged in the conflict in Syria and Iraq over the last three years receive much of the blame for the destruction of cultural heritage in that region. These groups are unique because they purposely go out of their way to destroy not only ancient artifacts, statues, and historic buildings, but also to attack mosques, shrines, and cemeteries. However, these groups are not the only forces damaging the cultural heritage of the region. Below are three things you may not realize are contributing to the threat of cultural heritage.

ISIL is not the only thing threatening cultural heritage. Here are 3 things you may not have considered are part of the problem.

Source: 3 Things Threatening Cultural Heritage in Syria and Iraq – The ASOR Blog

Sad that a culture can be destroyed for no other reason than some goddamn silly prejudice….

Don’t Be A Philistine

Sunday so why not something sort of religious…..the Bible goes on and on about those darn pesky Philistines….Goliath and the boys…..the problem is that there has been little evidence that they actually existed…..some even thought they may be figment of someone’s imagination…..

When I was in college and studying Middle East I was fascinated by the early history of the region….and consumed all I could on the subject (I shall write about this a little later).

In the past there have been a few pieces of pottery but no actual physical evidence……well that has been put to bed…..

Harvard University archaeologist Lawrence Stager has led the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon since 1985, clocking more than 30 years of excavations in a 150-acre site in the ancient seaport 35 miles south of Tel Aviv, reports the Harvard Gazette. Now, a major find related to the little-known Philistines, some of the Hebrew Bible’s “most notorious villains,” as National Geographic puts it, with Goliath and Delilah (of David and Samson infamy, respectively) among their ranks. To unlock the mysteries of the Philistines, archaeologists needed to find bodies, not just artifacts, but until now human remains have been elusive. “Archaeologists who study the Philistines began to joke that they were buried at sea like the Vikings—that’s why you couldn’t find them,” one archaeologist tells National Geographic. Sunday brought the news that the expedition has for three years been excavating the first Philistine cemetery to be found.

From the time the Ashkelon expedition team first discovered a human tooth in 2013 until this week, when the year’s final expedition came to a close, archaeologists have counted at least 145 sets of human remains in several burial rooms, reports the BBC. Most are buried without any objects or ornamentation, though some perfume, food, jewelry, and weapons were unearthed, and the small number of children and infants buried were found covered in a “blanket” of broken pottery. DNA analysis and carbon dating will hopefully shed light on some long-running mysteries about the Philistines’ origins and whether they have a connection to the mysterious Sea Peoples who tore across the Mediterranean in the 13th and 12th centuries BC; the remains date to the 11th to 8th centuries. “So much of what we know about the Philistines is told by their enemies,” says the expedition’s co-director. “We’ll really be able to tell their story by the things they left behind for us.” (Check out where these Philistine pottery shards were discovered.)

I have been doing research on the Hanging Gardens Of Babylon and the event we call the Exodus…..all of which I shall share as soon as the research is done and I compile my findings…..

Have a great day….I shall return to normal tomorrow….peace out…..

Doesn’t Fit The Paradigm

Here in the West the news media is the leading purveyor of propaganda…..if it does not fit the paradigm that they have set up then the report will not appear or will be used as filler.

As today….the paradigm that many want to believe is the ISIS somehow represents ALL Muslims….of course this is as ignorant as any one person could be….but that will not stop the mental midgets from ranting…..

For instance I read a story about 2 days ago and waited to see how the western MSM would handle it…..and after waiting they handled it as I thought they would….they ignored the report and just kept on with the BS……

The report I am talking about…….

Yet more high-profile terror attacks: Suicide bombers struck three cities in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, including in Medina near one of the holiest sites in Islam. In the latter incident, the explosion took place outside the mosque where the Prophet Muhammad is buried, reports AP. Several cars caught fire, and local media showed images of what appeared to be a fire outside one of the buildings overlooking the Prophet’s Mosque. The number of casualties was unclear, though Reuters reports three bombers and two security forces officers were killed. The sprawling mosque is visited by millions of Muslims from around the world each year during pilgrimages to Mecca. The area would have been packed with pilgrims for prayer during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in the kingdom on Tuesday.

Also Monday evening, a suicide bomber and a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia, several hours after another suicide bomber carried out an attack near the US Consulate in the western city of Jiddah. Neither of those two attacks killed anyone but the bombers. The possibility of coordinated, multiple attacks across different cities in Saudi Arabia on the same day underscores the threat the kingdom faces from extremists who view the Western-allied Saudi monarchy as heretics and enemies of Islam. Saudi Arabia is part of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. The violence follows attacks in Iraq, Bangladesh, and Turkey.

This is not the act of a true believer…..for NO one would attack the “Prophet’s Mosque” as it is a truly Holy site…..

There is more……so many on the Right keep harping that there are 1000s of refugees willing to come here for no other reason than killing Americans….basically all Muslims want death to the infidels….

Here is another story that will not fit the paradigm……

Iraqi Muslims celebrated Christmas to show solidarity with Christians last year, while the Chaldean Catholic Church announced a day of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan this year to show that all Iraqis are united.

Father Maysar Bahnam of Mar Korkis Catholic Church in Baghdad told Al-Monitor, “Christians are organizing activities to reach out to Muslims. Our church organized on June 9 an iftar [meal served at sunset] for the fasting Muslims, as an annual tradition that promotes coexistence between Christians and Muslims.”

The official in charge of the church’s Social Committee, Issam Maskouni, told Al-Monitor, “Organizing an iftar for Muslims provides a meeting point for Muslims and Christians far from sectarian bickering and in an atmosphere free from the hate speech and divisive rhetoric prevailing in the political scene.”

Source: How religious holidays are uniting Iraqi Muslims and Christians

This will most likely fall onto deaf ears for it does not fit the paradigm that some want…..

Dust To Dust

My weekend is progressing well….I have left the mundane crap (especially the crap about attacks because None are serious…they just want to hear themselves talk) and have done what I truly enjoy…..history and archeology…..

When I was in the Middle East working I had the chance to visit Petra in Jordan…..most people that have not been to the site think that it is this structure….

It is called the “treasury” and has been in many movies and TV shows….but the site is an entire complex…not limited to this one structure……

File:Urn Tomb, Petra 01.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

There is so much more to Petra than the one icon building and it seems that my friend Sarah Parcak may have found even more to the site…..

The sandstone Monastery and Treasury Building of Petra, carved by the Nabataeans nearly 2,000 years ago, astonish hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit southern Jordan each year. Unbeknownst to them, another enormous monument has been “hiding in plain sight” half a mile away. Satellite and drone imagery and ground surveys have revealed a platform as long as an Olympic-size swimming pool and twice as wide buried beneath the sand at the World Heritage site, reports National Geographic. Inside sat a smaller platform that would have housed a 28-by-28-foot building facing a staircase that study author Christopher Tuttle calls “fascinating,” per the Guardian; the staircase is atypical in that it does not face the heart of Petra. “I find it interesting that such a monumental feature doesn’t have a visible relationship to the city,” he says.

He says archaeologists previously suspected something was at the location of his find, but “the structure’s sides resembled terrace walls common to the city” and so were seemingly ignored. Pottery found on the surface suggests the structure may date to about 150BC—or Petra’s first glory age, per the BBC. Many of Petra’s most iconic structures were built later, from the end of the first century BC to the second century AD. The city was eventually abandoned in the seventh century AD, rediscovered in 1812, and named one of the 7 new wonders of the world in 2007. No excavations are scheduled, but co-author Sarah Parcak notes satellite surveys of sites elsewhere in the world are underway. Expect “some pretty amazing discoveries over the next year,” she says.

It is a fascinating site to visit…I recommend it if one ever gets the chance…..you will not be disappointed.

There is more archeology…..this time in Southeast Asia….Cambodia to be exact…..

All is not as it has seemed in Cambodia, according to new research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Using aerial scanning technology that determines precise elevation points beneath even dense jungle foliage, archaeologists say they have uncovered multiple metropolises between 900 and 1,400 years old that might have made up the largest empire on the planet at the time, reports the Guardian. The findings also upend a key chapter in the history of Southeast Asia. Historians have long thought that the city of Angkor was abandoned in the 15th century amid a Siamese attack and occupation, but the research finds no evidence to suggest that a million people uprooted themselves in a mass migration, reports Cambodia Daily. Instead, it appears that the population remained and thrived, boasting complex waterway systems that emerged centuries earlier than thought.

“What we had was basically a scatter of disconnected points on the map denoting temple sites,” lead archaeologist Damian Evans of Australia tells AFP. “Now it’s like having a detailed street map of the entire city.” He says more maps will be published in the months ahead, but his second round of scans, which were taken in 2015 after the first round in 2012, has his peers abuzz. “It is as if a bright light has been switched on to illuminate the previous dark veil that covered these great sites,” says New Zealand archaeologist Charles Higham. “It is wonderful to be alive as these new discoveries are being made.” The technology, called Lidar, forms a 3D model of any stark changes in ground height. The maps illustrate just how extensively developed the area was around Angkor Wat, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

And that is your archeological round-up for June 2016…..

They Came Out Of The Cave(Closet)

My weekend continues and I am arguing with my daughter….nothing new there….move along…..and I read an article that made me sit up and think….maybe it will do the same for my readers…..

The debate these days is over LGBT rights and most recently we have been overly concerned on where one person pees…..but guess what….none of this is anything new…..is it possible that there were some sort of LGBT thing going on in the early days of human history?

Caveman was buried like a woman, leading scientists to question his sexual orientation.

Archaeologists investigating a 5,000-year-old Copper Age grave in the Czech Republic believe they may have unearthed the first known remains of a gay or transvestite caveman, reports the Telegraph.

The man was apparently buried as if he were a woman, an aberrant practice for an ancient culture known for its strict burial procedures.

Since the grave dates to between 2900 and 2500 BC, the man would have been a member of the Corded Ware culture, a late Stone Age and Copper Age people named after the unique kind of pottery they produced. Men in this culture were traditionally buried lying on their right side with their heads pointing west, but this man was instead buried on his left side with his head pointing east, which is how women were typically buried.

Source: Archaeologists unearth 5,000-year-old ‘third-gender’ caveman | MNN – Mother Nature Network

Is it more possible that our ancient ancestors were far more mature about this than we are here in the present day?

Ya see…there is NOTHING new under the sun……gays in society have been around since the beginning……GET OVER IT!

I will spend the day trying to get back to normal…not having a good weekend so far…..enjoy your time and see you guys tomorrow…..

Archeology Update

It is once again the weekend and I get to spend time with family and friends….you see they have to work and I have time to fart around…..now it is time to get caught up…..

My readers are aware that I love some history ergo archeology also…..this past week there were several stories in the field of archeology that were amazing…well at least to me…..

First, Stonehenge….few decades, probably longer man has been trying to figure out how the ancients moved the stones so many ages ago….I mean they were barely out of the knuckle dragging stage…..well they may have their answer…..

Researchers in London think they have solved one of the most enduring mysteries of Stonehenge: How did a bunch of prehistoric Britons haul massive stones from a quarry in Wales to the site of the monument more than 100 miles? “The answer,” per the Telegraph, “is surprisingly simple.” By mounting a giant stone on a wooden sleigh and dragging it along a track of timbers, a team from University College London found that just 10 people were able to move a more than 2,000-pound stone at a rate of about 1mph. “We were expecting to need at least 15 people to move the stone so to find we could do it with 10 was quite interesting,” doctoral student Barney Harris tells the Telegraph. The rocks in question, the ones at the center of the monument known as bluestones, were quarried in Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire, Wales, according to a separate study last year.

They were laid at Stonehenge, some 140 miles away in Wiltshire, around 2400 BC, according to Seeker.com. The larger stones around the perimeter, called sarsens, are local sandstone and were laid during a second phase of construction about 500 years later. The sleigh-and-track method, if that’s what Stonehenge’s architects used, is not unique, Harris tells the Telegraph. “We know that pre-industrialized societies like the Maram Naga in India still use this kind of sledge to construct huge stone monuments, he says, adding that the Japanese are known to have used similar sleighs thousands of years ago. Could oxen have been used to pull the stones along the track? “Oxen are quite belligerent and difficult to control,” Harris says. “This experiment shows that humans could have carried out the task fairly easily.”

Next, on to Egypt…..Please do not let those whacked out stoners of the ancient alien theories know of this news…..

King Tut’s dagger is out of this world—or at least it was at some point. Italian and Egyptian researchers teamed up to analyze the blade found in the boy king’s sarcophagus (placed on his right thigh) using portable fluorescence spectrometry. They found that the iron used to make the dagger came from a meteor, reports Discovery News. (As Gizmodo puts it: “King Tut Had a Space Dagger.”) “Since its discovery in 1925, the meteoritic origin of the iron dagger blade … has been the subject of debate and previous analyses yielded controversial results,” the researchers write in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. However, the recent analysis “strongly supports its meteoritic origin.” The tipoff? Nickel, researcher Daniela Comelli tells Discovery News. While many iron artifacts have a maximum of 4% nickel, the blade of Tut’s dagger (complete with a gold handle and decorated gold sheath) contains nearly 11%.

And then there’s the cobalt concentration, a slim 0.58%. “The nickel and cobalt ratio in the dagger blade is consistent with that of iron meteorites,” Comelli says. Researchers also think they may have identified the meteor the iron came from. Of the 20 they looked at, just one’s nickel and cobalt measurements are in the ballpark. That meteor, called Kharga, was discovered in 2000 on a limestone plateau about 150 miles west of Alexandria. The researchers say the quality of the blade indicates that Egyptians of the 14th century BC already were skilled ironsmiths. And then, a linguistic insight: The researchers note a “composite term” introduced one century later means “iron of the sky,” and “suggests that the ancient Egyptians … were aware that these rare chunks of iron fell from the sky already … anticipating Western culture by more than two millennia.”

Dagger of King Tutankhamun

With this news they can turn it into a hour show for their series…(BTW how did these guys get a series?)

That is the archeology update for now….please start your weekend and enjoy some time for yourself……be safe and have a day, my friends.

Mysteries Of The Desert

The weekend and it begins….(my poem for the day)…..

Since I love some history and I try to be fair to all parts of the planet…..I have a couple of stories about the continent of Africa…..that reminds me of line from a movie…”It is Africa…No one cares about Africa”….for the most part it is true.  Americans care little about the continent….so I try to write about it as often as I can especially when I find something that I think will interest my readers.

Ever see the movie “Sahara”?  It is a story about some guys searching for a civil war ironclad shipwreck in the desert…..may not be as far fetched as one would think……

Miners have been pulling diamonds from a vast area of Namibia’s Namib Desert called the Sperrgebiet (or “forbidden territory”) for more than a century. But in 2008, workers hunting for diamonds where the desert meets the Atlantic Ocean found something even more precious: the likely remains of the Bom Jesus, a Portuguese sailing ship that disappeared some 500 years ago on its way to India. It’s a discovery, per recent coverage by News.com.au, that solved “one of the biggest maritime mysteries.” Also, says archaeologist Dieter Noli, it’s the oldest shipwreck ever found in sub-Saharan Africa. And there’s treasure as well: Included in the find were some 2,000 gold coins from Spain and Portugal, according to Gainesville News. Upon unearthing the site of the shipwreck, per CNN, workers found pieces of metal, wood, and what looked like pipes.

Not sure what they had found, they called in Noli. “It just looked like a disturbed beach,” he told CNN earlier this month, “but lying on it were bits and pieces.” Among those were a centuries-old musket and an elephant tusk. “I thought, ‘Oh, no no, this is definitely a shipwreck,'” Noli says. Ultimately, in addition to the gold, workers recovered cannons (the pipes), navigational instruments, tons of copper ingots, swords, and a lot more—some 5,438 artifacts. Not much of the actual structure of the ship remains. But archaeologists have matched the cargo with that of the Bom Jesus (which means the “Good Jesus”) based on details found in a 16th-century book that lists the ship as lost. The stretch of coastline is known for storms. Speaking to CNN, Noli speculates that the Bom Jesus “came in, it hit a rock, and it leaned over.

Then back in the day Southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa were some of the earliest evidence of humans…..there has been new evidence that it goes back some 20,000 years ago……

THE last Ice Age made much of the globe uninhabitable, but there were oases – or refugia – where people 20,000 years ago were able to cluster and survive. Researchers at the University of Huddersfield, who specialise in the analysis of human DNA, have found new evidence that there was one or more of these shelters in what is now Southern Arabia.

Once the Ice Age receded – with the onset of the Late Glacial period about 15,000 years ago – the people of this refugium then dispersed and populated Arabia and the Horn of Africa, and might also have migrated further afield.

Read on and learn something….even it is the weekend….it is never too late to learn a thing or two…..

Source: Researchers prove humans in Southern Arabia 10,000 years earlier than first thought | EurekAlert! Science News

Your history lesson is complete….now go enjoy your weekend and feel a little smarter…..you are welcome.

As per usual this will be my only post of the day…..Have a day, my friends.