Newsdesk Archive

The two mighty tectonic plates that form Africa and Arabia are slowly ripping apart, a report published in Thursday's issue of British science journal Nature claims.Research by an international team of geologists who monitored an earthquake and volcanic eruption in Ethiopia in September 2005 shows the plates that make up Africa and Arabia are gradually moving apart. As a result of this long-term split, the northeast of Ethiopia and Eritrea will be torn from the rest of Africa and may eventually form a huge new sea, the study says. The event, in the Afar desert at the southern end of the Red Sea, yielded only small amounts of volcanic material but was hugely significant in terms of geological movement, the geologists report. Using images supplied by the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite and deploying positioning sensors and seismic instruments, the geologists were able to get a rare first-hand look at the event.

LIBERIA, Costa Rica (Reuters) -- Better known for coffee, surfing and jungles, tiny tropical Costa Rica is now home to scientists working on a plasma rocket engine they hope will slash travel times to the moon and beyond.Led by Costa Rican-born former NASA space shuttle astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, the Houston-based Ad Astra Rocket Company inaugurated a site last weekend in the Central American nation to test rocket components.

Genetics is helping researchers trace the migration of the Basque people, a culture that originated in East Africa tens of thousands of years ago. By first tracking the female gene back 150,000 years to East Africa, scientists then followed the male Y chromosome to determine human whereabouts.As Joxe Mallea-Olaetxe, adjunct professor for the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nexada, Reno (USA), explained at a recent presentation at Northeastern Nevada Museum as part of the National Basque Festival in Elko, "The Basque came out of East Africa 50,000 or so years ago and passed through the Middle East."

ARCHAEOLOGISTS say they have discovered a 4,500-year-old ceremonial centre, the oldest ritual site in Greece. Excavations resumed for a few weeks this summer at Dhaskalio Kavos - Kavos for short - on the tiny island of Keros, after a lull of nearly 20 years. The problem with the site had been that it was disturbed by looters, who made a lucrative trade in the 1960s of the now famous minimalist Cycladic figurines. As a result, archaeologists could never be sure whether fragments of the Cycladic statuettes had been smashed in antiquity or more recently by smugglers. That puzzle has now been solved by this year's excavation on an undisturbed patch of the site dating to 2,500BC.

Three generations of Charles Darwin's descendants have replicated their great grandfather's 150-year-old survey near his old home, Down House, in Kent. Between then and now, the number of plant species in Great Pucklands meadow has declined by 15%. Changes in farm practice are believed to be behind the decline. Darwin's observations in the meadow contributed to the development of the natural selection theory in his seminal book On The Origin of Species.

As archaeologists explore the latest tomb to be uncovered in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt's chief of antiquities says he believes 30% of the country's ancient monuments have yet to be found. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, says many ancient cities are buried under modern ones. Some prominent ancient Egyptians, including the "most beautiful, famous queen," Nefertiti, probably were buried in the Valley of the Kings, but their tombs have never been found, he says.Since King Tutankhamen's gold-laden tomb was discovered 83 years ago, some experts have believed that the ancient burial grounds have yielded their major archaeological treasures. But Hawass announced last month that he believes the first tomb uncovered in the Valley of the Kings in more than eight decades might have once contained the remains of Queen Kiya, Tutankhamen's mother.

The pharaohs of ancient Egypt owed their existence to prehistoric climate change in the eastern Sahara, according to an exhaustive study of archaeological data that bolsters this theory. Starting at about 8500 B.C., researchers say, broad swaths of what are now Egypt, Chad, Libya, and Sudan experienced a "sudden onset of humid conditions." (See a map of Africa.) For centuries the region supported savannahs full of wildlife, lush acacia forests, and areas so swampy they were uninhabitable.During this time the prehistoric peoples of the eastern Sahara followed the rains to keep pace with the most hospitable ecosystems.

New radar images of Saturn's moon Titan reveal dunes, hills, valleys and rivers that scientist say look a lot like home.But on Titan, which is frigid and shrouded in smog, the features are likely carved in ice rather than solid ground.The detailed view is of a bright area on Titan called Xanadu. It's about the size of Australia and has been studied from afar for years. Now scientists are getting a better look with NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Radar is bounced off the surface to generate an image that cannot be made using visible-light observations because the orbiting spacecraft can't see through the moon's thick atmosphere.

At the end of the last Ice Age, the Sahara Desert was just as dry and uninviting as it is today. But sandwiched between two periods of extreme dryness were a few millennia of plentiful rainfall and lush vegetation.During these few thousand years, prehistoric humans left the congested Nile Valley and established settlements around rain pools, green valleys, and rivers.The ancient climate shift and its effects are detailed in the July 21 issue of the journal 'Science'.Around 10,500 years ago, a sudden burst of monsoon rains over the vast desert transformed the region into habitable land.

BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- U.S. and German scientists launched a two-year project Thursday to decipher the genetic code of the Neanderthal, a feat they hope will help deepen understanding of how modern humans' brains evolved.Neanderthals were a species that lived in Europe and western Asia from more than 200,000 years ago to about 30,000 years ago. Scientists from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology are teaming up with a company in Connecticut to map the genome, or DNA code.

We have received two letters from American friends recently returned from Lebanon. The letters, which include an appeal for practical assistance and links to relevant websites, are reproduced here in the name of peace, decency and justice: Dear friends,I am writing on behalf of friends and relatives in Lebanon who are literally CRYING FOR HELP over the phone. They are asking that Americans pressure the US government to implement an immediate cease-fire. Families are being killed in their homes, ambulances and trucks with medical and food supplies are now being targeted by Israeli jets.If you are a US citizen and a voter please go to the site of "United for Peace and Justice" (www.unitedforpeace.org). Please call the White House (202-456-1111), the State Department (202-647-4000) and the Congress main line (202-224-3121). Please let them know that the position of the Bush administration is not that of the American people who wouldn't subscribe to the siege and destruction of a fragile country which was slowly recovering from 15 years of civil war. If you are in Europe please go to "Lebanese abroad" (www.lebanese-abroad.com).Donations are being accepted by Lebanese charities and banks. The situation is terribly serious. Food is becoming scarce and Beirut Christian neighborhoods are being bombed to instigate a civil war against 250,000 displaced Shia from the South. The country is on the verge of total collapse.The Lebanese have been abandoned by an American administration that had promised to support their recently formed government. Please show them that the people have not done the same.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dear friends,The massive air power Israel is using in all of Lebanon has already destroyed the country's infrastructure and caused the death of more than 200 civilians. We have been talking to friends and relatives there who have said that the destruction is far worse than is being reported in the Western media and that civilians are being targeted.Please help in any way you can to press politicians and officials to work towards and immediate end to this invasion and planned destruction of another country by Israel. Below are two websites that are coordinating an international campaign to help Lebanon and to put an end to this humanitarian disaster.cedarfree.blogspot.comwww.saveleb.org

Somalia, in the Horn of Africa, has always been remote but its inaccessibility is all the greater today after nearly two decades of warfare and anarchy. While chaos continues in the south, the northern part of the former "Somali Democratic Republic" has achieved remarkable peace and stability in recent years, established its own borders and declared its independence and statehood as the Somaliland Republic - a distinct entity from the failed state in the south.Musa Hersi, a Somali émigré living in the UK, recently had the opportunity to travel in the Somaliland Republic. He came across extensive and apparently very ancient stone ruins in the central area around Ain including a number of small pyramidal structures. He reports here exclusively for grahamhancock.com.

CONCORD, New Hampshire (AP) -- In 1872, so the story goes, workers digging a hole for a fence post near Lake Winnipesaukee in the central part of this New England state found a lump of clay that seemed out of place.There was something inside -- a dark, odd-looking, egg-shaped stone with a variety of carvings, including a face, teepee, ear of corn and starlike circles.And there were many questions: Who made the stone and why? How old was it? How was it carved?

In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces. The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation. Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert. But the glass is itself a scientific enigma. How did it get to be there and who or what made it?Thursday's BBC Horizon programme reports an extraordinary new theory linking Tutankhamun's gem with a meteor.

Wednesday has become the hottest July day in England ever, with a temperature of 36.3C (97.3F) recorded at Charlwood in Surrey, near Gatwick Airport.The temperature, recorded by the Met Office at 1432 BST, beat the previous record from July 1911 when temperatures reached 36C (96.8F) in Epsom, Surrey.Schools across England have been forced to close because of "unbearable" heat.Zoos took special steps to keep animals cool and NHS Direct reported increased calls from people hit by sunstroke.In Charlwood - England's hottest hot spot - Elizabeth Tennant, 55, front desk manager at the Stanhill Court Hotel, said staff and customers were "melting".

Patients are dying and being seriously harmed because many doctors lack the sufficient knowledge to prescribe drugs properly, leading experts say. Top doctors said the problem was being caused because the General Medical Council was placing less emphasis on pharmacology in UK medical schools. They also said the risk was being compounded by the use of more complex medicines in the health service. The GMC said it rejected the allegations completely. The NHS spends £7bn a year on drugs, with an average of 12 prescriptions being written for each patient.

Recent analysis of three ancient seashells reveals that they are likely to have been used as beads, potentially pushing back the evidence for personal decoration by 25,000 years.The finding adds weight to the theory that modern human behavior emerged gradually. This theory contradicts the belief that a sudden creative explosion took place in Europe around 45,000 years ago. The shells were excavated from Mount Carmel in Israel and Oued Djebbana, Algeria, in the 1930s and 1940s.

The focus of the weeklong crackdown, launched Saturday, "is to prevent the entry of kids under the age of 18," said a Culture Ministry official quoted by the China Daily newspaper.It said violators could face penalties ranging from being shut down for 15 days to losing their license to operate.Internet cafes are required to limit the hours that underage customers can spend online and only allow in a few minors at a time.

The remains of an Archaic Era Phoenician city have been unearthed in Mezquitilla, Vélez Málaga. Archaeologists say it is the largest settlement from that period in Andalucía, and also one of the largest in the Mediterranean.The excavations have uncovered the remains of a block of houses, covering an area of 40 x 12 metres, although the whole city is said to have covered more than six hectares. Kitchen utensils and dishes have also been discovered intact.The site is what remains of the Phoenician city of Las Chorreras, founded in the 8th century BC, and abandoned a hundred years later.

Archaeologists excavating part of a Roman villa in Somerset have unearthed a mosaic of Daphne and Apollo. The mosaic, which dates back to the 4th Century, is part of the Dinnington Roman Villa site near Ilminster. It is thought to be the only one of its kind in the country to feature the figures from Greek mythology. The treasure was uncovered by a team of experts from Somerset County Council and students from Winchester University and Taunton's Richard Huish College.

An experimental inflatable spacecraft bankrolled by a real estate magnate rocketed into orbit Wednesday to test technology that could be used to fulfill his dream of building a commercial space station. The Genesis I satellite flew aboard a converted Cold War ballistic missile from Russia's southern Ural Mountains at 6:53 p.m. Moscow time. It was boosted about 320 miles above Earth minutes after launch, according to the Russian Strategic Missile Forces. The launch was a first for Bigelow Aerospace, a startup founded by Robert Bigelow, who owns the Budget Suites of America hotel chain. Bigelow is among several entrepreneurs attempting to break into the fledging manned commercial spaceflight business.

Trees could be growing in the Antarctic within a century because of global warming, an international scientific conference heard. With carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere set to double in the next 100 years, the icy continent could revert to how it looked about 40 million years ago, said Professor Robert Dunbar of Stanford University."It was warm and there were bushes and there were trees," he told some 850 delegates in the Tasmanian capital Hobart, the national AAP news agency reported.

Silk may be able to help repair damaged nerves, according to scientists. The UK researchers have shown how nerve cells can grow along bundles of a special fibre, which has properties similar to spider silk. They hope the silk will encourage cell re-growth across severed nerves, possibly even in damaged spinal cords. A picture of nerve cells growing on the silk is one of the winning images in this year's Wellcome Trust Biomedical Image Awards.

Glaciers in the European Alps are melting so fast that the mountains could be virtually ice free by the end of this century, a new global warming study warns. Shrinking glaciers could severely affect tourism in the snowcapped region and leave local communities vulnerable to natural disasters, the study authors say.The team, from the University of Zurich in Switzerland, predicted the likely impact of rising temperatures on the European Alps using modeling experiments based on past rates of glacier loss and future climate-change forecasts. The study, to be published later this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggests the Alps will become almost free of ice by 2100, given a nine-degree-Fahrenheit (five-degree-Celsius) rise in summer air temperature.

As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis's laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens. In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples -- water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis's home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001 -- contain microbes from outer space.

An Egyptian archaeological expedition has discovered Greek-language engravings in Alexandria, Egypt's Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni announced on Tuesday. The engravings, which were discovered close to the Amoud al-Sawari monument, are said to date back to the times of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (ruled 161-180 AD.) The secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawwas, said the engravings are six lines long and were found etched on an artefact measuring 50 centimetres long and 36 centimetres wide, which may perhaps be part of an ancient altar.

A SAUDI archaeologist who has been trying for nine years to prove his theory that the Dilmun civilisation celebrated New Year on June 21 - the first day of summer - has finally received some official recognition.Information Ministry Assistant Under-Secretary for Culture and National Heritage Shaikha Mai bint Khalifa Al Khalifa is said to have endorsed his judgement after visiting the 4,000-year-old Saar settlement to observe the phenomenon last month.Bahrain National Museum director of heritage Yousif Bumtaia, who was part of the official visit to the site, believes Mr Al Shaikh's theory has some validity."I am not an archaeologist, but I saw something and felt that maybe he is right," Mr Bumtaia told the GDN.

On 26 April 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant blew up. Forty-eight hours later the entire area was evacuated. Over the following months there were stories of mass graves and dire warnings of thousands of deaths from radiation exposure. Yet in a BBC Horizon report screened on Thursday 13 July, a number of scientists argue that 20 years after the accident there is no credible scientific evidence that any of these predications are coming true.

The Sacred City of Caral, the oldest city in the Americas that has changed the history of Peru and the world since its discovery in 1994, is now open as a prime destination and archaeological treasure for tourists who visit Lima. As a result of the work done by the Proyecto Especial Arqueólogico Caral-Supe (Caral-Supe Special Archaeological Project), the Sacred City of Caral is now open for tourists and will continue to undergo a series of restorations that will provide an added value to the existing and future tourist circuits in the region.The Sacred City of Caral, built over 5,000 years ago, is not only the oldest city in the Americas but also third overall after Mesopotamia and Egypt, followed by China and India.

A festival has begun in Mongolia to honour the nation's most famous emperor, warrior Genghis Khan. Celebrations marking the 800th anniversary of the Mongol empire have been going on all year. But the highlight is the three-day Nadaam festival, which features the traditional "three manly sports" of horse-racing, wrestling and archery.The games are taking place around the country, with the population thronging to district centres to take part. "This is the most beautiful and important holiday of our country," Tsendsuren Majaa, who was attending the games in the western town of Arvaikheer, told Reuters news agency.

The coat colour of mammoths that roamed the Earth thousands of years ago has been determined by scientists. Some of the curly tusked animals would have sported dark brown coats, while others had pale ginger or blond hair. The information was extracted from a 43,000-year-old woolly mammoth bone from Siberia using the latest genetic techniques. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers said a gene called Mc1r was controlling the beasts' coat colours.

CONCORD, N.H. --In 1872, so the story goes, workers digging a hole for a fence post near Lake Winnipesaukee in Meredith found a lump of clay that seemed out of place. There was something inside -- a dark, odd-looking, egg-shaped stone with a variety of carvings, including a face, teepee, ear of corn and star-like circles.And there were lots of questions: Who made the stone and why? How old was it? How was it carved? To date, no one's been able to say for sure, and the item has come to be known as the "Mystery Stone."Seneca Ladd, a Meredith businessman who hired the workers, was credited with the discovery.

A huge sunshade a million miles from Earth could help astronomers search for signs of life on planets orbiting distant stars, a study says. The daisy-shaped "occulter", as it is known, would use a powerful telescope trailing thousands of miles behind. The shade, described in the journal Nature, would stop light from the planet's star swamping the telescope.The concept by Professor Webster Cash of the University of Colorado has already received funding from Nasa. He believes an occulter could be in space within seven years "stalking" Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013.

CHENNAI: The discovery of a Neolithic stone celt, a hand-held axe, with the Indus script on it at Sembian-Kandiyur in Tamil Nadu is, according to Iravatham Mahadevan, "a major discovery because for the first time a text in the Indus script has been found in the State on a datable artefact, which is a polished neolithic celt." He added: "This confirms that the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu shared the same language family of the Harappan group, which can only be Dravidian.The discovery provides the first evidence that the Neolithic people of the Tamil country spoke a Dravidian language." Mr. Mahadevan, an eminent expert on the subject, estimated the date of the artefact with the Indus script between 2000 B.C. and 1500 B.C.It was in February 2006, when V. Shanmuganathan, a school teacher living in Sembian-Kandiyur, near Mayiladuthurai in Nagapattinam district, dug a pit in the backyard of his house to plant banana and coconut saplings, that he encountered two stone celts.

Make-up used by the "footballers' wives" of Roman times is on display at an antiquity festival in south Wales. At the Roman "military spectacular" in Caerleon cosmetics expert Sally Pointer will show how society beauties of the day made themselves glamorous. Her range make-up includes scrubs to polish the skin, foundation pastes, blushers, eyeliner and perfumes. But not all will be exact replicas, because Romans often used poisonous ingredients such as lead.Ms Pointer - a manager at the National Museum in Cardiff - has recreated a number of centuries-old products. She said ancient Rome could be behind many current fashion trends and compared its high society women to the footballers' wives of today.

Astronomers dedicated the University of Hawai'i's newest telescope, called PS1, last Friday in a ceremony on the summit of Haleakala, the massive extinct caldera on the island of Mau'i. The telescope is a prototype for the larger Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, or Pan-STARRS, telescope scheduled to start scanning the skies for "killer asteroids" in 2010.The telescope's mirror is only 71 inches in diameter - much smaller than the twin Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea, whose mirrors are nearly 400 inches each.The PS1 will be unique because it will be equipped with the world's largest digital camera, currently under construction at the UH Institute for Astronomy's Manoa headquarters. The camera will contain 1.4 billion pixels -about 300 times more than in a typical commercial digital camera.

A portion of the bone bed at the Hudson-Meng Bison Kill was exposed by archeologist Larry Agenbroad in the 1970s.Agenbroad concluded that ancient hunters drove the bison off a cliff about 10,000 years ago.Two other archeologists believe the animals died from a natural event - such as a lightning strike or a grass fire that asphyxiated them.To this day their deaths remain a mystery.

China and India have opened a historic trade route that had been closed for nearly half a century. The Himalayan pass of Nathu La, 4,000m (14,000 feet) above sea level, was once part of the ancient Silk Road.The opening ceremony took place at the windswept border between India's Sikkim state and the Chinese region of Tibet.Nathu La has opened just a few days after the first train service was launched from eastern China to Tibet.

The Sacred City of Caral, the oldest city in the Americas that has changed the history of Peru and the world since its discovery in 1994, is now open as a prime destination and archaeological treasure for tourists who visit Lima. As a result of the work done by the Proyecto Especial Arqueologico Caral-Supe (Caral-Supe Special Archaeological Project), the Sacred City of Caral is now open for tourists and will continue to undergo a series of restorations that will provide an added value to the existing and future tourist circuits in the region.The Sacred City of Caral, built over 5,000 years ago, is not only the oldest city in the Americas but also third overall after Mesopotamia and Egypt, followed by China and India. This historical treasure, located in the Supe Valley, is just two hours north of Lima and easily accessible by the Pan-American Highway. Although Machu Picchu, located in Cusco, has gained considerably more attention around the world as the capital of the Inca Empire, many do not know that the Sacred City of Caral was the first political state formed in Peru 4,400 years prior to the Incas.

(ANSA) - Aquileia, July 3 - Italian archaeologists are working hard to unearth more of the largest Roman city ever uncovered, a colony that served as a bulwark against barbarian invasions before being destroyed by Attila the Hun .Aquileia in today's far north east, once the third-biggest city in Roman Italy, had been largely wiped off the map by foreign attacks and centuries of stone looting. But some of its ancient splendour remained in traces of its baths, temples, port, public buildings and private dwellings .Specialists from the University of Udine have been bringing the city back to renewed life so as to make the place - one of Italy's World Heritage sites - more interesting for the visitor to look at .

The hole in Earth's protective ozone layer won't repair itself until about two decades later than had been expected, scientists announced yesterday.The ozone layer blocks more than 90 percent of the sun's ultraviolet radiation, helping to make life as we know it on Earth possible. For many decades, ozone was depleted by chlorine and bromine gas in the air, produced by man-made chlorofluorocarbons. A hole in the ozone layer formed over the Southern Hemisphere.Efforts to curb those chemicals have in recent years led to optimism that ozone would rebuild. Computer models had predicted the hole would fill back in by 2050.

Khmer Rouge soldiers used the ornate sandstone sculptures on the sides of Phnom Bakheng for target practice during the wars of the 1970s and 1980s. But the damage done to the temples of the Angkor Wat complex did not end with the arrival of peace. Instead, the political settlement in Cambodia merely opened the gate to an army of rampaging tourists.The celebrated temple complex, built in the 10th century, is not the only ancient monument to be suffering under an onslaught of visitors, but it is one of the more vulnerable. It currently draws about one million tourists a year, but estimates suggest that over the next few years visitor numbers could swell to as many as five million a year.

THE first human ancestor to walk upright may have evolved in Asia, not Africa, according to a radical new theory. In a major challenge to the "Out of Africa" theory, some academics believe fossil remains of Homo erectus found in Asia are up to 1.8 million years old - just as ancient as those found in Africa.Professor Robin Dennell, of Sheffield University, and Professor Wil Roebroeks, of Leiden University in the Netherlands, say changes to the climate which resulted in the forests of Asia drying up to be replaced by a vast savannah grassland may have been the trigger for early humans to become bigger and to stand up on two legs.

Tapeworms that infect people today grow to adulthood in the small intestine. The largest can stretch more than 35 feet. The latest tapeworm research suggests a time frame for human migration out of Africa, and also reveals that people gave the parasite to domestic animals such as pigs--not the other way around.

A large asteroid is set to pass Earth in a close encounter which scientists say will pose no danger. The asteroid, estimated at half a mile (800m) wide, will sweep within 270,000 miles (433,000km) of the planet - only slightly further away than the moon. "It's not Earth-threatening," said Don Yeomans, who heads Nasa's Near Earth Object Program. The asteroid, 2004 XP14, should be visible by telescope from N America and Europe, most clearly on Monday.

Near the end of the last Ice Age 8,000 years ago, an ice dam on North America's east coast broke, releasing a torrent of fresh water seven times more voluminous than all the Great Lakes combined. It all rushed into the Atlantic Ocean over the course of only a few months.At around the same time, ocean circulation worldwide slowed to a crawl, plunging Europe into a second ice age that lasted centuries. Scientists have long suspected the two events were linked, and now they have the evidence from sediment core samples to prove it.The finding, detailed in the June 30 issue of the journal Science, provides the first clear evidence that the so-called North American "lake burst" was the trigger that slowed ocean circulation and cooled the climate about 8,200 years ago.

Beijing - Tombs almost 1 000 years old in western China - known as the "pyramids of the east" - are in danger of collapse due to natural erosion and man-made damage, Chinese state television said on Wednesday.The Western Xia Tombs, in the poor, remote region of Ningxia, house the remains of kings of an empire that once stretched to the borders of Tibet and developed its own complex written script based, like Chinese, on pictographs.But years of wind, rain and neglect of the state-protected site has left holes up to two metres deep in the structures, which resemble miniature versions of Egypt's pyramids, the report said."The tombs are in imminent danger of collapse and urgently need to be saved," it said, adding that a 10-metre-long wall had already crumbled.

LOS ANGELES - Scientists went back to work Thursday at one of the world's richest Ice Age fossil sites, digging the tooth of a five-foot dire wolf and the toe of a sabertooth tiger from the sticky prehistoric asphalt near Wilshire Boulvard. About 10,000 years before the arrival of mammoth traffic jams, the two beasts likely got stuck in the goo at La Brea Tar Pits while hunting a camel, horse or ground sloth, said John Harris, chief curator and head of vertebrate studies at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which oversees the site.Thousands of other animals made the same fatal mistake, leaving a treasure trove of well-preserved bones, plant remnants and microorganisms.Excavation work began in 1915 and has been done every summer since 1969 to the delight of children and other visitors who watch from a glass-enclosed area overlooking the 14-foot deep pit.

Tulum ruins on cliffs overlooking Caribbean considered among the most beautiful of Maya civilization.Call it The Passion of the Maya: Mel Gibson is quietly filming a movie in a Mexican jungle about the collapsed civilization. Given Gibson's cinematic history, experts on the ancient Maya are looking forward to his upcoming epic, Apocalypto, with a mixture of curiosity and dread. They're pleased that Hollywood will feature a period of world history still little understood but worry that once again a movie may sacrifice historical accuracy for the sake of a good story."A lot depends on how well they depict the Maya. It may serve as a really good springboard into a lecture," says archaeologist Lisa Lucero of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. "Or it may be something we have to nip in the bud in that first lecture."Gibson wasn't available for comment, and the public relations firm for his Icon Productions declined to offer any details on the film's plot.

A team of Texas archaeologists believe they may have located the remains of Noah's Ark in Iran's Elburz mountain range."I can't imagine what it could be if it is not the Ark," said Arch Bonnema of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration (B.A.S.E) Institute, a Christian archeology organization dedicated to looking for biblical artifacts.Bonnema and the other B.A.S.E. Institute members hiked for seven hours in the mountains northwest of Tehran, climbing 13,000 feet before making the apparent discovery.

A grouping of granite blocks along a grassy Amazon hilltop may be the vestiges of a centuries-old astronomical observatory _ a find archaeologists say indicates early rainforest inhabitants were more sophisticated than previously believed.The 127 blocks, some as high as 9 feet tall, are spaced at regular intervals around the hill, like a crown 100 feet in diameter.On the shortest day of the year _ Dec. 21 _ the shadow of one of the blocks disappears when the sun is directly above it."It is this block's alignment with the winter solstice that leads us to believe the site was once an astronomical observatory," said Mariana Petry Cabral, an archaeologist at the Amapa State Scientific and Technical Research Institute. "We may be also looking at the remnants of a sophisticated culture."

In an Antarctic "ghost town," freeze-dried whiskers, skin, and bones provide evidence that the South Pole was a much warmer place not too long ago, a new study reveals. The 1,000- to 6,000-year-old elephant seal remains were found in abandoned breeding colonies in a now barren region of Victoria Land on the Antarctic coast near the Ross Sea (map of Antarctica).The discovery, scientists say, is the first hard evidence for a warming period in the region between 2,300 and 1,100 years ago. An earlier warming period, between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago, has been recognized by other researchers and is believed to have been widespread, at least throughout the Southern Hemisphere.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revealed not one but two dust disks circling the nearby star Beta Pictoris. The images confirm a decade of scientific speculation that a warp in the young star's dust disk may actually be a second inclined disk, which is evidence for the possibility of at least one Jupiter-size planet orbiting the star.The disk is fainter than the star because, at the visible wavelengths measured, its dust only reflects light. To see the faint disk, astronomers used Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys' coronagraph, which blocked the light from Beta Pictoris. The Hubble images clearly show a distinct secondary disk that is tilted by about 4 degrees from the main disk. The secondary disk is visible out to roughly 24 billion miles from the star, and probably extends even farther. The finding appears in the June 2006 issue of the Astronomical Journal.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian archaeologists have found two ancient sarcophagi close to the pyramids, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities said on Sunday.The sarcophagi, found about a kilometer (0.6 miles) south of the pyramids in Giza, dated to the late 26th dynasty, or about 2,500 years old, council chief Zahi Hawass said in a report by the state MENA news agency.Hieroglyphs referring to the ancient Egyptian gods Osiris, god of the dead, and the sun-god Ra were painted on the larger sarcophagus, which measured about 2 meters (6 ft 6.74 in) tall, 70 cm wide and 60 cm deep and was painted red, blue and green, the report said.The name of sarcophagus' owner, Neb Ra Khatow, and ritual incantations to the gods were also painted on the sarcophagus.

The Romans were a methodical people, not given to acts of folly - so why did they apparently build a road to nowhere? Known as the Peddars Way, it is a typically straight track marching from near Thetford directly through the heart of west Norfolk until it peters out at an isolated coastal spot at Holme, and is now favoured by walkers and cyclists.But just what its original purpose was when it was built around 2,000 years ago is a question that has long perplexed historians.Andrew McCloy is the latest to investigate. He devotes a chapter of his new book, Exploring Roman Britain, to the Peddars Way, and has reached a tentative conclusion."Usually the routes ended at a fort or garrison, or had another obvious destination," he says. "Here you come out at Holme, and you think, Why? Where were the Romans going?"

An "emotionally aware" computer being developed by British and US scientists will be able to estimate an individual's thoughts by analysing a combination of facial movements that represent underlying feelings."The system we have developed allows a wide range of mental states to be identified, just by pointing a video camera at someone," Professor Peter Robinson, of Cambridge University, said.He and his collaborators believed the "mind-reading" computer's applications could range from improving people's driving skills to helping companies tailor advertising to people's moods."Imagine a computer that could pick the right emotional moment to try to sell you something, a future where mobile phones, cars and websites could read our mind and react to our moods," he said.The technology is already programmed to recognise different facial expressions generated by actors.Prof Robinson hopes to get more data to determine whether someone is bored, interested, confused, or agrees or disagrees, when it is unveiled at a science exhibition in London today.

When it comes to designing aircraft, there is a big tradeoff. If you want to be able to hover above a site like a helicopter, you need to design a plane that can stay afloat, if you will, at low speeds. Conversely, if you want to rocket between New York and Los Angeles in the blink of an eye, the plane needs to be designed for high speeds and as a result, can't exactly stay in the air very well at a turtle's pace. Northrop Grumman seems to be developing an unmanned aircraft that can accomplish both, thanks to its ability to rotate its wings up to sixty degrees. This allows the Switchblade, as it's been dubbed, to slowly float over a given site, but in an instant can blast up to supersonic speeds and zip out of the scene unnoticed. With the wings outstretched, it floats with ease. With the wings folding in a bit, drag is reduced, and supersonic speeds are achieved, all the while maintaining optimal fuel economy.

A tireless prophet with a salt-and-pepper beard and an inviting grin, John Saxer knows that mainstream archaeologists, journalists and folks in Tarpon Springs think he's nuts.They reject his Greek mythology- and archaeology-based theories that Tarpon Springs is the center of the biblical Garden of Eden and the Tampa Bay area coastline was the seaport of Atlantis.It's been a tough sell, acknowledges Saxer, a 55-year-old bicycle mechanic and bartender who was homeless for much of 2004.Saxer has been ignored by archaeologists nationwide for the past 18 months, despite offering evidence of what he claims are 6,500-year-old stone ark anchors abundant on land near shorelines in New Port Richey, Holiday and Tarpon Springs.

An important archaeological dig undertaken by the University of Southampton, has produced over twenty flint handaxes, including two of exceptional size and quality, which may lead to a reassessment of the level of human development in the Early Stone Age.The dig, at a site at Cuxton in Kent, uncovered a sharply pointed 307mm handaxe - the second largest found in Britain. Preserved in almost mint condition, the handaxe displays exquisite, almost flamboyant, workmanship in addition to its extreme size. Another giant handaxe was also uncovered beside it, this time a cleaver, 179mm long by 134mm wide.Dr Francis Wenban-Smith, who led the dig said that the find is significant because the presence of such clearly defined types of handaxe reflects deliberate design, something not previously associated with the Lower Palaeolithic period, which lasted from 600,000 to 250,000 BC in Britain.

Scientists have found the oldest beads used for ornamental and decorative purposes by humans. These beads date back approximately 100,000 years, 25,000 years earlier than any previous discovery. The results of the study were reported in today's issue of the journal 'Science.' Scientists from University College London and the National Center for Scientific Research in Talence, France wrote the report. The beads were made of mollusk shells that were discovered years ago in Israel and Algeria. These beads are similar to those found in the Blombos Cave in South Africa. The Blombos cave dated back 75,000 years.

Scientists are calling for action to prevent foreign species from taking hold in Antarctica and wrecking the continent's unique ecosystems. Despite Antarctica's inhospitable environment, non-native species introduced by tourists, scientists and explorers are gaining a foothold. Species can hitch a ride on ships and planes carrying visitors and supplies. A paper on the matter tabled at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Edinburgh met with "good agreement".

Scientists say they have discovered part of the skeleton of a dodo, the large, flightless bird which became extinct more than 300 years ago. One of the team in Mauritius said it was the first discovery of fully preserved bones which could give clues as to how the bird lived its life. Last year, the team unearthed dodo bones in the same area, but said the current find was more "significant". The bird is thought to have been hunted to extinction by European settlers. No complete skeleton has ever been found in Mauritius, and the last full set of bones was destroyed in a fire at a museum in Oxford, England, in 1755.

A rare Roman coin has returned to Greece from Britain after a landmark settlement, which Athens hopes will bring back more classical treasures. The 1st-Century denarius - equivalent to a day's wages for a Roman foot soldier or labourer - is set to be unveiled at the Greek Culture Ministry. A British coin dealer is urging the Greek government to start paying market rates to those who find antiquities. The coin was handed over after Greece proved it had been unearthed illegally.

Seven archaeology projects will be run across Caithness this summer to investigate its Neolithic, Iron Age and war-time history. Experts will investigate the area's ancient cairns, brochs, crannogs, castles and shipwrecks. With the help of local divers, they also hope to solve the mystery sinking of a World War I German warship. There will be nothing of this scale anywhere else in the UK running at the same time this year. The Early Architecture Research Programme (EARP) will begin its investigations later this month.

The southeastern Anatolian province of Þanlýurfa, considered to be the cradle of agriculture as well as hosting numerous examples of ancient architecture, promises new discoveries to shed light on the history of human evolution in the region.Harran University Assistant Professor Cihan Kürkçüoðlu noted that every archaeological excavation to be carried out in Þanlýurfa would provide new information on the history of civilization in the region.Kürkçüoðlu reminded the Anatolia news agency that Þanlýurfa is situated in the Fertile Crescent, considered in the literature to be the center of culture and civilization.

Scattered rafts of black lava over northern and central Australia are really part of one gigantic volcanic field that appears to be one of oldest and largest on Earth, say geologists.If so, the half-billion-year-old eruption might be the culprit in the first mass animal extinction event in the history of life.Australian geologists used both the chemical signatures of the far-flung basalt lava rocks and their ages to connect them to a single huge volcanic eruptive episode between 505 and 508 million years ago.The newly identified Kalkarindji Continental Flood Basalt Province covered at least 400,000 square miles with more than 120,000 cubic miles of lava, report geologists Linda Glass and David Phillips of the Australian National University.

Human damage to coastal ecology is not a recent phenomenon, say an international team of scientists: it's been happening since the dawn of civilization.Whether they settled along the coasts of North America, Europe or Australia, humans have always been reducing the biodiversity of estuaries and coastal seas, say researchers publishing in today's issue of the journal Science."This isn't a blame game," says Roger Bradbury, an adjunct professor at the Australian National University and co-author of the paper."People in the 20th century haven't started to do this - we've just built on what our ancestors have done."

Continuation of archeological excavations in Haji Abad and six other cities in Hormozgan province which had initially started in order to identify, record, prepare the archeology map, and register these areas in the list of Iran's National Heritage Sites, led into finding of more historical sites and relics which will in turn reveal the rich civilization of Hormozgan province during the ancient times.Identifying two historical areas belonging to the fourth and third millennium BC in Haji Abad and discovery of the remains of soap stone dishes similar to those already found in the district of Halil Rud civilization are some of the main achievements of archeologists during their recent excavations in Hormozgan province. "Some designed potteries were discovered in the pre-historical sites of Hormozgan which are very similar to the potteries previously discovered in Susa belonging to the beginning of urbanization in this area. Some soap stones similar to the historical relics discovered in Jiroft have also been found in this area," said Marjan Ravayi, expert of the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department of Hormozgan province.

They may not compare with today's diamond-encrusted bling, but in their own way, they are of far greater value. Two tiny shells have been confirmed as the world's oldest known items of jewellery, probably used on a necklace about 100,000 years ago.It's more than just a pretty trinket: the shells have forced scientists to rethink their ideas on when human culture and language first developed."This research shows that a long lasting and widespread bead-working tradition associated with early modern humans extended through Africa to the Middle East well before comparable evidence appears in Europe," said Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum, who led the work."The research also supports the idea that modern human anatomy and behaviour have deep roots in Africa and were widespread by 75,000 years ago, even though they may not have appeared in Europe for another 35,000 years."

Red-stained bones dug up in a cave in Israel are prompting researchers to speculate that symbolic thought emerged much earlier than they had believed. Symbolic thought - the ability to let one thing represent another - was a giant leap in human evolution. It was a mental ability that allowed sophisticated language and maths. New excavations show that a red colour made from ochre was used in burials 100,000 years ago, much earlier than other examples of colour association.

An underwater volcano with a base larger than Washington, D.C., has been discovered just off the shores of Sicily, a scientist with Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said on Thursday. The volcanic structure, which incorporates peaks previously thought to be separate volcanoes, was named Empedocles after the Greek philosopher who named the four classic elements of earth, air, fire and water. Legend has it that the philosopher died by throwing himself into Mount Etna, the nearby Sicilian volcano. Giovanni Lanzafame, who works at the institute and led the research, said Empedocles was at least 400 meters (1,300 feet) high -- taller than the Eiffel Tower.

International scientists will recreate the immediate aftermath of the "Big Bang" in a bid to uncover the mysteries of the universe, a world physics summit announced. The laboratory experiment will take place in Europe next year with the collaboration of US, Japanese and Russian scientists to increase scientific knowledge of dark energy and matter, said summit organizer Carlos Montufar, of Ecuador's San Francisco University."The idea is to generate a clash between particles similar to what happened a thousandth of a second after the Big Bang and see what it could tell us about the standard model of matter," Montufar told AFP.

The world's leading scientists yesterday urged schools to stop denying the facts of evolution amid controversy over the teaching of creationism.The national science academies of 67 countries - including the UK's Royal Society - issued a joint statement warning that scientific evidence about the origins of life was being "concealed, denied, or confused". It urged parents and teachers to provide children with the facts about the origins and evolution of life on Earth.Creationism includes a belief that all forms of life have always existed in their present form and that the world was formed in 4004 BC rather than 4,600 million years ago as scientists believe.The statement was drafted by members of the Inter Academy Panel on International Issues, a global network consisting of 92 science academies. It points out that "within science courses taught in certain public systems of education, scientific evidence, data, and testable theories about the origins and evolution of life on Earth are being concealed, denied, or confused with theories not testable by science".

Modern medical science has exposed the villainy of the crocodile mummy sellers of Hawara, more than 2,000 years after they defied the edict of a Pharaoh and turned neatly bandaged bundles of rubbish into a nice little earner.Before the reopening this month of the Egyptian Galleries at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, curators took their animal and human mummies to the city's Addenbrooke's Hospital, as part of a £1.5m re-display of the internationally renowned collection, which dates in part back to the founding of the museum in 1816.Analysis continues after the mummies were run through a CT scanner and other tests, but the preliminary results are startling. The two baby crocodile shaped mummies were originally sold to worshippers at the temple at Hawara, to be buried in ritual pits as an offering to the god Sobek. There was clearly a history of problems with the animal sellers: a pharaonic decree a century earlier had ordered that each mummy should contain the body of one animal.

Chinese archaeologists have discovered a group of ancient tombs shaped like pyramids, dating back at least 3,000 years, in Jiaohe City of northeast China's Jilin Province. The tombs, covering an area of 500,000 square meters (1,000 meters long and 500 meters wide), were found after water erosion exposed part of a mountain, revealing two of the tombs. Six smaller tombs had eroded away leaving no indications of their original scale and appearance, but the biggest tomb, located on the south side of the mountain, could clearly be discerned as a pyramid shape with three layers from bottom to top. The pyramid's square bottom is about 50 meters long and 30 meters wide, about the size of a basketball court, with an oval platform on the top, about 15 meters long and 10 meters wide. The tomb was made of stone and earth dug out from the hill.

Richard Harris, NPRAudio interview available at article website Boulder, Colo., is home to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a repository of up-to-the-minute information about the state of the world's ice. The center is a collection of whirring computers, and more importantly, people whose mental thermometers are set below 32 degrees, like research scientists Ted Scambos and Mark Serreze.Scambos studies Antarctica's massive ice sheets, while Serreze keeps his eye on the ice around the North Pole. Their research has turned up the same finding: The planet's ice is in jeopardy.When the enormous Larsen B ice shelf along the Antarctic peninsula broke off and disappeared into the sea in 2002, Scambos was worried no one would care. Four years later, Scambos and Serreze have become the human face of the melting planet, using their research, presentations and interviews to get the message out.

A team of German archeologists will come to Iran to carry out joint excavations with Iranian experts in Chehr Abad historical mine where the four salt men had been discovered. Tehran, 20 June 2006 (CHN Foreign Desk) -- Following the visit of two Iranian archeologists to Germany and Austria, the condition for a joint cooperation between Iranian and German archeologists was prepared and a team of archeologists of Bochum Mining Museum of Germany is to come to Iran to carry out excavations in Chehr Abad historical salt mine, the burial ground of the discovered famous salt men in Zanjan province."After signing a memorandum of understanding between Iran's Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (ICHTO) and Germany's Bochum Mining Museum and defining the budget for this project by ICHTO, this project will officially start," said Roustayi, an archeologist from Iran's Archeology Research Center who went to Germany on behalf of Iran to discuss the criteria for a joint archeological cooperation Iran and Germany.

The earliest known hominid fossil, which dates to about 7 million years ago, is actually some kind of ape, according to an international team of researchers led by the University of Michigan. The finding, they say, suggests scientists should rethink whether we actually descended from apes resembling chimpanzees, which are considered our closest relatives.U-M anthropologist Milford Wolpoff and colleagues examined images and the original paper published on the discovery of the Toumaï cranium (TM 266) or Sahelanthropus tchadensis, as well as a computer reconstruction of the skull. Two other colleagues were actually able to examine the skull, Wolpoff said, in addition to the images and the computer reconstruction.

The Britons of 250,000 years ago were a good deal more sophisticated than they are sometimes given credit for, new archaeological evidence suggests. It comes in the form of giant flint handaxes that have been unearthed at a site at Cuxton in Kent. The tools display exquisite, almost flamboyant, workmanship not associated with this period until now. The axes - one of which measured 307mm (1ft) in length - were dug up from old sand deposits in a front garden.

(SPACE.com) -- The space above you is fizzing with activity as bubbles of superhot gas constantly grow and pop around Earth, scientists announced Tuesday. Astronomers found the activity up where Earth's magnetic field meets a constant stream of particles flowing out from the sun. While space is commonly called a vacuum, in fact there is gas everywhere, albeit not as dense as the air you breathe.The newfound bubbles are technically called density holes. In them, gas density is 10 times lower. The gas in the bubbles is 18,000,000 Fahrenheit (10,000,000 Celsius) instead of the 180,000 degrees Fahrenheit of the surrounding hot gas, which is known as plasma.

A SAUDI archaeologist will make his annual pilgrimage to watch the summer solstice at the 4,000-year-old Saar settlement on Wednesday. Nabiel Al Shaikh has been a loyal observer of the phenomenon for the last nine years as he attempts to prove his theory that the Dilmun civilisation celebrated New Year on June 21 - the first day of summer.He says an ancient temple at the settlement, which features an oddly positioned triangular corner room, was used as an astronomical device to measure the position of the sun, letting priests know it was the beginning of the New Year. If correct, Mr Al Shaikh's hypothesis means the Dilmun civilisation would have been one of the first to base its calendar on the movement of the sun, making it different to other societies of the time such as Mesopotamia, Iran and Egypt.But the expert has received little support for his theory as the sun no longer sets over the corner of the temple and is offset by around 10 degrees. However, he argues this can be explained by the natural movement of soft sand beneath the settlement, which stands on raised ground.

An essay appearing in the latest issue of a prominent Israeli journal raises new questions about the ownership of the Tomb of the Kings, an ancient Jewish holy site in east Jerusalem which has been under French control for 120 years. The paper, which appears in Et-mol, a bimonthly periodical of the Yad Ben-Zvi Institute, was authored by Eyal Ben-Eliyahu of Hebrew University's Department of the History of the Jewish People. It cites an array of new evidence indicating that France's acquisition of the site in 1886 may not have been fully legal.

Bar-Ilan University researchers have found a cache of 120,000 wild oat and 260,000 wild barley grains at the Gilgal archaeological site near Jericho that date back 11,000 years - providing evidence of cultivation during the Neolithic Period.The research, performed by Drs. Ehud Weiss and Anat Hartmann of BIU's department of Land of Israel studies and Prof. Mordechai Kislev of the faculty of life sciences, appears in the June 16 edition of the prestigious journal Science. According to the researchers, the newest find shows that the transition from nomadic food gathering and the beginning of agriculture were quite different than previously thought. Until now, the general assumption has been that agriculture was begun by a single line of human efforts in one specific area. But the BIU researchers found a much more complicated effort undertaken by different human populations in different regions, drawing a completely new picture of the origins of agriculture.

Leptis Magna was where the Romans went to play. See for yourself, it's been beautifully preserved by the sand, says Robert Nurden Porticus. Concordiae. Dedicavit. The jumble of words on the plinth above our heads was just Greek to us. Well, Latin. Either way, if my father - a classics scholar - had been there he could have reeled off a translation. While he visited the ancient sites of Turkey and Greece before he died, he never went to Leptis Magna, the one Roman city in modern-day Libya that he longed to see. So when, much later, I had a chance to visit this sprawling and beautifully preserved city of imperial pomp and luxury-living I took it, sure that the spirit of my dad would walk with me.Leptis Magna is about an hour's drive from Tripoli. Our group travelled by minibus, on which we were joined by Mohammed, a large sleeping policeman whose job was to ensure we didn't nick any artefacts. Even if we had, I'm not sure he would have noticed.At the gates of Leptis Magna we slipped seamlessly from the Muslim into the pagan world, with the imposing monumental arch of Septimus Severus looming above us. It was Septimus, the only emperor of Rome to come from Africa, who AD193 reconfigured Augustus's town planning, which had itself transformed the original Phoenician settlement of 1100BC. He wanted his home town to be the grandest and most exotic hotspot in the empire, and no expense was spared in creating what many regarded as the ultimate temple to hedonism.Not only is it big but it is in fantastic condition. It was built largely of resilient limestone and for 1,000 years it lay under the sand, which protected it from the elements and pillagers. Thanks to painstaking and faithful restoration work by Italian and Libyan archaeologists, it can now be seen in its best light. ..... Read more.

New evidence from Canada and Alaska suggests that climate change, rather than human hunting, may have played the key role in a great die-off of mammoths, horses and other large North American mammals that began more than 10,000 years ago."It was a special time of greater warmth and moisture," said paleoecologist R. Dale Guthrie of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. "The arid steppe receded, the short grass became more lush and then the forest came in. The mammoth and the horses, which did well when it was cold, didn't survive."Guthrie, reporting in the journal Nature, dated animal remains in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon, concluding that mammoths and native American horses could not find adequate forage in the forest. Today's horses, both domesticated and "wild," are the offspring of animals brought to the New World by Europeans beginning in the 16th century.

AT SOME point in the centuries leading up to the birth of Christ, a prominent spur of the Pentlands, the hill range outside Edinburgh, was enclosed by a timber palisade. This wooden structure was designed to provide a defensive barrier for the local Iron Age in habitants. It was the beginning of what became Castlelaw Hillfort.The Iron Age was a time of considerable unrest between local groups as people competed for land and cattle. New weapons led to different techniques of warfare, aided by the advent of iron which could be mass-produced relatively simply and cheaply. In addition, there was a new threat to the Celtic tribes as they faced up to the menace posed by the northward march of the Romans. A fort like this may not have been permanently occupied, but it would provide shelter for many people and their herds in times of danger.

The nature of existence or the future of the universe are questions that scramble the brain of most of us, but Gerry Gilmore grapples with these mysteries every day.The Christchurch-born professor of experimental philosophy at Cambridge University's Institute of Astronomy, has one of the top astronomy jobs in the world and is in New Zealand on a lecture tour. Professor Gilmore left in 1979 after graduating from Canterbury University with the first astronomy doctorate awarded in this country. His work is to try to define the nature of dark energy, a force scientists now believe is accelerating the universe and which, if we can one day get a handle on it, will reveal our ultimate fate. Dark energy makes up about 70 per cent of the universe. About 25 per cent is an unknown, transparent matter and the remaining 5 per cent of matter we recognise, such as planets, the moon, the sun - and us.Cambridge scientist Gerry Gilmore thinks robots would do a better job than the Discovery mission. Picture / Martin Sykes

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkish archaeologists announced Tuesday that they have discovered an ancient Byzantine port in an area that was slated to become an underground station for a modern rail tunnel.They're calling the find the "Port of Theodosius," after the emperor of Rome and Byzantium who died in the year 395, and say the items they're digging up here could shed significant light on the commercial life of this ancient city. Through the ages, the metropolis has been known as Byzantium, Constantinople and finally Istanbul.

CAESAREA, Israel (Reuters) - Above the glistening waves off the shores of the Israeli city of Caesarea, a group of scuba divers suit up to begin their descent into history.As they slowly sink underwater, the light disperses to reveal remnants of what experts say was one of the biggest and most sophisticated sea ports of the Roman Empire.After around 2,000 years, the ancient harbor is again open for business. The tourism business, that is.Israeli and North American archeologists discovered the ruins some 40 years ago and, since last year, have worked to preserve the remnants, some of which once rested above the surface, to create Israel's first underwater archeological museum.

Odd-shaped mounds of dirt in Australia turn out to be fossils of the oldest life on Earth, created by billions of microbes more than three billion years ago, scientists say in a new report. And these mounds are exactly the type of life astrobiologists are looking for on Mars and elsewhere. A study published Thursday in the journal Nature gives the strongest evidence yet that the mounds dotting a large swath of western Australia are Earth's oldest fossils. The theory is that these are not merely dirt piles that formed randomly into odd shapes, but that ancient microbes burrowed in and built them.

YUXI, YUNNAN: Ten divers began a seven-day search for a possible underwater "Atlantis" on Friday in the Fuxian Lake near Kunming, the second-deepest freshwater pool in the country.Local diver Geng Wei first told of a large ancient city in the lake eight years ago, thought to span 2.4 square kilometres. Geng claimed to have seen lots of square boulders more than 1.4 square metres in size, either piled or scattered deep underwater.In 2001, the local government launched the first large exploration of the lake, which was broadcast live across the nation by China Central Television (CCTV).A submarine was sent down and detected a 60-metre-long stone wall. Divers unearthed a shard of pottery embedded in the stone wall, which was found to date back to the Han Dynasty (104 BC-220 AD).The evidence convinced Chinese archaeologists that there might be some constructions under the lake, possibly more than 1,800 years old.

It has spawned a T-shirt, souvenir and hotel industry, drawn thousands of visitors and volunteers every weekend, and become a rare symbol of national unity in a country riven by ruinous sectarian war.Last week, it won the backing of Unesco, the world's foremost educational and cultural body.There is just one thing missing from Bosnia's so-called Pyramid of the Sun, acclaimed by some as the most important archaeological discovery in Europe for more than a century - a pyramid.Despite the fact that Semir Osmanagic, who claims to have discovered it, has no formal archaeological training and believes, among other things, that the South American Mayans descended from visitors from outer space, more people apparently want to believe his theory that Bosnia is home to giant pyramids than to debunk it.Locals cash in on souvenirs

A suspected tomb raider turned police informant has led archaeologists to what experts described Friday as the oldest known frescoed burial chamber in Europe.The tomb, located on a hilly wheat field north of Rome, belonged to a warrior prince from the nearby Etruscan town of Veio, said archaeologists who took journalists on a tour of the site.Dating from around 690 B.C., the underground burial chamber is decorated with roaring lions and migratory birds. Experts are hailing it as the earliest example of the funerary decorations that would later become common in the Greek and Roman world.

The sun streams into the chamberthrough the narrow entranceAn archaeologist has discovered that the passage into a burial mound on Anglesey was built to catch the rising sun on the summer solstice.Steve Burrow said he was "elated" when the sun filtered in through trees as he sat in the Bryn Celli Ddu chamber.He made the discovery as he researched a book about burial tombs in Wales from 4,000-3,000 BC.Carbon dating on the site has also revealed it may contain the oldest building in Wales.Mr Burrow, the curator of Neolithic archaeology at the National Museum of Wales, said he had to visit the site twice before his discovery.

Russia is to build the world's first floating nuclear plant, designed to provide power for remote areas. Under a contract signed on Wednesday, the plant will be built at an Arctic site where atomic submarines are made. Work is expected to start next year on two nuclear reactors and the 144m (475ft) platform for them, despite environmentalists' concerns. Nuclear industry leaders said fears about the safety of the $336m (£183m) facility were unfounded.

Even after decades of study, Yale University's collection of relics from Machu Picchu continues to reveal new details about life in the Incan city in the clouds. The bones tell stories about the health of the Incan people. The metal tools hint at the society's technological advancement. The artifacts help scientists reconstruct ancient trade routes. Archaeologists say they've even learned that the Incan diet revolved not around the Peruvian staple of potatoes, but was based largely on maize. All this from restudying a collection that's nearly a century old. The government of Peru wants it back, saying it never relinquished ownership when Yale scholar Hiram Bingham III rediscovered the city in 1911 and began exporting artifacts from what has become one of the world's most famous archaeological sites.

Discovery of black and white stones belonging to the quarries of Bolaghi Gorge near the summer palace of Darius indicate that such stones were used in decoration of this Achaemenid monument. Tehran, 16 June 2006 (CHN) -- Further archeological excavations on the remains of Darius' palace which was discovered during the recent archeological excavations in Bolaghi Gorge by the Iran-French joint team, indicate that this palace was used as a summer settlement by Darius the Great and other Achaemenid kings. Studies on the stone pillars of the balcony show that the base of these pillars were constructed and decorated with white and black stones. These stones had been obtained from quarries which exist in Bolaghi Gorge.

The Archaeology Department has discovered a Buddhist temple and a brick-soled road dating possibly between the seventh and eighth centuries at the historic Mahasthangarh site in Bogra during a Bangladesh-France joint excavation recently.The structure of the brick-built Buddhist temple found near the Mahasthan Mazar is at least 1,200 years old, said Regional Director of Archaeology Department Abdul Khaleque.The latest session of the Bangladesh-France joint excavation ended in March this year, he said.The temple has features similar to the Godaibari Dhap temple found earlier at Mahasthangarh and the Itakhola Mura temple found at Mainamati in Comilla, said an excavation report of the Archaeology Department.