Newsdesk Archive

A groundbreaking new study examines the origins of holiday giving and finds that our early human ancestors were frequently altruistic. "Reciprocity is arguably the foundational basis of cooperation in humans," writes Michael Gurven (University of California - Santa Barbara). "A core feature of reciprocity is the contingent relationship between acts of giving and receiving among social partners. Contingency is important because it sets the rules for who qualifies as a free-rider or cheater in exchange relations."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A distant object named Buffy has been spotted circling the sun far beyond Neptune in a strange tilted orbit that is making some astronomers question how the outer reaches of the solar system formed. Officially called 2004 XR 190 by the International Astronomical Union but code-named Buffy, the object is now about 58 times as far from the sun as Earth, and twice as far from the sun as Neptune.At this distance from the heart of the planetary system, Buffy is a considered a Kuiper Belt object, but an odd one, astronomers working in Canada, France and the United States said in a statement on Tuesday.

The construction of the Roman Limes was quite possibly influenced by the concept of the Great Wall in China, though the two great buildings of the world are far away from each other, said archaeologists and historians. Although there is no evidence that the two constructions had any direct connections, indirect influence from the Great Wall on the Roman Limes is certain, said Visy Zsolt, a professor with the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology of the University of Pecs in Hungary. Visy made the remarks in an interview with Xinhua as he attended an international conference in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province recently, and his opinion was shared by some Chinese and foreign scholars. The Roman Limes are Europe's largest archaeological monument, consisting of sections of the border line of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent in the 2nd century AD.

new study of genes in humans and chimpanzees pins down with greater accuracy when the two species split from one. The evolutionary divergence occurred between 5 million and 7 million years ago, an estimate that improves on the previous range of 3 million to 13 million years in the past.Modern chimps are the closest animal relative to humans. Knowing when the two split has implication both for understanding how quickly evolution works and for imagining the likelihood of intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, researchers said today.

Scientists believe that studying the humble zebrafish may have helped solve the mystery of human skin colour. A team at Penn State University has found just one tiny change in a key gene plays a major role in determining skin pigmentation. The finding, published in Science, may help explain why people of European descent have lighter skin than those from Africa. It is hoped the research may lead to new ways to treat skin cancer.

CHICAGO -- An excavation project on the Syrian-Iraqi border has uncovered an ancient settlement wiped out by invaders 5,500 years ago. Discovered in northeastern Syria, the ruined city of Hamoukar appears to have been a large city by 4,500 B.C., said archaeologists Clemens Reichel and Salam al-Quntar, who co-directed Syrian-American excavations on the site. Reichel, a research associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and al-Quntar, of the Syrian Department of Antiquities, jointly announced their discoveries on Thursday.

The scientist behind the British Beagle 2 mission to the Red Planet says the craft may have been found in pictures of the Martian surface. Colin Pillinger says the images suggest the mission very nearly worked, but Beagle somehow failed to contact Earth. He thinks the craft may have hit the ground too hard - as the atmosphere was thinner than usual because of dust storms in that region of Mars. This may have damaged onboard instruments, preventing the call home.

Scientists have pieced together part of the genetic recipe of the extinct woolly mammoth. The 5,000 DNA letters spell out the genetic code of its mitochondria, the structures in the cell that generate energy. The research, published in the online edition of Nature, gives an insight into the elephant family tree. It shows that the mammoth was most closely related to the Asian rather than the African elephant.

The power of the sea is to be harnessed to generate electricity at the mouth of Strangford Lough in County Down. Electricity for about 800 homes will be provided by a turbine to be built as part of a five-year pilot project. The turbine, powered by the currents at Strangford Narrows, will be connected to the national grid next autumn. Energy Minister Angela Smith said the scheme, which has been given a £4.5m government grant, would "minimise the impacts of energy generation".

Researchers have produced more evidence that dark chocolate may help to reduce the risk of serious heart disease. hey found eating a few squares a day may stave off artery narrowing and hardening in smokers by countering the disruption caused by their habit. Smoking compromises the activity of both endothelial cells, which line the artery walls, and platelets, which are involved in blood clot formation. The research, by University Hospital, Zurich, is published in Heart.

This year has been the warmest on record in the Northern Hemisphere, say scientists in Britain. It is the second warmest globally since the 1860s, when reliable records began, they add. Ocean temperatures recorded in the Northern Hemisphere Atlantic Ocean have also been the hottest on record. The researchers, from the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia, say this is more evidence for the reality of human-induced global warming.

The family tree of dinosaurs may have to be revised, with the discovery that some could adjust their growth rates. Until now, most dinosaurs were thought to be warm-blooded, with a steady growth rate independent of environmental factors such as food. But a study in Science magazine shows that at least one dinosaur came in "little and large" forms.

A member of the parliamentary select committee on food and the environment yesterday called for emergency action to ban the artificial sweetener aspartame, used in 6,000 food, drink and medicinal products. The Liberal Democrat MP Roger Williams said in an adjournment debate in the Commons that there was "compelling and reliable evidence for this carcinogenic substance to be banned from the UK food and drinks market altogether". In licensing aspartame for use, regulators around the world had failed in their main task of protecting the public, he told MPs. Mr Williams highlighted new concerns about the additive's safety, raised by a recent Italian study that linked it to cancer in rats. He said the history of aspartame's licensing put "regulators and politicians to shame", with the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary and former head of Searle, the company that discovered the sweetener, "calling in his markers" to get it approved.

Archaeologists working in Guatemala say they have uncovered one of the most spectacular pieces of artwork created by the ancient Mayan people.They say they have discovered a mural depicting the Mayan creation myth and the coronation of a king, thought to be more than 2,000 years old.Archaeologist William Saturno said it was like finding the Mayan equivalent of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. The mural was discovered at the San Bartolo site in northern Guatemala.

Scientists have unearthed a collection of fossilised stone tools in East Anglia marking the earliest evidence of human activity in northern Europe. The finding puts our ancestors on the map of what is now Britain some 700,000 years ago, when Suffolk was warmed by a Mediterranean climate and sabre-tooth cats, elephants and giant deer roamed free.Previously, researchers believed early humans did not cross the land bridge that once connected Britain to the European continent until 200,000 years later.There were sharp flakes that could have been used for butchering carcasses and notched flints capable of sawing through bone. The tools were probably shaped from pebbles transported to the site by the Bytham river that once ran from Stratford-upon-Avon to the North Sea.

An unprecedented audit of the oceans has discovered hordes of unusual creatures, forcing scientists to rethink their ideas about the world's wildest marine life.Among the organisms to be identified are tiny carnivorous sea sponges that engulf passing prey with their mouths and single-celled animals that protect themselves by building football-like shells. The species were spotted by two separate expeditions that set out to probe the little-known depths of the South Atlantic and Southern oceans. Scientists aboard the vessels say that up to 90% of the creatures they encountered have never been seen before.The expeditions were part of an attempt to draw up a census of life in the world's oceans, the most under-explored environment on Earth. Now at the halfway stage, the £500m Census of Marine Life involves 1,700 scientists in 73 countries.

Chinese archaeologists have found the gate of the 1,300-year-old Daming Palace, the largest imperial architectural complex of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), state media has said. The "Danfeng" Gate, or Vermillion Phoenix Gate, located in Xi'an, capital of northern China's Shaanxi province, had five doorways, making it the largest imperial palace gate in Chinese history, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The gates of ancient Chinese palaces usually had one to three doorways, Xinhua quoted Chinese archaeologist An Jiayao saying. An is a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Archaeology.

It has become some sort of a tradition to make sensational statements about discovery of Noah's Ark every year in October - November. As a rule, the exact place is not mentioned at that for two reasons. Either these people know the exact location of Noah's Ark and try to keep it secret, or make such sensational statements having no grounds at all just to have their names made public in connection with the sacred mystery.This year, legendary mountain-climber President of Russia's Union of Mountain-Climbers Vladimir Shatayev, 68, went for his seventh tour to Ararat in search of Noah's Ark. Together with his companion Igor Yakovlev he managed to investigate the eastern slope of Big Ararat.

CAPTIVA ISLAND -- On the northernmost tip of Captiva Island stands a piece of southwest Florida history that may help scientists unlock the mysteries of an ancient culture. From the road lined with high-priced homes in the secluded South Seas Plantation, a mound with several peaks built by the Calusa Indians more than 2,000 years ago looks like any other clump of mangroves and vegetation.Hundreds of years of plant growth and soil deposits have hidden the sun-bleached white shells that form the foundation of the mound, which at one point reaches 18 feet high.But by studying what is underneath that growth more thoroughly than in previous mound excavations, scientists hope to uncover the answers of how the Calusa built their shell hills.

People with chronic pain can think their woes away by watching their brains in action, according to a study published yesterday. Using brain scanning equipment, researchers showed that patients with ongoing pain, most of which resulted from previous accidents, could overcome unrelenting aches by using mental exercises to subdue their brain's reaction to pain signals. Researchers at Stanford University medical school in California used a new type of brain scanner called real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rtfMRI) to show people the inner workings of their brains as they sat in scanners. Healthy volunteers and patients with chronic pain were shown real-time footage of activity in a part of their brain called the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, which is responsible for processing pain, and asked to try different mental tactics to change the activity in the region.

Tehran, 11 December 2005 (CHN) -- Archaeological excavations in the historical site of Gour city led to the discovery of staircases and floorings which date back to the Sassanid era.Historical city of Gour, located near Firuz Abad in Fars province, is the first circle-shaped city of Iran. The city was constructed during the third century A.D. by the order of Ardeshir Babakan, the founder of Sassanid dynasty, and was consisted of four main gates. A team of German-Iranian archaeologists are carrying out excavations in the historical site of Gour under the supervision of the German professor, Prof. Dietrich.

LONDON, December 11 (IranMania) - Archaeologists will start the final season of excavations in the pre-historical Sialk Tepe, said CHN. Sialk Tepe which dates back to more than 8000 years ago is one of the most important historical sites of Iran, located in Kashan city. The remains in this historical hill indicate that it was the residential area of many ethnic groups in the course of history. Sialk was first excavated by Roman Grishman, French archaeologist. During his excavations, Grishman unearthed a giant structure which he called the brick structure of Sialk. Despite the previous plans, just the northern hill of Sialk will be excavated during the last season of excavations to study again the history of the sixth millennium BC in Sialk,? said Sadegh Malek Shahmirzadi, head of the excavation team of Sialk.Since the forth season of excavations is focusing just on the northern hill, it seems that like the previous years there is no need for the attendance of foreign researchers on the site, explained Malek.

team of scientists from Bristol, The Open and Sheffield Universities have proved the engravings at Creswell Crags to be greater than 12,800 years old, making them Britain's oldest rock art. Creswell Crags which straddles the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border is riddled with caves which have preserved evidence of human activity during the last Ice Age. Recently, engravings on the walls and ceiling were found by archaeologists. These engravings depict animals such as the European Bison, now extinct from Britain, and other more enigmatic figures. The nature and style of these engravings led archaeologists to wonder if this art was perhaps older than any existing art in Britain.

Scientists have identified a major climate crisis that struck Africa about 70,000 years ago and which may have changed the course of human history. The evidence comes from sediments drilled up from the beds of Lake Malawi and Tanganyika in East Africa, and from Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana. It shows equatorial Africa experienced a prolonged period of drought. It is possible, scientists say, this was the reason some of the first humans left Africa to populate the globe.

Griffins thought to be guarding the ancient Temple of Athena might become the symbol of Foça along with Mediterranean seals, says archaeologist ÖzyiðitSculptures of horses and griffins as old as 2,600 years were discovered during excavations at the Temple of Athena located at the ancient city of Phokaia, which is today within the borders of Ýzmir's Foça district.

ROME - Archaeologists have unveiled a recently unearthed Roman burial ground, complete with sealed marble sarcophagi, that has somehow managed to elude Italy's active tomb raiders. "It is a very unusual find, the experience of a lifetime," said archaeologist Andrea Iannaccone, who led the dig on the outskirts of Rome in a patch of bleak wasteland overlooked by a chicken processing factory. The most prized find so far is a buried tomb containing five sarcophagi dating back to the second century AD, a golden period for ancient Rome when Marcus Aurelius was emperor.

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Mankind's best friend for thousands of years is ready to teach new tricks to science.The genetic makeup of the dog -- in this case a boxer named Tasha -- has been deciphered and should help identify genes that make both dogs and people vulnerable to cancers, heart disease, diabetes, epilepsy, blindness, deafness and even some psychiatric disorders, scientists said Wednesday.The work is the first virtually complete decoding of the species and illuminates the blueprint that shapes everything from the smallest Chihuahua to the biggest Great Dane.

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Archeologists working in Guatemala have unearthed a monument with the earliest-known depiction of a woman of authority in ancient Mayan culture, the Canadian leader of the research team said on Monday. The 2-meter high (6-1/2 foot high) limestone monument, called a stela, has a portrait of a female who could be either a ruler or a mythical goddess, said Kathryn Reese-Taylor, a University of Calgary archeologist.The stela may date from the late 4th Century A.D., making it as much as 200 years older than previously discovered monuments depicting powerful Mayan women, said Reese-Taylor, whose international team made the find earlier this year.

CAIRO: Egyptologists are again looking to converge on Egypt in order to continue excavating one of the most important archaeological sites in recent, years. The Helwan necropolis, 15 miles south of Cairo, is home to over 10,000 tombs that date from pre-dynasty Egypt to the third dynasty (5,000 years ago). According to Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist and professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, Helwan is the flagship site in Lower Egypt. "It is one of the most important sites in the north due to the necropolis' sheer size," said Ikram. Under the direction of the Australian Center for Egyptology at Sydney's Macquarie University, teams of archaeologists have unearthed thousands of tombs over the years at Helwan - this year is sure to bring more of the same.

When it was first proposed, it seemed like a good idea: open up the Greek seas to divers and create a paradise for tourists underwater. Those who backed the law never thought of it as a windfall for looters, nor did it occur to them that it might put the acquisition policies of museums under further scrutiny.But the Greek parliament's unprecedented step last month to allow divers access to the once forbidden coastline has raised fears that archaeological riches preserved in an untouched world will be taken by ruthless thieves."There are treasures in our seas," says Dimitris Athanasoulis, president of the Archaeologists' Association. "This will open the floodgates to smugglers. It'll serve to encourage them at a time when evidence shows the trafficking of antiquities is on the rise."

Todays edition of the Daily Mail (Dec 5 05) continues with part two of an abridged extract from 'Supernatural' concluding a provocative and fascinating series.The reader is prompted to consider:Visitors from beyond. Fairy changelings, alien babies and an astonishing question...are there spirits from another dimension guiding our lives?

The Daily Mail (Saturday 3 December) carries extensive extracts from Graham Hancock's new book Supernatural on pages 54-57 as part of a two-part serialisation of the book."For millennia, man has been seduced by glimpses of the supernatural -- from Stone Age monsters and fairies to alien abductions. But could they ALL be encounters with the same mysterious beings from a parallel universe?"The second part of the article, 'Are there spirit messages hidden in our DNA?', will run on Mon 5th Dec.

A perfectly preserved fossil of a feathered creature that lived 150 million years ago has provided further evidence to show that modern birds are living dinosaurs.The fossil is a complete skeleton of an Archaeopteryx and shows it had features common to birds and a group of meat-eating dinosaurs called therapods.Scientists said the feet of the fossilised Archaeopteryx were anatomically almost identical to those of therapod dinosaurs, which pointed to a common ancestry for both groups. Archaeopteryx had many bird-like features such as feathered wings and a wishbone but it also had distinctly reptilian traits including jaws with teeth, a bony tail and claws on its fingers.

A mysterious energy source is heating up the southern pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus, triggering blasts of highly pressurized water ice that is spewing hundreds of miles into space, say scientists who this week released pictures of the fountains taken by the Cassini satellite. "This is one of the most extraordinary discoveries for us," said Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., who heads the Cassini imaging team. Cassini captured images of the geysers with a back-lit view of Enceladus as the spacecraft made a pass by the moon last weekend.

Any heart gains from drinking alcohol in moderation are likely outweighed by the harm, say researchers. The findings in The Lancet suggest that drinking a glass or two of wine a day may not be such a good idea. Although past research suggests some heart benefits, the New Zealand team says the studies were flawed. Indeed, there is more evidence that heavier drinking provides the most heart protection - alcoholics have relatively 'clean' arteries - they say.

UK astronomers are finding new stars in the sky using a remarkable low-cost camera technique. Known as Lucky Imaging, it has helped the Cambridge team overcome the problem of turbulence in the atmosphere which makes stars twinkle and hard to see. The group's camera takes millions of images very quickly in the hope that just a few are not blurred. The scientists say the clearest pictures are as sharp as those captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Changes to ocean currents in the Atlantic may cool European weather within a few decades, scientists say. Researchers from the UK's National Oceanography Centre say currents derived from the Gulf Stream are weakening, bringing less heat north. Their conclusions, reported in the scientific journal Nature, are based on 50 years of Atlantic observations.

Muenster, Germany (dpa) - Scientists have announced the discover of the precise age of the moon, give or take 10 million years - it is 4,527 million years old and shows little sign of ageing. The date of formation, published Friday in the U.S. journal Science, was about 30 million to 50 million years after the Solar System, scientists from the universities of Muenster and Cologne in Germany and Oxford in England said. The date fits in with the contemporary theory of the moon's origin: That an object the size of Mars collided with an earlier planet dubbed "Proto-Earth", leaving a disc of waste matter in orbit that finally clumped together as the moon.

Deep in South Sinai, snuggled amidst dry gorges and naked valleys, 17 centuries of uninterrupted asceticism in an orthodox monastic centre trace back to the reign of the Roman Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. Never in its long history has St Catherine's Monastery been conquered, damaged, or destroyed. It is famous for its icons and manuscripts, and it is the latter that is about to receive attention. The Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the custodians of the monastery, have announced a three-phase project, the first of which includes comprehensive documentation of all the manuscripts -- one of the richest monastic collections in the world and second in importance only to the Vatican.

When it comes to feet, the earliest known bird species had more in common with Velociraptors than cardinals.Modern bird feet have a hind toe that points backward and helps the birds perch on branches, power lines, and pirates' shoulders. And until a recent discovery of an extremely well preserved skeleton of the earliest known bird species, Archaeopteryx, scientists believed it too had a "perching toe."The new fossil, known as the "Thermopolis specimen," is incredibly well preserved. It left clear impressions of its wing and tail feathers in the limestone it was encased in, and the skull is the best preserved of all the ten specimens ever discovered.

When the Kenyan curator Kiprop Lagat was invited in to the British Museum this year, he was given free rein to peruse all the 12,000 treasures in its vast eastern Africa collections. Now, in a groundbreaking deal which could resolve decades of bickering over Britain's colonial plundering, 140 of those items are going back to Africa for the first time for a special exhibition which will open in Nairobi in the spring.Visitors to the Kenyan show will get the chance to see wooden sculptures, silver and beaded jewellery and circumcision masks thousands of miles from their "home" in London - but much closer to the communities that made them

Berkeley -- Alleged footprints of early Americans found in volcanic rock in Mexico are either extremely old - more than 1 million years older than other evidence of human presence in the Western Hemisphere - or not footprints at all, according to a new analysis published this week in Nature. The study was conducted by geologists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center and the University of California, Berkeley, as part of an investigative team of geologists and anthropologists from the United States and Mexico. Earlier this year, researchers in England touted these "footprints" as definitive proof that humans were in the Americas much earlier than 11,000 years ago, which is the accepted date for the arrival of humans across a northern land-bridge from Asia. These scientists, led by geologist Silvia Gonzalez of Liverpool's John Moores University, dated the volcanic rock at 40,000 years old. They hypothesized that early hunters walked across ash freshly deposited near a lake by volcanoes that are still active in the area around Puebla, Mexico. The so-called footprints, subsequently covered by more ash and inundated by lake waters, eventually turned to rock.

A British palaeontologist has discovered the footprints of a giant water scorpion that used to roam across Scotland around 330m years ago.The tracks of the 1.6 metre (5ft) long creature, called Hibbertopterus, show that although it normally lived underwater, it could also crawl on to land.Martin Whyte, from the University of Sheffield, found the scorpion tracks during geological fieldwork in central Scotland. "I came across a block of sandstone and noticed a strong central groove with three rows of crescent shaped footprints on either side," he says.

Mars Express has become the first spacecraft to detect reserves of water ice deep beneath the surface of the Red Planet, experts have announced. The Marsis radar experiment carried onboard appears to have discovered water ice more than 1km below ground.It is thought the greatest reservoir of retained water on Mars could be found beneath the surface, perhaps providing a habitat for microbial life.The US-European Marsis team report their findings in the journal Science. Radar sees ice deep below Mars

Swimming with dolphins appears to help alleviate mild to moderate depression, researchers have found.A University of Leicester team tested the effect of regular swimming sessions with dolphins on 15 depressed people in a study carried out in Honduras. They found that symptoms improved more among this group than among another 15 who swam in the same area - but did not interact with dolphins.

Current levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years. That is the conclusion of new European studies looking at ice taken from 3km below the surface of Antarctica. The scientists say their research shows present day warming to be exceptional.

Advanced satellite analysis of the Brazilian rainforest reveals that logging is causing more than twice as much damage as previously thought. SATELLITE analysis of the Brazilian rainforest has revealed that logging is causing more than twice as much damage as previously thought. Many ecologists believe that it may be contributing to the region's worst drought in 40 years. Previous satellite analyses could not tell normal forest from areas that had been thinned by selective logging, in which only valuable timber such as mahogany is removed. Only areas that had been completely cleared were discernible from orbit, and most estimates of selective logging came from questionable reports of local sawmill activities.

The first images ever made of retinas in living people reveal surprising variation from one person to the next. Yet somehow our perceptions don't vary as might be expected. Imaging thousands of cells responsible for detecting color in the deepest layer of the eye, scientists found that our eyes are wired differently. Yet we all -- with the exception of the color blind -- identify colors similarly. The results suggest that the brain plays an even more significant role than thought in deciding what we see.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Ancient wooden anchors preserved by natural salt for more than 2,000 years have been discovered on the receding shores of the Dead Sea, Israel TV reported Monday. Archaeologist David Mevorach told the TV station that one anchor dated back 2,500 years -- the oldest ever found. Another anchor was 2,000 years old, he said. They were built from acacia wood for Roman ships, he said.The Dead Sea, with no outlet, has a high concentration of salt. "The salt and the lack of oxygen in the water preserved them in a special way, including the ropes that were tied to the boat,'' he said.

Athens - Archaeologists conducting restoration work on the Acropolis said heavy rain is eroding the foundation of the ancient structure. Restorers have spend decades replacing rusted iron clamps and cement inserts on the Acropolis' three main monuments, the Parthenon, the Propylea and the temple of Athena Nike, after a misguided attempt to strengthen the temple was conducted earlier this century by Greek civil engineer Nikos Balanos. In 1975, a team of archaeologists, architects and engineers launched an ambitious 25 million dollar restoration project.

Huge chunks of the Earth's crust crashed into the edge of the core 2.2bn years ago, where they may have changed the speed at which the fledgling planet rotated and so altered the length of its day, scientists announce today. The movement of dense material towards the centre of the Earth could have speeded up its rotation in the same way that an ice skater spins faster by drawing in the arms towards the body.Crust made on the ocean floor slides into the Earth's mantle. But David Dobson and co-researchers at University College London have come up with a theory to explain some unusual patterns in seismic waves travelling through the Earth. Dr Dobson will present their findings at the William Smith meeting of the Geological Society of London today.

Scholars from Lyon and Toronto Universities have asked to carry out excavations in the ancient caves of Mazandaran province in Iran.Previous studies and excavations in the caves indicate that human settlement in Mazandaran province dates back to 40,000 years ago. Mazandaran province, in the southern coastal line of the Caspian Sea, enjoys several unique caves such as Kushiman. Mazandaran is one of the most historical provinces of Iran, the inhabitants of which have lived in urbanized societies from the 5th millennium BC. Until now a lot of mysteries of the 5,000-year-old life of the people of the region have been revealed.

AN archaeological project is expected to outline the chronology in the prehistoric millennium from 4,500 years ago to 3,500 years ago to decode the origin of Chinese civilization. The government-backed project, called "Pre-research on the Origin of the Chinese Civilization," was launched in June 2004 with an aim to work out the chronology of the Yao, Shun, Yu periods and the Xia Dynasty, said Wang Wei, deputy director of the Archaeological Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. Yao, Shun and Yu are three leaders who have been much praised in historical tradition. In their period disastrous floods occurred and they called on all the tribes to fight against the disasters.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A millennium has passed, but the massacre is still chilling: a king and queen of ancient Cancuen, over 30 nobles and pregnant women, are overwhelmed by their attackers and murdered with spears and axes. Deep in Guatemala's Peten rain forest the ruins of the sprawling palace in the old royal city have revealed skeletons and the last-minute panic that overtook Cancuen before it was overcome by marauders."The king and queen and their nobles apparently were gathered together and slain en masse, many by lance thrusts to the neck or head," said Arthur Demarest, one of the lead archaeologists of the team that excavated the grim site in Guatemala and its long hidden story.

A surprising new study by an international team of researchers has concluded Earth's continents most likely were in place soon after the planet was formed, overturning a long-held theory that the early planet was either moon-like or dominated by oceans. The team came to the conclusion following an analysis of a rare metal element known as hafnium in ancient minerals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia, thought to be among the oldest rocks on Earth. Hafnium is found in association with zircon crystals in the Jack Hills rocks, which date to almost 4.4 billion years ago.

SEOUL, South Korea - Everything seemed so bright for pioneering stem cell scientist Woo Suk Hwang just a few weeks ago after two major breakthroughs this year.Now the man who made world headlines by cloning a dog faces a swirl of allegations over the ethics of his team's work.The Seoul National University scientist is a hero in South Korea, where postage stamps have been commissioned depicting the hopes of his research, a man rising from a wheelchair and walking.

To the American Indians who hold them sacred, the seven rocks in the way of Paseo del Norte's westward expansion aren't inanimate stones. They're alive. They're connections to their sacred earth that can't be replicated 100 feet away. Which is why the city's plans to relocate the rocks decorated with ancient petroglyphic markings- even if they're in the same orientation as they were found - is disturbing, said Lorene Willis, director of the Jicarilla Apache's cultural affairs office. "They can't move those rocks," Willis said. "It loses its significance once it's been moved.

BARSTOW - In the multicolored hills overlooking the Mojave River Valley, the excavation of stone tools and flakes reveals human activities from the distant past.A new system of geologic dating has confirmed that an alluvial deposit bearing the stone tools and flakes at the Calico archaeological site is about 135,000 years old.But the site could even be older.Calico project director Fred Budinger Jr. said a soil sample, taken at a depth of 17 1/2 feet in one of three master pits at the dig near Yermo, verifies that the deposit dates to the Middle Pleistocene Epoch - the Ice Age.

The Hayabusa space probe landed successfully on its asteroid target despite the initial announcement of a failure, Japan's space agency says. But it apparently failed to drop equipment to collect material from the surface of asteroid Itokawa. The Japanese spacecraft is on a mission to return these samples from Itokawa to Earth for the summer of 2007.

The European settlers who were present at the first Thanksgiving in 1621 thought the Native Americans were wild Israelites who had lost their "civilized" ways after living in the New World wilderness, according to a U.S. historian. The theory, which is outlined in a recent press release and is supported by several other American colonial history scholars, suggests one reason why tensions often mounted between the Native Americans and the Europeans.It also foreshadows the later missionary work by other Europeans, many of whom felt they were turning the Native Americans back to their former beliefs.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The disappearance of Flight 19, a Navy mission that began the myth of the Bermuda Triangle, is still unexplained, but not forgotten, 60 years later. The 27 Navy airmen who disappeared somewhere off Florida's coast on December 5, 1945, were honored in a House resolution Thursday. Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Florida, said he hoped the gesture would help bring closure for surviving families.What happened is the question that has befuddled, entertained and tormented skeptics and those who believe that the Bermuda Triangle -- a stretch of ocean between Puerto Rico, Bermuda and Miami -- is an area of supernatural phenomena.

NICOSIA (Reuters) - Archaeologists have discovered what they believe is the earliest evidence yet of long distance seafaring in the eastern Mediterranean, undermining beliefs that ancient mariners never ventured into open seas. Fragments of stone implements believed to be up to 12,000 years old have been found at two sites of Cyprus, suggesting roving mariners used the areas as temporary camp sites after forays from what is today Syria and Turkey. The flints are unlike anything found in the geological make-up of Cyprus, and more than 1,000 years older than the timing of the first permanent settlers to the island.

US President George Bush planned to bomb Aljazeera, British newspaper the Daily Mirror has reported, citing a Downing Street memo marked top secret. The five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveals that Blair talked Bush out of launching a military strike on the station, unnamed sources told the daily.The transcript of the pair's talks during Blair's 16 April 2004 visit to Washington allegedly shows Bush wanted to attack the satellite channel's headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

Amateur fossil hunter Van Turner felt certain he had found something important during his search of earth turned up by bulldozers making way for a new subdivision in Dallas County.Sixteen years later, scientists finally confirmed that Turner had discovered the first well preserved early mosasaur found in North America -- a prehistoric lizard that lived 92 million years ago that evolved into what some call the "T. Rex of the ocean."

A rare seal bearing a picture of Jesus on one side was discovered at an archeological dig in the old city of Tiberias on Thursday. The other side of the seal, which dates from the sixth century, depicts a cross and bears the inscription "Christos." The seal was discovered by two volunteers, employees of the American and British embassies.

There are a trio of longstanding views of what Earth might have looked like in its formative years: a moon-like desert, a fiery volcanic hell, or a waterworld with no firm footing. All three may be wrong. A new study concludes Earth had continents and oceans 4.3 billion years ago, which is just a geological eyeblink after the planet is thought to have formed, in the wake of the Sun's birth 4.6 billion years ago. A separate study reported in May came to a similar conclusion, also suggesting that notions of a fiery, hellish planet back then have been overblown.

A new study of the Earth's oldest minerals has pushed back the date of the first solid ground, and possibly oceans, another half-billion years to only a couple hundred million years after the planet formed. The evidence, published in the journal Science, comes from tiny extremely ancient zircon crystals from Jack Hills, Australia, which contain traces of the extremely long-lived elements called hafnium and lutetium. The quantities of these two rare elements tell the tale of a layered Earth with a walkable surface, liquid water and possibly life as early as 4.5 billion years ago.

he oldest map of anywhere in the western world, dating from about 500 BC, has been unearthed in southern Italy. Known as the Soleto Map, the depiction of Apulia, the heel of Italy's "boot", is on a piece of black-glazed terracotta vase about the size of a postage stamp.It was found in a dig led by the Belgian archaeologist Thierry van Compernolle, of Montpellier University, two years ago. But its existence was kept secret until more research was carried out."The map offers, to date, for the Mediterranean, and more generally for western civilisation, the oldest map of a real space," the university said recently.

Archaeologists excavating the ruined Guatemalan city of Cancuen have found the remains of what they believe is one of the pivotal events in the collapse of the Maya civilization: The desperate defense of the once-great trading center and the ritual execution of at least 45 members of its royal court. An enemy as yet unknown not only wiped out the royal dynasty about A.D. 800 but also systematically eliminated religious and cultural artifacts as well, in effect, killing the city and leaving it abandoned to the elements, researchers announced Wednesday. After this event, cities in the western Maya lowlands in Guatemala were abandoned, most within 20 to 30 years, the researchers said. The displaced populations moved to the East and North, where they eventually depleted local resources and faded away.

The fossils of prehistoric animals tentatively dated to more than 5 million years ago have been unearthed in Trigonou municipality by crews of the Egnatia company while digging to build a gradient road linking the region with the Via Egnatia highway, it was announced on Monday.The finds, in the Dikaia region, include sections of tusks, a molar and a premolar of a proboscidean mastodon, and bones of hipparions (prehistoric horses).The work on the road was immediately discontinued, and the Komotini Antiquities Ephorate and the Northern Greece Ephorate of Paleoanthroppology and Speleology were immediately alerted.

To the naked eye, they look like mounds of soil on a plain of flat farmland. But to archaeologists, the network of small hills represents a treasure trove of ancient Persian culture now endangered by organised plunder and intensive agriculture.Iranian cultural heritage officials are on a collision course with rural communities after embarking on a legal crusade to reclaim the hills and nearby land on which, they believe, once stood the city of Jondishapour, where the Persian King Shapour I vanquished the Roman emperor Valerian more than 1,700 years ago.

Elite women brewed the final batch of ceremonial beer at a mountaintop outpost in ancient Peru, archeologists and anthropologists say. The 1,000-year-old brewery and palace was discovered during an excavation at Cerro Baul, about 2,400 metres above sea level in what is now southern Peru. The site predates the Inca Empire. The brewery had an 1,800-litre capacity for chicha, a fermented alcoholic drink based on corn and a pepper tree berry. The city had a population of under 1,000

LONDON, November 17 (IranMania) - David Whitehouse was the first archaeologist who discovered Siraf. He has described the site as far more marvelous and splendid than those of the legends, CHN reported. According to his researches, the marine trade of the Persian Gulf and Far East lands flourished in Siraf. Whitehouse, who due to an illness could not attend Siraf international conference, sent a message to the conference, which was delivered by Professor

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's head man is calling for a new way to put cargo into space. That could mean new money and jobs for Central Florida, WESH 2 News reported.NASA Administrator Michael Griffin wants private industry to launch supplies to astronauts in space.Rockets and spacecraft designed 50 years ago represented the newest technology. Now, NASA wants private industry to come up with something newer, better and cheaper, and turn space exploration into a profit-making enterprise.

The inscription attributed to King Jehoash whose discovery was announced earlier this week was reportedly found near Jerusalem's Muslim cemetery, outside the eastern wall of the Temple Mount, not far from Golden Gate, according to information obtained by Ha'aretz. Jehoash ruled in Jerusalem at the end of the ninth century B.C.E. The inscription has been authenticated by the National Infrastructure Ministry's Geological Survey of Israel. Three different people and institutions involved in examining the stone told Ha'aretz that representatives of the collector who owns the stone told them it was found near the Muslim cemetery. One added that he was told it had been found following a landslide or flood.

It was a bad day in the year 406 B.C. Euripides, an elderly playwright, was wandering around the palace, skulking in his gloom. For decades he had dedicated himself to the theater and written and directed more than 90 plays, performed before thousands of people. Yet for all his pains, he had won prizes for only three of his dramas, a minuscule number compared to his rivals Sophocles and Aeschylus. More than once, he had been held up to public ridicule by the tart-tongued comedian Aristophanes. In sadness and anger, Euripides left his home in Athens and accepted an offer to live in distant Macedon, where he would write his last plays in self-imposed exile. Euripides might have been more successful if he had not made a point of pointing out the flaws of the pagan gods who presided over Athens' destiny

YEREVAN, Armenia - Archeologists said Wednesday they have unearthed burial mounds dating back to the third millennium B.C. which they believe contain remains and trinkets from ancient Aryan nomads. Historian Hakob Simonian said Wednesday that the four mounds were among 30 discovered about 35 miles west of the Armenian capital Yerevan, containing beads made of agate, carnelian and as well as the remains of what appears to be a man, aged 50-55.Also found were remains of domesticated horses and glazed pottery appearing to show chariots, Simonian said.

LIMA, Peru - A camera crane operator shooting a commercial at the Machu Picchu Inca ruins whose equipment tipped and chipped a stone sundial there has been sentenced to six years in prison, officials said Friday. The local court in Urubamba, 338 miles southeast of the capital, Lima, said it had found Walter Leonidas Espinoza guilty on Nov. 3 of destruction and alteration of cultural goods.The charge carries a maximum penalty of eight years behind bars. Antonio Terrazas, a lawyer acting as spokesman for Peru's Institute of Culture, said offenders are seldom charged and when they are prosecuted and found guilty, it normally results only in a fine or a few months in jail.

A study of DNA from ancient farmers in Europe shows sharp differences from that of modern Europeans. The research was aimed at helping solve the mystery of European origins, but it may just add fuel to the debate. Researchers led by Wolfgang Haak of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, argue that their finding supports the belief that modern residents of central Europe descended from old stone age hunter-gatherers, present 40,000 years ago, and not the early farmers who arrived thousands of years later. Other anthropologists questioned that conclusion, arguing that the available information is insufficient to support it.

The gravity of a spacecraft could one day be used to alter the course of an Earth-threatening asteroid, according to astronauts at NASA's Johnson Space Center.The so-called gravitational tractor design not only capitalizes on advanced rocket technology already planned for some NASA programs, but also provides a cheaper and more fastidious solution than other methods."If you're trying to deflect an asteroid from hitting the Earth, you better be very controlled before you do it. You don't want to do the silly Hollywood movie thing, which is to blow it up," said astronaut Edward Lu, who with astronaut Stanley Love published the proposal in the Nov. 10 issue of Nature.

A Pravda article:One can imagine researchers' disappointment when they unsealed Cheops's sarcophagus and found a small statuette in lieu of a mummyThe French scientist Lauert arrived in Egypt 60 years ago. He was going to unravel the mystery of the pyramids. The scientist is still in Egypt. These days the 90-year old researcher says he has to crack more mysteries than before. Pyramids still remain the world's wonder No.1 since everything we know about them is mostly guesswork and speculation. Tatyana Shakurova, an Egyptologist at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow, shared her views of some mysteries relating to the Egyptian pyramids.

A PARTICULARLY gruesome Roman tombstone unearthed on a Lancaster building site has been described as a 'significant find' by historians.Last week archaeologists from Manchester University Archaeo-logical Unit, working on a site to the south of Lancaster city centre, unearthed a fine example of a tombstone of a Roman cavalry soldier.The Manchester team had won the 'dig' contract in a tendering process for the site, which is adjacent to the road which led from the south to the Roman fort on Castle Hill. Over the years, a considerable amount of cemetery material has come from this general area. It was normal practice in Roman times for burials and cremation-urns to be put to rest beside the roads leading from settlements.

Archaeologists have begun to piece together the story of a mysterious massacre more than 4,000 years ago in the former royal city of Mendes, which flourished for 20 centuries on a low mound overlooking the green fields and papyrus marshes of the Nile delta north of Cairo.Donald Redford of Pennsylvania State University had begun to excavate the foundations of a huge temple linked to Rameses II, the pharaoh traditionally linked to the biblical story of Moses, when he found an earlier structure destroyed by fire, and evidence of a grisly episode of death on the Nile, he told a Bloomsbury Academy conference in London on Saturday.

Huge tracts of grooved seafloor off the Antarctic Peninsula are telling researchers about a larger role Antarctica's ice has played in climate-driven sea-level rise, and hinting at how quickly glaciers can contribute to drowning coastlines worldwide.New seafloor imagery shows long, parallel grooves in the 1,300 to 3,900-foot-deep (400 to 1,200 meters) undersea continental shelf.The grooves were most likely gouged by fast-flowing glaciers that stretched to the edge of the continental shelf.

More than 20 rare, carved wooden figures dating to the early 19th century recently were discovered in a cave at North Kona, Hawaii, according to several newspaper reports from the Big Island. The objects are believed to be tiki, which native Hawaiians refer to as "ki'i," or carved images of gods thought to house spirits. Construction crew workers accidentally breached the lava tube cave while preparing for a 450-acre residential and golf development at Kohanaiki. News reports said state officials were brought in to further investigate the cave, which now is sealed and under 24-hour security watch.

It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. If that does not sound radical enough, how about this: the principle behind the source turns modern physics on its head.Randell Mills, a Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel. Independent scientists claim to have verified the experiments and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market. And he claims to be just months away from unveiling his creation

Using a high-precision absolute-dating method (techniques involving electron spin resonance and uranium series), Jack Rink, associate professor of geography and earth sciences at McMaster, has determined that Gigantopithecus blackii, the largest primate that ever lived, roamed southeast Asia for nearly a million years before the species died out 100,000 years ago. This was known as the Pleistocene period, by which time humans had already existed for a million years. "A missing piece of the puzzle has always focused on pin-pointing when Gigantopithecus existed," explains Rink. "This is a primate that co-existed with humans at a time when humans were undergoing a major evolutionary change. Guangxi province in southern China, where the Gigantopithecus fossils were found, is the same region where some believe the modern human race originated."

There is an interview with Graham Hancock in today's Daily Express in a double page spread.

In the 10th century B.C., in the hill country south of Jerusalem, a scribe carved his ABCs on a limestone boulder - actually, his aleph-beth-gimels, for the string of letters appears to be an early rendering of the emergent Hebrew alphabet. Archaeologists digging in July at the site, Tel Zayit, found the inscribed stone in the wall of an ancient building. After an analysis of associated pottery and the position of the wall in the layers of ruins, the discoverers concluded that this was the earliest known specimen of the Hebrew alphabet and an important benchmark in the history of writing, they said this week.If the discoverers are right, the stone bears the oldest reliably dated example of an abecedary - the letters of the alphabet written out from beginning to end in their traditional sequence. Several scholars who have examined the inscription tend to support this view.

Fabricated tornadoes could be the next best thing in wind energy if a machine that recreates a powerful, natural phenomenon can harness their power successfully. The atmospheric vortex engine, an invention by Canadian petroleum engineer, Louis Michaud, could be used to capture waste heat from power plants and convert it into useable megawatts. "Two hundred megawatts would supply the electricity needs of a city of 100,000 people with 25,000 homes," said Michaud, whose theories were tested this summer in Utah at an experimental tower owned and operated by colleague and computer engineer Tom Fletcher.

LAKE KANASI, China - The moon is barely a crescent in the sky as dusk darkens the milky green surface of Lake Kanasi. Four people huddle on the edge of a floating wooden dock, eyes scanning this mountain lake near China's remote northwestern frontier with Central Asia. Small waves lap at their shoes. In a soft voice, Yuan Guoying recounts his two sightings of the creatures. The first over there, from a cliff, Yuan says. Then again, 19 years later. From the group comes a squeal as tiny, silver fish dart at hunks of bread they have dropped in. "Look! There are so many of them!" says one girl. "But where's the lake monster?"Another 40 minutes pass. A chill breeze kicks up. Yuan is unfazed. "We can wait all night," he says. "Let's see if this is our fate."They have come by the tens of thousands over the years - skeptical scientists, curious tourists - answering the lure of the mysterious "Kanasi Huguai," China's very own version of the Loch Ness monster.

The "Ötzi curse" legend has been strengthened with the death of the seventh person to come into contact with the world's oldest and best-preserved mummy.Molecular archaeologist Tom Loy, who discovered four different types of human blood on Ötzi's clothing in 2003, was found dead in his Brisbane home a fortnight ago, The Australian newspaper reported on Friday.

An archaeological team, jointly set up by School of Archaeology and Museum Studies of the Peking University and Beijing Research Institute of Cultural Relics, has discovered recently an early New Stone Age human skeleton buried with bent limbs that lived about 9,000 years ago, with more earlier human remains with traces of fire use in the North China area, following the discovery of an intact corpse in Donghulin Village of Zhaitang Town in Beijing's Mentouguo District in October 2003, reports the overseas edition of People's Daily on November 3.The tomb faces the Qingshui River with backing on to a mountain slope, just to avoid attacks from northwest winds. In an about 1.2-meter-long tomb, there lies a skeleton about one meter long quietly. His or her head faces north with face towards east a little. The head of the skeleton is intact. However, the skeleton posture is very strange, looking just like a baby in a mother's womb, in terminology, this is known as a burial with limps bent.

(AP) James Richeson was checking out erosion damage on eastern Long Island after days of torrential rain last month when he made a fascinating discovery."I ... saw little bits of bone down the hillside and some of it had washed away in the surf already," said Richeson, the parks supervisor at Indian Island County Park _ named in honor of the local Shinnecock and other tribes that have inhabited Long Island for as much as 12,000 years.A closer inspection uncovered skull and bone fragments, as well as several artifacts, including a ceramic bowl and pipe covered with ornate geometric markings. The artifacts date at least 500 years _ and possibly as far back as 700 B.C. _ according to one expert who says such finds are becoming more common.

Archeologists were ecstatic after discovering what may be a 2000-year-old grave in Herad, Farsund in southwest Norway.Archeologist Wenche Helliksen told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) that the grave, which included a person in a coffin roughly 2000 years old, was very special."This is a find that you make just once in a lifetime. I have been digging for 20 years and have never made such a find," Helliksen said.

If humans don't curb use of fossil fuels, the planet will warm 14.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2300. The polar ice caps will disappear and oceans will rise 23 feet (7 meters). That's the conclusion of climate simulations released today by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. At the poles, the average temperature would rise more than 36 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius), the model predicts. "The temperature estimate is actually conservative because the model didn't take into consideration changing land use such as deforestation and build out of cities into outlying wilderness areas," said Govindasamy Bala of the Laboratory's Energy and Environment Directorate.

A wild idea to combat global warming suggests creating an artificial ring of small particles or spacecrafts around Earth to shade the tropics and moderate climate extremes. There would be side effects, proponents admit. An effective sunlight-scattering particle ring would illuminate our night sky as much as the full Moon, for example. And the price tag would knock the socks off even a big-budget agency like NASA: $6 trillion to $200 trillion for the particle approach. Deploying tiny spacecraft would come at a relative bargain: a mere $500 billion tops. But the idea, detailed today in the online version of the journal Acta Astronautica, illustrates that climate change can be battled with new technologies, according to one scientist not involved in the new work.An illustration of the ring of particles or spacecraft casting a shadow on equatorial Earth. To keep the particles in place, gravitationally significant shepherding spacecraft might be employed. They would herd the particle much like small moons keep Saturns rings in place. Credit: Star Technology and Research Inc

There is no scientific proof exposure to electrical equipment causes ill health, say scientists. Researchers from the Health Protection Agency (HPA) looked at research into electrical sensitivity and reports from patients. The HPA said people could have real and unpleasant symptoms. But they said there was insufficient evidence of a direct link between electrical exposure and these symptoms, which can often be disabling.

A Japanese spacecraft is about to make a close encounter with an asteroid in a mission to recover space dust. The Hayabusa probe is stationed over a giant asteroid some 300 million km from Earth. On Friday it will descend to the surface of the 600-metre-long space rock to carry out observations and release a tiny robotic probe. Two further descents are planned later this month to collect samples for return to Earth next year.

The evolutionary process that Charles Darwin discovered almost 150 years ago, responsible for transforming dinosaurs into birds and allowing the walking ancestors of whales to take to the seas, is still quietly at work in humans today.Darwin's natural selection is the process by which nature rewards those individuals better adapted to their environments with survival and reproductive success. It works at the level of genes, sections of DNA that encode for proteins serve as the software of life.In one of the most detailed human DNA studies ever conducted, researchers analyzed nearly 12,000 genes from 39 people and a chimpanzee, our closest living relative. Darwin argued that useless limbs and leftover organs are evidence of evolution. The findings suggest that about 9 percent of the human genes examined are undergoing rapid evolution.