Newsdesk Archive

RESEARCH TRIANGLE, N.C., May 6 (AScribe Newswire) -- It's not exactly Google, but the stunning cache of information Professor Robert Englund and his colleagues are making accessible on the Web is revolutionary - nearly one million lines of transcribed cuneiform, the earliest form of writing, with much more to come - documenting the social and literary worlds of Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia, ancient lands comprising modern Iraq and parts of Iran, Syria, and Turkey. While the wedge-like cuneiform script was often incised on stone slabs that could weigh several tons, it was usually impressed onto more portable clay tablets that hardened quickly in the hot and dry climate of the region.

Archaeological discoveries in eastern parts of Oman have confirmed that the sultanate's merchants moved between the international civilisation centres in the third millennium BC, according to a top official at the Ministry of National Heritage and Culture. "Discoveries at Ra's Al Jinz, Ra's Al Hadd and El Suwayh sites in the Eastern Region have provided an undoubted evidence of trade relations between the ancient Omani people and the civilisation centres of India, Mesopotamia and Africa," Biubwa Ali Al Sa-bry, director of archaeology, told Gulf News yesterday

When your family history is history, the family does not always get along. Take the Medici, one of Italy's most celebrated clans. Known for writing cheques to Michelangelo, the Medici have of late been airing some dirty laundry as a handful of their descendants fall into a spat. Why are the descendants of this famous Renaissance dynasty sniping at one another in acid aristocratic jabs? Scientists in Florence are planning to exhume the remains of 49 Medici corpses this month for a wide-ranging forensic study. One branch of the family was invited to take part, but a second branch was not.

Archaeologists are starting work to restore one of Cornwall's prehistoric stone circles. Three of the stones at the Nine Maidens circle at Madron near Penzance which have fallen over will be re-erected in time for the summer. The project is a joint venture with Cornwall County Council, the Environment Department (Defra) and the Nine Maidens Commoners. Work is expected to last until the end of May. In the 18th century there were 13 stones in the circle, but workings at the nearby Ding Dong mineral mine moved closer to the circle until they reached and disturbed the site.

A pair of 30 million-year-old fossils from southern Germany are the oldest fossil hummingbirds, a researcher says. The location of the finds is unexpected, because today the birds are only known from the Americas. In the latest edition of Science magazine, Dr Gerald Mayr claims the fossils show many striking resemblances to modern hummingbird groups.

Nasa scientists are considering whether to send the Mars rover Opportunity into an impact crater the buggy has spent the last three weeks travelling to. Opportunity is now sitting at the edge of the 130m-wide Endurance Crater on the Martian Meridiani Planum. Professor Steve Squyres said the crater contained rocks that were likely to be of huge scientific interest. But the problem facing Nasa is that the rover could have difficulty getting out of the depression once inside.

DALLAS - While excavating an ancient royal palace deep in the Guatemalan rain forest, archaeologists made a rare discovery - the 1,200-year-old tomb and skeleton of a Mayan queen. Archaeologists announced the find Thursday, and said the woman appears to have been a powerful leader of a city that may have been home to tens of thousands of people at its peak. They found her bones on a raised platform, with evidence of riches scattered around her body. "We find clues of people's existence in the past all the time, from the garbage they left or the buildings they built. ... But when you actually come face-to-face with human beings, it's a deeply sacred moment for all of us," said David Freidel, an anthropology professor at Southern Methodist University, which sponsored a team of 20 archaeologists excavating the site.

Ashgabat, , May. 5 (UPI) -- Archaeologists have made a sensational discovery in Turkmenistan -- a royal mausoleum -- local media reported Wednesday. The Margianskaya expedition led by Victor Sarianidi, a prominent Russian archaeologist, has been digging on the site of an ancient settlement called Gonur in the delta of the Murgab River in the eastern Mary region, some 200 miles east of the country's capital, Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.ru said.

BRONZE Age gold unearthed by metal detectors in North Wales was yesterday officially declared treasure of international importance. It was the metal detectors' equivalent of winning the lottery, a treasure trove inquest heard. Three enthusiasts from Liverpool and the owner of the land at Rossett, near Wrexham, where the hoard was discovered, will be sharing the value of the find. A gold Bronze Age Ringlemere Cup, found in Kent in 2001, was valued at £270,000.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) -- Are the three musketeers and four swashbuckling chums buried under an unassuming Dutch garden in the town where legendary swordsman D'Artagnan was killed? Police plan to turn over an investigation into the discovery of the seven skeletons to archaeologists in the southern Dutch town of Maastricht, which has a history of battles going back to Roman times.

CAIRO (AFP) - A Belgian archaeological mission to Egypt discovered a Pharaonic housing compound close to a gold mine in mountains along the Red Sea, the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities said. "The Belgian mission headed by Frank Vermeulen surveyed an area of three square kilometers (one square mile) and discovered numerous housing compounds for laborers in the gold mine," the council's head of Pharaonic Archaeology, Sabri Abdulaziz, told AFP. The new discovery is situated 120 kilometres (75 miles) from the city of Marsa Alam on the Red Sea, 700 kilometres southeast of Cairo.

Physics-based techniques are playing an increasingly important role in the analysis of archaeological artefacts. At the 34th Symposium of Archaeometry in Zaragosa, Spain, this week Manolis Pantos and colleagues at the Daresbury and Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in the UK will describe how they used beams of synchrotron radiation and neutrons to examine a bronze helmet from ancient Greece. The non-destructive techniques employed by the group have helped to unravel the object's unusual history and could now used to investigate other ancient artefacts.

Cape Town - The Dutch slave ship, Meermin, ran aground off the southern Cape coast 236 years ago after an on-board rebellion nearly succeeded - and now researchers are poised to uncover her secrets.

Deleting memories is simple with computers, but as the movie Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind shows, it's still - as far as humans are concerned - the stuff of science fiction. Or is it?

HCM City, May 4 (VNA) - Archaeologists have found that many artifacts of great value in Cat Tien in the Central Highland province of Lam Dong, which give new clues to the trade history between Viet Nam and other countries as far away as the Middle East. The findings announced at a seminar in Da Lat City include a statue featuring a victory deity standing on the back of a buffalo, a silver box carved with a reclining lion, a Somasutra water spout, jewelry and lingas among various other items.

Members of the London-based Society of Thames Mudlarks look very different today from the Victorian street children the group takes its name from. Where ragged waifs once searched for bits of bone and coal to sell, men in overalls, gloves, and rubber boots now comb the River Thames foreshore with metal detectors.

A research panel comprising the Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) and archeologists failed for 17 years to return seven 13-century pots borrowed from the Syrian government in 1985, sources close to the panel said. Moreover, the panel loaned two of the pots to the Nara municipal and prefectural governments without the permission of the Syrian authorities.

TEHRAN (CHN) -- An Iranian underwater archaeology team will explore four historical areas in search of archaeological evidence, lost cities, and sunken ships. Iran, considered a rich civilization, had important ports and superior nautical science. References to Iranian ports and sailing in the Straits of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf during the Achaemenid and Sassanid have been detailed in historical books.

In April 2005, Dr Olsen will become the third "space tourist" to travel to the International Space Station. He has paid $20m for the privilege of boarding a Russian Soyuz capsule on the trip of a lifetime. He told us what he hoped to get out of the mission and how he thinks it might change him.

Most UK skywatchers will have been left disappointed during Tuesday night's total eclipse of the Moon. Cloudy skies meant the event, which was already under way as the Moon rose, would only have been seen by a few. For those who did snatch a glimpse, a dim reddish-brown disc was visible climbing above the south-east horizon.

An ancient map of the North Atlantic - which features sea snakes and other dreadful monsters - may have boasted surprisingly advanced information. The Carta Marina - published in 1539 - depicts elaborate sea swirls which, say researchers, closely match a giant ocean front shown in satellite images.

The Neanderthals reached adulthood at the tender age of 15 according to a report in the journal Nature. French and Spanish researchers analysed growth records preserved in the teeth of Neanderthals, modern humans and two other human species. Breaks in the deposition of crown enamel reveal how fast teeth grow.

An ongoing archaeological survey near the Book Cliffs could lead to new discoveries about the way the prehistoric Fremont people lived in central Utah, an archaeologist said Friday at the Utah Museum of Natural History. The pristine nature of the Range Creek site makes it one of the nation's premier survey sites, said Duncan Metcalfe, curator of archaeology at the museum, who publicly reviewed work at the site for the first time.

After an absence of a quarter-century, Western archaeologists are trickling back into Iran, encouraged by officials seeking wider scientific contacts with foreigners. During the past three years, a few American and European archaeologists have quietly resumed excavations primarily at ruins of the ancient Persian empire, which flourished 2,500 years ago. Their numbers are expected to swell in coming months as a result of a new openness toward foreign scholars proclaimed by Iranian cultural leaders last August at a conference in Tehran.

The legend has dominated Western culture for more than 3,000 years - the kidnapping of the most beautiful woman in the world, the thousand ships sent to bring her back, and the bloody 10-year war that followed. Now a leading British historian claims that the true story of Troy is finally about to be uncovered. Bettany Hughes, currently making a television series about ancient Greece, says that a number of recently unearthed clay tablets hold "the keys" to the compelling tale of Helen, Paris and the siege of Troy.

Marine archaeologists are examining the site of a Portuguese shipwreck off Western Australia's northern coast. The Correio da Azia was discovered yesterday by a Maritime Museum team after a hunt lasting more than 16 years. WA Minister for Culture, Sheila McHale, says it is a significant find because it is the earliest historic Portuguese shipwreck to be discovered in Australian waters.

VELIKY NOVGOROD, May 1 (RIA Novosti) - Archeologists have uncovered the remains of a medieval pavement in the Kremlin of Veliky Novgorod, in northwestern Russia. The wooden pavement can be dated to the 13th or the 14th centuries, according to Sergei Troyanovsky, the man leading the excavations in the Novgorod Kremlin.

TEHRAN (CHN) -- Iranian scientists have dated a Paleolithic cave in the central Isfahan province at about 15,000 years B.C. biologists in the university of Isfahan arrived at the conclusion after studying some 100 animal bones. The cave was discovered six months ago during archeological and geological studies west of the city of Isfahan near the Zayandeh River. Stone tools and bones were found in the cave.

The oldest known map of the stars will go on display in Britain this week in an exhibition that will demonstrate the supremacy of early Chinese astronomy. A fresh analysis of the star chart, which was found buried in a desert cave on the ancient Silk Road between China and the West, has dated the manuscript to as early as the 7th century AD.

TEHRAN (CHN) -- The discovery of inscriptions and architectural remains in the historical Jiroft area by the bank of the Halilrud River in southeastern Iran indicates there was a major civilization in the area, the head of an international archeological group said at the end of a second season of explorations in Jiroft.

Progress has been made in piecing together the Forma Urbis Romae, a map of Rome carved into stone slabs about AD 210 but later broken into fragments. Measuring 18m by 14m, it was originally hung in the Templum Pacis, one of the ancient city's major public landmarks.

The Cassini-Huygens mission continues to return tremendous images of Saturn. The double spacecraft is now just two months away from arriving at the ringed planet to begin a four-year expedition of the gas giant and its many moons.

Russia's Soyuz capsule with three crewmen from the International Space Station has landed in Kazakhstan. The capsule touched down safely at 0011 GMT, Russia's mission control centre in Korolyov, outside Moscow, reported. Russian Alexander Kaleri and British-born Michael Foale have been in space for six months; Dutchman Andre Kuipers returns with them from an 11-day stint.

Artefacts dating back around 4,000 years have been uncovered by archaeologists in Londonderry. The team, led by John O'Neill from Queen's University, was working on a Bronze Age lake settlement at Ballyarnet, when they found large quantities of decorated pottery, flint arrowheads and scrapers, hammerstones, fishing weights and grinding stones. According to Mr O'Neill, the investigation, which was carried out earlier this month, revealed that the substantial lake settlement may have only been occupied during a relatively short period of time.

One team of experts believes Atlantis lies under the seas west of Gibraltar, while an American researcher believes the Lost City was in Cyprus. The team heading to Gibraltar is led by pre-historian Professor Jacques Collina-Girard, aided by the two men who led the expeditions to the Titanic. They believe that using a combination of literary pointers and geological evidence they have pinned the lost city's location to just west of the Straits of Gibraltar, on a submerged mud shoal now known as Spartel Island.

The image is of a dying star surrounded by hailstones 4,000 light-years away was unveiled by researchers at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. The picture reveals vast walls of compressed gas, laced with trailing strands and bubbling outflows.

A scientist claims Nasa is considering temporarily sterilising astronauts to control their sex drives on long voyages. Dr Rachel Armstrong, speaking at a British Interplanetary Society symposium, said the space agency was concerned about the natural urges of astronauts. She was talking about long journeys such as a three-year trip to Mars, where a six-strong crew would be likely to include two women, reports The Independent.

Scientists have developed a self-cooling beer can that could be on shop shelves as early as this summer. Scientists say the temperature of the drink drops to 3C in three minutes and stays cold for up to an hour. They work on the same principle of evaporation that makes you feel cold when you step out of the shower. The beer is surrounded by a watery gel which drains off when the bottom of the can is twisted. The bottom also contains an insulated heat-absorbing gizmo.

What could be 790,000-year-old evidence of fire has been found at Gesher Benot Ya'aqovon, a likely Homo erectus site in Israel. "The biggest jigsaw in the world." Pieces of the Forma Urbis, a map of Rome made in A.D. 210, are being fit together with the help of a new computer program.

Saqqara, Egypt - French and Egyptian archaeologists said on Monday they had found more than 50 mummies buried in deep shafts south of Cairo and dating from the first millennium BC. Some of the mummies, wrapped in linen and sealed inside stone or wooden sarcophagi, are in an excellent state of preservation for the period, said Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Antiquities Council.

The Egyptian-American mission operating in Tal al-Borg area in north Sinai discovered remains of two fortresses from the Pharaonic l8th dynasty.

Few Chinese people have heard of the yue, an ancient wind instrument that belonged to the flute family. However, this flute, the name of which is pronounced the same as the word for "music" in Chinese, used to be an important instrument in many ancient ceremonial rituals. In The Book of Songs (Shi Jing), the most ancient collection of Chinese poetry, which was compiled in the 6th century BC, yue is the most frequently mentioned wind instrument.

Human bones were uncovered Thursday near Wupatki National Monument, and preliminary findings indicate that the bones might be those of a prehistoric ancestor of the Hopi Tribe. Ken Frederick, spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service, said that a National Park Service ranger found the bones on an area of Forest Service land near the southern edge of Wupatki. The location of the site is not being divulged, Frederick said, in accordance with an agreement the U.S. Forest Service has with the Hopi Tribe to protect archaeological resources and show sensitivity to Hopi cultural concerns.

The Maha Vihara project of Anuradhapura has discovered a set of Chinese ceramic plates at the excavation of the East side out wall of Ruwanweliseya. The project is conducting an archaeological conservation program for the out wall of the pagoda. At the excavation these plates were found in clay pots placed at the last reconstruction level of the wall in the ancient time, in accordance with Mahawansa, said Prof. T. G. Kulatunge director Mahavihara project.

Cairo - Apr. 25 (UPI) -- Egypt said Sunday new mummies in wooden coffins dating back to the 7th Century B.C. have been unearthed at the Giza Pyramids near Cairo. Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni told reporters an archeological team discovered a few ancient coffins with gold artifacts next to them - all believed to be of Pharaonic religious value. He said the team opened one of the coffins and found a "perfectly wrapped mummy."

A chunk of the moon that landed on Earth as a meteorite contains a new mineral, which scientists have named after a researcher who years ago predicted the unusual process that formed the material. Grains of the material, made of iron and silicon, were found in pieces of a meteorite that was discovered in Oman on the Saudi peninsula, said Lawrence A. Taylor of the University of Tennessee, a member of the research team that reported the find.

Cats can now have more than nine lives thanks to a Californian company that is the first US firm to go commercial and offer the public a pet cloning service. Five customers have already parted with $50,000 each for a copy of their cats. Genetic Savings & Clone says work will start in May to clone the animals, with the first kittens arriving by November if the procedures prove successful.

ROSIA MONTANA, Romania - (KRT) - For more than 2,000 years, strangers have invaded this place, seeking the gold that's beneath the villagers' feet. They've come with swords and arrows, guns and tanks - Romans, Austro-Hungarians, Nazis and Soviets. But the village always survived. Until now. "Nobody ever came to kick us out of our homes before," said Eugen Cormea, whose family has lived here for generations. "They used us to mine. They forced us to mine. But they left us here. This is different." This time, a Romanian mining company, backed by Canadian capital and fueled by Romania's hunger to become a member of the European Union, plans to open huge pits to get at the gold, and fill the valley with leftover crushed rock. Within a few years, the villagers' homes, their churches and their graveyards will be gone, along with two valleys, a couple of rocky peaks and an ancient network of tunnels the Romans used to mine the area.

"Newgrange is a passage grave, another boring tomb. That IS the way, so do behave To change would give us gloom. But look, kind sir, what's really there It takes but one good stare. Father Sun and Earth, his wife together for all to see A monument to endless life, the place for fertility." In "Newgrange - Temple to Life," Chris O'Callaghan proposes that the massive, five thousand years old monument was built by Boyne Valley farmers to mark the turn of the Winter Solstice Sun and the return of fertility to the depleted food chain. He suggests that the so-called roof-box, more aptly the Sun Window, provides the key to the contention that Newgrange had no connection with burials and tombs as is commonly claimed. Watch for upcoming articles and announcements....

Heritage enthusiasts are facing a race against time as they bid to save a 19th century smiddy from demolition. The blacksmith's building was uncovered during work on an underpass for the A92 Dundee to Arbroath road. The company carrying out the work near Upper Victoria said the building would have to be removed. It is expected to be knocked down within days. But Mary Brand from the Carnoustie and District Heritage Society is calling for it to be preserved.

A robotic rescue mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope may be feasible, according to Nasa's Associate Administrator, Dr Ed Weiler. In January, the US space agency said there would be no more risky astronaut visits to the telescope, which would probably limit its life to a few years. But Dr Weiler says there are now some promising ideas about how Hubble could be visited without the space shuttle.

US researchers have shown that stem cell therapy could help repair failing hearts. Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine looked at 20 patients with heart failure. They found those who had stem cells injected into damaged parts of their hearts were able to pump more blood than those who had surgery alone. Researcher Professor Robert Kormos said the findings could 'revolutionise' treatment.

The Hubble Space Telescope has seen a brilliant circle of bright blue stars in a rare example of a "ring galaxy" - the result of a galactic collision. The galaxy is larger than our own Milky Way and lies far away in the direction of the southern constellation Dorado. This image was released to commemorate Hubble's 14 years of working in space. Earlier this year, the US space agency Nasa said there would be no more manned servicing missions to Hubble, a decision that will limit its lifespan.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A new museum designed to draw people into the spirit and excitement of science opens in Washington Friday. The Marian Koshland Science Museum, created by the National Academy of Sciences, opens with a permanent exhibit on the wonders of science and two featured exhibits, on global warming and on DNA, the blueprint for life. After about two years the two temporary exhibits will travel to other museums around the country and be replaced by other topics.

WHITEHORSE - By examining 4,300-year-old bird feathers, scientists are gaining a glimpse into the pre-history of the Yukon. Twelve feather samples were sent to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. after melting out of ice patches in alpine meadows in southern Yukon. The feathers were first discovered several summers ago, attached to ancient arrows or darts. When the ice melts each summer, archeological finds are revealed.

A MARINE archaeologist has accused Portland Port of blocking an important survey of the wreck HMS Hood. Mark Beattie-Edwards, a project officer with the Nautical Archaeology Society in Portsmouth, asked the harbour authority if his team of specialst divers could monitor and record the state of the 113-year-old battleship. He claims his request was turned down despite promises to operate under a strict safety code and not enter the wreck.

Gold and silver jewellery dating from 2,500BC has been discovered in a storeroom at the British Museum among relics first excavated in the 1920s. The adornments were part of the elaborate head-dresses worn by female attendants who had been buried alive in a royal tomb at the ancient Sumerian city of Ur in what is now southern Iraq. Some of the material excavated from the site more than 70 years ago had been hurriedly preserved in blocks of paraffin wax before being shipped back to London.

AN ANCIENT burial site has been damaged after an estimated 1,000 tonnes of sand was removed from a beach in the north of Scotland without permission. It is being claimed the action exposed human remains from the Pictish cemetery at Ackergill on the Hempriggs Estate in Caithness. Highland Council said the sand was removed without planning permission and police have been notified along with Historic Scotland. A council spokesman said the material was taken to a contractor's yard near Watten and left a "gaping hole" in the sand, damaged a Second World War look-out post, and disturbed the Picto-Norse cemetery.

French archeologists have unearthed a perfectly preserved head of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in the ancient Nabatean city of Petra south of Jordan, the head of the mission told AFP Thursday. "A monumental white marble head, in excellent condition, belonging to a statue the emperor Marcus Aurelius was found in Petra by French archeologists," Christian Auge said. The head of the 2nd century AD Roman leader who was also known as the "good emperor" or the "philosopher-king" was found in the Qasr al-Bint area of Petra, a Nabatean city famous for its rose-red temples dug in the rock.

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (AP) -- A team of U.S. and Guatemalan archeologists says it has discovered important Mayan monuments covered with texts from the ceremonial ball court at the Cancuen palace in northern Guatemala. The researchers said the discovery is providing new information about the final years before the collapse of the ancient Mayan civilization.

A spring-propelled car conceived by Leonardo da Vinci five centuries ago could have paved the way for the Mars rovers, an eight-month study of a drawing by the Renaissance genius has revealed. Drawn on sheet number 812r of the Atlantic Codex in 1478, when Leonardo was 24 years old, the sketch has been translated into a one-third scale model at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence.

Ashgabat, , Apr. 20 (UPI) -- Archaeologists have made a sensational discovery in Turkmenistan -- a temple of water dating back to the third millennium B.C. The Margianskaya expedition has been digging on the site of an ancient settlement called Gonur in the delta of the Murgab River in the eastern Mary region, some 200 miles east of the country's capital, Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.ru reported Tuesday.

AN international dive team shivered in excitement when they spied the timbers of a wreck belonging to one of the most famous buccaneers of all time. They discovered the remains of Welshman Captain Henry Morgan's lost frigate, HMS Oxford, off the coast of Haiti. Oxford sank in 1669 as the result of an explosion believed to have been ignited by a celebratory pig roast. The 34-gun ship had been sent to Morgan by King Charles II following his appointment as Admiral in Chief of the Confederacy of Buccaneers.

The fabled kingdom of the Etruscan king Lars Porsena is coming to light in the Tuscan hills near Florence, according to an Italian University professor. Known as Chamars, where the lucumo (king) Porsena reigned in the 6th century B.C., this was the leading city-state of the Etruscan civilization that dominated much of Italy before the emergence of Rome.

As the German Archaeological Institute turns 175 on Wednesday, the spotlight will be on its archaeological work as well as on its cultural diplomacy in the Arab world and the Mid East. From Prussian times to present-day democratic Germany, the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) has weathered a variety of political and ideological systems in its pursuit of scientific research. Founded on April 21, 1829 in Rome with the aim of researching and publicizing the archaeological discoveries of the antique Greek era, the institute has seen an expansion of its focuses and activities over time.

Geologists have discovered microscopic burrows where some of Earth's earliest lifeforms bored their way into volcanic glass 3.5 billion years ago. The tubes, from rocks in South Africa's Barberton Greenstone Belt, retain traces of organic carbon left behind by the microorganisms, the authors say. The microbes etched their way into rocks that formed as lava oozed out across a sea floor in Archaean times. An international team published details of the work in the journal Science.

NASA announced Thursday that the second of the international space station's four stabilizing gyroscopes failed on Wednesday night, but neither the station nor the crew were in immediate danger.

A mouse that is the daughter of two mothers has been created by scientists in a breakthrough that could be as controversial as cloning, it has been revealed. The mouse, named Kaguya after a Japanese fairy tale character, is the first mammal ever to be born without an egg being fertilised. Such 'virgin birth' is known as parthenogenesis and can occur naturally in a wide range of animals including insects, reptiles and birds.

Jupiter is in the process of changing its spots, scientists have reported. The giant planet could be in for a major temperature shift over the next decade as most of its 'spots' - in reality huge storm systems - disappear. But Jupiter's most famous feature, the Great Red Spot, is expected to stay put. The planet's atmosphere contains about 80 swirling vortices which are similar to long-lived hurricanes. The largest, the Great Red Spot - spanning 12,500 miles and large enough to swallow the Earth two or three times over - was first observed in 1665.

Nobody knows how he got there or how he died. But the human skull of an elderly man unearthed under a block of flats has given archaeologists a tantalising mystery to puzzle over. The skull, which is more than 500 years old, was revealed during demolition work on the Canon's Walk flats in Thetford on Monday morning. A driver pulled up the pilings from the old flats and spotted something unusual underneath, and on closer inspection found it was a skull.

Stone Age people may have started hunting whales as early as 6,000 BC, new evidence from South Korea suggests. Analysis of rock carvings at Bangu-Dae archaeological site in Ulsan in the southeast of the country revealed more than 46 depictions of large whales. They also show evidence that humans used harpoons, floats and lines to catch their prey, which included sperm whales, right whales and humpbacks.

As principal scientific investigator on the Gravity Probe B, he has overseen Nasa's mission to test key elements of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. He told us about his goals for the project. It's nearly 100 years since Einstein developed his first theory of relativity, surely these things are now established and confirmed?

The annual Lyrid meteor shower will peak before dawn on Thursday, April 22. Skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere with dark skies away from city lights could see anywhere from five to 25 shootings stars per hour, or one every few minutes. The timing of this year's version is good, because the moon just passed its new phase and its otherwise bright light not a factor.

Astronomers opened a new window to the cosmos Saturday by inaugurating a powerful U.S.-Brazilian telescope under northern Chile's famously clear skies. The $30 million Southern Astrophysical Research, or SOAR, telescope sits at 8,800 feet above sea level on Cerro Pachon mountain above the unpolluted Elqui Valley, 300 miles north of Santiago.

The scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep are applying for a licence to clone human embryos. Professor Ian Wilmut, of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, wants to use them to study motor neurone disease, reports the BBC. His application to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is likely to provoke criticism. Therapeutic cloning for research has been legal in the UK since 2001.

Anthropologists seeking to study the ancient Kennewick Man skeleton scored another victory when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request by four Northwest tribes for a rehearing in the lengthy dispute. Tribal lawyers sought to have the case reheard by the full court after a three-judge panel ruled in February that the tribes had no right to the 9,300-year-old remains under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

The final link of what is believed to be a necklet owned by Queen Boadicea has been discovered in Norfolk. The 2,000-year-old treasure is part of a gold torc, a type of Iron Age necklet, and was found by archaeologists in a field in Sedgeford. The Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project believe it is the end of an Iceni tribe gold torc. The torc, unearthed 40 years ago, is displayed at the British Museum.

Humanity's urge to adorn the body with baubles, bangles and beads goes farther back into prehistory than most experts imagined, scientists announced late last week. Based on the discovery of small perforated shells apparently tailored 75,000 years ago for stringing as beads, archeologists think these crude ornaments push the date for handcrafted jewelry back another 30,000 years into the past.

Nearly every leading Italian archaeologist interested in ancient Rome sat in the chandeliered room of the German Archaeological Institute on March 18 to hear Marc Levoy, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford, describe efforts to build an online archive of what remains of the Severan Marble Plan, or Forma Urbis Romae -- a massive marble map of third-century Rome.

A team of German and Egyptian archaeologists working in the Nile Delta has unearthed "quite a remarkable" stele dating back 2 200 years to Ptolemaic Egypt which bears an identical inscription in three written languages - like the famed Rosetta Stone. Announcing the find on Monday, University of Potsdam chief Egyptologist Christian Tietze said the stone fragment was "quite remarkable and the most significant of its kind to be found in Egypt in 120 years".

Hundreds of fans of ancient Rome dressed up as gladiators and marched by the ruins of the forums Sunday to mark the birthday of the city, which legend says was founded on April 21 2,757 years ago. The actual anniversary is Wednesday, but the "gladiators," armed with spears and sporting helmets, turned out to stroll down Via dei Fori Imperiali, which is closed to traffic on Sundays.

Archaeologists claim that the Badain Jaran Desert in North China, one of China's major sandstorm sources, was once habitable. Archaeologists draw this conclusion from the large amount of cultural relics and rock paintings excavated in this region. Archaeologists of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region have just discovered a cultural site dating from the Paleolithic Age tothe Shang (16 century B.C.-11 century B.C.)and Zhou (11 century B.C.-221 B.C.) Dynasties in the eastern border area of the desert, where an unprecedented large amount of stone items of the Alxa Region were unearthed. At the same time, nearly 800 rock paintings were discovered in the southeastern part of the desert, most of which are animals andlaboring scenes.

A MASSIVE haul of treasure discovered by a metal detector expert has gone on show. Bronze Age and Roman "treasures" found by archaeologist James Balme will be on display at Warrington Museum throughout April. James discovered the ancient settlement of Warburton near Lymm after six years of investigations and many of the artefacts were recovered thanks to his metal detecting skills at the site, which also includes a previously unknown small Roman fort.

Buried for 12 centuries by a landslide and closed to the public for 24 years, the oldest Christian church in the Roman Forum is being opened for a limited time, offering glimpses of Byzantine frescoes that changed scholars' views of medieval art. Guided tours of the Santa Maria Antiqua, nestled under the imperial palaces of Rome's Palatine Hill, began earlier this month and continue through May while restoration efforts continue. Werner Schmid, a restoration expert working on the project, said the tours will give visitors a chance to see frescoes from the mid-6th century to the mid-8th century. Standing in the nave of the church amid the restorers' scaffolding, Schmid said the works are unusual because they show a loose, classical style once considered alien to medieval Rome.

Archaeologists claim that the large ancient rock picture they spotted in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region recently is the largest one ever discovered in Xinjiang. Located in Chonghu'er township, Burqin county of Altay prefecture, the 13 meter by seven meter rock picture was excavated along with nearly 100 rock pictures. All the pictures engraved on rocks are of wildlife and nomadic ethnic groups, said Wu Dongjun, director of the cultural relics administration of Altay. The age of the rock pictures is still under investigation.

Revolt is in the air over a mummified princess. Julius Strauss reports from Gorno-Altaisk High in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia, where Shamans still practise their ancient rites and most people are descended from Asiatic nomads, there is a whiff of revolt in the air. Local officials, urged on by the increasingly militant electorate, are collecting signatures, writing petitions and demanding audiences with regional political leaders. Their demands are simple and have nothing to do with the inept rule, poverty, corruption and ecological disasters dogging the region. They want a 2,500-year-old mummy, found by Russian archaeologists 11 years ago and being studied in the Siberian capital of Novosibirsk, to be reinterred without delay.

The first archeological park museum of Iran, which once completed could be used by students and researchers, will showcase parts of the lives of ancient people at the time of Achaemenids, Parthians and Sassanids. According to sculptor and designer of the project, Esfandiar Iman Zadeh, the project started 3 years ago and although more than 400 statues, inscriptions and figures have been replicated, only ten percent of the project is so far completed.

Pyramids, mummies, tombs, and other icons of aristocracy and the afterlife dominate our images of ancient Egypt. But love poems composed thousands of years ago may provide a more intimate glimpse of the lives of everyday ancient Egyptians. "Poetry is perhaps the greatest forgotten treasure of ancient Egypt," said Richard Parkinson, an expert on ancient Egyptian poetry at London's British Museum, home to the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Cairo.

A satellite that will put Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity to the test is due for lift off at 1801 GMT. The US space agency's $700m (£387m) probe will launch on a Boeing Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Base in California. Gravity Probe B will test Einstein's theories about space and time and how the Earth distorts them.

Astronomers have seen a comet vaporise into a cloud of gas as it plunged on to the fiery surface of a hot, young star. The comet - a 100km-wide body made of rock and ice - was ripped apart and destroyed by the heat of the star. Its demise was witnessed by observers using the giant Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas to observe the star Lk H-alpha 234, which is 3,200 light-years away.

Kampyr-Tepe, in southern Uzbekistan, was built at the time of Alexander the Great's empire and occupied for about 500 years until it fell into decline. Since it was discovered, a generation ago, it has been closed to the public because it stands in a sensitive and tightly guarded military zone, right on the Afghan border. The city perched on a high shelf of land - cut into clay walls that dropped sheer into the plains below. Caught in the light of a winter afternoon, an entire city spread as far as we could see, the dun-coloured dust touched with gold.

Greg Taylor has just announced the re-opening of The Daily Grail website! To read the public announcement at Phenomena Magazine, follow the article link....

Archaeologists believe that 13,000-year-old cave paintings in Nottinghamshire were part of a continent-wide culture. The people who created the first surviving art in Britain were committed Europeans, belonging to a common culture spanning France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, according to the man who discovered the cave art in Creswell Crags, Nottinghamshire. And the essential preoccupations of this single market in ice-age art, it seems, were hunting and naked dancing girls.

Garden makeover programmes are being blamed for an increase in the theft of ancient artefacts from Dartmoor. Electronic tags are being used to help protect valuable stone crosses and troughs in the area. Officials from the Dartmoor National Park Authority say the popularity of TV garden series could be triggering more thefts. New security measures follow a recent attempt to remove a granite cross.

The temples of Kalabsha Island in Aswan will be opened next month for visitors following a comprehensive restoration that covered the archaeological site. The temples and chapels on the island bad not been restored since their transfer under the UNESCO campaign to rescue monuments from drowning in Lake Nasser. The Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni said that the island is considered an open museum for monuments of different ages. There are rock inscriptions of animals, boats and hunting scenes dating back to the Old Kingdom in addition to the two temples of Beit Al- Wali and Garf Hussein, pertaining to the New Kingdom, specifically to the age of Ramsis II.

A GROUP of teenagers have unearthed the remains of an ancient monk after spending their Easter holidays working on an archaeological dig. Seven youngsters, aged 13 to 19, from the CYDS project have been hard at work on the dig at Leiston Abbey for the past fortnight. And this week their efforts have been rewarded with the discovery of a skeleton thought to date back as far as the 13th century.

THE discovery of the body of a warrior - thought to have died in battle more than 2,000 years ago - could help archaeologists to pinpoint the site of an ancient Druid holy site, experts said yesterday. The young warrior, aged about 30, with his spear, a sword, his belt and scabbard, stunned archaeologists who found his stone coffin. The discovery on Marshill, Alloa, last year was hailed as one of the most significant Iron Age finds for decades in Scotland. A copper pin, which once fastened his uniform at the neck, remained, along with rings on two toes and six other rings unlike any found in Scotland before. He was gripping his sword.

Nineteen years after discovering the Titanic, underwater explorer Robert Ballard announced yesterday that he's returning to the luxury liner to document its deterioration and to push for international backing to preserve it and other shipwrecks as permanent memorials. The goal of the $1 million expedition, set to begin May 30, is to confirm reports that the Titanic is deteriorating more rapidly than previously thought from natural causes and from damage done by scores of dives to the ship. Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration visited the Titanic in June and reported that the ship was quickly degrading at its grave 2 1/2 miles beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Scientists excavating a cave in South Africa believe they have found the world's oldest necklace. Perforated shells found at Blombos Cave appear to have been strung as beads about 75,000 years ago, according to research published in American journal Science. Archaeologists conducting the dig on the coast of the Indian Ocean said the beads provided some of the earliest evidence of our ancestors' modern behaviour. A total of 41 shells, from a tiny river-dwelling mollusc scavenger, were discovered in a layer of sediment deposited during the Middle Stone Age - making them 30,000 years older than any previously identified personal ornaments.

For the Yapese of Micronesia, a disk of sculpted limestone could buy just about anything. "We secured the boat and began climbing a path of broken coral bits and limestone gravel leading to the island's interior. The clamor of buzzing insects and screeching birds filled the air as we made our way through the steamy jungle. It was 1997, and I had come to see the famous stone "money" disks carved by people from the Micronesian island of Yap 300 miles away. Braving unpredictable seas, the Yapese quarried limestone from the caves and rock shelters scattered among these islands. I was not disappointed; soon a Palauan colleague cried, "Balang ra Beluulechab!" (Yapese money!) as we reached a broken circular limestone disk with a neat hole drilled through the center that lay precariously across a large fissure in the rock. At ten feet in diameter, more than one and a half feet thick at the center, and weighing eight tons, it was indeed the stone money, or rai, of the Yapese--one of the largest objects ever carved to be moved across open ocean by native Pacific Islanders. This rai had probably broken during an attempt to move it to the shore, rendering it worthless, so the Yapese had left it behind."