Newsdesk Archive

Nasa's robot rover Opportunity has found round grains in the soil of Mars, raising the possibility they may have been shaped by liquid water. Photos taken by the rover's microscopic imager show coarse soil grains of different shapes, including round ones.

Chagas disease, a deadly parasitic blood illness that recently has drawn attention in North America, has infected some South and Central Americans for at least 9,000 years, researchers said Monday. The Red Cross, alarmed about reports of Chagas disease in the United States, announced last year that it expects to begin testing donated blood for the disease. Seven cases, spread by transfusions, have been reported in the United States and Canada since 1986. Now a team of researchers led by Arthur Aufderheide of the University of Minnesota School of Medicine in Duluth reports evidence that the disease infected residents of the coastal Andes mountains as long as 9,000 years ago.

ATAMI, Shizuoka Prefecture-Archaeologists say they may have found ruins of a submerged city from the Kamakura Period (1192-1333) off the coast of Shizuoka Prefecture. They say numerous stone structures at depths of 20 to 50 meters unlikely occurred naturally and appear to have been made deliberately. Archaeologists pinpointed about 20 sites of interest covering a 1-square-kilometer area.

The parting of the Red Sea and the subsequent escape of thousands of Jewish slaves, which is described in the Bible's book of Exodus, can be explained by science, according to two Russian researchers. The study, published in the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is one of the first to examine the event using oceanography, weather patterns, and mathematical calculations.

A doctor on ITV's This Morning programme fears he may have cancer after a Russian girl who claims to have X-ray vision spotted problems. Dr Chris Steele agreed to be a guinea pig for Natasha Demkina when she appeared on the show earlier this week. The 17-year-old said she could see problems with his pancreas, liver and kidneys. While that turned out to be wrong, a scan he later took at a Harley Street clinic, showed up enlarged lymph nodes in his abdomen. Further tests were carried and the 58-year-old is now awaiting the results.

Leaning across the wooden helm of his boat, Vello Mass scans the Baltic Sea to the horizon and muses about the treasures lying beneath the cold, grey waves. "There are hundreds of Viking ships out there, hundreds of old trading ships, hundreds of warships," the 63-year-old wreck-hunter remarks. "The Baltic's an archaeological paradise." He's already pinpointed about a dozen wrecks, most recently the Russalka, Russia's first armoured naval ship, which went down nose-first between Estonia and Finland in an 1893 storm and rammed itself into the seabed like an enormous sword.

UK scientists claim they now know how Earth recovered on its own from a sudden episode of severe global warming at the time of the dinosaurs. Understanding what happened could help experts plan for the future impact of man-made global warming, experts say.

UK crop circle researcher Francine Blake says definitively that some formations are not manmade. According to Blake, some circles appear overnight, if not in a matter of seconds. How does she know? Because she has watched: "Sometimes, we keep vigil over a misty farm. There is poor visibility. Suddenly the mist clears and a crop circle appears over the farm from absolutely nowhere. We are convinced that these have been created by a force and energy that that we do not understand."

A joint team of Iranian and Belgian experts are conducting a wide ranging research program in the southern plains of the Khuzestan Province and the Persian Gulf coast. The program aims at palaeo-environmental reconstruction, locating and dating the places under study in a bid to find out about the various stages of the formation of the northern Persian Gulf coastline. Existing evidence suggest water level fluctuations in the Persian Gulf over the last 10,000 years have left considerable impact on the geographical conditions of the historical sites in the southern Khuzestan plain.

An ancient rock covered in carved symbols has been discovered in a South American jungle by an archaeologist from Cornwall. Julien Chenoweth, from St Mawes, said a date test showed the carvings were as old as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

THE Martians are not coming - they've probably already arrived on earth. And we could be their descendants. Two Australian scientists have developed new technology to confirm claims by NASA that a meteorite from Mars found in Antarctica in 1984 contained microscopic fossils from the red planet. Scientists have fiercely debated whether the ancient, microscopic compounds were deposited by ancient bacteria or natural chemical reactions - and whether such bacteria was Martian or moved in after the meteorite fell to earth. But biophysicist Dr Tony Taylor from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in Sydney and the University of Queensland's Professor John Barry devised a new technique which they say affirms the Martian microbe theory "beyond reasonable doubt".

During Cambodia's long nightmare of civil war, genocide and foreign occupation, concern for its archaeological treasures took second place. But after more than a decade of peace, an international campaign to rescue Angkor Wat and other centuries-old temples is being hailed as a model for safeguarding the ancient sites of Afghanistan, Iraq and other war-torn nations. . With some 40 major monuments and hundreds of smaller sites, it may be another 25 years before restoration and conservation work nears completion. Yet, in an initiative led by France and Japan and coordinated by Unesco, the international community has demonstrated a rare commitment to preserving a miracle of human ingenuity in a country too poor to do so itself.

A harp enthusiast is hoping to recreate the first working copy of the famous Harp of Ur, which was vandalised in Iraq's national museum following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Andy Lowings, 52, from Cambridgeshire, wants the replica instrument to be as close to the 4,750 year-old original as possible, even down to the source of the wood.

Polls show that more than half the population of the United States believes that UFOs are alien craft surveilling our world. However, many skeptics and scientists have been fighting this idea, believing it to be a core belief in a tidal wave of irrational thinking. Now, a Christian writer has written a book which says that we ought to take UFOs seriously, because the answer is of crucial importance to the Christian faith. Dr Hugh Ross believes that UFOs are a manifestation of demons, and that the gullibility of UFO enthusiasts is leading humanity towards disaster. In his book LIGHTS IN THE SKY & LITTLE GREEN MEN, Dr Ross explains how UFOs show signs of being both physical manifestations as well as having traits of non-physical beings. Much along the lines of researchers like Dr Jacques Vallee and John Keel, he says that these 'craft' show signs of disobeying the laws of physics, but at the same time can leave physical evidence behind. But while Vallee and Keel say this might be due to UFOs and aliens being travellers through some sort of dimensional portals, Ross goes one step further and calls these entities 'malevolent'.

Standing inside the maze of mysterious lines and figures that put this arid region on the tourist map, state archaeologist Alberto Urbano surveys a football-field-size spread of ankle-deep trash. "Farther down this road there are illegal gold mines, too," he says, noting that the path actually is the side of a giant trapezoid: "See how straight it is." Trash and small-time gold diggers are not the only threats to Peru's fragile Nazca Lines. Grave robbers, tractor-trailers and tourists have left their marks on the mammoth designs carved more than a millennium ago along a 35-mile stretch of desert.

The discovery of Palaeolithic art in a cave in South Africa is causing researchers to consider an older and less Euro-centric view of the origins of what is considered 'modern behaviour'. While excavating a cave near the southernmost tip of South Africa, U.S. and South African palaeontologists discovered two pieces of ochre rock decorated with geometric patterns. The site, called Blombos Cave, is near the southern Cape shore of the Indian Ocean, nearly 200 miles of Cape Town, South Africa. Sophisticated dating techniques led the researchers to conclude that the artefacts date back more than 70,000 years. That is more than 35,000 years older than any other 'stone age' art.

The Mars rover Opportunity has rolled off its lander on to the surface of the Red Planet, a week after arrival. The operation went as planned, a Nasa spokesman said, with the robot coming to a halt short distance away.

A chilling reminder of our superstitious past has been unearthed from a rural farmhouse. The "witch bottle" was discovered buried in old foundations in the Lincolnshire village of Navenby. Containing bent pins, human hair and perhaps urine, the bottles were supposed to protect a household against evil spells.

Nasa chief Sean O'Keefe, responding to criticism, has agreed to reconsider his decision to abandon the successful Hubble Space Telescope. On 16 January, he said that because of astronaut safety there would be no more space shuttle missions to maintain and upgrade the orbiting telescope.

They may not look like the greatest talkers, but these stones have a story to tell. Hundreds of thousands of years ago they were washed down to East Anglia with a vast river that cut through the middle of England. But what the experts are puzzling over today is where this river ran its course. If they can plot its course and date it accurately, they could prove there were humans living in Britain 500,000 years ago and fill a gap in our pre-historic knowledge. And a hand-axe discovered at Lakenheath in the 1800s could be the vital link they need. This is part of an historical puzzle being pieced together by archaeologists across the country as part of the national Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) survey.

Archaeologists announced Wednesday they have discovered an ancient Teotihuacan settlement on a hill in central Mexico City, dozens of kilometres from the pyramids where Teotihuacan - long regarded as a mother culture of central Mexico - flourished nearly 2,000 years ago. The discovery in December of structures and tools on a hill just behind the city's landmark Chapultepec Castle suggests Teotihuacan spread and influenced Mexico City even earlier than previously thought. Teotihuacan, 50 kilometres north of Mexico City, remains largely a mystery today, and it was so even for the Aztecs, who are credited with founding Mexico City in the 1300s.

The Inca invented a powerful counting system that could be used to make complex calculations without the tiniest mistake, according to an Italian engineer who claims to have cracked the mathematics of this still mysterious ancient population. Begun in the Andean highlands in about 1200, the Inca ruled the largest empire on Earth by the time their last emperor, Atahualpa, was garroted by Spanish conquistadors in 1533.

Nasa scientists have discovered what might be the most compelling evidence yet of rocks formed in water on Mars. The Opportunity rover has sent back pictures of rock slabs that appear to contain thin layers, say researchers.

How do you work out where an ancient ship was originally built? Try looking at the pollen caught in the joints of the wreck, suggests a French ecologist. Serge Muller, of the University of Montpellier II in France, says the range of pollen found on a shipwreck gives a snapshot of the plant species local to the boat's birthplace. The sticky resin used to seal a boat's hull can catch and trap pollen, giving the boat a biological 'birth certificate'.

Tartan kilts have become fashionable in Austria after archaeologists claimed the country invented them. Many Austrian stores are now selling "traditional Austrian" kilts and sporrans as well as lederhosen. The Austrian claim is based on the discovery of what they claim is the oldest piece of tartan in the world. The host of the Austrian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire is the latest convert to the trend. Armin Assinger turned up at the studio wearing one of the Carinthian kilts. Thomas Rettl, whose clothing company is based close to where scraps from the original Celtic kilt were found, said: "Ever since we found out that Austria was the true home to tartan we have been doing a roaring trade. "It was found not in Scotland but in a place called Molzbichl in Carinthia in Austria. The Celts who conquered Scotland originally came from Europe, which would back our claim to have had the kilt first. "The tartan sample found in Austria was dated to at least 320 years BC - over 1,600 years earlier than the oldest Scottish tartan which was made in 1,300 AD."

In a prehistoric battle for survival, Neanderthals had to compete against modern humans and were wiped off the face of the Earth, according to a new study on life in Europe from 60,000 to 25,000 years ago. The findings, compiled by 30 scientists, were based on extensive data from sediment cores, archaeological artefacts such as fossils and tools, radiometric dating, and climate models. The collected information was part of a project known as Stage 3, which refers to the time period analyzed.

The image of a painting of a snake wrapped around a turtle was captured on a monitor screen Monday, when the 1,300-year-old Kitora tomb in Asukamura, Nara Prefecture, was inspected by researchers from the Cultural Affairs Agency. The snake and turtle, found on the north wall inside the tomb's chamber, represent the deities of Genbu, who rule the northern sky, according to Shinto belief. The painting appears not to have deteriorated since 2001, when the image was last checked, the researchers said.

The commission of inquiry looking into the loss of the UK-built Beagle 2 lander will be hoping for one piece of evidence above all else in its investigation: a picture of the stricken probe on the surface of Mars. If it can get an image of an intact "pocket watch" robot on the Red Planet, this would significantly reduce the list of possible factors that could have blighted the mission.

Ever since their discovery in the 19th century, Neanderthals have been like the uncomfortably odd relatives who show up at a family reunion. Should they be seated with the closest kin, sent to the back of the room with the distant cousins or tossed out as rank interlopers, despite a family resemblance? In short, were the now-extinct Neanderthals of Europe full members of the modern human species, a subspecies or an entirely different species? The answer has implications for the ancestry of modern Europeans: whether some Neanderthal blood could flow in their veins.

Archaeologists in KwaZulu-Natal have unearthed 1 500-year-old human bones which they believe provide evidence of South Africa's first permanent agricultural community The two arm bones, a leg bone and a shoulder blade were discovered last week at a site in Salt Rock, one of the richest Iron Age coastal sites to be excavated in KwaZulu-Natal.

THE RUINS of Miletus jut up from the marshy scrub, a snaggle-toothed amphitheatre of stained stone, topped with Byzantine fortifications. At the highest point, a Turkish flag snaps in the breeze, brazen scarlet against a turquoise sky. The crescent moon banner is a newcomer here. A johnny-come-lately on the shores of the Marmara, dominated by Greeks for thousands of years. Miletus was once the oldest and most powerful metropolis among the 12 Ionian cities, a nexus of culture and commerce. Now it lies coated in river sludge - the same sludge that smothered the vibrant community hundreds of years ago.

Nasa scientists have said they are "astonished" at the first pictures beamed back from Mars by the rover vehicle Opportunity. The images sent by the probe show a smooth plain, near a rocky outcrop. The landscape is quite unlike the boulder-strewn site on the other side of Mars where its sister craft, Spirit, landed three weeks earlier.

A set of copper plate inscriptions of the Talakadu Ganga kings has been unearthed from Tumbula. The Sanskrit inscriptions date back to AD 444. In a press release, N. Havalaiah, Reader and Principal Investigator, Department of Studies in Ancient History and Archaeology, University of Mysore, said the three copper plates had an elephant seal. They referred to the kings, Kogunivarma, Madhavavarma, and Harivarma. The inscriptions also contain Kannada words in describing the boundaries of a village. This is considered important from the archaeological and historical points of view. The inscriptions record some grants for a hero who died in a battle and throws light not only on the Ganga history but also on Kannada language, according to Mr. Havalaiah. The other members of the team involved in the discovery of the inscriptions are H.M. Nagaraja Rao, epigraphist, Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies, Krishnappa, research scholar, and Rajusiddartha.

An ancient administrative city of " Alphanteen " island in Aswan that dates back to late 4th Dynasty and early 5th Dynasty about 3500 years ago has been unearthed, said Farouk Hosni Minister of Culture. The Egyptian-German joint mission found square chambers with different sizes that housed the prints of the sealings used in the official bodies in the city, added Hosni.

Scientists are heralding the discovery of a remarkably naturalistic 20,000-year-old bison figurine found at the Upper Palaeolithic site of Zaraysk, 100 miles southeast from Moscow. The figurine, four inches high and carved from mammoth ivory, was found on a specially built podium at the bottom of a small storage pit. The site has been excavated by the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1995.

For more than a century, scientists have concluded that a species evolves or adapts by going through an infinite number of small genetic changes over a long period of time. However, a team of researchers, including a Michigan State University plant biologist, has provided new evidence that an alternate theory is actually at work, one in which the process begins with several large mutations before settling down into a series of smaller ones.

Scientists have decided that a fossil found near Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire is the remains of the oldest creature ever to live on land. It is thought that the one-centimetre millipede which was prised out of a siltstone bed is 428-million-years-old.

A joint UAE-French archaeological team has started excavating the intermediate level of Grave N of Hili Archaeological Park, an 8m pit-grave that was discovered by the Al Ain Department of Antiquities and Tourism (DAT) in the 1980s. The DAT has left the central part of the deposit untouched for about 10 years and to preserve it from erosion, they approached the French Archaeological Mission in the UAE, funded by the Archaeological Division of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to carry out an excavation as part of a joint project. Speaking to Khaleej Times, Dr Sophie Mery, of the National Centre for Scientific Research, France, (CNRS) and head of the French team, said: "We have conducted five seasons of excavation in this site and we are now starting on the sixth." She also pointed out: "This collective tomb dates back to the end of the 3rd millennium BC and contains more than 550 dead bodies of adults and children, both males and females, according to Dr McSweeney. "Some of the babies below one year old were possibly buried under the floor of the dwellings as in the contemporary early Bronze Age settlement site of Ra's al Jinz in the Sultanate of Oman" she added.

The victim of a murder in Carlisle in the 3rd Century AD is to be part of an exhibition looking at the Roman way of death. His skeleton was found in a well in the city during the 1980s - he had been shot in the head and attacked with a sword.

Opportunity, the second of two Nasa rovers, has successfully landed on the Martian surface where it will search for signs of water on the planet. The new rover touched down at 0505GMT, halfway around the red planet from where Spirit rover landed on 4 January.

"It's the Shroud of Turin all over again," said Dr. James A. Harrell, a University of Toledo geology professor, of the James ossuary. The significance of the first century limestone box, inscribed in Aramaic with the words, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," will be debated for years by scientists, scholars, and theologians, he said, just as the authenticity of the shroud, said to have been wrapped around Jesus' body, remains in dispute.

The US space agency says it may take days, even weeks, to get its Martian rover Spirit back into action. The probe had short contacts with Earth on Friday, sending some engineering data that mission staff can now use to try to diagnose and fix its problems.

The European Space Agency has released the early results from its Mars Express probe now orbiting the Red Planet. The data include a batch of remarkable pictures taken at very high resolution. The images show what appear to be sediments left in the bottoms of river-cut valleys, and details as fine as dust blowing over the rims of craters.

THE first part of a major archaeological investigation of Chester's Roman Amphitheatre began this week. The survey, jointly funded by English Heritage and Chester City Council, will use advanced technology to produce the most detailed map ever made of the city landmark and its surrounding area.

The US space agency (Nasa) will try to establish normal communication again with its Mars rover Spirit on Friday. Engineers know the vehicle is alive but they have received no useful data from the probe for more than 24 hours. Efforts to contact Spirit will begin in earnest when the buggy "wakes up" with the Martian dawn at about 11 GMT.

A crater from a meteorite that collided with earth about 1,5 billion years ago has been discovered in Finland by two amateur geologists, Finnish scientists said on Thursday. "The discovery is 9km in diameter, but the original crater must have been much larger, because only the floor is left, since the rest of the crater bowl has eroded away," said Lauri Pesonen, a professor of geophysics at Helsinki University who verified the find.

The discovery of a possible American Indian settlement as much as 7,500 years old has halted work on a new water treatment plant. Workers have found about 38 tools and stone chips used for making and repairing tools, as well as a hearth and a storage pit, at the site on South Street near Third Herring Brook.

The long-standing cultural dispute over Christopher Columbus' final resting place could take a new turn as further DNA tests are carried out by an Italian university. DNA technology will be applied by the University of Pavia's laboratories to fragments of bones now kept in a box in the university's library. The remains come from Santo Domingo, one of Columbus' debated burial places.

A shadow hangs over the rocket that will blast next month's flagship European comet mission into space. British scientist André Balogh has told the BBC he fears the Rosetta probe could miss its flight due to technical problems on the launch vehicle.

With help from Herodotus and an Aegean Sea octopus, a Canadian-led scientific expedition appears to have discovered the site of a turning point in world history: The sinking of a massive Persian invasion fleet in a fierce storm that saved Greece at the dawn of western civilization. During an October dive off the country's northeast coast near Mount Athos -- a site pinpointed by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus -- archaeologists retrieved ship storage jars dating from the fifth century BC and the metal butt of a spear that matches those carried by Persian warriors.

If the 24 January landing on Mars of the Opportunity rover is successful then the next target should be an extinct volcano, say scientists. Opportunity follows Spirit's successful landing at Gusev crater on 4 January.

Two Belgian botanists have completed a piece of detective work to rival that of super-sleuth Hercule Poirot, their fictional fellow countryman. Marcel De Cleene, associate professor at Ghent University in Belgium, and fellow ethnobotanist, Marie Claire Lejeune, combed thousands of sources, including old travellers' tales, fairytales, Greek classical writings, and medieval herbals, to produce the Compendium of Symbolic and Ritual Plants in Europe.

Plants appear to 'think', according to US researchers, who say that green plants engage in a form of problem-solving computation. David Peak and co-workers at Utah State University in Logan say that plants may regulate their uptake and loss of gases by 'distributed computation' - a kind of information processing that involves communication between many interacting units.

Archaeologists at the University of Birmingham, supported by the British and Slovene Academies, have discovered what may be one of the most important archaeological sites of the last 50 years, in a riverbed in Croatia. The site at the Valley of the River Cetina, which is geographically and strategically placed at a major European crossroads, holds the key to unlocking over 8,000 years of Balkan history.

Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit has looked back at its landing pad and taken a stunning colour picture of the platform where it started its Martian adventure. Colours in the image have been adjusted but scientists have not yet determined the "true" colour of the Martian rocks.

Vello Mass leans across a wood-spoked ship's wheel and scans the horizon of the Baltic Sea -- where, he says, the wrecks of thousands of ships from throughout the ages lie beneath the cold, gray waves waiting to be found. "There are hundreds of Viking ships out there, hundreds of old trading ships, hundreds of warships," muses the captain turned researcher, called the Baltic's Sherlock Holmes in his native Estonia for locating so many sunken ships. "The Baltic's an archaeological paradise."

A rock found in the Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco in 2001 has been confirmed as Martian in origin. The meteorite's chemical signature was checked out by researchers at the UK's Southampton Oceanography Centre.

Western archaeologists often think archaeological research in Iran has all but stopped. Yet Iranian archaeologists have continued excavations throughout the country, exploring periods stretching from the Palaeolithic to Islamic times, at major sites such as Susa, Tappeh Sialk and the Masjid-e-Jomieh in Esfahan. Foreign archaeologists have become involved in these efforts, working at such sites as Chogha Zanbil and the recently discovered mining settlement of Arisman.

A complete mammoth skull has been unearthed in southern England, only the second to be found in Britain. The specimen was discovered in a gravel pit in the Cotswolds and is estimated to be about 50,000 years old.

Scientists say Neanderthals, the human species that once lived alongside our ancestors, were probably frozen out of existence. Mystery surrounds the extinction of the Neanderthals, which abruptly vanished from Europe almost 30,000 years ago. The effects of climate and failure to compete with Homo sapiens are two theories that have deeply divided experts. Now a team of scientists, led by Itjeerd van Andel from the University of Cambridge, has pointed to the harsh winters of the last ice age as being the chief reason why the Neanderthals died out.

When Israel's chief rabbis meet Pope John Paul II today, they will seek permission to search Vatican storerooms for artefacts such as the huge golden menorah that stood in the Temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Vatican officials confirmed to the Associated Press the meeting would take place but declined comment on the rabbis' request.

A cloud of white dust drifts over Athens' former international airport as a crew using heavy equipment builds facilities for this summer's Olympics. A few paces away, another team - with only brushes and garden tools - carefully digs into the past. The 2004 Games have been a boon for archaeologist, bringing the biggest single antiquities treasure hunt in Athens and surrounding areas. Experts rushed in trying to beat the bulldozers at dozens of Olympic-related sites - from sports venues to highways.

Archaeologists have embarked on an epic search for an ancient fleet of Persian ships that was destroyed in a violent storm off northern Greece in 492 BC. The team will search for sunken remains of the armada - sent by Persian king Darius to invade Greece - which was annihilated before reaching its target.

A French archaeological team has retrieved more than 1,000 bronze artefacts, including statues and busts of Pharoanic gods and goddesses, from the Mediterranean sea floor off Egypt's northern coast, Egyptian antiquities officials said Sunday. The artefacts found during archaeological surveys last month date to the 3rd through 5th centuries B.C., and also include tools and containers used in religious rituals, Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, a senior official in the Supreme Council of Antiquities said. The French mission, led by Franck Goddio, has left for Paris, Abdel Maqsoud said, and its members could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Late Neolithic monument complex at Thornborough, North Yorkshire, was possibly the most important sacred site in their day. Today they form part of the largest prehistoric sacred landscape in Britain. They have been called the Stonehenge of the north - comparable to Westminster, York and Canterbury Cathedrals - all placed in a single location! Yet here the ancient peoples built three henges - the only triple henge alignment in the world - part of the only six henge complex in the world. Campaigners are fighting to stop the landscape around these most important monuments from being quarried for gravel. It is this ritual landscape, including the settlements and ritual deposition areas that is currently being quarried by Tarmac Northern Ltd. Quarrying destroys not only the archaeology, but the entire landscape - meaning that massive areas of this most important site are being removed leaving deep water filled pits. It is these activities that campaigners are trying to put a stop to.

February's Author of the Month, Paul Cochrane, will be appearing on the Inner Space Message Board this month to discuss in his 'The Mind of God' a personal journey into the meaning of myth, religion and synchronicity. Click below to read his introductory essay - and then join in the discussion!

The stories of the Treasure Coast's (Florida) past - of long before any gold and silver floated ashore - are told not in words, but in clues. A pile of oyster shells. A bear's tooth. An entry from a shipwrecked pioneer's journal. Under and tucked near the businesses, condominiums and beach access points along the ocean in Martin and St. Lucie counties, evidence of dozens of American Indian camps gives local archaeologists a glimpse at the past.

The Hubble Space Telescope will eventually become useless, as Nasa switches the focus to President George Bush's plans to send humans to the moon, Mars and beyond. Nasa is cancelling all space shuttle servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, a decision that, in effect, will kill off the powerful observatory.

It looks more like a giant spider than a boat, yet the Borobudur has already sailed more than 8,000 miles, retracing an ancient trading route stretching from Asia to the bulge of Africa. The strange craft with its muddle of beams and gangly outriggers seems somewhat out of place moored outside Cape Town's opulent Cape Grace Hotel, wedged between the gleaming yachts of millionaires. The 19-metre-long (57-foot) wooden vessel, based on an 8th century Indonesian design, left Jakarta in August and is on its way to Ghana -- seeking to prove that trade links between Africa and southeast Asia were thriving more than 1,000 years ago.

On Jan. 2nd, 2004, NASA's Stardust spacecraft approached Comet Wild 2 and flew into a storm. Flurries of comet dust pelted the craft. At least half a dozen grains moving faster than bullets penetrated Stardust's outermost defenses. The craft's 16 rocket engines struggled to maintain course while a collector, about the size of a tennis racquet, caught some of the dust for return to Earth two years hence. All that was expected. Then came the surprise. It happened when Stardust passed by the core of the comet, only 236 km distant, and photographed it using a navigation camera. The images were intended primarily to keep the spacecraft on course. They also revealed a worldlet of startling beauty.

Beneath the bright white lights of the isotope laboratory in the department of archaeological sciences at Bradford University, Mandy Jay rummages through a drawer and produces a small, sealed polythene sack containing half-a-dozen shards of a pitted, yellowing material. They are bones; fragments of femur excavated from an Iron Age burial site in east Yorkshire. By studying these ancient bones, these Yorkshire scientists have gained an insight into our Iron Age diet. So why did we stop eating seafood for 4,000 years?

Bigfoot hunter C. Thomas Biscardi knows Bigfoot is out there. He even claims to have photographic proof. The next step, he says, is to prove once and for all that the creature exists by putting together a professional expedition and capturing one. As such, Biscardi is currently planning a new search, is inviting journalists and corporate sponsors to participate. "'The American Bigfoot Expedition' will be both a commercial and scientific expedition and we will also offer the rights to televise it," according to Biscardi. He hopes to conduct the search in spring or early summer of this year.

Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt--ancient Nekhen and city of the Hawk--is a vast archaeological site. Stretching for 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) along the desert fringe of the cultivated Nile floodplain and extending for another 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) back into the low desert up the Wadi Abu Suffian, it contains a wealth of remains dating to the Egyptian Predynastic period (ca. 4000-3100 B.C.), for which it is deservedly famous. These include Egypt's oldest preserved house--that of the potter who accidentally burnt his house down with his own kiln; Egypt's earliest industrial-strength breweries, with huge vats capable of brewing over 300 gallons a day; and Egypt's first temple (see Narmer's Temple). Recent fieldwork has also revealed, among other things, Egypt's first mummies, its oldest funerary masks for use by the ruling elite, and the burials of exotic animals, including two adolescent elephants!

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the deepest view ever of the cosmos, detecting the youngest and most distant galaxies ever seen by astronomers. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is the result of an unprecedented, long look of 80 days at just one patch of sky.

COUNCILLORS are being urged to defer a decision on giving planning consent for a homes development in Castle Acre, Norfolk because it could disturb Saxon remains near the castle. Conservationists and archaeologists are also worried about the visual impact of the development on the ancient castle's setting.And the parish council opposes the scale of the scheme, fearing it will lead to further congestion in an area which already clogs up with traffic as visitors flock to the village in the spring and summer.

A giant hole that appeared in a uniform layer of cloud over Mobile, Alabama, in the US, has left scientists puzzled. Local resident Joel Knain said as he took pictures: "I immediately realised that I was seeing something unique." Meteorological experts believe the hole formed when ice-crystals from a passing plane fell through the cloud, causing the water droplets in it to evaporate.

Russian scientists have been unable to disprove a teenage girl who claims she has x-ray vision and can see inside human bodies. Doctors at Saransk's children hospital carried out exhaustive tests on 16-year-old Natalia Demkina whose claims she has x-ray vision has gripped the Russian public. But so far they have been unable to come up with a logical explanation for the vivid and detailed accounts she gives of what she sees when she looks inside the human body.

The US robotic probe that landed on Mars 10 days ago has rolled off its lander and on to the Martian surface. The Spirit rover rolled down the three- metre-ramp on to the red soil of Mars, widely considered one of the riskiest steps in the US Space Agency's mission.

City archaeologists have struck gold - with a major Bronze Age discovery in eastern Europe. A team of experts from the University of Birmingham has discovered what may be one of the most important archaeological sites of the last 50 years, in a riverbed in Croatia. Items recovered from the river include more than 90 swords, a Roman legionnaire's dagger complete with sheath, more than 30 Greco-Illyrian helmets, plus

Activists launched a fresh bid Wednesday to persuade the British Museum to return ancient sculptures from the Parthenon to Greece, saying even a loan would be a huge step forward. The activists, whose group is called Marbles Reunited, said Greece had suggested the British Museum retain ownership and control over the so-called Elgin Marbles but display them on long-term loan at a museum being built at the Acropolis in Athens.

Italian archaeologists have discovered the ancient port of Neapolis during excavation work for a new subway in Naples, they announced at a news conference this week. Extending into the heart of present-day Naples, the second-century port was found 13 meters (43 feet) beneath one of the city's main squares, not far from the 13th-century Maschio Angioino fortress.

French archaeologists say a mummified lion found in a bone-cluttered tomb in the Nile Valley has confirmed long-running suspicions that the pharaohs viewed the animal as sacred. The skeleton of the adult male lion was found at Saqqara, in what was originally the tomb of King Tutankhamun's wet nurse, Maia, buried 3,500 years ago.

Scientists have identified a gene that appears to have played a key role in the development of the human brain. They believe it is responsible for the expansion of an area of the brain called the cerebral cortex which controls abstract reasoning.

Scientists have reconstructed the environmental history of a Celtic mining town by digging through a peat bog near Dijon in France in search of lead residues and pollen grains. Their results confirm some historical theories about the settlement says Fabrice Monna from the University of Bourgogne in Dijon, who led the study. "Archaeologists suspected that there had been mining there before the first century AD, but there was no direct proof until now."

President George W Bush is to set out ambitious space exploration plans, which include a permanent base on the moon and a manned mission to Mars. In a speech on Wednesday, he is expected to announce a $800m boost to Nasa's budget to start the programme.

They were Africa's Vikings. Tough, daring voyagers who sailed thousands of miles to pluck riches from unmapped lands known today as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa and Nigeria. Centuries before Europeans, mariners from Indonesia raided and traded across the continent, filling their vessels with gold and silver for the princes of Java and Sumatra. In return they gave Africa the secrets of iron and bronze, exotic plants such as banana and yams, and a new culture enriched with music, architecture and spirituality. And then the seafarers vanished. Some died, some returned home, others inter-married with the locals. So absorbed was the Asian influence that by the time the white man came he never noticed it. So says a controversial new theory about Africa's development more than 2,000 years ago which could revive a racially tinged debate about whether outsiders fathered certain advances in technology, agriculture and art.

A star on the far side of our galaxy is 40 million times brighter, and 150 times more massive, than our Sun. Although the star appears to be the brightest yet detected, it cannot be seen with the unaided eye because it is shrouded in a huge gas and dust cloud.

What does it take to become an artist? Do you need to study it first, or do you just pick up a brush or a knife and do it? This question lies at the heart of a prolonged debate among archaeologists and anthropologists over the origin of figurative art -- drawing, sculpting or otherwise creating recognizable images of figures or objects -- and what it implies about human cultural development. For years, scholars regarded the appearance of figurative art as the initiation of an evolutionary process -- that art became progressively more sophisticated as humans experimented with styles and techniques and passed this knowledge to the next generation. But a growing body of evidence suggests that modern humans, virtually from the moment they appeared in Ice Age Europe, were able to produce startlingly sophisticated art. Artistic ability thus did not "evolve," many scholars said, but has instead existed in modern humans (the talented ones, anyway) throughout their existence.

As the world looks at Mars, an American scientist has produced the best images ever obtained from the surface of a rather different planet - Venus. The second planet from the Sun is blanketed with a thick layer of cloud.

Archaeologists declared they found no written records on over 1,000 ancient bamboo slips which recently unearthed in Jiuliandun Tombs in central China's Hubei Province. The archaeologists said this is the first time for them to find wordless ancient bamboo slips. Ancient Chinese wrote their records on bamboo slips, which usually provide more direct information than other cultural relics.

Kirin Brewery Co. has re-created as accurately as possible the beer of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt by employing an experimental archaeological technique at its brewery in Amagi, Fukuoka Prefecture. The work was done by interpreting wall paintings illustrating the beer-making process in the New Kingdom (1570-1070 B.C.), in cooperation with Sakuji Yoshimura, a professor and director of Egyptology Research at Tokyo's Waseda University.

Archaeologists working in the Yukon's melting snow fields say they've found some of the oldest evidence of human habitation in the territory. Last year's warm summer further melted the territory's alpine snowfields, which have become a rich source of artefacts from the territory's pre-history.

A frightened television crew had to be rescued from the dark depths of Epping Forest after allegedly stumbling upon the ghost of Dick Turpin during a live night-time broadcast. The crew from the LivingTV cable and satellite channel went into the forest with a psychic medium who, live on air, tracked down the famous highwayman's spirit and enjoyed a revealing conversation with him.

The Spirit Mars rover has completed manoeuvres which should allow it to explore the planet surface within days. Twelve pyrotechnic devices were fired successfully, moving the craft on to its six wheels, Nasa scientists said.

Archaeologists in northwest China's Shaanxi Province have unearthed the ruins of an ancient city dating back 4,500 years on a mountain in Jiaxian County. The ancient city consists of a 3,000-square-meter inner city, built on the top of a hill, a 60,000-square-meter outer city, which encircles the middle and lower part of the same hill, and a moat, 10 meters wide and 6.4 meters deep.

"Egypt floats on a sea of antiquities," it is often said. Without fail, excavation missions in every part of the country come up with a discovery. The latest finds, a wealth of treasures which includes a gold mask, intact limestone sarcophagi, sealed wooden coffins, mummies, a box belonging to a prince and an unusual sixth-dynasty tomb, have been found by French and Polish missions in their recent archaeological seasons at Saqqara. The seasons of both teams lasted from October to December. North of the causeway of the Pyramid of Unas in the Saqqara necropolis, which lies near the ruins of Memphis almost 30km south of Giza, the French mission from the Louvre Museum stumbled upon three intact burial shafts stuffed with a large number of inscribed and painted funerary items dating back to various periods.

A previously unknown ancient mask from southern Mexico contains an inscription that shows the language used there prior to the Maya civilization remains undecipherable, according to a new study by Brigham Young University archeologist Stephen Houston and Yale University professor emeritus Michael Coe. Translating the Isthmian script, the written form of one of the languages used in Mesoamerica from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 500, would be a tantalizing key to unlocking the mysteries of ancient American societies before the Maya. In 1993, two other scholars reported in the journal "Science" that they had deciphered the writing system, an assertion disputed in the new study, published in the new issue of the journal "Mexicon."

No fewer than 50 members of the family that dominated the Florentine Renaissance are to be exhumed in the attempt to unveil their last secrets, Italian authorities have announced. The project, to be filmed by The Learning Channel, aims to reconstruct how the Medici family, who ruled Florence and Tuscany from 1434 to 1737, lived and died.

United States space officials have welcomed President George W Bush's desire to send Americans to Mars and back to the Moon. Nasa chief spokesman Glenn Mahone said the agency was "excited" about the news and its implications.

A team of Italian conservators specialising in restoring wall paintings has been painstakingly revealing, through layers of grime, magnificent images in what has become known as the Cave Church at the Monastery of St Paul near the mainland Red Sea coast. Restoration of this monastery is being carried out by ARCE (American Research Centre in Egypt) with funding from USAID in collaboration with the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and with the blessing of the Coptic Church. Work started in 1999 with detailed photography of the visible standing remains and some structural consolidation. Three years later the project is in its final stage. A team of workmen is renewing the crumbling plaster on the external domes and restoring the walls of the church, together with the stonework and windows, under the supervision of Father Maximus, himself a professional conservationist of portable icons.