Newsdesk Archive

A strange sixteenth-century book may be cunningly crafted nonsense, says a computer scientist. Gordon Rugg has used the techniques of Elizabethan espionage to recreate the Voynich manuscript, which has stumped code-breakers and linguists for nearly a century. "I've shown that a hoax is a feasible explanation," says Rugg, who works at Keele University, UK. "Now it's up to believers in a code to produce evidence to support their ideas." He suspects that English adventurer Edward Kelley produced the Voynich to con Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor and collector of antiquities, out of a fortune in gold.

A dispute over archaeological survey work for construction of the Shannon Creek Dam near Grafton has seen the Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists raise concerns with the National Parks Service. The archaeologist commissioned to do the survey work, Kelvin Officer, says National Parks refused to allow sub-surface testing before building a 70 km water pipeline which he claims allows whole or partial destruction of any Aboriginal heritage deposits.

Architectural historians have long credited the Romans with inventing the aboveground barrel vault, but a recent discovery at the site of Morgantina shows that the innovation goes back to the third century B.C. and may have originated in Hellenistic Sicily.

Hanoi - Archaeologists in the Vietnamese capital city have excavated 17 000 square metres of a massive historic site, officials told reporters on Wednesday. The state has already spent nearly $1,3-million (about R9-million) excavating the site and preserving the millions of artefacts that have been dug up since last December, said Professor Le Trung Tong, the head of Vietnam's Institute of Archaeology.

A sculpted piece of mammoth ivory may be the earliest representation of a bird in the archaeological record. The 30,000-year-old figurine, found at Hohle Fels Cave in Germany's Ach Valley, depicts what looks to be a diving cormorant with swept-back wings.

In this remarkable essay, written exclusively for our Forum, William Bourne argues that the long-held assumption that the Crab nebula and its accompanying pulsar were the result of a supernova explosion in 1054 AD may, in fact, be far from the truth. An important paper by Ho Peng-Yoke that examines the original Chinese and Japanese evidence for this assertion, he argues, casts considerable doubt whether the object of 1054 AD and the Crab nebula are connected at all. What Bourne goes on to suggest is the possibility that the event of 1054 AD was far more than a supernova, in fact the approach towards perihelion of a large planetoid in a highly elliptical orbit about the Sun. And that over time most of the records of this awesome event, in cultures all over the world, were edited or destroyed for religious and political purposes. Click below to read this fascinating essay in full.

A series of dust storms could threaten the success of three space probes heading for Mars, astronomers warn. The scientists say some small storms are combining to obscure a large part of the planet's northern hemisphere.

The Colosseum in Rome was as sophisticated as a modern stage set, according to archaeologists who have calculated how an intricate system of gangplanks, trapdoors and levers was used to bring wild animals into the arena. Under the 55,000-seat Colosseum, pulleys and ropes were operated at split-second intervals to connect passages, open gates and hoist cages from the basement to the floor of the arena.

The late American astrophysicist Carl Sagan reconstructed the ancient Library of Alexandria, the Mouseion, for his TV series Cosmos. He strolled through this replica of the ancient building, depicting some of the events that took place there. "This legendary library was the mind and glory of the greatest city on earth, and was the first centre for scientific research in the history of the world," he told the audience. "In this Mouseion lived a community of scientists who discovered the sciences of physics, linguistics, medicine, astronomy, geography, philosophy, mathematics, biology and geology. Here scientific studies reached adulthood. Here genius flourished. Here in the Library of Alexandria were the first serious trials to understand the world." Sagan was right. The torch of science that sparkled at the Library of Alexandria between the fourth century BC and the fourth century AD was its greatest and most enduring achievement.

From Portsmouth Herald: University of New Hampshire archaeologist William Saturno will grace the pages of the December 2003 edition of National Geographic - his second time in his two years since discovering a 2,000-year-old Maya mural in Guatemala. Saturno, now 34, discovered the oldest known intact wall painting of Maya mythology while hiding from the hot sun during a dig in San Bartolo

Nancy (Champion de Crespigny) Movius of Cambridge, an archaeologist who took part in excavations in England, the Middle East, and France, died in her sleep Dec. 6 at her Cambridge home. She was 93. Mrs. Movius and her late husband, Hallam L. Movius Jr., a retired Harvard professor, visited Stone Age sites in 1936 and 1937 in Burma, Malaya, and Java. They spent more than a decade excavating in the small French town of Les Eyzies, where they helped uncover artefacts as old as 40,000 years.

Over 70 archeologists from China and abroad gathered in Guilin, southeast China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Thursday to discuss the latest discoveries in the Zengpiyan Cave. Excavations in the cave have provided important clues to the life of prehistoric people in south China and cultural exchanges between south China and Southeast Asia.

Last time, the athletes were naked, women were not allowed to watch - let alone compete - and the winners received olive wreaths, not gold. However, next year, for one day only, 64 athletes of both sexes will have the privilege of competing for an Olympic medal on the sacred turf of Ancient Olympia, where it all began 2700 years ago.

A US space agency (Nasa) satellite launched early this year and designed to measure the world's ice sheets is showing novel maps of Antarctica and Greenland in remarkable detail - down to the last ice crevasse. Despite the early loss of one of its lasers; the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, (IceSat) is beaming home high-resolution measurements of polar ice and sea ice elevation as well as the stratification of clouds and aerosols.

MUSEUMS in Merseyside and Cheshire may be forced to return their prized collections of ancient mummies to Egypt. A legal loophole in a government Bill, drawn up to prevent hospitals stockpiling human organs, could be used by the Egyptian government to claim back the preserved bodies.

It was recently reported that astronauts on board the International Space Station said they saw strange lights in space. NASA has discovered these were incredibly high auroras, produced by the recent solar storms, although they still don't know how this was possible. Auroras are usually only seen from Earth, close to the poles. They are generated by solar storms, and with space storms at a historical high, people recently saw auroras in 49 states. But until the recent astronaut reports, researchers didn't realize they could also be seen from space.

The well-known Chinese myth that God Pan Gu created the universe could have originated in Laibin, a city in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, before it spread to the central and northern regions, according to a Chinese expert. Prof. Qin Naichang, head of the Guangxi Institute for Nationality Studies, has labored to disprove beliefs that China has no myth about the creation of the universe and that the mythology of God Pan Gu had came from India, Egypt or Babylon.

In two separate incidents metal detectorists working in Kent have unearthed fascinating hoards of prehistoric coins, axe heads and jewellery. A number of weeks ago two metal detectorists found an Iron Age hoard on farmland near Maidstone and last Sunday another detectorist dug up a Bronze Age hoard near Wye.

IN TERMS of bringing history to life, pupils and staff at Winchester's newest school couldn't have done much better. Because in the grounds of the newly opened Osborne School, archaeologists are uncovering a massive Roman cemetery with more than 150 graves dating back 1,700 years. The graves give a fascinating insight into life in Winchester at that time - or Venta Belgarum, as the Romans called it - but they have also turned up some unexpected finds. For example, most of the graves are believed to have been Christian burials

When Alexander the Great stood at the gates of Babylon in 323 B.C., the story goes, a flight of ravens fell dead at his feet. It was a bad omen, according to the soothsayers. Within two weeks the conqueror of an empire that stretched from Greece to India was dead, at age 32, of a mysterious illness. Doctors and historians have speculated for centuries about the cause of this battle-hardened warrior's death. In 1998 two University of Maryland Medical Center physicians said he probably died of typhoid, which can cause the chills, fever, abdominal pain and delirium that Alexander suffered. But today, across the Potomac, the Virginia Health Department's chief epidemiologist says those dying ravens weren't omens, but clues. Alexander may have been history's most famous victim of West Nile virus, John Marr claims.

A mouse-sized fossil found in China may be the oldest ancestor of modern marsupials - the mammal family that includes kangaroos and koalas. The creature, which was unearthed in Liaoning province, extends the ancestry of marsupials by 50 million years.

More than 10,000 artefacts taken from historic sites throughout the West have been recovered as part of one of the largest archaeological cases ever investigated, authorities said. The two-year investigation, dubbed Operation Indian Rocks, has led to a ring of relic hunters who were stealing remnants of the past, including arrowheads, ancient corncobs, hammer-stones and clay figurine fragments, the Las Vegas Sun reported Thursday.

Astronomers may have shown how microbes from Earth could be spread throughout the galaxy taking life to other worlds. Scientists at Armagh Observatory and Cardiff University say bacteria could get into space on rocks blasted off the planet by an asteroid or comet impact.

The chance discovery of a Roman "ghost fleet" buried in mud just outside Pisa has led experts to conclude that the city was built on a lagoon much like an early Venice. Archaeologists believe that traces of a community dating back to a pre-Roman era, a sort of Etruscan Venice, may lie beneath the ships. The end of the lagoon civilisation may also offer pointers to the fate of modern Venice - the waterways were silted up by violent floods over a long period.

Two decades after his passport was revoked, King Tut is set to travel again. Was it a case of diplomatic tit-for-tat? THE PRICELESS TREASURES of Tutankhamun will soon visit Europe for the first time in over 20 years when a Swiss museum hosts 50 artifacts from the pharaoh's tomb as well as a collection of grave goods from other New Kingdom royal tombs.

Japan has given up on its first interplanetary space mission on the final leg of the journey to Mars. Officials have decided not to put the Nozomi space craft into orbit around the planet. Last-ditch attempts to fix an onboard electrical fault have failed, and the probe will be steered off into space.

A church court today refused permission to exhume a body from a medieval church to find out if they were the remains of King Harold. A group of amateur historians wanted to see the tomb at the Holy Trinity Church in Bosham, West Sussex, opened, so they could settle once and for all the age-old question of where the Saxon king was buried.

Red-stained bones dug up in a cave in Israel are prompting researchers to speculate that symbolic thought emerged much earlier than they had believed. Symbolic thought - the ability to let one thing represent another - was a giant leap in human evolution.

It is unlikely the dinosaurs perished in a global firestorm triggered by the asteroid strike on Earth 65 million years ago, scientists have claimed. A popular theory suggests the impact, which was centred on Chicxulub in Mexico, generated enough energy to set off a raging worldwide inferno. But a new study shows rocks laid down at the time contain little charcoal - a possible tell-tale record of fires.

Linguists have discovered a still-surviving version of the sacred religious language of the ancient Maya - the great pyramid-building civilisation that once dominated Central America. For years some Maya hieroglyphic texts have defied interpretation - but now archaeologists and linguists have identified a little-known native Indian language as the descendant of the elite tongue spoken by rulers and religious leaders of the ancient Maya.

Measurements of ancient air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice offered evidence that humans have been changing the global climate since thousands of years before the industrial revolution. Beginning 8,000 years ago, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide began to rise as humans started clearing forests, planting crops and raising livestock, a scientist said Tuesday. Methane levels started increasing 3,000 years later.

The manuscript of this book has not yet been released to the general public. It has, of course, been seen by our Literary Agents and the various publishers who acquired the Rights, as well as a few proof-readers and intimate colleagues. Also a few (uncorrected/unedited) 'excerpts' have been put on this Bulletin, and some broad discussions have taken place on a few Message Boards as well as publishing the 'blurb' of the book. It has come to our attention that certain persons have been spreading the belief that TALISMAN is anti-Masonic. Also other bizarre accusations against us of 'hidden agenda' are promulgated on the Internet by some hysterical critics.

David Grinspoon, Principal Investigator for NASA's Exobiology Research Program, says, in his book "Lonely Planets", :- "Here's what we don't always cop to: Our scientific arguments against "the extraterrestrial hypothesis" for UFOs depend on a framework of assumptions. These are the pesky metaphysical leaks and leaps in our airtight worldview - the things we feel we know to be true, but cannot prove. It wouldn't hurt our credibility to acknowledge that science has its own superstitions. Much as we "real alien researchers" would like the UFO phenomenon to just go away, we can't dismiss all UFO reports out of hand. We might miss something important. Further, we alienate a large segment of the public when we appear to be close-minded, snotty, and overconfident. "

Nasa Scientists say measurements taken by the US space agency's Mars Odyssey craft prove that a human mission could survive on the Martian surface. Instrument data show radiation around the Red Planet might cause some health problems but is unlikely to be fatal. One comment on hearing this was:- "We better hurry up and go somewhere because we are ruining our own planet..... "

Clear, unequivocal evidence has been uncovered by Mars Global Surveyor that some valleys on Mars experienced the same type of flow-patterns as rivers on Earth. What is important about this discovery? First, it provides clear, unequivocal evidence that some valleys on Mars experienced the same type of on-going, or, persistent, flow over long periods of time as rivers do on Earth. Second, because the fan is today a deposit of sedimentary rock, it demonstrates that some sedimentary rocks on Mars were, as has been suspected but never clearly demonstrated, deposited in a liquid (probably water) environment.

A stone-age family who lit a campfire on a riverbank near Salisbury, UK, 250,000 years ago, have dealt a blow to a controversial scheme to build a "bypass by stealth". Archaeologists working for Wiltshire county council think the find could be the earliest evidence of man-made fire in Europe, indicating that early hominids learned how to build fires to keep warm before the emergence of Homo sapiens.

Immense cracks in our planet's magnetic field can remain open for hours, allowing the solar wind to gush through and power stormy space weather. Fortunately, these cracks don't expose Earth's surface to the solar wind. Our atmosphere protects us, even when our magnetic field doesn't. The effects of solar storms are felt mainly in the high upper atmosphere and the region of space around Earth where satellites orbit.

An ancient bronze drum believed to date back 2,000 years was found in the central highlands province of Dac Lac. The drum, 80 cm in diameter, was discovered in Dac Mam town, Krong No district, by Le Duc Thong while digging on his land. The centre of the drum face, which is still intact, features encircled star-points, S-letter designs and "Lac Viet" flying mythical birds. Four small toad statues are attached to the drum's rim. This is the tenth drum to be discovered in Dac Lac province.-Enditem

In October, 1965, Yale University librarians announced that they had acquired a manuscript world map dating from about 1440 showing the territory the Norse had dubbed "Vinland" (Wine Land) when they first sighted it from their ships a thousand years ago. The ruins at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland had already been declared a genuine Norse site, and accepted as proof that the Norse had ventured to North America. Now here was a map reconfirming it. But was the map genuine? Debate has raged for the past four decades; it was reignited this week with an announcement by retired Smithsonian Institution chemist Jacqueline Olin, who declared that the ink on the Vinland Map had very likely been applied years before the first voyages of Christopher Columbus.

The Stone Age ice man known as Oetzi has been given a new home - a refrigerated igloo in Bolzano, which experts believe will prevent him from losing mass, the Ansa news agency reported on Tuesday. The world's oldest and best-preserved mummy, which is widely believed to be 5 300 years old, was discovered in 1991 by two German tourists after they strayed from the regular path on a hiking trip up the Italian Alps straddling Austria and Italy.

The Edfu Temple in the South Egyptian archaeological city of Aswan will receive visitors as of early next year at its original entrance that opens for the first time in 2200 years after the end of restoration and works in the monument built by ancient Egyptians. Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said the project costs L.E 25 million and took 18 months, adding that electronic gates and closed-circuit TVs will be provided in the temple.

Digging on a coastal plain at the Gulf of Corinth three years ago, archaeologists came upon some ruins of Helike, a Greek city destroyed by earthquake in Plato's time. A search for the rest of Helike has now turned up something even more ancient, rare and inviting. The archaeologists say they have uncovered the stone foundations, cobbled streets and pottery of a well-preserved 4,500-year-old urban centre, one of the few Early Bronze Age communities ever found on the Greek mainland.

A flint object with a striking likeness to a human face may be one of the best examples of art by Neanderthal man ever found, the journal Antiquity reports. The "mask", which is dated to be about 35,000 years old, was recovered on the banks of the Loire at La Roche-Cotard.

An arc of buried megaliths that once formed part of the great stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire has been discovered. A map of Avebury drawn up by William Stukely in the 1720s showed that many of the stones in the south east and north east quadrants of the circle were missing. A survey of these areas by the National Trust has revealed that at least 15 of the megaliths lie buried in the circle itself.

More than 280 ancient artefacts discovered in a Swiss customs warehouse were returned to Egypt on Sunday, Egyptian antiquities officials said. The artefacts are from the prehistoric, Pharoaonic, Hellenic and Roman eras. Two mummies as well as sarcophagi -- the boxes that hold mummies -- statues and masks were among the artefacts seized last August in an investigation into the illegal excavation and export of the objects.

Defying an international outcry, Myanmar's military rulers have begun building a nearly 200-foot-tall viewing tower in the midst of the ancient temple city of Bagan, one of Asia's greatest archaeological sites. "It's a cultural crime," said Pierre Pichard, a Bagan expert at the French Research School of the Far East, based in neighboring Thailand. "It will be ... conspicuous and ugly, and it's totally crazy to add such a structure in the middle of an ancient historical site."

A new study by researchers at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the Observatoire de la C?te d'Azur provides an explanation for one of the more mysterious aspects of the population of objects beyond Neptune. In doing so, it provides a unique glimpse into the proto-planetary disk from which the Solar System's planets formed. Results will be published in the November 27 issue of Nature. The Kuiper belt is a region of the Solar System that extends outward from Neptune's orbit, containing billions of icy objects from kilometers to thousands of kilometers across. It was discovered in 1992 and, since that time nearly 1,000 objects have been cataloged. Some of these objects are very large - the largest having a diameter of more than 1,000 kilometers.

For the normal eye, they are just fragments of pottery. But for the specialist eye of Southampton varsity scholar Roberta Tomber, these pieces of clay are first fragile indicators that may help archaeologists solve the mystery of the ancient Indian port of Muziris. Roberta claims that the pottery pieces found by K P Shajan, a marine geologist, from Pattanam near Paravoor, are parts of Roman wine amphora, Mesopotamian torpedo jar and Yemenite storage jar. "It is the first time that we have found evidence in Malabar coast. The clay is very different from what was used in India during the same period.

Vietnamese scientists on Saturday said they had completed the restoration of two mummies from the 17th century which depict Buddhist monks in a position of meditation. The figures at Dau pagoda in Gia Phuc village, 25km south of Hanoi, are embalmed Zen Buddhists Vu Khac Minh and Vu Khac Truong. The pair died aged around 50 and 40, respectively, in the 17th century.

Astronomers say they have evidence for Earth-like planets orbiting a nearby star, making it more like our own Solar System than any yet discovered. The star, Vega, is one of the brightest in the sky, only 25 light years away. It is three times larger than our Sun and, at 350 million years old, much younger as well. Vega has a disc of dust circling it, and at least one large planet which could sweep debris aside allowing smaller worlds like Earth to exist.

In 1993, I was contacted by Dr Farkhunda Hassan and asked if I would put together a book about the role of women in Ancient Egypt. The book was to be presented by Mrs Suzanne Mubarak at the Women's Conference scheduled to be held in China later that year. Mrs Mubarak wanted to convey the fact that women enjoyed a privileged status during the time of the Pharaohs. Many were more empowered than women of the 20th century. Women in Pharaonic Egypt were entitled to inherit property and divorce their spouses, and also held important positions in society. Many were doctors, and there is even evidence of a woman judge. Women also had a large measure of influence on the building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, as well as being involved with astronomy, calculating the position of the ancient monuments, advising the Pharaoh on the forces of nature and how to maximise crop productivity. Tomb paintings from the Old Kingdom show women overseeing the carving of statues which were placed on the walls of the tombs of deceased family members.

Forget Atkins, abandon the other modern fads, and get stuck into the Stone Age diet. Scientists say that for good health we should adopt the eating habits of cavemen. It could become a mammoth craze... It may be more than a million years old, but a regime of organic meat, or a leg of game bird, accompanied by fresh leaves, nuts and fruit, washed down with water, is just about perfect for the human body.

The US space agency says one of the instruments on its Mars Odyssey craft has been shut down by a solar flare. The instrument, designed to assess the hazards humans would face if they ever went to the planet, has not worked since a solar storm on 28 October. The same storm caused a blackout in Sweden, damaged two Japanese satellites and interfered with navigation and radio systems for aircraft and ships.

The facial features of an ancient Khitan nobleman of the Liao Dynasty (916 - 1125), restored from skeletal remains, have vividly appeared on the computer screen of the Frontier Archaeology Centre of Jilin University in northeast China's Jilin Province. The skeleton was unearthed in March from a well-preserved tomb, which was decorated with colourful paintings, on Mount Tugaljin in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Scientists in Germany have announced the discovery of a petrified hoard of 17-million-year-old nuts they say form the oldest known cache of stored food. "These fossilised nuts are the oldest proof we have for mammals laying in food stores," Martin Sander, a palaeontologist from Bonn university, told Reuters on Tuesday. "In fact, they're the oldest store of food yet known from any animal."

Switzerland returned more than 200 ancient artefacts, including two mummies, to Egypt on Friday, three months after they were discovered in a customs warehouse. The mummies as well as sarcophagi, statues and masks were seized in August during an investigation of the illegal excavation and export of the objects, the Swiss Justice Ministry said in a statement.

It's no fast-unto-death, it's no hunger strike. But a septuagenarian sadhu's apparently simple decision to switch off food since the age of ten after being "blessed by the Goddess" that has left scientists perplexed. Prahllad Jani, the 76-year-old 'sadhu' from the pilgrim town of Ambaji in north Gujarat, has scientifically proved that he neither ate nor drank anything for the past 66 years.

The U.S. and Russian crew of the international space station reported a brief unexpected metallic crunching noise outside the outpost early today. Astronaut Mike Foale told NASA's Mission Control the noise sounded as if something had struck the aft end of the Russian module that houses the crew's sleeping quarters, kitchen and lavoratory. Both U.S. and Russian ground-based experts could find no evidence of penetration of the station's airtight hull or the cooling system for the electronic equipment that is responsible for many of the operations.

A large number of drinking vessels recently excavated at Yuchi Temple, south China's Anhui Province, show the Chinese may have been making wine 5,000 years ago, almost 1,000 years before it was previously known. The Yuchi Temple site in Mengcheng county dates back about 5,000 years and belongs to the later period of the Dawenkou Culture (4000 B.C.- 2600 B.C.), a cultural era of the late New Stone Age.

The latest scientific analysis of a disputed map of the medieval New World supports the theory that it was made 50 years before Christopher Columbus set sail. The study examined the ink used to draw the Vinland Map, which belongs to Yale University. The map is valued at $20-million (about R140-million) - if it is real and not a clever, modern-day forgery.

A family tree of Indo-European languages suggests they began to spread and split about 9,000 years ago. The finding hints that farmers in what is now Turkey drove the language boom - and not later Siberian horsemen, as some linguists reckon. Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson, of the University of Auckland in New Zealand use the rate at which words change to gauge the age of the tree's roots - just as biologists estimate a species' age from the rate of gene mutations. The differences between words, or DNA sequences, are a measure of how closely languages, or species, are related.

After years of intensive research, Chaco Canyon, located in a desolate region of northwestern New Mexico, leaves us with more questions than answers. Huge pueblos, known as "Great Houses" are the distinguishing feature of a culture that flourished in this area starting around 850 AD and continued until 1250 AD. Ten massive structures, some four stories high, had approximately 3,000 rooms. Pueblo Bonito was the size of the Roman Coliseum. Generations of The Ancient Ones, known also as Anasazi, dedicated themselves to the building of these pueblos. Not only did it require the transportation of sandstone from the cliffs above, timber required for the construction of the four story buildings was not available in the area. Modern research has proven that the trees were carried by workers over 50 miles. Few crops could be grown in this arid region, so food to support the thousands of builders had to be imported.

Six months after the James ossuary was declared a fake, the ancient burial box bearing an inscription mentioning Jesus continues to rock the world of biblical archaeology. Scholars are now on the trail of more possible forgeries and questioning the roles their colleagues play in the authentication of relics that turn out to be fake.

The sun disc is the first recorded example of its kind in Wales An ancient gold disc which was used as an item of adornment at a burial 4,000 years ago has been discovered in Ceredigion. Experts say the priceless sun disc is the first one of its kind to be found in Wales and only the third known piece of gold from the Bronze Age uncovered here.

The Earth's magnetic field is generated by its molten core, some two thousand miles beneath the surface of the planet. This magnetic field, amongst other things, helps protect us from the cosmic radiation thrown at us by bodies like the Sun. And recently, it's been throwing plenty. However, scientists are now saying that magnetic field is getting weaker - and at quite a rate. According to John Shaw, a geologist at the University of Liverpool, the rate of change in recent centuries has been greater than at any time in the last five millenia. "It's going from a strong field down to a weak field, and it's doing it very quickly," he said.

The historians claim they have found King Harold's tomb A group of amateur historians are battling to open a tomb which they claim contains the remains of King Harold II. The historians say if they break open the tomb at Holy Trinity Church in Bosham, West Sussex, they will uncover the mystery surrounding the final resting place of the last Anglo-Saxon king. The debate over the burial site of Harold, killed by William the Conqueror's army during the Battle of Hastings in 1066, has raged for decades.

The highlands of Venus are covered by a heavy metal "frost", say planetary scientists from Washington University. Because it is hot enough to melt lead at the surface, metals vaporise and condense at cooler, higher elevations. This may explain why radar observations made by orbiting spacecraft show that the highlands are highly reflective.

AHMEDABAD, India (AFP) - An Indian man who claims divine inspiration says he has survived 68 years without eating, drinking or relieving himself, baffling doctors who are unable to prove him an imposter. Prahlad Jani, a 76-year-old whose extraordinary tale has won him a small band of devotees, took a dare and underwent round-the-clock surveillance at a hospital in Ahmedabad , the commercial capital of the western state of Gujarat.

Archaeologists and anthropology researchers in Gujarat will soon be examining prehistoric sites in the Sabarmati basin in an attempt to recreate the lives of early man in the region. The project to be undertaken by M S University department of archaeology as a part of UGC's special assistance programme is a maiden attempt to excavate primary-sites (settlements) during the lower Palaeolithic age in Gujarat . In 1890, British archaeologist Robert Brucefoote had studied secondary sites in the region. The study, first of its kind, was commissioned by the then ruler of Baroda Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III. Brucefoote based his work on the artefacts and stone tools found in the exposed part of river Sabarmati and Orsang.

Recent conclusions that the storied Vinland Map is merely a clever forgery are based on a flawed understanding of the evidence, according to a scientist at the Smithsonian Institution. Results from last year's study debunking the map's authenticity can also be construed to boost the validity of its medieval origins, the scientist claims. The report will appear in the Dec. 1 edition of Analytical Chemistry, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. The Vinland Map is a drawing of Iceland, Greenland and the northeastern seaboard of North America that has been dated to the mid-15th century, suggesting that Norse explorers charted North America long before Columbus. The map, which has had a contentious history since its discovery in the 1950s, resides at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. It has been valued at more than $20 million.

We are please to announce that an exclusive essay by our December author of the month Laird Scranton is now available in the Forum. Laird will be joining us on the Mysteries Message Board for a month-long discussion of his book 'Hidden meanings' - a book that argues for a radically different interpretation of ancient symbolism and mythology. Could it be that 5000 years ago an ancient scientific knowledge was encoded into the hieroglyphs of the Ancient Egyptians, Knowledge that was in no way primitive but that actually reflects the findings of modern science...?

A purported first-century inscription naming Jesus may or may not be the real thing, but Israel's labeling of the find as a fake is premature, scientists and scholars said at a panel discussion Sunday. At issue is a limestone burial box, or ossuary, with the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," that emerged on Israel's antiquities market last year.

A Second prehistoric log boat has been unearthed in a Derbyshire quarry less than a mile from where a similar find was discovered five years ago. Archaeologists found the 3,500-year-old log boat, which dates back to the Bronze Age, at Shardlow Quarry, Shardlow, in an area that used to be river channel into the Trent.

A tiny vase-shaped glass and a jade dragon-shaped pendant, dating back to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), have been excavated in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. This was the first time that such kinds of relics had ever been found in the Han tombs in Ningxia and they were rarely found in other places of China, said archaeologists with the regional archaeological research institute.

One of two images carved into rocks at an archeological site in Chino, Nagano Prefecture, where the nation's first remains of a Jomon period (ca 10,000 B.C.-ca 300 B.C.) settlement was confirmed--has been determined to be of considerably more recent origin, the city's board of education said Saturday. According to an interim report issued by the Chino City Board of Education, investigations by the Togariishi Jomon Archeological Museum, which owns the two drawings, found a carved image of a man shooting an arrow from a bow on a side of a volcanic rock, first said to have dated back to the middle Jomon period, was bogus.

Well-known Giza researcher Nigel Skinner-Simpson has told Phenomena that he has serious doubts about recent reports that there is a tunnel leading from the Sphinx to one of the Giza pyramids. "It has been reported that Dr Hawass recently stated in a lecture that he had opened a 45ft long tunnel leading from the Sphinx towards [a pyramid]...I understand that according to the story, this was not one of the tunnels already known about. I can assure you that this is bunk."

Penguins, scientists and keen astronomers will be among a select few to experience this Sunday's total eclipse of the Sun in Antarctica. The 500-kilometre-wide shadow of the Moon will sweep across the southern Indian Ocean and the frozen wastes of the White Continent at speeds exceeding one km per second.

Turkish Cypriot daily VATAN newspaper (21.11.03) reports that an archaeological site of great importance was discovered in the area between the occupied villages of Komi Kepir and Livadia. The area, which covers an area of 300 square meters, was used as a wheat field. As the paper writes during archaeological excavations in the area which lasted for two months, two ancient tombs were discovered. The first tomb, which is dating back to the Iron Age, is 15 meters long. The second tomb, which is dating back to the Protogeometrik Period, had inside a male skeleton and death objects like javelins with bronze ends, bronze needles and sixteen different ceramic objects decorated with red and brown colours.

Archaeologist Dr. Carla Sage points out that according to ancient accounts, the Mycenaean, Cretan and Egyptian civilizations all traded with Atlantis -- which would have been unlikely if it lay in the North Atlantic as many believe. "Atlantis was clearly within easy trading distance of Troy and the other city states of the Mediterranean," she says. "I believe Atlantis was the capital of a vast North African empire with ports on the Gulf of Sidra. "Atlantis was destroyed, not by earthquake, floods or volcanoes, but by the steady march of desert sands that smothered the civilization. "The empire did not sink into the sea as is commonly believed -- it was swallowed by the dunes."

Astronomers have discovered a key fact required to understand the Sun's 11-year cycle of activity. Sunspots and flares on the Sun's surface follow the cycle, but expelled gas clouds do not. It seems that these ejections trail the sunspot peak - they peaked in 2002, two years after sunspots. The expelled gas takes away the Sun's old magnetic skin allowing a new one to emerge to start a new cycle.

On the 50th anniversary of the unmasking of the Piltdown Man hoax, archaeologist Dr Miles Russell explains why he believes local solicitor Charles Dawson was the man behind it all In his life Charles Dawson achieved recognition as the greatest British antiquarian and amateur palaeontologist. Within the social circles of his home county, his discoveries earned him the title "the Wizard of Sussex".

Scientists have uncovered a landscape of buried buildings and villages representing more than 6,000 years of British history. Anglo-Saxon settlements, Roman houses, Bronze Age graves and Iron Age homes - covered by thick layers of sand and loam - have been pinpointed using hi-tech magnetic sensors and air reconnaissance surveys. The discovery, at West Heslerton in northern England, suggests the British countryside may have been far more intensively occupied and farmed than previously realized. The surveys have also directed archaeologists to make several significant finds, including a 1,300-year-old brooch scrawled with letters that are the oldest known form of writing in English.

An archaeologist is claiming that logging activity has disturbed several sites of Aboriginal significance in the Bago State Forest in south-west New South Wales. Jim Kelton, who owns a lease adjoining the state forest, says he has discovered more than 100 sites of former Aboriginal campsites. Mr Kelton says State Forests allowed logging to go ahead even after he notified them of the existence of the sites.

Ennis-based Kestrel 3D is currently working with the British Museum to scan hundreds of Iraqi artefacts in order to fabricate replicas for a museum in Mosul. Kestrel 3D, which holds the rights to a unique scanning technology that captures both colour and dimensions, has been engaged in the project for months, although the current instability in Iraq has put the initiative temporarily on hold. But Kestrel 3D finance director Ken O'Mahony said that once stability is restored to the state, the University of Mosul would begin to receive shipments of replica cuneiform tablets, which tell some of the earliest tales recorded by humans.

Last week I talked about the controversial ideas of Jacques Vallee and John Keel regarding UFO (or Vallee's UAP) sightings, and how they may actually be a manifestation of intelligences from other dimensions, or states of being. However, this is only one aspect of the UFO phenomenon. Generally the UFO community is grouped into two distinct areas of experience - those that have sightings, and those that have contact. The major sub-set of the latter is comprised of individuals who state that they have been abducted by alien beings.

A solar storm rattled Earth's outer defences early this morning, generating colourful northern lights as far south as Wisconsin and Michigan. The space cloud is expected to clear early Friday. The storm, called a coronal mass ejection (CME) was generated along with a medium-class solar flare Nov. 18. The cloud of charged particles arrived at about 3:30 a.m. ET (0830 GMT).

Forty years later, and there are still questions about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The intervening decades have seen the rise of an entire industry dedicated to providing answers -- lots of answers, many conflicting. Indeed, one could select virtually any two books on the assassination at random and find in them a wealth of contradictions. So where to look for The Truth?

Burrows the size of groundhog holes dot the sand covering the western edge of one of the world's most ancient religious sites. They are the marks of thieves who after the war plundered treasures that archaeologists say date back to 5000 BC. But this village, explored by University of Chicago archaeologists since 1948, is one of the luckier ones. For weeks now, hired guards, Iraqi police and Spanish troops from the U.S.-led coalition have kept looters at bay, authorities said.

The United States and Cambodia have signed a deal aimed at ending the trade in artefacts plundered from ancient Khmer temples. The US State Department expressed concern at the "alarming rate" of pillage. It said Cambodia's cultural heritage was in jeopardy.

A barely legible clue, the name Simon carved in squiggly Greek letters, beckoned from high up on the weather-beaten facade of an ancient burial monument. Their curiosity piqued, two Jerusalem scholars applied a squeeze, a simple 19th century technique of spreading paper mush over a surface, and uncovered six previously invisible lines of inscription, most of it a verse from the New Testament (Luke 2:25). The inscription, believed to be the first New Testament passage found on an ancient shrine in the Holy Land, declares that the 60-high monument is the tomb of Simon, a devout Jew who the Bible says cradled the infant Jesus and recognized him as the Messiah.

Britain's commitment to future Mars missions remains in doubt, despite the success of the Beagle 2 project. Academia and industry battled against all odds to build the probe, which is set to land on Mars on Christmas Day. It has left British companies in prime position to win key contracts for space missions planned in the next decade. But a shortfall in funding could leave the UK flagging behind other European countries in the race to explore the planet with new landers and orbiters.

Archaeologists have uncovered some fascinating finds - including human remains and a headless horse - on a dig in Stafford. The site, part of a new development for Stafford College, has produced what could be the first physical evidence of a medieval castle in nearby Broadeye as well as the burial site of the headless horse and human remains. Experts from Birmingham Archaeology, based at the University of Birmingham, are now trying to record the discoveries before work begins on a sports hall that will stand on the site.

Initial find of well preserved dolmens was made in 1994 A team of archaeologists has discovered the skulls and bones of 20 people within the confines of a stone burial structure constructed over 5,000 years ago. Along with the human bones were 20 pottery vessels, a scatter of beads, mace heads, and flint tools. Located at Tall al-Umayri on the Queen Alia International Airport Highway just 13 kilometers south of the Seventh (Zahran) Circle at the entrance of Amman National Park, the ancients, whose nationality can no longer be determined, built the dolmen during the Early Bronze Age IB, about 3200 BC.

Most of the serious problems affecting the United Nations World Heritage site of Angkor in Cambodia have been solved thanks to a 10-year international preservation campaign and the time has now come for projects that will directly benefit the local population, according to an international conference held over the weekend. The results of the campaign to save the vast archaeological complex of temples, thanks to the efforts of the international community which has invested more than $50 million, the commitment of Cambodia's authorities and coordination led by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), speak for themselves, UNESCO said in a report today on the conference, held in Paris.

RANO RARAKU VOLCANO, Chile (Reuters) - The steep side of dormant Rano Raraku volcano is the most photographed spot on mysterious Easter Island. Tourists crowd each other to shoot photos of the statues called Moai in the native language. The enormous long faces of these best-preserved examples look down on their eroded brothers at outposts along the coast of Rapa Nui, as the island is known in the native language. All of the existing 870 Moai sculptures were born here in a quarry of unique volcanic tuff rock. The statues that were never moved from the quarry were protected from destructive rain, fire, animals, and souvenir grabbers that have destroyed other Moai and threaten to ruin the island's unique archeological treasure and tourism attraction.

A discovery in 1932 at Clovis, New Mexico established an orthodox view to explain how and when people populated the Americas. The earliest occupation was declared to be that of the Clovis people, hunters that took game with weapons having distinctive, fluted projectile points. The Clovis people were nomadic hunters of both large and small game; mammoth, mastodons, bison, horses and camels were hunted throughout the great plains of North America and into northern Mexico. It was theorized that the Clovis culture crossed the Bering Land Bridge, an non-glaciated tract that emerged some 20,000 to 25,000 years ago, towards the end of the Pleistocene (Ice Ages). Their craft in making these identifiable projectile points was developed in-route as they followed their prey across the land bridge, eventually to the where the spear points were discovered in what is now the southwestern United States. In the 1950s, theses were prepared, papers were presented, and text books were written declaring that Clovis was in-fact the oldest culture in the Americas. The spear points were dated at 12,000-years ago.

Juan Cabello takes pride in not using a cell phone or the Internet to communicate. Instead, he puckers up and whistles. Cabello is a "silbador," until recently a dying breed on tiny, mountainous La Gomera, one of Spain's Canary Islands off West Africa. Like his father and grandfather before him, Cabello, 50, knows "Silbo Gomero," a language that's whistled, not spoken, and can be heard more than two miles away. This chirpy brand of chatter is thought to have come over with early African settlers 2,500 years ago. Now, educators are working hard to save it from extinction by making schoolchildren study it up to age 14.

Uygur guardian Yasen has more to fear than tomb raiders at the historic site of Loulan, an ancient Chinese civilization that suddenly vanished along the Silk Road in northwest China about 2,000 years ago. "Tomb raiders are nothing to fear," said the guardian, "the most horrible thing for us is the lack of visits by other people in Loulan , Xinjiang."

Scientists in Germany are handling the oldest ice that has ever been unearthed in what is hoped will provide important information on climate change. Around 120 chunks of ice, each around half a metre long and 10 centimetres in diameter are being examined by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven.

A discovery that started when North Carolina college students happened on a violated tomb below Jerusalem's Mount Zion has shed light on the burial of a possible contemporary of Jesus, an archaeologist said Sunday. The group of student volunteers led by professor James Tabor from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte three years ago discovered a recently robbed tomb that yielded the shroud-wrapped skeletal remains of an affluent member of the old city.