Newsdesk Archive

Archaeologist Joseph Shepp-herd has traveled in more than 50 countries and has lived overseas for more than half his life. He will share stories from those travels and talk about how his Baha'i faith motivates him at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Old Linn County Armory Building, 104 Fourth Ave. S.W. The meeting is the first in a series of monthly Multifaith Devotional Gatherings sponsored by the Linn County Baha'i community. Sheppherd, 53, was born in California and lived there until he was about 13 years old. It was at this time that he became interested in the Baha'i faith. Not long after that he attended a Baha'i world conference.

Hurtling through space above the Red Planet, potato-shaped Phobos completes an orbit of Mars in less than eight hours. In fact, since its orbital period is shorter than the planet's rotation period, Mars-based observers see Phobos rise in the west and set in the east - traveling from horizon to horizon in about 5 1/2 hours. These three images from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft record the oval shadow of Phobos racing over western Xanthe Terra on August 26, 1999. The area imaged is about 250 kilometers across and is seen in panels from left to right as red filter, blue filter, and combined color composite views from the MGS wide-angle camera system. The three dark spots most easily seen in the red filter image are likely small fields of dark sand dunes on crater floors. Standing in the shadow of Phobos, you would see the Martian version of a solar eclipse!

In January 2002, a dull star in an obscure constellation suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun, temporarily making it the brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy. The mysterious star has long since faded back to obscurity, but observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of a phenomenon called a "light echo" have uncovered remarkable new features. These details promise to provide astronomers with a CAT-scan-like probe of the three-dimensional structure of shells of dust surrounding an aging star. The results appear tomorrow in the journal Nature.

Blacksburg, Va. -- David L. Rodland, a Ph.D. student in Virginia Tech's Department of Geological Sciences, has been studying encrustation, or the colonization of seashells by other marine organisms that live permanently attached to hard surfaces. Examples of encrusting organisms (or epibionts) include serpulid and spirorbid worms, bryozoans, barnacles, and algae. Many epibionts produce their own calcareous tubes, shells, or skeletons, which are attached to that surface and may become fossilized along with it. "The encrustation of seashells by epibionts provides a great deal of ecological data or, for fossils, paleoecological, data," Rodland said. "You can count the number and diversity of epibionts on a shell, for example, and see how it changes as a function of shell size. Or you can examine how encrustation varies between different kinds of shells or between the shells collected at different places and under different environmental conditions. Some workers have even suggested that they could be used to estimate the amount of nutrients and plankton available in ancient seas."

VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) - The oldest written fragment of the Nibelungen myth, an oral tale later standardized into the most famous Germanic text of the Middle Ages, has been found in a monastery in Austria, experts said Friday. The Nibelungen Saga, a 2,439-verse epic that tells of the rise and fall of the Burgundian empire through the adventures of the mythical hero Siegfried, is considered the most important text of the Middle High German language. There are three official written versions of the song dating to the late 12th century. But the pieces of parchment found recently in the Zwettl monastery in the province of Lower Austria are older than the official versions, art historian Charlotte Ziegler told Reuters.

It's time to stop pointing an accusatory finger at some of the earliest people in North America, researchers say.For decades, the Clovis people have been blamed for exterminating as many as 35 types of animals more than 11,000 years ago, including mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, camels and other mammals that roamed the continent during the Pleistocene era. A study published this month in the Journal of World Prehistory says there's no evidence that the Clovis people hunted big-game animals into extinction.

MEDICAL experts who reconstructed the face of a Roman soldier who died mysteriously almost 2,000 years ago believe he was a native of northern Europe, and came to Scotland with the armies of occupation. Replica features of Trimontium Man, a 45-year-old military veteran, have been crafted from computerised data gleaned during a CT scan of his skull at Borders General Hospital. The only complete skull of a Roman militiaman to be discovered in Scotland is thought to be of Germanic or Gallic origin, although further analysis of the teeth will be necessary before firm conclusions can be reached. As the reconstructed head went on public display at the Trimontium Trust Museum in Melrose, speculation over the cause of death intensified. The Romans cremated their dead, so the soldier, whose skeleton was recovered from a 14ft-deep pit or well in 1846, cannot have died from natural causes.

CLONAID has published the first photograph of one of the human clones it claims to have created. The group said the photograph was of the third of five clones, a baby boy born in Japan in January. However, a fertility expert warned last night that the photograph of a baby in an incubator offered no proof, and Clonaid had yet to provide the evidence it had promised to back its claims. The three-month-old baby is thought to be in the incubator because it was born prematurely, rather than for any other medical reason. It is shown with a tape covering its eyes, which is believed to be for masking its identity. Electrodes are shown attached to its back for routine monitoring.

An Australian neuroscientist claims he can conjure up the mysterious Australian outback phenomenon of the Min Min lights, now that he has worked out what causes them. Professor Jack Pettigrew, of the University of Queensland in Brisbane claims the lights are actually an inverted mirage of light sources which are, in some cases, hundreds of kilometres away over the horizon. The work was published in the current issue of Clinical and Experimental Optometry. Pettigrew studied the phenomenon in the Channel Country, Western Queensland, where he said it has been disturbing the locals for many years.

It is not just the plot for a far-fetched science-fiction disaster movie. Something unexplained really is happening to the Earth's magnetic field. In recent years, the field has been behaving in ways not previously seen in the admittedly short time it has been monitored. Some researchers think it may presage a geomagnetic reversal when the north and south magnetic poles flip. Such speculation takes place as the science-fiction movie The Core goes on release. In the film, the Earth's core stops rotating and our planet's magnetic sheath collapses.

THE mystery surrounding a ship which sank off the Scottish coast more than three hundred years ago may have been solved by a group of amateur historians. Since the 17th-century the true reason why the vessel, which has lain off the west coast, made the journey has eluded historians. Until now they had no idea where it came from, what it was doing in those waters or even when it had sunk.But a group of experts now believe she was a Dutch vessel carrying a cargo of high-powered guns sent to attack Mingary Castle, in the Sound of Mull.

A distinguished archaeologist will be on campus tomorrow to discuss the discovery and excavation of the ill-fated French vessel La Belle, which was shipwrecked off the coast of Matagorda Bay over 300 years ago. James Bruseth, the director of the archaeology division of the Texas Historical Commission (THC), will give a presentation on the discovery at 11 a.m. tomorrow in room 3205 of Dunbar Hall. The lecture is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Western Michigan University Department of History and the Fort Miami Heritage Society, an organization that focuses on the local history of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, Mich.

The popular image of Neanderthals as clumsy, backward creatures has been dealt another blow. It was always thought they were a somewhat ham-fisted lot. However, computer reconstructions of fossilised bones show their hands had almost the same manual dexterity as ours. Far from being "butter fingered", they would have been adept at using implements such as axes and knives.

The world's water resources must become a common global good under a new international system anchored in a constitutional right to water for all, an alternative water forum resolved here at the weekend. While 12,000 people were meeting in Kyoto at the official Third World Water Forum, a smaller group with a radically different agenda came here to Italy. The First People's World Water Forum, as it was called, gathered to protest at the direction of current water policies - which it believes are dominated by private corporations who favour large projects such as dams, instead of simpler technologies.

COLOSSAL 6000-year-old earthworks across Scotland have puzzled experts for centuries, but new research has revealed that the structures were used in mystical rites of passage rituals. Antiquaries thought the cursuses, enigmatic neolithic enclosures, were simply race tracks but archaeologists Peter Topping and David McOmish now believe the sites were processional routes used by young men to symbolically mark their path to adulthood. The Scottish countryside is littered with more than 50 of the huge enclosures but few have been properly excavated, leaving question marks over internal features, artefacts and dating features.Both the Scottish Royal Commission and English Heritage now have embarked on separate projects to catalogue and explain the mysterious monuments.

It is a little-known fact that the festival known worldwide as Mother's Day has its roots in ancient Egyptian civilization. The ancient Egyptians worshipped the goddess Isis, who embodied the virtues of the archetypal Egyptian wife and mother. She was the sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus, and hence became the symbolic mother of the king, who was himself regarded as a human form of Horus. Isis is better known as the devoted wife of Osiris, who had been killed by Set, the god of evil. His corpse was dismembered and the pieces scattered.

At a U.S. Central Command briefing on March 26, 2003, it was stated that Iraqi forces have placed military and communications equipment near the 2,000-year-old Ctesiphon arch located on the banks of the Tigris. This situation, similar to Iraq's deliberate placement of fighter planes near the 4,000-year-old ziggurat at Ur during the 1991 Gulf War, illustrates the threat of destruction plaguing the cradle of civilization. Iraqi officials reported in 1992 that 4,000 artifacts went missing during the Gulf War. Only 20 had been returned by 1998. Post-war sanctions on Iraq limited the government's financial ability to preserve antiquities, protect sites, and enforce cultural property laws. Conflict in Afghanistan has had similar consequences. After the withdrawal of Soviet troops and the fall of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1992, attacks to control Kabul resulted in the looting of seventy percent of its coin collection. More recently, the Taliban destroyed un-Islamic artifacts at the Kabul Museum, and an impoverished population continues to plunder its culturally rich sites.

French scientists have launched a war against an insidious fungus that is attacking the Lascaux caves, the site of the world's most famous prehistoric paintings. So says the latest study into the hominids who inhabited Europe, parts of Central Asia and the Middle East for some 170,000 years until they mysteriously disappeared around 30,000 years ago, apparently displaced or massacred by anatomically modern man.

Earthquakes may be sounding an early warning system in the outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere, says an international team of scientists. For decades, Russian scientists have been claiming that earthquakes can be preceded by changes in the airless, but electrically charged, ionosphere on the edge of space. But they've never been able to explain why the ionosphere would be affected by something happening inside the ground. That's one of the reasons U.S. scientists have disregarded their work.

Tim McClanahan, a conservation zoologist with the Bronx, New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, has studied the coral barrier reefs of Belize for the past decade. McClanahan said he was "hooked" when he noticed that the Belize Barrier Reef System, the world's second largest, showed signs of ill health similar to damaged reefs near densely populated locations like Jamaica. "Why would these reefs out in the middle of the Caribbean, far from land, located near a small country with a small population, not look like they should?" McClanahan recalled.

Jules Verne thought you could get to the center of the Earth through the chimney of an extinct Icelandic volcano. At the bottom, he envisioned a vast inland sea -- really inland, as in 4,000 miles down -- and a bunch of dinosaurs. This, it turned out, was science fiction. These days we know more, and this week Paramount Pictures will release "The Core," in which a team of intrepid "terranauts" try to reverse the collapse of the Earth's magnetic field by traveling to the metal center of the planet and setting off a nuclear bomb. This is somewhat closer to reality, since it reflects the prevailing view that the Earth's core is made of partially crystallized iron and nickel, and makes use of the idea that heat from the cooling core contributes to the magnetic field that repels solar radiation and keeps it from frying the Earth to a crisp.

SANTA FE, New Mexico (AP) -- Believers in space aliens, rejoice! New Mexicans can now celebrate every second Tuesday in February as "Extraterrestrial Culture Day" after a Roswell lawmaker's proposal won approval in the House. Some lawmakers scoffed at the idea. But the sponsor of the memorial, Republican Rep. Daniel Foley, of Roswell, said life on other planets -- if you believe in it -- surely has its own set of cultural beliefs.

A microchip that uses chemicals instead of pulses of electricity to stimulate neurons has been created. It could open the way to implants that interact with our nervous system in a far more subtle way than is possible now. While electrical pulses convey impulses along neurons, the cells communicate with each other and with other cells such as muscles by releasing chemical messengers. These neurotransmitters are released from one side of a cell junction, or synapse, and picked up by receptors on the other side, triggering another electrical pulse.

A plan has been unveiled to conserve the hut used by the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton during his 1907-1909 Nimrod expedition to Antarctica. The hut at Cape Royds, like others in the region, is in a state of serious disrepair as a result of the harsh weather and the wear and tear caused by visitors. Many artefacts have been stolen. Under the plan, produced by the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust, the hut will be restored to reflect the condition it was in when Shackleton abandoned it in 1909, following his failed attempt to reach the South Pole. The work is expected to take five years and could cost about £2m. A major fund-raising initiative is underway to obtain the necessary funds.

Identical Stone Age settlements have been unearthed near Novopetrovka in the Amur region in the Russian Far East, and on an island off South Korea.

AN IRON AGE engraving discovered on a stone at a Cambridge excavation site is being hailed a unique find by archaeologists.

Stonehenge was one among many monolithic computing devices which were networked together across the isle of Britain and no doubt connected to much more advanced devices at the Hyperborean base at the north pole. It is assumed that the majority of these supercomputers were in Atlantis itself, and were lost to antiquity when the waters suddenly came in - destroying years of advanced culture and inspiring world-wide myths of a "great flood."

The melting of an enormous Antarctic ice sheet 14,000 years ago triggered climatic changes in Europe and North America that ultimately led to the end of the last ice age, according to a new study.

Scientists claim they have found the oldest evidence of human creativity: a 350,000-year-old pink stone axe. The handaxe, which was discovered at an archaeological site in northern Spain, may represent the first funeral rite by human beings. It suggests humans were capable of symbolic thought at a far earlier date than previously thought. Spanish researchers found the axe among the fossilised bones of 27 ancient humans that were clumped together at the bottom of a 14-metre- (45 feet) deep pit inside a network of limestone caves at Atapuerca, near Burgos. It is the only man-made implement found in the pit.

Scientists have found evidence of high-speed winds blowing away vast amounts of gas from the cores of two quasar galaxies."The winds we measured imply that as much as a billion suns' worth of material is blown away over the course of a quasar's lifetime," says George Chartas, of the Penn State Astronomy and Astrophysics Department, US, who led the observations. Researchers speculate that the winds might also regulate the growth of the black hole at the centre of an active galaxy, and possibly spur the creation of new stars in the centres of galaxies as well.

Antiquaries thought they were ancient race-tracks. Later they were seen as processional routes. But cursuses might have been both these things and a whole lot more, writes David McOmish Few monuments, from any period in history or prehistory, are as enigmatic as cursuses. These long - often ludicrously long - Neolithic enclosures have turned the concept of 'mystery' into an art form. Few have been properly excavated, and those that have, generally produced pitifully little by way of internal features, artefacts or dating evidence.

American experts say the killer virus from Asia that has been baffling health officials worldwide could be caused by a new variety of a common cold virus. The head of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said a number of tests had revealed traces of a form of microbe known as a coronavirus in the tissue of people infected with the unidentified disease.

A court in northern India has received a first report on controversial excavations taking place at a holy site claimed by Hindus and Muslims.Details of the dig in the town of Ayodhya have not been made public since work started two weeks ago following a court order. Archaeologists are trying to settle a row over whether the ruins of a Hindu temple lie beneath a 16th century mosque pulled down by Hindu zealots in 1992. The destruction of the mosque sparked off religious riots across India in which more than 2,000 people died. Hindus say the mosque was built on the ruins of a temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu God, Ram. They want to build a new temple on the site.

Two dogs digging for a buried bone in their owner's backyard in Chile found a 2,500-year-old mummy.Ivan Paredes, who lives in Arica, could not believe his eyes when his dogs dug up the ancient body. He told La Cuarta online: "The dogs were trying to find bones buried in the backyard as usual, but they started to bark very loud and I came to check what was going on and found the mummy of child

The Egyptian mission under Zahi Hawas, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), unearthed an ancient mummy, considered the first embalmment attempt known by ancient Egyptians 5,000 years ago dating back to the era of King Hor-aga, 3200 B.C., at Sakkara, Giza. Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni, at a press conference Sunday, said the mission also unearthed a wooden sarcophagus, made of cedar, which was brought by ancient Egyptians from Lebanon.

DENVER - Visit the great Puebloan ruins of the American Southwest -- Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon or Aztec -- and you'll probably hear about the mysterious, long-lost Anasazi who abandoned their cities during a withering drought. Don't believe any of it, archaeologists now say. The Anasazi aren't gone, but live on as the modern Pueblo people. They never abandoned their great buildings; they simply reorganized themselves into smaller villages. And that much-touted drought was probably just one factor among many that led to people moving around.

According to a recent research by Mahmoud Zanati, professor of history and philosophy of law, the ancient Egyptians, including the pharaohs, were extremely religious while their legal practices respected human rights. Dr Zanati's book, Human Rights in Pharaonic Egypt is a comparative study of ancient governments and political systems. He used foreign sources in order not to present a biased account and concluded that Pharaonic Egypt was the first nation in history to promote human rights.

Scientists hope to send a satellite into deep space to study solar influences on climate change. The Earthshine mission would showcase British expertise and provide vital data on climate change. Principal investigator Mike Lockwood believes going it alone will deliver answers more quickly than joining forces with other nations. "The need is to get the data quickly," he told BBC News Online. "Science has moved to a point where people are asking questions now that we can't answer because we don't have the data."

After eight days of discussions involving 12,000 participants, mountains of paper and lakes of coffee, beer and sake, the Third World Water Forum ended with this ringing endorsement from the World Conservation Union: "The (ministerial) declaration will have virtually no impact on national policies. There is nothing in the text which will make a difference."

A team of physicists may have stumbled upon a surprising discovery about one of the deepest and best-studied questions in pure mathematics: whether or not prime numbers appear randomly in the sequence of whole numbers. Pradeep Kumar and colleagues at Boston University1 reckon that they have found a kind of order among the distribution of primes, the numbers that cannot be divided by any smaller number other than 1.

Trim and hyperkinetic at 40, Bonnie Bassler is often mistaken for a graduate student at conferences. Five mornings a week at dawn, she walks a mile to the local YMCA to lead a popular aerobics class. When a representative from the MacArthur Foundation phoned last fall, the caller played coy at first, asking Bassler if she knew anyone who might be worthy of one of the foundation's fellowships, popularly known as genius grants. "I'm sorry," Bassler apologized, "I don't hang out with that caliber of people." The point of the call, of course, was that Bassler - an associate professor of molecular biology at Princeton - is now officially a genius herself. More than a decade ago, she began studying a phenomenon that even fellow biologists considered to be of questionable significance: bacterial communication. Now she finds herself at the forefront of a major shift in mainstream science.

Hardly bothering to suppress enthusiasm, she held up a large oblong fragment of a stippled, deep green plate - gummy clay soil stuck within the details of its leafy edging and molded border of pears and garlands. "I've never seen anything like it before," Azizi said. "It's from the last quarter of the 18th century. It's definitely from the time period we're looking for, and it would have been considered expensive."

Archaeologists of the two countries revealed in an exchange of scientific information that "identical labor, hunting and household tools and jewelry" have been found in the Neolithic sites, Prof. Boris Sapunov from the History Department of Blagoveshchensk Pedagogical University told Interfax on Monday. He said joint archaeological research will be undertaken. A team of South Korean archaeologists will come to the Amur region in June 2003, to take part in excavations near Novopetrovka.

...the origin of the tale of Yamata-no-Orochi and the sword is believed to be utterly down-to-earth. Specifically, it is thought to stem from the itinerant groups of men skilled in the ways of making fine steel from iron-rich sand who, long, long ago worked deep in western Honshu's wooded mountains.

Nothing is ever quite settled when it comes to ancient hominids, and I doubt there is a single claim in paleoanthropology that can't be used to start an argument. So I hope there will be people who will argue with Richard Klein of Stanford University, who has made me nostalgic for ancestors he says I never had.

The Mayan civilisation of Central America collapsed following a series of intense droughts, suggests the most detailed climatic study to date.

Archaeologists working at Norwich's newest development have discovered some unexpected secrets about the city's past.

BUILDERS who were on the brink of using a JCB digger to lay the foundations of a new housing estate have unearthed what may be the richest archaeological find in Scotland. It includes the well-preserved skeleton, sword and valuable adornments of an Iron Age warrior buried with full honours.

Archaeologists have discovered one of the earliest Christian burial sites underneath a school playground in north-east England.

Polo, the favorite sport of Britain's Prince Charles and the international jet set, was also apopular recreation and diplomatic activity during the ancient Chinese Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.), according to historians.

In this quaint stone village perched high in the mountains above Damascus, the language of Christ has somehow, miraculously, endured through the millennia.

Pompeii is well known for its rich archaeological record sealed by volcanic deposits in A.D. 79. But what was the history of the city and its inhabitants before this date? The Anglo-American Project in Pompeii (AAPP), sponsored by the University of Bradford in England, is answering this question through scholarly research and at the same time is training future archaeologists and historians in the latest scientific field techniques. This video introduces the viewer to Pompeii and the goals of the AAPP and describes the field excavation of 2002.

Ancient Britons started mummifying their dead at around the same time as the ancient Egyptians, according to a British archaeologist.

Do some of today's languages still hold a whisper of the ancient mother tongue spoken by the first modern humans? Many linguists say language changes far too fast for that to be possible. But a new genetic study underlines the extreme antiquity of a special group of languages, raising the possibility that their distinctive feature was part of the ancestral human mother tongue.

Just over a century ago sponge divers off the coast of Antikythera, an island northwest of Crete, discovered a first-century B.C. Roman shipwreck. They later returned to the site, accompanied by archaeologists, and spent the next year diving 200 feet down to the shipwreck (without scuba gear or air tanks) to recover amphoras, statues, jewelry, coins and pottery.

No disrespect meant to Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright or anybody else who might claim responsibility for the game we call baseball, but Thutmose III had them beat by three millennia or so.

Working with new evidence and a trove of re-examined relics, many of them recovered from the basement of a Yale museum here, archaeologists have revised their thinking about the significance of Machu Picchu, the most famous "lost city" of the Incas.

Chinese archaeologists have excavated 41 ancient tombs built from the Spring and Autumn Period (770 B.C.-476 B.C.) to the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-24 A.D.) in central China's Hunan Province. Chinese archaeologists have excavated 41 ancient tombs built from the Spring and Autumn Period (770 B.C.-476 B.C.) to the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-24 A.D.) in central China's Hunan Province. The archaeologists unearthed a total of 303 relics including bronze swords, daggers, spears, clusters of arrows, bronze mirrors, pottery jars and pots, as well as jade rings and agate pipes from these ancient tombs located in the downtown area of Yiyang City.

When the Center for Free Inquiry opens its newest office in Manhattan, it couldn't ask for a better greeting. The ornate sign outside the building at 30 Rockefeller Center reads "Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of our times" and a sculpture of the Greek god Prometheus stands prominently nearby. "If we had a patron saint, he would be ours," CFI-Metro NY Chairman Austin Dacey says of Prometheus, who brought fire and intelligence to humanity.

The first mummies to be discovered in Britain have been found in the Outer Hebrides. Researchers believe islanders on South Uist started mummifying their dead at the same time as the ancient Egyptians. Film-makers from the 'Meet the Ancestors' programme followed archaeologists from the University of Sheffield working at Cladh Hallan on South Uist.

New images and analysis suggest the slopes around the Red Planet's largest extinct volcano, Olympus Mons, contain dark stains caused by brine flowing down hill. The discovery indicates that the substantial underground ice deposits on Mars can sometimes melt and flow across the surface. It is bound to increase speculation that life may exist near to the surface of the planet.

Markings in hardened volcanic ash, dubbed "devils' trails" by local Italian villagers, have been confirmed as the oldest-known footprints ever made by humans. The fossilised hand and footprints belong to three early humans who were probably climbing down the side of the Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy about 385,000 to 325,000 years ago, report a team of Italian palaeontologists in today's issue of the journal, Nature.

The Mayan civilisation of Central America collapsed following a series of intense droughts, suggests the most detailed climatic study to date. The sophisticated society of the Maya centred on large cities on the Yucatán peninsula, now part of Mexico. Their population peaked at 15 million in the 8th century, but the civilisation largely collapsed during the 9th century for reasons that have remained unclear to this day.

The 10,000-plus delegates to the World Water Forum in Japan have a challenging week ahead. They must work out how to reach the UN target of halving the numbers of people without clean water by 2015.

For more than a month strange objects have continued to fall from the sky within the borders of the Hautes-Pyrénées and Haute-Garonne. It all began on January 28 when an inhabitant of Cuguron, a small village of Comminges (Haute-Garonne), affirms having seen a ball of fire cross the sky before falling to the ground. It was a small sphere, he said, about the size of a balloon or handball.

Yokota, at the foot of Mount Sentsuzan in the Izumo region of Shimane Prefecture, is home to one of Japan's best-known mythological tales. As described in the eighth century "Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters)" and "Nihon Shoki (Chronicle of Japan)," the story goes something like this: "Once upon a time, an eight-headed and eight-tailed monster called Yamata-no-Orochi haunted villages and terrorized residents. The serpent, with bright red eyes and its body inflamed and bleeding, was the size of eight valleys."

All over the world, monuments are a national treasure which governments and the public are keen to preserve. But in Egypt, the situation is somewhat different. Although there is a marked interest on official level to restore and upgrade archaeological sites, neglect is still a major factor jeopardising archaeological heritage. For instance, the monuments in Rosetta on the Delta, are under threat of rising levels of underground water. Some of the town's mosques are suffering from severe damp. The sight of piles of refuse detracts from the cultural and historic values of the town. The Zagloul Mosque is a tragic example of neglect. Part of the mosque collapsed some years ago and until now nobody has taken the initiative to rebuild it.

The Salado Indians disappeared centuries ago, but the remnants of their civilization linger in central Arizona canyons. During the past two years, the dry spell has lowered the lake levels to the point that many of the ruins have reappeared to varying degrees, allowing archaeologists to view them and learn. They got some of their best views beginning in September.

Croatian archaeologists have discovered an Iron Age grave dating back to 700 years BC, the official news agency HINA reported on Sunday evening.

The use of trawl-nets in waters off Desaru, Johor, may have damaged ceramic artefacts, which the authorities are trying to recover from a sunken ship.

Joe Ben Sanders has spent 27 years looking at the Wind Mountain petroglyphs at Three Rivers, N.M. He has made controversial connections with the Hopi tribes of New Mexico and Arizona and the ancient site of Casas Grandes in Mexico.

People who've never been anywhere near the Giza Plateau may be seduced into holding whatever theory they like. But those theories require one to ignore the fact that none of the Giza Pyramids ever stood alone; each was always part of a complex that included an upper and lower temple connected by a causeway, walls, boat pits, harbors and ancillary small pyramids - elements that don't exactly mesh with notions of ancient astronauts and atom smashers.

Working with historical maps that show the location of Adele Street between St. Andrew and Josephine streets, archaeologists of the local firm Earth Search, led by dig coordinator Ryan Gray, have plumbed old privies to collect artifacts that should eventually give them ideas about the cultures that have called the Irish Channel home for more than 150 years.

An axe head that could be as many as 6,000 years old has been discovered by a five-year-old boy in a Worcestershire playing field.

The germ that causes stomach ulcers has been a constant travelling companion throughout tens of thousands of years of human migration. From the arrival of the first farmers in Europe to the more recent slave trade out of Africa, the tiny spiral bacterium Helicobacter pylori has been hitching a ride inside the travellers' guts, new research shows.

Greetings from Waka', a Maya site in northern Guatemala, where we'll be working for the next three months. Our joint American-Guatemalan investigation, the Proyecto Arqueologico Waka', will explore the site's role in the struggle for domination between the Maya superpowers Tikal, to the east, and Calakmul, to the northeast.

An Army Corps of Engineers archaeologist has a message for people thinking about collecting artifacts along the Missouri River. "I won't make any bones about it," Richard Harnois said. "Removing artifacts from federal land is stealing. You are a thief."

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) Vadodara circle, has unearthed 160 ancient seals, with the Brahmi script inscribed on them, from the Hatab excavation site, located some 20 km south of Bhavnagar. The seals are said to be 2000 years old and were probably used to stamp goods that were to be exported.

For five years now, a University of Cincinnati team has been piecing together the fragments of three little-known, prehistoric Native American cultures that left behind immense earthworks that rival Stonehenge in their astronomical accuracy.

A Paleolithic Age settlement at Bukit Bunuh in Lenggong, Perak, has been confirmed to date back 40,000 years and not between 20,000 and 30,000 years as previously estimated.

A previously unknown temple has been found in the middle of the Cambodian jungle, government officials said yesterday.

Historians may change their age-old approach to restoring ancient buildings after the surprising discovery of 13th Century Irish wood in the framework of Salisbury Cathedral.

Scientists are preparing to study tiny bubbles of air trapped inside the Antarctic ice sheet for more than 800,000 years as part of an ambitious research programme to investigate the history of the Earth's climate using the frozen time capsules of the north and south poles.

There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. How are juries to evaluate them?

Sometime after the turn of the last century, young George Keller and a lad named Lone Eagle were playing among the foothills of the Rocky Mountains above the farm owned by George's father near Manti, Utah. The Kellers were the descendants of freed black slaves, who migrated to the American southwest following the Civil War. Coming to a massive overhang, the Indian boy pointed to a hole in the mountain side and explained, "This is a special place, the Cave of the Great Spirit. My father says it is the holy place of a people who are dead, and that a great

My main gripe with this whole Alternative History lark is that you all suffer from two chronic failings: 1) You are far too respectful of academia and 2) You are just not ambitious enough.

Archaeologists claim to have unearthed the world's oldest wheel in Slovenia. Experts estimate that the wheel is between 5,100 and 5,350 years old.

Statues from a highly advanced African civilization that thrived for 1,200 years along the banks of the Nile River have been uncovered by a team of archaeologists working in Sudan

AN EGYPTIAN royal mummy displayed in a Niagara Falls freak show for more than a century is to be returned to Cairo. The quality of the mummification and the position of the arms suggest that the body belongs to one of the missing pharaohs of the New Kingdom, perhaps Ramesses I or Ramesses VII; it could also be the mummy of Horemheb, the next-but-one successor to Tutanhkamun, experts suggest.

Arran Frood investigates what could have been the very first batteries and how these important archaeological and technological artefacts are now at risk from the impending war in Iraq.

SCOTLAND has the earliest frontier in the Roman empire, according to new evidence that shows they colonised Perthshire 15-20 years before previously thought. The study suggests that Scots engaged in trading with the Romans, giving them beer and mutton in return for the Mediterranean delights of wine and olive oil.

A Dorset woman who spent a year alone with a wheelbarrow excavating 7,000 years of history from the bottom of a quarry, won a major award yesterday for what has turned into one of the largest and most important archaeological excavations in England.

For almost 2,000 years one of the most glorious Roman treasures preserved by the ash from Mount Vesuvius has lain hidden...But from today...the public can visit the former seaside retreat of Julius Caesar's father-in-law, buried when Vesuvius erupted in 79AD.

Researchers from the University of Washington and Southern Methodist University who examined evidence from all suggested Clovis-age killing sites conclude that there is no proof that people played a significant role in causing the extinction of Pleistocene mammals in the New World.

Archaeologists...want to continue research that has turned up evidence humans lived on the [Mexican] island as long as 40,000 years ago.

This recent book by Christiane Zivie-Coche and translated from the French by David Lorton, called Sphinx: History of a Monument, sets the sculpture in its dense context....Seen as a backdrop to the centuries of development, the Sphinx serenely accepts the roles of funerary monument to Khafre in the Old Dynasty, and that of the god Haurun-Harmakhis, an avatar of Horus, under the reign of 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Amenophis I.

If you think you know anything of the history of Britain, prepare for a shock -- for the promise of this title, to reveal Britain's History, is woefully understated. In The History of Britain Revealed, the official account of Britsh origins is not merely exposed, it is rather, stripped naked and subjected to brutal humiliation.

Mystery mummy goes home to Egypt AN EGYPTIAN royal mummy displayed in a Niagara Falls freak show for more than a century is to be returned to Cairo. The quality of the mummification and the position of the arms suggest that the body belongs to one of the missing pharaohs of the New Kingdom, perhaps Ramesses I or Ramesses VII; it could also be the mummy of Horemheb, the next-but-one successor to Tutanhkamun, experts suggest.

The Supreme Court has granted an interlocutory injunction against Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council preventing the authority from carrying out further work at the medieval Carrickmines Castle site in south Dublin.

Winter Palace The first major exhibition devoted to the Incas' fabled cold-weather retreat highlights Machu Picchu's secrets