Newsdesk Archive
We will have achieved much for the study of aesthetics when we come, not merely to a logical understanding...of the fact that the further development of art is bound up with the duality of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, just as reproduction depends upon the duality of the sexes, their continuing strife and only periodically occurring reconciliation. We take these names from the Greeks who gave a clear voice to the profound secret teachings of their contemplative art....
On 22 November 2002, the SCI FI Channel aired a two-hour documentary that depicted archaeologists investigating the purported 1947 crash site of an extraterrestrial spacecraft in New Mexico. Archaeological excavations were carried out by a...team headed by Dr. William Doleman and under contract with the SCI FI Channel. Although in this case the client...and the subject...are both unusual, archaeology under contract is by far the most common form of archaeological work...in many parts of the world today.
Despite some researchers' belief that dogs were domesticated independently in the Old World and in the New, domestication may have happened only once, probably around 15,000 years ago...This is the conclusion of a second study, based on DNA retrieved from ancient dog bones from Mexico, Bolivia and Peru, which found that all the pre-Columbian dogs belonged to Eurasian dog lineages.
January brings us two, "co-authors" of the Month: Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, and two titles, *The Jesus Mysteries* (our primary selection) and *Jesus and the Lost Goddess*.
Please pick up a copy of at least one of these books today and join us January in the Mysteries forum for a most controversial discussion!
[ HUMOR :-) ] Civilization woozed out of the Nile about 300,000 years ago. The Nile was a river that had some water in it. Every year it would flood and irritate the land. This tended to make the people nervous.
-- Today's Selection from Non Campus Mentus
History calls it a tomb. Yet no mummy was ever found in it.
It is attributed to the 4th Dynasty pharaoh Khufu...yet the only reference to his name is upside-down in red paint on some quarry blocks....The one inescapable fact - and just about the only one - is that the pyramid exists.
A group of Chinese archaeologists --revising the orthodox theory that China's civilization originated 5,000 years -- believe the nation's roots can be traced back 8,000 to 10,000 years.
Skeptics in growing number are weighing in with doubts about the authenticity of the inscription on a burial box that may have contained the bones of James, a brother of Jesus.
Geologists in India say they have found an elephant fossil in the Thar desert of Rajasthan, supporting earlier theories that the vast desert was once a fertile area.
Zoologists used to believe that violence in human society could be traced to higher primates' natural propensity for aggression. But a new theory says that apes are not antagonistic at all. Sanjida O'Connell investigates
One of evolution's great mysteries can be explained by the formation of microscopic "incubators" which allowed complex biological molecules to form....Non-living "cells" formed in iron sulphide rocks near hot, hydrothermal vents on the sea floor, according to the theory formulated by Professor William Martin...and Professor Michael Russell....
New observations by a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars show a planet rich in water, but suggests that for billions of years it has done little other than remain frozen in the soil. The finding challenges theories that Mars was once a warm, wet place hospitable to life.
Mysterious ruins in Zimbabwe, nearly brushed this week by the shadow of a total solar eclipse, once served as an astronomical observatory to track eclipses, solstices and an elusive exploding star, a South African scientist said.
Thermoacoustics can work both ways, by removing heat or adding heat. Scientists used tweaked loudspeakers to create high amplitude sound waves in the air. The amplitude levels were far higher than those at rock concerts, where the decibel level is around 120. At 165 decibels, the sound level is so intense the friction could set fire to hair as gas undergoes such huge acoustic undulations.
Scientists believe they have found evidence of the earliest form of written communication in the New World, a pre-Mayan language that could shed light on the ancient peoples who populated what is now Mexico.
A 13,000-year-old skull found in Mexico may help prove theories that some of the New World's first settlers arrived along a Pacific Coast route from Japan, and not just across the Bering Strait.
Once dismissed by experts as folklore, the release of photographic and documentary evidence pointing to the possibility of prehistoric human settlements off the coast of Penghu has experts re-examining theories about the legendary continent of Mudalu
Scientists in Britain have identified the oldest skeleton ever found on the American continent in a discovery that raises fresh questions about the accepted theory of how the first people arrived in the New World.
[Hawass] now takes tea with engineer Robert Bauval (who says Egyptian civilisation is more than 12 000 years old: it's in the stars) and Graham Hancock (the constellation of Orion mirrors the Giza Plateau) and John Anthony West (the Sphinx was damaged by constant rain and floods 15 000 years ago), and entertains the theories he once found laughable.
Wesley Bradd was in the middle of a Raleigh International trip to Africa when he discovered a clutch of rare and ancient ostrich eggs which could be tens of thousands of years old. Academics are particularly excited because the eggs carry engravings by bushmen and the shells have been expertly turned into water bottles.
Visitors to the John Hay Library sometimes ask, "How old is your oldest book?" Answer: 4,000+ years old. The Library holds 27 cuneiform tablets and cones from ancient Mesopotamia, none of which had been translated until two seniors in Visiting Professor Alice Slotsky's class, Ancient Scientific Writings: Akkadian, undertook an elective project to decipher two of the tablets.
Most ancient Egyptians were on the poverty line while a handful of priest-kings held fabulous wealth. Children earned their keep from a very early age and two out of every three people in an average family had to work.
A young South African boy is missing, his friends say he was swallowed by an African rock python, and a snake expert says he believes them....[saying] there was evidence that a snake, between 5 and 6 metres long, had been in the area where the boy said the incident occurred.
Scientists in the United States are to press ahead with plans to create a new lifeform in the laboratory.
Dr Craig Venter - the man behind the privately funded human genome sequence - and Dr Hamilton Smith - a Nobel-Prize-winning geneticist - want to create a man-made microbe with the minimum number of genes needed to sustain life.
Like an underfilled burrito, "The Roswell Crash" has about 10 minutes worth of information wrapped in a two-hour package. And, like most "documentaries" that know they've got squat to reveal, this one keeps the big "surprise" till the end, making the whole thing less of a journalistic undertaking and more of a snake-oil come-on.
Fragments of genetic material have been recovered for the first time from an Ice Age bison, British and American researchers report in the December issue of the journal Geology.
Former Director General (DG) of Archaeological Survey of India, B B Lal, today dubbed the hypothesis of "Aryan Invasion of India" a myth and alleged that it was still accepted for reasons other than historical. "The theory that there was an Aryan invasion of India is completely wrong," Lal stressed in a seminar here and alleged that political reasons were behind its being in textbooks.
An enormous temple that was once surrounded by 300 towering oak posts lies directly underneath the Hill of Tara in County Meath, Irish archaeologists recently announced. While the site is home to many known archaeological treasures, this latest discovery reveals that even more exist underneath the sacred hill.
A large number of Paleolithic sites have been discovered in east China's Zhejiang province, enabling scientists to trace the existence of humans in Zhejiang area back at least 126,000 years. The province used to be considered China's only province without Paleolithic sites.
The analysis revealed clear evidence that photosynthesis did not evolve through a linear path of steady change and growing complexity but through a merging of evolutionary lines that brought together independently evolving chemical systems -- the swapping of blocks of genetic material among bacterial species known as horizontal gene transfer.
At least 35 genera of animals in North America alone were wiped out, including the huge saber-toothed cat, woolly rhinos, woolly mammoths, mastodons, giant skunks, giant rabbits, camels and horses. Using modern DNA analysis, bodies and bones found freeze-dried are being explored for signs of unusual disease. Did a deadly virus or bacteria infect and kill the animals? Or did a growing human population throughout the world exterminate species after species in its search for food and hides?
Dan Cruickshank, an architectural historian with a track record of finding sex in improbable places, insists that the true origins of England's highest order of chivalry and of King Edward III's remark, "Let him be honest who sees evil there", lie in a medieval cult of veneration of the genitalia of the Virgin Mary.
Like a saucepan of thick syrup being heated on the stove, huge convection currents within the Earth, generated by heat from the core, have stirred up the interior for most of its four-and-a-half billion year history. This has led geologists to believe that the interior is now well mixed. But Dr Simon Turner and Professor Chris Hawkesworth from the Earth Sciences Department at Bristol University, with colleagues at the Open University, have new data that suggest the presence of extremely ancient material beneath the Azores.
She talks about physics like it's cooking. "My strength is to put things together out of nothing," she says, "to take this ingredient and another one there and stick something together." The art is figuring out which ones to use and how to combine them so that when the oven bell dings, the universe comes out just right.
The waters surrounding the offshore Penghu islands in the Taiwan Strait may contain ancient ruins belonging to a lost civilization, according to results of a preliminary study conducted by an organization formed by scientists and professional divers presented yesterday.
Underwater archaeologists yesterday announced the discovery of a man-made wall submerged under the waters of the Pescadores Islands that could be at least six and seven thousand years old....The underwater finds are part of a growing body of evidence suggesting the existence of civilizations older than anything previously imagined.
Details about an undersea site reportedly containing ancient city walls more than 10,000 years old will soon be unveiled as the government announced its support for an exploratory project yesterday. Huang Yung-chuan, deputy director of the National Museum of History, announced the project in a press conference.
Neanderthals and early humans knew how to make spears - but did not know how to throw them. Instead, they had a limited hunting strategy, and used their spears merely to stab animals they had already trapped or ambushed.
Ancient hyenas were larger than their relatives found today in Asia and Africa, and even the modern hyena has a jaw so powerful it can crush the leg of a rhinoceros, Turner says. Modern hyenas tend to be fearless in the presence of humans, and they have been known to drag a human hunter from a tent in Africa and crush his bones like toothpicks.
Excavations at Karnak Temple complex have been focusing on areas hitherto little explored, with rewarding results. Nevine El-Aref takes a look
Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawas said the Robot, Pyramid Rover, will return to the Great Pyramid of Cheops after Eidul Fitr to continue the endeavours to unravel the mystery of the pyramid....Another door is expected to be uncovered, Hawas said, to protect the burial chambers and funeral furniture of the king.
New archeological discoveries help complete missed rings in the Pharaonic history, underlining many features of ancient Egyptians' progress in all domains.
It is the most ancient boat ever discovered in China. "The discovery of a boat this ancient is a rare event in the archaeological history of the world," said Jiang Leping, a researcher with the Zhejiang Institute of Cultural Relic Archaeology.
It's a question that has puzzled Peruvians for centuries --why did ancient civilisations bother to etch elaborate shapes into the desert south of Lima some 2,000 years ago, especially when most can only be seen by air?
There are no mysteries in archaeology. There are problems that need to be solved. Each field of science has its own issues, and I do not think that a public conversation about them would be interesting.
As continuously been shown by some new developments both in the mainstream and sub-cultures of current living religions, the normative, "heretical" and esoteric religious currents discussed in the book will hopefully shed further light on the religious and spiritual dynamism underlying the oddly fascinating and seemingly endless search for the identity of 'the other god'.
The CIA has released two new documents that indicate the search for ''Noah's Ark'' reached the level of the White House, according to a report in Insight Magazine.The release of the documents comes two years after Insight published an exclusive story on the search for the biblical Noah's Ark.
[The Bering Strait hypothesis] was so accepted that few archaeologists even bothered to look for artefacts from periods before 10,000BC. But when Jim Adavasio continued to dig below the Clovis layer...he found blades and blade cores dating back to 16,000BC. His findings were dismissed as erroneous; too astonishing to be credible. The Clovis consensus had too many reputations behind it....Some archaeologists who backed Adavasio's conclusions...were accused of...errors or even of planting finds.
A group of divers and academics will form an association to help train Taiwan's archaeologists to conduct underwater research, organizers said yesterday. Hsieh Hsin-hsi, chairman of Taipei-based China Diving Enterprise Co, said the new organization, to be named the Chinese-Taipei Marine Archaeology Society, will be inaugurated at the end of this month to promote underwater study in Taiwan.
An archaeological site identified by OSU researchers as the oldest on the Oregon Coast dates back about 10,400 years. Roberta Hall, Loren Davis, and Michele Punke were all on the team to investigate this known archeological site in Samuel Boardman State Park near Brookings, where the deposits are almost 2000 years older than those previously dated.
Three Dearborn teenagers are among the first high school students to develop an "antigravity machine." The Dearborn High School students have been working on the project for several months and plan to enter it in the Detroit Science Fair in May.
Just released in the U.S., Graham Hancock's UNDERWORLD enters the Bay area's best-selling "Top Ten List" for hard-cover, non-fiction at number four! [-- Web Editor]
From chihuahuas to Saint Bernards, all modern dogs originate from a small number of female wolves living in East Asia some 15,000 years ago, Swedish scientists said on Thursday.
New research suggests harbour seals use acoustics to protect themselves from predators. The University of St Andrews study shows they are capable of distinguishing between harmless fish-eating killer whales and mammal-eating ones.
Archaeologists have found what they believe to be a lost city in the jungles of Nicaragua. The remnants are located near the town of Kukra Hill in the south of the country. Preliminary studies suggest it was a settlement dating back more than 2000 years.
A cave survey in Israel's Judean Desert has found papyrus scrolls, coins and arrow heads from the time of the Jewish rebellion against the Romans in the second century, archaeologists said.
As a Mexican American, Rodriguez long had pondered the historical location of Aztlan, the mythic homeland of the Aztecs. Six years ago, he and his wife, Patrisia Gonzales, found tantalizing directions in Don Joseph Antonio Alzate y Ramirez's map of North America.
Irish archaeologists on Monday said they had discovered the remains of huge monuments dating up to 4 500 years old, just below the surface of the Hill of Tara, the traditional seat of the prehistoric kings of the country.
Officials at the Royal Ontario Museum say they have repaired the stone burial box known as the James ossuary and in the process have made some new discoveries about its age.
Why do some people remain slender, no matter how much they eat? Scientists are looking for a genetic link that might defeat the obesity epidemic
Pheromones were briefly fashionable in the 1970s but faded away because, says Nick Neave, a psychologist at Northumbria University, United Kingdom, the world was not ready for them. There was no scientific rationale for how they worked; they were tricky to manufacture. Then, in the 1980s, Martha McClintock, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, showed that the menstrual periods of women who live together gradually synchronize.
High atop a coastal mountain, this huge and largely unknown carving of an ancient face reminds explorers of the Sphinx in Egypt. Mysterious inscriptions give clues in an extinct language. Could this be a link to our forgotten past?
From time to time there are great discoveries that are made in unusual places. Great works of art have turned up in obscure antique and curio shops, and so have important clues to our past. One reader sent Viewzone these amazing photographs that were taken in a [U.S.] West Coast curiosity shop.
We humans are strange primates. We walk on two legs, carry around enormous brains and have colonized every corner of the globe. Anthropologists and biologists have long sought to understand how our lineage came to differ so profoundly from the primate norm in these ways, and over the years all manner of hypotheses aimed at explaining each of these oddities have been put forth. But a growing body of evidence indicates that these miscellaneous quirks of humanity in fact have a common thread: they are largely the result of natural selection acting to maximize dietary quality and foraging efficiency.
Intuition is not subliminal perception; it is subtle perception and learning-- knowing without knowing that you know. Chess masters often "know" the right move to make even if they cannot articulate how they know it. People who are highly skilled in identifying "micromomentary" facial expressions are also more accurate in judging lying. In testing college students, psychiatrists, polygraphists, court judges, police officers and Secret Service agents on their ability to detect lies, only the agents, trained to look for subtle cues, scored above chance.
For two years, residents this Victoria suburb have been plagued by garage doors that open without warning, sprinklers that come on at will and radios that play several stations at once. Chris Burke says his electronically controlled bed has even developed a nasty habit of folding up while he and his wife are asleep.
Two Australian scientists believe they have found evidence of a parallel universe of strange matter within our own Solar System....Dr Robert Foot believes that mirror matter would have been made in abundance in the Big Bang and that it is all around us but we can't see it. "There could be mirror matter stars, planets and galaxies out there," he told BBC News Online.
[MEDIA PLAYER REQUIRED] Archive recording available of Graham Hancock's appearance on the the Jeff Rense Radio Program on November 19th.
Graham Hancock's latest book, Underworld, argues that civilisation could be much older than is generally thought; Hancock claims to find evidence of drowned cities which predate the standard Mesopotamian origins of civilisation. David Barrett interviews him for Amazon.co.uk.
Scientists have managed to recreate deep earthquakes in the laboratory. In nature, they occur hundreds of kilometres below the surface and scientists say that they should not actually happen. Understanding deep faulting will significantly improve our knowledge of Earth science. The results have also helped explain the origin of some of the largest and most violent earthquakes to occur on Earth.....
Evidence has emerged of how Britain's history was shaped by an asteroid collision 214 million years ago. Rock blasted out of the ground by an asteroid hitting the Earth has been found for the first time in the southwest of England.
Skywatchers are about to have their best chance to see the Leonid meteor shower for the next three decades, say experts. The Leonid display is predicted for the early morning hours of Tuesday 19 November, as viewed from Europe. If enthusiasts are lucky enough to experience clear skies, then they could see as many as two or three bright meteors a minute. The "shooting stars" are actually particles from Comet Tempel-Tuttle which has a 33-year orbit around the Sun.
The unveiling in South Africa's parliament on Monday of a replica of an ancient Chinese map of the then known world which includes a recognisable outline of Africa is raising intriguing questions of which foreigners first explored the continent.
Research divers and marine archaeologists expect to find shells, rocks and remnants of shipwrecks when they excavate areas of the ocean bottom. But pine cones, tree branches and charred limbs -- thought to be about 8,400 years old -- were an unexpected and intriguing treasure awaiting archaeologist Corey Malcom, who spent much of the summer underwater in search of the remains of the Henrietta Marie, a British slave ship that sank 35 miles off Key West in 1700.
In this final part of the essay, we will see how Critias does indeed give an accurate description of a real location, that we can easily discern today; and of the problem for ocean navigation caused when Atlantis was swallowed by the waves.
Scientists have for the first time managed to retrieve an intact protein from a fossil bone more than 55,000 years old.
"The type of arrowhead found in Otzi's body has a very specific 'tanged' shape. It occurs only in the southern Alps and in northern Italy, not in the northern Alps where the arrowheads tend to have a flat base. That means that the guilty party lived south of the Alps and was probably one of Otzi's own people."
Fresh evidence that the Biblical plagues and the parting of the Red Sea were natural events rather than myths or miracles is to be presented in a new BBC documentary.
A new department for foreign archaeological missions was created earlier this year. Seven months down the line Jill Kamil and Nevine El-Aref talk to Supreme Council of Antiquities Secretary-General Zahi Hawass about the additional rules and responsibilities required of missions working in Egypt
Scientists at the University of Chicago and Argonne are 'building' a third-millennium BC city using Sim City-style software.
The Sixth Century builders of Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine cathedral still standing in Istanbul, discovered cement with earthquake-resistant properties 1 300 years before anyone else, a research team revealed on Wednesday.
Terracotta warriors and horses have been found near Chu Emperor Mausoleum at Lion Mountain of Xuzhou recently. After archaeologists' five days' careful excavation, one hundred and ninety-six terracotta warriors and horses reappear before us after hidden in the ground for over two thousand years, among which involve rare "chignon terracotta warriors". All excavated antiques have been collected by Chinese Terracotta Warriors & Horses Museum.
Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and Henan Province have launched a joint project to trace the roots of Chinese civilization.
Russian scientists say their calculations back the conclusion that the Turin Shroud, believed by some Christians to be the linen cloth in which Jesus Christ was buried almost 2,000 years ago, was in fact made in the Middle Ages.
Undersea explorer Robert Ballard's next adventure will take him to the coast of Egypt in search of 2,000-year-old shipwrecks. Ballard said the expedition, scheduled for the summer, will take him around Alexandria, Egypt, and the mouth of the Nile River, up through the Black Sea and parts of the Mediterranean.
In trying to unravel a mystery that may involve the war of the worlds, cable TV's SCI FI Channel has turned to a group of educated men and women with shovels and set them loose on the southern New Mexico desert.
The CIA has released two new documents that indicate the search for 'Noah's Ark' reached the level of the White House, according to a report in Insight Magazine.
Paulina Zelitsky remembers the hot July day two summers ago and the sudden, unpleasant feeling that she had stumbled into a place she was not supposed to be. "We were shocked, and frankly we were a little frightened," said Zelitsky. "It was as though we should not be seeing what we were seeing. Our first thought was maybe we found some kind of secret military installation."
Long before modern-day athletes started taking drugs to enhance their performance, ancient Greeks had a trick or two up their sleeve to maximize their chances of winning. As far back as the 18th ancient Olympiad, in 708 B.C., they were using handheld stone or lead weights in the standing long jump event to improve on their natural ability.
Dr. Peter Woit, a mathematician and physicist at Columbia University, said of the brothers' work, "Scientifically, it's clearly more or less complete nonsense, but these days that doesn't much distinguish it from a lot of the rest of the literature." ...some physicists...worry that far too much junk goes past the referees who vet articles for the scientific journals....
In 1954, Allais observed odd deviations in the swing of a Foucault Pendulum...during the solar phenomenon...the pendulum took an unexpected turn, changing its angle of rotation by 13.5 degrees....He later repeated the experiment and got similar results.
We invite you, readers of Viewzone, to inspect these images, contribute your own finds, and help us to understand who made these, what they mean, and what implications does this global communication and culture have to our understanding of human history.
Think of the great voyages of discovery, and whose names spring to mind? Vasco da Gama, Bartholomew Diaz, Christopher Columbus? Ask the Speaker of Parliament, Frene Ginwala, and one name comes to her lips - the Chinese explorer, Zheng He.
Although many archaeologists believe that no humans could have witnessed the devastating creation of Meteor Crater, some recent findings point to the contrary. About 330 miles to the southeast near Orogrande, New Mexico 4., R. S. MacNeish of The Andover Foundation for Archaeological Research has uncovered evidence of human habitation that even antedates the 47,000 YBP (years before present) window for Meteor Crater.
Through the wizardry of modern genetics, it is possible to reconstruct the travels of the earliest humans as they moved out from their ancestral home in northeast Africa and spread around the globe. More details of these historic itineraries emerge each year, many at an annual conference of population geneticists and archaeologists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island.
Mr Burns said there are 10 times more images of The Green Man in churches than of Christ himself. One theory is that in Medieval times people also liked to worship Pagan Gods as Christianity was often forced on them. "Representations of The Green Man were used in the borders and decorations of bibles and other religious works and he is even carved, under the instruction of Michelangelo, on the tomb of Pope Julius II in Rome."
What is admirable about "The Web" is the argument it makes, deeply original for its time, that civilization (as opposed to barbarity) is feminine. Green wasn't saying that, nor were any of the other histories or encyclopediae of the time.
The brief write-up left loads to be desired. He omitted presenting any basic data about his lab work -- no word on the number of male frogs in the different atrazine treatments or their mortality, and no statistical analysis of the data....The most dubious part of Hayes' experiment is the claim that frogs exposed to the lower concentration of atrazine...actually had triple the rate of deformities....
The real truth is out there and it is a lot more interesting than the conspiracy theorists realise. What they are doing is imposing on the world their own suspicions of deceit, mass lies, cover-ups and double dealings.
For years scientists and marine experts have dismissed such stories as superstition. Walls of water do not rise out of the blue, they said. But now research has revealed that 'killer waves' do exist and regularly devastate ships around the world. They defy all scientific understanding and no craft is capable of withstanding their impact.