Newsdesk Archive
Read this at TheNewsMexico.com by clicking the following link
Read this article at UNESCO Press by clicking the link below
To read this article at Ananova, click the link below...
Read this article at the Sunday Times by clicking the link below...
Click the link below to read this article at Ananova
Read this article at the BBC by clicking the link below
To read this article at Yahoo! News, click the link below
To read this article at People's Daily, click link below
Read this article at Discover Archaeology by clicking on the link below...
Click the link below to read this article at the Guardian website...
Click on the link below to read this article from Xinhua News Agency
To read this article at Space.com click the link below
Thanks to Matt for drawing our attention to the link below at Unknown Country
Read this article at Egypt Online by clicking on the link below
To read this article at BBC News Online click the link below...
Read this at the Buxton Advertiser by clicking the link below
This report is from the Xinhua News Agency. Click the link below to read it.
Read this by clicking the link below.
Read this at nature.com by clicking the link below.
Read this at Archaeology.org by clicking the link below.
Thanks to William T. for alerting us to this news on the Message Board. Click the link below to read the article at Al-Ahram Weekly Online.
Read this article at the Guardian website by clicking the link below.
Click the link below to read this article.
Read this at Human Oasis by clicking the link below.
Read this article at Discovery Archaeology by clicking the link below.
Read this article at ABCNews.com by clicking the link below.
Read this article at The Time website by clicking the link below.
Read this article at the Sunday Times website by clicking the link below.
I guess insurance premiums were lower in the Neolithic.
Read this article at The Independent website by clicking the link below.
Click the link below, then scroll down and browse the numerous articles on this subject.
Read this article at the The Times website by clicking the link below.
Read about this at the Ananova website by clicking the link below.
Read this article (with great photos) at Ananova.com by clicking the link below.
Kites???
Click the link below.
Ananova reports that "The world's first pin-up has been discovered in France"
The Palaeolithic Frenchman would have been deeply offended by this. He followed a sophisticated religion that was expressed through the connected symbols of human physiology, astronomy and the cyclicity of nature. A depiction of the goddess in a cave is no more of a "pin-up" than a depiction of the Virgin Mary in a Church.
Click the link below to read Ananova's crappy article.
Read this article at the Washington Post website by clicking the link below.
Chinese scientists are suggesting the buildings slid into the lake during an earthquake. Read more by clicking the link below.
As Sharif announced earlier this week, we will be implementing user registration for the Message Board. This will mean that, in order to post to the MB, you will have to log in. You will still be able to read the MB without logging in.
In order that this go as smoothly as possible, there will be a transition period whereby you will be able create a 'user account' but login's will not be required to post.
You can now create an account by going to the following address:
http://www.grahamhancock.com/users/register.php
If everything goes according to plan, the MB login will be put live Thursday evening at around 10pm GMT/UTC (11pm BST - UK). There will be a few minutes where the MB will be offline while all the files are updated.
From XINHUA NEWS AGENCY:
"Yu Xixian, an archaeologist with the Beijing University, and two journalists from Yunnan Daily conducted several on-the-spot investigations at the bottom of the lake in March this year. Based on a large number of pictures and video tapes taken by Yu and the two reporters and a man-made stone carving, archaeologists confirmed that there exist the ruins of ancient civilization at the bottom of Fuxian Lake."
Follow the link below to read more at People's Daily.
Also, CNN ran a story saying that exploration of the submerged buildings will be broadcast live by China Central Television on June 3rd.
Read this article at BBC Online by clicking the link below.
Read this article at the Sunday Times website by clicking the link below.
Read this article, discussing the recent work of Barry Cunliffe, at the Guardian Unlimited website by clicking the link below.
Follow the link below to see Hoagland's argument that the latest hi-res photos of the face reveal feline features.
Recent, high-res images from the Mars Surveyor have revealed that the famous 'face' detected 25 years ago by Viking I is not a face at all.
Read a full article at The Times website by clicking the link below...
This article can be purchased at www.sciencemag.org, or you can read a summary of the article at ABC Australia for free by clicking the link below...
Read this article at UnknownCountry.com by clicking the link below...
Read this article at the Washington Post Online by clicking the link below...
Read this fascinating article at BBC News Online by clicking the link below...
Read this article at the telegraph by following the link below.
(Often Telegraph links stop working, so you may need to go to www.telegraph.co.uk and do a search for Silbury Hill.)
Read this article at USAToday.com by clicking the link below...
Click the link below to read more...
Read this informative article at the Time by clicking the link below...
Piri Reis said on his map that Colombus discovered America in 1485-86. This claim was dismissed by historians as a simple factual error. Now, however, the historian and writer Ruggero Marino has found evidence, in the form of an inscription on the tomb of Pope Innocent VIII (who died before Colombus's voyage of 1492) to support Piri Reis's version of events.
Many other of Piri Reis's claims have been dismissed by historians as factual errors. For example, Reis says that Colombus used a book describing America and its wonderful wealth to obtain funding for his voyage. This is dismissed as a myth. Reis also says his map is based on source maps that go back to the time of Alexander the Great - this is explained away by historians as the result of a confusion on Reis's part between Claudius Ptolemy (a famous 2nd Centuty geographer) and the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt. In a note on the southern-most part of his depiction of the New World, Piri Reis gives a measures of the day length (max. 22hours, min. 2hours) that is consistent with Antarctic latitudes. This is generally dismissed because Reis also reports that the land in this part of the world is warm during the day, and "has much dew" during the night.
Now that the veracity of Reis has been supported on one of these points, could it be that his other claims deserve to be reconsidered?
Read a fuller article on the Ruggero Marino's work at the Times by clicking the link below...
[10 May 2001] Carbon dating is a mainstay of geology and archaeology - but an enormous peak discovered in the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere between 45 thousand and 11 thousand years ago casts doubt on the biological carbon cycle that underpins the technique. The study led by physicist Warren Beck of the University of Arizona, US, could also affect estimates of how quickly the Earth can re-absorb the excess carbon dioxide generated by fossil fuels (J W Beck et al 2001 Science to appear).
Read an article discussing this paper at PhysicsWeb by clicking the link below...
"Five centuries ago, before the Spanish conquest of Peru, a horde of fabulous Incan treasure disappeared. Tons of gold formed into statues, sun shields, ceremonial objects were well hidden by the Incas somewhere underground beneath the city of Cuzco. The search for these underground chambers where the sacred treasure was hidden - a colossal engineering feat no less mysterious than that which was hidden - has occupied in vain scores of adventurers and investigators. No one, until now, has been able to find these priceless artifacts..."
Read full article in the Forum Section of this website by clicking the link below.
Javier Sierra is a well known spanish writer and journalist. He is the editor of the magazine Más Allá de la Ciencia (Beyond Science) and author of five books. The most recent one, In Search of the Golden Age (not yet published in English), is an account of his research into the world behind ancient mysteries.
Read this article at the Chicago Tribune by clicking the link below...
A popular theory among geneticists (but originally proposed by archaeologist Colin Renfrew) is that, around 10,000 years ago, farming populations expanded out from the Middle/Near East, spreading their ('Nostratic) languages and farming technologies across Europe, Western Asia, India and North Africa. This so-called 'Nostratic Demic Diffusion' (NDD) hypothesis is highly controversial, particularly among linguists and many archaeologists.
This week the NDD hypothesis received strong support from an important genetic study, carried out by a Swiss-French team and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA, 2001, vol. 98, no.10, pp5927-5932). This study shows that a major lineage of Old World domestic goats also underwent a great expansion from the Middle/Near East around 10,000 years ago.
Graham Hancock is often attacked for being "ultra-diffusionist" when he suggests that cross-cultural parallels in folklore, astronomy and architecture might be due to a common ancestral prehistoric culture. Now it seems that top geneticists are explaining linguistic and technological parallels between cultures in precisely the same way.
A good article on the goat genetics paper can be found at BBC News Online by clicking the link below. Alternatively, purchase access to the original paper at PNAS.org for $5.
Read this article at Independent Online by clicking the article link below...
Read this article at the Times of India website by clicking the link below...
Read this fascinating article at the Pioneer Planet website by clicking the link below...
Follow the article link below to find out more about this fascinating development...
The GrahamHancock.com website needs to be upgraded to cope with the number of people visiting the site. The upgrade will take place at around 8:30am BST (7:30am GMT/UTC) on Monday 30th April. The website will be down for around 20 minutes.
To ease the migration, I will be bringing the Message Board down late on Sunday night (again UK time). Once the migration is completed, the Message Board will be brought back up. This should happen before 10:00am BST Monday.
The upgrade will mean faster response when surfing the site and gives us the option of adding further functionality to the site.
For those interested in the numbers, the site consistently delivers more than 10,000 pages every day. On the day following the re-airing of the BBC's Horizon programme featuring Graham, the site delivered 23,861 pages which is the highest to date.
Thank you for your time and I hope you continue to enjoy the site.
Ronny [email protected]
Palestinians Seek Reopening of 'Oldest City'
April 24, 2001 12:03 pm EST
By Christine Hauser
JERICHO, West Bank (Reuters) - A sign in the echoing entrance hall of the deserted Sultan Tourist Center in Jericho says "Welcome" in six languages, including Hebrew.
Now, seven months into a Palestinian uprising and stifled by Israel's blockade of the West Bank, the desolate institution symbolizes dashed Palestinian hopes of turning the town into an economic showpiece and a magnet for tourists.
"The original idea was to have all tourists who came here understand that they would be welcome," said Taher Jabir, a financial manager at the center. "But now there are none, and all of Jericho is closed."
Keys in hand, Jabir stands by idle cable cars which in better times swung visitors up to viewpoints in the ancient mountains around the Jordan Valley city of 14,000 people.
Down the road is a once-lucrative casino that attracted thousands of Israelis to the Palestinian-ruled city -- until the uprising against Israeli occupation erupted in September.
The casino, where up to 3,000 Israelis a day poured money into slot machines and card tables in an unusual example of economic cooperation with the Palestinians, is closed and abandoned, the only movement its swaying trees outside.
But Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Israel would lift a blockade on the city in the next few days after reporting progress at joint security talks.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israel should lift its blockade on all the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"Jericho is the breadbasket of the West Bank and Gaza Strip," he told Reuters. "(It) is the major tourist city, and not one single foreign tourist was allowed to come to Jericho for the last seven months."
CHOKED BY ARMY
Israel has installed concrete barricades, trenches, barbed wire and army checkpoints around the city to enforce a closure policy imposed on security grounds at the start of the uprising.
Every Palestinian who enters or leaves the city ruled by the Palestinian Authority must pass through Israeli roadblocks.
"This is pure oppression," said Subhi Zakat, stuck in a long queue of cars in the heat shimmering off the sands near the city.
"What's the big deal? This is normal," said an Israeli soldier, pausing between inspecting Palestinian identity cards and waving their exasperated owners through.
Tourist guidebooks call Jericho the world's oldest city, citing modern excavations that have verified biblical accounts of Joshua's conquest of the first settlement in Canaan.
The nearby Jordan river is the site of numerous chapels commemorating the baptism of Jesus. The Mount of Temptation near Jericho is where Jesus spent his 40 nights in the wilderness.
Jericho has suddenly become a focus of how Israel may be modifying its response to the Palestinian uprising.
Peres said the closure of Jericho would be lifted after Palestinians promised to keep the area "safe." Erekat said there had been no shooting from the city for more than two months.
Palestinian homes in Jericho came under heavy machinegun fire last week and the casino was shelled last year, but a spokeswoman said it had been repaired and was ready to reopen.
Erekat said the army closure had wrecked tourism and farming. He said unless there is a woman in their car, Palestinian men are banned from leaving the city, where up to $500 million in private investment had gone to development.
Pepper and grape farms have been destroyed by army bulldozers, the fields crushed and greenhouses shredded.
Last week, heavy machine gun fire ripped up the walls of the Nimeri home, where three brothers, wives and 18 children live.
"It was the dead of night and the tanks started shooting right at our house," said Munzir Nimeri. "We are just civilians living here, unarmed civilians."
Follow link below...
John Major Jenkins is a Maya scholar and a leading researcher of Maya cosmology, calendrics, mythology, and astronomy. He has lived and worked with the Quiche Maya in Guatemala over a period of twelve years, studying their language, folklore, and cultural traditions. Recognized as a leading voice in explaining difficult areas of Maya thought, and for decoding the true intention behind the Maya calendar's 2012 end-date, he is the author of dozens of articles and seven books, including Tzolkin (an in-depth reconstruction of the Mayan Venus calendar published by Borderlands in 1994), Mayan Sacred Science (1994), and the groundbreaking Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 (1998).
Jenkins has contributed two articles to our Forum: a summary of his book, Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, and an essay dealing with the cosmological significance of the 2012AD astronomical alignment.
Clicking the link below will take you directly to the latter aricle...
Follow link below...
Graham Hancock will be visiting Malta and its extraordinary Mnajdra Temple as part of Underworld.
The massive temple is a thousand years older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid at Giza. It has fascinating astronomical alignments.
It should have been better protected.
Follow the Reuters link below to find out more about the destruction...
Also see the Maltese Times article at this page:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/index1.htm
Follow link below...
LONDON (Reuters) - French underwater explorer Franck Goddio Tuesday unveiled his first complete underwater map of the sunken ancient city of Alexandria.
In 1996, Goddio discovered the fabled city quarters which had been lost for more than 1,000 years.
Since then, the underwater archeologist has worked with experts to map out the harbor with its palaces, temples and the famous royal island of Antirhodos.
"We were amazed to find fabulous things," he told a news conference at the British Museum, which is displaying one of the most startling finds -- a bust believed to be of Caesarion, the son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar.
Presenting his map of the long hidden world, he said: "Soon after the first electronic surveys of the harbor, we realized that the topography of the ancient quarters of Alexandria was totally different from what had been assumed until now."
The murky depths revealed other treasures with divers coming face to face with statues of the inscrutable sphinx.
"Nothing can be seen at first when you are diving but it was very exciting under the sediment," he said.
"I hope our team will go on exploring for years and years and I am sure we will find plenty more treasures," he said.
Goddio, ranked as the most successful marine archeologist in the world, has found and excavated 14 historically important sunken ships from Napoleon Bonaparte's flagship Orient to the Spanish galleon San Diego.
Previously, the Djoser step-pyramid complex of 2668-2649BC was cited as the oldest stone structure in the world. Now that will have be revised, as this newly discovered Saqqara structure, with massive walls and unknown function, has been dated to the 2nd Dynasty around 2,00BC.
Follow the link below to read more at Egypt Revealed, but bear in mind...
What about the megalithic Mnajdra temple in Malta, which has been dated to 3,700BC? And what about the massive stone tower and walls at Jericho, which go back more than 10,000 years?
Follow the link below...
This is a good article at ScienceNews.org - follow the link below to read it...
Follow link below to read full article...
From the International Herald Tribune:
As recently as last year, Afghans, including members of the ruling Taleban, were imploring outsiders to help protect the country's cultural heritage by taking away portable items for safekeeping, scholars say. But cultural organizations and Western archaeologists blocked their removal...
Read full article by following link below.
The dates just keep going back.
It's not possible to link directly to the full article at the Telegraph website. Instead, click the link below and do a search for "oldest boat Kuwait" in the April 1st Issue, 2001...
To be transported directly to this new forum article, click the article link below...
Read this article at the Independent newspaper's website by following the link below...
Follow article link below...
French archaeologists have found the tomb of the pharaoh Ramses II's chief of staff, dating from the 13th century BC, Egypt's head of antiquities said on Sunday.
"Necharomes was the chief of staff of Ramses II and his envoy," the chairman of the Supreme Antiquities Council, Gaballah Ali Gaballah, told reporters. "He could have been a member of a delegation sent by Ramses II to the Hittites to conclude a peace treaty."
The tomb, which includes a likeness of Necharomes carved into the rock, was found in Sakkara southwest of Cairo.
Ramses II, whose rule began in 1304 BC, won a great victory over the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh. The New Kingdom ruler later concluded a peace treaty with the Hittites and married one of the Hittite princesses.
Gaballah said Necharomes was also an administrative supervisor of the area of Memphis and of the Treasury.
Sakkara is the site of several tombs discovered by the French team. - Reuters
Read this article at the Discovering Archaeology website by following the link below...
Well, according to Discovering Archaeology.
Follow the article link below...
Apparently Professor Mitsuo Kagawa, 78, was accused by a University panel of investigators of deliberately mis-attributing Jomon period artifacts to the late palaelithic period.
Read the full article by following the link below.
"The long-held view is that humans, co-called Clovis Man, first migrated from Siberia about 12,000 years ago around the end of the last ice age. But Dewar cites growing evidence that man has been in the Americas for 50,000 years or more and may have first arrived by boat from the Old World centuries before walking across Bering Strait, if that ever did happen."
"Dewar claims racist attitudes have tended to push scientists into adopting the theory that aboriginals came here only 12,000 years ago, turning First Nations into just another group of immigrants without the moral authority to make land claims."
Read summary of the book at OttawaCitizen.com by following article link below...
Read article on oldest known writing at arabia.com by following article link below...
Click article link to read article...
This is a fascinating article at the New York Times, follow article link below to read...
The article suggests these ruins belong to the 'Ahad' rather than the Indus-Sarasvati civilisation...
The Pyramids are a traditional destination for Egyptians wanting to enjoy the feast during the Eid Al-Adha holiday period.
But this year hundreds of ordinary Egyptians, many of whom had travelled many hundreds of kilometres by public transport to see the marvels for the first time, were turned away by Egyptian security forces.
A policeman told reporters that he had been ordered to deny access to holidaying Egyptians in order "to make space for the tourists and prevent overcrowding" on the Giza plateau.
While the Egyptians, and tourists from other Arab countries, were ordered to use alternative entrances kilometres away down the Faiyum road, bus-loads of Americans and Europeans were allowed through without even being stopped.
"Why don't they turn the foreigners back. We don't have hired vehicles like them, so why don't they make them go," said Magdi Ala Hussein, in his fifties, one of hundreds who were denied access on Wednesday, the third day of the feast.
"They're treating us like dirt," said Mohammed Ali Hussein, who had traveled 200 kilometers (125 miles) from Damietta on the Mediterranean coast to show his family the three pyramids at Giza, near Cairo, for the first time.
The opposition Al-Wafd newspaper criticized the segregation in a front page article entitled "Foreigners Only" beside a picture of a handful of western tourists strolling around the foot of an otherwise deserted pyramid.
"The area was a traditional place for simple Egyptians to enjoy the feast, but now its empty, reserved only for tourists," the newspaper said.
Read about Enheduanna and some extracts of her wonderful poems at the Discovery website by following the article link below...
Following the terrible earthquake in Gujarat there has been renewed interest in ancient Indian writings on the subject.
The article linked below discusses some of the ways in which the work of ancient Indian scholars can be considered scientific and even accurate...
A Taliban envoy to Pakistan has hinted that the regime would be prepared to consider pleas from Islamic scholars to stop the destruction of Buddhist statues.
The envoy said that they must be presented with a good reason not to destroy the statues, based on Sharia law.
The envoy, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said:
"I am not hopeful and not disappointed...whether the destruction will be stopped or will continue, but maybe if there is a message from religious scholars of the Arabic world this may help.
"So far we have not received any message or proposal which is based on reasons of Sharia law. If there is such a message it will be considered."
The likelihood of this happening is difficult to determine, since Sharia doesn't appear to discuss issues relating to the preservation (or destruction) of cultural heritage.
Nevertheless, Muslim intellectuals across the world condemn the Taliban's destruction of Buddhist, and are petitioning the Taliban regime to stop what they consider un-Islamic barbarism.
In a joint statement, 70 Islamic intellectuals from around the world said
"historical monuments are the heritage of all mankind and do not belong to any government or people." The demolition was "totally un-Islamic and unwarranted", they said.
"Islam orders us to respect the places of worship of other religions. Islam does not allow destruction of religious places of any community."
There are reports from Reuters witnesses in Afghanistan that the destruction has paused because of a religious holiday. There are also reports that three quarters of the great Bamiyan Buddhist statues remain intact, despite being the target of tank shells and rocket-powered grenades.
A Taliban sources said that the destruction of the Bamiyan statues had not yet begun. Local residents said that Taliban soldiers were seen firing anti-aircraft weapons at the statues three days ago.
A Guardian newspaper article contains suggestions from various analysts that the anti-statue edict may be an attempt to bargain with the West with regard to the sanctions currently in place against Afghanistan, and with regard the grave threat of starvation faced by many hundreds of thousands of Afghans due to drought.
A UNESCO special envoy, Pierre Lafrance, flew to Afghanistan on Sunday to make a last-ditch attempt to save the statues. On Saturday Pierre Lafrance came out of a meeting with the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan on Saturday and said he believed there was "a faint glimmer of hope" but it was unclear how much had been destroyed.
(See http://www.timesofindia.com/today/05indi16.htm for more on the 70 Islamic intellectuals and their joint statement.)
Read at BBC News Online by following the article link below...
These results were achieved with a new C14 dating technique which employs accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS).
The upper-limit on the age of some of these petroglyphs is difficult determine. But the article says it is likely that they date back to between 11,000BC and 5,500BC.
Read a very informative article at the Antiquity website by following the link below...
Read at Japanese Times online by following article link below...
Read this great story by following the article link below...
The article link below will take you to an article at the Japanese Times Online.
Something on the new library at Alex has been posted here before, but the linked article contains some further interesting details about the architectural design (which apparently has some astronomical significance).
Read about it (and weep) at the Contra Costa Times website, linked below...
The world media are reporting that the leader of the radical Taliban movement, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has ordered the destruction of all pre-Islamic statues in Afghanistan.
In fact it appears that the edict, pronounced on the Taliban's "Voice of Shariat" radio station, will specifically affect Buddhist relics, presumably because these include statues that were meant to be objects of worship. A Taliban official is quoted as saying:
"We respect Hindus and Sikhs and they will not be stopped from performing their rituals."
Various international organisations, including UNESCO, as well as many Afghans are pleading with the Taliban leaders to have the order reversed.
Hamid Karzai, a former deputy foreign minister in the ousted government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, said the statues are no longer a part of religion but are now a part of the country's heritage and history, like the tombs of Egypt's ancient Pharaohs.
"Afghanistan has been a staunch Muslim country for 1,200 years and the mullahs (Islamic clerics) have never tried to destroy these statues," he said. "Why wasn't the issue of these statues being against Islam raised in 1,200 years?"
The article link below will take you to deseretnews.com's article, but here are others:
http://www.expressindia.com/news/daily/20010227/02700301.htm
http://asia.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/02/26/taliban.statues/index.html
Read this article at the Independent's website by following the article link below...
Read this story at USNews.com by following the article link below...