Friday, May 07, 2004

Isfahan Residential History May Date Back 6000 Years


TEHRAN (CHN) — The historical site of Gourtan, the most important historical area of Isfahan, is to undergo a new series of excavations to verify a hypothesis that it may possibly move back the history of the city from 2000 to 6000 years ago.

Based on the existing documents and historical remains, the creation of Isfahan, one of most significant tourist attractions of Iran, dates back to the time of Arsacids and Sassanids, but the primary archeological studies in Gourtan site gives a possible date of some 6000 years ago as the starting point of residence in the city.


Report awaited on Viking settlement

WATERFORD’S local authorities are anxiously awaiting the outcome of a detailed assessment of a significant Viking settlement site unearthed along the €300m City Bypass route to find out if the road will have to re-routed and whether it will delay the project.

Environment & Local Government Minister, Martin Cullen, has ordered a report on the Viking site at Woodstown off the Old Kilmeaden Road near Waterford city, which dates from the 9th century and may be even older than the Viking settlement excavated at Wood Quay in Dublin.

Representatives from his Department, which has responsibility for the heritage service Duchas, were carrying out the assessment of the site yesterday (Tuesday).


Unmasking Sanxingdui Ruins

CHENGDU, May 6 (Xinhuanet) -- In an out-of-the-way area of southwest China not on the beaten path of most foreign tourists visiting the picturesque home of the giant panda, giant Buddha andTibetan people lies a little-known site that holds its own unique mystique.

Some 100 years ago, Sanxingdui in today's Sichuan Province hadn't seemed to anyone anything more than a typical rural area, and just 20 years ago its significance was not fully known. But when a farmer hollowing out a just-dug ditch in 1929 found some jade he unwittingly opened the door on an unknown culture between 3,000 to 5,000 years old.


Note to budding graduate students: There is LOTS of stuff in China.

This story keeps coming back British claim on boomerang

A BRITISH historian has claimed to have uncovered the world's oldest evidence of the returning boomerang – in Yorkshire.

Terry Deary says his research indicates a rock carving on Ilkley Moor in West Yorkshire is of a four-armed boomerang which dates back as far as 4000BC.

The carving on what is known as the Swastika Stone was first discovered in the 1870s and has long been considered by experts to be a swastika motif which was common in ancient Greek and Roman art.


Science: Ancient Map Captures Ocean Front

An ancient map of the North Atlantic - which features sea snakes and other dreadful monsters - may have boasted surprisingly advanced information.

The Carta Marina - published in 1539 - depicts elaborate sea swirls, which, say researchers, closely match a giant ocean front shown in satellite images. If correct, it means the Swedish cartographer Olaus Magnus may have been the first to map such an ocean feature.


Cuneiform Goes Digital: UCLA Professor Illuminates Life in Ancient Iraq

RESEARCH TRIANGLE, N.C., May 6 (AScribe Newswire) -- It's not exactly Google, but the stunning cache of information Professor Robert Englund and his colleagues are making accessible on the Web is revolutionary - nearly one million lines of transcribed cuneiform, the earliest form of writing, with much more to come - documenting the social and literary worlds of Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia, ancient lands comprising modern Iraq and parts of Iran, Syria, and Turkey. While the wedge-like cuneiform script was often incised on stone slabs that could weigh several tons, it was usually impressed onto more portable clay tablets that hardened quickly in the hot and dry climate of the region.

While roughly five million of these tablets are believed to be still buried in the ruin mounds of Iraq, awaiting archaeological discovery, some 500,000 are safely held in museum collections in London, Berlin, Istanbul, Russia, the United States, and elsewhere. These clay documents contain the Epic of Gilgamesh (first written in Sumerian and Akkadian around 1800 B.C. and carefully copied until 500 B.C.) and the Code of Hammurabi, as well as notes and calculations by merchants, doctors, and others from the Babylonian bureaucracy and from the general population, that illuminate what daily life was like thousands of years ago. But these priceless tablets and shards are so fragile that they have been known to crumble spontaneously, so transporting them from place to place for research is unheard of.



"You will learn to read cuneiform. . .in your DREAMS!"

Web site: http://www.cdli.ucla.edu/

Not good things to steal Stealing a Country's History

Many of Afghanistan's most precious artefacts are being looted and sold to the highest bidder.

By Noor Ahmad Ghafori in Mazar-e-Sharif, and Mustafa Basharat with Hafizullah Gardesh in Kabul (ARR No. 118, 06-May-04)

The red and white stones are meant to indicate where landmines are concealed in this heavily mined nation.


Dig shows Welsh were evolving at faster pace

DURING the middle Bronze Age, farming communities in North Wales were developing well, say archaeologists.

The early Bronze Age had been characterised by communities based around monuments similar to Stonehenge. But Dr Robert Johnston of Bangor University says that in North Wales the pattern of dwellings was determined by the size of extended families and a more advanced culture.

The number of weapons found indicate that conflicts existed between different groups which were settled by violence. However there was no evidence of any large invasions during this period, Dr Johnston said.