Thursday, June 24, 2004

Cool breaking news Archaeologists set to announce major prehistoric find in Utah

For more than 50 years, rancher Waldo Wilcox kept most outsiders off his land and the secret under wraps: a string of ancient settlements thousands of years old in near perfect condition.

Hidden deep inside eastern Utah's nearly inaccessible Book Cliffs region, 130 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, the prehistoric villages run for 12 miles along Range Creek, where Wilcox guarded hundreds of rock art panels, cliffside granaries, pit houses and rock shelters, some exposing mummified remains of long-ago inhabitants.

The sites were occupied for at least 3,000 years until they were abandoned more than 1,000 years ago, when the Fremont people mysteriously vanished. The Fremont, a collection of hunter-gatherers and farmers, preceded more modern American Indian tribes on the Colorado Plateau.


Marineland skeletons update Archaeologist to visit site of bone find

The human remains found here last week are likely not significant enough to stop plans to build 276 condominiums, a Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research official said Wednesday.

Two teeth and a hand bone, believed to be Indian remains, discovered across State Road A1A from the Marineland attraction were unearthed by erosion, and not by vandals or construction, said Ryan Wheeler, chief of the Bureau of Archaeological Research.

"From everything that we've heard so far, it's a natural process," Wheeler said of the find.

Dallas-based Centex Corp. is building the condominium project next to the attraction, known for its dolphins and oceanarium.

The state archaeologist said he will visit Marineland, possibly next week, to determine the exposure of the remains, he said.





New findings throw limelight on Peking Man site

New geological findings and enhanced protection efforts at Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian on Beijing's outskirts have thrown again the limelight on the world heritage site since last year.

Chinese archaeologists unearthed in 1929 the first complete skull of Peking Man at Zhoukoudian, about 50 km southwest of downtown Beijing. The Peking Man was proved to have lived approximately 500,000 years ago and the discovery stunned the world then.

By 1937, five complete skulls of the Peking Man had been unearthed since excavation of the Peking Man site which was started in 1927.

Except for three teeth of Peking Man stored in a lab in Sweden, the five skulls sunk into oblivion during World War II and no trace of them has ever been found.