Tuesday, November 02, 2004


The beer that made Suffolk famous

Roman brewery timbers on display

FOR 1800 years these timbers of a Roman brewery have hidden away underground but now they're done roamin' and are on display in Ipswich museum.

The timbers, believed to be from a Roman brewery have evoked spirits of a bygone era.

The roof timbers are believed to date back to 200 years after the birth of Christ and conjure images of toga-laden men working the maltings.


Story about non-Hobbit hominids! Yunxian Skulls Restored

Chinese and French scientists announced on October 25 in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, that they had finally finished reconstructing the half-million-year-old skulls of Yunxian Man. The French scientists presented the restored No. 2 skull to the Hubei Provincial Archeology Research Institute.

Li Tianyuan of the institute in Wuhan discovered the two fossilized human skulls at a site in Yunxian County in 1989 and 1990. They were determined to be specimens of Homo erectus, the predecessor of Homo sapiens and who walked the earth 300,000 to 1.7 million years ago.

The No. 2 skull, although badly damaged and without a jawbone, was the most complete human skull of its age ever found in China. It was determined to be 350,000 to 500,000 years old.


Inscription news Fragment of Persepolis inscription puzzles experts

Iranian archaeologists have still been unable to translate a fragment of an inscription recently discovered during an excavation at the ruins of Persepolis, ancient scripts expert Abdul-Majid Arfa’i announced on Saturday.

“With dimensions of 2cm x 2cm x 4cm, the triangular clay fragment bears cuneiform script, but we have not succeeded in identifying the language,” he added.

Some photos of the fragment have been sent to experts at the University of Chicago in the U.S., the University of Luneburg in Germany, and the University of Rome in Italy to identify and translate the inscription, he added.

He said that the fragment might be written in a new unidentified language.


Ah, apparently it's written in a known script, but in a mysterious language.