Bow down and worship us, all ye who aspire to total nerdhood! We now have an original owner's manual for our original TI-30 calculator in its attractive faux-denim carrying case:
We have, of course, given away our approximate relative ages. Note (or not since it's not a very clear picture) that the manual refers to the product as an "electronic slide-rule calculator".
We found said manual while rummaging around the basement of the local museum. Really.
Ooooooo. . .a brewing controversy US archaeologists accused of plagiarism
A Peruvian archaeologist has accused two US archaeologists of plagiarising her work on the Caral complex, recently determined to be the oldest site in the Americas.
The official news agency Andina reported Ruth Shady accused Chicago-area archaeologists Jonathan Haas and his wife Winifred Creamer before the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) with taking her work on Caral, Ms Shady told Andina.
Note to ABC.net: Proofread your articles, please.
Let's hope this time they find something if it's there Archaeologists dig before road is built
Long before vacationers visited the sandy shores of Otter Tail Lake, another group set up camp there: Native Americans.
Because of this, the Otter Tail County Highway Department will have to take a few extra steps in getting ready to do road construction on a county highway near Otter Tail City.
County Highway 61, south of 108, has been tagged as an area with a high potential for Native American artifacts and because of that, extra steps have to be taken before any construction begins.
Celebration in the Shire 'Hobbit' archaeologist up for award
THE startling discovery by Australian and Indonesian scientists of a previously unknown species of small humans - dubbed the "hobbits" - captured the imagination of the world last year.
Not only were these dwarf humans previously unknown, but it was revealed that they died out as recently as 500 years ago, meaning they lived side by side with modern humans on the Indonesian island of Flores.
Archaeologist Mike Morwood headed the Australian arm of the scientific team which made the discovery, working in partnership with the Indonesian Research Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta.
CSI: Thebes
King Tut Mummy Scanned -- Could Solve Murder Mystery
Was Tutankhamun murdered? In an effort to solve that mystery and others, scientists CT-scanned the 3,000-year-old mummy of the ancient Egyptian king yesterday.
In 1968 an x-ray of "King Tut" revealed a bone fragment in his skull. Ever since, rumors have swirled that a blow to the head had killed the boy king. The break, though, could also be explained by a fall or a mishap during mummification.
The three-dimensional image that will be created from yesterday's CT scan will be many times more informative than any x-ray. As such, it may help uncover just how Tutankhamun died.
We noticed that ABC News stole our "CSI: blahblahblah" shtick for their story on this yesterday.
We'd prefer it full of Darjeeling, but what the heck Boston Tea Party chest going home?
A small wooden tea chest has returned to Boston more than 230 years after rebellious colonists dumped it overboard during a famous protest that helped set the scene for the American War of Independence.
Or at least that's what the new owners would like you to believe.
Historic Tours of America unveiled on Wednesday what it said was a piece of American history: one of only two known surviving tea chests from the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773.
We may have noted this earlier 7000-year-old artifacts discovered in Bushehr region
A joint Iranian and British archaeological team recently discovered 7000-year old artifacts and ruins dating back to the Chalcolithic era (7000? to 3500? B.C.) in northern Bushehr.
The Iranian director of the team, Hossein Tofiqian, said on Tuesday that the team began the first stage of their activities last month and made significant finds.
“The team began their work with the aim of discovering the social and economic status of the historical site during the Chalcolithic era in the fifth and sixth millennia B.C., while the previous excavations at the site mostly focused on the Elamite, Achaemenid, and Islamic eras,” he added.
But when older stuff gets news, we like to highlight it as much as possible.
Say, it's news from Mehr again 5000-year-old commercial seal discovered in Jiroft
The oldest known commercial seal, estimated to be about 5000 years old, was recently discovered at the historical site of Jiroft in southeastern Iran.
The director of the archaeological team working at the site, Yusef Majidzadeh, said on Friday that the seal, which bears the image of a goat with its head leaning back, was discovered near the governmental structure of the site during the third stage of excavations.
“The 2x2cm marble seal was skillfully made, indicating that the region was a developed economic center 5000 years ago,” he added.
Online paper alert Ancient Mesopotamian Accounting and Human Cognitive Evolution
Abstract: Recent archaeological evidence supports the claim that the first system of writing and the first use of abstract numerical representation evolved from the clay token accounting system of ancient Mesopotamia. Writing and other abstract symbol systems have subsequently transformed human cognitive capacities within only few millennia, a time period too short for any substantial changes in our biologically-evolved brains. This paper uses Merlin Donald's theory of human cognitive and cultural evolution [in Origins of the Modern Mind; 1991] to identify the role played by ancient accounting in these evolutionary processes. Specifically, it is argued that this early accounting system paved the way for writing by instigating revolutionary cognitive structures for processing visual/ symbolic artifacts and establishing a primitive but very powerful form of external memory (external to the brain). The paper also explores the role that accounting systems continue to play in the provision of "cognitive scaffolding" with respect to our organizational and institutional environments, and provides a cursory overview of the pioneering developments of ancient Mesopotamien accounting in this regard.
We haven't gone over it in any detail yet, but the basics -- writing grew out of a need for accounting -- is fairly well-attested.