Neanderthals had strong, yet high-pitched, voices that the stocky hominins used for both singing and speaking, says a UK researcher.
The theory suggests that Neanderthals, who once lived in Europe from around 200,000 to 35,000 BC, were intelligent and socially complex.
It also indicates that although Neanderthals were likely to have represented a unique species, they had more in common with modern humans than previously thought.
Please note that we have successfully avoided making any reference -- textual or pictorial -- to a certain HBO series.
Egypt plans to renovate ancient temple
Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) has allocated 12-million Egyptian pounds (about R12,3-million) to renovate a twelfth dynasty Pharaonic temple in Egypt's southern Sinai, an official said on Monday.
SCA Secretary-General Zahi Hawass announced that the project to renovate the Sarabit el-Khadim temple is expected to be complete and open to tourists in May.
Probably a good move, although any time you open a place for tourism you're going to get problems of destruction of the monuments.
Also from Egypt Supplicants send their mail to the unseen powers that be
CUSTOMS DIE HARD, nowhere more than in Egypt. Archaeological documents show that from as early as the Old Kingdom up to modern times, an endemic and persistent distrust in medicine and justice, as practiced in the land, often led the Egyptians to address their requests for health and legal redress directly to their dead relatives and the gods. Later, when monotheistic religions prevailed, they were addressed to saints whose extraordinary powers had become firmly rooted in popular belief.
Olmec update Mother of us all, or sister? Olmecs a puzzle
On a coastal flood plain etched by rivers flowing through swamps and alongside fields of maize and beans, the people archaeologists call the Olmecs lived in a society of emergent complexity. It was more than 3,000 years ago, along the Gulf of Mexico around Veracruz.
The Olmecs moved a veritable mountain of earth to create a plateau above the plain, and there planted a city, the ruins of which are known today as San Lorenzo.
Seems like there ought to be more to this article but we can't find a continuation anywhere.
Ummmm. . .no. Huge Achaemenid era jug discovered at Tang-e Bolaghi Tehran Times Culture Desk
The team of archaeologists currently working at the Tang-e Bolaghi site in Fars Province recently discovered a huge Achaemenid era jug.
The Iranian and Italian archaeologists who discovered the 50-kilogram jug carried out 16 hours of excavation work in order to unearth it safe and sound.
The head of the team, Alireza Asgari, said on Monday that the huge red jug was found during excavation work at one of the storehouses in a residential area of Tang-e Bolaghi.
We have also successfully avoided making any references -- textual or pictorial -- to jugs as well.
Dang this self control. . . . .
Field school update Wesleyan archaeology class to excavate historic site
There is a piece of land in the Monongahela National Forest in Randolph County that holds a lot of history.
The site holds the remains of a campsite that is 3,000 years old, as well as that of a second camp from the 1700s.
To excavate the site, Molly Clark, an adjunct professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College, is teaching an archaeology field methods class during the May term. The class is open to Wesleyan students and the general public.
Field school update II Students wanted for field school to study New Philadelphia
Applications are being accepted for the New Philadelphia field school in archaeology and laboratory techniques.
The school for nine students, sponsored by the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program, runs May 24-July 29.
The program helps enhance undergraduate education in scientific methods and analyses in an ongoing long-term project at New Philadelphia. "Free" Frank McWorter, a former slave, incorporated the racially-integrated community near Barry in 1836.
That reminds us, this is the time of year to start applying for field schools. Unless you're really into roughing it, make sure you find one that takes reasonable care of creature comforts. Once you start doing real projects you can suffer, but might as well get your initial field experience (and it's a class after all) in a comfortable setting.
We won't mention the wet bar we maintained in our tent at our field school. Except in passing, of course.
Archaeologists tackle chess puzzle
A grubby green cousin of the world's most famous chessmen is puzzling archaeologists.
The little knight on horseback, recently found by an amateur using a metal detector on farmland in north Nottinghamshire, is startlingly similar to chesspieces found hundreds of miles away in 1831, on a beach on the isle of Lewis.
The find is being announced today at a British Museum conference to mark the government's agreement to keep funding a scheme to encourage the reporting of all finds.
Cleopatra seduced the Romans with her irresistible . . . mind
LONG before Shakespeare portrayed her as history’s most exotic femme fatale, Cleopatra was revered throughout the Arab world — for her brain.
Medieval Arab scholars never referred to the Egyptian queen’s appearance, and they made no mention of the dangerous sensuality which supposedly corrupted Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Instead they marvelled at her intellectual accomplishments: from alchemy and medicine to philosophy, mathematics and town planning, a new book has claimed.
Artist's conception of what Cleopatra may have looked like:
(in 2525)