Archaeologists Unearth 5,000-Year-Old Jars
Archaeologists uncovered a 5,000-year-old chamber believed to have been used for the burial rituals of Egypt’s first major pharaoh found a cache of 200 rough ceramic beer and wine jars, Egyptian authorities said today.
The mortuary enclosure of King Hur-Aha, the founder of Egypt’s First Dynasty, also included a cultic chapel where the floor and benches are stained with organic material – probably the remains of offerings made during rituals, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said.
“It is a very important discovery because it would provide us with new information about the First Dynasty,” Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told The Associated Press.
This is probably a very important find. Not much is known about the first three dynasties. The beer jars are common throughout the Old Kingdom and are typically large parts of any site's ceramic inventory. They're a fairly crude form of vessel and in tomb contexts were generally used to contain offerings of beer, wine, or just about anything else. They are also found in settlement areas and probably carried much the same sorts of contents. Don't have any photos, but here are two drawings:
http://www.acagle.net/dissertation/figures/figureii.9.jpg
http://www.acagle.net/dissertation/figures/figureii.8.jpg
Earliest European 31,000 years old
Fossilised human bones found in the Czech Republic have been dated back to some 31,000 years, which scientists say confirms them as the oldest known examples of Homo sapiens found in Europe.
Austrian and US scientists publish their carbon-dating results in today's issue of the journal Nature.
An upper jaw, teeth and the skull of a female were found in a cave in Moravia in the 19th century, but scientists have debated how old they are.
Dig near Las Vegas continues to yield fossils
Fifty years ago, 27-year-old archaeologist Charles Rozaire had high hopes he would find clues around charcoal deposits at Tule Springs that could be linked to the earliest humans in North America.
First thought to be evidence of fire pits or hearths, the charcoal smudges that dotted cross sections along the upper Las Vegas Wash in the valley's north end were near the area where giant animals – camels, horses, lions, bison, bears, sloths and mammoths – roamed what is now southern Nevada 11,000 to 40,000 years ago.
"We were literally scratching the surface," Rozaire, 77, told students and scientists at a recent Geoscience Summit at Shadow Ridge High School, a 10-minute walk from Tule Springs. The site, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is in Floyd Lamb State Park, 10 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Don't dig in Washington Discovery of bones halts road project near Arlington
Work was halted yesterday on a highway expansion project near Arlington after construction crews unearthed what were initially deemed "ancient" human bones on the north side of state Route 530, near Arlington Heights Road.
It was the latest in a string of discoveries of human remains and ancient artifacts that have halted highway or construction work around the state.
The latest bones found were embedded in the dirt about two feet under a very large boulder, the state Department of Transportation said. Work stopped immediately. The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office, called to the scene, ruled out the possibility that the site was a crime scene, Transportation Department spokeswoman Jamie Holter said.