Applied archaeology update? Evidence Found for Canals That Watered Ancient Peru
n the Andean foothills of Peru, not far from the Pacific coast, archaeologists have found what they say is evidence for the earliest known irrigated agriculture in the Americas.
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An analysis of four derelict canals, filled with silt and buried deep under sediments, showed that they were used to water cultivated fields 5,400 years ago, in one case possibly as early as 6,700 years ago, archaeologists reported in a recent issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Other scholars hailed the discovery as adding a new dimension to understanding the origins of civilization in the Andes. The canals are seen as the long-sought proof that irrigation technology was critical to the development of the earliest Peruvian civilization, one of the few major cultures in the ancient world to rise independent of outside influence.
Wonder if they might use the info from these ancient irrigation systems to build new ones?
More from National Geographic.
Graveyard yields secrets of ancient world
Residents of the village of Nobber, north Meath, in the Republic of Ireland, stumbled upon archaeological treasure when they decided to clean up an old graveyard.
Now they are hoping that tombs in the shape of Celtic crosses, dating back 1100 years, will put them on the map, alongside such famous archaeological sites as Newgrange.
Lesson to all: Get cleaning those old cemeteries.
Biblical archaeology update Post-Roman ancient Jewish village discovered
Discovery of an ancient village just outside Jerusalem has brought into question one of the strongest images of biblical times - the wholesale flight of Jews running for their lives after the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE.
Just beneath the main road leading north from Jerusalem, archaeologists have found the walls of houses in a well-planned community that existed after the temple's destruction. It might lead to rewriting the history books if it was really Jewish. But at least one expert isn't sure it was.
More here.
Archaeological Dig Unearths Hopes for a Civil War Museum
Windswept and rocky, the knobby point overlooking the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal in present-day Potomac provided a strategic lookout but little shelter for the Union soldiers who fortified the spot in 1862.
Beginning that winter of the Civil War, soldiers of the 19th Massachusetts Infantry are believed to have guarded this Montgomery County site on the C&O, then an important commercial route parallel to the adjacent Potomac River. From their perch, Northern soldiers attempted to keep Confederates from crossing the Potomac from Virginia into Maryland.
Discovery of Ancient Mass Graves in Burnt City, Iran
Archaeologists unearthed more than 108 graves in the pre-historic cemetery of Burnt City during their latest excavations in the site. In some of these graves, three to eight bodies were buried.
Burnt City is one of the key historical sites of Iran. Some unique relics such as the animated figure of a goat on a clay barrel, which is believed to be the first animation work in the history of the world, and a very unique backgammon, which is also believed to be the oldest one in the world, have been discovered in this historical site during the archeological excavation. Different methods of burial were one of the issues which have attracted the special attention of archaeologists during the 9 seasons of excavations.
Vikings! AN AMBITIOUS project to uncover the Viking heritage of Britain's most northerly island will go ahead later this year now the final piece of funding has been secured.
Shetland Amenity Trust is planning to excavate a number of Viking longhouses on Unst, as well as reconstructing one of the island's farm houses with an interpretation centre. A replica longship will also be displayed.
The Viking Unst project is expected to give the island a major boost in developing a stronger tourism sector in the hope of replacing some of the economic decline that is caused by the closure of the island's RAF camp, at Saxa Vord.
Neanderthal update Redating of the latest Neandertals in Europe
Two Neantertal fossils excavated from Vindija Cave in Croatia in 1998, believed to be the last surviving Neandertals, may be 3,000-4,000 years older than originally thought.
An international team of researchers involving Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences; Tom Higham and Christopher Bronk Ramsey of the Oxford University radiocarbon laboratory; Ivor Karavanic of the University of Zagreb; and Fred Smith of Loyola University, has redated the two Neandertals from Vindija Cave, the results of which have been published in the Jan. 2-6 early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The resultant ages are between 32,000 and 33,000 years ago, and perhaps slightly older. In 1998, the fossils had been radiocarbon dated to 28,000-29,000 years ago.
Basically, it represents a continuing advance in dating remains directly. There should be more news like this coming along in the near future.
Applied archaeology II Ancient genetic tricks shape up wheat
By re-enacting an evolutionary event that happened to wheat thousands of years ago, researchers are producing new plant varieties that could save lives in regions where drought causes food shortages.
Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), a staple food for millions of people around the world, is the product of two rare genetic events that happened during the Stone Age in a region of the Middle East known as the 'fertile crescent'.
Two different species can't usually breed to produce hybrid offspring, because their chromosomes don't match and can't pair properly during the process that produces sex cells such as eggs and sperm. But sometimes a genetic blip can produce sex cells with double the normal number of chromosomes, side-stepping the problem. If two sex cells of this type combine, a whole new fertile species with double the number of chromosomes is produced.
More Neanderthal stuff Thoughtful Hunters (Neanderthals)
From about 500,000 BP onwards, Europe saw a continuous occupation by occasionally very small and rather isolated groups of hominins. The typical cold-adapted Neanderthals of the last glacial were the product of a long process of Neanderthalisation that developed during the last half million years under severe climatic stress. Over the last five years archaeological studies have shown that these Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins, in contrast to previous opinions, were capable hunters of a wide variety of large game. Studies of the stable isotopes from their skeletal remains strongly suggest that they were “top-level carnivores”, with animal protein constituting an important part of their diet.
As it's title suggests, the present research programme' Thoughtful Hunters? The Archaeology of Neanderthal Communication and Cognition', focuses on the behavioural and cognitive - next to cultural and technological - presuppositions of Neanderthal hunting. A key question is whether the 'quality education' needed to become an expert hunter was possible without the transcendence of the here and now and a release from proximity by symbolic and syntactical language?
This seems to be a project description in search of funds. . . .
Fashion update Ostrich Shell Necklace: Paleolithic Must
A Paleolithic jeweler's workshop that thrived 20,000 years ago recently was excavated in China, unearthing about 100 exquisitely polished and shaped ostrich eggshells, according to a Xinhua news report.
While 16,000-year-old pottery has been found in China, the jewelry indicates artistry and beauty were appreciated along with practical function long before previously thought.
The ostrich eggshells appear to have been used to make necklaces, as each piece of worked eggshell, less than a half an inch in diameter and only around .04 inches thick, has a .12-inch-wide hole in the center, according to researchers.
Raid it! Raid it! Myth of the Lost Ark fuels pride of a nation on brink of war
If Indiana Jones had done his homework, he would have found the Ark of the Covenant by raiding a church in the barren mountains of northern Ethiopia.
Many Ethiopians believe that the Ark, containing the stone tablets inscribed with God's Ten Commandments, rests in the church of St Mary of Zion, at the town of Axum, and some western scholars have endorsed this national myth as true.
The story underpins the country's sense of identity. Ethiopia believes itself to be a unique nation with an ancient Christian tradition. This fervent patriotism has led Ethiopia into a perilous military confrontation with neighbouring Eritrea.
This story keeps cropping up. I seem to recall several years ago someone actually got a look at the 'ark' and it was just an inscribed rock.
Did Early Humans First Arise in Asia, Not Africa?
Two archaeologists are challenging what many experts consider to be the basic assumption of human migration—that humankind arose in Africa and spread over the globe from there.
The pair proposes an alternative explanation for human origins: arising in and spreading out of Asia.
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They believe that early-human fossil discoveries over the past ten years suggest very different conclusions about where humans, or humanlike beings, first walked the Earth.
New Asian finds are significant, they say, especially the 1.75 million-year-old small-brained early-human fossils found in Dmanisi, Georgia, and the 18,000-year-old "hobbit" fossils (Homo floresiensis) discovered on the island of Flores in Indonesia.
Such finds suggest that Asia's earliest human ancestors may be older by hundreds of thousands of years than previously believed, the scientists say.