Ancient Mysteries

A busload of Japanese tourists spills onto a mud road and poses for pictures next to a red sign that says, "DANGER!" Nearby several bomb clearance workers armed with a metal detector prepare to face a potentially deadly hazard. They head single-file along a narrow path into the brush, and 20 minutes later a call rings out: they have found two live mortar bombs. Inspection reveals the bombs do not pose an immediate danger and can be collected at another time fordemolition.

The teams moves on. Later another call rings out ... this time for an archaeologist. This find is not lethal but fragile. Buried in the bushes are large pieces of ancient rock, the stone jars that give the Plain of Jars its name. No one knows much about the thousands of pod-like stone vessels, some taller than a man, which dot the landscape in northeastern Laos and are nestled next to bomb craters resembling golf course bunkers. The puzzle of the Plain of Jars remains today as intriguing and mysterious to archaeologists as it did when Madeleine Colani of France made theearliest known excavations of the area more than 70 years ago. "This is like the megaliths of Easter Island. Nobody really knows who the people were or why they were doing it," said Julie Van Den Bergh, an archaeologist consulting for UNESCO on a joint project with Laos.

View: Full Article | Source: Channel News Asia

Archaeologists in Cumbria say they have discovered what could be the country's most important Viking burial site. Experts are so excited about the find and its wealth of treasures, they are keeping its location a secret so they can work undisturbed. All that has been revealed is that it is near Barrow and contains artefacts dating back to the 10thCentury.

Another burial site has been uncovered in Cumbria, close to Cumwhitton village, near Carlisle. Both sites were found by metal detector enthusiasts. Barrow archaeologist, Steve Dickinson, who has been involved in the dig, said experts were particularly excited about a merchant's weight, which is the size of a finger and shows a dragon design with two figures.He said: "Normally such weights are plain lead with perhaps just a bit of inlaid metal, so thisis definitely something to impress people. "It is an example of local craftsmanship and represents an extraordinarily rich burial. "The weight is currently with the British Museum for conservation.

View: Full Article | Source: BBC News

The year 2004 ends with a major story in archaeology, revealed by the use of new DNA technology on ancient bison bones scattered around western North America. The findings profoundly affect our understanding of how North America was populated by humans, and could have an impact on aboriginal politics as well. The conventional wisdom, taught to generations in school, speaks of a land bridge connecting Asia with Alaska. This now-submerged bridge was created by lower sea levels in the last ice age, which ended about 8,500 years ago. It was postulated that prehistorictribes followed herds of migrating big animals down through an ice-free corridor roughly along the Rocky Mountains, eventually reaching all points of the continent and establishing what are now revered as the First Nations.It is now becoming clear that this conventional wisdom is wrong, or at least woefully incomplete.Lionel Jackson of the Geological Survey of Canada and Mike Wilson of Douglas College gave a talk on the latest findings Dec.

7 at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver. Their work relates to DNA findings from an Oxford University team that focused on bison, the most widespread and persistent large animals of the era.Two big points come out of the Oxfordstudy: Bison were in decline, for reasons not yet clear, as much as 10,000 years before ice and human hunters put pressure on them, and the ice-free corridor was closed at least during the peak of the ice age. Isolated from the rest of the continent by glaciers, the northern bison died out. All of today's bison are descendants of a small southern group that eventually spread back up north.

View: Full Article | Source: myTELUS

Ötzi the Iceman, the world's oldest and best-preserved mummy, might have been murdered in a struggle for power, according to a new theory that identifies the 5,300-year-old mummy as the powerful leader of a Neolithic community. Discovered in 1991 in a melting glacier in the Ötztal Alps — hence the name — by the German hiker Helmut Simon, Ötzi is thought to have died at about 45. He was hit by an arrowhead while being assaulted by his enemies, some of whose blood was found on the mummy's cloak and weapons."Ötzi was a leader, perhapsa shaman.

He might have gotten many enemies as he did not want to give up his power even though he was very old, a sort of Methuselah for his time," Walter Leitner, an expert at the Institute for Ancient and Early History at the University of Innsbruck, told Discovery News. Leitner presented his new theory at a recent archaeological conference in Hannover, Germany. According to Leitner, a member of the team who studied the mummy when it was first transferred to the University of Innsbruck, Ötzi's high social status is testified by the items he carried with him. As he emerged from the ice, the mummy was still wearing goatskin leggings and a grasscape, while a copper-headed axe, a quiver full of arrows and a medicine kit with herbal remedies were lying nearby."Only a leader would have owned a copper axe. Copper was very precious and a symbol of power at that time," Leitner said.According to his reconstruction, the Iceman was assaulted not far from the Similaun Glacier where his mummified body was found.

View: Full Article | Source: Discovery Channel