Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Startling evidence of a Stone Age structure in the Solent.

DIVING almost blind in the Solent’s murky waters, the team of maritime detectives could just make out the shape of a wooden plank protruding from the muddy seabed.

While it might have been dismissed as underwater junk by the untrained eye, the archaeologists soon realised they had discovered a vital clue to a lost civilisation.

The timber was not isolated. In fact they found another 23 pieces of all shapes and sizes intersecting throughout the underwater cliff off Bouldnor, on the north coast of the Isle of Wight.

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Monday, September 21, 2009

'Whicker Man' tomb to yield Bronze Age secrets, say scientists

HUMAN remains uncovered at a burial site in the Highlands are extremely rare and could provide new information about Bronze Age life, experts say.

The site was discovered in February when landowner Jonathan Hampton was using a mechanical digger to clear peat from Langwell Farm, Strath Oykel, in Sutherland.

He found a substantial stone cist (tomb) containing a skeleton that archaeologists
believe was partially wrapped in animal hide or was wearing furs. A wicker basket lay over its face.

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Researchers Probe Links Between Modern Humans and Neanderthals

Homo neanderthalensis nearly made it through two Ice Ages in Europe, only to disappear roughly 30,000 years ago. That’s about 15,000 years after our own ancestors arrived and settled the continent. For most of our own species’ time on Earth, Neanderthals were around, too. Some people even suspect that our own ancestors did them in.

Many wonder if there was interbreeding. Might some of us have a few distinctly Neanderthal genes?

Richard “Ed” Green, PhD, studies Neanderthal DNA at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Green is part of a lab team headed by Svante Pääbo, a Swedish scientist internationally renowned for studies of Neanderthal genes. Green visited UCSF’s Mission Bay campus in late July and gave a seminar talk highlighting the lab team’s recent discoveries.

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Bones discovery 'extremely rare'

Bones recovered from an ancient burial site in the Highlands could provide fresh insight of life in the Bronze Age, archaeologists have said.

Parts of a skull, some bones and teeth were in a cist - a rectangular stone chamber - uncovered by a digger operator in Sutherland in February.

In a report to Historic Scotland, archaeologists have described the find as "extremely rare" and "valuable".

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Landesausstellung »Eiszeit - Kunst und Kultur« in Stuttgart eröffnet

Beeindruckende Gesamtschau der spektakulären Höhlenfunde der Schwäbischen Alb

Seit heute ist die baden-württembergische Landesausstellung im neu sanierten Stuttgarter Kunstgebäude für Besucher geöffnet.

„Die Große Landesausstellung ‚Eiszeit - Kunst und Kultur‘ bietet eine beeindruckende Gesamtschau der spektakulären Höhlenfunde der Schwäbischen Alb, darunter die erst jüngst gemachten Entdeckungen der Venusfigur vom Hohle Fels und des Elfenbeinmammuts aus der Vogelherdhöhle bei Niederstotzingen.

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