Exciting archaeological discoveries....

[CassD]

There was a History Channel program on the other night relating to the fact that many Greek writers describing places where fossils were found exactly duplicate places where modern fossil fields were discovered.

Taken in itself the old way of thinking was to call it myth. In reality the writers were actually historians of their times.

I watched one similar to that before we left the States and it was fantastic. I thought it was fantastic that they had found those sites and knew that they were looking at fossils, and I liked the way they put the skeletons together because they put them together all wrong. The Ancient Greeks thought that the fossils they found were the skeletal remains of the Titons and of their Greek heroes.

 

[HungaryTom]

I watched one similar to that before we left the States and it was fantastic. I thought it was fantastic that they had found those sites and knew that they were looking at fossils, and I liked the way they put the skeletons together because they put them together all wrong. The Ancient Greeks thought that the fossils they found were the skeletal remains of the Titons and of their Greek heroes.

Twitch,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...7A35754C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

CassD, I am sure you were thinking of something like this - http://www.leibniz-translations.com/unicorn.jpg
from PROTOGAEA by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, from 1690-1691.

There is a reason why http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Cuvier is famous - he was the first man who assembled the bones correctly.

 

[CassD]

Whilst we are discussing exciting archeological discoveries, thought I'd mention the Bronze Age pyramid found in the Ukraine. This article is a couple of years old, but it's really interesting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/sep/07/ukraine.tomparfitt

Ooops, just found a follow up article on Wikipedia that states that the site was misidentified as a pyramid at first, but it's still interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhansk_sacrificial_site

 

[HungaryTom]

'Barbarians' in terms of the Greeks were doing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanation
http://mithol.oszk.hu/01900/01992/html/index965.html
Some cool etching on trepanation:
http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/bio-ethics/images/trepanation.jpg

 

[Twitch]

Yes tom and Cass, the ancient Greeks were putting animal fossils together to resemble a giant human form. Hey it was logical at the time.

 

[Story]

This can't end well...

Paging Mr. Lovecraft, Mr Lovecraft to the courtesy phone...

Sacred ruins older then Incas found in Peru
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 3:01pm GMT 14/03/2008

The ruins of a sacred temple have been uncovered that predates the Incas, say archaeologists.

Some of the structures hidden in a forest of eucalyptus trees predate the Inca empire but were then significantly developed and expanded, with a roadway and irrigation, says a team from Peru's National Institute of Culture.

Archaeologists were lucky to find the ruins at all, as part of the structure was destroyed by dynamite blasts in the early 20th century*, when the site was used as a stone quarry.

This is always how the pulp tale begins, isn't it? "Oops, sorry about shattering that really ancient seal that kept whatever was supposed to be imprisoned in there..."
[huh]
* Do I get bonus points for the FL-period tie in?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/03/14/sciinca114.xml

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Doran -- I had seen that article and was amazed they could find something that far back in the ancient world. Don't know how they can prove anything, but how amazing....

I never dispute mythology or old stories told by a family or a culture as I have discovered there is always some grains of truth in what is said. Yes, the characters in the story are pumped up to a god-like status, or much has been added or embellished, but there are also underlying truths.

In studying my own family's geneology, I find that words uttered by someone a century or more ago, contain truth and should be heeded.

So, I believe that someone like or called Achilles lived at the time of the Trojan War and probably did fight and die in it.

It reminds me of my reading ofnthe search for King Arthur, another legendary figure who may or may not have existed; probably he did live, or someone with a name like it, around 500 A.D., but he was not the man of our favorite myths.

karol

 

[CassD]

It reminds me of my reading ofnthe search for King Arthur, another legendary figure who may or may not have existed; probably he did live, or someone with a name like it, around 500 A.D., but he was not the man of our favorite myths.

karol

I think that there's a popular theory right now that the King Arthur legend is actually based on several kings from earlier ages. Fascinating study. And, as a tie in to the FL, it is believed to have laid the groundworks of chivalry which extended all the way up to the women's lib movement, though it does thankfully still exist in some men today.

 

[Dr Doran]

Doran -- I had seen that article and was amazed they could find something that far back in the ancient world. Don't know how they can prove anything, but how amazing....

I never dispute mythology or old stories told by a family or a culture as I have discovered there is always some grains of truth in what is said. Yes, the characters in the story are pumped up to a god-like status, or much has been added or embellished, but there are also underlying truths.

Grain of truth? Probably, yes. "Never dispute"? well ...

It depends on how interested you are in trying to tease out the plausible from the implausible amid the evidence from the ancient Mediterranean world, which is precisely what my career consists of. Determining reliability of extant evidence, etc. It takes years and years of familiarity with the sources, knowledge of dead languages, knowledge of archaeology and ancient technologies, plus understanding of genres: heroic myth as a genre, history (e.g. Thucydides, Xenophon) as a genre, what these genres were intended to accomplish. Reading Herodotus backwards and forwards in Greek and reading the opinions of the mass of modern commentators on him who draw parallels to different texts and to archaeological discoveries. (And knowing enough modern languages to be able to read the modern scholars' articles, and having access to obscure journals.) It's a huge field and it takes years to get even to the level I am currently at -- not high compared to some of my professors who have been in the field over 50 years!

One guy who has a very user-friendly presentation of how ancient historians evaluate evidence is Richard Carrier, whom I met recently at a presentation he did on why miracles are not very believable according to the historic method. He's a nice guy, too, and does a fine talk. Among the traits for reliability in an ancient source are whether it (e.g. the Gospel of Luke) is reliable in matters other than its focus; how distant a source is from the events it purports to report; whether a source names its own sources; what can be understood about the source's intended audience. For example, does the writer of the source seem like he wrote for an audience of true believers or of reasonably skeptical people he was trying to convince through reason? Of educated people or agriculturalist villagers? Because education was expensive and hard to come by. Does independent evidence exist for the events described in the source? Do hostile or neutral sources report similar things, or do only laudatory sources report these things? Then one must consider genres.

All in all, if we compare Homer as evidence for the life of Achilles to Thucydides as evidence for the life of Perikles, we see the contrast quite clearly. No one knows who Homer was and when he lived or even if he was an individual person. The stories he tells are filled with magic which, as far as we can tell, does not exist. Homer claims that the heroes he writes about lived long ago, not in his lifetime, so he did not know them. As for the genre he wrote in, it is similar to that of the "narcocorrido" poets/singers in Mexico today: glorification of tough guys and, probably, of their descendants or more likely the aristocrats who claim descent from these heroes. Thucydides on the other hand is a pretty well-documented source who lived in Athens at the time of the events he wrote about, referred to persons whose existence is confirmed by other sources both literary and epigraphic, as well as written on the pot-shards used for ostracisms. The Perikles he describes jibes well with the other sources we have, sources both hostile and neutral as well as laudatory, and we know of many persons in Perikles' family who are pretty solidly documented. Achilles is about as well-documented as, for example, Moses or Solomon. There may have been a person of this name, but the tradition is so much later, in such a fantastical genre, with such an absence of sources CONTEMPORARY to him, that there is not much we can plausibly believe.

This is the difference I am talking about.

 

[CassD]

Doran: What do you do? I have to say, it sounds like whatever it is you get to really dig in to history and I am incredibly jealous.

 

[Dr Doran]

Doran: What do you do? I have to say, it sounds like whatever it is you get to really dig in to history and I am incredibly jealous.

Cass, I am a PhD student in a program at the University of California at Berkeley called "The Graduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology" or AHMA which has participating faculty from the departments of Classics, Near Eastern Studies, History, Anthropology, Art History, and Religion. If you want to look at what the program has, here is a link to the website for AHMA:

http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/ahma/

Some of the bigger of the bigshots under whom I study are google-able and their works can be found on Amazon. The two biggest names are probably Erich S. Gruen and Andrew Stewart. Another bigshot is Ronald S. Stroud, but his works are mainly specialist in nature and appear in specialist journals.

 

[CassD]

Doran,

Thanks for the information. My husband is a graduate student at Leeds University right now, so I have to wait for him to finish his classes before I can do anything about mine, but I'm definately going to look at it.

 

[Story]

Hidden in plain sight?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/23/wark123.xml

It was considered by many of Leonardo da Vinci’s peers to be his greatest masterpiece. But the unfinished mural of the Battle of Anghiari that graced the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence has not been seen since the mid-16th century when the Medici grand duke Cosimo commissioned a renovation and redecoration of the great hall.

The fresco was long presumed lost forever behind the new paintings. But Maurizio Seracini, an Italian expert in high-technology art analysis, will soon deploy the cutting-edge science of a neutron generator and gamma ray detector in an attempt to prove that the mural is actually preserved beneath a wall built just in front of it during the remodelling.

 

[Story]

What is good in life, Conan?

A 4,000-year-old Bronze Age skeleton has been unearthed by archaeologists working on a site in east Kent.

Canterbury Archaeological Trust said the curled-up skeleton was an example of a "Beaker" burial because of the pottery vessel placed at its feet.

Education officer Marion Green said the "beautifully decorated" pot could have been "a type of beer mug". :beer:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/kent/7300232.stm

 

[CassD]

Dinosaur Skin

A dinsaur fossil was found in the North Dakota Badlands that has fossilized skin still attached to it!! It's not the first fossil found with skin, but seems to have the largest amount of fossilized skin thus far found on a dinosaur fossil.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23689410/?GT1=43001

Fantastic article about a truly remarkable find.

 

[dhermann1]

We've strayed from archaeo- to paleo-, but still, I'm digging all this digging.

 

[Twitch]

They are actually serious about the day when they can reconstructs genomes and "build" extinct animals. History Channel had interesting program regarding the Jurassic Park idea as science instead of fiction.

Seems it will be logical to start with an Emu and work backwards to "turn on" various dormant genes that control length of tail, skin, teeth and the rest. By genetically manipulation chicken DNA they got tails to produce more vertebra, beaks to grow teeth and found the one that could grow feathers where scales are on feet.

They also have sufficient mammoth DNA. Researchers have been surprised to find that no more than 1000 genomes in any species make the differences in every animal and humans! Instead of searching through millions of sequences it's just 1000! And the computer is able to map species very rapidly once programmed with the DNA for that species- chimpanze, human, goat, dog, cat, and others.

Amazing stuff.

 

[drjones]

turn the dial to human

They are actually serious about the day when they can reconstructs genomes and "build" extinct animals. History Channel had interesting program regarding the Jurassic Park idea as science instead of fiction.

Seems it will be logical to start with an Emu and work backwards to "turn on" various dormant genes that control length of tail, skin, teeth and the rest. By genetically manipulation chicken DNA they got tails to produce more vertebra, beaks to grow teeth and found the one that could grow feathers where scales are on feet.

They also have sufficient mammoth DNA. Researchers have been surprised to find that no more than 1000 genomes in any species make the differences in every animal and humans! Instead of searching through millions of sequences it's just 1000! And the computer is able to map species very rapidly once programmed with the DNA for that species- chimpanze, human, goat, dog, cat, and others.

Amazing stuff.

So how long until we can turn the dial on the machine and "pop tart" a human out?

EEK!

DRJONES

 

[Story]

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Jane Stanford wanted the university she and her husband founded to boast a campus as grand as that of Harvard, Yale or Cambridge, with neoclassical buildings similar to those seen in Europe.

In 1902, a centerpiece of that dream began to rise: the country's largest gymnasium, with towering stone columns, a marble entrance and a glass dome.

``They thought if they built that building, it would stand for 500 years,'' said Stanford University archeologist Laura Jones.

In 1906, the gymnasium, a library and museum annex, all built by Jane Stanford, were in ruins, leveled by the great earthquake that struck San Francisco. A century later, the Stanford, California, college is trying to solve the mystery of why the buildings designed for posterity had crumbled.

Since last fall, a team of archaeologists and students has been excavating the ruins of the gymnasium for clues. On the first public tour of the site last week, a crowd of 30 gathered around a dusty hole to stare at the top of a granite block that hasn't been exposed since the builders slathered it with grout more than a century ago.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aRWo5KKZxmrY&refer=us

 

[Dr Doran]

We've strayed from archaeo- to paleo-, but still, I'm digging all this digging.

I'm digging the digging too! We haven't strayed TOO far ... still pretty on topic!