Many extra-biblical records corroborate the existence of giants, including sober accounts from early explorers like Magellan and ancient texts like the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, the Hebrew Book of Enoch, and the Book of Giants. Now, a mummy skeleton found in Peru looks like a giant toddler. If that is indeed what it is, then it adds more weight to the idea that giants were real.
Gilded mummy portrait of a woman
Probably from er-Rubayat, Egypt
Roman Period, about 160-170 C.E.
The British Museum
“Work on an 8,000-year-old Stone Age settlement under the surface of the Solent in Hampshire is throwing up evidence of clear parallels of the modern “high street”, archaeologists say.
After 30 years of excavating the area around Bouldnor Cliff, a boatyard was uncovered last summer, which teams have been working on ever since.
Since The Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology spotted a swamped prehistoric forest in the 1980s, the Stone Age village was found by chance at the end of the last century.
Divers taking part in a routine survey spotted a lobster cleaning out its burrow on the seabed and to their surprise the animal was throwing out dozens of pieces of worked flint - which turned out to be the first sign of the village.
The discoveries, after analysing a mile-long stretch of seabed, are of “international importance” the trust says, because it sheds new light on how people lived in the Mesolithic period.”
Read More & Watch Clip Here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-17046338
Can’t really explain why I felt compelled to write this tonight, but I did, so there it is…
So, let’s say you’re a history buff.
And that museums are cool, and all, but you’re more of an outdoorsy person. You like to see the splendor and size and the reality of sites and you get shivers thinking about standing on a path where others have stood, thousands of years before you – of touching the same wall, of looking through the same window. You probably like to touch things, if they don’t seem too fragile. (You probably have a thing for buildings and architecture, too, but you always hated math too much to take that path in school.)
And let’s say that it happens to be June or July (or maybe even August – these are, after all, Field Season) and you happen to be somewhere really old and really, really interesting (like, say, a World Heritage Site).
And, away from the crowds, off to a back side, there seem to be a rather lot of people. Who are rather spread out all around the place – or maybe, actually, sort of in the place. And these people seem to be doing some sort of – are they digging? Squatting and staring at the ground? Shaking things? Holding long sticks up against rocks and taking pictures of each other? Maybe counting pebbles?
You’ve found yourself at an active archaeological excavation.
If you behave yourself, express interest, and flatter an expert or two – you might get to see some really cool stuff.
Read the rest at Matador Travel: So you wanna visit a dig: How to drop in on an archaeological excavation…
“New findings of a recent archaeoacoustic study suggests that the ancients of the 3,000-year-old Andean ceremonial center at Chavín de Huántar, in the central highlands of Peru, practiced a fine art and science of manipulating sound with architecture to produce desired sensory effects. With the assistance of architectural form and placement, and sounds emitted from conch-shell trumpets, the oracle of Chavín de Huántar ”spoke” to the ancient center’s listeners.
Says Miriam Kolar, Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow, PhD Candidate at Stanford University and leader of the study: ”At Chavín, we have discovered acoustic evidence for selective sound transmission between the site’s Lanzon monolith and the Circular Plaza: an architectural acoustic filter system that favors sound frequencies of the Chavín pututus [conch-shell trumpets] and human voice…”
Read More Here: http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/december-2011/article/magic-sounds-of-peru-s-ancient-chavin-de-huantar
“New findings of a recent archaeoacoustic study suggests that the ancients of the 3,000-year-old Andean ceremonial center at Chavín de Huántar, in the central highlands of Peru, practiced a fine art and science of manipulating sound with architecture to produce desired sensory effects. With the assistance of architectural form and placement, and sounds emitted from conch-shell trumpets, the oracle of Chavín de Huántar ”spoke” to the ancient center’s listeners.”
Read More Here:http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/december-2011/article/magic-sounds-of-peru-s-ancient-chavin-de-huantar
How do paleontologists identify dinosaur teeth?
Smithsonian Curator identifies Cretaceous Dinosaur teeth from Washington DC area.
