Agatha Christie and Archaeology. 'Many years ago, when I was once saying sadly to Max it was a pity I couldn't have taken up archaeology when I was a girl, so as to be more knowledgeable on the subject, he said, 'Don't you realize that at this moment you know more about prehistoric pottery than any woman in England?' [more inside]
posted by plep
on Feb 26, 2003 -
13 comments
The
King of Stonehenge found in a 4,000-year-old grave near
Stonehenge may have been from Switzerland and involved in its construction. It is the
richest Bronze Age burial found in Britain "off the scale".
...it is fascinating to think that someone from abroad – probably modern day Switzerland – could well have played an important part in the construction of Britain’s most famous archaeological site.”
posted by stbalbach
on Feb 10, 2003 -
16 comments
The republic of Kalmykia is a unique place. A member of the Russian Federation, it was settled in 1608 by Mongols from what is now the Chinese province of Xinjiang. It is the only state in Europe where Buddhism is the dominant religion, and probably the only state in the world whose
president claims to have created an "extra-sensory field" around it. Kalmykia's spiritual leader,
Telo Rinpoche, is an American from Philadelphia who was appointed by the Dalai Lama. There has been a long history of migrations between Europe and Asia. In one really intriguing case,
3000-year-old mummies with reddish-blond hair, Caucasian features and wearing tartans similar in design to Celtic ones, were
discovered in the Takla Makan Desert in Xinjiang. If these ancient Caucasians were absorbed by the population of Xinjiang, then perhaps the Kalmyk migration might have unknowingly been a return to their ancestral lands.
[First link via plep].
posted by homunculus
on Dec 29, 2002 -
12 comments
Atapuerca (in Spanish, with incomplete English translation) is the site of the earliest European hominid ancestors yet found in Europe. Two of the most stunning finds are
Gran Dolina, where the first
Homo antecessor fossils were found, and Sima de los Huesos, site of the most complete
Homo heidelbergensis fossils ever excavated. And soon: an
exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in New York. I know my plans for January 11th.
posted by The Michael The
on Dec 10, 2002 -
3 comments
Frightening Archaeology: Dark Passage is scarier than
Infiltration; less cosy than
Lost America; and more disturbing than
Ruins of Detroit or any other ruination already investigated on Metafilter. In fact, it's probably the extreme incarnation of the thriving world of websites about
abandoned buildings, full of spooky mental asylums, echoes of depravity and twisted archaeology - like a spaced-out online version of Brad Anderson's
Session 9. Or
the real thing. To make matters worse, it also falls disconcertingly into the "What's this all about?" category. Brrrrr.... [
QT/WM required for the last link only - please disregard "Purchase" title and enjoy Nine Inch Nails soundtrack. Via Linkfilter.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo
on Nov 20, 2002 -
42 comments
Archaeological Collage. Neat old cityscene photographs dissolve part by part into modern shots of the same location. Slide the slider and trollies morph into cars, stoop tragedy is supplanted by stoop dalliance. This site has been my white whale: I spent many months tracking it down after losing the link, asking
here, asking
there, and finally getting an
Answer. SPOILER: In the saddest one, going left to right, you're delighted that the grand hotel survives, until in the last 10% it yields to a parking lot. *sob* (Shockwave required)
posted by luser
on Nov 11, 2002 -
9 comments
Save Thousands Of Years And Preserve Graffiti Now: Bijan Omrani playfully argues for the preservation of contemporary graffiti in Oxford's august Bodleian Library. Perhaps they're the modern equivalent of the
Lascaux cave paintings. "Kilroy was here" notwithstanding,
witty graffiti can be found on walls all around the world. Shouldn't some sort of repository be created to safeguard this undeniably pure - and unfairly overlooked - form of popular expression? I'm sorry to say I couldn't find
one single good written graffiti site on the Web. Does anyone know of one - or at least have a memorable graffito to share with the rest of us?
posted by MiguelCardoso
on May 4, 2002 -
25 comments
Some say the Taj Mahal pre-dates Shahjahan by several centuries and was originally built as a Hindu or Vedic temple complex. Fascinating theory or a crackpot...more inside >
posted by bittennails
on Apr 11, 2002 -
10 comments
City older than Mohenjodaro unearthed. This subject has always fascinated me, what is the world's oldest city/civilization? I remember learning in school the standard-tigris and euphrates river valley in Iraq version. But since I left school there seems to have been an ongoing search with multiple claims, here are a few links to newer claims,
hamoukar, mohenjodaro, harappa, details of hamoukar, by the archaeologist.
Does anyone have any insights, links are welcome, and what in your opinion is the oldest city/civilization in the world.
posted by bittennails
on Jan 16, 2002 -
15 comments
A sunken megalithic city, perhaps 6,000 years old, has been sonar-photographed with an underwater sub, off the coast of Cuba, 2100 feet down. Well, at least they didn't describe it as 'cyclopean'. Nor is there any word on whether its architectural angles are
non-Euclidean. [More inside]
posted by Slithy_Tove
on Dec 9, 2001 -
23 comments
The stuff from which Myth is made. A recent discovery of a meteor impact crater in the middle-east, dating around 2300BC, is shedding new light on the decline of many cultures and the rise of many legends.
posted by mkn
on Nov 15, 2001 -
19 comments
An Archaeological Find For Our Times? Indian archaeologists have uncovered two ancient statutes, believed to be representative of
Ashoka, an emperor who, after a brutal climb to the throne, switched over to Buddhism and attempted to create a just society.
posted by ed
on Nov 9, 2001 -
6 comments
Ho Hum, just the remains of another four thousand year old city discovered on the ocean floor. This one is
Harrapan of the Indus Valley which was home to the
largest of the four ancient urban civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. The ruins extend for 9 kilometers and located around 40 metres below the water surface. "Due to geological processes and tectonic events, the entire [Gulf of] Cambay was faulted — taking down with it the then existing part of the river sections and the metropolis"
posted by lagado
on Jul 2, 2001 -
3 comments
"The marbles belong to the British Museum ... which does not intend to return any part of the collection to its country of origin," PM Tony Blair ruling out the return to Greece of the so-called "Elgin" marbles, the stone carvings that were
unceremoniously hacked off the Parthenon by the
Earl of Elgin and carted back to Britain. Nearly 200 years later and despite years of Greek protest, the British Museum is not budging and has maintained thoughout that it has been protecting these antiquities from almost certain destruction (although their own record in this regard
has not been great). Should museums today be returning treasures that have were obtained though such looting?
posted by lagado
on Mar 25, 2001 -
29 comments
'I Feel A Great, Personal Loss' Conservationist Rakhaldas Sengupta spent nine years restoring the world's tallest Buddha statues...
This has been covered by MeFi before but Sengupta has a perspective on the statues that hasn't come to light yet. To think that the Taleban is destroying these 1700 year old statues breaks my heart. I hope I never understand the reasoning of religious zealots.
posted by gen
on Mar 9, 2001 -
8 comments
Mmmmm. Hu-ming. A British archaeologist finds evidence that cannibalism still existed amongst the Celts as recently as two thousand years ago, during Roman Times.
One grisly find includes a femur which had been split lengthways in order to scrape the marrow out. Tastemungus mates :)
posted by zeoslap
on Feb 28, 2001 -
6 comments
The Independent has a report that excavations at Herculaneum has brought forth some 850 papyri and "Among the works, which academics hope to read using the new equipment, are the lost works of Aristotle (his 30 dialogues, referred to by other authors, but lost in antiquity), scientific works by Archimedes, mathematical treatises by Euclid, philosophical work by Epicurus, masterpieces by the Greek poets Simonides and Alcaeus, erotic poems by Philodemus, lesbian erotic poetry by Sappho, the lost sections of Virgil's Juvenilia, comedies by Terence, tragedies by Seneca and works by the Roman poets Ennius, Accius, Catullus, Gallus, Macer and Varus."
posted by stbalbach
on Feb 11, 2001 -
20 comments
Mayan Suburbia Did the Mayans follow modern city development patterns 1500 years ago? Maybe, say some archaeologists who recently uncovered ancient suburbs, complete with subdivisions on artificial lakes, big private lawns, and strip malls.
[ from
Rebecca's Pocket ]
posted by daveadams
on Dec 21, 2000 -
7 comments
When archaeology goes bad "For a nation that has always reveled in its cultural uniqueness, the discoveries were more than heartening; they were almost too good to be true. "
posted by lagado
on Dec 12, 2000 -
7 comments
The Kensington Runestone. In 1898 a farmer in Minnesota named Olaf Ohmann, dug up from his property a stone covered in runes (viking enscriptions). When it was deciphered it read:
8 Goths (Swedes) and 22 Norwegians on a voyage of discovery from Vinland (of) the West...
Read more inside.
posted by lagado
on Dec 12, 2000 -
22 comments
The Polynesians were, undoubtedly, the greatest navigators of the ancient world. Using outrigger canoes, they were able to colonize lands spread as far apart as Madagascar and Easter Island and as far south as New Zealand. But where did they originally come from?
Jared Diamond demonstrates how, by using linguistic and archaeological evidence, it's possible to reconstruct their journey from China and Taiwan to the Philippines, from there on to Borneo, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea and out to the Pacific one way and Madagascar in the other. As an exercise, try comparing
the numbers 1 to 10 in all Polynesian and Indonesian languages, to see how the language gradually changed as they hopped from island to island.
posted by lagado
on Nov 23, 2000 -
4 comments
The Great Pyramids at Giza have never been accurately dated. Conventional Egyptian chronologies are only accurate to within 100 years. Using a neat trick, scientists have been able to pin that date down to within a few years. When they were built, the pyramids where aligned northwards by using two stars as a guides. Over time, these stars have moved because the Earth's rotational axis "wobbles" slightly over a 26,000 year period. The orientations of the pyramids reflect this, the older pyramids are oriented slightly to the north east and the younger ones are oriented slightly to the north west. This information has been used to pin down their exact ages.
posted by lagado
on Nov 15, 2000 -
2 comments
The Ancient Underwater Pyramids of Japan. "A STRUCTURE thought to be the world's oldest building, nearly twice the age of the great pyramids of Egypt, has been discovered. The rectangular stone ziggurat under the sea off the coast of Japan could be the first evidence of a previously unknown Stone Age civilisation, say archeologists. The monument is 600ft wide and 90ft high and has been dated to at least 8000BC. The oldest pyramid in Egypt, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, was constructed more than 5,000 years later."
posted by lagado
on Nov 1, 2000 -
11 comments
Deconstructing the walls of Jericho Old article, but an interesting one. Archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University has said that
"Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs' acts are legendary, the Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon, nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts have been known for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody wants to hear about it." Also the
BBC Article.
posted by lagado
on Oct 18, 2000 -
4 comments
The Mummies of the Tarim Basin were discovered fifteen years ago by Chinese archaeologists working in the salty deserts of far western China. These bodies date from between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago and have been preserved so well in the extremely dry salty conditions that some of them look like they're still alive. Even more remarkable is that their clothing is still intact including tapestries and tartans. Finally these people were six feet tall, had long noses and fair hair and there is strong evidence that they spoke a language whose closest relatives are Celtic and Latin.
posted by lagado
on Aug 7, 2000 -
10 comments
