After a successful stay at the Peabody Essex Museum, ‘Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea’ opens this weekend at Forth Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum. The exhibition offers a new interpretation of the ancient culture, beyond the traditional view of the Maya as a land-based civilisation. Expect supernatural crocodiles breathing forth rain; cosmic battles taking place between mythic beasts and deities; and art works adorned with shark teeth, stingray spines, sea creatures and waterfowl all part of the new and vivid picture the exhibition paints of the Maya world view: the Maya did not just navigate river and streams,…
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London-based nightclub Ministry’s motto of sound system first, interior design second, lights third made them one of the most famous gathering places for those who worship bass. But how did those conceptualising Stonehenge plan to enchantthe Neolithic congregate? Rupert Till, an acoustics and music technology expert, asserts the stone circle would have created a perfect (early design) amplifier – making Stonehenge the place to be from the Stone Age onwards. Professor Tillsays Stonehenge when it was in perfect shape would have worked perfectly to resonate sound, creating trance-like music which would have aided rituals and worship at the site. To…
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Archaeologists digging at the ancient Maya city of Uxul, Mexico, havelocated an artificial lake the size of a football field. The two metres deep pool its floor a mosaic of ceramic shards was constructed about 1,500 years ago. Uxul is located on the Mexican Yucatn Peninsula, near the Guatamalan border and only twentysix kilometres southwest of Unesco World Heritage Site Calakmul. German and Mexican archaeologists started systematically excavating and mapping its ruins in 2009. In doing so, we stumbled upon two square water reservoirs, each about 100 metres by 100 metres, says Dr Iken Paap from the University of Bonn.…
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It is a well-known rule that search queries which lead people to your website should be dealt with as actual questions depending on the amount of people using the search query, you know that at least one person is interested in the subject (as it comes to sex andnaked belly dancers a lot of people are intrigued). Now, some people actually phrase their search query as a question (remember AskJeeves?) starting with ‘what’, ‘how to’, ‘where’, … .Often these are err.. quite original. Here are my favourites (capitalisation and question marks added where needed) in the categories ‘General (Lack Of)…
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Excavations at a Colonial Period site on the North Coast of Peru have revealed the first traces of a lost language. Sometime in the early 17th century, a Spaniard jotted down some notes on the back of a letter. Four hundred years later, archaeologists dug up and studied the paper, revealing how Peruvian natives used numbers. The find is significant because it offers the first glimpse of a previously unknown language and number system, says Dr. Jeffrey Quilter, director of the archaeological project at Magdalena de Cao Viejoand curator at the Peabody Museum Harvard. It also points to the great…
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Archaeologists have stumbled upon what appears to be the remains of a substantial ancient settlement at Umm El-Mawagir in Kharga Oasis, Egypt. Dated to the Second Intermediate Period (1650 to 1550 BC), the newfound city is at least a thousand years older than any of the other major surviving ancient remains in the area. The ancient town lies along the bustling caravan routes connecting the Nile Valley of Egypt and the El-Kharga oasis with points as far as Darfur in western Sudan. The discovery was made by an American-Egyptian archaeological team from Yale University that is systematically searching the area…
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Almost 10,000 years ago, in Utahs Escalante Valley, a new recipe was added to the prehistoric cookbook: mush cooked from the flour of milled sage brush seeds.In those times,what else would the early chefs put on your plate..err… rock? Archaeologists from the Brigham Young University are publishing what they’ve learned from five summers of excavations at the ‘North Creek Shelter’. The site,on the northern Colorado Plateau in southern Utah,has been occupied by humans on an off for the past 11,000 years, and is one of the oldest of such archaeological sites in Utah. In the upcoming issue of the journal…
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Following years of restoration and development, the Marina el-Alamein archaeological site on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast will open to tourists mid-September. The Marina el-Alamein archaeological site a Hellenistic-Roman town is locatedabout 5km east of el-Alamein. The ancient city was accidentally discovered in 1986, when construction started on the Marina El-Alamein resort. The archaeological area spans a section that is more than 1km long and about 0.5km wide and is the largest archaeological site on Egypt’s north coast. Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, announced that the site will be opened to tourists mid-September complete with a high-tech lighting system throughout the entire…
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Archaeologists have discovered a large Gallo-Roman religious complex located only a few kilometres from the ancient city of Le Mans. The ancient sanctuary is thought to have been an important pilgrimage area, visited by thousands to honour the gods. The religious complex unearthed in Neuville-sur-Sarthe about 5km north of Le Mans, France is excavated by archaeologists from the French National Institute of Archaeological Research (INRAP) and dated to the 1st to 3rd century AD. Traces of the complex were first revealed on aerial photographs taken in 2003, when an long period of drought scorched much of the vegetation on the…
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Comparing Stonehenge Summer Solstice 2010 with 2009, it seems that the ‘Ancestor’ really stood out as something different. Each year there are small ‘arts & crafts’ performances (dance, live music, jugglers, …) but this year a massive 20ft steel sculpture was the guest of honour at Stonehenge, marking a significant change – a statement that the future and the now is just as important as the celebration of the summer solstice and the past, the ancient megaliths and the remembering of ancestors. So it seemed appropriate to kick-start this picture report with the statue – appropriately dubbed ‘The Ancestor’ – reaching out…