Bringing to mind an old adage about buses and waiting, almost 1,900 years since the Roman Ninth Legion, Legio IX Hispana, is said to have last invaded Scotland, the big screen is set to witness its return, twice in the space of just a few months. Two very different major movies based on the tale of the legendary, hitherto all-conquering Roman army that marched north across the border from England on a campaign against the Picts and legend has it never returned are in advanced stages of production, and slated for release in 2009/2010. Centurion, directed by Englishman Neil Marshall…
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An excavation of one of the thousands of roundhouses dotted across the landscape of Dartmoor has offered a these-days-rare new insight into prehistoric life on the windswept, rainy plain in the southwest of England. Today its an inhospitable, if undoubtedly striking place. But back in the Bronze Age, when the climate was much milder, it was a hive of activity, cleared by fire of forestry and turned into pasture and farm lands. Its inhabitants left behind the largest concentration of Bronze Age remains found anywhere in Britain. As many as 5,000 stone houses, and many more wooden examples which have…
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Anyone looking for a holiday that gets much closer to the cultural core of a historic destination than the average tourist experience would do well to check out the Global Explorer Series a partnership between Fairmont Hotels & Resorts and the National Geographic Society. Theyre inviting intrepid travellers to do better than peer at their attractions of choice from behind a cordon while leafing though a guidebook, but better still engage with them in top destinations from Kenya to Cairo, Monaco and St Andrews up-close and in context together with a leading expert. The latest package offered is the Wonder…
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It was hardly bling worthy of an East Coast rapper, but stashes of symbolic jewellery found recently in the desert of Morocco dating back 82,000 years are being hailed as vital discoveries in the scientific quest to establish the earliest juncture between human culture and cognition. Unearthed at four different spots, the items comprise 25 tiny marine shell beads, drilled with holes and showing evidence of pigment and frequent wear. They were found as part of the European Science Foundation‘s EUROCORES programme: Origin of Man, Language and Languages. So early humans had a little bit of fashion sense whats the…
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Long gone are the days of school children creating minor masterpieces in art class only to take them home for mum to pin on the fridge. Pioneered as part of a wider initiative to discover innovative ways of bringing new technologies and computer games-based learning into the classroom in Scotland, CANVAS (Childrens Art at the National Virtual Arena of Scotland) will allow Scottish school kids the chance to display their work to thousands of other pupils in a specially-designed, safe and secure online domain. Better still, theyll then be able to create their own avatars and discuss their creations in-world.…
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A school in Edinburgh, Scotland, has developed an innovative alternative to the rigmarole of loading kids onto a bus for a visit to the museum bringing the museum to the kids. Developed with 10,000 from the Big Lottery Fund, the Living Links Museum at South Queensferrys Echline Primary School will represent the only in-school museum of its kind in Scotland, and feature displays relating to the Vikings and the ancient Egyptians and Africans. The museum will be housed in an old library. Exhibits will come from an extensive collection built up by the school over the past few years, via…
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Jakob Kainz, a young archaeologist working on the excavation of the Links of Noltland on the Orkney Island of Westray, has discovered what is being described as a eureka find Scotlands earliest representation of the human face. Crudely scraped into a flat piece of sandstone, and measuring just 3.5 centimetres by 3 centimetres, the so-called Orkney Venus might not look like much, but its got the phizzogs of all from leading heritage experts to the Scottish Culture Minister Mike Russell who called it a find of tremendous importance beaming from ear to ear. The tiny pendant dates from as far…
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Tourism is a massive industry in Egypt, thanks to the countrys venerable past it accounts for 11% of GDP, and creates jobs for around 12% of the total national workforce. Chief among Egypts antiquarian attractions are the tombs of the pharaohs, the vast network of lavishly decorative burial chambers for its ancient rulers spread across the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, such as KV62 the final resting place of Tutankhamun. So why, then, is the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities calling for them to be closed? The Council have been faced with an almighty catch-22. The tombs are extremely…
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Cherchen Man, who died around 1000 BC, appears to be as Scottish as square sausage tall, dark-haired, clad in a red tunic and tartan leggings and sporting a beard as ginger as a burning fox. His DNA attests to his Celtic origins. So why on earth, then, was his mummified corpse discovered buried in the barren sands of the Taklamakan Desert, in the far-flung Xinjiang region of western China? Its a question that still has experts scratching their heads, especially since Cherchen Man is just one of hundreds of ancient desiccated corpses of European origin found in the Tarim Basin…
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A Scottish castle ransacked by government soldiers after the Battle of Culloden has been rebuilt in the online virtual reality domain Second Life. Virtual reality tours are now being offered of Invergarry Castle, in Glengarry in the Highlands, which has been cloned in two different forms the intact 1740 version, and the modern ruined remains, which are in such a state of disrepair theyre almost inaccessible. The project is a publicity initiative by the My Glengarry Conservation Trust an organisation who are attempting to raise money for the preservation of the Glengarry area, by selling off legal deeds to plots…