Ever thought you’d been speaking to a brick wall day? Well now’s your chance to try it out for real, as we hook up with the London Stone on Twitter on Monday for what promises to be the masonry equivalent to Frost vs Nixon. And though you can get a huge dose of the stone’s history in our inaugural Ancient World in London video, this is a web event not to be missed. Learn all about one of London’s weirdest treasures at 7pm Monday! As arbiters of ancient info, Heritage Key has managed to bypass the artefact’s hefty entourage for…
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Who is the man in this picture? How did this fellow, whose maternal ancestry is East Asian, end up in a modest grave in southern Italy about 2000 years ago? Its an enticing question and one that has been in the news ever since Heritage Key announced the story of this mans discovery. Just a quick recap; a team of scientists based at McMaster University in Hamilton Canada have found that this man, buried in a Roman cemetery at Vagnari, in southern Italy, is of East Asian ancestry on this mothers side. They determined this through mitochondrial DNA testing. The…
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The tomb of Chinese warlord Cao Cao one of Chinas latest and most controversial discoveries has yet to open itself up for firsthand public views. But an exhibit in Beijing offers the next best thing. From weapons and coins to statutes and artwork, 1,800 year-old relics from Cao Caos era will be on display at Beijings National Centre for the Performing Arts. The unique exhibit centers on Chinas Three Kingdoms period, and will go on until March 15. Lasting from 184 to 280 AD, the Three Kingdoms period is one of Chinas most famous eras. During this time, the country…
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Since the economic downturn, colleges and universities around the world have found themselves in a pickle: their income is not what it used to be. Endowment-rich, private American institutions have seen an unprecedented decline in the value of their investments, while publicly funded universities around the world have seen their tax-generated budgets shrunken by unimaginable margins. For the first time in a long time (or, perhaps, for the first time ever) publicly funded and privately funded universities are in the same boat and that boat is sinking. Academics have reluctantly begun to accept that cuts are inevitable. Sometimes small things…
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Did the ancestors of todays Inuit race across the arctic 750 years ago in search of meteorites?Canwest News Services has just published an intriguing story that suggests just that. According to the news service, Dr. Robert McGhee, curator emeritus at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, recently published this theory in a new book, The Northern World: AD 900 to 1400. Basically the idea works like this. 10,000 years ago a meteorite crashed into west Greenland, its known today as the Cape York meteorite. Mining in the arcticwas quite difficult (even today) so an iron meteorite was very handy for anyone…
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Best-selling author Caroline Lawrence has added her name to a growing list of celebrities supporting the fight to save Colchester’s Roman Circus. Lawrence, the author of the Roman Mysteries series of childrens books, joins other high-profile people backing the appeal, including authors Ronald Blythe, Guy de la Bedoyere and Adam Hart-Davis, Time Team presenter Tony Robinson, architectural historian and TV presenter Dan Cruickshank, broadcaster Peter Snow, and former MP and cabinet minister Tony Benn. Colchester was the first Roman capital of England, and boasts a number of well-preserved sites such as the Norman castle and Roman wall, which was built…
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Stonehenge no stranger to mystery was shrouded in a cloak of foggy secrecy on Tuesday night, as the BBC filmed scenes for a forthcoming episode of Doctor Who inside a closed set at the iconic Wiltshire monument. Rumour has it that the first few instalments of the new season of the long-running cult timr-travelling sci-fi drama expected to air sometime in the next few months will be set sometime in the past. Dr Who anoraks observing from the edges of the set, hoping to catch a rare glimpse of filming, spotted the Time Lord himself played by Matt Smith, the…
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David Pybus describes himself as a 21st century alchemist and aromancer, and says his mission in life is to get people to stop their frenetic living from time to time and to smell the roses. Hes underselling himself, of course. Hes really a chemist with more than 20 years experience at the worlds largest perfume makers. During an appearance on the BBCs Dragons Den in 2007, he convinced entrepreneurs Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones to part with 40,000 each to help launch Scents of Time, a range of fragrances based on ancient themes. Since his appearance on the show and…
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Canterbury City Council is the latest local authority set to close museums as part of cost-cutting measures. The council is wielding the budget axe and its decided that saving the citys Christmas lights is more important than keeping the Roman Museum open to the public. Under the budget proposals, the Roman Museum and the nearby the Westgate Towers Museum would close, while Herne Bay Museum would remain open only for educational groups (though apparently not for the general public who wish to educate themselves). Canterbury is not alone in sacrificing museums often seen as soft targets as part of cost-cutting…
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Egyptology photographer Sandro Vannini has been busy photographing tombs across Thebes for his new book “The Lost Tombs of Thebes:Lost in Paradise” and you can watch him at work in a Heritage Key video which also features Dr Zahi Hawass and Dr Janice Kamrin (Watch the video). During his photo-spree in this Ancient Egyptian city, Sandro took images of archaeologists hard at work at the site of TT34 – The Tomb of Montuemhat. Described by the excavation lead Dr Farouk Gomaa as “one of the largest [tombs] in Thebes“, the University of Tbingen archaeologist and his team are searching for…