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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Fragments of a bronze statue of the Roman emperor Augustus on horseback only the second known equestrian statue of Augustus in existence – have been found in a river near the German town of Giessen, about 40km north of Frankfurt-am-Main. The statue is thought to date back 2,000 years and the discovery has been announced by the science ministry of Hessen state. According to a statement from the science ministry, reported in The Local, this is the most well preserved Roman artefact of quality to be found in Germany to date. The discovery took place on August 12, when a…
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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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A pioneering Scots team could be the answers to saving some of the world’s greatest historical monuments. The six-strong group from Historic Scotland and the Glasgow School of Art are making waves across the world, as they use cutting-edge laser technology to map world heritage sites across the globe. First up on the team’s list will be Mount Rushmore, in South Dakota, USA. And the group are confident they can use their American-made CyArk 500 scanner to model the carved faces of former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln to within 3mm. The subsequent models could…
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Travel writer and photographer Ethel Davies knows the Roman coast of North Africa better than most (see her top 10 sites here). We asked her to give us an insight into how her favourite image came about. “As a professional travel photographer, I accrued a great number of images over the course of the two years of intensive work and study for North Africa: The Roman Coast (not to mention the various trips I took before my research began),” says Ethel. “Its virtually impossible to choose a favourite, as each image represents a place, an experience and even a feeling.…
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An alien necklace in King Tut‘s tomb? Too right, and it’s no myth or quackery. A pectoral found during Howard Carter‘s 1922 expedition to the boy-king’s funerary masterpiece is thought to contain the remnants of a meteor impact in the desert, thousands of years before the first stones were laid in Saqqara. The amazing story began 77 years after Carter’s discovery, when Italian geologist noticed something odd about a yellow-green scarab in the pectoral’s centre. Subsequent tests proved the lump of glass was older than any Egyptian civilization – a lot older, in fact. After much research, experts traced the…
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The Antikythera Mechanism is one of the most debated – execpt perhaps the Elgin Marbles – Greek artefacts. Where the frieze of the Parthenon leaves us with mainly one single question, ‘Who does it belong to?’, this no-doubt ingenious ancient device raises a myriad questions like, ‘When and by whom was it created?’; What purpose did it serve?’; ‘How did it look in its entirety?’ and, ‘What was it doing on board of the Antikythera Wreck?’ Scholars around the world are working hard to resolve these issues, and every year new answers surface. One thing all the scholars agree on,…
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Lost for moves? Tired of busting out the same old body popping/moonwalk/drunk-uncle-at-a-wedding? You could take your dancing lines from Jacko, Wade Robson or even Michael Flatley (if you don’t mind being alone for the rest of your life). But how about Tutankhamun? The boy-king may be making waves in stateside museums right now, but he’s been influencing the best underground dancers on both sides of the Atlantic for over twenty years with the ‘Tut’ – and I don’t mean Steve Martin’s Saturday Night Live performance. Amateurs be warned: it may take a bit more practice than karaoke night down the…
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Like the ancient world? Like early civilization? Like pyramids? I’m guessing if you’re reading this you probably do, so you might enjoy a new documentary series airing on the Discovery Channel next Monday evening. Out of Egypt examines the links between ancient cultures, our modern fascination with them, and the myths and legends which have endured thousands of years. Fronted by glamorous Egyptologist Dr Kara Cooney, the first episode, ‘Relics’, sees the team travelling to Mexico, Vietnam and Sri Lanka to ask just how powerful a part relics have played in the world’s most famous cultures. Dr Cooney explores the…