The University of Oxford is the latest British research institution to agree to return the remains of indigenous Australians to their homeland. Aboriginal remains are scattered across the globe after they were shipped abroad for ‘research purposes’ following the colonisation of Australia by the British in 1788. It is the intention of the Australian government to repatriate all remains, and the hope of the Aboriginal people to bring all scientific analysis on their ancestors to a halt. Aborigines, who refer to the colonisation of Australia as ‘invasion’, had occupied the continent for more than 40,000 years prior to the discovery…
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Few people would ever have called Saddam Hussein a god; not even many of his most vehement supporters. But the vainglorious way in which he rebuilt many of Iraq’s most coveted ancient sites seems to suggest he saw himself as some sort of Babylonian deity along the lines of the Egyptian heretic king Akhenaten. However a great number of Saddam’s beloved monuments have fallen into the hands of the US Army since the war in 2003. How are the Americans looking after Saddam’s Mesopotamian masterpieces? And what modern uses are these sites, spearheaded by the vast Ziggurat of Ur, currently…
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When reading books, and especially when browsing ‘the interwebz’, one comes across the most hilarious, flabbergasting and ‘OMG, the pills you are taking, are those legal?!‘ pyramid theories. Sadly enough, the thrill is soon gone, as all those ‘pyramidiot’1 stories fall back on the same basic protagonists aliens and the inhabitants of Atlantis and the same story lines ‘way older’, special vibrations, immortality with an occasional twist freemasonry, numerology and Supreme Council of Egyptian Antiquities conspiracy theories. Composing a Pyramidiot Theory Hence the challenge, write up your very best Pyramidiot Theory without using any of the stereotypes mentioned below. As…
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Stonehenge‘s use may have been debated for millennia – but one expert now thinks the Neolithic site was the venue for some of prehistory’s wildest raves. Professor Rupert Till, an expert in acoustics and music technology at Huddersfield University, insists the megalithic structure would have worked perfectly to resonate sound – creating trance-like music which would have aided rituals and worship at the site. To prove his theories, Dr Till used a computer model to simulate the acoustics of Stonehenge when it was in perfect shape (many of the huge stones have fallen down over time). The expert also visited…
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On a recent trip to watch the sun rise from behind the spectacular structure of Stonehenge, I was lucky enough to meet Druid couple Kim and Andrea (right). It was a couple of days before the Easter Solstice, and the pair were preparing to protest against the lack of free access to what they see as a place of worship. Normally, the stones are only open during the visiting hours dictated by the National Trust. Visitors need to buy a ticket to get anywhere near the site; a ticket that forces them to walk the wrong way around the stones…
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Attribution: pjink11 Delphi Greece Key Dates The earliest finds in the area of Delphi date to the Neolithic period (4000 BC). Traces of occupation are rare and fragmentary until the eighth century BC. The first temples were built in the late seventh century BC, and in the sixth and fourth centuries BC the Delphic oracle was at its peak. In the third century BC, the sanctuary was conquered by the Aetolians, and then in turn by the Romans in 191 BC. In the Byzantine age, the Slavs destroyed the precinct in 394 BC. By the seventh century AD, a new…
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Egypt hasn’t always been controlled from Cairo – in fact the city only took on its capital city mantle in 969 AD. The ancient Egyptian empire went through over a dozen capital cities in its history, the most notable being Memphis, Thebes, Amarna and Alexandria. But how did power shift between these bustling ancient hubs? And what was life like as a resident of an ancient Egyptian capital? A Divided Land Before the empire was united in 3118 BC, it consisted of two separate kingdoms: Upper and Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt consisted of the valley regions of the south, taking…
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Attribution: Peter Mattock Donore Ireland Key Dates Newgrange was built between 3300 and 2900 BC, and was a focus of ceremonial activity throughout the Neolithic period. New monuments were progressively added to the site – timber circles were built and a free-standing circle of stones was erected to circle the mound. It wasn’t until the 17th century that Newgrange was discovered. Excavation and restoration took place 1962-1975 under the supervision of the University of Cork Archaeology Department’s Professor Michael J O’Kelly, the first person to witness the winter solstice from within the mound. During the excavation, the remains of five…
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Saqqara, located 40km south of Cairo, was a vast, 6km-long necropolis for the ancient capital of Memphis during the 1st and 2nd dynasties. It is most famously recognised for its step pyramid, built for the 3rd Dynasty pharaoh Djoser (2635 – 2610 BC) – but houses thousands of ancient burial sites, with many more submerged beneath the unerring depths of the desert. It stands as not only a memoriam to the time in which it was developed, but also as a yardstick against which all future Egyptian funerary ceremony would be placed. The City of the Dead Saqqara was originally…
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Signs O’ The Times Egyptian hieroglyphs – streams of sometimes heavily stylised pictograms and letters, carved into stone or drawn onto papyrus parchment – are instantly recognisable relics of one of the world’s oldest and most famous ancient civilizations. But what on earth do they mean? And what of their place in the development of the Egyptian language, written and spoken, as a whole? Origins and Development Examples of written Egyptian date back more than 3,400 years, making it one of the earliest known languages in human history. The oldest bands of script discovered to date comprise a primitive system…