The East · Archaeology · Geography · Science
Off the island of Kekova on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, in the province of Antalya, the remains of a vessel have been found at a depth of about 30 metres, and are believed to be the oldest known shipwreck in the Mediterranean. The find is dated to the Bronze
Architecture · Heritage · Science
Giant steel sphere discovered during the demolition of a paper mill in North Carolina The riveted steel sphere, about 9 metres high and weighing about 40 tonnes, is reported to have been built in 1936. Unfortunately, it was damaged by mistake during dismantling. The most convincing version suggests that the
Archaeology · Science · Ethnography
Alexandr Diachenko of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Detlef Gronenborn of the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology in Mainz have built a mathematical model that links the diversity of pottery ornament to population size, the organisation of pottery production and the exchange of information. They compared the pottery
Archaeology · Science · Palaeontology · Nature
Some news on migration. At Schöningen in Lower Saxony, a milk tooth of a macaque some 310,000 years old has been found. The tooth was recovered as long ago as 2004, but has been studied only now. Scientists from Leiden University and the Senckenberg Centre at the University of
Archaeology · Science · Nature
When ancient farmers domesticated plants, they relied on variation that already existed in wild species. Useful mutations were rare in the wild ancestors of cultivated plants, but people spent millennia selecting plants with the desired traits, and the frequency of those mutations rose. The chief trait of domesticated rice is
Archaeology · Science
Researchers of the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution have published the first full analysis of the wooden finds from the Neanderthal site of Abric Romaní. The site lies beneath a rock shelter in the town of Capellades, not far from Barcelona. Neanderthals lived here from roughly 62,
Archaeology · Science · Nature
If an English actress takes the products of human combustion as a sedative, then the products of burning birch bark, scientists have found, may have been used by Neanderthals as an antibiotic. Researchers from the universities of Cologne, Oxford and Liège, and from Cape Breton University in Canada, have established
Archaeology · Science
An unfinished antler axe, probably of the Mesolithic, which may have been used for straightening arrows. Archaeologists have explored the Tina Jama cave on the limestone Karst plateau above the northern coast of the Adriatic Sea, not far from Trieste, and have uncovered a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer camp directly beneath
The Golden Age · Architecture · Science · Paris
The arch carries no Russian towns in the sense of places “taken”; what it carries are the names of battles fought against the Russian army. They fall into several groups. The campaign of 1812 Battles fought on the territory of the Russian Empire are inscribed in the French transcription of
The East · Science · Society
The emperors of the Ming dynasty, which ruled China from 1368 to 1644, were in dire need of silver in the sixteenth century. It went chiefly on prestige projects such as the Forbidden City in Beijing and the repair of the Great Wall. The historian Mark Cartwright writes in the
Archaeology · Archive · The East · Museums · Science
An American archaeologist has carried out a forensic analysis of skulls of people who were buried beside the tombs of Egypt's first kings at Abydos, and has found on many of them traces of violent death. Abydos in Upper Egypt served as the burial place of the kings
The East · In the Press · Science · Society
Professor Oba Mie of Kanagawa University writes that Japan could become a third partner for the ASEAN countries alongside the USA and China. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations preserves its independence under the slogan of "centrality": the bloc's members seek to remain the principal forum