Bosnian Pyramid Loses Funds!

Not a pyramid at all but rather a “natural formation,” says the Bosnian Culture Minister, Gavrilo Grahovac. So they’re pulling the plug on self-proclaimed, “amateur archaeologist,” Semir Osmanagic, who, for a little over a year now, has claimed that the geologic formations as Visoko, Bosnia are pyramids built by people in antiquity. If true, the [...]

Dilmun and Punt: Two Mythical Origins for Two Early Civilizations (Part I)

Archaeology is about examining the material remains of the human past, often in hopes of learning something of the origins of civilizations in antiquity: where did they come from? why did they leave there? what motivated them to seek a new home? -these are but a few questions that archaeologists and cultural historians work with [...]

Arctic Spring Came Early

With Global Warming becoming less and less debated by even the staunchest denialists, continuing confirmation of the affects keep appearing in the media. Case in point is the recent news that the ice of northeast Greenland shows signs of melting about 2 weeks earlier than in the 1990s. [Arctic spring's 'rapid advance'] This news isn’t [...]

The Last Foragers of Tanzania – A Farewell to the Hadza?

Chris O’Brien at Northstate Science has a gut-wrenching post on the plight of the Hadza of northern Tanzania. Their very existence is threatened by wealth, ignorance, and a complete lack of compassion by the government that should be responsible stewards of the cultural diversity of its citizens. Instead, the Tanzanian government is coming to an [...]

Chris O’Brien at Antiquity!

My online access to Antiquity has a 6 month lag and my library doesn’t have the summer edition yet, but I have it on good authority that our friend and fellow blogger, Chris O’Brien of Northstate Science has been quoted by Martin Carver, editor of this premier journal of archaeology. Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology, who [...]

Iceman Bled to Death on Glacier – Killed by Arrow

At least that’s the title I should have used on March 20, 2007 when I scooped the BBC, the LA Times, National Geographic and other major and minor media outlets. My original post on the topic was at Anthropology.net, titled New Research on Ötzi, the Iceman, Cometh. From that post I discussed the study conducted [...]

ArtiFACTS: Recent News in Archaeology and Anthropology

Here’s what’s new in archaeology for the previous week (below the fold):2,100 year old melon… with flesh still on the rind! In Japan, archaeologists recovered the melon from a layer of “wet ground” that impeded microorganisms that would have otherwise consumed the remains. This is probably the oldest known piece of melon. And to think [...]

The Emergence of the Israelites in Canaan: Part II

In Part I of this two part series, I discussed a few of the hypotheses that exist to explain the emergence of the Israelites in the Canaan highlands (there are others, but I mentioned three of the more prevalent ones); I also discussed, briefly, the Hyksos, which comes up from time to time in looking [...]