Rare 19th Century Map of Jerusalem Unearthed

[The Forward]  A map of Jerusalem that was drafted some 190 years ago by a German tourist was recently unearthed by two researchers – one Israeli, the other German – in an archive in Berlin. The map, sketched by hand in 1823, was discovered in the course of a study conducted in tandem by Israeli researchers and scholars at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, in Leipzig, Germany.

Ancient life-size lion statues baffle scientists

[MSNBC]  Two sculptures of life-size lions, each weighing about 5 tons in antiquity, have been discovered in what is now Turkey, with archaeologists perplexed over what the granite cats were used for.

Archaeologists amazed at treasures found near tomb raided by Nazi SS

[The Mirror]  An underground pyramid from 500BC and suspected of containing untold treasures has been found near a Celtic tomb raided by Heinrich Himmler.The SS chief, obsessed with Celtic mysticism, stole golden artefacts from an ancient tomb of a noble couple in Buehl, South West Germany. The loot, thought to be worth £500million, was never seen again. But now archaeologists are excited by a nearby Iron Age burial chamber that is even bigger at 18 square feet, probably the grave of a great chieftain

Earliest spiral galaxy ever seen: a shocking discovery

[Phys Org]  Astronomers have witnessed for the first time a spiral galaxy in the early universe, billions of years before many other spiral galaxies formed. In findings reported July 19 in the journal Nature, the astronomers said they discovered it while using the Hubble Space Telescope to take pictures of about 300 very distant galaxies in the early universe and to study their properties. This distant spiral galaxy is being observed as it existed roughly three billion years after the Big Bang, and light from this part of the universe has been traveling to Earth for about 10.7 billion years.    

Oldest Pharaonic boat discovered

[Egypt Independent]  The oldest wooden boat from the Pharonic period was discovered in Abu Rawash, said Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Ali on Wednesday. The boat dates back to the era of King Den of the First Dynasty, around 3,000 BC. It is in good condition, Ali said in a statement.

Extraodinary discovery of Leonardo sculpture

[Marketwatch]  A-once-in-a-lifetime find of a Leonardo da Vinci sculpture will be unveiled to the world at a private event at the historic Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills California. Made from the mold of a beeswax statue dating back over 500 years, the sculpture has been authenticated to come from the hands of Renaissance Master, Leonardo da Vinci.

No wreckage found in expedition to solve fate of Amelia Earhart

[Reuters]  Researchers on July 3 set off on a $2.2 million expedition and travelled 1,800 miles (2,897 km) by ship from Honolulu to Nikumaroro in the Republic of Kiribati to search for clues to her disappearance in 1937. "We are returning from Nikumaroro with volumes of new sonar data and hours upon hours of high-definition video," The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery said in a statement on Monday. TIGHAR did not immediately release details about what the sonar data or video might show, and it did not say that any plane wreckage it had sought has been recovered.

Ancient astronomical observatory unearthed in Georgia

[Examiner]  About three hours west of Savannah, archaeologists unearthed an ancient Indian mound which had a secret hidden chamber inside. Inside this secret chamber was a circle of fifty seats and an altar in the shape of a hawk or eagle. Known as the Ocmulgee Earthlodge, new evidence proves this earth-covered building was a sophisticated piece of engineering with precise astronomical alignments that likely served as an astronomical observatory.

Lost Katherine Mansfield short story found

[The Guardian] A lost short story by Katherine Mansfield has been discovered in an archive by a PhD student, giving new insight into one of the most turbulent periods of her short life, when she was abandoned by her lover while pregnant and went on to marry a man she left on her wedding night.

Ancient Alteration of Seawater Chemistry Linked With Past Climate Change

[Science Daily]  Scientists have discovered a potential cause of Earth's "icehouse climate" cooling trend of the past 45 million years. It has everything to do with the chemistry of the world's oceans.

"Seawater chemistry is characterized by long phases of stability, which are interrupted by short intervals of rapid change," says geoscientist Ulrich Wortmann of the University of Toronto, lead author of a paper reporting the results and published this week in the journal Science.

Polar bear split from brown bear over 4 million years ago

[Science News]  With such old origins, the creature must have weathered extreme shifts in climate, researchers report online July 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Simulations of how the DNA changed over time suggest that polar bear populations rose and fell with the temperature. After thriving during cooler times between 800,000 and 600,000 years ago, the bears seem to have suffered a genetic bottleneck and crashed after a warmer period that started about 420,000 years ago.

"Dramatic" New Maya Temple Found, Covered With Giant Faces

[National Geographic]  Some 1,600 years ago, the Temple of the Night Sun was a blood-red beacon visible for miles and adorned with giant masks of the Maya sun god as a shark, blood drinker, and jaguar. Long since lost to the Guatemalan jungle, the temple is finally showing its faces to archaeologists, and revealing new clues about the rivalrous kingdoms of the Maya.

An olive stone from 150BC links pre-Roman Britain to today's pizzeria

[The Guardian]   Iron Age Britons were importing olives from the Mediterranean a century before the Romans arrived with their exotic tastes in food, say archaeologists who have discovered a single olive stone from an excavation of an Iron Age well at at Silchester in Hampshire. The stone came from a layer securely dated to the first century BC, making it the earliest ever found in Britain – but since nobody ever went to the trouble of importing one olive, there must be more, rotted beyond recognition or still buried.