The Old World Times

Friday, December 17, 2010

Ancient Roman Statue Uncovered In Israel Storm

[Huffington Post] One of the strongest storms Israel has experienced in recent years brought winds of more than 100 kilometers per hour and sent 10-meter-high waves crashing onto the nation's coast. But the harsh weather also brought about something unexpected: the discovery of an ancient Roman statue in amazing condition. More...

Ancient Mexicans crossbred wolf-dogs

[AP] Mexican researchers said Wednesday they have identified jaw bones found in the pre-Hispanic ruins of Teotihuacan as those of wolf-dogs that were apparently crossbred as a symbol of the city's warriors. More...

Ancient trove of Egypt statues found in Luxor

[AP] Archaeologists found what may be a trove of 3,400 year old statues on the west bank of the ancient temple city Luxor, said the head of Egypt's antiquities department on Thursday. More..

Mummified Forest Found on Treeless Arctic Island

[National Geographic] Pines, spruces buried in landslide millions of years ago, when area was warmer. More...

Bulgarian Archaeologist Discovers World's Likely Oldest Sun Temple

[Novinite] Bulgarian archaeologist Georgi Ganetsovski has made a new hit discovering by unearthing what might be the world's oldest sun temple. More...

Spain rethinks reopening of prehistoric art 'Sistine Chapel'

[AFP] Spain's Altamira cave, dubbed the "Sistine Chapel" of Paleolithic art because of the paintings of animals on its ceiling, will no longer reopen to the public as planned at the end of the year.The cave located some 30 kilometres (19 miles) west of the northern city of Santander has been closed since 2002 because the breath and body heat from visitors threatened the fragile natural pigments used in the cave art. More...

Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart's

[AP] The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open. Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway. More...

Indonesian fishermen find old sunken ship

[AP] A sunken ship that may be several centuries old and containing green and gray ceramics has been found off remote Indonesian islands recently hit by a tsunami, officials said Thursday. More...

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Historians discover tiny numbers and letters in the eyes of the Mona Lisa

[Mail Online] Mona Lisa was at the centre of a new mystery yesterday after art detectives took a fresh look at the masterpiece – and noticed something in her eyes. Hidden in the dark paint of her pupils are tiny letters and numbers, placed there by the artist Leonardo da Vinci and revealed only now thanks to high-magnification techniques. More...

Friday, December 10, 2010

Ancient crashes blasted metals into Earth, moon and Mars

[MSNBC] Gigantic collisions on Earth, the moon and Mars 4.5 billion years ago injected precious elements such as gold and platinum into the developing worlds, a new study suggests.

In the last days of planet formation, a body as big as Pluto likely slammed into Earth after the planet had been clobbered by a Mars-size object, researchers said. Mars and the moon absorbed smaller but still devastating blows, they added. More...

Jesus' Great-Grandmother Identified

[Discovery] The great-grandmother of Jesus was a woman named Ismeria, according to Florentine The legend of St. Ismeria, presented in the current Journal of Medieval History, sheds light on both the Biblical Virgin Mary's family and also on religious and cultural values of 14th-century Florence. More...

WWII Japanese-American draft resister dies at 94

[AP] A Japanese-American who helped lead draft resistance at a World War II internment camp has died in Southern California. When the government decided to draft Japanese-Americans in 1944, Emi and six others formed the Fair Play Committee, which argued that Japanese-Americans shouldn't have to fight for freedom abroad when they were denied it at home. Three hundred men from the camps were imprisoned for draft evasion. More...

Ancient Greek Computer Gets Rebuilt Using Lego

[PC World] 2000 years ago the Greeks built a device designed to calculate the motion of celestial bodies, a computer now called the Antikythera mechanism. Lost for centuries at the bottom of the ocean, it was pulled up in 1901 and has baffled scientists until recently. This year, designer Andrew Carol built the first working copy of the computer out of Lego bricks, the New Scientist reports. More...

Massive Canadian melt may have triggered flood of biblical proportions

[Canada.com] A British researcher has published a startling new theory that the remains of untold ancient settlements from a 100,000-year stretch of human history were submerged by the rapidly rising waters of the Persian Gulf around 6,000 BC — the result, in all likelihood, of a catastrophic, planetwide flood triggered in Canada. More...

Thursday, December 9, 2010

'Vandals have hacked at the heart of Christianity': 2,000-year-old Holy Thorn Tree of Glastonbury is cut down

[Mail Online] Standing proudly on the side of an English hill, its religious roots go back 2,000 years. But a single night of vandalism has left an ancient site of pilgrimage in splinters.The Holy Thorn Tree of Glastonbury has been chopped down in what is being seen by some as a deliberately anti-Christian act. A feature of the skyline surrounding the Somerset town, the tree has been visited by thousands retracing the steps said to have been taken by Joseph of Arimathea, who some say was Jesus’ great uncle. More...

Is There A Lost Civilization Under Persian Gulf?

[Arch News] A once fertile landmass now submerged beneath the Persian Gulf may have been home to some of the earliest human populations outside Africa, according to an article published in Current Anthropology. More...