From The Guardian: Liechtenstein: no retaliation for Swiss ‘invasion’.

The Swiss army is not renowned for its aggressive expeditionary adventures — but it does appear to have accidentally invaded Liechtenstein. [continue]

Maybe it’s time to update the Swiss Army knife design, hmmm? They could add a tiny GPS unit.

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From eKathimerini.com: Forgotten necropolis.

An unknown civilization around four lakes that lasted from 6000 BC to 60 BC has been uncovered in two important excavations of a Neolithic and an Iron Age settlement in the Amyntaio district of Florina, northern Greece.

A 7,300-year-old home with a timber floor, remnants of food supplies and blackberry seeds are among the findings in a Neolithic settlement near the lakes of Vegoritis, Petres, Heimatitida and Zazari. Garments, women’s fashions and burial customs in northern Eordaia 3,000 years ago are coming to light among the hundreds of funeral offerings in a forgotten necropolis dating from the Iron Age in western Macedonia.

More than 100 years after the excavation at Aghios Pandeleimonas in Amyntaio in the Florina prefecture – known in the bibliography as the Pateli Necropolis – by the Russian Archaeological Institute of Istanbul, a systematic investigation of 12 tombs by the 17th Antiquities Ephorate has found a total of 358 tombs dating from between 950 BC and 550 BC. Although the first discovery in 1898 of 376 graves produced many findings, now in the Istanbul Museum, the necropolis between the lakes of Heimatitida and Petres has revealed [continue]

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From the BBC: Dutch pioneer floating eco-homes.

Small and densely populated, the Netherlands is one of the countries most at risk from climate change and rising sea levels.

But in one village in the south of the country, they are trying out a new way of living with an increased risk of floods. [continue]

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From the Beeb: Towers point to ancient Sun cult.

The oldest solar observatory in the Americas has been found, suggesting the existence of early, sophisticated Sun cults, scientists report.

It comprises of a group of 2,300-year-old structures, known as the Thirteen Towers, which are found in the Chankillo archaeological site, Peru.

The towers span the annual rising and setting arcs of the Sun, providing a solar calendar to mark special dates. [continue]

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From Business Week: The Face of the $100 Laptop.

The so-called $100 laptop that’s being designed for school children in developing nations is known for its bright green and white plastic shell, its power-generating hand crank, and for Nicholas Negroponte, the technology futurist who dreamed it up and who tirelessly promotes it everywhere from Bangkok to Brasilia. What has not received much attention is the graphical user interface — the software that will be the face of the machine for the millions of children who will own it. In fact, the user interface, called Sugar, may turn out to be one of the more innovative aspects of a project that has already made breakthroughs in mesh networking and battery charging since Negroponte unveiled the concept two years ago.

Sugar offers a brand new approach to computing. Ever since the first Apple Macintosh was launched in 1984, the user interfaces of personal computers have been designed based on the same visual metaphor: the desktop. Sugar tosses out all of that like so much tattered baggage. Instead, an icon representing the individual occupies the center of the screen; "zoom" out like a telephoto lens and you see the user in relation to friends, and finally to all of the people in the village who are also on the network.

It’s the first complete rethinking of the computer user interface in more than 30 years. "We’re building something that’s right for the audience," says Chris Blizzard, the engineering project leader for Sugar. "We don’t just take what’s already there and say it’s good enough. You can do better." [continue]

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From haaretz.com: Present-day Sanhedrin court seeks to revive ancient Temple rituals.

The present-day Sanhedrin Court decided Tuesday to purchase a herd of sheep for ritual sacrifice at the site of the Temple on the eve of Passover, conditions on the Temple Mount permitting.

The modern Sanhedrin was established several years ago and is headed by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. It claims to be renewing the ancient Jewish high court, which existed until roughly 1600 years ago, and meets once a week.

Professor Hillel Weiss, a member of the Sanhedrin, told Haaretz on Tuesday that the action, even if merely symbolic, is designed to demonstrate in a way that is obvious to all that the expectation of Temple rituals will resume is real, and not just talk. [continue]

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By now you will have heard claims that the tombs of Jesus and his family have been found in Jerusalem. Here’s the response from Prof. Amos Kloner, printed in the Jerusalem Post: A great story, but nonsense.

Prof. Amos Kloner oversaw the archeological work at the Talpiot tomb when it was discovered during construction in 1980.

What do you make of the assertion that Jesus and his family were buried there?

It makes a great story for a TV film. But it’s completely impossible. It’s nonsense. There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb. They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle class family from the 1st century CE.

But there is apparently such a confluence of resonant names.

The name "Jesus son of Joseph" has been found on three or four ossuaries. These are common names. There were huge headlines in the 1940s surrounding another Jesus ossuary, cited as the first evidence of Christianity. There was another Jesus tomb. Months later it was dismissed. Give me scientific evidence, and I’ll grapple with it. But this is manufactured. [continue]

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From ansa.it: ‘First’ Sicilian woman gets face.

The face of a late Stone Age woman who lived in Sicily has been reconstructed by a sculptor working with anthropologists at Palermo University.

The skeleton of the woman, who lived 14,000 years ago, was discovered in a cave near Messina in 1937, along with the incomplete skeletons of six other humans, presumably her family. [continue, see photo]

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From The Telegraph: Sceptre from Roman emperor exhibited.

The only Roman emperor’s sceptre to have been found has gone on public display in Rome for the first time.

The sceptre, which is topped by a blue orb that represents the earth, was discovered at the end of last year and is believed to have been held by Emperor Maxentius, who ruled for six years until 312AD.

Maxentius, who was known for his vices and his incapacity, drowned in the Tiber while fighting forces loyal to his brother-in-law, Constantine, at the battle of the Milvian bridge. Archaeologists believe that Maxentius’ supporters hid the sceptre during or after the battle to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. [continue, see photo, wish you were in Italy.]

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From Radio Praha: Rare 16th century nautical atlas found in Olomouc.

Historians in the department of old prints and manuscripts at the Research Library in Olomouc have made a surprising discovery. While moving a safe containing rare documents to a new building, they found a seven-page nautical atlas that was hand-made in 1563. The richly coloured parchment with gold and silver linings shows the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea and the northern part of the Atlantic. Made by the Catalan cartographer Jaume Olives, there are only five others in the world - in Barcelona, New York, Florence, Milan, and Valenciennes in France. I spoke to the Olomouc Library’s Petra Kuncova:

"Jaume Olives was a famous producer of portable maps in the sixteenth century and he was a member of a very famous Catalan family of cartographers. The family came from the island of Mallorca and moved to Italy from time to time. We don’t know exactly why the atlas was made but it was probably commissioned by a rich or important person because only someone wealthy could pay for something so unique." [continue, see photos]

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From the Beeb: Early man ‘couldn’t stomach milk’.

A drink of milk was off the menu for Europeans until only a few thousand years ago, say researchers from London.

Analysis of Neolithic remains, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests no European adults could digest the drink at that time.

University College London scientists say that the rapid spread of a gene which lets us reap the benefits of milk shows evolution in action. [continue]

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From the Guardian: Anyone here speak Cromarty fisher?

Obscure fishing dialects aren’t renowned for their ability to set the heart racing, but news that a centuries-old brand of Anglo-Scottish pidgin is only two people from extinction has induced mild panic among traditionalists. The Cromarty fisher dialect is being kept alive by two Scottish brothers, Bobby and Gordon Hogg, 87 and 80, who live in the Highland town. Am Bailie, an online archive, plans to record them to preserve the language for posterity. "Dialects come and go, but they are extremely important," says Jamie Gaukroger, content organiser for Am Bailie. "It would be doing a disservice to the whole culture by not recording it."

Cromarty is a small port on the tip of the Black Isle, just north of Inverness. The Cromarty website describes the town as a "jewel of vernacular architecture" and the "capital of the Highlands". Its patois is assumed to have developed in the 17th century from a fusion of the local fishermen’s tongue and that of visiting English soldiers.[continue]

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From the BBC: Skull man suffered bad toothache.

A human skull found in woodland in Buckinghamshire belonged to an 18th Century man with severe toothache.

The skull was found on 7 January by a member of the public walking his dog in Wendover Woods near Aylesbury.

Forensic archaeologists took DNA samples from a tooth and dated the skull between 1757 and 1788.

It belonged to a man aged between 20 and 40 who would have suffered from toothache as there was bone deformation caused by an abscess. [continue]

Poor fellow.

Have you noticed that it’s always people walking their dogs who find these things? When I take our dog for a walk, I tell her Please don’t find any bodies.

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From the Telegraph: Find of Roman coin shows ancient Britons in a new light.

Experts are excited about a rare coin unearthed by an amateur treasure hunter which could change the accepted ancient history of Britain.

The silver denarius which dates back to the Roman Republic — before Julius Caesar made Rome an empire — was unearthed near Fowey in Cornwall.

Dating from 146 BC, it shows how ancient Britons were trading with the Romans well before the country was conquered in AD 43.

"It proves that there was a lot more going on between the continent and ourselves," said Anna Tyacke, Finds Liaison Officer at the Royal Cornwall Museum. [continue]

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From PressTV.ir: Lost ancient city unearthed in Iran.

Archeologists have discovered an ancient structure in southern Iran believed to be the fourth largest site of the Achaemenid era after structures in Susa, Pasargad, and Persepolis.

They say the site may be the lost city of Lidoma which is mentioned in the ancient tablets discovered in Persepolis.

A team of Iranian and Australian archeologists discovered the ruins of the structure near the historical city of Shiraz.

Lidoma was one of the most important centers of the Achaemenid empire, which reigned from around 650 BC to 330 BC. The site is expected to be registered as one of the oldest historical ruins of ancient Persia. [continue]

Update: www.presstv.ir is having technical troubles right now, so the article isn’t available. You can read Google’s cached copy here.

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From The Proceedings of the Athinasius Kircher Society: Linnaeus’s Flower Clock.

Carl Linnaeus, father of taxonomy, divided the flowering plants into three groups: the meteorici, which change their opening and closing times according to the weather conditions; the tropici, which change their opening and closing times according to the length of the day; and the aequinoctales, which have fixed opening and closing times, regardless of weather or season.

Linnaeus noted in his Philosophia Botanica that if one possessed a sufficiently large variety of aequinoctal species, it would be possible to tell time simply by observing the daily opening and closing of flowers. Though Linneaus seems never actually to have planted an horologium florae, or flower clock, his plan was taken up with great passion by many 19th-century gardeners, who often arranged a dozen or more species in the manner of a circular clock face. Below, the approximate opening and closing times of aequinoctal flowers that can be used in an horologium florae: [continue, see image]

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From discovery.com: Ancient Tiles Reveal Complex Geometry.

Those wondrously intricate tile mosaics that adorn medieval Islamic architecture may cloak a mastery of geometry not matched in the West for hundreds of years.

Historians have long assumed that sheer hard work with the equivalent of a ruler and compass allowed medieval craftsmen to create the ornate star-and-polygon tile patterns that cover mosques, shrines and other buildings that stretch from Turkey through Iran and on to India.

Now a Harvard University researcher argues that more than 500 years ago, math whizzes met up with the artists and began creating far more complex tile patterns that culminated in what mathematicians today call “quasi-crystalline designs.”

Quasicrystal patterns weren’t demonstrated in the West until the 1970s.

“It shows us a culture that we often don’t credit enough was far more advanced than we ever thought,” contends Harvard graduate student Peter J. Lu, who studied the question after a vacation in Uzbekistan left him marveling at the tilework. [continue]

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From the BBC: Chimpanzees ‘hunt using spears’.

Chimpanzees in Senegal have been observed making and using wooden spears to hunt other primates, according to a study in the journal Current Biology.

Researchers documented 22 cases of chimps fashioning tools to jab at smaller primates sheltering in cavities of hollow branches or tree trunks. [continue]

Thanks to cricket for telling me about this story.

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From Deutsche Welle: German Cuisine Gets Molecular Makeover.

Licorice is paired with salmon. Caviar gets served atop white chocolate or warm ice cream. If a dish sounds like it defies the laws of nature, it’s likely a matter of molecular gastronomy, an approach to cooking that has entered the mainstream over the past few years.

The most well known practitioner of this innovative way of cooking is Spain’s three-star chef Ferran Adria. At the beginning of the new millennium he grabbed headlines with creations such as apple caviar, parmesan spaghetti and blackberry-tobacco sorbet.

German cuisine is also receiving a molecular twist as more chefs turn to physics and chemistry to create unusual dining experiences. One practitioner of molecular gastronomy is the Düsseldorf-based chef Richard Nicolaus.

His restaurant, km 747, is located in a quiet area near the Rhine River. The kitchen is a far cry from the typical mad scientist’s laboratory with nary a test tube or microscope in sight. The science begins when Nicolaus starts cooking.

“We’re going to make a satay skewer from tuna fish, and what’s different is that the tuna fish will be fried in a sugar water mixture at 120 degrees (Celsius),” Nicolaus said.[continue]

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From Wired: Nintendo Surgeons More Precise?

If Dr. James Rosser Jr. had his way, every surgeon in America would have three indispensable tools on the operating room tray: a scalpel, sutures, and a video game controller.

Rosser looks like a football player and cracks jokes like a comic, but his job as a top surgeon and director of the Advanced Medical Technologies Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York is to find better ways to practice medicine. At the top of his list — video games. (…)

Surgeons who play video games three hours a week have 37 percent fewer errors and accomplish tasks 27 percent faster, he says [continue]

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From IC Wales: Ritual piece of Stonehenge discovered.

A missing stone which could be an integral part of rituals at Stonehenge may have been discovered by a Welsh archaeologist.

Dennis Price, pictured below, who has done years of research on the mysterious stone structure, believes he has tracked down a previously lost altar stone, identified during one of the first studies of the site in the 17th century.

He is convinced it is now in two pieces on either side of a road in a Wiltshire village, just a couple of miles from Stonehenge itself.

Mr Price, who is from Monmouthshire, and now based in Exeter, has studied the archaeology of Stonehenge for years, and in 2003 filmed the excavation of the graves of the Welsh Boscombe Bowmen who helped build Stonehenge.

He believes the stones found used to be the altar stone which was named and described by 17th century architect Inigo Jones. [continue]

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As if the Cargo Cult stuff isn’t strange enough, now this! From The Telegraph: South Sea tribe prepares birthday feast for their favourite god, Prince Philip.

At the base of a banyan tree, an elderly village chief held his most prized possession between bony fingers. "Philip sent this to us," he said. "Now we have three of them."

A signed portrait of Prince Philip is an incongruous sight in a South Pacific jungle, but for the people of this remote village, in the island state of Vanuatu, the picture is an integral part of their lives.

As unlikely as it sounds, the people of Yaohnanen and surrounding villages worship 85-year-old Prince Philip as a god.

They believe him to be the son of an ancient spirit who inhabits a nearby mountain, on the island of Tanna. [continue]

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This is utterly fascinating. From The Province: The Masked Man.

For several centuries, the Chewa men of Malawi have reaffirmed their brotherhood through a secret masked society.

But Doug Curran is neither Chewa nor anything remotely approaching African.

He is a twice-divorced white man from North Vancouver. He grew up a military brat, photographs publicity film stills for a living (working with the likes of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner), and drives an Audi.

So how is it that this middle-aged British Columbian ended up a member of a closely guarded African fraternity?

That he’s not only privy to a world where men become wild beasts and speak in riddles, but is also a guardian of its secrets?

Curran ferrets around in the recesses of his mind for an answer. [continue]

Preview-art.com has a page you might like to see: Douglas Curran: The Elephant Has Four Hearts Nyau Masks and Ritual. That page has a few photos. And If you don’t mind dealing with Adobe Acrobat files, take a look at the masks photos in this PDF file from Presentation House Gallery. Wow.

Vancouver residents might want to attend this exhibition: The Village is Tilting: Dancing AIDS in Malawi at the Museum of Anthropology.

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From the Beeb: Beach hunt for lost Jacobite gold.

Archaeologists hope to find missing French gold sent to Scotland to help fund a Jacobite Rebellion buried under a remote Highland beach.

A portion of the money was believed to have been hidden at Arisaig, near Mallaig, in the 1700s. (…)

The money did not arrive in Scotland until after the Jacobites’ defeat at the Battle of Culloden in April 1746.

It was intended to finance Charles Edward Stuart - Bonnie Prince Charlie - and his efforts against the British monarch, George II, and put his father James Stuart on the throne. [continue]

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From the LA Times: Homeless by choice, O.C. student learns self-reliance.

After a long day of film classes, working at the Apple Store, rock climbing at the gym and finishing homework in the student union, Cal State Fullerton senior Andy Bussell heads home — to a white Toyota Tacoma with a twin-size mattress in the truck bed, a camper shell for protection and black curtains for privacy.

The 26-year-old has been living in his truck for nearly 19 months, skirting rules against sleeping in vehicles while otherwise living the life of a mainstream student. What started out as a way to save some cash has turned into a journey of self-reliance and independence. [continue]

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