EQ Archeology
Answering the question: What is in the news about archeology?
'Twas
an arrow killed the Iceman
Washington Post; July 26, 2001
A team of scientists in Italy has concluded that the 5,300-year-old Bronze Age hunter, whose frozen, mummified corpse was discovered a decade ago in the Alps on the Italian-Austrian border, died from a wound from an arrow that ripped through his back. When the Iceman, nicknamed Otzi, was discovered, scientists speculated that he had fallen asleep and died in the snow or was killed in a fall. Much attention in the search for clues to his death focused on the awkward position of Otzi's left arm, which was draped across the front of his neck. But using a technique called computerized tomography, a sophisticated X-ray that allows for multidimensional imaging, scientists discovered an arrowhead beneath the Iceman's upper left shoulder and concluded that he died in pain and bled extensively.
In search of the ancient
Mayans
WND; July 17, 2001
Like the mysteries of the ancient civilization that once thrived in this area, beautiful Tikal is shrouded in wonder and intrigue. Located amid a dense jungle that makes up a 576 square kilometer national park, Tikal was the greatest of all classic Mayan cities. Driving northeast from the lakeside city of Flores, the city emerges as one of the largest Mayan ruins in the world. Tikal boasts 3,000 massive stone temples, some of which are 6,000 years old. Some pottery at the site was used about 200 years before Christ. Amazingly, archaeologists have only discovered about 10 percent of the site.
Titanic letter
discovered
Atlantic Business Chronicle; Apr. 10, 2001
RMS Titanic Inc. (OTC BB: SOST), the Atlanta company that owns the salvage rights to the Titanic, has discovered that a suitcase brought up from the wreck site this past summer contained the personal belongings of a seventeen-year-old man named Edgar Samuel Andrew. Among the suitcase contents, the company found an ironic letter written by Andrew before the Titanic's demise. Andrew, a citizen of Argentina, boarded the Titanic in Southampton, England, not far from where he was attending school. Andrew bought a ticket to board the steamship Oceanic, but due to a coal strike, he was forced to change his ticket and go aboard the Titanic. He wrote:
"You figure, Josey, I had to leave on the 17th this (month) aboard the 'Oceanic', but due to the coal strike that steamer cannot depart, so I have to go one week earlier on board the 'Titanic'. It really seems unbelievable that I have to leave a few days before your arrival, but there's no help for it, I've got to go. You figure, Josey, I am boarding the greatest steamship in the world, but I don't really feel proud of it at all, right now I wish the `Titanic' were lying at the bottom of the ocean."
The suitcase and its contents will undergo conservation so that they can be displayed along with other recovered objects in a traveling Titanic exhibit.
Confederate sub
reveals its secrets
NewsMax; Mar. 26, 2001
Two months into their excavation of the fudgelike gray mud inside the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, scientists said they have found more bones of a young, slightly built sailor. Well-preserved ribs were found less than an inch from a piece of wood, suggesting to scientists that, in the murky churn of seawater and sand, the sailor's body possibly came to rest atop the edge of a stool. Even more chilling, a button emblazoned with an admiralty anchor is embedded between the ribs. The button presumably settled down into the ribs after the sailor's uniform deteriorated in 30 feet of water near the Charleston Harbor. Smithsonian Institution forensic anthropologist Doug Owsley detected damage to a vertebra as he examined the bones. That's evidence, he said, of a herniated disc, presumably caused by the stress of turning the handcrank that powered the Hunley.
Alexander the Great's
palace unearthed
The Times; Mar. 19, 2001
GOLD jewellery, marble sculptures and terracotta statuettes are among thousands of treasures that Greek archaeologists have unearthed in excavations at Pella, the Ancient Macedonian birthplace of Alexander the Great. Among their discoveries is the palace, complete with swimming pool, where Alexander was born, three main sanctuaries including one devoted to Aphrodite, the agora, or marketplace, and tombs of both the aristocracy and ordinary people. Although Ancient Greek historians dismissed the Macedonians as coarse and barbaric, finds made by their 21st-century successors show that they led a luxurious and refined lifestyle, particularly in the 4th and early 3rd centuries BC.
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