More on Queen Hatshepsut

KATARINA KRATOVAC,
Associated Press Writer


"The long-overlooked mummy of an obese woman, who likely suffered from diabetes and liver cancer, has been identified as Queen Hatshepsut, ancient Egypt's most powerful female pharaoh, Egyptian archaeologists said Wednesday.

A single tooth was key to solving one of the greatest mysteries of ancient Egypt, said Zahi Hawass, the country's antiquities chief.

If fully confirmed — DNA tests are still ongoing — the discovery could be the most significant find since archaeologists discovered King Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, experts say.

Hatshepsut ruled for 20 years in the 15th century B.C., dressing like a man and wearing a fake beard. A monumental builder, she wielded more power than two other famous ancient Egyptian women, Cleopatra and Nefertiti, who unlike her never took the title of pharaoh.

But when she died, all traces of her mysteriously disappeared, including her mummy..."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070627/ap_on_re_mi_ea/egypt_lost_queen

New mummy found

AFP
yahoo.com
6/22/2007


"Archaeologists have discovered the 3,000-year-old mummy of a high priest to the god Amun in the southern city of Luxor, antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass told the official MENA news agency on Saturday.

The 18th Dynasty mummy of Sennefer was unearthed in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings -- one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world -- by a team from Britain's Cambridge University..."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070622/sc_afp/egyptarchaeology_070622200806;_ylt=AmC328t0Bc0fYe9ydM1hbhJFeQoB

Egyptian Queen's mummy identified

BBC News
6/27/2007


"Egyptologists say they have identified the 3,000-year-old mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypt's most powerful female ruler.

Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass made the official announcement at a packed news conference in Cairo.

It is being billed as the biggest archaeological find in Egypt since the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb.

Archaeologists hope the mummy, which has lain unrecognised for decades, will yield clues about the mystery of her death and subsequent disappearance..."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6244516.stm

Bog body back on view at British Museum

Jonathan Jones
Thursday June 21, 2007
The Guardian


"The Lindow Man...goes back on view today in a state-of-the-art, refrigerated and transparent grave in the British Museum's excellent new prehistoric galleries."

For more info...

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/heritage/story/0,,2107854,00.html

Hockney vs. iPod

Hockney vs. iPod
By rcooper on Technology
David Hockney argues that the rise of portable music is causing the demise of visual culture. Are we shuffling our way to an artless society? Read the article…http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/12/narts212.xml

Lego Art or the Art of the Brick

Nathan Sawaya is currently touring the United States with his "The Art of the Brick" exhibition. He just finished exhibiting at the Lancaster Museum of Art where record crowds came to see his work. View the full article at: http://www.artnewsblog.com/2007/06/lego-art-or-art-of-brick.htm

Snite Museum podcasts

"Art museum student podcasts. Notre Dame professor Chris Clark has asked students to produce podcasts about selected works of art in the collection of the university's Snite Museum. These SniteCasts involve digital gear, Garage Band, podsafe music, some research, sometimes another student reading the text. Twenty or so pieces are up on the web site as well as on the major podcast subscription services."

-- From Webblogs in Higher Ed

80,000-year-old Beads!

80,000-year-old Beads Shed Light on Early Culture

Heather Whipps
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com
6/18/2007


"Even the very first modern humans may have spruced themselves up with beaded bling.

Twelve shell beads discovered in a cave in eastern Morocco have been dated at more than 80,000 years old, making them one of the earliest examples of human culture. The beads are colored with red ochre and show signs of being strung together.

Similar beads have been found in other parts of Africa and the Middle East, suggesting the first Homo sapiens literally carried their penchant for baubles with them as they populated the world.

"If you draw a triangle covering the three furthest known locations of Homo sapiens between 75,000–120,000 years ago, that triangle stretches from South Africa to Morocco to Israel," said study co-author Chris Stringer of London's Natural History Museum.

"Shell beads are now known at all three points of that triangle," Stringer added. "So such behavior had probably spread right across the early human range by this time, and would have been carried by modern humans as they dispersed from Africa in the last 100,000 years"...

Read more at http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070618/sc_livescience/80000yearoldbeadsshedlightonearlyculture

Satellites find Ancient Egyptian City

"Satellites hovering above Egypt have zoomed in on a 1,600-year-old metropolis, archaeologists say.

Images captured from space pinpoint telltale signs of previous habitation in the swatch of land 200 miles south of Cairo, which digging recently confirmed as an ancient settlement dating from about 400 A.D.

The find is part of a larger project aiming to map as much of ancient Egypt's archaeological sites, or "tells," as possible before they are destroyed or covered by modern development.

"It is the biggest site discovered so far," said project leader Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "Based on the coins and pottery we found, it appears to be a massive regional center that traded with Greece, Turkey and Libya..."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070608/sc_livescience/ancientegyptiancityspottedfromspace;_ylt=Apm2E58hGsQ9ma5to27vElpFeQoB

Archaeologists find sunken ship in the South China Sea

"Archaeologists have discovered a sunken ship laden with Ming Dynasty porcelain, tipped off by local police who learned that fishing boats were carrying out illegal salvage operations off the south China coast, state media reported.

The ship, dubbed the South China Sea II, was probably built during the Ming Dynasty, which lasted from 1368 to 1644, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday, citing the Guangdong Archaeology Institute.

Archaeologists used GPS earlier this month to locate the approximately 59-foot ship, which is 66 feet below the surface of the South China Sea..."

For more info see...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070615/ap_on_sc/china_sunken_ship_3;_ylt=ApTXMFHBzY_cwlBb.pAnZClFeQoB

New Viking treasure discovered in Sweden

A Viking treasure trove found by two brothers on Gotland last year is larger than originally believed, archaeologists say.

A press conference due to have been held on Tuesday at the site on the Swedish Baltic Sea island have been put off, after further discoveries demanded more attention from investigators. Swedish Radio Gotland reports that stone constructions have been found at the site.

"From an archaeological standpoint, this is more complicated than we believed. We haven't really got a grip of this site yet," said Majvor Östergren, head of Gotland's archaeological services.

Brothers Edvin and Arvid Svanborg made the finds last October when they were clearing bushes for a neighbour. In the ground they found a hoard of silver weighing nearly three kilos. The treasure, mainly consisting of 1,000 silver coins from the Arab world and armbands from the early Viking period in around 900 AD, was one of the 25 largest finds ever made on Gotland, one of Sweden's most historic regions...



http://www.thelocal.se/7505/20070605/

Ancient South American Frogs Rafted to the Caribbean

Caribbean and Central American frogs have their ancestors to thank for their relaxing and picturesque habitats, according to a new study.

DNA evidence suggests that at least 29 million years ago, South American frogs hopped on some sort of natural rafts and drifted until reaching either Central America or the Caribbean islands, where they gave rise to new frog populations.

Very little has been understood about the evolutionary history of tiny frogs nicknamed “Eleuths” (named after their genus, Eleutherodactylines), which can be as tiny as two centimeters long and make up almost a third of all frogs living in South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Some scientists had predicted that these frogs originated in South America and then crossed into Central America and the Caribbean via land bridges that had existed prior to breaking away about 80 million years ago...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070605/sc_livescience/ancientfrogsraftedtothecaribbean

Interactive paper sounds exciting

17:49 04 June 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Tom Simonite


Boring billboards can be turned into interactive displays by using conductive inks to print touch sensors and speakers onto paper, say Swedish researchers.
"The first generation of paper was for display, like books," says Mikael Gulliksson, a researcher at Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden, "the second for packaging, and the third for hygiene - we are investigating what the fourth might be."

Gulliksson and colleagues think "paper four", as they call it, will be interactive. Prototype billboards currently on display at the university show how that might be possible.
The paper surfaces of the 2 meter high billboards respond to users' touch by playing clips from music albums, or spoken dialogue from a comedian (watch the billboards in action - Flash plug-in required).

Chickens first in the Americas! Take that Columbus!

Why did the chicken cross the ocean? To get to America before Columbus — and from the other direction — according to a new report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Many scholars had thought chickens arrived in the New World with the early Spanish or Portuguese explorers around the year 1500.

When Juan Pizarro arrived at the Inca empire in 1532, however, he found chickens already being used there, raising the possibility they had been around for some time.

And now, researchers led by Alice Storey at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, report finding evidence that may ruffle some scholarly feathers. They found chicken bones of Polynesian origin at a site in what is now Chile.

For more info...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070604/ap_on_sc/fowl_finding250