Another one of those fascinating articles that excites this history geek teacher.

Archaeologists discovered a pharaonic sun temple with large statues believed to be of King Ramses II under an outdoor marketplace in Cairo, Egypt's antiquities chief said Sunday.

The partially uncovered site is the largest sun temple ever found in the capital's Aim Shams and Matariya districts, where the ancient city of Heliopolis _ the center of pharaonic sun worship _ was located, Zahi Hawass told The Associated Press.

Among the artifacts was a pink granite statue weighing 4 to 5 tons whose features "resemble those of Ramses II," said Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Also found was a 5-foot-high statue of a seated figure with hieroglyphics that include three cartouches with the name of Ramses II, and a 3-ton head of royal statue, the council said in a statement.

The green pavement stones of the temple's floor were also uncovered.

An Egyptian team working in cooperation with the German Archaeological Mission in Egypt discovered the site under the Souq al-Khamis, a popular market in eastern Cairo, Hawass said.

"The market has to be removed" as archeologists excavate the entire site, Hawass said. "Other significant discoveries might be waiting to be excavated now, and compensation will be paid to the shop owners."

"We are planning to make the whole area as a tourists and archaeological site, maybe after two years," he said.

King Ramses II, who ruled Egypt for 66 years from 1270 to 1213 B.C., had erected monuments up and down the Nile with records of his achievements, as well as building temples _ including Abu Simbel, erected near what is now Egypt's southern border.

Numerous temples to Egypt's sun gods _ particularly the chief god Ra _ were built in ancient Heliopolis. But little remains of what was once the ancient Egyptians' most sacred cities, since much of the stone used in the temples was later plundered.

The area is now covered with residential neighborhoods, close to a modern district called Heliopolis, in Egypt's packed capital.

Remember -- history is all around you, lying beneath your feet in the ground you walk upon. Some places, though, just have a lot more of it, and it is much more interesting.

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What killed the Bard? Tradition says his death was brought on by a night of heavy drinking. Scientific study now raises a different possibility.

Almost 400 years after he died, a final act has been added to the story of William Shakespeare.

Scientists now believe that the Bard died not of binge drinking, but cancer.

Ancient tittle-tattle in Stratford-upon-Avon had suggested that he fell into a fever after a heavy night on the town with old friend and fellow writer Ben Jonson.

But forensic tests normally used to convict criminals have discovered that he had a life-threatening tumour over his left eye.

The breakthrough came after researchers studied four images supposedly of Shakespeare, including his death mask, and a bust displayed at London's Garrick Club.

Each shows a growth on the left eyelid, which increases in size in the later pictures.

Doctors who have studied the images say that this is evidence of a slowly-growing cancerous tumour which could have caused Shakespeare's death in April, 1616, aged 52.

The death mask shows that it had grown so large that it was hanging over his eye.

The discovery came after an investigation by a German literature expert into whether the four images are actually of Shakespeare.

Amazing, isn’t it, how we can now learn all sorts of things about the lives of those who lived in centuries past?

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What killed the Bard? Tradition says his death was brought on by a night of heavy drinking. Scientific study now raises a different possibility.

Almost 400 years after he died, a final act has been added to the story of William Shakespeare.

Scientists now believe that the Bard died not of binge drinking, but cancer.

Ancient tittle-tattle in Stratford-upon-Avon had suggested that he fell into a fever after a heavy night on the town with old friend and fellow writer Ben Jonson.

But forensic tests normally used to convict criminals have discovered that he had a life-threatening tumour over his left eye.

The breakthrough came after researchers studied four images supposedly of Shakespeare, including his death mask, and a bust displayed at London's Garrick Club.

Each shows a growth on the left eyelid, which increases in size in the later pictures.

Doctors who have studied the images say that this is evidence of a slowly-growing cancerous tumour which could have caused Shakespeare's death in April, 1616, aged 52.

The death mask shows that it had grown so large that it was hanging over his eye.

The discovery came after an investigation by a German literature expert into whether the four images are actually of Shakespeare.

Amazing, isnÂ’t it, how we can now learn all sorts of things about the lives of those who lived in centuries past?

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There was a concerted effort by Northwest tribes and their PC Leftist allies to prevent the study of Kennewick Man following his discovery a decade ago. The claim was that the tribes had a legal claim to the fossilized remains because he must be an ancestor. Now studies have concluded that he is not related to any of the groups that tried to claim him – and the conclusions drawn from study of the 9,000 year old skeleton are going to revolutionize our understanding of the peopling of the Americas.

Kennewick Man was laid to rest alongside a river more than 9,000 years ago, buried by other people, a leading forensic scientist said Thursday.
The skeleton, one of the oldest and most complete ever found in North America, has been under close analysis since courts sided with researchers in a legal battle with Indian tribes in the Northwest who wanted the remains found near the Columbia River reburied without study.

Douglas Owsley, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, discussed his findings in remarks prepared for delivery Thursday evening at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Seattle.
"We know very little about this time period," Owsley said in a telephone interview. "This is a rare opportunity to try and reconstruct the life story of this man. ... This is his opportunity to tell us what life was like during that time."

Researchers have disagreed over whether Kennewick Man was buried by other people or swept up in a flood and encased in sediment.

Owsley concluded the man was deliberately buried, between two and three feet deep, his body placed in the grave, head slightly higher than feet, hands placed at his sides.

The location was riverside, with the body parallel to the river and head pointing upstream.

Using an industrial CT scanner, Owsley was able to study the skeleton in fine sections and also get a better look at a spear or dart point imbedded in Kennewick Man's hip.

The point has previously been described as a Cascade point, typical of the region, but Owsley said that is not the case. Cascade points tend to have two pointed ends and are sometimes serrated, he said, while the point in Kennewick Man has a pointed end and a stem.

The spear or dart entered the man from the front, moving downward at a 77-degree angle, Owsley said. Previous analysis had indicated it might have hit from the back, he noted.

The point was not the cause of death, he said, saying, "This is a healed injury."
"There was no clear indication in the skeleton of cause of death," Owsley said. Kennewick Man had undergone "a lot of injuries, this guy was tough as nails."

There are three types of fractures in the bones, Owsley said, ones the man suffered in his lifetime and which had healed; fractures that occurred after burial from aging of the bones and the ground settling, and breaks that occurred when the skeleton was unearthed.

A team of 20 forensic scientists has been studying the skeleton, he said, and have concluded that the skull doesn't match those of Indian tribes living in the area.

"We know very little about this time period. Who the people were that were the earliest people that came to America," Owsley said. "We are finding out they were coming thousands of years earlier than we had thought," arriving not just over the Bering Strait but by boats and other means.

"This is a very rare discovery. You could count on your fingers the number of relatively complete skeletons from this time period," Owsley said.

Following discovery of the bones in 1996, the Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce and Colville tribes urged that the skeleton be reburied without scientific study. They argued that the bones were covered under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Scientists sued for a chance to study the remains and a federal court ruled there was no link between the skeleton and the tribes.

The law cited above is a well-meaning but fatally-flawed attempt to show respect to tribal cultures and beliefs – but as this case shows, the presumptions in the law stand in the way of good science and good history. Human remains that date back to prehistoric periods are part of the heritage of all humanity, and should be studied to help us understand the development of human civilization and culture. To allow particular ethnic groups to veto research in the field is a travesty. The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act therefore needs to be significantly modified – if not repealed completely – in the interest of allowing the advancement of human knowledge.

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, Stuck On Stupid, Blue Star, third world country, Bacon Bits, Voteswagon, Adam's Blog, Liberal Wrong Wing, Uncooperative Blogger, NIF, Stop The ACLU, Samantha Burns, Oblogatory Anecdotes, Bullwinkle Blog, Don Surber, Wizbang, Basil's Blog, Jo's Cafe, Right Wing Nation

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There was a concerted effort by Northwest tribes and their PC Leftist allies to prevent the study of Kennewick Man following his discovery a decade ago. The claim was that the tribes had a legal claim to the fossilized remains because he must be an ancestor. Now studies have concluded that he is not related to any of the groups that tried to claim him – and the conclusions drawn from study of the 9,000 year old skeleton are going to revolutionize our understanding of the peopling of the Americas.

Kennewick Man was laid to rest alongside a river more than 9,000 years ago, buried by other people, a leading forensic scientist said Thursday.
The skeleton, one of the oldest and most complete ever found in North America, has been under close analysis since courts sided with researchers in a legal battle with Indian tribes in the Northwest who wanted the remains found near the Columbia River reburied without study.

Douglas Owsley, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, discussed his findings in remarks prepared for delivery Thursday evening at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Seattle.
"We know very little about this time period," Owsley said in a telephone interview. "This is a rare opportunity to try and reconstruct the life story of this man. ... This is his opportunity to tell us what life was like during that time."

Researchers have disagreed over whether Kennewick Man was buried by other people or swept up in a flood and encased in sediment.

Owsley concluded the man was deliberately buried, between two and three feet deep, his body placed in the grave, head slightly higher than feet, hands placed at his sides.

The location was riverside, with the body parallel to the river and head pointing upstream.

Using an industrial CT scanner, Owsley was able to study the skeleton in fine sections and also get a better look at a spear or dart point imbedded in Kennewick Man's hip.

The point has previously been described as a Cascade point, typical of the region, but Owsley said that is not the case. Cascade points tend to have two pointed ends and are sometimes serrated, he said, while the point in Kennewick Man has a pointed end and a stem.

The spear or dart entered the man from the front, moving downward at a 77-degree angle, Owsley said. Previous analysis had indicated it might have hit from the back, he noted.

The point was not the cause of death, he said, saying, "This is a healed injury."
"There was no clear indication in the skeleton of cause of death," Owsley said. Kennewick Man had undergone "a lot of injuries, this guy was tough as nails."

There are three types of fractures in the bones, Owsley said, ones the man suffered in his lifetime and which had healed; fractures that occurred after burial from aging of the bones and the ground settling, and breaks that occurred when the skeleton was unearthed.

A team of 20 forensic scientists has been studying the skeleton, he said, and have concluded that the skull doesn't match those of Indian tribes living in the area.

"We know very little about this time period. Who the people were that were the earliest people that came to America," Owsley said. "We are finding out they were coming thousands of years earlier than we had thought," arriving not just over the Bering Strait but by boats and other means.

"This is a very rare discovery. You could count on your fingers the number of relatively complete skeletons from this time period," Owsley said.

Following discovery of the bones in 1996, the Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce and Colville tribes urged that the skeleton be reburied without scientific study. They argued that the bones were covered under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Scientists sued for a chance to study the remains and a federal court ruled there was no link between the skeleton and the tribes.

The law cited above is a well-meaning but fatally-flawed attempt to show respect to tribal cultures and beliefs – but as this case shows, the presumptions in the law stand in the way of good science and good history. Human remains that date back to prehistoric periods are part of the heritage of all humanity, and should be studied to help us understand the development of human civilization and culture. To allow particular ethnic groups to veto research in the field is a travesty. The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act therefore needs to be significantly modified – if not repealed completely – in the interest of allowing the advancement of human knowledge.

OPEN TRACKBACKING: Conservative Cat
, Stuck On Stupid, Blue Star, third world country, Bacon Bits, Voteswagon, Adam's Blog, Liberal Wrong Wing, Uncooperative Blogger, NIF, Stop The ACLU, Samantha Burns, Oblogatory Anecdotes, Bullwinkle Blog, Don Surber, Wizbang, Basil's Blog, Jo's Cafe, Right Wing Nation

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Just a quick reminder for all the Cadillac Communists and silk-sheet Socialists who idolize Castro’s cold-blooded killer.

Guevara-worship may be naive or opportunistic, but there is something downright obscene in his promotion by capitalist commerce. Guevara simply was not a nice fellow.

There is nothing benign about the real Guevara, pistol in hand, giving a cold-blooded coup de grace to the Castro regime's enemies at La Cabaña fortress. Or his bloody repression of anti-Castro peasants in the Escambray mountains of central Cuba when the Castroite regime was 2 years old.

Guevara's hands had much blood on them besides his own. In real life, he was a war criminal.

So to all the Rolex radicals and Mercedes Maoists who have adopted Che as an iconic hero, consider this – he personally committed misdeeds that dwarf any abuses committed by American soldiers against the Saddamites imprisoned at Abu Ghraib.

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Just a quick reminder for all the Cadillac Communists and silk-sheet Socialists who idolize CastroÂ’s cold-blooded killer.

Guevara-worship may be naive or opportunistic, but there is something downright obscene in his promotion by capitalist commerce. Guevara simply was not a nice fellow.

There is nothing benign about the real Guevara, pistol in hand, giving a cold-blooded coup de grace to the Castro regime's enemies at La Cabaña fortress. Or his bloody repression of anti-Castro peasants in the Escambray mountains of central Cuba when the Castroite regime was 2 years old.

Guevara's hands had much blood on them besides his own. In real life, he was a war criminal.

So to all the Rolex radicals and Mercedes Maoists who have adopted Che as an iconic hero, consider this – he personally committed misdeeds that dwarf any abuses committed by American soldiers against the Saddamites imprisoned at Abu Ghraib.

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Let me say it clearly -- the Holocaust happened.

Let me be forthright about my belief -- those who deny the Holocaust are intellectually dishonest scum.

But all of that is irrelevant to my next point -- Holocaust-deniers are not criminals.

And that is why I am sorry to see David Irving, one of the more malignant figures in the Holocaust-denial movement, plead guilty to criminal charges related to his expression of that postion in Austria.

A right-wing British historian said Monday he would plead guilty to criminal charges of denying the Holocaust as his trial opened in Vienna.

David Irving, 67, told reporters he now acknowledges that the Nazis systematically slaughtered Jews during World War II. "History is like a constantly changing tree," he said as an eight-member jury and a panel of three judges prepared to hear charges that could put him behind bars for up to 10 years.

Irving has been in custody since his arrest in November on charges stemming from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he was accused of denying the Nazis' extermination of 6 million Jews.

A verdict could come later Monday.

Holocaust-denial is a hateful, dishonest intellectual position -- but it is one easily refuted by recourse to the facts. The verdict should come in classrooms, scholarly papers, and books, not in courtrooms.

And as we face demands for censorship of films, books and newspapers that are found to be subjectively wrong and offensive (not objectively wrong and offensive, like Irving's words) by Muslims, we in the West need to be clear on a simple point -- the proper response to evil or offensive words is not censorship or violence, but rather more speech to uplift and instruct in what is right.

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An interesting find in the Valley of the Kings – an unspoiled non-royal tomb from the 18th Dynasty.

An American team has found what appears to be an intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the first found in the valley since that of Tutankhamun in 1922, one of the archaeologists said on Thursday.

The tomb contains five or six mummies in intact sarcophagi from the late 18th dynasty, about the same period as Tutankhamun, but the archaeologists have not yet had the time or the access to identify them, the archaeologist added.

The 18th dynasty ruled Egypt from 1567 BC to 1320 BC, a period during which the country's power reached a peak.

The Valley of the Kings in southern Egypt contains the tombs of most of the pharaohs of the time but the archaeologist said the mummies in the newly found tomb need not be royal.

"There are lots of non-royal tombs in the valley. It wouldn't be the only one by any means," said the archaeologist, who asked not to be named because the Egyptian authorities are planning a media event at the site on Friday.

"The archaeologists haven't been inside properly yet. It's very small and cramped but it is late 18th dynasty," she added.

A statement from the government's Supreme Council of Antiquities said the tomb was found by a team from the University of Memphis in the United States.

The five sarcophagi, which are carved to human form, have coloured funerary masks and the tomb contains a large number of big storage jars, the statement said.

"For an unknown reason they were buried rapidly in the small tomb," it added.

The tomb, 5 km (three miles) from that of Tutankhamun, was covered with the rubble of workmen's huts dating from the latter part of the 19th dynasty, more than 100 years after the tomb was sealed, it said.

This tomb likely dates from around the time of King Tut. I canÂ’t wait to hear more.

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The oldest cave paintings ever found.

A French caver has discovered prehistoric cave art believed to date back 27,000 years - older than the famous Lascaux paintings.

Gerard Jourdy, 63, said he found human and animal remains in the chamber in the Vilhonneur forest, in caves once used to dispose of animal carcasses.

The paintings included a hand in cobalt blue, he told AFP news agency.

The discovery was made in November, but kept secret while initial examinations were carried out.

Mr Jourdy also said he saw a sculpture of a face made from a stalactite - which would be a scientific first for the era, but experts were dubious about this claim, AFP says.

Neat stuff!

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