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POPSThe 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts What are we to make of these finds? There are several possibilities: * Intelligent humans date back much, much further than we realize. * Other intelligent beings and civilizations existed on earth far beyond our recorded history. * Our dating methods are completely inaccurate, and that stone, coal and fossils form much more rapidly than we now estimate. In any case, these examples - and there are many more - should prompt any curious and open-minded scientist to reexamine and rethink the true history of life on earth.
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POPSExplore Peru's oldest city We owe this amazing discovery to a devoted Peruvian/American archaeologist, Ruth Shady, who has spent her last 12 years unearthing Caral - the ancient city that would change the history textbooks. Applauses to Ruth.
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POPS30 Upcoming Movie Sequels to say Why??? Maybe I am jaded from working on movies (and many of them went straight-to-video) but the on;y ones I see with positive potential outside the stars are National Treasure 3, The Descent 2 (read the Book -they may get it right for once!), Ice Age 3 (2 was great no matter what they say), Ghost Rider 2 (It's Cage but it is a damn good story too), The Untouchables: Capone Rising (a prequel to the 1987 hit) and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (face it folks, Archeology and Pulp-Style cliffhangers will rock because of Indiana Jones!) My biggest disappointment on this list? Easily, People Under the Stairs 2. It was a horrible movie in 87 and I do not see how a sequel will help.
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POPS840 CE: Trade between Viking Scandinavia and the Arab World We take for granted that our world is more international today than it ever was before in history. Though our speed of trans-national communications, commerce and travel is truly staggering, ancient civilizations were not necessarily isolated islands. Understanding that the Arabs and Vikings, Romans and Chinese were all part of a single international system, not monolithic bastions of "clashing" civilizations is the first step towards understanding how we can live peacefully with each other today.
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POPS5500-year-old Plaza found in Peru Discovery of Caral (dated to 3000 BCE) was a shock for established archaeology, who rejected the existence of an ancient civilization in south America, prior to 1200 BCE. Now the discovery of Sechin Bajo appears to be a second shock, which pulls the date back to 3500 BCE. These two findings alone, show that Peru hosted an important, unknown civilization, 400 years before the Egyptian kingdom was founded by Menes and at least 250 years before the Sumerians took control of southern Mesopotamia. Amazing discoveries forces historians to reconsider their established "ancient history" cliches.
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POPSWhy Archaeology of Holy Lands is So Important I recommend Norman Cantor's sizzling history of Judaeism, 'The Sacred Chain', a bit dated now but shows how such work has demonstrated that the first millennium or so of received Jewish 'history' is fable rather than factual.
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POPSMonkey Sacrifice at the Ancient Peruvian Fire Temple! I must admit, I clipped this partly just so I could be the first to tag a clip with "Monkey Sacrifice." (Look it up! I'm the first!) This is a fascinating temple to me for many reasons. It shows a diversity in Pre-Columbian cultures that is often overlooked in favor of stereotypes of a few high-profile cultures (The Inca, the Maya, the Aztecs, etc.) But it also seriously shows that it is time for us to start considering whether to retire the rusty old land bridge theory. Increasingly, it seems only logical that trans-oceanic travel was not the exclusive domain of "civilized" Europeans. Nor was being "civilized" for that matter. World history is a lot more complex than our myopic record of it. Fortunately, there are still exciting archaeological finds like this one to open our eyes.
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POPSShipwreck: Real Pirates, Actually of the Carribean Underwater Archeology is a fascinating field, but it's badly in need of legal support, since currently looters and scavengers not only enjoy the benefit of legal ambiguity, they exalt in their shameless destruction of historical heritage for crass commercialism and sensationalism.
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POPSOn Getting Creative Ideas And here is another one by urray Gell-Mann: (Google Tech Talks March 14, 2007). Murray Gell-Mann is one of the largest living legends in physics. He's also been described as The Man With Five Brains, and it's no puzzle why: He was admitted to Yale at 15, got his PhD from MIT at 21, and is an international advisor on the environment. He speaks 13 languages fluently (at last count), and has expertise in such far-ranging fields as natural history, historical linguistics, archeology, bird-watching, depth psychology, and the theory of complex adaptive systems.
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POPSCult of the Wolf: An Ancient Roman Cave Shrine Archaeologists have finally discovered the lost Lupercal underneath the ruins of the Emperor Augustine's palace. It was the underground shrine to the she-wolf who raised the legendary fratricidal twins who founded Rome, Romulus and Remus. Somehow my job suddenly seems very boring. But I do like that Italy's Minister of Culture, Mr. Rutelli, appears to believe this is historical validation of the Myth of Romulus. After all, if there's an ancient temple there that must prove the myth to be true in its entirety. (Hey, it worked when they found "Troy," right?) Welcome to the Evans-Schliemann School of Hokey Historiography and Wistful Thinking.
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POPSUnderwater Urban Archeology: 7 Submerged Wonders of the World A wealth of human history lies submerged in ancient cities at the bottoms of lakes, seas and oceans of the world. Some of these were sent into the water via earthquakes, tsunamis or other disasters thousands of years ago. Many have just recently been rediscovered, by accident or through emergent technological innovations. Some have even caused scientists to question the history of human civilization. Bay of Cambay, India:A few years back discovered the remains of a vast 9,500 year old city. This submerged ruin has intact architecture and human remains. More significantly, this find predates all finds in the area by over 5,000 years, forcing historians toreevaluate their understandingof the history of civilazation in the region. The find has been termedDwarka,or the ‘Golden City,’ after an ancient city-in-the sea said to belong to the Hindu god Krishna.
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POPSunderwater archeology museum - Caesarea "Well, divers in general have the tendency to look for new things, new sites, new interest, new thrills, and if they have the tendency or the feel for archaeology - bingo - they have two in one".
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POPS2400 years old merchantman ship found !! Professor Elisha Linder: "I am mad about the subject. I love to be at the sea, to look at ships, to deal with ships, and to study ships," he said. "And I would die to find an even older ship!"
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POPSDiscovered: Artifacts from the First Temple of Solomon I think the time has come to open up these areas to tastefull, scholastic investigation, so that we can organize and preserve the relics that may be contained here in. Religion need not be at odds with the accumulation of humanistic knowledge, in fact religious significance is often a great complement to the field of archeology, as is archeology to important aspects of ancient religious history.
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