Category: Archeology

Bittlestone’s Ithaca takes another step towards the light

This evening Channel 4 News announced at considerable length the compelling findings of Robert Bittlestone’s borehole investigation of the Thinia isthmus between the Keffalonian “mainland” and Paliki.  The isthmus is not constructed of bedrock but of infill, as Bittlestone predicted.

MR readers with good memories may recall the piece I wrote about Bittlestone’s great quest to recover Odysseus’ homeland for Paliki.  This is not a matter of dry prognostications among dusty museum archives but of the living discovery of Homeric legend.  Our Hellenic cultural heritage is 3,000 years old - as old as Jewry - and closer to us in significant ways than the Jewish rabbi they nailed to the cross on Calvary.  Odysseus modelled the heroic virtues that shaped European minds and fitted us as peoples set against the capricious gods of Nature more naturally than ever the Paulian fragments of a universalist, monotheistic spirituality ever did.  Awareness of who and what we really are - an awareness of which we may one day find ourselves much in need - begins there in Homer, not in the Torah.

That said, I recommend a visit to Robert Bittlestone’s website to bring you up to date with proceedings today.

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Population of Shangdong, China in 500 B.C. closer to European than Asian

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/17/9/1396

Genetic Structure of a 2,500-Year-Old Human Population in China and Its Spatiotemporal Changes

Li Wang*{dagger}, Hiroki Oota*, Naruya Saitou{ddagger}, Feng Jin§, Takayuki Matsushita|| and Shintaroh UedaGo,*

*Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan;
{dagger}Department of Medical and Animal Genetics, Institute of Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;
{ddagger}Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Japan;
§Laboratory of Human Genetics, Institute of Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; and
||Doigahama Site Anthropological Museum, Houhoku, Japan

Abstract

To examine temporal changes in population genetic structure, we compared the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences of three populations that lived in the same location, Linzi, China, in different periods: 2,500 years ago (the Spring–Autumn era), 2,000 years ago (the Han era), and the present day. Two indices were used to compare the genetic differences: the frequency distributions of the radiating haplotype groups and the genetic distances among the populations. The results indicate that the genetic backgrounds of the three populations are distinct from each other. Inconsistent with the geographical distribution, the 2,500-year-old Linzi population showed greater genetic similarity to present-day European populations than to present-day east Asian populations. The 2,000-year-old Linzi population had features that were intermediate between the present-day European/2,500-year-old Linzi populations and the present-day east Asian populations. These relationships suggest the occurrence of drastic spatiotemporal changes in the genetic structure of Chinese people during the past 2,500 years.

Hmmmmmm.  You know me, I’m thinking about political implications, not mtDNA, right now.

:D

Snout Of Africa?

Maybe humans evolved in Asia.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1227_051227_asia_migration.html

Civilization goes back a long way in Europe too

Bulgarian archaeologists have unearthed about 15,000 tiny golden pieces that date back to the end of the third millennium B.C. — a find they said Wednesday matches the famous treasure of Troy.  The golden ornaments, estimated to be between 4,100 and 4,200 years old, have been unearthed gradually during the past year from an ancient tomb near the central village of Dabene, about 75 miles east of the capital, Sofia, said Vasil Nikolov, an academic consultant on the excavations.  “This treasure is a bit older than Schliemann’s finds in Troy, and contains much more golden ornaments,” Nikolov said.  Heinrich Schliemann, an amateur German archaeologist, discovered the site of ancient Troy in 1868 and directed ambitious excavations that proved he was right.

The treasure consists of miniature golden rings, some so finely crafted that the point where the ring is welded is invisible with an ordinary microscope.

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