China Archaeologists are rewriting history in Hong Kong, where it was long thought no human activity took place until the Neolithic. Now, the discovery of a tool-making site 39,000-35,000 years old on the Sai Kung Peninsula has pushed back human presence in Hong Kong to the Paleolithic.
Guatemala San Bartolo, site of the Maya world's earliest murals, rewrites scholarship with the discovery of the oldest-known Maya writing in the rubble of the site's Las Pinturas pyramid. Dating to 250 B.C., the six-inch-long strip of glyphs is 500 years older than the earliest solidly dated Maya text. Only the glyph ajaw, meaning "ruler," has been identified, but the text is clearly rendered, indicating that Maya literacy must date to even earlier.
Jerusalem Hot Spot: While Jewish groups have long complained of illegal digging and destruction of artifacts on the Temple Mount by Muslim religious authorities, Jerusalem's top Muslim cleric is now accusing the Israeli government of excavating beneath the mount to undermine the site, calling the archaeological work an "aggression." The Israel Antiquities Authority insists that no projects are being conducted in the vicinity of the Temple Mount.
Syria Calling the assault "Shock and Awe in the fourth millennium," archaeologists have found evidence of a siege that destroyed one of the earliest cities in the world, making it one of the first examples of large-scale warfare. The 10-foot-tall mud walls of the 5,500-year-old northern Mesopotamian city of Hamoukar had been bombarded with sling bullets and eventually collapsed in a fire. Artifacts of daily life were found where fleeing inhabitants dropped them. The aggressors may have been from the Uruk-dominated south.
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