Email this article
|
|
Index of Newsbriefs
|
Volume 49 Number 3, May/June 1996
|
|
|
Click on the title of a newsbrief to see the full text.
|
Romans in Ireland?
|
Scholars have discounted as "nonsense" and
"wild speculation" a report in the Sunday
Times of London that the Romans invaded Ireland.
|
|
|
New Texts from Qumran
|
Three ostraca, one inscribed with 16 lines of Hebrew text from
the first century A.D., have been found in
Qumran, Israel. This is the first textual material discovered at
the site since the Dead Sea Scrolls were found there in 1947.
|
|
|
Yaws Origin
|
Analysis of Homo erectus skeletal remains suggests the
disease yaws had its origins in Middle Pleistocene Africa 1.5
million years ago. Before now the earliest known evidence of
the bacterial affliction was a skeleton from the Mariana
Islands in the Pacific dated ca. A.D. 850.
|
|
|
Oldest Human DNA Isolated
|
A French geneticist has succeeded in extracting DNA from a
piece of 12,000-year-old bone found at the Taforalt site in
western Morocco. The oldest DNA previously isolated by
scientists came from 8,000-year-old Egyptian mummies.
|
|
|
Largest, Heaviest Book
|
A German China specialist has brought to light the largest and
heaviest book in the world, nearly 14,300 stone tablets
inscribed with Buddhist scriptures found in caves near the
Yunju monastery.
|
|
|
Chalcolithic Cache
|
A 6,500-year-old burial cave has been discovered in Galilee in
northern Israel.
|
|
|
Medicinal Myrrh
|
A team of chemists and pharmacologists at the University of
Florence in Italy report that two compounds of myrrh, used
since ancient times in incense, perfume, and as a painkiller,
do indeed have pain-relieving properties.
|
|
Mycenaean Jewelry
Goes Home
|
The return of some 50 Mycenaean artifacts to Greece was
marked by a repatriation ceremony in the rotunda of the
Russell Senate Building in Washington. The objects are
believed to have been plundered, probably in 1978, from one or
more tombs at Aidonia, a site near Nemea in southern Greece.
|
|
|
Jade Shroud Found
|
A magnificent shroud of 4,000 wafer-thin jade plaques, sewn
with gold thread and decorated with gold flowers and buttons,
has been found in a rock-cut tomb in eastern Jiangsu
Province.
|
|
|
Field Notes
|
Arrests in Iran; Tibetan Cave Find; Stupa Conservation;
Lucy was a Guy?; Dining al Fresco; Pre-Taíno Culture
|
© 1996 by the Archaeological Institute of America
www.archaeology.org/9605/newsbriefs/ |
|
|
 |
|
Exclusive Features
Bigfoot vs. Indy, Roman Empress Unearthed, Beijing's Cultural Heritage
Latest News
Daily archaeological headlines
Interactive Digs
Johnson's Island, Ohio; Sagalassos, Turkey; Hierakonpolis, Egypt
Reviews & Shows
Tomb of the Dragon Emperor; Red Land, Black Land; Dame Kathleen Kenyon
Interviews
Rob Cohen, Heather Pringle, Shelby Brown, Silvana Rizzo
|
|
|
