Ancient Texts Present Mayans as Literary Geniuses Book elicits praise from scholars of Mayan culture throughout the world
Release Date: March 5, 2010
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Literary critics, cultural scholars and aficionados of the Mayans, the only fully literate people of the pre-Columbian Americas, have lined up to call the first fully illustrated survey of two millennia of Mayan texts assembled by award-winning scholar Dennis Tedlock, "stunning," "astounding," "groundbreaking" and "literally breathtaking.
Also very "stunning" and astounding The art of the Maya, is a reflection of their lifestyle and culture. It was an important trade merchandise.

"The Maya words tz'ib or tz'ib'al refers to painting in general, including both imagery and writing. The practitioners of these crafts, called ah tz'ibob ('they who paint'), were both master calligraphers and painters, which signed their work. The large corpus of ancient Maya painting includes portraits and names of several ah tz'ibob, depicts them at work, and presents their patron deities. The Vase rollout show below is a very distinctive class named The Holmul Dancers.
More tombs at the La Pava de Mochumí site March 4, 2010 - Five more tombs have been discovered at the La Pava de Mochumí where recently the 800 year old tomb of a shaman was found, just outside Chiclayo, the archaeology Mecca of Peru.
Maya Site Inhabitants Manufactured Weapons and Tools MEXICO CITY.- Specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) explore in Tenosique, Tabasco, an archaeological site of Maya affiliation dedicated exclusively to manufacture weapons and tools. San Claudio “was occupied from 200 BC to 900 AD by Maya workers at the service of other community of higher hierarchy”, informed archaeologist Jose Luis Romero Rivera, director of the excavation project at the site."
Ancient Mural Portrays Ordinary Mayans By Stéphan Reebs, Natural History Magazine: 07 March 2010 - One corner of the painted Maya pyramid structure at Calakmul, Mexico. One layer of the mural must still be excavated. Credit: Carrasco Vargas et al./PNAS

Full Size Very old artworks provide a fascinating glimpse of ancient life, but not without limitations: They typically portray the lifestyles of the rich and famous (rulers, royals, generals, and priests), abandoning the masses to the mists of history.
Add plumbing to the mysterious arts of the ancient Maya, investigators report. In a Journal of Archaeological Science study, anthropologist Kirk French and civil engineer Christopher Duffy of Penn State report on a conduit designed to deliver pressurized water to Palenque, an urban center in southern Mexico, more than 1,400 years ago.
Ancient Corpses Ritually Dug Up, Torn Apart, Reburied "Double burial" practiced for 4,500 years in what is now Mexico, experts say. John Roach for National Geographic News Published March 9, 2010
According to the first known evidence of "double burials," ancient people in what is now Mexico routinely dug up decomposing bodies and took off their arms, legs, and heads, then reburied the bodies, new research shows.

The tomb of a headless man adorned with jade has been discovered beneath an ancient Mexican chamber famously painted with scenes of torture. John Roach
for National Geographic News - March 12, 2010 -
Found under the Temple of Murals at the Maya site of Bonampak, the man was either a captive warrior who was sacrificed — perhaps one of the victims in the mural—or a relative of the city's ruler, scientists speculate (interactive map of the Maya Empire). Whoever he was, "the place of the burial tells us that the person buried there was special," said anthropologist Emiliano Gallaga Murrieta via e-mail.
Why and how did Native Americans build mounds? March 7, 2010 - "The earliest mounds seem to have functioned both as public landmarks for seasonal gatherings and platforms for villages. Many of the shell mounds within the interior of the Southeast seem merely to have been piles of discarded freshwater mussel shells that marked the location of annual harvests and feasts.
Qin Shihuang Tomb has north gate March 08, 2010 Reporters from Xi'an Evening News learned from Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology that archaeologists exploring the Qin Tomb have discovered a north gate of the tomb's outer city, marking an important archaeological discovery. The north gate proves that the Qin Tomb has 4 gates. In addition, archaeological exploration of some Han Dynasty tombs located in the Qin Tomb site has led to the exposure of the largest solid bricks unearthed so far.
Searching for Zheng: China's Ming-Era Voyager By Ishaan Tharoor Monday, Mar. 08, 2010

Read more: "They were essentially following maritime routes that had been in use by people in the Indian Ocean for ages," says Wade. Many academics argue that the popular Arab-Persian tale of the Seven Voyages of Sinbad, littered also with snippets of Indian folklore, was derived from the real travels of Zheng He — making the mariner as much a pan-Asian protagonist as a Chinese one.
Czech archaeologists find oldest settlement in Arbil, north Iraq 8 MARCH 2010
Plzen, West Bohemia, March 5 (CTK) - An expedition of Czech archaeologists has found remains of an about 150,000-year-old prehistoric settlement in Arbil, north Iraq, which has been the so far oldest uncovered in this part of northern Mesopotamia, team head Karel Novacek told reporters Friday.
Kerala's possible Mediterranean links unearthed by researchers News Date: 9th March 2010 Did the Mediterranean region of megalithic age have any links with the state of Kerala in southern India? A wide range of megalithic burials recently discovered in some northern districts of Kerala during a research project have thrown light on possible links between the Mediterranean and Kerala coasts in the prehistoric stone age that occurred between 6000 BC and 2000 BC.
Roadworks dig finds millions of Aboriginal artefacts Updated Wed Mar 10, 2010
Archaeologists conduct a dig at the Brighton bypass in southern Tasmania. (Rob Paton) • AUDIO: Archaeologist Rob Paton talks to ABC Reporter Damien Larkins about the initial findings. (ABC News)
Archaeologists say they may have found proof of the oldest and most southerly human habitation in the world at the site of a major road project in Tasmania.
Archaeologists and Aboriginal heritage officers have been removing sediment from eight trenches along the Jordan River levee at the Brighton roadworks site, north of Hobart. ANCIENT TRIBAL MEETING GROUND FOUND IN AUSTRALIA The 40,000-year-old site may hold the world's southernmost traces of early human life. - Wed Mar 10, 2010 03:15 PM ET | content provided by Amy Coopes, AFP The site of the 40,000-year-old tribal meeting ground has been hailed by one archaeologist as "Tasmania's Valley of the Kings." THE GIST: • An archaeology survey conducted ahead of roadwork has found an ancient, Aboriginal meeting ground. • Up to three million artifacts were believed to be buried in the area. • Only around 470,000 of Australia's original inhabitants are still alive today.

Mummy of Egypt's monotheist pharaoh to return home Mar 11, 3:51 PM (ET) By PAUL SCHEMM (AP) A stela at the Egyptian museum in Cairo is seen Thursday, March 11, 2010 , Egypt, showing Pharaoh...
CAIRO (AP) - The DNA tests that revealed how the famed boy-king Tutankhamun most likely died solved another of ancient Egypt's enduring mysteries - the fate of controversial Pharaoh Akhenaten's mummy. The discovery could help fill out the picture of a fascinating era more than 3,300 years ago when Akhenaten embarked on history's first attempt at monotheism.
Bulgaria Archaeologists, Architects Move to Save Cybele Temple Archaeology | March 12, 2010, Friday A commission of archaeologists and architects is set on securing a National Monument status for the temple of Greek goddess Cybele in Bulgaria’s Balchik.
The absolutely unique Cybele temple was uncovered by accident in April 2007 at the construction site of a hotel owned by a local entrepreneur.
Pi day: Five tasty facts about the famous ratio • 12 March 2010 by Jacob Aron - Mathematics enthusiasts will this weekend be celebrating Pi day, which falls on 14 March in honour of the famous ratio's first few digits, 3.14. You probably know that pi is the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter, but here are some less familiar facts about the mathematical constant.

Sub Atomic Chess LHC to shut down for a year to address design faults By Judith Burns
Science reporter, BBC News - The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) must close at the end of 2011 for up to a year to address design issues, according to an LHC director. Dr Steve Myers told BBC News the faults will delay the machine reaching its full potential for two years.
The atom smasher will reach world record collision energies later this month at 7 trillion electron volts. But joints between the machine's magnets must be strengthened before higher-energy collisions can commence.

Roger Penrose: Non-stop cosmos, non-stop career • 10 March 2010 by Michael Brooks
Penrose, who is 80 next birthday, is still making incursions into physics. He has just handed his publisher the manuscript for his next book, a rewrite of cosmological theory. There are those, I hesitantly suggest, who say that mathematicians would normally have ceased being this productive long ago. "Well," he says with a grin, "I can't help that, can I?"
The ultimatum game March 4, 2010 12:40 PM, by Jonah Lehrer... is a simple experiment with profound implications.
The game goes like this: one person (the proposer) is given ten dollars and told to share it with another person (the responder). The proposer can divide the money however they like, but if the responder rejects the offer then both players end up with nothing.
People play this game the same way all over the world, and studies have observed similar patterns of irrationality in Japan, Russia, Germany, France and Indonesia. No matter where the game was played*, people almost always made fair offers. As the economist Robert Frank notes,

"Seen through the lens of modern self-interest theory, such behavior is the human equivalent of planets traveling in square orbits."
(Irrational??! To a greedy-eyed pirate or a Chicago School bean counter maybe... Manno a manno, lopsided exchange wins no friends... )