Analysis of an Ancient War Wound (and the Soldier Survived, Too)

From Live Science

Well, I'm not sure how the formatting is going to turn out on this article, I hope it is readable!  It sure is interesting.  

How X-Rays Demystified a 2,500-Year-Old Battle Wound (Op-Ed)

Dr. Helise Coopersmith, North Shore-LIJ Health System

Date: 02 July 2013 Time: 06:58 PM ET

 

Dr. Helise Coopersmith is a musculoskeletal and body imaging radiologist for the North Shore-LIJ Health System, assistant professor of radiology at the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine and a member of the Hofstra medical school's admissions committee. She contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

 

I have worked as a musculoskeletal radiologist for many years and have seen a wide range of bone injuries. But recently, I found myself for the first time using my X-ray table to look at a 2,500-year-old bone and a piece of an ancient arrow.

 

The bone, discovered in Northern Greece, was brought to me by Anagnostis Agelarakis, a professor and chair of anthropology at Adelphi University. It was a section of the ulna bone, which is the inner of two forearm bones.  

 

My initial impression was surprise. Although the outer region of bone, the cortex, was thinned by time, and the inner region, the medullary cavity, had long since disintegrated, the girth and contours of the bone were quite similar to a human bone one would see today.

 

But, most notably, there was a turquoise-colored object jutting out from the bone, and according to Agelarakis, this was one of four sides of a bronze arrowhead. He proposed that this piece of the arrowhead was never removed by the field surgeons of the time because a barbed component anchoring it into the bone would have damaged the superficial soft tissues if removal were attempted.

Beside my X-ray table, I had a photograph of the re-assembled skull that was found with the ulna bone and a sketch by scientific illustrator Argie Agelarakis (Anagnostis's wife) of what the soldier's face may have looked like around the time of his eventual death, presumably at about 58 to 62 years of age.

My team and I took three X-rays of the ulna bone, and we found that indeed the films confirmed what Anagnostis Agelarakis had suspected.

There was a barbed component to the arrowhead that could not be seen with the naked eye. The full extent of the remaining arrowhead could now be seen and was seated superficially within the bone, located only within the cortex, or outer shell. This supported Agelarakis's notion that the arrowhead could have been removed if not for its barbed component.

There was a large bony (osseous) spur adjacent to the arrowhead, which make sense as the human body can form extra bone material in response to trauma. Such spurs take many months to fully mature, which implies that the soldier lived for a long time after the injury. Also, there was no bony erosion adjacent to the arrowhead, confirming that the arrowhead did not cause life-threatening infection.

We also noted that the arrowhead and the osseous spur were in the region of the flexor digitorum profundus muscle, which means the injury would have made it difficult for the soldier to flex his fingers and grasp objects.

There was a story behind the objects we were seeing, the story of an ancient Greek warrior who was an injured veteran, like many who are celebrated today and served by the hospital I work in.
It is amazing to think that the same X-ray technology that we use to diagnose conditions for our patients can answer age-old questions and help solve historical mysteries.

 

 

Farming Invented at Least Twice -- Once on the Persian Plateau

Absolutely fascinating.  I've long believed that if there is some truth, however mangled, in the old biblical accounts, then maybe, just maybe, the biblical traditionalists are looking for the remains of Noah's ark in the wrong area (Ararat in Turkey).  To my train of thought, it follows that when Noah and his family eventually disembarked the ark (har!), it wasn't too long thereafter that the first evidences of agriculture appeared in our archaeological record, including the first evidence of deliberate grape-growing (called "vineyards" but methinks they weren't anything like the vineyards of today).  Just imagine...

From sciencemag.org

Farming was so Nice, It was Invented at Least Twice

by Michael Balter on 4 July 2013, 2:15 PM

 

The invention of farming some 10,000 years ago set the stage for the rise of civilizations in the Near East. Yet archaeologists disagree about how it happened. Some say it arose in a single spot near the Mediterranean, and spread from there. Others argue it had multiple independent origins, a view that is getting new credence, thanks to findings from an early farming site in Iran.

 

Whether farming arose once or a hundred times, it happened first in the Fertile Crescent, a broad region stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Iran. Most research over the past decades has focused on the western stretches of the Fertile Crescent—including modern-day Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Turkey—in large part because those were the easiest areas to work in, both logistically and politically. Recent excavations in those areas have suggested that hunter-gatherers first began to gather and plant seeds from wild cereals and legumes, such as wheat, barley, and lentils, as early as 13,000 years ago. Over a few thousand years of such cultivation, the wild forms of these plants mutated into new, domesticated species that were easier to manage and harvest, making farming more productive and efficient.

 

Until recently, the oldest known farming villages had been found at sites in Palestine, Syria, and eastern Turkey, where archaeologists radiocarbon dated the earliest domesticated plant species to about 10,500 years ago. Only a few sites were known as far east as Iran, and most of them had been excavated in the 1960s and 1970s, before that country's 1979 Islamic Revolution made it nearly impossible for Western archaeologists to work there—and also before the advent of modern archaeobotanical techniques that make it much easier for researchers to recover tell-tale plant remains.

 

About five years ago, archaeologist Nicholas Conard and archaeobotanist Simone Riehl of the University of Tübingen in Germany hooked up with researchers at the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research (ICAR) in Tehran, and particularly Mohsen Zeidi, an experienced ICAR excavator, to begin work at the early farming village of Chogha Golan, in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in western Iran. Iranian archaeologists had discovered the village about 15 years earlier, but never fully excavated it. While digging in 2009 and 2010, the team uncovered extensive evidence for the processing of plants in the village, including mortars, pestles, and grinding stones. The dig also yielded a huge quantity—more than 21,000 individual pieces—of charred plant remains, which Riehl analyzed for a report online today in Science.

 

Radiocarbon dating of the archaeological deposits, some 8 meters in depth, showed that Chogha Golan had been occupied continuously between about 12,000 and 9,700 years ago or even later . That allowed Riehl and her colleagues to trace the use of plants over that entire period of time. They found that the people of Chogha Golan apparently began cultivating wild barley, wheat, and lentils more than 11,500 years ago, and that domesticated forms of wheat appeared about 9,800 years ago, nearly as early as at sites to the west. The team concludes that the advent of farming at Chogha Golan, and in the eastern Fertile Crescent, was an independent event that paralleled developments much farther west. This suggests, researchers say, that farming was more or less inevitable once the Ice Age had ended and climatic and environmental conditions were right for it, rather than being a fluke that arose in just one location.

 

"These results do support the idea of multiple origins of agriculture," says Roger Matthews, an archaeologist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. He adds that the findings are consistent with recent DNA studies that also suggest multiple origins for both domesticated plants and animals. They also echo work that he, along with other British and Iranian archaeologists, has carried out at another Iranian site called Sheikh-e Abad, where it appears that wild goats were herded and penned, "a transitional stage between wild and domesticated that matches well with the transitional stages in plant use" found at Chogha Golan.

 

George Willcox, an archaeobotanist affiliated with the University of Lyon in France, agrees that the geographical distance of the Zagros Mountains from the western Fertile Crescent could suggest an independent origin for crop cultivation. But he cautions that "it is too early to argue one way or the other" whether the actual domestication of cereals, as opposed to cultivation of wild forms, was an independent event. It is still possible, Willcox says, that the domesticated wheat found at Chogha Golan, which at 9800 years was several hundred years younger than the earliest known domesticated species, was introduced from further west.

Part of Old Kingdom Sphinx Uncovered in Tel Hazor (Northern Israel)

From phys.org.news

Unique Egyptian sphinx unearthed in north Israel (Update)

Jul 09, 2013 by Jonah Mandel

Part of an ancient Egyptian king's unique sphinx was unveiled at a dig in northern Israel on Tuesday, with researchers struggling to understand just how the unexpected find ended up there.

 

An Australian excavation volunteer on July 9, 2013, displays part of an ancient Egyptian king's unique sphinx with a hieroglyphic inscription dating circa 3rd century BCE, found during excavation at the northern Israeli site of ancient Tel Hazor. The sphinx was unveiled with researchers struggling to understand just how the unexpected find ended up there.

The broken granite sphinx statue—including the paws and some of the mythical creature's forearms—displayed at Tel Hazor archaeological site in Israel's Galilee, is the first such find in the region.

 

Its discovery also marks the first time ever that researchers have found a statue dedicated to Egyptian ruler Mycerinus who ruled circa 2,500 BC and was builder of one of the three Giza pyramids, an expert said.

"This is the only monumental Egyptian statue ever found in the Levant - today's Israel, Lebanon, Syria," Amnon Ben-Tor, an archaeology professor at the Hebrew University in charge of the Tel Hazor dig, told AFP.  It is also the only sphinx of this particular king known, not even in Egypt was a sphinx of that particular king found."

Ben-Tor said that besides Mycerinus's name, carved in hieroglyphics between the forearms, there are symbols reading "beloved by the divine souls of Heliopolis".  "This is the temple in which the sphinx was originally placed," Ben-Tor said of Heliopolis, an ancient city which lies north of today's Cairo.

Tel Hazor, which Ben-Tor calls "the most important archaeological site in this country," was the capital of southern Canaan, founded circa 2,700 BC and at its peak covering approximately 200 acres and home to some 20,000 Canaanites. It was destroyed in the 13th century BC.

 

"Following a gap of some 150 years, it was resettled in the 11th century BC by the Israelites, who continuously occupied it until 732 BC," when it was destroyed by the Asyrians, Ben-Tor said.

He said the find was approximately 50 centimetres (20 inches) long, and estimated the entire statue was 150 centimetres (60 inches) long and half a metre (20 inches) high".

How, when and why it reached Tel Hazor remains a mystery.  "That it arrived in the days of Mycerinus himself is unlikely, since there were absolutely no relations between Egypt and this part of the world then," said Ben-Tor.

"Egypt maintained relations with Lebanon, especially via the ancient port of Byblos, to import cedar wood via the Mediterranean, so they skipped" today's northern Israel, he said.

 

Another option is that the statue was part of the plunders of the Canaanites, who in the late 17th and early 16th century BC ruled lower Egypt, the expert said.  "Egyptian records tell us that those foreign rulers... plundered and desecrated the local temples and did all kinds of terrible things, and it is possible that some of this looting included a statue like this one".

But to Ben-Tor the most likely way the sphinx reached Tel Hazor is in the form of a gift sent by a later Egyptian ruler.

 

"The third option is that it arrived in Hazor some time after the New Kingdom started in 1,550 BC, during which Egypt ruled Canaan, and maintained close relations with the local rulers, who were left on their thrones," he said.  "In such a case it's possible the statue was sent by the Egyptian ruler to king of Hazor, the most important ruler in this region."

Shlomit Blecher, who manages the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in Memory of Yigael Yadin, was the archaeologist who actually unearthed the finding in August 2012.  The statue's incrustation was meticulously removed over a period of many months by the excavation's restorer, before the intricate carvings and hieroglyphics were fully visible.

"It was the last hour of the last day of the dig," she told AFP of the moment of the find. "We all leapt with joy and happiness, everyone was thrilled."

 

"We hope the other pieces are here and that we find them in the near days," she said. [So do I!]

Ben-Dor said the statue was most likely deliberately broken by new occupiers at Tel Hazor in an act of defiance to the old rule.  Finding the sphinx was "unexpected," said Ben-Tor, "but fits" archaeological facts and findings. "When you're in a bank, you find money," he said.

To Ben-Tor, however, the true coveted find would be archives buried somewhere on Tel Hazor that could serve as an inventory to the ancient city's content.  "I know there are two archives," he said. "We already have 18 documents from two periods, the 17th and 14th century BC. If I found those archives, people would come running here."

Big News: Untouched Wari Tomb Discovered in Peru

Lots of news stories about this find -- THREE QUEENS!

Heather Pringle

for National Geographic

Published June 27, 2013

First Unlooted Royal Tomb of Its Kind Unearthed in Peru
Three queens were buried with golden treasures, human sacrifices.

June 27, 2013 4:25 pm
Smithsonian.com
Smart News

Unlooted Royal Tomb Found in Peru

 

Archaeologists Keep Wari Tomb Discovery Secret to Prevent Looting

June 28, 2013 by Andean Air Mail & PERUVIAN TIMES

And more:

A pile of Wari mummies in a pre-Inca royal tomb:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2350600/Treasures-Peruvian-royal-tombs-A\
rchaeologists-unlooted-tomb-ancient-Wari-civilisation-queens-buried-alongside-go\
lden-jewellery-human-sacrifices.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23092825
http://phys.org/news/2013-06-dozens-mummies-pre-inca-royal-tomb.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-peru-wari-tomb-royal-in\
ca-20130627,0,4860913.story
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/pictures/130627-peru-archaeology\
-wari-south-america-human-sacrifice-royal-ancient-world-photos/#/

Buried With Flowers

Hola darlings!  I took a brief respite and when I was ready to come back, I was confronted with internet connectivity problems, ACHHHH!  Anyway, connectivity issues have FINALLY been resolved.  So now I'm going to try and play catch-up with some of the fascinating stories that have come and gone.

A very interesting story about definitive evidence of flowers having been buried with two bodies some 12,000 years ago. Amazingly, the only grave with evidence of flowers being buried with the body is a 70,000 year old Neanderthal burial -- which is controversial. 

Here's the story from National Geographic:

Mysterious Pair Buried With Flowers—Oldest Example Yet

Aromatic sage and mint lined graves found on Israel's Mount Carmel.

Ker Than

for National Geographic

Published July 1, 2013

Imprints of stems and blossoms stamped into the dirt of ancient graves are the oldest definitive proof of flowers decorating graves—a common practice around the world today—a new study says.

 

Scented flowering plants, such as mint and sage, were imprinted in soft mud after they decomposed some 12,000 years ago in the graves, which are located in a cave on northern Israel's Mount Carmel.

Ancient mourners lined four graves with the flowers, most notably one that holds the bodies of two people.

The pair—an adult male and an adolescent of undetermined sex—belonged to the primitive Natufian culture, which flourished between 15,000 and 11,600 years ago in an area that is now Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

 

The Natufian society was one of the first—possibly the first—to transition from a roaming hunter-gatherer lifestyle to permanent settlements, and was also the first to establish true graveyards, said study leader Daniel Nadel, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa in Israel.

 

"There are examples of groups living in a camp for a few years, but some of the [Natufian] sites we know about were used for thousands of years," Nadel said.

 

So what's new?

 

The new discovery indicates that the Natufians were also among the first to use flowers to honor their dead.

 

The only potentially older instance of funerary flowers is a dusting of pollen found at the site of an approximately 70,000-year-old grave of a Neanderthal dubbed Shanidar IV in Iraq. However, some scientists have argued that holes found at that site were made by burrowing rodents that stored seeds and flowers in the grave.

 

"From [the Neanderthal] example until the Natufians"—a period spanning some 50,000 years—"there is not one example [of flowers decorating graves]," said Nadel, whose study appears this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

He noted, however, that this doesn't necessarily mean that people weren't using flowers at graves during that entire time. More likely, the flowers decayed over time.

 

"Finding such flowers is very difficult," Nadel said. "Asking for such preservation is asking for a lot."

 

Why is it important?

 

The evidence suggests the pair's grave was prepared with great care. First, a pit was dug, and then a thin veneer of mud was used to cover the sides. The bottom of the grave was lined with the plants—which bloom in pink and lavender—before the bodies were placed inside.

 

The scented flowers were likely chosen as much for their aromas as their appearance.

 

"There are hundreds of flowers on Mount Carmel during the spring, but only a small group provide very strong fragrances. It's impossible that the Natufians didn't recognize the smell" when they chose them for the graves, Nadel said.

 

What does this mean?

 

Based on items found in other graves at the cave cemetery—such as animal bones—Nadel thinks the pair was buried with great pomp and circumstance.

 

"They didn't just place the bodies inside the graves and leave," he said. "We have to envision a colorful ceremony that maybe included dancing, singing, and eating. They may have hunted a few animals and had a big meal around the graves and then threw bones or meat inside."

 

If Natufian burial practices were anything like those of modern cultures, the grave flowers were intended not only for the dead, but also for the living, Nadel said.

 

"We create ceremonies and make a big fuss to show our respect for the dead," Nadel said.

 

What's next?

 

Nadel and his team are currently working to identify the age, gender, and relationship of the individuals in the flower-lined graves.

 

For example, in the case of the double burial, "are they relatives?" he said. "Are they parent and child? Are they brothers? Or friends? Did they die together? And how come they were buried together? We don't know."

Daniel Nadel's research was funded in part by the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration.

700,000 Year Old Horse's DNA Sequenced

A horse is still recognized as a horse, from DNA 700,000 years old.

From Scientific American Online:

Horse Fossil Yields Astonishingly Old Genome—Are Similarly Ancient Human Genomes Next?

By Kate Wong | June 26, 2013|

 

Researchers have recovered DNA from a nearly 700,000-year-old horse fossil and assembled a draft of the animal’s genome from it. It is the oldest complete genome to date by a long shot–hundreds of thousands of years older than the previous record holder, which came from an archaic human that lived around 80,000 years ago. The genome elucidates the evolution of modern horses and their relatives, and raises the question of whether scientists might someday be able to obtain similarly ancient genomes of human ancestors.

Ludovic Orlando of the University of Copenhagen and his colleagues extracted the DNA from a foot bone found at the site of Thistle Creek in Canada’s Yukon Territory in permafrost dating to between 560,000 and 780,000 years ago, which falls within the so-called early Middle Pleistocene time period. They then mapped the fragments of DNA they obtained against the genome of a modern horse to piece together a draft of the ancient horse’s genome.

Comparing that sequence to the genomes of a 43,000-year-old horse, a donkey, five modern domestic horses and a modern Przewalski’s horse (a type of wild horse native to Mongolia), the researchers were able to gain insights into some key aspects of horse evolution. Their findings indicate that the last common ancestor of the members of the genus Equus—which includes modern horses, donkeys, asses and zebras, along with their extinct relatives–lived some 4 million to 4.5 million years ago, double the estimate suggested by the oldest unequivocal Equus fossils. The results also allowed the team to chart the demographic history of horses over the past two million years, revealing how the population waxed and waned as climate shifted and grasslands expanded and contracted. In addition, the researchers identified several genome regions in modern horses that seem to have been targeted by natural selection acting to promote advantageous gene variants related to immunity and olfaction, as well as a number of genome regions that may have undergone selection related to domestication. A report detailing the study will be published in the June 27 Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

This is a pretty exciting development (so exciting, in fact, that I’m interrupting my vacation to write about it). And I can’t help but think back, as I do whenever a new ancient DNA story breaks, to the first time I ever reported on DNA from deep time. The year was 1997. Researchers had just announced that they had sequenced DNA from a 40,000-year-old Neandertal fossil. Specifically they had sequenced DNA from mitochondria—the cell’s energy-producing organelles, which contain their own DNA that is passed on along the maternal line.

The Neandertal mitochondrial genome was a huge breakthrough—and it seemed to settle a long-running debate over Neandertals and the origin of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. But mitochondrial DNA represents only a tiny fraction of an individual’s genetic information; the real action is in the DNA that resides in the cell’s nucleus—the nuclear genome. The scientists I spoke to back then—geneticists and paleontologists—longed for a nuclear genome from a Neandertal. But they were quite certain that they would never ever get one. Mitochondrial DNA is far more abundant than nuclear DNA, because a cell can contain hundreds of mitochondria, whereas it has just one nucleus. Thus the chances of finding nuclear DNA that has survived the ravages of time is far, far lower than those of obtaining mitochondrial DNA—itself a rarity.

And yet. Fast forward to 2010 and the impossible dream was realized: a draft sequence of a nuclear genome of a Neandertal. More recently the sequencing of nuclear DNA retrieved from an enigmatic finger bone from Denisova Cave in Siberia has revealed a previously unknown kind of human. And scientists have obtained an astonishingly complete Neandertal genome from the same cave site. These ancient nuclear genomes paint a rather different picture of archaic-modern human relations than the early mitochondrial DNA work did, and are providing a wealth of fascinating insights into our own evolution and that of our relatively recently extinct cousins.

This fantastically old horse genome got me thinking about the possibility of recovering DNA from comparably ancient human relatives—ones who roamed the earth long before the Neandertals and the Denisovans. If scientists had such data, what would they try to learn from it? When I asked paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin this question, he had this to say:
“Right now the Denisovan and Neandertal genomes have raised a new scenario of population structure for Middle Pleistocene people. They show us that earlier hominins in Eurasia were largely supplanted, possibly with some mixture, by a dispersal of Neandertal and Denisovan ancestors. What was that pre-Neandertal population like? Did it have its own unique events shaping its evolution? How many times did large-scale dispersals of human populations sweep across the Old World? And what happened to African ancestors during this key Middle Pleistocene time period?”

Now, lest we get ahead of ourselves, it must be noted that the horse fossil was found in permafrost, which no doubt contributed to the preservation of the DNA. So will scientists have to find a Middle Pleistocene human on ice (or ice-cold soil) to have any hope of getting a genome out of it? Not necessarily. The Denisova specimens weren’t preserved in permafrost and their ancient DNA is first class. Still, they are far younger than the horse fossil. But according to ancient DNA expert Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University in Canada, the key to DNA preservation is dry conditions. “While cold and dry is best, warm and dry will still work,” he explains.

Poinar additionally noted that he is certain that researchers will eventually recover genomes even older than this 700,000-year-old (give or take) one. Which brings me to my final thought. When I learned of the horse genome, the first thing I thought was: what does this mean for Australopithecus sediba, the two million-year-old fossil species unearthed in at the site of Malapa in South Africa a few years ago. It has been held up as a candidate for the long-sought ancestor of our genus, Homo. These fossils are exquisitely preserved and may even contain organic material. Some of the remains are completely encased in rock, visible only with computed tomography and other imaging techniques. Might scientist be able to extract DNA from these fossils—and might that DNA be sufficiently well preserved to yield a genome? “I think DNA from Malapa is very possible and an exciting prospect,” Poinar says.

In fact, efforts are already under way to recover DNA from the A. sediba fossils, “We are in the process of looking and there are specimens presently being investigated,” says paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, who is leading the recovery and analysis of the fossils from Malapa. “It is of course unlikely in a [two million-year-old] fossil,” he notes, “nevertheless, Malapa has as good a chance as anywhere if the impossible is going to prove possible.”

I’m going to resume my vacation now. But I’ll be daydreaming about genomes from our long-vanished cousins. The future of ancient DNA research has never looked brighter.

Pissed Off Shabti Demands Bread, Beer and Beef!

Hey, I don't blame the dude. He's been starving for the past 80 years!  Now he's going on march to demand BREAD, BEER, AND BEEF!  Hey dude, I hear you.  I love them, too!  Surely it must be possible to satisfy Neb-Senu's appetite by providing miniaturised versions of bread, beer and beef on a mini offering table presented before him.  Come on, people! Feed Neb-Senu! 

There is a video embedded in the news article below, but I was not able to capture it to post here.  I found this same video, minus sound, at You Tube, and you can watch and judge for yourselves, minus the distraction of commentary!




Neb-senu is the tall ebony-colored Shabti on the right-end of the row (farthest away from viewer).

Ancient Egyptian Statue Mysteriously Rotates at Museum

 

By ABC News | ABC News Blogs – 13 hours ago
An ancient Egyptian statue in a British museum has sparked debate after it was captured on video seemingly rotating on its own.

The 10-inch tall statue of Neb-senu has been on display at the Manchester Museum in Manchester, England, for 80 years but it was only recently that museum staff noticed the statue moving.

"Most Egyptologists are not superstitious people. I wondered who had changed the object's position without telling me," the museum's curator, Campbell Price, told the U.K.'s Sun. "But the next time I looked, it was facing in another direction-and a day later had yet another orientation."

With his curiosity piqued, Price returned the statue of the Egyptian idol to its original position in a locked glass case and set up a camera to film the statue over an 11-hour period. The resulting time-lapse video, Price says, shows the statue moving on its own.

Other experts attribute the rotation to a more scientific reasoning, such as subtle vibrations that cause the statue to move.

"The statue only seems to spin during the day when people are in the museum," Carol Redmount, associate professor of Egyptian archeology at the University of California, Berkeley, told ABC News. "It could have something to do with its individual placement and the individual character of the statue."

The statue, made from serpentine, shows what is likely an official with "priestly duties," according to Price, wearing a shoulder-length wig and knee-length kilt.

The hieroglyphs on the back of the statue spell out, "bread, beer and beef," a "prayer for offerings for the spirit of the man," Price told the Sun.

********************************************

One of my favorite old-time movies is "Miracle of the Bells."  It starred, of all people - Fred MacMurray (he later went on to television fame in the 1960's as the father of "My Three Sons" and a drop-dead gorgeous actress who sported only one name - Valli (Dorothy Sebastian).  In the film, she plays an actress who strikes it big by scoring the lead in a major film production of "Joan of Arc" -- but before the film can be completed she dies of -- I think -- tuberculosis.  The producers decide to pull the film from distribution rather than working around an ending with an unknown, now dead, although brilliant, actress.  Fred MacMurray, who had befriended the "Kid" as he called her, years before, when she was a struggling actress dancing in a two-bit woo-woo show to make ends meet, hits upon an ingenious plan to not only pay homage to the girl he maybe could have loved and maybe even did love and his coldest, calculating most commercial reporter instincts to promote the film and, he hopes, put enough pressure on the Hollywood producers to release the film, which shows the "Kid" at her finest.

And I have to say that, without watching a single scene fresh of the movie, I don't even know if' it has ever been released as a video, just remembering Valli acting as Joan of Arc was a very emotional and transcendent experience as I watched the old film on cable TV years ago in the 1980's (when it was still reasonably priced - I don't have cable TV now).

Anyway, the grand climax of the movie takes place in the actress's hometown church -- a small, struggling mining town in Pennsylvania, I believe.  As the church is packed with people for her final memorial service, the bells of the church begin to ring, and all across the town, all other church bells begin to ring too.  This is spread across the region, from town to town, city to city, as many church bells begin to ring at precisely the same time, and -- miraculously, all across the United States, as people had read reporter Fred MacMurray's touching tribute to the deceased actress and the demise of her one and only and greatest film role of all time in a movie that would never be seen, was spread across the land in the week before the memorial service took place.

In the local church where the deceased actress lay in a fine coffin beneath a hovering stone sculpture of the Archangel Michael, as the church bells begin to ring, and other bells from other churches join in, filling the air with deafening sound, suddenly, to the amazed eyes of all beholding, the Archangel begins to move! 

The Archangel, in fact, moves about 45 degrees so that He is now hovering with (I seem to recall) a mighty sword arched over the dead actress's coffin, as if protecting it, as if blessing it.  And the head of the statue appears to be gazing down at her, as she lays at rest. 

Of course the story of the miraculous event that occurred in that little, tired church in Pennsylvania, spreads across the United States in a firestorm -- or what was a firestorm back then, when there were only telephones and telegraphs! 

Enough publicity is generated, and enough public opinion arises, that the Hollywood producers who had pulled Valli's finest hour as Joan of Arc announce that they are releasing the film after all!

And thus, the Miracle of the Bells ends on a sad, but triumphant note.

Well, it got to me, heh?  I still remember so much of it, even after all these years! 

Now, let me tell you darlings, Father Paul, who was the young but worldly wise priest of the old parish church where the actress was laid to rest, he was played by none other than a young and very skinny FRANK SINATRA!  And he didn't sing a note, either! 

Valli went on to play in another bizarre but smash film that has become a cult classic: The Red Shoes.

I do not remember any other films in which she starred.  But those two films were enough to fill the plate of a great actress, back in those days.

Anyway -- back  to the Miracle of the Bells.  Father Paul deduces that it was the vibrations of the extended bell ringing that caused the stone sculpture of Michael the Archangel to swing around on its base to face protectively over Valli's coffin.

Vibrations.  The Music of the Goddess.  Oh, if only we would stop and take awhile to listen once again to the Divine Music.

P.S.  Guess what, darlings!  The colorized version of The Miracle of the Bells is available to view on You Tube:




So, is it just vibrations (shades of the Beach Boys' smash song from the mid 1960's Good Vibrations...) that is causing Neb-Senu to spin in his glass case?  And was it just good good good vibrations that caused the admittedly fictional stone stature of Michael the Archangel to pivot around on his pedestal to protectively overlook the coffin of the actress played by Valli?

A Couple Personal Super Moon Photos

Hola darlings!

These are not the best quality, but I did get out last night and took several photographs of the Super Moon from the vantage point of my front yard near the end of my garage.  I forgot about getting out at Moon rise due east which happened a few hours earlier (I was busy ripping carpeting off my staircase), but the photos I took were looking toward the southeast and the Moon was just beautiful!  I wish I could have captured it much better.  Oh well.

These photographs that I'm posting remind me a little of water-colors; they were taken about 10:00 p.m. last night.  It was very humid and "dewey" last night -- at one point yesterday the dew point was at SEVENTY!  In Milwaukee, Wisconsin!  Holy Hathor!  Dew point is worse than humidity.  I have discovered over the past several years, since local weather forecasts have started reporting on dew points, that I get extremely uncomfortable at anything over 55.  Sixty is torture.  Seventy is HELL.

The photo below is the best of the photos I took -- slightly less blurred looking and no water spots (or Phantom Moons, as I prefer to think of them):

I wished Mr. Don was here to see this with me.  Even my poor photo captures the incredible beauty of the Moon's light bouncing off the clouds last night, and the partial echo of the Moon's incredible glow from the street lamp.

9 Queens Upcoming Events

Hola!  Check out the latest from 9 Queens.  I hope you are supporting them!  9 Queens does great work with kids and women.  We need more of them around - across the entire USA!!!

Shang Dynasty Capital To Be Excavated

From Zeenews.com
June 23, 2013

China begins excavation to discover 3000-year-old ancient city

Beijing: Chinese archaeologists have started a three-month excavation project in north China's Hebei Province to discover an ancient state capital dating back to more than 3,000 years.

The excavation project is taking place in the Caijiafen village. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage has approved the excavation in April.
Archaeologists and historians believe that Caijiafen village has served as the capital of Guzhu state, a vassal state of the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC to 1046 BC), according to Xie Fei, an expert from the Hebei Provincial Cultural Heritage Bureau.

The excavation will help in unveiling the history and culture of the ancient state, Xie told state-run Xinhua news agency.
About 30 archaeologists from Renmin University and Hebei Provincial Cultural Heritage Bureau are participating in the excavation project.

PTI

Super Moon Over Rotterdam

Hola darlings!

Yesterday was the "super Moon" event - as I understand it, the Moon happened to be a point in its rotation around the Earth closest to it and this coincided with the "full" Moon, making the Moon look super-large and particularly close in the skies in the northern hemisphere last night.  I happened to see this breathtaking photograph at Xinunet while I was checking out a story on the upcoming excavation of an ancient Shang Dynasty capital.

What struck me was the juxtoposition of the lunar crescent on the top of a mosque against the full Moon Goddess in all of her glory rising above Rotterdam in The Netherlands!  A truly international symbol as well as an international event published in international news coverage.  How connected we have become.  If only we would remember that underneath our different skin colors and cultures, we're all the same, too.

Does that crescent symbol look familiar to you?  It sure does to me...

Above is one of the sides of the incredibly beautiful and ancient Narmer Palette from pre-dynastic Egypt, although some historians call it Dynasty Zero.  Zero because it was right around the time Narmer was united Upper and Lower Egypt into one kingdom.  Check out Hat-hert a/k/a Hathor, the cow/lunar goddess, who was later turned into a daughter of the Sun god, Re, and became a solar goddess. But her first, and most ancient, association is with the Moon, and in some depictions of Hat-hert and later, Isis, she wears the "horns" of the Moon (a/k/a cow horns) enclosing the sacred solar disc.  Hat-hert also prominently appears on the reverse side of the Narmer Palette.  The Palette's antiquity is attested to by the fact that Hat-hert is depicted in her original cow form.  In later incarnations during her long herstory in ancient Egypt, Hat-hert was depicted as a woman with cow-ears, and still later, as a woman wearing a "crown" of cow horns. 

Here is a much later depiction of the lunar crescent worn as a crown by this beautifully formed alabaster goddess who "may" be Ishtar (Astarte), from a "necropolis of Hillah, near Babylon" with a 400 year swing date of 2nd Century BCE or CE, at the Lourve (photo from Wikipedia Commons):

 
At Carthage, the Moon goddess was worshipped as the fearsome Tanit, sometimes depicted with a lion's head (Hat-Hert was sometimes transformed into a lioness to wreak destruction upon sinning Egyptians, harking back to predynastic depictions of Hat-Hert as a warrior goddess:

  Tanit, to whom infants and young children were sacrificed by the CARthiginians (CAR is another archaic Moon goddess, whose worship is found in ancient place-names, I've written about her, too) is said to be an incarnation of Astarte:

The photo above is from Wikipedia Commons.  Do you see a resemblance between this form of the Goddess and the ancient Egyptian "ankh" symbol?  I also couldn't help but notice that in this depiction of a lunar goddess, the crescent Moon is "inverted" over the Goddess' head and I was much struck by its resemblance to some depictions I've seen of doves, so often associated with the Roman Catholic Mother of God, the Virgin Mary.  Periodically in modern-era Egypt (prior to the Islamists taking over the government after the overthrow of Mubarak), thousand of people attested to seeing the Virgin Mary appearing in the skies above Coptic Christian churches, often surrounded by "doves."  I've written about some of these apparitions of the Virgin Mary. 

If you're interested in learning more, please check out:

July 2, 2009:  The True Origins of the Koran (formatting is screwed up on this post, and many of my older posts, due to various changes that Google Blogger has gone through since the founding of this blog.  I hope you will take the time to slog through it despite no paragraph breaks!)

April 15, 2008:  Goddess Tanit. 

July 4, 2008:  The Goddess of the Moon. 

Did you know that the Moon Goddess has an intimate connection with Chinese Xiang'qi and the even older "pre-chess" game of Xiang'xi?  Oh yeah, if you read herstory between the lines, sometimes one can discern the truth.  Please check out my post from October 27, 2007:  The Chinese Moon Goddess and Chess. 

And if you would like to read more about some of the Virgin Mary apparitions:

August 24, 2007:  Goddess Sighting: Our Lady of Guadalupe (check out the nice crescent Moon the Our Lady is standing upon)

Our Lady of Zeitoun, from Wikipedia (I'm sure I posted about this and other Virgin Mary apparitions occurring in Egypt, but right now I cannot find them in my blog and I don't have time to hunt and peck at the moment)

At Tour Egypt:  Egypt: Egypt's 1960's Remarkable Virgin Mary Sightings, Egypt
Check out the "dove" above the "Virgin Mary" figure -- does it remind you of the crescent Moon depiction in the ancient stone carving above Tanit's head at Carthage (above):

She reappeared again in 2009, at a different location, but this time the birds around here were described as a swirl of pigeons and the Goddess had been reduced to appearing as an amorphous "flash of light."  Well, maybe.  Depends who you talked to when it happened...  Such things, after all, are in the eye of the beholder:

December 15, 2009:  EGYPT: Is it the Virgin Mary or just a curious flash of light?

For my part, I think the Mother has been, and is still trying, desperately, to reach out to us, but we're just not getting Her message.  Beware when she returns as Kali or Car.  And those in the know won't be able to say we weren't warned.

Female Archaeologist Risks Life to Expose Massive Looting in Egypt

Story at TribLive/USWorld

Egyptologist risks life, career to expose looting
By Betsy Hiel

Published: Saturday, June 15, 2013, 9:13 p.m.Updated: Monday, June 17, 2013

ABU SIR AL MALAQ, Egypt — Monica Hanna's reputation as an archaeologist has grown far beyond her native Egypt — but not without risk.

 

Shawn Baldwin | For the Tribune-Review

Dr. Monica Hanna, an Egyptian archaeologist, surveys the burial grounds in Abu Sir
al Malaq. 'You see dogs playing with human bones, children scavenging for pottery
and painted sarcophagi. You also find very well mummified fragments.
It is very macabre,' Hanna says. Hanna is a leader in exposing the looting
of Egyptian antiquities.

 

As she and several journalists documented looting at an ancient burial site here, several men – one with a shotgun slung over a shoulder — threatened her.

 

“I heard one man say, ‘Beat her and take her camera,' ” Hanna said afterward.

 

When the men phoned for police, she hid her camera's memory card in her shirt. After 45 minutes of argument, she was allowed to leave.

 

“The locals, who are a part of the looting, don't want the photos out there because then their business stops,” she explained.

Hanna, 30, is a leader in exposing the antiquity-looting that has exploded since Egypt's 2011 revolution. She appears on Egyptian television debating government officials, takes reporters to looted sites, and encourages Egyptians to protect their heritage. To Nigel Hetherington, an archaeologist and co-founder of Past Preservers, which connects academia and media on archaeological issues, she is “amazing … a revolutionary in the true sense of the word.”

 

“She is out to get the bad guys and harness the feeling the Egyptians have of their own heritage, and turn it into actual force for good,” he said.

 

When she was 14, Hanna took a school trip to the Egyptian Museum, which holds some of the country's best antiquities, including the King Tut collection. [Wonder how much of it is actually real antiquities these days?  Could all be fakes, sold by the Islamists to fund their foreign jihads and to buy bread for the restless 'natives.']

 

“I sneaked inside the mummification lab” and saw its director at work, she recalled. “I was fascinated, and I asked him if I could come and help.”

 

She volunteered twice weekly after school; a year later, she helped with mummy restorations. “I helped repair the toes of Thutmose III,” a pharaoh who ruled Egypt nearly 3,500 years ago.

She graduated from American University in Cairo with a bachelor's degree in Egyptology and archaeological chemistry, then earned a master's degree in teaching English, followed by a doctoral degree in archaeological sciences from the University of Pisa, Italy. She is doing post-doctoral studies at Humbolt University, Berlin.

 

Not everyone appreciates her work; she often receives threatening phone calls: “People say that I am foreign-paid, that I have a foreign agenda, or that I am doing this for personal glory.”

 

A policeman told her uncle that she should stop because “she is bothering really big people.”

 

Salima Ikram, Hanna's former teacher and head of American University's Egyptology unit, is not surprised by the threats: “That means she is doing her job well. She is scaring some of the syndicate people who live around and feed off of the antiquities.”

 

Hanna concedes she may be risking her career: “I might not get future permits to work on archaeological sites from the antiquities ministry. But, then, it's ethics versus career — if I cannot talk about this, then I really have no place to teach my students one day that we have done our best to protect our heritage.”

 

She is working with three groups to monitor archaeological sites; a website will allow people, including tourists, to anonymously report damaged antiquities. Her commitment arose, she said, because foreign archaeologists were afraid of losing work permits if they spoke up and antiquities inspectors who reported looting were usually ignored.

 

“If we Egyptians don't protect our heritage, who will?” she asks. [Who, indeed?]

 

Hetherington said Hanna “brings a model of archaeological heritage-management that is severely lacking here … (she) can empower the younger generation to take control of this mess.”

 

Her work “is a service not just to Egypt … because Egypt's heritage is part of the world heritage,” adds Ikram, her former teacher.

 

Betsy Hiel is the Tribune-Review's foreign correspondent.

'Lidar' Uncovers Mayan City in Mexico

'Lidar' in the news again -- this time, aiding the discovery of unexplored Mayan ruins in Mexico.

From The Latin American Herald Tribune
Caracas,
Wednesday
June 19,2013

Vast Mayan City Discovered in Southeast Mexico Jungle

MEXICO CITY – Archaeologists have discovered a previously unknown Mayan city in the southeastern state of Campeche, which for its vast extension and characteristics is believed to have been a seat of government some 1,400 years ago, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, said.

A team of experts headed by Slovenian archaeologist Ivan Sprajc has christened the site Chactun.

“It is one of the largest sites in the Central Lowlands, comparable in its extent and the magnitude of its buildings with Becan, Nadzcaan and El Palmar in Campeche”, Sprajc said in a statement released by INAH.

The complex covers more than 22 hectares (54 acres).

Based on the number of monuments, at least ten of them with inscriptions, the city is believed to have been the seat of government for a extensive area during the period of 600-900 A.D., the researcher said.

The INAH-backed exploration is financed by the National Geographic Society and two private companies: Austria’s Villas and Slovenia’s Ars Longa.

Down through the centuries, Chactun remained hidden in the jungle on the north of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. According to Sprajc, it forms part of an area covering more than 3,000 sq. meters (1,150 sq. miles) that has remained a “total blank” on the Mayan archaeological map.

The millennial metropolis is one of the nearly 80 sites detected by the Southeast Campeche Archaeological Recognition Project, launched in 1996. EFE

********************************************************

At Archaeology Magazine
June 19, 2013

Maya City Discovered in Mexico

CAMPECHE, MEXICO—A large Maya city dubbed Chactún, or Red Stone, has been discovered in the jungles of Mexico’s Central Lowlands, in an area once used by loggers, but only recently explored by archaeologists equipped with aerial photographs and images created with LIDAR. The size of the city and its pyramids, palaces, ball courts, and plazas suggest that it was a long-term seat of government some 1,400 years ago. “It is one of the largest sites in the Central Lowlands, comparable in its extent and the magnitude of its buildings with Becan, Nadzcaan, and El Palmar in Campeche,” explained Slovenian archaeologist Ivan Sprajc. The name of a ruler, K’inich B’ahlam, has been found carved on one of the ten stelae unearthed so far at the site. Archaeologists suspect that Chactún will help them understand the relationships between other nearby Maya cities.

Standing Man Defines Turkish Defiance...Where's the Woman???

Are the women sent home at dusk, fearing rape in this park-like area, similar to what Egyptian and foreign women were subjected to during the "revolution" in Egypt a few years ago, the same revolution that everyone cheered about?  Ha! Look who took over there, you fools!

Erdem Gunduz (C) stands in a silent protest at Taksim Square in Istanbul early June 18, 2013. Gunduz, a Turkish man, has staged an eight-hour silent vigil on Istanbul's Taksim Square, scene of violent clashes between police and anti-government protesters in recent weeks, inspiring hundreds of others to follow his lead. Gunduz said he wanted to take a stand against police stopping demonstrations near the square, Dogan news agency reported. REUTERS/Marko Djurica
(TURKEY - Tags: CIVIL UNREST POLITICS)

Turkey, as is Egypt (and many others in the "Middle East") is a country out of balance.  A country out of balance cannot long prevail.  It may take some time, but eventually, this country --  it's system -- will fall.  A country that began in equality but has degenerated to inequality cannot prevail in the long run.  HIStory shows us that this is true (despite HIStory's best efforts to hide the truth from us).

So sad.  And yet, after more than six thousand years of recorded HIStory, we still haven't learned the most fundamental of lessons!  If the genders are not equal, there IS no equality.  Without equality, a system will fail.

It may take what seems like a long time in today's 24/7 world, but it WILL, ultimately, fail. 

Fundamentalists of all political and religious persuasions, your Days Are Numbered. Of that, I am one hundred percent certain.  I may not live to see it, but I think your end is closer than you think - if you're thinking with anything other than your penises.  Sadly, it appears that you do not understand the true meaning behind the tale of the "Handwriting On The Wall." Here is my paraphrase of the rendering into modern English:  YOU have been weighed in the scales (of Justice) and have been found wanting.  YOUR days are numbered.

This doesn't just apply to Turkey.  We've got the same kind of war going on right here in the United States. 

'Standing man' inspires silent protests in Turkey

By Daren Butler | Reuters – 10 hrs ago

Celebrating at the Holler House in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

..Hola darlings!

Friday night (June 14) I was out with those wild and crazy and - did I say wild, cougars ladies that I ride the bus with on the way home from the office in the evenings.  They are so much fun - and good supportive friends, too. 

Most of my readers are not familiar with my hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.  The Holler House bar is housed in a building that was built in or around 1908.  It houses private residence space on the upper floors, a 2-lane bowling alley in the basement, and a small bar on the first (ground) floor) with private rooms in the back.  It is located on South 21st (or is that 20th?) Street and West Lincoln Avenue in an old area of Milwaukee's southside, right across the street from a part of the eastern border of the venerable (and quite beautiful) Forest Home Cemetery.

The building/bar has been owned by the same family since it was first built.  Right now, the current owner (who married into the family), Marcy, is in her late 80's.  I had not met her, or visited the Holler House, until this past Friday evening.  She is a beautiful woman, let me tell you -- she would have been stunning in her younger years.  One of the Bus Ladies - JoAnn a/k/a Ginger Snap (snap fingers here, cuz she's a Spicey Cookie), has been hanging out there for years and so I've heard a lot about the Holler House over the past three years or so, since we've gradually built up the Crazy Cougars - okay, some of them don't like the term "cougars" but personally I think it's quite fitting.

Back to Holler House --  A recent fire inspection of  the Holler House noted the presence of flammable materials hanging from the ceiling.  Said flammable materials consist of various sizes and all types of women's brassieres, the oldest ones hanging up there since women's liberation finally took hold in old-fashioned Milwaukee in the 1970s.  The story is that one wild and crazy night some female bar patrons, and Marcy, decided to take them off, take them off, take them ALL OFF, and the bras ended hanging up on various other decorations (I use that term loosely) hanging and/or tacked on to the ceiling and beams that span the width of the room that houses the bar.

The fire inspector issued a citation to the Holler House to remove the flammable material.  Marcy, the owner, objected.  But as things unfolded, her time to appeal the citation expired prior to when she sought "official" help.  Being a law-abiding citizen, Marcy had one of of her relatives remove the offending materials so she would not run the risk of incurring hefty daily fines for violation of the removal order. She then turned to her local alderman and, with the help of friends, contacted local media.  This is one savvy lady.  One thing led to another and both Alderman and media took up the complaint on her behalf.  After all, Marcy argued, those same bras had been hanging up there since the 1970's, and no one ever complained about them being flammable (or inflaming, har :)) before. 

Justice has prevailed, TA DA!  The order was reversed and rescinded.  YAY MILWAUKEE COMMON COUNCIL!  YAY PUBLICITY IN THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL/SENTINEL AND LOCAL NEWS STATIONS! YAH ALDERMAN BOB DONOVAN FOR HELPING!  The story even made Reuters! 

And so Friday tonight, in celebration of being able to once again go back to the way things were before, in a very special celebration, the bras were re-hung, and folks were encouraged to bring in their own bras, donated or purchased, or a selection from Holler House's own extensive collection, to be hung or re-hung from the ceiling of the Holler House Bar!  A fund-raiser, YAY!  Two local charities close to our hearts, the Hope House and the ABCD Foundation, Melodie Wilson's foundation (Wilson was a former Miss Wisconsin and Miss America contestant, she was a popular local news anchor for many years but, sadly, died of breast cancer at too young an age, leaving young children behind).  One could hang a bra, or have it hung on your behalf, for a $5 donation.  Five bucks could also purchase a memorial tee shirt.  Such a deal!  Tees were a hot commodity.  Check out the tee I bought -- I hung it on a hanger from my dinette chandy to get a good photo of it:

(Please ignore my messy dinette - I was not expecting to take photos in there last Friday night and the tabletop is cluttered with mail and bills -- got to get around to paying them soon...  On a happy note, I purchased a MEDIUM shirt, LARGE is now too big for me to wear, yippee!)

The Holler House jukebox is FABULOUS!  It wasn't long before all of us were out in whatever space we could find dancing and grooving. But let me tell you, darlings, the music is LOUD. 

I had my camera along but, sadly, most of my pictures are not very good - and no group shot of all of us together:  JoAnn, Darlene, Anni, Thelma, Michele, Dodi, and me. Here are some of my photos:

In the photo above, Santa Claus (you'll see him in some later pictures when his face isn't stuffed into hanging brassieres) is up on a ladder hanging my bra -- a satin black underwire Olga bra from the days when I was a svelt 34C (I'm now, sadly, a 38D).

In this photo, our bus buddy Thelma (Thelma and I visited Las Vegas - her first visit ever - in April) is coming down from the ladder after having hung up her own donated black bra. She's so cute!  She is too young to be a cougar, she is an "honorary cougar."

Unfortunately, the photo above did not turn out very well, but it's the only photo I've got of our bus buddy Michele, hanging a Holler House bra.

The photo above was taken from the stair landing going down to the two bowling lanes down in the Holler House basement.  The Holler House was opened in 1908 and has the two oldest sanctioned lanes authenticated by the United States Bowling Congress (I think that is what it is called).

Ginger Snap (a/k/a JoAnn) took this photo of me (left), Anni (middle) and Dodi (right), downstairs at the Holler House lanes.  Anni has on one of the Great Bra Re-Hanging tee shirts.  I am holding a glass of Chardonnay, and Dodi is holding a cocktail.  I have no idea what Anni is holding - maybe a pussy coin purse?  She doesn't drink anything except soda.  Oh, maybe it's a soda glass.  The wall on the right side of the pic was reconstructed some years back to eliminate some foundation problems, and many of the concrete blocks now sports autographs of patrons, fans, and famous and not-so-famous bowlers.  It was a hoot reading some of them -- we were careful not to go on to the lanes themselves, we stayed on the approaches.  Those approaches were rebuilt a few years back, funded by the Bowling Congress, bless it's heart! 

There's Thelma striking a pose with a ball - a bowling ball - BOWLING BALL, PEOPLE!

Here's a video taken on Friday June 14, 2013 by one of our local television stations, WTMJ-TV Channel 4  and broadcast on the 10 PM news.  About 28 seconds into the actual video (after commercials) you get a glimpse of a group of women inside the bar, including little Anni in a green wig (she looks a little like a lepruchan) and the backs of several of our heads, including mine (I think), LOL!  Woo woo - our 15 minutes of fame!  Later in the video there is a glimpse of Ginger Snap a/k/a JoAnn can be seen descending from the ladder.

The Holler House's wonderful fund-raiser and the events leading up to the Great Bra Re-Hanging made the news in The Chicago Tribune, 90 miles to our south.  The article featured a separate link to several nice and clear (unlike mine and JoAnn's) photographs. 

And now you're going to see Santa in his summer garb, courtesy of The Chicago Tribune:

 Heh heh heh!  As I and Thelma were both there for the hanging of our respective black bras, I can tell you with 100% certainty that my donated bra is covering the right arm of the lady up on the ladder and Thelma's donated bra is partially covering the left arm of said lady.  Our bras will go down in herstory...  One of our friendly local busdrivers on the route we take to/from work is on the far right.  In the lower right hand corner, you can just see Pepper Spray staring into the camera -- is that a "V" for Victory sign she's making - or a "come hither" signal with her hand...

Photo above from The Chicago Tribune, an outshot shot of the Holler House.  Like I said, just a small neighborhood bar. 

And in this photo you can see our irrepressible Pepper Spray up on the ladder giving a campaign speech (she's running for President of the United States in 2016) and in the lower left hand corner a demure Ginger Snap laughing her ass butt off.  ELECT PEPPER SPRAY PRESIDENT IN 2016!  She intends to run as a Wisconsin Born-Again Republidem, offering a new, refreshing political alternative to the old boring do-nothing snores in Congress who currently control our "New Normal" USA. 

HEY - YOU WANT NORMAL?  Come visit the Holler House in good ol' Milwaukee, darlings :)  JanXena certified! 

Latest Technology Helps Uncover Lost City Covered by Jungle

This is cool - "lidar."  There are a lot of articles about this discovery, I selected this one.

This video, by Damien Evans of Sydney University, shows some of the on-land treks into the area revealed by the "lidar" data -- it's absolutely fascinating and worth watching -- a little less than 10 minutes long, so lots of information:

June 17, 2013

Archaeologists Discover “Lost City” in Cambodian Jungle

By Sarah Pruitt

For more than a millennium, its temples, canals, roads and statues remained buried under dense jungle undergrowth in the mountainous Phnom Kulen region of northwestern Cambodia. Now, a team led by archaeologist Damien Evans of Sydney University has used the airborne light-scanning technology known as Lidar to unearth the ancient city of Mahendraparvata, thought to be around 1,200 years old. Part of the Hindu-Buddhist Khmer Empire that ruled much of Southeast Asia from about A.D. 800 to 1400, the city lies some 25 miles west of the famous 12th-century Hindu temple complex of Angkor Wat, and appears to predate it by some 350 years.

The area around the mountain known as Phnom Kulen has been revered as a holy place for centuries, welcoming thousands of pilgrims seeking to bathe and perform spiritual rites there. In the 1970s, the region was a stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, the radical communist regime that tried to revive the agricultural glory of the Angkor era to disastrous effect, including the deaths of more than 1 million people from overwork or starvation and the execution of hundreds of thousands more. Land mines continue to litter the region, making exploration and excavation of the region difficult and dangerous.

As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald on June 15, Evans and his small team of archaeologists found the outline of the ancient city confirmed to be Mahendraparvata by making a detailed map of the area using Lidar laser-scanning technology. In 2009, Lidar technology was used to reveal terraced farming systems and roads in the ancient Maya city of Caracol in Belize, Central America. It was also used at Stonehenge and other archaeological sites in Europe, but had never before been used for archaeological work in tropical Asia. To conduct their project, the University of Sydney team had to seek high-level clearance from the Cambodian government in Phnom Penh.

Evans and his team strapped the scanning equipment to helicopters, which then flew at an altitude of 800 meters and methodically criss-crossed 370 square kilometers of northwest Cambodia, collecting billions of data points and about 5,000 digital aerial photographs. Lidar technology works by firing laser impulses at the landscape, after which a sensor measures how long it takes each pulse to bounce back. Through repetition, the measurements create a detailed picture of the landscape.

Several weeks ago, Evans and his team noticed something unusual: the laser imagery showed a landscape that was completely clear of vegetation. When they went to confirm the Lidar findings, they found the ruins of six previously unrecorded temples, as well as ancient canals, dykes and roads. Subsequent searches revealed another two dozen hidden temple sites. A number of the temples had been looted, but at least two were intact. In addition, the team found a cave with historically revealing carvings, used by holy hermits who flourished during the Angkor period. The light-scanning data also revealed hundreds of mysterious earth-covered mounds, measuring several meters high, scattered across the city; these could be tombs for the dead, although that hypothesis is still unconfirmed.

A one-legged guide named Heng Heap joined Evans on the arduous jungle expedition, along with a reporter and photographer from Fairfax Media. Heng Heap, a former Khmer Rouge soldier, was able to guide the team through dense growth and avoid land mines scattered over landscape he knows intimately. His own village, Anglong Thom, lies in the middle of the “lost city,” and he had been aware of some of its structures, but not all. The upcoming excavation of Mahendraparvata is expected to provide work—in the form of clearing vegetation and preserving historical sites—for local villagers, many of whom are undernourished.

It is not known yet quite how big the city was, as the Lidar search covered only a circumscribed area, and Evans told reporters that “there is a lot of work to be done to discover the extent of this civilization.” Archaeological research—including analysis of sculptured caves and river beds—indicates that the region encompassing the lost city remained occupied throughout the Angkor period (between the ninth and 16th centuries). Angkor Wat, the temple complex constructed in the 12th century by the Khmer ruler Suryavarman II, was first “discovered” by Westerners in the 1860s, but had been used by local peoples for religious purposes for centuries before that. It has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Reflecting on possible reasons for Mahendraparvata’s demise, Evans suggested that the “severe environmental impact of deforestation and the dependence on water management” may have led to its downfall, as the city may have become “too successful to the point of becoming unmanageable.” [Hey China - hint hint...]

Chinese Subway Contractor Destroys Ancient Tombs

Now you see 'em, now you don't!  Once gone, they're gone forever. 

Of course, contractors are doing the same thing here in the USA every day, you just don't read about it in the press because not enough people give a damn.  Have you ever read of a construction contractor on U.S. soil being brought up on criminal charges for violating federal (and state) laws on deliberately destroying historical artifacts?  I'd like to hear about it!  We didn't send one fricking asshole to jail for their criminal activities in causing the Second Great Depression 2007 and ongoing still, so I I seriously doubt the government is chasing after any contractor for destroying ancient burial sites or entire villages for that matter.

One wonders if this Chinese contractor will be slapped with a tiny fine because of public outcry, and then of course, the Chinese central government will enact yet more restrictions on the internet and ban more sites and more news. 

From The South China Morning Post

Work on Guangzhou Metro Line 6 destroys five ancient tombs
Mimi Lau in Guangzhou
Monday, 17 June, 2013, 5:51am 

Guangzhou Metro is facing a public outcry after contractors destroyed a group of ancient imperial tombs in the Menggang district during construction of Line 6 of its subway system.

The tombs, ranging from 2,200 to more than 3,000 years old and still being studied by archaeologists, were wrecked by excavators on Friday night.

The protected site, on the eastern slope of Da Gong mountain, had been sealed off by the Guangzhou Archaeology Research Centre, with warning signs posted and red lines marking the protected area. It was fine when archaeologists left on Friday but had been torn up by the time they returned on Saturday.

"Yesterday we were still conducting archaeological excavations, but all five tombs were gone this morning," said an archaeologist quoted by Southern Metropolis Daily yesterday.

One of the archaeology technicians responsible for the site, Miao Hui , said: "At least five of them were destroyed … this time. They date from the late Shang dynasty to the Warring States. This is not the first time the construction company has destroyed ancient tombs. The area they dug up was sealed by red lines. They even specifically moved our archaeological tools aside before blazing in."

A foreman hired by the centre said the site was impossible to miss. "We have begun working with one of the tombs and used plastic film to cover the unfinished site. It's a very large and obvious target, it's impossible that the workers could miss it."

Yesterday's reports in most Guangzhou media put the number of tombs at five, while Xinhua reported on Saturday that six tombs were destroyed.

A manager for Guangzhou Metro's construction agent said the workers were confused by unclear warning signs and markings left by the archaeologists.

A Guangzhou Metro spokesman said the construction work had already been approved by the archaeology centre, according to Southern Metropolis Daily.

However, it was reported that the centre wrote to the company last month to say the site had not been cleared for construction.  The research centre's director, Zhang Qianglu , said the slope's densely packed tombs had significant historical value.

The subway project is reported to have destroyed more than a dozen ancient tombs in the first five months of the year.

The damage has triggered an outcry online, with internet users describing it as outrageous and shameless. One said she did not believe it was simply a mistake. "The constructor has never taken the historical relics seriously. If you are not sure where to dig, why don't you ask? They must be severely punished, otherwise we'll only see more cultural relics being destroyed."

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Guangzhou subway work destroys five ancient tombs.