Power Ball in Old Mexico

Wondering, could these air-borne ball games be descendants of ancient games that were etched out and played on the ground, taken up off the board, so to speak?  Notice also the symbolic cross-over between this ball game and symbols of the after-life as in Senet and perhaps the even older Mehen.
From Live Science
Ballplayer Statue Suggests Sports Were Big in Ancient Mexico

Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer

Date: 11 May 2012 Time: 11:44 AM ET

Sports may have been all the rage for ancient Mesoamericans, scientists say after discovering a portion of a figurine of an athlete near Oaxaca, Mexico.

The figure indicates the activity known as "the ballgame" was even more widespread than thought in Mesoamerica, which extended from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

Partial ballpayer figurine.

The partial figurine shows about 2 inches (5 centimeters) of a male ballplayer's chest. The head and legs have been broken off. It seems to be wearing a ballgame costume, including a wide belt covering the abdomen and an elaborate mirrored collar like those worn by other examples of ballplayers known from other areas of Mesoamerica.

"Because the ballgame is associated with the rise of complex societies, understanding its origins also illuminates the evolution of socio-politically complex societies," study author Jeffrey Blomster of the George Washington University said in a statement. "Exploring the origins and spread of the ballgame is central to understanding the development of the Mesoamerican civilization."

The Mesoamerican ballgame was played in large courts, and involved tossing or hitting a ball — usually with one's hips, though other body parts and even rackets may have been allowed — through a circular hole several feet up and sticking out from a vertical wall (think of a basketball hoop-rim turned on its side). It's been played since 1400 B.C. by people in ancient Mexico and Central America.

According to Blomster, the games and the costumes or uniforms worn by participants were tied to themes of life and death, mortals and underworld deities, or were symbols of the sun and moon. In some instances, the ballcourt itself represented a portal to the underworld.

Ballgame evidence from other areas of Mesoameria indicates that the ballgame developed during the Early Horizon period, sometime between 1700 B.C. and 1400 B.C. The area around the newly discovered figurine was dated using carbon isotopes (elements with a different number of neutrons) to between 1399 B.C. and 899 B.C.

"We know there were earlier versions of a ballgame prior to the Early Horizon with both a ballcourt and rubber balls found in coastal Chiapas and the Gulf Coast, but the institutionalized version of the ballgame, a hallmark of Mesoamerican civilizations, developed during the Early Horizon," Blomster said.

For instance, a Mayan artifact shaped like a monkey skull that was reported in 2011 is thought to be a hand guard used for such a ballgame. This artifact, however, seemed to be for use in the afterlife, placed in a tomb between A.D. 250 and 600.

Before the discovery of the figurine remnant, researchers didn't think the ballgame had infiltrated these areas of Mexico inhabited by the Mixtec people during that time. "While there has been some limited evidence about the participation of the nearby Valley of Oaxaca [in southern Mexico] in the ballgame, the Mixteca has largely been written off in terms of involvement in the origins of complex society in ancient Mexico," Blomster said.

"This discovery re-emphasizes how the ancient Mixtecs were active participants in larger Mesoamerican phenomenon," he said.

The research is detailed in the May 7 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mayan Astronomical Tables Stretch 7,000 Years Into the Future

Article from BBC News
10 May 2012 Last updated at 14:02 ET

Mayan art and calendar at Xultun stun archaeologists

Archaeologists working at the Xultun ruins of the Mayan civilisation have reported striking finds, including the oldest-known Mayan astronomical tables.

The site, in Guatemala, includes the first known instance of Mayan art painted on the walls of a dwelling.

A report in Science says it dates from the early 9th Century, pre-dating other Mayan calendars by centuries.  Such calendars rose to prominence recently amid claims they predicted the end of the world in 2012.

The Mayan civilisation occupied Central America from about 2000BC until its decline and assimilation following the colonisation by the Spanish from the 15th Century onwards. It still holds fascination, with many early Mayan sites still hidden or uncatalogued.

The ruins at Xultun were first discovered in 1912 and mapping efforts in the 1920s and 1970s laid out much of the site's structure.

Archaeologists have catalogued the site's features, including a 35m-tall pyramid, but thousands of structures on the 30 sq km site remain unexplored.

In 2005, William Saturno, then at the University of New Hampshire, discovered the oldest-known Mayan murals at a site just a few kilometres away called San Bartolo.

In 2010, one of Dr Saturno's students was following the tracks of more recent looters at Xultun when he discovered the vegetation-covered structure that has now been excavated.

When Mayans renovated an old structure, they typically collapsed its roof and built on top of the rubble. But for some reason, the new Xultun find had been filled in through its doorway, with the roof left intact.

Dr Saturno, who is now based at Boston University, explained that despite it being under just a metre of soil today, that served to preserve the site after more than a millennium of rainy seasons, insect traffic and encroaching plant and tree roots.

"We found that three of the room's four walls were well preserved and that the ceilings were also in good shape in terms of the paintings on them, so we got an awful lot more than we bargained for," he said.

'Different mindset'

The excavation was carried out using grants from the National Geographic Society, which has prepared a high-resolution photographic tour of the room.  It measures about 2m on each side with a 3m, vaulted ceiling, and is dominated by a stone bench, suggesting the room was a meeting place.

The east wall features a number of seated figures, nearly life-sized, dressed in black and wearing elaborate headdresses similar to a bishop's mitre.

They all look toward the north wall, on which a more elaborately dressed figure in orange holds a stylus in a hand outstretched toward a figure that Dr Saturno believes represented the king of Xultun.

"The seated figures that we see around them are involved in some narrative in which the king is being portrayed impersonating a Mayan deity and these guys are in attendance at that impersonation," Dr Saturno explained.

The relevance of the figure with the stylus seems clear: "We think this room was used as a writing room, that it's part of a complex associated with the work being done by Maya scribes."

Perhaps most intriguing among the finds were several finds related to astronomical tables, including four long numbers on the east wall that represent a cycle lasting up to 2.5 million days.

The east wall is mostly covered by tabulations of black symbols or "glyphs" that map out various astronomical cycles: that of Mars and Venus and the lunar eclipses.

The astronomical cycles and corrections were used to predict lunar eclipses far into the future

The wall also features red marks that appear to be notes and corrections to the calculations; Dr. Saturno said that the scribes "seem to be using it like a blackboard".

The Xultun find is the first place that all of the cycles have been found tied mathematically together in one place, representing a calendar that stretches more than 7,000 years into the future.

The Mayan numbering system for dates is a complex one in base-18 and base-20 numbers that, in modern-day terms, would "turn over" at the end of 2012.

But Dr Saturno points out that the new finds serve to further undermine the fallacy that this is tantamount to a prediction of the end of the world.

"The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this," he said.  "We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset."

New Language Discovered in Middile East - in Women's Names

Article from the independent.co.uk

Ancient language discovered on clay tablets found amid ruins of 2800 year old Middle Eastern palace
Friday May 11, 2012

Archaeologists have discovered evidence for a previously unknown ancient language – buried in the ruins of a 2800 year old Middle Eastern palace.

The discovery is important because it may help reveal the ethnic and cultural origins of some of history’s first ‘barbarians’ – mountain tribes which had, in previous millennia, preyed on the world’s first great civilizations, the cultures of early Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq.

Evidence of the long-lost language - probably spoken by a hitherto unknown people from the Zagros Mountains of western Iran – was found by a Cambridge University archaeologist as he deciphered an ancient clay writing tablet unearthed by an international archaeological team excavating an Assyrian imperial governors’ palace in the ancient city of Tushan, south-east Turkey.

The tablet revealed the names of 60 women – probably prisoners-of-war or victims of an Assyrian forced population transfer programme. But when the Cambridge archaeologist – Dr. John MacGinnis - began to examine the names in detail, he realized that 45 of them bore no resemblance to any of the thousands of ancient Middle Eastern names already known to scholars.

Because ancient Middle Eastern names are normally composites, made-up, in full or abbreviated form, of ordinary words in the relevant local lexicon, the unique nature of the tablet’s 45 mystery names is seen by scholars as evidence of a previously unknown language.

The clay tablet text originally formed part of the palace’s archive – used by local Assyrian imperial officials to record their administrative, political and economic decisions and actions.

The 60 women (including the 45 with evidence of the previously unattested language) were almost certainly being deployed by the palace authorities for some economic purpose (potentially a female-associated craft activity like weaving). Indeed the text mentions that some of them were being allocated to specific local villages.

Typical names, borne by the women – the evidence for the lost language – include Ushimanay, Alagahnia, Irsakinna and Bisoonoomay.

Now archaeologists and linguistics experts are set to analyse the mystery names in even greater details to try to discover whether the letter-order or letter frequency shows any similarities to previously attested ancient tongues to which this mystery language could be related.

The 45 women are thought to come from somewhere in the central or northern Zagros Mountains – because that is the only area in which the Assyrians were militarily active at the relevant time where the ancient languages are still largely unknown.

It’s likely that the women were compulsorily moved from their Zagros Mountains homeland and assigned to work near Tushan sometime in the second half of the 8th century BC – probably as a result of conquests carried out in the Zagros by the Assyrian kings Tiglath Pilasser III or Sargon.

The excavation of the palace at Tushan is being carried out by a German archaeological team directed by Dr. Dirk Wicke of Mainz University as part of an archaeological investigation into the ancient Assyrian city led by Professor Timothy Matney of the University of Akron in Ohio. Full details about the discovery of the mystery names are published in the current issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies .

David Keys is the Archaeology Correspondent for The Independent

Genetic Drift Does Not Equal "Evolution"

Here's an example.  Article from The New York Times:

Observatory

Another Genetic Quirk of the Solomon Islands: Blond Hair

By Sindya N. Bhandoo
Published: May 3, 2012

In the Solomon Islands, about 10 percent of the dark-skinned indigenous people have strikingly blond hair. Some islanders theorize that the coloring could be a result of excess sun exposure, or a diet rich in fish. [Aren't they all exposed more or less to the same level of sun exposure?  And don't they all have more or less the same diet?] Another explanation is that the blondness was inherited from distant ancestors — European traders and explorers who came to the islands. [A possible and plausible explanation, but now, thanks to DNA, we know the truth of the matter.]

But that’s not the case, researchers now report. The gene variant responsible for blond hair in the islanders is distinctly different from the gene that causes blond hair in Europeans.

“For me it breaks down any kind of simple notions you might have about race,” said Carlos Bustamante, a geneticist at Stanford University. “Humans are beautifully diverse, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Dr. Bustamante and his colleagues published their findings in the current issue of the journal Science. The researcher analyzed saliva samples from more than 1,000 islanders, looking closely at a subset of the samples — from 43 blond and 42 dark-haired islanders.

They were soon able to identify the single gene responsible for the variance in hair color. Called TYRP1, the gene is known to influence pigmentation in humans. The researchers also found that the variant of TYRP1 that causes blond hair in Solomon Islanders is entirely absent in the genomes of Europeans.

“Here you go into an unstudied population with a small sample size and you can really find some cool things,” Dr. Bustamante said. “So what about other places, like what about light pigmentation in parts of Africa? How do we not know the genetic basis of skin and hair pigmentations across the globe?”

He and his team hope to raise more money to further analyze the Solomon Islands data.

2012 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

Results R3:

Table	White	Score	Rating	Black	Score	Rating	Result
1	WIM Zenyuk, Iryna	1.5	2224	WGM Abrahamyan, Tatev	1.5	2329	1-0
2	IM Krush, Irina	1.5	2457	WIM Ni, Viktorija	0.5	2228	1-0
3	IM Goletiani, Rusudan	1.0	2333	FM Melekhina, Alisa	1.0	2242	1-0
4	IM Zatonskih, Anna	2.0	2510	WGM Foisor, Sabina-Francesca	1.0	2364	½-½
5	WFM Kats, Alena	0.0	2137	WGM Baginskaite, Camilla	0.0	2358	1-0

Standings after R3:

Rank	Name	Score	M/F	Rating	TPR	W-We	1	2	3
1	IM Zatonskih, Anna	2.5	F	2510	2567	+0.21	1	1	½
2	IM Krush, Irina	2.5	F	2457	2551	+0.31	1	½	1
3	WIM Zenyuk, Iryna	2.5	F	2224	2539	+1.18	½	1	1
4	IM Goletiani, Rusudan	2.0	F	2333	2446	+0.45	1	0	1
5	WGM Foisor, Sabina-Francesca	1.5	F	2364	2433	+0.29	0	1	½
6	WGM Abrahamyan, Tatev	1.5	F	2329	2196	-0.53	½	1	0
7	FM Melekhina, Alisa	1.0	F	2242	2213	-0.14	½	½	0
8	WFM Kats, Alena	1.0	F	2137	2266	+0.42	0	0	1
9	WIM Ni, Viktorija	0.5	F	2228	2064	-0.58	½	0	0
10	WGM Baginskaite, Camilla	0.0	F	2358	1592	-1.61	0	0	0

What is going on with Baginskaite? She lost today to a player rated 200 points below her.  Is Baginskaite ill?  Anna Zatonskih had no business drawing her game today against Foisor.  Don't get complacent.  Way too early to be doing that!  Melekhina continues her slide.  It's probably just a matter of time before quits pro chess altogether. 

Pairings for R4:

Table	White	Score	Rating	Black	Score	Rating	Result
1	WGM Abrahamyan, Tatev	1.5	2329	WGM Baginskaite, Camilla	0.0	2358
2	WGM Foisor, Sabina-Francesca	1.5	2364	WFM Kats, Alena	1.0	2137
3	FM Melekhina, Alisa	1.0	2242	IM Zatonskih, Anna	2.5	2510
4	WIM Ni, Viktorija	0.5	2228	IM Goletiani, Rusudan	2.0	2333
5	WIM Zenyuk, Iryna	2.5	2224	IM Krush, Irina	2.5	2457

Rare Engraving Discovered in Rare Book Room - Not a Joke!

From The New York Times

Stumbling Across a Rarity, Even for the Rare Book Room By DAN BARRY

PROVIDENCE, R.I.
Published: May 3, 2012

Day after day, a tall, shy woman weaves her way unnoticed through the earnest and learned campus swirl of Brown University. She enters the hush of a library, then promptly vanishes from sight.

Down goes Marie Malchodi, 48, who attended but never graduated from Brown, down to the library’s subterranean warrens, where she works as a “book conservation technician.” She sweeps her long dark hair into a bun, pierces it with a paint brush and starts her day, caring for ancient books and ephemera that are sensitive to the touch.

A few weeks ago, Ms. Malchodi opened yet another leather-bound book, one of more than 300,000 rare volumes in the hold of the John Hay Library. With surgical precision, she turned the pages of a medical text once owned by Solomon Drowne, Class of ’73 (1773, that is). And there, in the back, she found a piece of paper depicting the baptism of Jesus. It was signed:

“P. Revere Sculp”

Ye gods! Had Marie Malchodi, of Cranston, R.I., book conservation technician, just made contact with Paul Revere, of Boston, silversmith? Revere, who knew of the fiery need to share vital information, would have appreciated Ms. Malchodi’s galloping reaction, which was:

“I have to show this to somebody.”

Ms. Malchodi is more spiritually attuned to books than her Orwellian job title might suggest. She came to Brown as an undergraduate in the early 1980s, but life wound up demanding her study. Soon she was working in a College Hill bookstore rather than reading in a college library, and making cabinets rather than writing papers about her beloved Romantics.

One day she saw an advertisement for a bookbinding and conservation job at the university. She has been here ever since — though mostly underground — inspecting old books, submitting to their long-ago stories and vanishing to where now is then and then is now.

In the ensuing 20 years, gray has come to her hair and a husband and twin girls have come to her life, yet wasn’t it all just yesterday? When Wordsworth thrilled her heart? When Wordsworth lived?

A year ago, Ms. Malchodi was assigned to check the condition of thousands of rare books about to be shipped to an off-campus annex. In a basement room made smaller and louder by the air ducts looming from the ceiling, she tended to her task, sitting on a stool set beside a collection of dusty, rolled-up maps, all needing to be vacuumed, and all with titles like “Madeira and Mamore Railway Plan of the Rio Madeira at San Antonio.”

The job sometimes took longer than necessary because of that tendency of hers to get lost in things: illustrations in children’s books, brittle newspaper clippings and, especially, handwritten notes from the long dead. She feels the rush of intimacy as the distance in time collapses.

Now here, on a small cart, were 177 more books, all from the collection of Drowne, a doctor and polymath who distinguished himself during the American Revolution. “Watts’s Logick.” “Kalm’s Travels.” “Plague and Yellow Fever.”

Next up: an 1811 edition of “The Modern Practice of Physic,” by Dr. Robert Thomas, a champion of purgatives as a cure for disease. Ms. Malchodi examined the red leather cover, the gold tooling on the spine. Then she pulled out that piece of paper.

The engraving, titled “Buried With Him By Baptism,” shows John the Baptist raising Jesus from the River Jordan under a blazing sun, while people in vaguely Colonial attire watch from shore. And in the lower right corner appears the name of a Revolutionary icon.

Who knows how long this papery wisp lay hidden in the musty stacks at the century-old Hay Library? In the section reserved for the history of science. Near a microscope and a skull. Across from a copy of Darwin’s monograph on the “subclass Cirripedia” (barnacles, that is).

What Ms. Malchodi knew was that she had to sound the alarm. With some hesitancy — “because I don’t want to bother her” — she approached the raised desk of Rachel Lapkin, a library materials conservator who was immersed in stabilizing the leather of an 18th-century Chinese dictionary.

 Ms. Lapkin, who actually enjoys her colleague’s enthusiasm, studied the print and found it fascinating, even bizarre. “I think we should look into that,” she said.

The basement brain trust decided that the print must be shown to Richard Noble, the rare books cataloger, whose office takes some doing to reach. So, with the discovery safely inside Dr. Thomas’s celebration of purgatives, Ms. Malchodi began her journey through an underground labyrinth, carrying the volume as a deacon might carry the Bible.

Out of her basement work space and past some lockers. Past discarded wooden catalog cabinets. Down some steps to the subbasement. Past some metal bookshelves and a “Do Not Remove” sign. Down more steps and through the tunnel that crosses beneath College Street. Up to Mr. Noble’s office, in Cataloging and Acquisitions. Carefully carrying that Revere — if it was a Revere.

And Mr. Noble had stepped away for lunch.

An hour or so later, Ms. Malchodi returned. “She said, ‘I found this,’ and presented it to me with a big smile,” Mr. Noble recalled. “She let me discover what was inside. She let me have that much fun.”

Mr. Noble’s first reaction was to say that the engraving was just crude enough to be a Revere. Then he held the engraving up to the light as a test. It had the faintly ribbed look of paper produced from the slurry pulp made of rags, signaling that it was most likely handmade paper from the 18th century.

Yes. A Revere.

This could very well mean that the patriot — who had nurtured the seeds of rebellion with his engraving of the Boston Massacre of 1770 — had cut the scene into a flat copper plate; filled the grooves with ink, perhaps by pressing it in with the palm of his hand; wiped away the excess with circular sweeps of a small cloth; and used a hand-operated press to produce the engraving.

“That was a nice moment,” Mr. Noble said.

It turned out that Ms. Malchodi had uncovered only the fifth known copy of this particular engraving, which is “a bit of a curiosity in Revere’s work,” according to Lauren Hewes, the curator of graphic arts at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass. She said that while Revere carefully documented his prosperous and prolific career as an artisan, he made no mention of this piece, and so the exact date of the engraving is unclear.

“It sits outside of what we think of when we think of Paul Revere,” she said. “It wasn’t all patriotic topics — he did a lot more than that.”

How the engraving came to be in the possession of Solomon Drowne is still being researched; his descendants have some theories. And its monetary worth is probably only a few thousand dollars, but that is hardly what matters.

“It’s really a great moment,” Ms. Hewes said. “That moment of discovery.”

Ms. Malchodi made her discovery on a Thursday. On that Friday, she was back at work beneath the verdant Brown campus. Inspecting old books, vacuuming old maps, opening herself to time’s collapse.

Domestication of the Horse Solved! Mares Were "Loose"...

From Sciencedaily.com
Mystery of the Domestication of the Horse Solved: Competing Theories Reconciled

ScienceDaily (May 7, 2012) — New research indicates that domestic horses originated in the steppes of modern-day Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, mixing with local wild stocks as they spread throughout Europe and Asia.

The research was published 07 May, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For several decades scientists puzzled over the origin of domesticated horses. Based on archaeological evidence, it had long been thought that horse domestication originated in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe (Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan); however, a single origin in a geographically restricted area appeared at odds with the large number of female lineages in the domestic horse gene pool, commonly thought to reflect multiple domestication "events" across a wide geographic area.

In order to solve the perplexing history of the domestic horse, scientists from the University of Cambridge used a genetic database of more than 300 horses sampled from across the Eurasian Steppe to run a number of different modelling scenarios.

Their research shows that the extinct wild ancestor of domestic horses, Equus ferus, expanded out of East Asia approximately 160,000 years ago. They were also able to demonstrate that Equus ferus was domesticated in the western Eurasian Steppe, and that herds were repeatedly restocked with wild horses as they spread across Eurasia.

Dr Vera Warmuth, from the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology, said: "Our research clearly shows that the original founder population of domestic horses was established in the western Eurasian Steppe, an area where the earliest archaeological evidence for domesticated horses has been found. The spread of horse domestication differed from that of many other domestic animal species, in that spreading herds were augmented with local wild horses on an unprecedented scale. If these restocking events involved mainly wild mares, we can explain the large number of female lineages in the domestic horse gene pool without having to invoke multiple domestication origins."

The researchers provide the first genetic evidence for a geographically restricted domestication origin in the Eurasian Steppe, as suggested by archaeology, and show that the tremendous female diversity is the result of later introductions of local wild mares into domestic herds, thus reconciling evidence which had previously given rise to conflicting scenarios.

The research was funded by the BBSRC, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Leverhulme Trust.

Enigmatic Burials in Cambodian Mountains

A press release from the University of Otago, New Zealand
May 8, 2012:

New light on enigmatic burial rituals in Cambodian mountains

First radiocarbon dates for unusual jar and log coffin interments on exposed ledges

Researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand working in remote Cambodian mountains are shedding new light on the lost history of an unidentified people by studying their enigmatic burial rituals.

The Otago researchers have now provided the first radiocarbon dates for unusual jar and log coffin interments on exposed ledges high in southern Cambodia's rugged Cardamom Mountains. Since 2003, they have been working to geo-locate and survey 10 interment sites and to date these using samples of coffin wood, tooth enamel and bone.

With colleagues from Cambodia, Australia, USA and Scotland, Drs Nancy Beavan and Sian Halcrow of the Department of Anatomy have just published the dating of four sites in the journal Radiocarbon. These reveal that the mysterious funerary rituals, which are unlike any other recorded in Cambodia, were practiced from at least 1395AD to 1650AD.

Dr Beavan, who is currently in Cambodia, says that this period coincides with the decline and fall of the powerful Kingdom of Angkor, which was seated in the lowlands.

"Funeral practices in the Angkor Kingdom and its successors involved cremation rather than anything remotely like those found at sites we are studying. This stark difference suggests that, in cultural terms, these unidentified mountain dwellers were a 'world apart' from their lowland contemporaries."

To date, the bulk of research that makes up what is known about cultural history of the Khmer regions has focused on the lowlands, she says.

"Through our work we hope to broaden the understanding of this history beyond the legacies of the great Khmer Kingdom alone to those who lived within its margins," she says.

Dr Sian Halcrow says that archaeological findings from another of the 10 sites, which she and Dr Beavan are currently preparing for publication, will offer important new clues about who these mysterious people were, their culture, trade connections and biological adaptation to the environment.

Given the rugged and remote locations of the sites, the fieldwork has not been without its challenges, Dr Beavan says.

"In 2010 one of our campsites was invaded by a wild elephant in the dead of night and it had to be driven off by our camp crew banging on cooking pots. It turns out we had pitched camp between two tempting stands of wild banana. We packed up and headed off soon after that."

2012 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

Results R2:

Table	White	Score	Rating	Black	Score	Rating	Result
1	WGM Abrahamyan, Tatev	0.5	2329	WFM Kats, Alena	0.0	2137	1-0
2	WGM Baginskaite, Camilla	0.0	2358	IM Zatonskih, Anna	1.0	2510	0-1
3	WGM Foisor, Sabina-Francesca	0.0	2364	IM Goletiani, Rusudan	1.0	2333	1-0
4	FM Melekhina, Alisa	0.5	2242	IM Krush, Irina	1.0	2457	½-½
5	WIM Ni, Viktorija	0.5	2228	WIM Zenyuk, Iryna	0.5	2224	0-1

Standings after R2:

Rank	Name	Score	M/F	Rating	TPR	W-We	1	2
1	IM Zatonskih, Anna	2.0	F	2510	2994	+0.41	1	1
2	IM Krush, Irina	1.5	F	2457	2496	+0.10	1	½
3	WGM Abrahamyan, Tatev	1.5	F	2329	2376	+0.11	½	1
4	WIM Zenyuk, Iryna	1.5	F	2224	2428	+0.54	½	1
5	WGM Foisor, Sabina-Francesca	1.0	F	2364	2395	+0.09	0	1
6	IM Goletiani, Rusudan	1.0	F	2333	2361	+0.07	1	0
7	FM Melekhina, Alisa	1.0	F	2242	2341	+0.24	½	½
8	WIM Ni, Viktorija	0.5	F	2228	2084	-0.37	½	0
9	WGM Baginskaite, Camilla	0.0	F	2358	1687	-0.83	0	0
10	WFM Kats, Alena	0.0	F	2137	1673	-0.36	0	0

Pairings for R3:

Table	White	Score	Rating	Black	Score	Rating	Result
1	WIM Zenyuk, Iryna	1.5	2224	WGM Abrahamyan, Tatev	1.5	2329
2	IM Krush, Irina	1.5	2457	WIM Ni, Viktorija	0.5	2228
3	IM Goletiani, Rusudan	1.0	2333	FM Melekhina, Alisa	1.0	2242
4	IM Zatonskih, Anna	2.0	2510	WGM Foisor, Sabina-Francesca	1.0	2364
5	WFM Kats, Alena	0.0	2137	WGM Baginskaite, Camilla	0.0	2358

The Tarim Basin Reveals Another Buddhist Temple

From xinhuanet.com

China Exclusive: Ancient Buddhist temple found in Taklimakan Desert

English.news.cn 2012-05-07 17:57:50

KERIYA, Xinjiang, May 7 (Xinhua) -- The ruins of a Buddhist temple dating back 1,500 years ago have been discovered in China's largest desert, offering valuable research material for historians studying Buddhism's spread from India to China.

The temple's main hall, with a rare structure based around three square-shaped corridors and a huge Buddha statue, has been uncovered after two months of hard work in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Dr. Wu Xinhua, the leading archaeologist of the excavation project, said Monday.

"The hall is the largest of its kind found in the Taklimakan Desert since the first archaeologist came to work in the area in the 20th century," said Wu, also head of the Xinjiang archeological team of the Chinese Academy of Social Science.

The ruins are located in the south of the Taklimakan Desert, in the Tarim Basin, known as the Damago Oasis in the ancient kingdom of Khotan, a Buddhist civilization believed to date back to the 3rd century BC.

Temple halls with square-shaped corridors stemmed from early Buddhist architecture in India, and gradually disappeared after the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420AD-589AD), when Buddhist architecture in China began to pick up its own characteristics, according to Xiao Huaiyan, a member of the excavation team and a former researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Judging from the layout of the ruins, and the artifacts uncovered at the site, Wu and his colleagues believe the temple dates back to the Southern and Northern Dynasties.

It is so far the best Buddhist site for scholars to study how the religion arrived in China from India, and its early development in the country, said Wu.

Judging from the size of the pedestal on which it would have rested, the missing Buddha statue should be at least three meters tall, reaching the size limits of the hall when its roof was intact, he estimates.

The innermost corridor extends six meters from both south to north and from east to west, the second corridor is 10 meters long and 10 meters wide, while the hall's wall surrounds an area of 256 square meters.

Still visible on corridor walls are mural paintings of items including the Buddha's feet, Buddhists and auspicious animals. They are painted in a Greco-Buddhist artistic style, which was seldom seen after the 6th century.

Ruins of several residential structures were found to the southwest of the main hall, along with some pottery kilns and ancient coins.

There is still a scripture hall, a stupa and residential houses for Buddhists to be uncovered, Wu added.

The southern end of the ancient Silk Road, a major historical trade route, went across the 337,000-square-km Taklimakan Desert, and a wide variety of cultural heritage items have been buried in what is now known as the "sea of death."

In 1901, British explorer Marc Aurel Stein trekked far out in the desert and into the ruins of Niya, an ancient Pompeii-like city with homes, Buddhist stupas, temples, pottery kilns, orchards, tombs, waterways and dams.

Since then, more than 10 Buddhist sites have been discovered by archaeologists from China and abroad in the Damago Oasis.

Lubomir Kavalek: Tales of Women in Chess

A classic article reviewing some of the most well-known female chessplayers in the world, past and present.  At the very end of the article some games are featured that allow you to click and play through.

Women in Chess: A Few Tales    
Posted: 05/06/2012 5:27 pm

One of the games Kavalek featured is one from the 2004 Olympiad, when GM Susan Polgar led the U.S. Women's Team to a Silver Medal, the first ever medal earned by a U.S. Women's Team.  Polgar also earned, in addition, two individual Gold Medals and an individual Silver Medal for her splendid overall performance. 

This photo is from a comprehensive report on Polgar's 2004 Olympiad performance at Chessbase. 

GM Susan Polgar, left (in cream colored outfit), GM Maia Chiburdanidze, right
(in one of her famous chapeaus), the Game in R6

In this game, Polgar played against another Women's World Chess Champion, GM Maia Chiburdanidze:

Champions come and go and we wish them well. But before they say the final goodbye, we demand another masterpiece. At the 2004 olympiad in Calvia, Spain, Zsuzsa Polgar and Maya Chiburdanidze obliged. Their tactical skills did not diminish with age and they gave us a memorable performance. And again, the square f7 played a major role in Zsuzsa's combination.

Polgar,Zsuzsa - Chiburdanidze,Maya
36th Olympiad w Calvia ESP (6), 20.10.2004

1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 0-0 5.a3 Bxc3 6.Qxc3 c5 7.b4 b6 8.Bb2 d6 9.g4!
(A vintage Polgar! Where others look to increase a small positional advantage, the Polgar sisters go after the king.)

9...Bb7 10.g5 Nh5 11.Rg1 e5 12.Bh3 Nf4 13.Bf5

(Provoking the next mistake.)
13...g6?

(The weakening of the long diagonal allows a beautiful combination. The queen on c3, supported by the bishop on b2, can now "see" as far as the square h8. Developing the knight 13...Nc6 gives black a good game.)

14.Nxe5! Nxe2

(A good idea, but the wrong move-order. Black should have played: 14...Qe7 15.Be4 dxe5 (15...Bxe4 16.Nc6 Nd3+ 17.Kf1+-) 16.Bxb7 and only now 16...Nxe2! 17.Kxe2 Qxb7 18.Qxe5 f6 19.Qe6+ Rf7 20.gxf6 and although white is clearly better, black can still fight.;
After 14...dxe5? 15.Qxe5 f6 16.Qxf4 wins.)

15.Nxf7!!

(Creating mating threats. Wrong would be 15.Kxe2 dxe5 16.Qxe5? Re8.)

15...Nxc3

(After 15...Kxf7 16.Qg7+ Ke8 17.Bf6 white wins; and on 15...Rxf7 16.Qh8 mates.)

16.Nh6+ Kg7 17.Bxc3+ Rf6 18.Bxf6+ Qxf6 19.gxf6+ Kxh6 20.Be6?!

(This wins slowly. Interestingly, Polgar who was drilled in mating finales, missed to swing her rook from a1 to h3, for example: 20.Rb1! gxf5 [20...Bf3 21.Rb3 Bh5 22.Be4 wins; 20...Nc6 21.Rb3 and the rook goes to mate on h3; 20...Nd7 21.Bxd7 wins.] 21.Rb3 and black gets mated.)

20...Nc6 21.Bd5 (The pin.) 21...Rf8 22.f7 Nd8 23.Bxb7 Nxb7 24.Rg3 Rxf7 25.Re3 (The rook made it to the open file.) 25...Nd8 26.b5 (Taking away the square c6.) 26...Rf4 27.d3 d5 28.Re7! (The rook on the 7th rank limits the knight.) 28...dxc4 29.dxc4 Nf7 (After 29...Rxc4 30.Rd1 Rd4 31.Rxd4 cxd4 32.Rxa7 the b6-pawn falls shortly.) 30.Rd1 Ng5 31.Rxa7 Rxc4 32.Ra6 Rc2 33.Rxb6 c4 34.a4 Ra2 35.Ra6 Nf3+ 36.Kf1 Nd2+ 37.Rxd2! (Simplifying into a clearly won rook endgame.) 37...Rxd2 38.Rc6 Rc2 39.b6 Black resigned.

2012 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

It's that time again. So happy to see GM Alex Lenderman and GM Ray Robson in the U.S. Chess Championship.  I like both players very much and would like for them to do very well.

My prediction for the Women's Championship:  Zatonskih will retain her title.  Yeah, I'm probably hanging myself right now making such a prediction on the basis of one game.  I just don't think any of the other players can out-play her OTB, not even Krush.  Let's see how my prowess as a prognosticator measures up!

You can follow the action and see games in PGN, etc. etc. at uschesschamps.com. 

Standings after R1:

Rank	Name	Score	M/F	Rating	TPR	W-We	1
1	IM Zatonskih, Anna	1.0	F	2510	2895	+0.11	1
2	IM Krush, Irina	1.0	F	2457	3099	+0.37	1
3	IM Goletiani, Rusudan	1.0	F	2333	3093	+0.53	1
4	WGM Abrahamyan, Tatev	0.5	F	2329	2228	-0.14	½
5	FM Melekhina, Alisa	0.5	F	2242	2224	-0.03	½
6	WIM Ni, Viktorija	0.5	F	2228	2329	+0.14	½
7	WIM Zenyuk, Iryna	0.5	F	2224	2242	+0.03	½
8	WGM Foisor, Sabina-Francesca	0.0	F	2364	1722	-0.37	0
9	WGM Baginskaite, Camilla	0.0	F	2358	1598	-0.53	0
10	WFM Kats, Alena	0.0	F	2137	1752	-0.11	0

R1 Pairings:

Table	White	Score	Rating	Black	Score	Rating	Result
1	WIM Ni, Viktorija	0.0	2228	WGM Abrahamyan, Tatev	0.0	2329	½-½
2	WIM Zenyuk, Iryna	0.0	2224	FM Melekhina, Alisa	0.0	2242	½-½
3	IM Krush, Irina	0.0	2457	WGM Foisor, Sabina-Francesca	0.0	2364	1-0
4	IM Goletiani, Rusudan	0.0	2333	WGM Baginskaite, Camilla	0.0	2358	1-0
5	IM Zatonskih, Anna	0.0	2510	WFM Kats, Alena	0.0	2137	1-0

R2 Pairings:

Table	White	Score	Rating	Black	Score	Rating	Result
1	WGM Abrahamyan, Tatev	0.5	2329	WFM Kats, Alena	0.0	2137
2	WGM Baginskaite, Camilla	0.0	2358	IM Zatonskih, Anna	1.0	2510
3	WGM Foisor, Sabina-Francesca	0.0	2364	IM Goletiani, Rusudan	1.0	2333
4	FM Melekhina, Alisa	0.5	2242	IM Krush, Irina	1.0	2457
5	WIM Ni, Viktorija	0.5	2228	WIM Zenyuk, Iryna	0.5	2224

Rare Han Dynasty Exhibit at Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge)

This is something I would love to see.  Sigh.  Can't afford a trip to England this year.  Only the first several paragraphs are included here.  some fascinating history is given in the later paragraphs (not copied here) about the Kingdom of Nanyue (modern-day Guangzhou Province) whose capital then is modern-day Canton now and was the terminus/beginning of the maritime Silk Road trade routes. 

University of Cambridge/Research News
The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China
May 5, 2012

In the first exhibition of its kind, the Fitzwilliam Museum will relate the story of the quest for immortality and struggle for imperial legitimacy in ancient China’s Han Dynasty.

The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China (May 5-November 11) will feature over 350 treasures in jade, gold, silver, bronze and ceramics in the largest and most important exhibition of ancient royal treasures ever to travel outside China.

The Han Dynasty established the basis for unified rule of China up to the present day. To maintain this hard-won empire the Han emperors had to engage in a constant struggle for power and legitimacy, with contests that took place on symbolic battlefields as much as on real ones. While written accounts provide an outline of these events, it is through the stunning archaeological discoveries of recent decades that the full drama and spectacle of this critical episode in Chinese history has been brought to life.

Dr Timothy Potts, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, commented: “It is impossible to overstate the importance of the Han Dynasty in the formation of a Chinese national culture and identity. At the time of the ancient Romans, the Han emperors were the first to unify a large part of the regions we now know as China under a sustained empire, which they ruled virtually unchallenged for 400 years.

“The Han Dynasty gave its name to the Chinese language, its script and the vast majority of the Chinese people. It was arguably the defining period of China’s history and the point of genesis for the China of today.

“The spectacular objects in this exhibition bring to Cambridge the finest treasures from the tombs of the Han royal family, the superb goldwork, jades and other exquisitely crafted offerings the kings chose to be buried with on their journey to the afterlife. For their artistry, refinement and pure beauty they rival anything from the ancient world.”

This pioneering exhibition will compare the spectacular tombs of two rival power factions: the Han imperial family in the northern ‘cradle’ of Chinese history, and the Kingdom of Nanyue in the south, whose capital in modern-day Guangzhou formed the gateway to the rich trade routes of the China Sea and Indian Ocean.

Objects from these tombs have never before been displayed together as a single exhibition. Through the exhibition it is revealed how, in both life and in death, Empire and Kingdom played a diplomatic game of cat and mouse, one to assert its supremacy, the other to preserve its autonomy.

Virtual Exhibition. 

You Know It's a Slow News Day When...

...the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a SPORTS story on the recently enacted "dress code" of the European Chess Union.  OHMYGODDESS, what is this world coming to?

SPORTS
By Norman Chad, the Couch Slouch (I kid you not, that's what it says)
Chess dress code puts checkmate on cleavage
May 6, 2012

As many of you surely know by now, the European Chess Union has established dress-code rules for chess players.

(OK, some of you don't know - you don't follow chess and you don't think it's a sport. Well, friends, at a minimum, it's "mental sport." And, as far as I'm concerned, Bobby Fischer was every bit the athlete that Michael Jordan was; both were hyper-competitive and ruthless in their pursuits, plus Fischer was a better trash talker.)

Before we detail the dress code - apparently, the bust line has become a problem - as a former non-grandmaster, let me emphatically state my opinion in this sartorial area:

Chess needs a dress code like Switzerland needs a navy. [It seems Mr. Couch Slouch is not familiar with chessplayer Maria Manakova, who has been known to "bare it all" but not, as far as I know, at a tournament -- while playing OTB that is...]

Poker needs a dress code. At the moment, all the twentysomething savants favor shades, baseball caps and hoodies, usually adorned in black. Card rooms these days look like funeral homes, with chips.

Golf needs a dress code. At the Masters, Ian Poulter was wearing plaid pants and yellow shoes; it looked as if Walt Disney had thrown up on him. Who dresses these guys, Grace Jones?

Tennis needs a dress code. When I turn on the TV and see Serena Williams, I'm not sure if I'm watching the French Open or "Project Runway."

Bowling? Actually, those fellas look fine to me.

(Granted, I'm the last guy in the world who knows anything about fashion. At least I have an excuse: I dress in the dark and, for personal safety, I do not have any mirrors in my home.)

I last played serious chess in college; I appeared to be behind from the beginning of every match. What chance did I have, anyway? Those jokers were all perfecting Moscow Variations of their Sicilian Defense while, frankly, I was only in the sport for the ladies.

Nowadays, it seems, the ladies are the problem.

The new dress code covers both sexes, but women appear to the object of the regulators' desires.
Stunningly, plunging necklines are out - only two buttons may be opened on women's blouses.

Which raises the question: Could a comely female distract a weak-minded male with some strategic cleavage? I guess so. Heck, most men get distracted by the smell of bacon.

But Sava Stoisavljevic, general secretary of the European Chess Union, told the German website ChessBase that the new rules had nothing to do with protecting men from themselves; rather, they resulted from spectator comments on female competitors' outfits.

She also said that limits on short skirts might be forthcoming.  (If these rules had been effect in the early 1980s, my first marriage never happens.)

Under the new order, sunglasses and neckties are allowed, hats and jeans with holes are not. High heels are in, flip flops are out.

And the ECU encourages sports coats for men, which would be fine by me. I have a closetful of blazers; in fact, I've slept in a Harris Tweed for years.

In short, Stoisavljevic wants the game to maintain its modesty.  (This likely will thwart Spike TV's upcoming plans for "Strip Chess.")

The ECU rules require "a pulled-together, harmonious, complete look with colors, fabrics, shoes and accessories, for both men and women." What, suddenly this is Goldman Sachs? (Actually, that might be a poor reference - I'm not sure there are any women at Goldman Sachs.)

Stoisavljevic says these rules will restore a sense of decorum; to be honest, I didn't think chess was being overrun by Carrot Top and Lady Gaga.

Anyhow, players not properly attired will get a verbal warning, then a second written warning. After this, a breach in the dress code will send you into the park for your next match.

So far, the chess community has fallen in line; no one's shown up looking like a Chippendale.

Me? I've gravitated back to my sporting roots: Checkers! We wear what we want.

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

At the time the Chessbase article (link above) was written in 2004, the ECU dress code was not in effect.  I doubht there was such a thing in effect in 1936, either, when this photograph of two female chess legends was taken:

That's Sonja Graf on the left, a German national who played in Europe for many years, sat out WWII in Argentina when that war broke out while she and many other players were in Argentina for a chess olympiad, and after she married and moved to the United States, a two-time U.S. Women's champion.  The other woman is Vera Menchik, the best female chess player in history until Judit Polgar came along.  Menchik lived in England and played for that country until her death in London during a bombing raid in WWII. 

Check out their outfits.  Me thinks that neither Graf nor Menchik would pass muster according to today's ECU dress code!  Menchik's dress is far too low cut - no cleavage must be showing, you know.  And Graf - well, she's dressed like a DUDE.  Even her hair is dudey.  Gasp!  In short, she looks like Victoria dressed as Victor (remember the movie Victor/Victoria).  No matter how well in taste her outfit is, and Graf certainly does look sharp in that outfit, I don't think it is within the rules.  Nope.  Women must dress like women, and dudes must dress dudey, and never the twain shall meet OTB. 

Here is another photo of Graf taken at the Utrecht Chess Club on October 3, 1936, according to Wikipedia, where I copied it from:

Sonja Graf is the one with the bustline.

Here is a photo of her in a dress and I'm sure that head wrap she has on back then (may have been taken in laste 1950s-early 1960s) would be disqualified today as too distracting (she was not a Sikh).

IM Herman Steiner and Graf, playing with a set designed by Steiner.  Details here. 

Roman Women Created Own Credit System

Not the best translation into English, but it's readable.  Not sure of the date of issue, either!

From Universitat-Jaume
Women of ancient Rome prompted a similar system of microcredits to overcome legal exclusion

Some women in ancient Rome already implemented the concept of microcredit as a loan of small amounts of money that enables people without resources to develop work projects on their own. The study conducted by the professor of Roman Law at the Universitat Jaume I Carmen Lázaro shows how women managed to evade the legal rules that excluded them from activities related with the bank and exchange through credit contracts of small amounts of money made by and among women and guaranteed by pledge agreements in which they gave as collateral personal property of small value.

 The existence of this microcredit system is known through various sources, mainly epigraphic, such as the inscriptions found in Roman Granio House in Pompeii, which reflect legal transactions as the ones carried out among the moneylender Faustilla and other women with an interest at 6.25%, remaining as collateral for reimbursement by way of endorsement (through pignus-pawns) personal items such as earrings or coats. Lázaro points out that these loans were done legally and avoided the need to be approved by the tutor (according to the rules of the necessary intervention of a tutor in carrying out legal transactions performed by women) "since money was a fungible good and therefore, not subject to formalities for the transmission to provide legal effects." Moreover, as what was deposited was the capital of the pawnbroker, "the loan could have taken the form of an irregular deposit, imperfect bilateral agreement which in principle would only generate obligations to the depositary." The usefulness of the irregular deposit would only raise obligations, in principle, for a part, the deposit taker, so that the lender could also avoid the necessary intervention of the tutor.

Researches carried out by Carmen Lázaro also collect other evidence of business loans for women as the ones found in the Pompeian tablets of Murecine or at some literary sources. In short, the researcher points out that the epigraphic and literary sources show how, despite the prohibition on engaging in banking activities and exchange, women were an active and passive part of monetary obligations for loans and that they operated in the field of banking and credit.

Legal constraints, which suffered women in ancient Rome, were just, as the researcher says, what led to consolidate this system that without opposing the legislation, developed the right mechanism to allow women to make their transactions. In this regard, it should be noted that the law prevented women from having access to certain contractual arrangements that limited the performance of specific legal transactions without the presence of a tutor, for example, an application for a monetary loan or the possibility of become moneylenders. However, loans among women, formalized through legal concepts beyond common and customary limits and carried out because of the gender, allowed the mobility of small amounts of money, that is, the execution of loans operated by well-off lenders to borrowers supposedly poorer that could not obtain credit through traditional means. In short, as the researcher says, it is "a business that has the characteristics of what we know today as microcredit and allowed women to enjoy some freedom of action and avoid the prohibition in the rule of law".

Perhaps Roman women kept abreast of the current development of microcredit system driven by Nobel Peace Prize and honorary doctor from the Universitat Jaume I Muhammad Yunus, who started, through the Bank of Poor in Bangladesh, a system of small loans that allowed escape from poverty to millions of people, especially women. Moreover, the lenders were also women.

In addition, Lazarus states that the activity of women in the business sector in ancient Rome was beyond lending activity since there is written evidence of women participating in the world of commerce and business. Thus, women headed shipping, textile manufacturing and footwear companies, business aimed at providing embellishment to other women, traded luxury goods and food products or managed accommodation business, among other activities. "This freedom of women in the field of business despite the prohibitions was favored by the succession of periods of war. The lack of men, who died or were fighting in the front, made virtually impossible the exercise of parental authority, it is to say, women were independent de facto, at least in economic terms as they were the heirs (of husbands, fathers, brothers and sons who, sadly died during the war) in a system in which most marriages were celebrated sine manu, that is, a marriage that provides an economic regime that we believe precedent of separation of marital property" explains. A position of women that leads Carmen Lázaro to remember the quote of Rene Pichon which states "in a people, as the Roman, which is not exactly a feminist one, women have freedom, activity and influence, more than in other societies that boast about having it".

 

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

A note on the term pignus - pawn:

 

Pignus is the Latin word for pawn! Not to be confused with the Latin word for "foot soldier" (see below) that became the pawn in chess -- or could there possibly be a connection, hmmm...

Definition: Pawn, pledge, token, (in pl.) persons in pledges of

The Latin word for Pawn is Pignus, Pignus is defined as: pawn, pledge, token, (in pl) persons in pledges of. To view supplementary Latin Words that share homogeneous meanings with Pignus, please visit the: Pignus - Pawn Latin Word page.

 

Pawn - as in the sense of a pawn shop, where an item might be temporarily physically consigned as a pledge against repayment of a loan. 

 

• peon •

Pronunciation:pee-ên, pee-ahn   

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A person bound in servitude to someone else. 2. An unskilled or menial laborer (pronounced [pyun] in India). 3. A peasant, a member of the hoi-polloi, an insignificant member of lower class society.

Notes: If you choose to pronounce today's word the first way illustrated in the pronunciation, [pee-ên,], be careful not to confuse it with paean "hymn of praise", pronounced identically. This is a good reason to choose the second acceptable pronunciation of today's word, [pee-ahn], with a little more emphasis on the second syllable. The state of being a peon is peonage

.

In Play: In the Southwest US this word is still used in its Spanish sense of simply an unskilled laborer: "The US economy would falter without the undocumented peons in the workforce." However, peon is used most often simply to refer to people of little importance to someone: "The boss very seldom comes out to the floor; he tries to avoid contact with us peons."

Word History: Today's Good Word was originally Spanish peón "laborer, pawn" from Medieval Latin pedo, pedon- "foot soldier"; in fact, it originally meant "foot soldier" in Spanish. This word was reduced to paon in Old French whence it was borrowed as pawn by English. The French word for "foot soldier" became peonier, which slowly devolved into pionnier "pioneer". Somewhere in between, English borrowed it as pioneer. The Latin word originally referred to someone with wide feet, for pedo is derived from pe(d)s "foot", a root that became foot in English and pai "leg" in Persian. Now, the word for "garment" in Persian is jamah, so when Hindi borrowed the Persian word for "leg garment", the result was pajama. (Today we thank someone who is no peon at alphaDictionary, Susanne Williams, for suggesting this little word with such a large history.)

Islamists Attack UNESCO Heritage Site

From Gulf-times.com
Latest Update: Sunday6/5/2012May, 2012, 12:34 AM Doha Time

Mali Islamists attack Unesco heritage site
Reuters/Bamako

Malian fighters from the Ansar Dine Islamist group attacked and burned the tomb of one of the town’s saints, classified as a Unesco World Heritage Site, residents and a regional official said yesterday.

The militants broke off doors, windows and wooden gates from the grave and burned them, they said, in the first reported attack on a shrine in Mali.

El Hadj Baba Haidara, an elected member of parliament from Timbuktu, said some young people were discussing how to react despite being unarmed.

“There is a risk the people may revolt because this is something that affects their dignity. This tomb is sacred, it is too difficult to bear,” Haidara said.

Ansar Dine, along with Tuareg rebels and other armed groups, swept through northern Mali in March and April, seizing the northern half of the country and its ancient towns of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal after the government collapsed in a March 22 coup.

While the rebel MNLA has declared an independent state in the north, Al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine - led by veteran Tuareg leader Iyad Ag Ghaly - has rejected that idea and said the group’s objective was to impose Islamic law in Mali.

Timbuktu Muslims on their way to Friday prayers at the tomb of Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar and those of other saints were stopped and threatened by armed men from Ansar Dine, one resident said.

“What you are doing is haram (forbidden). Ask God directly rather than the dead,” one of the armed men told the residents, according to Ahmed Ibrahim, a resident who witnessed the scene.

Some view shrines as idolatry but others, especially Sufis, see shrines as part of accepted custom. Salafists have attacked several Sufi shrines in Egypt and Libya in the past year.

“After uttering those words, three of them (armed men) entered the mausoleum, ripped and burnt pieces of white clothing that surrounded the tomb of the saint in front of everyone,” Ibrahim said.

Haidara said the act by the Islamist group could spark a violent reaction from the population, and that he had urged the UN body to help protect Timbuktu’s heritage sites.

“They attacked the grave, broke doors, windows and wooden gates that protect it. They brought it outside and burn it, because to build a tomb is contrary to the principles of Islam,” he said. The men said they would return to destroy other tombs.

No one at Unesco was immediately available to comment.

“We have learned with indignation of the desecration of tombs perpetrated by lawless individuals. The government condemns in the strongest terms this unspeakable act in the name of Islam, a religion of tolerance and respect for human dignity,” Mali’s government said in a statement read on national television.

Timbuktu has 333 tombs of holy saints among which 16 are classified as Unesco World Heritage Sites including that of Sidi Mahamoud Ben Amar, a learned scholar considered the most sacred in Timbuktu, Haidara said.

The town has been a World Heritage Site since 1988 and Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova in April appealed to the rebels to spare its “outstanding earthen architectural wonders”.

These include the Sankore, Sidi Yahia and Djingarei-ber mosques - the latter Timbuktu’s oldest, built from mud bricks and wood in 1325 - the famous manuscript libraries and the 16 mausoleums of Timbuktu.

9Queens and Chess Queen Alexandra Kosteniuk!

As part of 9Queens' Fifth Annual Chess Fest, 12th Women's World Chess Champion GM Alexandra Kosteniuk played a 40-gam simul in Tucson, Arizona.

The 9Queens website hasn't been updated with the most recent information/photos yet, but you can read a little at Alexandra Kosteniuk's Facebook Page.

See also 9Queens' Facebook Page with some nice photographs of Alexandra in the simul, etc. 

The simul was held at the Congress Hotel.