From smithsonianchannel.com:
The ancient world was filled with innumerable Gods, but what happened to these forgotten entities- where have the old Gods gone? The rise and fall of the ancient civilizations are highlighted: the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Celts, the Romans, the Maya and the Inca. Journey through faith and time in this enlightening series.
There are some nice sneak peek videos from the full Episodes.
Go here to see the videos.
From the .guardian.co.uk article:
Ambitious plans for a world-class visitor centre for Stonehenge may have dwindled to a world-class prefab, but yesterday both English Heritage and the government pledged it would be built in time for the 2012 Olympics.
After over 20 years of bitter public debate, and an estimated £9m spent on consultants, designs and planning inquiries, the proposed £57m visitor centre collapsed last year when the government abandoned, on cost grounds, the plan to tunnel the A303 where it passes one of the world’s most famous prehistoric monuments.
Ordered by culture minister Margaret Hodge to sort the site in time for the expected Olympics tourism bonanza, English Heritage yesterday launched yet another public consultation, this time on a new quick fix solution: a “temporary” building lasting up to 20 years, costing up to £20m, and providing a café, a shop and twice as much parking.
It could be achieved either by drastically upgrading the present site - damned almost 20 years ago by a parliamentary committee as “a national disgrace” - or on one of four other sites scattered across the edge of the world heritage site: some on National Trust land, others on privately owned or Ministry of Defence land.
In most options there would be park and ride schemes leaving visitors to walk the remaining 1.25km to the stones, across a landscape spattered with other monuments completely overlooked by most visitors today. In every case the A344 branch road, which passes within yards of the stones, would be closed and turfed over.
Read the article here.
From the bbc.co.uk article:
The ancient city of Pompeii has fallen into such disrepair that the Italian government has declared a “state of emergency” in a bid to save the ruins.
Ministers intend to appoint a special commissioner to oversee the site, and have earmarked extra funding for it.
According to analysts, the ruins have suffered from lack of investment, mismanagement, litter and looting.
Pompeii was buried by a volcanic eruption in AD79 and was not rediscovered until the 18th Century.
The volcanic debris preserved many of the city’s buildings, frescos, silverware, mosaics and other artefacts.
But experts complain that the relics are now in danger.
“Every year at least 150 sq m (1,600 sq ft) of fresco and plasterwork are lost for lack of maintenance,” Antonio Irlando, a regional councillor responsible for artistic heritage, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
“The same goes for stones: at least 3,000 pieces every year end up disintegrating,” he said.
Read the article here.
There is also a short video describing the situation.
From the nationalgeographic.com article:
Hunter-gatherers who made temporary camps along the Seine about 9,500 years ago were among the earliest “residents” of what is now Paris, archaeologists say.
A recent dig near the river revealed thousands of arrowhead bits and animal bones from about 7600 B.C. that scientists say are the oldest evidence of human occupation within modern city boundaries.
Previously the oldest such evidence was a 4500 B.C. fishing village near the current Gare de Lyon railway station.
Nomadic tribes camped at the newfound site for periods of days or even weeks while they collected flint to make arrowheads for hunting, the dig team believes.
Read the article here.
Twelve images of the Bugatti Veyron Sang Noir here.
From the slate.com article:
How did archaeologists find half a million objects at one site?
Archaeologists announced on Wednesday that they had unearthed George Washington’s boyhood home at a site not far from Fredericksburg, Va. Over the course of a seven-year excavation, the researchers found more than 500,000 artifacts. How can there be half a million artifacts at one site?
Almost everything you find counts as an artifact, as long as it was made or impacted by people. The objects comprise more than just materials from George Washington’s home; archaeologists excavated a full acre of land, and the items they collected spanned 10,000 years of history—from rocks used to sharpen prehistoric stone tools to Civil War-era buttons. The collection does include an expensive tea set thought to be owned by the Washingtons and a pipe bearing a Masonic crest, but most of the objects are far more mundane, like nails, broken glass, or cracked egg shells. The only artifacts that weren’t removed from the site are remnants of old buildings—either architectural fragments that are still intact or foundation stones that were weighed and left at the site.
Read the full article here.
The world’s population will reach 7 billion in 2012, even as the global community struggles to satisfy its appetite for natural resources, according to a new government projection.
There are 6.7 billion people in the world today. The United States ranks third, with 304 million, behind China and India, according to projections released Thursday by the Census Bureau.
The world’s population surpassed 6 billion in 1999, meaning it will take only 13 years to add a billion people.
By comparison, the number of people didn’t reach 1 billion until 1800, said Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. It didn’t reach 2 billion until 130 years later.
“You can easily see the effect of rapid population growth in developing countries,” Haub said.
Read the article here.
From the breitbart.com article:
Officials at a nature center in Italy have spotted a 10-month old deer that looks a lot like the mythical unicorn, the Italian news agency ANSA reports.
Instead of a normal pair of antlers, the young buck has only a single horn.
“Our deer may be aware that he is different since he doesn’t allow himself to be seen very easily,” Gilberto Tozzi, director of the Prato Natural Science Center in Tuscany, told ANSA.
Tozzi says an anomaly similar to that of the center’s deer may be responsible for unicorn mythology that dates back to the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus in the Fifth Century B.C.
“It’s proof that the mythical unicorn celebrated in iconography and legends was probably not just a fantastic creature but a real animal,” Tozzi said.
See the article here.
I recently discovered this music service called Pandora. It has probably been around for a while but I had never heard of it before. It’s like a radio station that you can direct the playlist by letting it know what type of music or specific bands you like and then rating the tracks it plays with either a thumbs up or down. The thing that I find to be the most useful aspect of Pandora is finding new music and not just typical radio crap. If you have become tired of listening to the same stuff over and over give Pandora a try.
Go to Pandora.
See more about Pandora here.
See more about The Music Genome Project here.
