From the pbs.org website:
Host Michael Wood takes an epic journey, following in the path of the Queen of Sheba, searching for Shangri-La in Tibet, untangling the tales of King Arthur’s Celtic Brittan and tracing the trek of Jason who sought the Golden Fleece.
More info here.
From the independent.co.uk article:
Stone Age Britons had a sophisticated knowledge of geometry to rival Pythagoras – 2,000 years before the Greek “father of numbers” was born, according to a new study of Stonehenge.
Five years of detailed research, carried out by the Oxford University landscape archaeologist Anthony Johnson, claims that Stonehenge was designed and built using advanced geometry.
The discovery has immense implications for understanding the monument – and the people who built it. It also suggests it is more rooted in the study of geometry than early astronomy – as is often speculated.
Mr Johnson believes the geometrical knowledge eventually used to plan, pre-fabricate and erect Stonehenge was learnt empirically hundreds of years earlier through the construction of much simpler monuments.
He also argues that this knowledge was regarded as a form of arcane wisdom or magic that conferred a privileged status on the elite who possessed it, as it also featured on gold artefacts found in prehistoric graves.
Read the article here.
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.
Anglo Saxon Disk Brooch and Two Pendants, all three early 600s
This site will provide more information then you can possibly take in at one time and as such it makes for a great reference site. This site basically covers the art history of sentient European man and otherwise. Also be sure to check out this section on the United States here.
From the bbc.co.uk article:
The story of the Vikings in Britain is one of conquest, expulsion, extortion and reconquest. Their lasting legacy was the formation of the independent kingdoms of England and Scotland.
Go here to see the aticle.
From the yorkshirepost.co.uk article:
Once they were spectacular resting places to honour the dead.
But with pagan Britain’s conversion to Christianity, the Bronze Age burial mounds came to be regarded with suspicion as places where devils and dragons lurked.
It was at one such site in East Yorkshire that the Anglo-Saxons chose to bury the worst kind of criminals, away from hallowed ground, leaving their heads to rot on stakes.
The latest archaeological techniques have now thrown a new light on an eerie cemetery – the only one so far discovered north of the Humber – where the decapitated bodies of executed criminals were laid to rest.
The dozen skeletons – 10 without their heads – were discovered by archaeologists in the late 1960s in a Bronze Age barrow at Walkington Wold, sparking theories that it has been the site of a massacre, a series of
executions or even a Celtic head cult.
But a new study by two Yorkshire archaeologists, involving radiocarbon dating and a re-analysis of the bones, has uncovered gruesome new evidence about how the victims –all men – met their deaths.
Read the article here.
Western Paradigm 