The Baigong Pipes

Do modern metal pipes buried in ancient Chinese stone prove that aliens must have visited?

Should you happen to visit Tibet anytime soon, be sure to stop by the city of Delingha. It's a town of most extraordinary beauty, nestled on the edge of the Qaidam Basin below a range of Himalayan hills. There you'll find the local residents proudly displaying their most famous distinction. For a few yuan you can probably get someone to take you to see it. Only a short journey outside of town is said to be a cave, and in this cave are a series of ancient metal pipes. These pipes predate all known history, and are embedded into the rock itself. They are said to lead through the very mountain, and connect to a nearby salt lake. The explanation? Ruins of a construction project 150,000 years ago, by alien visitors.

The Baigong Pipes are an example of what paranormal enthusiasts refer to as "out of place artifacts", modern objects discovered in ancient surroundings. The Baigong Pipes are described as a sophisticated system of metal pipes, buried in geology in such a way that precludes the possibility of having been installed in modern times. They are located on Mt. Baigong in the Qinghai province of China, about 40 kilometers southwest of Delingha. Most accounts describe a pyramid-shaped outcropping on the mountain, and the cave containing the pipes is on this pyramid. 80 meters from the mouth of this cave is a salt lake (the twin of an adjacent freshwater lake), and more pipes can be found poking up along the shore. Most of the information you can find online about the Baigong Pipes appears to be originally sourced from a 2002 article from the Xinhua News Agency, talking about preparations by a team of scientists about to embark to this remote area to study the pipes. "Nature is harsh here," said one. "There are no residents let alone modern industry in the area, only a few migrant herdsmen to the north of the mountain."

The two lakes are broad, shallow sinks at the low point of the vast Qaidam Basin. Searching for Mt. Baigong is likely to be fruitless: First, the area is largely flat and the nearest mountains are 20 or 30 kilometers away; second, baigong is a local word for hill and could mean anything in this context. The southernmost of the two lakes, Toson Hu or Lake Toson, has some low bluffs here and there along its southern and western sides (Google Maps link), and it is in one of these bluffs (about 50 or 60 meters in height) that author Bai Yu once happened to find what he described as a small cave, according to his book Into the Qaidam.

Bai was traveling the area in 1996, and described a lifeless lake surrounded by cone-shaped hills. The cave appeared to have been artificially dug, and was triangular, about six meters deep. Nearby were two similar caves, but they had collapsed and could not be entered. But what struck Bai was the array of manufactured metal pipes protruding up through the floor of the cave and embedded within its walls, one 40 cm wide. Following their path outside, Bai discovered more pipes protruding from the surface of the conical hill, and even more of them 80 meters away from the cave along the shore of the lake. Excited, he removed a sample and sent it to the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry. The result was 92% common minerals and metals, and 8% of unknown composition.

Bai proceeded about 70 kilometers to the Delhi branch of China's Purple Mountain Observatory, a high vantage point from where he knew he could get a birds-eye view of the whole region. He saw great expanses of flat, open terrain, and putting two and two together, he concluded that this would make for a fine alien landing site. Unknown minerals and plentiful landing space meant that the Baigong Pipes had to be of alien origin.

Scientists from the China Seismological Bureau visited the lake in 2001 to examine the pipes. Samples brought back to the Beijing Institute of Geology were examined by thermoluminescence dating, a technique that can determine how long it's been since a crystalline mineral was either heated or exposed to sunlight. The result came back that if these were indeed iron pipes that had been smelted, they were made 140-150,000 years ago. Human history in the region only goes back some 30,000 years, and so the alien theory seemed to have been confirmed. The following year the Xinhua news story was published, and the Baigong Pipes entered pop culture as, supposedly, genuine, tangible evidence of alien visitation.

If you visit the area today, you'll find a locally-built monument to the aliens off the main highway, replete with a mockup metallic satellite dish. Internet forums buzz with the absence of followup articles by Xinhua; the natural conclusion is that it turned out the alien explanation was the true one and the Chinese government is suppressing any further reporting. Cracked.com touts the Baigong Pipes as one of Six Insane Discoveries that Science Can't Explain.

And although that's where most reporting of the Baigong Pipes stops, it's also where responsible inquiry should begin. When you settle on a paranormal explanation, it means you've decided there is no natural explanation. In fact, when you don't yet know the explanation, you don't yet know the explanation; so you can't reasonably decide that the time is right to stop investigating. But so many do.

Skeptical hypotheses have already been put forward, seeking a natural explanation for the Baigong Pipes that doesn't require the introduction of a wild assumption like alien visitation. The first thing we turn to are geological processes that might explain them. The Chinese have put forth several such hypotheses, including one involving the seepage of iron-rich magma into existing fissures in the rock.

A 2003 article in Xinmin Weekly described how this might work. Fractures caused by the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau could have left the ground riddled with such fissures, into which the highly pressurized magma driving the uplift would have been forced. Assuming this magma was of the right composition that, when combined with the chemical effects of subsequent geological processes, we might very likely expect to see such rusty iron structures in the local rock. But evidence of this has never surfaced, and the Chinese dismissed this theory. They also noted that the Qaidam oil field would not be able to exist if there were active volcanism in the area as recently as 150,000 years ago.

It was their next theory that ultimately led to a satisfactory explanation, and this theory involved the same hypothesized fissures in the sandstone. But, instead of being filled with iron-rich magma, the fissures could have been washed full of iron-rich sediment during floods. Combined with water and the presence of hydrogen sulfide gas, the sediment could have eventually hardened into the rusty metallic pipelike structures of iron pyrite found today. This theory was not fantastic, in part because there was no logical reason why the sandstone might happen to be laced with pipe shaped fissures. But the idea of flooding did make sense, given the geological history of the Qaidam Basin.

Three years before Bai Yu took his first peek into the cave at Lake Toson, researchers Mossa and Schumacher wrote in the Journal of Sedimentary Research about fossil tree casts in Louisiana. They found cylindrical structures in the soil, thermoluminescence dated from 75-95,000 years ago. The chemical composition of the cylinders varied depending on where and when they formed and in what type of soil. The authors found that these were the fossilized casts of tree roots, formed by pedogenesis (the process by which soil is created) and diagenesis (the lithification of soil into rock through compaction and cementation). The result of this process was to create metallic pipelike structures, which by comparing the descriptions offered by researchers, appear to be a perfect match for the Baigong Pipes.

The Chinese scientists eventually did come to the same conclusion, according to the Xinmin Weekly article. They used atomic emission spectroscopy to conduct a detailed chemical analysis of the rusty pipe fragments, and found them to contain organic plant matter. Under the microscope they found tree rings, consistently throughout the samples. Once they established that the Baigong Pipes were simply fossilized tree casts, they set about to discover how they got there.

The Qaidam basin was once a vast lake, which has disappeared as the Qinghai-Tibet plateau uplifted the basin to its current elevation of about 2800 meters. Over the millennia, various floods filled the sink with runoff, alluvium, and debris including such fossils. They can now be found wherever such ancient flows deposited them, and it seems that Bai Yu was lucky enough to discover just such a pocket.

And so we end up with a complete story of how rusty iron pipes, tens of thousands of years older than any people who might have forged them, can end up embedded in solid sandstone in such a way as to baffle the average observer. Like many amateur researchers, Bai Yu stumbled upon an extraordinary discovery, but through his lack of applicable knowledge, misinterpreted what he saw. Those who underestimate the Earth's ability to produce fascinating effects are often left to grope for goofy explanations like alien construction projects. I find that the Baigong Pipes are one of the better examples of the folly of stopping at the paranormal explanation, compared to the rich rewards offered by following the scientific method to uncover what's really going on.

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with 1 comment

The Bloop - a deep sea monster

It came from the depths of the South Pacific. Throughout the summer of 1997, a sound never before recorded burst from the abyss. News agencies scrambled; was this some new leviathan, an unknown monster from the deep? Nobody knew, and though this recording has taken its place among the permanent fixtures of the museums of the strange, the Bloop has never been identified.

The Bloop was on the loud side, to be sure. It was picked up on multiple sensors as far as 5,000 kilometers away. By triangulation, we know it came from somewhere right around 50°S, 100°W, which is about 1,750 kilometers west of Chile in the South Pacific. It's about as remote as you can get in any ocean. There are no islands or anything anywhere near it. The water is deep there, very deep, averaging around 4,300 meters. The Bloop was recorded several times during 1997, on the Eastern Equatorial Pacific autonomous hydrophone array, which was deployed in May, 1996 by NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for long-term monitoring of seismic events on the East Pacific Rise.

Cryptozoologists love the Bloop, because to them it is evidence pointing to the existence of a gigantic unknown creature. Virtually every web page about the Bloop (and there are a lot of them) repeats this same quote, word for word:

Though it matches the audio profile of a living creature, there is no known animal that could have produced the sound. If it is an animal it would have to be huge — much larger than even a Blue whale, according to scientists who have studied the phenomenon.

I've been unable to find the original source of this quote. Only one web site on which I found it gave an attribution, saying it was a quote from NOAA. However this text does not appear on any NOAA web sites, and its wording is inconsistent with NOAA's typical descriptions of unknown sounds. When a sound is unknown, NOAA says it's unknown and leaves it at that; it is not their habit to editorialize or hypothesize about giant cryptids.

So, for now, the identity of these "scientists who have studied the phenomenon" remains a mystery. Many cryptozoologists have written about the Bloop, as is easily shown by a simple Google search; but from what I could tell, few legitimate zoologists have, and none who have concluded the Bloop has a biological origin.

Fortunately, we are not entirely without our own resources to test this suggestion that the Bloop "matches the audio profile of a living creature". There are three basic types of sounds in the oceans: Natural sounds like volcanoes and earthquakes, biological sounds from sea creatures, and man-made sounds from boats or other machinery. Usually you can take your unknown sound and compare it to a selection of known sounds, and get a pretty good idea what it is. Sounds can be represented on colorful graphs called spectrograms. Time is one dimension, and frequency is the other.

The amplitude is represented by the color. An ongoing sound with a certain frequency range, like a boat engine, creates a solid band across the spectrogram. A chirp from a dolphin would make a little streak. This gives us a two-pronged approach to trying to match the Bloop to a known source: We can listen to it to get a subjective feel for it, and we can also compare its spectrogram to known spectrograms to get a firmer, more quantifiable comparison.

source

The frequency of the sound meant it had to be much louder than any recognised animal noise, including that produced by the largest whales.

So is it a huge octopus? Although dead giant squid have been washed up on beaches, and tell-tale sucker marks have been seen on whales, there has never been a confirmed sighting of one of the elusive cephalopods in the wild.

The largest dead squid on record measured about 60ft including the length of its tentacles, but no one knows how big the creatures might grow.

For years sailors have told tales of monsters of the deep including the huge, many-tentacled kraken that could reach as high as a ship's mainmast and sink the biggest ships.

However Phil Lobel, a marine biologist at Boston University, Massachusetts, doubts that giant squid are the source of Bloop.

"Cephalopods have no gas-filled sac, so they have no way to make that type of noise," he said. "Though you can never rule anything out completely, I doubt it."

Nevertheless he agrees that the sound is most likely to be biological in origin.

The system picking up Bloop and other strange noises from the deep is a military relic of the Cold War.

In the 1960s the U.S. Navy set up an array of underwater microphones, or hydrophones, around the globe to track Soviet submarines. The network was known as SOSUS, short for Sound Surveillance System.

The listening stations lie hundreds of yards below the ocean surface, at a depth where sound waves become trapped in a layer of water known as the "deep sound channel".

Here temperature and pressure cause sound waves to keep travelling without being scattered by the ocean surface or bottom.

Most of the sounds detected obviously emanate from whales, ships or earthquakes, but some very low frequency noises have proved baffling.

Scientist Christopher Fox of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Acoustic Monitoring Project at Portland, Oregon, has given the signals names such as Train, Whistle, Slowdown, Upsweep and even Gregorian Chant.

He told New Scientist that most can be explained by ocean currents, volcanic activity -- Upsweep was tracked to an undersea South Pacific mountain that had not been identified as "live."

"The sound waves are almost like voice prints. You're able to look at the characteristics of the sound and say: 'There's a blue whale, there's a fin whale, there's a boat, there's a humpback whale and here comes and earchquake," he says.

But some sounds remain a mystery he says. Like Bloop -- monster of the deep?

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with 1 comment

Titan: Nasa scientists discover evidence 'that alien life exists on Saturn's moon'

Researchers at the space agency believe they have discovered vital clues that appeared to indicate that primitive aliens could be living on the planet. Data from Nasa's Cassini probe has analysed the complex chemistry on the surface of Titan, which experts say is the only moon around the planet to have a dense atmosphere.

They have discovered that life forms have been breathing in the planet’s atmosphere and also feeding on its surface’s fuel. Astronomers claim the moon is generally too cold to support even liquid water on its surface. The research has been detailed in two separate studies. The first paper, in the journal Icarus, shows that hydrogen gas flowing throughout the planet’s atmosphere disappeared at the surface. This suggested that alien forms could in fact breathe. The second paper, in the Journal of Geophysical Research, concluded that there was lack of the chemical on the surface. Scientists were then led to believe it had been possibly consumed by life. Researchers had expected sunlight interacting with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acetylene gas. But the Cassini probe did not detect any such gas. Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at Nasa Ames Research Centre, at Moffett Field, California who led the research, said: “We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth. "If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth.” Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University, added: “We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process. “In four billion years’ time, when the Sun swells into a red giant, it could be paradise on Titan.” They warned, however, that there could be other explanations for the findings. But taken together, they two indicate two important conditions necessary for methane-based life to exist.

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with 1 comment

Time Traveler Caught in Photo?

It’s the short description for the photograph shown at the virtual Bralorne Pioneer Museum, from British Columbia, Canada. The image can be seen specifically on this page (scroll down to the middle), among other items of the online exhibit. Did you notice anything out of place? Or perhaps, out of time?

The man with what appears to be very modern sunglasses seems to be wearing a stamped T-shirt with a nice sweater, all the while holding a portable compact camera!

Internet people reached to the obvious conclusion: it’s a time traveller caught on camera on 1940! Finally, we have proof!

If the story seems straight out of a movie and the photo is in itself a great funny find, the most amusing thing i came up with while looking into this – as an Internet person, on the Internet – was the reply for a skeptical, or perhaps somewhat cynical comment on how spurious it would seem the idea that a time traveler would want to visit the reopening of a bridge in some small town in Canada.

Read this on Doc Brown’s voice: “Of course, because we know nothing happened there right? But if we are considering time travel, how can we know if in some other timeline something historical happened right there?”

Indeed! Once you consider time travel, everything changes. But before writing Hollywood scripts, let’s get back to reality and ask again: is the photo evidence of a time traveller?

As noted, the image is indeed available through the official website for Canada’s museums. It was part of the exhibit “Their Past Lives Here” from Bralorne-Pioneer, available to the public since 2004. It was put online since February this year, perhaps before that. And the peculiar “time traveller” image was only noted as such in the end of March, when it was linked on main websites such as Above Top Secret and FARK.

Given the source, we would assume the photo is authentic, and correctly dated to c.1940. Indeed, an Error Level Analysis suggests the image was not digitally tampered with, or at least that if it was, the author was smart enough to normalize the error across the whole thing. It’s a good job, if it was a job. And again, given the source, we would assume it was not a job.

So, how do we explain the man out of time?


Not quite out of time

As members of the ATS, like “Outkast Searcher”, diligently noted, despite looking very modern the man’s outfit and even glasses and camera could be found in the 1940s. Below, similar sunglasses used by actress Barbara Stanwyck on the movie “Double Indemnity” (1944):

The outfit could also be found 70 years ago. Being used as we are to our contemporary fashion, we look at the man and assume he’s wearing a stamped T-shirt, something that would be indeed out of place (or time). But if you look carefully, you can see that he’s actually wearing (or could as well be wearing) a sweatshirt. And sweatshirts with bordered emblems were not uncommon in the 1940s – in fact you can find those in other photos from the same exhibit.

The sweater he also uses seems to be hand knitted, with buttons on the front. Something that was definitely available at the time, if he had some kind grandma perhaps.

Finally, despite some comments about the camera lens being too big for the time, too compact, it looks like a Kodak Folding Pocket model, available since the beginning of the 20th century.

That is: even taking this photo for granted, as depicting an authentic scene, a real man with his curious glasses and outfit in Canada 70 years ago, there’s nothing that can be seen that is actually out of place or time. He looks different from other people, but it has already been suggested that he’s using welding goggles and a glove.

This is not much of a proof of time travel, and more like evidence of the cyclic nature of fashion. These days, even a beggar can be mistaken for a trendy fashion model. Keep reading for more into this and other time travel stories.


Not quite new

Despite being an awesome photo and story, the Canadian time traveller is not the first on the genre. One of the most famous Internet stories deals with Andrew Carlssin, a man from the year 2256 who appeared in Wall Street on 2003. It was published as a news item on Yahoo!, but few people noticed it was in the Entertainment section and that the source was the Weekly World News. In case you haven’t checked the WWN, you should do it now.

There’s also the story of John Titor, an elaborate story where a time traveller joined several online discussion forums! On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, but if you tell elaborate stories about being a time traveller, you may just create an enduring digital myth. Alas, time itself took care of disproving all of John Titor’s stories about the future. Or perhaps that’s a nice thing, since the future Titor invented was pretty gloom.

And some years ago, the photo of a man with a Mohawk hairstyle at a festival before the punk movement made the style popular was also reason for buzz. I remember seeing it on BoingBoing, but now I can’t find it! Was it erased by the time travellers? Will I forget about it soon? In any event, I also remember that people quickly pointed out that although the hairstyle was popularized by punks, it was not unseen before that, dating even from before the Mohawk tribe.

Time travel is an amazing idea, but so far it’s all speculation, fiction, hoax and misunderstandings.


Case closed?

As a matter of fact, no! Despite being clear that the image, even if authentic, would not be evidence of an out of time man, it’s still possible it could be a hoax. After all, photoshop jobs mixing modern figures in old photos are not that complex. A series that has been popular the past few weeks placed contemporary super-heroes in historical photos:

Is it possible that an elaborate hoax could have included a manipulated photograph among the items of a museum exhibit, only to have it put online and finally exposed as “time travel proof” later? Well, it would be quite an elaborate hoax, but it is possible.

Let’s look again at the photo. Pay attention to the right arm of the “time traveller”: you may realize that the arm actually belongs to the man right behind him. Why would another man’s arm be in that position? Is there even space for such a large, tall “time traveller” to stand in there?

These could be indications that the man was inserted into the image without much care for perspective.

Or perhaps it’s just an unusual perspective, and the arm from the man behind just looks like it’s over the “time traveller”, even touching the camera? Or could the arm actually belong to the hipster traveller?

I don’t know.

If this is a digital hoax, why would the hoaxer insert a man that seems out of place, but not actually using anything that couldn’t be found in the 1940s? The camera is definitely old. What looks like a stamped T-shirt is a sweatshirt with emblem. Why not have him use something definitely out of time, like the logo for a company that wouldn’t be created until decades later, such as NIKE or even Microsoft? It would even make an amazing viral marketing for any company that managed to get buzz from this. Why not?

I don’t know.

Once again, it must be clear that even if this photograph is authentic, even if it depicts a real scene from 1940, it would not be the proof of time travel. Alas. Also, I tend to assume that given the source, the photo is indeed authentic, not tampered with. But that arm, it does look strange. I’m not sure. I don’t know.

I tried to send an email to the Bralorne Pioneer museum, but the address was not valid. I’m still trying to find (an easy) way to contact it. If you manage to get an official response from them, do share it. If you discover anything else, do share it. This is an adorable little “mystery”.

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with No comments

Black Hole - a Doorways into Alternate Realities

Like part of a cosmic Russian doll, our universe may be nested inside a black hole that is itself part of a larger universe.

In turn, all the black holes found so far in our universe—from the microscopic to the supermassive—may be doorways into alternate realities.

According to a mind-bending new theory, a black hole is actually a tunnel between universes—a type of wormhole. The matter the black hole attracts doesn't collapse into a single point, as has been predicted, but rather gushes out a "white hole" at the other end of the black one, the theory goes.

In a recent paper published in the journal Physics Letters B, Indiana University physicist Nikodem Poplawski presents new mathematical models of the spiraling motion of matter falling into a black hole. His equations suggest such wormholes are viable alternatives to the "space-time singularities" that Albert Einstein predicted to be at the centers of black holes.

According to Einstein's equations for general relativity, singularities are created whenever matter in a given region gets too dense, as would happen at the ultradense heart of a black hole.

Einstein's theory suggests singularities take up no space, are infinitely dense, and are infinitely hot—a concept supported by numerous lines of indirect evidence but still so outlandish that many scientists find it hard to accept.

If Poplawski is correct, they may no longer have to.

According to the new equations, the matter black holes absorb and seemingly destroy is actually expelled and becomes the building blocks for galaxies, stars, and planets in another reality.

Wormholes Solve Big Bang Mystery?

The notion of black holes as wormholes could explain certain mysteries in modern cosmology, Poplawski said.

For example, the big bang theory says the universe started as a singularity. But scientists have no satisfying explanation for how such a singularity might have formed in the first place.

If our universe was birthed by a white hole instead of a singularity, Poplawski said, "it would solve this problem of black hole singularities and also the big bang singularity."

Wormholes might also explain gamma ray bursts, the second most powerful explosions in the universe after the big bang.

Gamma ray bursts occur at the fringes of the known universe. They appear to be associated with supernovae, or star explosions, in faraway galaxies, but their exact sources are a mystery.

Poplawski proposes that the bursts may be discharges of matter from alternate universes. The matter, he says, might be escaping into our universe through supermassive black holes—wormholes—at the hearts of those galaxies, though it's not clear how that would be possible.

"It's kind of a crazy idea, but who knows?" he said.

There is at least one way to test Poplawski's theory: Some of our universe's black holes rotate, and if our universe was born inside a similarly revolving black hole, then our universe should have inherited the parent object's rotation.

If future experiments reveal that our universe appears to rotate in a preferred direction, it would be indirect evidence supporting his wormhole theory, Poplawski said.

Wormholes Are "Exotic Matter" Makers?

The wormhole theory may also help explain why certain features of our universe deviate from what theory predicts, according to physicists.

Based on the standard model of physics, after the big bang the curvature of the universe should have increased over time so that now—13.7 billion years later—we should seem to be sitting on the surface of a closed, spherical universe.

But observations show the universe appears flat in all directions.

What's more, data on light from the very early universe show that everything just after the big bang was a fairly uniform temperature.

That would mean that the farthest objects we see on opposite horizons of the universe were once close enough to interact and come to equilibrium, like molecules of gas in a sealed chamber.

Again, observations don't match predictions, because the objects farthest from each other in the known universe are so far apart that the time it would take to travel between them at the speed of light exceeds the age of the universe.

To explain the discrepancies, astronomers devised the concept of inflation.

Inflation states that shortly after the universe was created, it experienced a rapid growth spurt during which space itself expanded at faster-than-light speeds. The expansion stretched the universe from a size smaller than an atom to astronomical proportions in a fraction of a second.

The universe therefore appears flat, because the sphere we're sitting on is extremely large from our viewpoint—just as the sphere of Earth seems flat to someone standing in a field.

Inflation also explains how objects so far away from each other might have once been close enough to interact.

But—assuming inflation is real—astronomers have always been at pains to explain what caused it. That's where the new wormhole theory comes in.

According to Poplawski, some theories of inflation say the event was caused by "exotic matter," a theoretical substance that differs from normal matter, in part because it is repelled rather than attracted by gravity.

Based on his equations, Poplawski thinks such exotic matter might have been created when some of the first massive stars collapsed and became wormholes.

"There may be some relationship between the exotic matter that forms wormholes and the exotic matter that triggered inflation," he said.

Wormhole Equations an "Actual Solution"

The new model isn't the first to propose that other universes exist inside black holes. Damien Easson, a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, has made the speculation in previous studies.

"What is new here is an actual wormhole solution in general relativity that acts as the passage from the exterior black hole to the new interior universe," said Easson, who was not involved in the new study.

"In our paper, we just speculated that such a solution could exist, but Poplawski has found an actual solution," said Easson, referring to Poplawski's equations.

Nevertheless, the idea is still very speculative, Easson said in an email.

"Is the idea possible? Yes. Is the scenario likely? I have no idea. But it is certainly an interesting possibility."

Future work in quantum gravity—the study of gravity at the subatomic level—could refine the equations and potentially support or disprove Poplawski's theory, Easson said.

Wormhole Theory No Breakthrough

Overall, the wormhole theory is interesting, but not a breakthrough in explaining the origins of our universe, said Andreas Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California, Davis, who was also not involved in the new study.

By saying our universe was created by a gush of matter from a parent universe, the theory simply shifts the original creation event into an alternate reality.

In other words, it doesn't explain how the parent universe came to be or why it has the properties it has—properties our universe presumably inherited.

"There're really some pressing problems we're trying to solve, and it's not clear that any of this is offering a way forward with that," he said.

Still, Albrecht doesn't find the idea of universe-bridging wormholes any stranger than the idea of black hole singularities, and he cautions against dismissing the new theory just because it sounds a little out there.

"Everything people ask in this business is pretty weird," he said. "You can't say the less weird [idea] is going to win, because that's not the way it's been, by any means."

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with No comments

New Written Language of Ancient Scotland Discovered

Once thought to be rock art, carved depictions of soldiers, horses and other figures are in fact part of a written language dating back to the Iron Age.
THE GIST:

• A new written language, belonging to the early Pict society of Scotland, has just been identified.
• Stylized rock engravings have been found on hundreds of Pictish Stones.
• If the writing can be deciphered, it would provide a unique insight into early Scottish history.

The ancestors of modern Scottish people left behind mysterious, carved stones that new research has just determined contain the written language of the Picts, an Iron Age society that existed in Scotland from 300 to 843.

The highly stylized rock engravings, found on what are known as the Pictish Stones, had once been thought to be rock art or tied to heraldry. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, instead concludes that the engravings represent the long lost language of the Picts, a confederation of Celtic tribes that lived in modern-day eastern and northern Scotland.

"We know that the Picts had a spoken language to complement the writing of the symbols, as Bede (a monk and historian who died in 735) writes that there are four languages in Britain in this time: British, Pictish, Scottish and English," lead author Rob Lee told Discovery News.

"We know that the three other languages were -- and are -- complex spoken languages, so there is every indication that Pictish was also a complex spoken language," added Lee, a professor in the School of Biosciences at the University of Exeter.

He and colleagues Philip Jonathan and Pauline Ziman analyzed the engravings, found on the few hundred known Pictish Stones. The researchers used a mathematical process known as Shannon entropy to study the order, direction, randomness and other characteristics of each engraving.

The resulting data was compared with that for numerous written languages, such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese texts and written Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, Ancient Irish, Old Irish and Old Welsh. While the Pictish Stone engravings did not match any of these, they displayed characteristics of writing based on a spoken language.

Lee explained that writing comes in two basic forms: lexigraphic writing that is based on speech and semasiography, which is not based on speech.

"Lexigraphic writing contains symbols that represent parts of speech, such as words, or sounds like syllables or letters, and tends to be written in a linear or directional manner mimicking the flow of speech," he said. "In semasiography, the symbols do not represent speech -- such as the cartoon symbols used to show you how to build a flat pack piece of furniture -- and generally do not come in a linear manner."

Although Lee and his team have not yet deciphered the Pictish language, some of the symbols provide intriguing clues. One symbol looks like a dog's head, for example, while others look like horses, trumpets, mirrors, combs, stags, weapons and crosses.

The later Pictish Stones also contain images, like Celtic knots, similar to those found in the Book of Kells and other early works from nearby regions. These more decorative looking images frame what Lee and his team believe is the written Pictish language.

"It is unclear at the moment whether the imagery, such as the knots, form any part of the communication," Lee said. He believes the stones also contain semasiographic symbols, such as a picture of riders and horn blowers next to hunting dogs on what is called the Hilton of Cadboll stone. Yet another stone shows what appears to be a battle scene.

Paul Bouissac, a University of Toronto professor who is one of the world's leading experts on signs and symbols, told Discovery News that he agrees "it is more than plausible that the Pictish symbols are examples of a script, in the sense that they encoded some information, which also had a spoken form."

What is known about a writing system, however, "does not amount to deciphering this putative script," Bouissac added.

"We will have to wait for the discovery of what would be the Pictish equivalent of the Rosetta Stone, which made possible the cracking of the Egyptian hieroglyphic code," he said. "This may or may not ever happen."

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with No comments

The ancient Rosslyn Chapel

The ancient Rosslyn Chapel, beloved as the key to mysteries surrounding The Da Vinci Code, the Holy Grail and the Knights Templar, has thrown up another unfathomable puzzle: what lies behind the secret of the bees?

Builders renovating the 600-year-old chapel have discovered two beehives carved within the stonework high on the pinnacles of the roof. They are thought to be the first man-made stone hives ever found.

It appears the hives were carved into the roof when the chapel was built, with the entrance for the bees formed, appropriately, through the centre of an intricately carved stone flower. The hives were found when builders were dismantling and rebuilding the pinnacles for the first time in centuries.

Malcolm Mitchell, from Page Park, the architects on the £7 million restoration, said it appeared the chapel had been a haven for the insects as long ago as the 15th century.

“From the research that we have done, this is a unique situation in Europe. We haven’t found any precedent of this type of hive before. We were quite taken aback. It’s very unusual.

“In Scotland, hives are so often made of baskets which can be lifted and moved around. It was particularly a surprise because the hives themselves are the ideal size for bees to inhabit — hollowed out to the size of a gas cylinder — but they were constructed purely as a haven for the bees. They weren’t built to harvest honey,” he added.

“It was just out of kindness and respect to the sacredness of these insects. Reverence to bees insects goes back historically to Egyptian times.”

Although human beings have collected honey from wild bee colonies since time immemorial, at some point they began to domesticate wild bees in artificial hives, made from hollow logs, pottery, or woven straw baskets. The Egyptians kept bees in cylindrical hives, and pictures in temples show workers blowing smoke into the hives, and removing honeycombs. Sealed pots of honey were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Bronze Age hives made of straw and unbaked clay have been dug up near Jerusalem. They were found in orderly rows, three high, each one accommodating around 100 hives. The Greeks also developed bee-keeping as an art, and celebrated it on gold rings and ornaments.

Honeycombs were found abandoned inside the hive in the north pinnacle, but, equally strangely, the hive on the south pinnacle did not have an entry hole for bees and therefore had not been occupied.

Mr Mitchell said: “It’s just another of Rosslyn’s mysteries. The north pinnacle was full of honeycombs which had been abandoned for some considerable years. The honey had all dried up.”

The experts believe the interior of the hives were lined with a coating to prevent the wild bees from gnawing away at the stonework.

Allan Gilmour, from Hunter & Clark stonemasons, the main contractors on the chapel, said: “I’ve never heard of man-made stone beehives. What I have seen is bees creating hives in stone. When we restored the Irvine Town House we found that bees had burrowed into the sandstone and created honeycombs. They had weakened the stone.

“Maybe at Rosslyn the monks had the same problem in the past and created the hive as a sanctuary.”

There is anecdotal evidence that visitors to the chapel, which dates back to 1446, used to be disturbed by bees. Mr Mitchell said some of the staff at the Rosslyn Trust were aware some years ago that there had been bees going into the cavity. The hives have now been reinstated within the rebuilt pinnacles on the roof of the chapel.

Rosslyn Chapel was built on the orders of William St Clair, Prince of Orkney. Begun in 1446. work ceased in 1484 when William died, so that the building was then in the form it remains in today.

Members of the Scottish Beekeepers’ Association said yesterday they had not heard of beehives created from stone. Mrs Una Robertson, the organisation’s historian, said: “I’m not an architect, but it’s the sort of thing that might have come my way. Bees do go into roof spaces and set up home, and can stay there a long time, but it’s unusual to want to attract bees into a building.

“Traditonally, bees were kept in a skep — made out of straw or dried grass. Skeps have been around for centuries. Wooden hives only came in since the 17th century. Bees have been kept in all sorts of containers , but I have never heard of stone.”

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with 1 comment

Biblical plagues really happened

The Biblical plagues that devastated Ancient Egypt in the Old Testament were the result of global warming and a volcanic eruption, scientists have claimed.

Researchers believe they have found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt, which led to Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, were based.

But rather than explaining them as the wrathful act of a vengeful God, the scientists claim the plagues can be attributed to a chain of natural phenomena triggered by changes in the climate and environmental disasters that happened hundreds of miles away.

They have compiled compelling evidence that offers new explanations for the Biblical plagues, which will be outlined in a new series to be broadcast on the National Geographical Channel on Easter Sunday.

Archaeologists now widely believe the plagues occurred at an ancient city of Pi-Rameses on the Nile Delta, which was the capital of Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Rameses the Second, who ruled between 1279BC and 1213BC.

The city appears to have been abandoned around 3,000 years ago and scientists claim the plagues could offer an explanation.

Climatologists studying the ancient climate at the time have discovered a dramatic shift in the climate in the area occurred towards the end of Rameses the Second's reign.

By studying stalagmites in Egyptian caves they have been able to rebuild a record of the weather patterns using traces of radioactive elements contained within the rock.

They found that Rameses reign coincided with a warm, wet climate, but then the climate switched to a dry period.

Professor Augusto Magini, a paleoclimatologist at Heidelberg University's institute for environmental physics, said: "Pharaoh Rameses II reigned during a very favourable climatic period.

"There was plenty of rain and his country flourished. However, this wet period only lasted a few decades. After Rameses' reign, the climate curve goes sharply downwards.

"There is a dry period which would certainly have had serious consequences."

The scientists believe this switch in the climate was the trigger for the first of the plagues.

The rising temperatures could have caused the river Nile to dry up, turning the fast flowing river that was Egypt's lifeline into a slow moving and muddy watercourse.

These conditions would have been perfect for the arrival of the first plague, which in the Bible is described as the Nile turning to blood.

Dr Stephan Pflugmacher, a biologist at the Leibniz Institute for Water Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin, believes this description could have been the result of a toxic fresh water algae.

He said the bacterium, known as Burgundy Blood algae or Oscillatoria rubescens, is known to have existed 3,000 years ago and still causes similar effects today.

He said: "It multiplies massively in slow-moving warm waters with high levels of nutrition. And as it dies, it stains the water red."

The scientists also claim the arrival of this algae set in motion the events that led to the second, third and forth plagues – frogs, lice and flies.

Frogs development from tadpoles into fully formed adults is governed by hormones that can speed up their development in times of stress.

The arrival of the toxic algae would have triggered such a transformation and forced the frogs to leave the water where they lived.

But as the frogs died, it would have meant that mosquitoes, flies and other insects would have flourished without the predators to keep their numbers under control.

This, according to the scientists, could have led in turn to the fifth and sixth plagues – diseased livestock and boils

Professor Werner Kloas, a biologist at the Leibniz Institute, said: "We know insects often carry diseases like malaria, so the next step in the chain reaction is the outbreak of epidemics, causing the human population to fall ill."

Another major natural disaster more than 400 miles away is now also thought to be responsible for triggering the seventh, eighth and ninth plagues that bring hail, locusts and darkness to Egypt.

One of the biggest volcanic eruptions in human history occurred when Thera, a volcano that was part of the Mediterranean islands of Santorini, just north of Crete, exploded around 3,500 year ago, spewing billions of tons of volcanic ash into the atmosphere.

Nadine von Blohm, from the Institute for Atmospheric Physics in Germany, has been conducting experiments on how hailstorms form and believes that the volcanic ash could have clashed with thunderstorms above Egypt to produce dramatic hail storms.

Dr Siro Trevisanato, a Canadian biologist who has written a book about the plagues, said the locusts could also be explained by the volcanic fall out from the ash.

He said: "The ash fall out caused weather anomalies, which translates into higher precipitations, higher humidity. And that's exactly what fosters the presence of the locusts."

The volcanic ash could also have blocked out the sunlight causing the stories of a plague of darkness.

Scientists have found pumice, stone made from cooled volcanic lava, during excavations of Egyptian ruins despite there not being any volcanoes in Egypt.

Analysis of the rock shows that it came from the Santorini volcano, providing physical evidence that the ash fallout from the eruption at Santorini reached Egyptian shores.

The cause of the final plague, the death of the first borns of Egypt, has been suggested as being caused by a fungus that may have poisoned the grain supplies, of which male first born would have had first pickings and so been first to fall victim.

But Dr Robert Miller, associate professor of the Old Testament, from the Catholic University of America, said: "I'm reluctant to come up with natural causes for all of the plagues.

The problem with the naturalistic explanations, is that they lose the whole point.

"And the whole point was that you didn't come out of Egypt by natural causes, you came out by the hand of God."

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with No comments

Road runner - meet your dinosaur predecessor!

Road runner, meet your dinosaur predecessor, an "extreme" runner unearthed by an international paleontology team in central China.

In the journal Zootaxa, a team led by Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reports, Xixianykus zhangi ('SHEE-shya-nye-kus jong-eye') describes a pint-sized, two-legged sprinter from about 85 million years ago. The fossil's legs, hips and backbone adds to growing evidence that the dinosaur's "parvicursorine" kindred, "represent extreme cursors (runners) among non-avian dinosaurs," says the study.

""The limb proportions of Xixianykus are among the most extreme ever recorded for a theropod dinosaur," says study researcher Corwin Sullivan, also of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in a statement. "This doesn't provide a basis for estimating its top speed, but it does show that Xixianykus was a highly efficient runner."

The dinosaur's name derives from Xixia, its region of origin, onyx (Greek for claw) and specific name in honor of paleontologist Zhang Wentang, "who has contributed greatly to the study of paleontology in Henan Province," according to the statement.

The relatively short thigh-bone of the dinosaur, which stood perhaps 20 inches tall, hints that it was a digger, as well as a runner, says the study. Termites dug from the ground with its claws likely made for meals for Xixianykus. "It may sound odd, but digging and running actually work quite well together. Some modern termite eating species travel long distances between colonies of their prey, so as an efficient runner Xixianykus would have been able to follow this pattern," said co-author David Hone of the Chinese academy.

"Wood-nesting termites may have essentially represented a patchy resource for these dinosaurs, forcing them to travel considerable distances between colonies and(or) spend long periods searching for food, as is apparently true of aardvarks and giant anteaters today," concludes the study.

Running would definitely have been a good skill too, Hone adds. Xixianykus lived in the era of Tyrannosaurus Rex and kin, a bad time to be small and slow.

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with No comments

The "Starchild"

We finally have a recovery of nuclear DNA from the Starchild!

This past weekend I met with the geneticist working on the Starchild's DNA. He explained how he can now prove the Starchild is not entirely human, which has been our position for years. Now it is no longer a question of "if," but of "when" and "how" we spread this astounding new reality beyond the mailing list. First, though, let me bring the list's newcomers up to speed.

In 2003 we had a DNA analysis that used human-only primers to recover the Starchild's mitochondrial DNA, the DNA outside the nucleus, which comes from the mother and her genetic line. That meant its mother was human. But we could not recover its nuclear DNA, which comes from both mother and father, which meant its father was not a human. Unfortunately, with the recovery technology of 2003 we couldn't prove what he was, which left us in scientific limbo. The "no result" from the search for the nuclear DNA clearly meant Dad wasn't human, but we could not prove that fact beyond all possible doubt.

Now, in 2010, there have been many improvements in the recovery process, and those improvements have been applied to the Starchild skull with the stunning result you see below. This is a gel sheet that shows a clear recovery of its nuclear DNA, which could not be done in 2003.



The next two screen shots are taken from the national genetic database at the National Institute of Health, NIH. That public-access database is a centralized repository of all genetic information generated by geneticists all over the world, and now covers essentially all living organisms on Earth, from various kinds of viruses and bacteria, to various kinds of crustaceans and fish, to all kinds of animals and plants, including great apes and humans.

For many species, humans included, there are already nucleotide sequences covering entire genomes. Therefore, sequences from the Starchild's DNA can be directly compared against this vast database to look for any matches. In one such comparison below, you see the text below the blue line at the bottom (if you can read it, sorry it's so fuzzy) that 265 base pairs (a good length) of recovered Starchild nuclear DNA matches perfectly with a gene on human chromosome 1. This verifies beyond any degree of doubt that some of the nuclear DNA seen in the gel sheet is from a human being.



In the one below, and again at the bottom, you see the stunning report that in a string of 342 base pairs (another good length), "No significant similarity (is) found." To recover a stretch of base pairs as long as that with NO reference in the NIH database is astounding because it means there is no known earthly corollary for what has been analyzed! This incredible anomaly will put the Starchild in history books!!!



Please understand that this result has now been verified several times, and a few more different fragments have been identified that cannot be matched in this database to anything known. Despite that fact, mainstream skeptics will be obligated by their positions to try to say it's some kind of gibberish or some kind of mistake because in their world view it simply can't be true.

Luckily, their bleating protests can be easily overcome with continued repetition of the result, finding more and more similar fragments in the library that will be created from the Starchild's DNA, which is what the geneticist is confident will happen over the next weeks and months---nothing but verification that a significant part of the Starchild's genome is not found on Earth.

I should add that I still can't reveal the name of the geneticist or where he works until we are ready to formally present his results to the world. However, trust me, he is a well-established professional and his facility is large and very credible. They don't want to be bombarded by media until they are prepared for it, and neither do I for that matter. Just know that you are a part of the "inner circle" of those who have put your faith in a dream that is now coming true.


Two more issues of importance:

(1) I still don't know where the recent "MonsterQuest" episode "Lizard Monster" can be viewed on the internet by people outside the U.S. If anyone knows how that can be found, please let me know and I'll share with the list. Thanks!

(2) The expenses for materials doing our research has now outstripped the amount donated by the list. It is now coming out of my pocket and I could use some help to bridge that gap. However, look on the bright side. This should be the last time I ever have to ask for your help in this way.

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with 1 comment

Tyrannosaurs spread worldwide early in Age of Dinosaurs

Paleontologists Thursday unveiled the first fossil evidence -- a foot-long pelvic bone found in Australia -- showing that T. Rex's predecessors roamed the entire globe.

Reported in the journal, Science, the 110 million-years-old fossil pubis is "almost identical to those of tyrannosaurids", says the study led by Roger Benson of the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge.

The finding of the bone -- crucial for the balance of the distinctive carnivore's shape -- suggests that "advanced tyrannosaurids" flourished tens of millions of years before T. Rex evolved to colossal size around 85 million years ago to become the top predator of the dinosaur world, say the report authors. These dinosaurs would have been long-legged with little arms and thick skulls. The fossil also shows a relation to smaller, fleeter Raptorex dinosaur carnivores from even earlier dinosaur eras.


"The find is intriguing and certainly suggests tyrannosaurids flourished worldwide," says paleontologist Thomas Holtz of the University of Maryland in College Park, who was not part of the study. But Holtz cautions that more than just one bone is needed to confirm the worldwide extent of T. Rex's predecessor.

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with No comments

Arctodus simus - America's Ice Age super-predator

When the first humans crossed the Bering Strait into North America they encountered a hunter's paradise, with mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, and a variety of large ungulates for the taking. However, they also came face-to-face with some of the most fearsome predators of all time.

The dire wolf was larger and more heavily built than the present-day gray wolf. The large saber-toothed and scimitar cats had huge canines that could inflict horrendous wounds. The American "lion," which was larger than today's African lion, was related to the present-day puma.

However, the most terrifying predator of them all was Arctodus simus, known as the short-faced bear, which, at an estimated weight of 700 to 800 kilograms (1,543 to 1,763 pounds), was the largest carnivorous mammal that ever lived in North America.

Or was it?

In the 1960s, the late Finnish paleontologist Björn (Swedish for "bear") Kurtén, a leading expert on Ice Age mammals, especially bears, reconstructed Arctodus simus as an active predator. He emphasized the short, broad snout, powerful jaws, well-developed carnassials, and long limbs. A giant bear that could run down its prey would have been the ultimate nightmare for the first human settlers!

Later, a number of paleontologists cast doubts on Kurtén's interpretation. Some noted close similarities between Arctodus simus and its closest living relative, the primarily vegetarian South American spectacled bear, and argued that it also consumed a lot of plant matter.

Others suggested that Arctodus simus was an omnivore that frequently scavenged animal carcasses.

A new study by a team of researchers from the Universidad de Málaga in Spain has reassessed the rival claims concerning the way this extinct giant gots its dinner.

The first step taken by the Spanish team was to determine the body mass of Arctodus simus.

The weight of most mammals can be estimated from measurements of their limb bones. The researchers found a considerable range of weights, from about 300 kilograms (660 pounds) to almost one ton (2,200 pounds).

They also noted geographic variation, with the largest individuals coming from more northern locations. This pattern is still seen in populations of present-day brown bear, with particularly large animals (especially males) occurring in Alaska.


Second, the Spanish team looked at skull and limb proportions of Arctodus simus. The giant bear did not, in fact, have a particularly short snout and its skull proportions were appropriate for a bear of its size.

The researchers also noted that the most carnivorous living bear, the polar bear, has a relatively long snout. The tooth evidence provided no clear indication for either meat-eating or omnivorous habits.

Finally, while the forelegs may have been enlarged the hind legs in the extinct bear were not proportionately longer than in present-day bears. Arctodus simus was not a runner.

No longer short of snout and long of limb, Arctodus simus has been dethroned as America's Ice Age super-predator. However, studies of the carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of its bones, commonly used to determine the dietary preferences of animals, still indicate the bear consumed some meat.

Presumably a one-ton bear could behave like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla--it could eat anything it wanted to!

Grizzlies consume a lot of vegetable matter yet, from time to time, will augment this diet by taking down an elk or the odd tourist. They will also chase wolves off their kills. The much larger extinct bear could easily have engaged in similar behaviors.

A mature adult Arctodus simus must have been a magnificent sight. Fortunately for Stephen Colbert and his fellow bear-haters, this giant vanished, along with the rest of America's remarkable Ice Age megafauna, some 11,000 years ago.

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with 1 comment

Deinosuchus - an Ancient Reptile Dined on Dinosaurs

An ancient crocodile-like animal, about twice the length of an SUV, probably dined on sea turtles and dinosaurs, suggests bite-mark evidence and dung droppings.

The giant reptile called Deinosuchus was up to 29 feet long (nearly 9 meters), and likely adorned Georgia's shores, in the United States, about 79 million years ago, much as modern crocodiles dot the shores of the West Nile, the researchers say.

While the animals weren't true crocodiles, they were members of the crocodilian group and more closely related to alligators than crocs (alligators and crocodiles are closely related but distinct species). Either way, the new findings show the beast was tough, taking down dinosaurs its own size.

"We're sure (Deinosuchus) ate a lot of sea turtles, but it's evident it liked to prey on dinosaurs too," said David Schwimmer, a Columbus State paleontologist, who recently completed two studies on the giant crocodile with one of his students, Samantha Harrell.

The team analyzed various specimens of dinosaurs and sea turtles, along with the crocodilian's teeth, which were typically broken at the tips. Schwimmer said the breakage suggests a diet that included hard foods, like bone material.

"These things had very thick blunt teeth, built like little hub caps, especially the back teeth," Schwimmer said.

Several dinosaur bones showing the distinctive bite marks, including the tailbones of duck-billed dinosaurs found in the western United States, and the leg bone of a small carnivorous dinosaur, whose remains are stored at a New Jersey museum.

"The [leg] bone was so chewed that it was distorted, and it looked like a chew toy, like a dog had been working on it," Schwimmer told LiveScience. "It was covered with crocodilian bites."

Similar marks were found on turtle shells.

Fossilized feces were also collected along the banks of the Hannahatchee Creek in Stewart County, a major tributary of the Chattahoochee River, in Georgia. Poop analyses provided some support for their predator-prey conclusions. The so-called coprolites were each about a half-foot long (15 centimeters) and 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.6 cm) in diameter, or "about the size we'd expect to come out of one of these animals," Schwimmer said, referring to the crocodilians.

The feces showed no sign of bones, which is what would be expected even if the animals were chowing on dinosaur bones. "Crocodilians have very strong digestive acids and bones get dissolved," he said.

Within the coprolites, Harrell found sand and lots of shell fragments. The results indicated the ancient crocs lived in a shallow, warm-water environment, perhaps near the mouth of a river where there may have been an abundance of sea turtles.

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with 6 comments

A Host of Mummies, a Forest of Secrets

In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants died almost 4,000 years ago, yet their bodies have been well preserved by the dry air.

The cemetery lies in what is now China’s northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with brown hair and long noses. Their remains, though lying in one of the world’s largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god’s mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead a vigorous forest of phallic symbols, signaling an intense interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation.

The long-vanished people have no name, because their origin and identity are still unknown. But many clues are now emerging about their ancestry, their way of life and even the language they spoke.

Their graveyard, known as Small River Cemetery No. 5, lies near a dried-up riverbed in the Tarim Basin, a region encircled by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the basin is occupied by the Taklimakan Desert, a wilderness so inhospitable that later travelers along the Silk Road would edge along its northern or southern borders.

In modern times the region has been occupied by Turkish-speaking Uighurs, joined in the last 50 years by Han settlers from China. Ethnic tensions have recently arisen between the two groups, with riots in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. A large number of ancient mummies, really desiccated corpses, have emerged from the sands, only to become pawns between the Uighurs and the Han.

The 200 or so mummies have a distinctively Western appearance, and the Uighurs, even though they did not arrive in the region until the 10th century, have cited them to claim that the autonomous region was always theirs. Some of the mummies, including a well-preserved woman known as the Beauty of Loulan, were analyzed by Li Jin, a well-known geneticist at Fudan University, who said in 2007 that their DNA contained markers indicating an East Asian and even South Asian origin.

The mummies in the Small River Cemetery are, so far, the oldest discovered in the Tarim Basin. Carbon tests done at Beijing University show that the oldest part dates to 3,980 years ago. A team of Chinese geneticists has analyzed the mummies’ DNA.

Despite the political tensions over the mummies’ origin, the Chinese said in a report published last month in the journal BMC Biology that the people were of mixed ancestry, having both European and some Siberian genetic markers, and probably came from outside China. The team was led by Hui Zhou of Jilin University in Changchun, with Dr. Jin as a co-author.

All the men who were analyzed had a Y chromosome that is now mostly found in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia, but rarely in China. The mitochondrial DNA, which passes down the female line, consisted of a lineage from Siberia and two that are common in Europe. Since both the Y chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA lineages are ancient, Dr. Zhou and his team conclude the European and Siberian populations probably intermarried before entering the Tarim Basin some 4,000 years ago.

The Small River Cemetery was rediscovered in 1934 by the Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman and then forgotten for 66 years until relocated through GPS navigation by a Chinese expedition. Archaeologists began excavating it from 2003 to 2005. Their reports have been translated and summarized by Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in the prehistory of the Tarim Basin.

As the Chinese archaeologists dug through the five layers of burials, Dr. Mair recounted, they came across almost 200 poles, each 13 feet tall. Many had flat blades, painted black and red, like the oars from some great galley that had foundered beneath the waves of sand.

At the foot of each pole there were indeed boats, laid upside down and covered with cowhide. The bodies inside the boats were still wearing the clothes they had been buried in. They had felt caps with feathers tucked in the brim, uncannily resembling Tyrolean mountain hats. They wore large woolen capes with tassels and leather boots. A Bronze Age salesclerk from Victoria’s Secret seems to have supplied the clothes beneath — barely adequate woolen loin cloths for the men, and skirts made of string strands for the women.

Within each boat coffin were grave goods, including beautifully woven grass baskets, skillfully carved masks and bundles of ephedra, an herb that may have been used in rituals or as a medicine.

In the women’s coffins, the Chinese archaeologists encountered one or more life-size wooden phalluses laid on the body or by its side. Looking again at the shaping of the 13-foot poles that rise from the prow of each woman’s boat, the archaeologists concluded that the poles were in fact gigantic phallic symbols.

The men’s boats, on the other hand, all lay beneath the poles with bladelike tops. These were not the oars they had seemed at first sight, the Chinese archaeologists concluded, but rather symbolic vulvas that matched the opposite sex symbols above the women’s boats. “The whole of the cemetery was blanketed with blatant sexual symbolism,” Dr. Mair wrote. In his view, the “obsession with procreation” reflected the importance the community attached to fertility.

Arthur Wolf, an anthropologist at Stanford University and an expert on fertility in East Asia, said that the poles perhaps mark social status, a common theme of tombs and grave goods. “It seems that what most people want to take with them is their status, if it is anything to brag about,” he said.

Dr. Mair said the Chinese archaeologists’ interpretation of the poles as phallic symbols was “a believable analysis.” The buried people’s evident veneration of procreation could mean they were interested in both the pleasure of sex and its utility, given that it is difficult to separate the two. But they seem to have had particular respect for fertility, Dr. Mair said, because several women were buried in double-layered coffins with special grave goods.

Living in harsh surroundings, “infant mortality must have been high, so the need for procreation, particularly in light of their isolated situation, would have been great,” Dr. Mair said. Another possible risk to fertility could have arisen if the population had become in-bred. “Those women who were able to produce and rear children to adulthood would have been particularly revered,” Dr. Mair said.

Several items in the Small River Cemetery burials resemble artifacts or customs familiar in Europe, Dr. Mair noted. Boat burials were common among the Vikings. String skirts and phallic symbols have been found in Bronze Age burials of Northern Europe.

There are no known settlements near the cemetery, so the people probably lived elsewhere and reached the cemetery by boat. No woodworking tools have been found at the site, supporting the idea that the poles were carved off site.

The Tarim Basin was already quite dry when the Small River people entered it 4,000 years ago. They probably lived at the edge of survival until the lakes and rivers on which they depended finally dried up around A.D. 400. Burials with felt hats and woven baskets were common in the region until some 2,000 years ago.

The language spoken by the people of the Small River Cemetery is unknown, but Dr. Mair believes it could have been Tokharian, an ancient member of the Indo-European family of languages. Manuscripts written in Tokharian have been discovered in the Tarim Basin, where the language was spoken from about A.D. 500 to 900. Despite its presence in the east, Tokharian seems more closely related to the “centum” languages of Europe than to the “satem” languages of India and Iran. The division is based on the words for hundred in Latin (centum) and in Sanskrit (satam).

The Small River Cemetery people lived more than 2,000 years before the earliest evidence for Tokharian, but there is “a clear continuity of culture,” Dr. Mair said, in the form of people being buried with felt hats, a tradition that continued until the first few centuries A.D.

An exhibition of the Tarim Basin mummies opens March 27 at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, Calif. — the first time that the mummies will be seen outside Asia.

source

If you like this post just click here Posted By crkota with No comments