Ancient Human Ancestor 'Ida' Discovered

A discovery of a 47-million-year-old fossil primate that is said to be a human ancestor was announced and unveiled today at a press conference in New York City.
Known as "Ida," the nearly complete transitional fossil is 20 times older than most fossils that provide evidence for human evolution

From LiveScience | LiveScience.com

The newly claimed primate genus and species Darwinius masillae, said to be an ancestor of humans. The fossil dates to 47 million years ago. The abdomen contains organic remains of food in the digestive tract. The skeleton was split into two parts before scientists put it all back together, leading to today's announcement.
Credit: PLoS One, Hurum et al.



A discovery of a 47-million-year-old fossil primate that is said to be a human ancestor was announced and unveiled today at a press conference in New York City.

Known as "Ida," the nearly complete transitional fossil is 20 times older than most fossils that provide evidence for human evolution.

It shows characteristics from the very primitive non-human evolutionary line (prosimians, such as lemurs), but is more related to the human evolutionary line (anthropoids, such as monkeys, apes and humans), said Norwegian paleontologist Jørn Hurum of University of Oslo Natural History Museum. However, she is not really an anthropoid either, he said.

The fossil, called Darwinius masillae and said to be a female, provides the most complete understanding of the paleobiology of any primate so far discovered from the Eocene Epoch, Hurum said. An analysis of the fossil mammal is detailed today in the journal PLoS ONE.

"This is the first link to all humans ... truly a fossil that links world heritage," Hurum said.

Here is some context for the age of the new primate fossil: Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) first emerged about 200,000 years ago, but early humans such as Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus anamensis, reach back to 3 million or 4 million years ago, or earlier. Humans are thought to have split off from a group that includes chimpanzees and gorillas about 6 million years ago. And a group that includes all the great apes (including us) and old world monkeys (called simians or anthropoids) diverged from new world monkeys in the Eocene, just after the time of Ida. So our primate roots reach back to this time.


History of discovery

For the past two years, an international team of scientists led by Hurum has conducted a detailed forensic analysis of the fossil.

The fossil was apparently discovered in 1983 by private collectors who split and eventually sold two parts of the skeleton on separate plates: The lesser part was restored and, in the process, partly fabricated to make it look more complete.

This part was eventually purchased for a private museum in Wyoming, and then described by Jens L. Franzen, part of Hurum's team, who recognized the fabrication. The more complete part has just come to light, and it now belongs to the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo.

Ida was preserved in Germany’s Messel Pit, a mile-wide crater containing oil-rich shale that is a significant site for fossils of the Eocene Epoch. Opposable big toes and nail-bearing tips on the fingers and toes confirm the fossil is a primate, and a foot bone called the talus bone links Ida directly to humans, Hurum said.

The fossil also preserved the primate's gut contents, including fruits and leaves. X-rays reveal both baby and adult teeth, plus the lack of a "toothcomb" or a "grooming claw," which is an attribute of lemurs (which are also primates, like us, but are considered more primitive and part of a different family than all the great apes and us).

The scientists estimate Ida was about 9 months at death, and measured about 3 feet in length. Her forward-facing eyes are like ours — which would have enabled her fields of vision to overlap, allowing 3-D vision and an ability to judge distance. She was probably nocturnal, Hurum and his colleagues say.

Ida lived at a time when mammals were evolving quickly on a planet that was basically a vast jungle. Early horses, bats, whales and many other creatures, including the first primates, thrived at this time when the climate was subtropical. The Himalayas were being formed.


Death scenario

X-rays reveal that a broken wrist may have contributed to Ida’s death — her left wrist was healing from a bad fracture, Hurum said.

She could have been overcome by carbon dioxide gas whilst from drinking from the Messel lake: the still waters of the lake were often covered by a low-lying blanket of the gas as a result of the volcanic forces that formed the lake and which were still active.

Hampered by her broken wrist, Ida possibly slipped into unconsciousness, was washed into the lake, and sunk to the bottom, where the unique conditions preserved her for 47 million years, Hurum said.

A replica of Ida will go on display later this week at the American Museum of Natural History's new "Extreme Mammals" exhibition.

35,000-year-old ivory carving found: Busty sculpture could be world's oldest

This figurine, found in 2008 in a cave in Schelklingen, southern Germany is allegedly the world's oldest reproduction of a human with an estimated age of at least 35,000 years. (AP/Daniel Maurer).

A 35,000-year-old ivory carving of a busty woman found in a German cave was unveiled Wednesday by archaeologists who believe it is the oldest known sculpture of the human form.

The carving found in six fragments in Germany’s Hohle Fels cave depicts a woman with a swollen belly, wide-set thighs and large, protruding breasts.

“It’s very sexually charged,” said University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard, whose team discovered the figure in September.

Carbon dating suggests it was carved at least 35,000 years ago, according to the researchers’ findings, which are being published Thursday in the scientific journal Nature.

“It’s the oldest known piece of figurative sculpture in the world,” said Jill Cook, a curator of Paleolithic and Mesolithic material at the British Museum in London.

Maria Malina, scientific employee, presents the photo of a carved ivory female figurine during its presentation in Tuebingen, southern Germany, Wednesday, May 13, 2009.

Stones in Israel and Africa almost twice as old are believed to have been collected by ancient humans because they resembled people, but they were not carved independently.

The Hohle Fels cave discovery suggests the humans, who are believed to have come to Europe around 40,000 years ago, had the intelligence to create symbols and think abstractly in a way that matches the modern human, Conard said.

“It’s 100 percent certain that, by the time we get to 40,000 years ago in Swabia, we’re dealing with people just like you and me,” Conard told The Associated Press, referring to the southern German region where the sculpture was recovered along with other prehistoric artifacts.

Conard believes the 2.4-inch-tall (6-centimeter) figure may have been hung on the end of a string. The left arm is missing, but Conard said he hopes to find it by sifting through material from the cave.

The Hohle Fels sculpture is curvaceous and has neither feet nor a head, like some of the roughly 150 so-called Venus figurines found in a range from the Pyrenees mountains to southern Russia and dating back about 25,000-29,000 years.

But Cook warned against trying to draw any connections between the Venuses and the Hohle Fels figure, saying that would be like comparing Picasso to a classical sculptor — too much time had passed.

“I wonder whether at this point we’re looking at figures which are unique within themselves and unique within the cultures that they’re arising in,” she said.

Archaeologist Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge, suggested a clearer continuum.

“We now have evidence of that sort of artistic tradition of Venus figurines going back 6,000 years earlier than anybody ever guessed,” he said.

Neanderthals also lived in Europe around the time the sculpture was carved, and frequented the Hohle Fels cave. But Mellars said layered deposits left by both species over thousands of years prove the sculpture was crafted by humans.

“Nothing within a million miles of this has ever been found in a Neanderthal layer,” Mellars said.

The archaeologists agreed the sculpture’s age and features invite speculation about its purpose and the preoccupations of the culture that produced it.

Cook suggested it could be symbol of fertility, perhaps even portrayed in the act of giving birth.

Mellars suggested a more basic motivation for the carving: “These people were obsessed with sex.”

Conard said the differing opinions reinforced the connection between the ancient artist and modern viewer.

“How we interpret it tells us just as much about ourselves as about people 40,000 years ago,” he said.

Ancient but deadly: the return of shastar vidiya

Banned by the Raj, the world's original martial art is being revived by British Asians. Jerome Taylor reports

Tuesday, 5 May 2009

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SUKHA SINGH

Nidar Singh Nihang, front, hopes to revive the ancient martial art of shastar vidiya

Studies say 'hobbit' previously unknown species

From: yahoo.com

AFP/National Geographic/File – A photo from the University of Wollongong in Australia shows an artist's impression of a human species.

The tiny ancient humans dubbed hobbits, whose remains were discovered on an Indonesian island in 2003, were a previously unknown species altogether, according to two new studies.
Debate has raged in the scientific community since the fossils were found on the island of Flores, with some experts insisting they were descended from Homo erectus and others saying evolution could not account for their small brains.

About a metre (three feet) tall and weighing 30 kilos (65 pounds), the tiny, tool-making hunters may have roamed the remote island as recently as 8,000 years ago. Their fossils are about 18,000 years old.

Many scientists have said Homo floresiensis, as the creature is now formally known, was a prehistoric human stunted by natural selection over millennia through a process called insular dwarfing.

Others countered that even this evolutionary shrinking, well documented in island-bound animals, could not account for the chimpanzee-sized brain -- just a third the size of that in a modern human being.

The only plausible explanation, they insisted, was that the handful of specimens found had a genetic disorder resulting in an abnormally small skull or that they suffered from "dwarf cretinism" caused by deficient thyroids.

Two new studies in the British journal Nature go a long way toward settling the debate.

A team led by William Jungers of Stony Brook University in New York tackled the problem by analysing the hobbit's foot.
In some ways it is very human. The big toe is aligned with the others and the joints make it possible to extend the toes as the body's full weight falls on the foot -- attributes not found in great apes.

But in other respects it is startlingly primitive: far longer than its modern human equivalent and equipped with a very small big toe, long and curved lateral toes, and a weight-bearing structure closer to a chimpanzee's.

Recent archaeological evidence from Kenya shows that the modern foot evolved more than 1.5 million years ago, most likely in Homo erectus.
So unless the Flores hobbits became more primitive over time -- considered extremely unlikely -- they must have branched off the human line at an even earlier date.

For Jungers and colleagues, this suggests their ancestor was not Homo erectus "but instead some other more primitive hominin whose dispersal into southeast Asia is still undocumented."

Companion studies published by the Journal of Human Evolution bolster this theory and conjecture that these more ancient forebears may be the still poorly understood Homo habilis.

In any case, Homo floresiensis would be confirmed as a separate species.
But what still has not been explained the hobbit's inordinately small brain.
That's where hippos come into the picture.
Eleanor Weston and Adrian Lister of the Natural History Museum in London compared fossils of several species of ancient hippos found on the island of Madagascar with the mainland ancestors from which they had evolved.

They were surprised to find that insular dwarfing -- driven by the need to adapt to an island environment -- shrank their brains far more than had previously been thought possible.
"Whatever the explanation for the tiny brain of H. floresiensis relative to its body size, our evidence suggests that insular dwarfing could have played a role in its evolution," they conclude.

While the new studies answer some questions, they also raise new ones sure to spark fresh debate, Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman said in Nature.

Only more fossil evidence will indicate whether the hobbits of Flores evolved from Homo erectus, whose traces have been found throughout Eurasia, or from an even more ancient lineage not yet found outside Africa, he said.

African San people - the world's most ancient race

The African San people have been found to be the most ancient race in the world in a huge genetic study.

Last Updated: 7:23PM BST 02 May 2009

Researchers discovered the genetic DNA of The San people was more diverse than any other group Photo: EPA

The people, who have lived as hunter-gatherers for thousands of years, are the direct relations of early modern humans who migrated from the continent to spread their DNA throughout the world.

A study by the University of Pennsylvania has found all populations descended from just 14 ancient African populations.

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Researchers discovered the genetic DNA of The San people was more diverse than any other group, suggesting they have survived longer than any other group.

The first humans evolved in southern Africa, probably near the South Africa-Namibia border, and today the continent has more genetic variation than anywhere else on Earth.

Nearly three-fourths of African-Americans can trace their ancestry to West Africa, according to the analysis published in the online edition of the journal Science.

It is the largest study of African genetics ever undertaken. Over 10 years, Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania and an international team of researchers trekked across Africa collecting samples to compare the genes of various peoples.

"Given the fact that modern humans arose in Africa, they have had time to accumulate dramatic changes in their genes," said lead researcher.

"Everybody's history is part of African history because everybody came out of Africa," said Muntaser Ibrahim of the department of molecular biology at the University of Khartoum, Sudan.

Discoveries May Point to Cleopatra's Tomb

By PAUL SCHEMM

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posted: 13 DAYS 13 HOURS AGO

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BURG EL-ARAB, Egypt (April 19) – Egypt's top archaeologist made his version of a sales pitch Sunday, presenting 22 coins, 10 mummies, and a fragment of a mask with a cleft chin as evidence that the discovery of the lost tomb of Mark Antony and Cleopatra is at hand.

Zahi Hawass showed off the ancient treasures to journalists during a tour of a 2,000-year-old temple to the god Osiris, where they were found. He believes the site near the Mediterranean Sea contains the tomb of the doomed lovers that has been shrouded in mystery for so long.

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Will Mystery Be Solved?

Amr Nabil, AP

8 photos

Centuries after their deaths, the final resting place of Cleopatra and Mark Antony could finally be at hand, Egypt's top archaeologist said April 19. Pointing to coins, mummies and masks inside this 2,000-year-old temple to the god Osiris as evidence, Zahi Hawass said he has reason to believe that "there is someone important buried inside."

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"In my opinion, if this tomb is found, it will be one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century because of the love between Cleopatra and Mark Antony, and because of the sad story of their death," he said.

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Mark Antony and Cleopatra challenged Caesar Augustus for control of the Roman Empire more than two millenia ago. Their armies were defeated and rather than submit to capture, the lovers committed suicide — Mark Antony by his sword, Cleopatra with a poisonous asp.

The Roman historian Plutarch said Caesar allowed the two to be buried together, but their tomb was never found.

Hawass' claim is the latest spectacular announcement by the archaeologist, who continues to capitalize on the world's fascination with ancient Egypt. He regularly unveils discoveries that are often met with skepticism and bemusement by Egyptologists abroad.

In the past, archaeologists have not always backed Hawass' more enthusiastic claims and suggested a degree of caution is sometimes warranted.

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With his trademark Indiana Jones-style hat, Hawass guided journalists through the Toposiris Magna temple 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Egypt's ancient seaside capital of Alexandria. One by one, he held up the fruits of three years of excavation by a team from the Dominican Republic, including the fragment of a mask bearing a distinctive cleft chin.

"If you look at the face of Mark Antony, many believed he had this cleft on his chin and that's why I thought this could be Mark Antony," said Hawass.

But he admitted they "are not sure 100 percent" and joked that the mask could depict Richard Burton, the actor who played Mark Antony in the 1963 movie "Cleopatra" also starring Elizabeth Taylor.

Kathleen Martinez, the Dominican archaeologist who has been excavating the site for the last three years, said she chose the temple based on 12 years of studying the life of Cleopatra.

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Ancient Human Remains

Egypt's Ministry of Culture / Reuters

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Oasis Discovery: Archaeologists have found dozens of well-preserved mummies in Fayoum, an Egyptian oasis. The remains, some buried as long ago as 2061 B.C., were wrapped in linen and decorated with paint that is still intact. They include "some of the most beautiful mummies found," said Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist said April 13.

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"I believe it could be Taposiris Magna because it was the most sacred temple of its time," she said, explaining that the lovers were buried in a temple rather than a public tomb to protect them from the Romans.

Inside the temple enclosure, Martinez's team also found coins bearing Cleopatra's name and face, as well as the carvings that could represent the doomed lovers.

For Hawass, however, the most significant element was the recent discovery of tombs from the same time period ringing the area around the temple. The tombs included 10 mummies of apparent nobles.

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"The discovery of the cemetery this week really convinced me that there is someone important buried inside this temple," he told television cameras while standing inside a rough cut tomb surrounded by niches filled with bones and whole skeletons.

"No one would be buried outside a temple without a reason. We saw that in the pharaonic days, they were always buried beside pyramids," he said.

The discovery of the cemetery prompted Hawass to conduct a study of the temple with ground-penetrating radar, which revealed three possible sites for subterranean burial chambers 40 feet (12 meters) underground.

Excavations will start Tuesday, said Hawass, who predicted the mystery of the resting place for the two would finally be solved. A second radar study is set for April 22.

Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery

Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery

• By Brandon Keim
• April 23, 2009 |
• 11:01 am |
• Categories: Earth Science

An ancient script that’s defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers.

Computational analysis of symbols used 4,000 years ago by a long-lost Indus Valley civilization suggests they represent a spoken language. Some frustrated linguists thought the symbols were merely pretty pictures.

"The underlying grammatical structure seems similar to what’s found in many languages," said University of Washington computer scientist Rajesh Rao.

The Indus script, used between 2,600 and 1,900 B.C. in what is now eastern Pakistan and northwest India, belonged to a civilization as sophisticated as its Mesopotamian and Egyptian contemporaries. However, it left fewer linguistic remains. Archaeologists have uncovered about 1,500 unique inscriptions from fragments of pottery, tablets and seals. The longest inscription is just 27 signs long.

In 1877, British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham hypothesized that the Indus script was a forerunner of modern-day Brahmic scripts, used from Central to Southeast Asia. Other researchers disagreed. Fueled by scores of competing and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to decipher the script, that contentious state of affairs has persisted to the present.

Among the languages linked to the mysterious script are Chinese Lolo, Sumerian, Egyptian, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Old Slavic, even Easter Island — and, finally, no language at all. In 2004, linguist Steve Farmer published a paper asserting that the Indus script was nothing more than political and religious symbols. It was a controversial notion, but not an unpopular one.

Rao, a machine learning specialist who read about the Indus script in high school and decided to apply his expertise to the script while on sabbatical in Inda, may have solved the language-versus-symbol question, if not the script itself.

"One of the main questions in machine learning is how to generalize rules from a limited amount of data," said Rao. "Even though we can’t read it, we can look at the patterns and get the underlying grammatical structure."

Rao’s team used pattern-analyzing software running what’s known as a
Markov model, a computational tool used to map system dynamics.

They fed the program sequences of four spoken languages: ancient
Sumerian, Sanskrit and Old Tamil, as well as modern English. Then they gave it samples of four non-spoken communication systems: human DNA,
Fortran, bacterial protein sequences and an artificial language.

The program calculated the level of order present in each language.
Non-spoken languages were either highly ordered, with symbols and structures following each other in unvarying ways, or utterly chaotic.
Spoken languages fell in the middle.

When they seeded the program with fragments of Indus script, it returned with grammatical rules based on patterns of symbol arrangement. These proved to be moderately ordered, just like spoken languages.

As for the meaning of the script, the program remained silent.

"It’s a useful paper," said University of Helsinki archaeologist
Asko Parpola, an authority on Indus scripts, "but it doesn’t really further our understanding of the script."

Parpola said the primary obstacle confronting decipherers of fragmentary Indus scripts — the difficulty of testing their hypotheses
— remains unchanged.

But according to Rao, this early analysis provides a foundation for a more comprehensive understanding of Indus script grammar, and ultimately its meaning.

"The next step is to create a grammar from the data that we have,"
he said. "Then we can ask, is this grammar similar to those of the
Sanskrit or Indo-European or Dravidian languages? This will give us a language to compare it to."

"It’s only recently that archaeologists have started to apply computational approaches in a rigid manner," said Rao. "The time is ripe."

Citation: "Entropic Evidence for Linguistic Structure in the Indus
Script." By Rajesh P. N. Rao, Nisha Yadav, Mayank N. Vahia, Hrishikesh
Joglekar, R. Adhikari and Iravatham Mahadevan. Science, Vol. 324 Issue
5926, April 24, 2009.

Image: J.M. Kenoyer/Harappa.com

New Artificial DNA Points to Alien Life

CHICAGO — A strange, new genetic code a lot like that found in all terrestrial life is sitting in a beaker full of oily water in a laboratory in Florida, a scientist said today, calling it the first example of an artificial chemical system that is capable of Darwinian evolution.

The system is made of the four molecules that are the basic building blocks of our DNA along with eight synthetic modifications of them, said biochemist Steven A. Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville.

The main difference between the synthetic molecules and those that make up conventional DNA is that Benner's molecules cannot make copies of themselves, although that is just "a couple of years" away, he said.

The wild biochemistry finding, described to a small group of reporters today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, offers ideas about new types of life for scientists to look for beyond our planet, or even possibly hidden on our planet.

"Unless it happens to shoot at you with a ray gun, the life that you encounter off of Earth will not necessarily have same biochemistry as us," Benner said.

And the step from Benner's system to something that could be called artificial life is still large. "There is not enough information in them to build organisms," Benner said.

Expanded alphabet for DNA

For some 20 years, Benner's labs have been involved in trying to make artificial life or things approximating it, with similar genetic and inheritance properties to life on Earth. (Previously, Benner worked at the University of Florida.)

He and his colleagues have focused in part on expanding the DNA alphabet to develop an "Artificially Expanded Genetic Information System," which now has its own supporting molecular biology.

The building blocks of DNA are four chemicals called nucleotides that are referred to as A, C, T and G, for short. The nucleotides pair up and bond in predictable ways to form the double helix structure of DNA. Benner's new nucleotides, which he and his colleagues have named Z, P, V, J, Iso-C, Iso-G, X and K, are reshufflings of the constituents of those molecules found in our DNA.

The evolution in this system happens when the 12-letter genetic code makes copying mistakes and subsequent sequences have properties that make them more liable to get copied. Those sequences would survive in greater numbers than the original sequence.

Benner's synthetic approach was conceptualized using "ball and stick plastic model chemistry," he said, the technique used by James Watson and Francis Crick to arrive at the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953.

The human genome's DNA includes 3 billion base pairs. Some of the molecules synthesized in Benner's lab are 81 base pairs long — relatively short.

The molecules are "fed" and grow via a process called the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that allows the molecules to make copies of themselves. Once the replication of the molecules in Benner's system is self-catalyzed, without PCR, the process is self-sustaining. Benner claims, "then it's artificial life."

Dreaming up extra-terrestrial life

The research resulted from a NASA-funded project to try to understand what life might look like beyond Earth. Such life might live in water, but it could also live in liquid nitrogen or methane (as speculated for Saturn's moon Titan) and in environments with extremely high or low acidity.

The results are published in a technical book, "Life, the Universe and the Scientific Method," of which Benner has made about 100 copies to distribute to his colleagues.

"One of the ways scientists try to understand life as a universal concept ... is you try to make life on your own in the lab," Benner said. "We try to put together chemicals that do that."

Any potential life forms made from such molecules would be "so alien in terms of their biochemistry that they will not able to eat you," Benner said.

NASA has been involved in searching for extra-terrestrial life along numerous avenues for decades, including the Viking mission to Mars in the 1970s and its recent missions to the red planet which have searched for signs of habitability there. NASA also funds an Astrobiology Institute, which partners with hundreds of researchers world-wide who study of the origins, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe

The trick to searching for alien life is how to look for it, said Paul Davies of Arizona State University, who also spoke with reporters here today.

"All of the techniques which microbiologists use to [look for alien life] are customized to life as we know it," Davies said. "It's no surprise that microbiologists haven't come across micro-organisms that seem to have relatively different biochemistry."

In the future, more scientists could "talk with Steve Benner," Davies said, "to come up with perfectly good molecules that life could use — but doesn't."

Archeologist Uncovers Evidence Of Ancient Chemical Warfare

Diagram showing the Sasanian Persian mine designed to collapse Dura’s city wall and adjacent tower, the Roman countermine intended to stop them, and the probable location of the inferred Persian smoke-generator thought to have filled the Roman gallery with deadly fumes. The Persians may have used bellows, but a natural chimney effect may also have helped generate the poisonous cloud. (Credit: Image copyright Simon James)



ScienceDaily (Jan. 15, 2009) — A researcher from the University of Leicester has identified what looks to be the oldest archaeological evidence for chemical warfare -- from Roman times.

At the meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, University of Leicester archaeologist Simon James presented CSI-style arguments that about twenty Roman soldiers, found in a siege-mine at the city of Dura-Europos, Syria, met their deaths not as a result of sword or spear, but through asphyxiation.

Dura-Europos on the Euphrates was conquered by the Romans who installed a large garrison. Around AD 256, the city was subjected to a ferocious siege by an army from the powerful new Sasanian Persian empire. The dramatic story is told entirely from archaeological remains; no ancient text describes it. Excavations during the 1920s-30s, renewed in recent years, have resulted in spectacular and gruesome discoveries.

The Sasanians used the full range of ancient siege techniques to break into the city, including mining operations to breach the walls. Roman defenders responded with ‘counter-mines’ to thwart the attackers. In one of these narrow, low galleries, a pile of bodies, representing about twenty Roman soldiers still with their arms, was found in the 1930s. While also conducting new fieldwork at the site, James has recently reappraised this coldest of cold-case ‘crime scenes’, in an attempt to understand exactly how these Romans died, and came to be lying where they were found.

Dr James, Reader in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, said: “It is evident that, when mine and countermine met, the Romans lost the ensuing struggle. Careful analysis of the disposition of the corpses shows they had been stacked at the mouth of the countermine by the Persians, using their victims to create a wall of bodies and shields, keeping Roman counterattack at bay while they set fire to the countermine, collapsing it, allowing the Persians to resume sapping the walls. This explains why the bodies were where they were found. But how did they die? For the Persians to kill twenty men in a space less than 2m high or wide, and about 11m long, required superhuman combat powers—or something more insidious.”

Finds from the Roman tunnel revealed that the Persians used bitumen and sulphur crystals to get it burning. These provided the vital clue. When ignited, such materials give off dense clouds of choking gases. “The Persians will have heard the Romans tunnelling,” says James, “and prepared a nasty surprise for them. I think the Sasanians placed braziers and bellows in their gallery, and when the Romans broke through, added the chemicals and pumped choking clouds into the Roman tunnel. The Roman assault party were unconscious in seconds, dead in minutes. Use of such smoke generators in siege-mines is actually mentioned in classical texts, and it is clear from the archaeological evidence at Dura that the Sasanian Persians were as knowledgeable in siege warfare as the Romans; they surely knew of this grim tactic.”

Ironically, this Persian mine failed to bring the walls down, but it is clear that the Sasanians somehow broke into the city. James recently excavated a ‘machine-gun belt’, a row of catapult bolts, ready to use by the wall of the Roman camp inside the city, representing the last stand of the garrison during the final street fighting. The defenders and inhabitants were slaughtered or deported to Persia, the city abandoned forever, leaving its gruesome secrets undisturbed until modern archaeological research began to reveal them.

Your Astrological Sign May Not Be What You Think It Is

Your Astrological Sign May Not Be What You Think It Is




Figure 1. The vernal equinox marks the first day of spring and occurs at the intersection of the ecliptic and the celestial equator. The vernal equinox also marks the zero point of the Zodiac.




Figure 2. If you were born between March 21 and April 19, your astrological sign is said to be Aries. But this was only true for a while, back when the system was set up in 600 BC. Today, the Sun is no longer within the constellation of Aries during much of that period. From March 11 to April 18, the Sun is actually in the constellation of Pisces!





Figure 3. The graphic shows the precession of the equinoxes from 600 BC to 2600 AD. In 600 BC, the intersection of the ecliptic and celestial equator is in western Aries and marked by the Vernal Equinox. In the year 2007, the intersection is in Pisces.

It's a great conversation starter: "What's your sign?"

But before you ask or answer that question, consider this: your zodiac sign corresponds to the position of the sun relative to constellations as they appeared over 2200 years ago!

The science behind astrology may have its roots in astronomy but don’t confuse these two disciplines. Astronomy can explain the position of the stars in the sky but it’s up to you to determine what, if anything, their alignment signifies.

The Constellations of the Zodiac

The ecliptic, or the position of the Sun as it’s perceived from the revolving Earth, passes through the constellations that formed the Zodiac - Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Zodiac signs were originally determined by which constellation the Sun was "in" on the day you were born.

Early astronomers observed the Sun traveling through the signs of the Zodiac in the course of one year, spending about a month in each. Thus, they calculated that each constellation extends 30 degrees across the ecliptic.

However, a phenomenon called precession has altered the position of the constellations we see today.

Precession and Astrology

The first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere was once marked by the zero point of the Zodiac. Astronomers call this the vernal equinox and it occurs as the ecliptic and celestial equator intersect.

Around 600 BCE, the zero point was in Aries and was called the "first point of Aries." (Figure 1) The constellation Aries encompassed the first 30 degrees of the ecliptic; from 30 to 60 degrees was Taurus; from 60 to 90 degrees was Gemini; and so on for all twelve constellations of the Zodiac.

Unbeknownst to the ancient astrologers, the Earth continually wobbles around its axis in a 25,800-year cycle. This wobble—called precession—is caused by the gravitational attraction of the Moon on Earth's equatorial bulge.

Over the past two-and-a-half millennia, this wobble has caused the intersection point between the celestial equator and the ecliptic to move west along the ecliptic by 36 degrees, or almost exactly one-tenth of the way around. This means that the signs have slipped one-tenth—or almost one whole month—of the way around the sky to the west, relative to the stars beyond.

For instance, those born between March 21 and April 19 consider themselves to be Aries. Today, the Sun is no longer within the constellation of Aries during much of that period. From March 11 to April 18, the Sun is actually in the constellation of Pisces! (Figure 2) See also Figure 3, which demonstrates the precession of the equinoxes from 600 BCE to 2600.

Your "Real Sign"

The table below lists the dates when the Sun is actually within the astronomical constellations of the Zodiac, according to modern constellation boundaries and corrected for precession (these dates can vary a day from year to year).

You will most likely find that once precession is taken into account, your zodiac sign is different. And if you were born between November 29 and December 17, your sign is actually one you never saw in the newspaper: you are an Ophiuchus! The eliptic passes through the constellation of Ophiuchus after Scorpius.

Now you really have something cool with which to start that conversation!

Check out your “real” zodiac sign below and see what the sky looked like on your birthday by going to the Birthday Sky application.

Capricorn - Jan 20 to Feb 16
Aquarius - Feb 16 to Mar 11
Pisces - Mar 11 to Apr 18
Aries - Apr 18 to May 13
Taurus - May 13 to Jun 21
Gemini - Jun 21 to Jul 20
Cancer - Jul 20 to Aug 10
Leo - Aug 10 to Sep 16
Virgo - Sep 16 to Oct 30
Libra - Oct 30 to Nov 23
Scorpius - Nov 23 to Nov 29
Ophiuchus - Nov 29 to Dec 17
Sagittarius - Dec 17 to Jan 20