Royal retainers living at Machu Picchu came from different parts of the Inca empire. Analysis of their bones shows that the yanacona grew up drinking water from different sources and eating different foods. Their skulls also display regionally distinctive characteristics, and they had been buried with pottery made in far-flung parts of the empire.

In the Roman port city of Ostia Antica, four second-century housing complexes decorated with frescoes have been restored and will be opened to the public. “They’re exceptional indicators of the emerging merchant class and the economic and political well-being of the city in the second century,” said archaeologist Flora Panariti.  

Construction plans that would have destroyed the “Stonehenge of Sevilla” have been canceled after some damage was inflicted by heavy machinery. The site, with its five dolmens and 22 burial chambers, is thought to be the largest Copper Age settlement in Spain. “In a strange sort of way it was good news that the developers moved in and helped to excavate the dolmens as now we know they are there officially to protect them,” said local activist Juan Antonio Morales.  

Different strains of house mice have been found to be living in Britain. Mice on the mainland share a genetic heritage with those living in Germany, but mice from the Orkney Islands, which was Viking territory in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, are related to those living in Norway.   

A mid-nineteenth-century water main made of wood was uncovered in downtown Syracuse, New York. The city had a private water system build by Oliver Teall, one of its founders.  

Today, Orillia, Ontario, sits on top of the Mount Slavin site, where burials, beads, arrowheads, spear points, wampum, and French iron axes, copper kettles, and knife blades were dug up by locals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Scholars aren’t sure if the site’s earlier residents were Algonquins or Hurons.  

The skeletal remains of Col. David H. Zook, U.S. Air Force, were found in Vietnam. His U-10B Super Courier aircraft went down on October 4, 1967.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, October 1, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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