A convicted arsonist was arrested in South Korea for the burning of the 600-year-old Namdaemun gate in Seoul. “(He said) he committed the crime out of anger because he felt the government did not take enough care with the appeal he filed after being insufficiently compensated for redevelopment in his residential area,” police station chief Kim Young-soo told reporters.

Did more frequent El Ninos drive early Peruvian hunter-gatherers from the coasts to the dry valleys of Norte Chico? Excavations at a mound in Huaricanga have turned up floors, walls and hearth fires, and indicate that the people carried shellfish to the valley and grew squash and cotton. “There’s a very distinctive Andean pattern that starts here and then spreads and forms the foundation for Andean civilization for the next 5,000 years,” said Jonathan Haas of the Field Museum in Chicago.  

More information on the Neolithic farming village discovered in Egypt is available at National Geographic News. Archaeologists working on the project found clay floors; hearths containing wheat and barley; the bones of sheep, goats, and pigs imported from the Middle East; pottery and tools; and jewelry. “It’s a missing link filling in a very important and poorly known phase of the development of agricultural systems, which led to the pyramids and later civilizations,” commented archaeobiologist Bruce Smith. 

There’s also more information on the 2,000-year-old hematite, or ochre mine discovered in the Andes Mountains. The Nasca people, who flourished between 100 B.C. and 600 A.D., used the mineral to decorate their pottery. 

The race is on to plant some 30,000 trees around Ancient Olympia. Wildfires in southern Greece last summer wiped out the site’s forests, and officials want it to look it’s best for the lighting of the Olympic flame on March 24, which will then be carried to Beijing. 

This spring, the site of Kelly’s Last Stand will be excavated in Australia. “We’re hoping to find physical remains of the original inn, the Ann Jones Inn and artifacts of the siege that happened there in 1880, that resulted in the death of three members of the Kelly gang and in the capture, or course, of Ned Kelly,” said archaeologist Adam Ford.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, February 12, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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