Erosion has exposed more than 50 petroglyphs depicting people and animals on an island in Tonga. David Burley, of Simon Fraser University, has been called in to study the site.

While cleaning rainwater drains at Moenjodaro, archaeologists uncovered some structures from the city’s ancient drainage system, including an “elliptical lid” that may have held water for ceremonies.  

Al-Ahram Weekly has more information on the recent discoveries at the Karnak Temples in Egypt.   

Salvage company Odyssey Marine Exploration is making headlines again with the discovery of the HMS Victory, a British man-of-war that sank in 1744. “We found this more than 50 miles from where anybody would have thought it went down,” claimed company co-founder Greg Stemm. A British Ministry of Defense spokesman responded: “Assuming the wreck is indeed that of a British warship, her remains are sovereign immune. This means no intrusive action may be taken without the express consent of the United Kingdom.” Odyssey Marine Exploration is currently being sued by Spain over a gold-laden, Atlantic Ocean shipwreck.   An article in The Telegraph on the announcement closes with a quote from Mike Williams, a law lecturer at Wolverhampton University and a member of the Nautical Archaeology Society. “If we allow Odyssey to go ahead with this operation, it will cause an uproar,” he said.  The Observer also weighs in on the discovery of the HMS Victory.  

Dan Vergano of USA Today reviews the “scientific back-story” of Homo floresiensis, a.k.a. the Hobbits, and the four new papers published in the Journal of Human Evolution.   

Here’s another article on the stone tools dated to 1.8 million years ago that were unearthed in Malaysia.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, February 2, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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