Morris Sutton, once a factory manager, quit his job to become an archaeologist. Now he lives in South Africa and digs at Swartkrans in the Sterkfontein Valley. “There’s a huge attraction that you are picking up something like a stone tool that maybe some hominid dropped a million years ago,” he explained.

You can read more than 250 ancient Greek manuscripts online, thanks to the British Library in London, which has made some of its holdings available to everyone. “This is exactly what we have all hoped for from new technology, but so rarely get,” said Mary Beard of the University of Cambridge.  

Discovery News has more on Liubov Golovanova’s idea that Neanderthals in western Asia and Europe were wiped out by at least three volcanic eruptions 40,000 years ago. Golovanova is affiliated with the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in St. Petersburg, Russia.  

A project to build a natural gas pipeline from Wyoming to Oregon will disturb cultural resources, according to some tribal nations. However, because the pipeline does not cross tribal boundaries, the tribal nations were not consulted ahead of time. “Adequate consultation is something that should have been done at the beginning – they’re trying to do it now, but the last thing should have been the first thing,” said Warner Barlese of the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, September 27, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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