Mitochondrial DNA from a tiny finger bone uncovered in a Siberian cave has shown it to be distinct from that of Neanderthals and modern humans. “The human family tree has got a lot of branching. It’s entirely plausible there are a lot of branches out there we don’t know about,” commented Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The new creature has been dubbed “X-woman.” 

Looting archaeological sites is big business in Lebanon, where laws and penalties are lax and ancient sites are neglected.  

Law enforcement agents and scholars have gone to great lengths to round up looters in the Ozarks and the surrounding area. Many pot hunters here also use illegal drugs.  

A team of archaeologists has until 2013 to investigate Tushan, an ancient Assyrian city in southeastern Turkey that could be flooded by dam waters. “This is a pragmatic, conservationist rescue dig,” said Tim Matney of the University of Akron.  

In the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, a bus depot sits on the site of a church cemetery where enslaved and free people of African descent were buried between the early seventeenth century and 1856. In 2008, church leaders, activists, historians, and elected officials joined forces to try to win recognition of the burial ground as a significant historical site.  

Hawaii’s State Historic Preservation Division, which is responsible for protecting the state’s archaeological and cultural sites, important architecture, and human remains, has been criticized for inadequate staffing, the lack of a suitable database, and an out of date statewide historic preservation plan. It could now lose its federal funding, or half of its budget. “We don’t have the technical expertise or money to get (SHPD) to the level the National Park Service wants,” said Laura H. Thielen, director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources.   

A letter postmarked February 12, 1934, turned up at a Duke University post office. Mike Trogdon, director of operations for postal services, tracked down the intended recipient.

 How did humans become adaptable beings? This is the questions to be asked in a new study that will look at how climate change over millions of years affected human evolution. “The explanations that we’ve had tied human origins back to an African savannah or to a European ice age, and it was never really adequate to understand the plasticity, the versatility of the human species,” explained Rick Potts of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Energy companies that want to construct offshore wind farms in the North Sea will have to beware of Stone Age villages in the region known as Doggerland, which was submerged by ice melt some 8,000 years ago. Doggerland once connected Britain to mainland Europe.   

As Pakistan’s historical sites are deteriorating, people are moving in and building new homes on the land.  

A section of a twelfth-century wall in Sri Lanka, said to have been built by King Parakramabahu the Great to protect the city of Polonnaruwa, has been bulldozed. The construction workers were putting in a new water line.  

An Eastern Han Dynasty walled city has been discovered in China’s Jiangxi province. The city is estimated to be 2,000 years old.  

Here’s more on the politics of archaeology in Jerusalem.  

The Assyrian International News Agency reports that structures belonging to the Anglican Church in Luxor, Egypt, have been destroyed to make way for the “Rams Road” project, before negotiations for the land were completed.   The project, also called the “Avenue of Sphinxes,” has been making news for a while.