The remaining column bases at Iran’s Apadana Palace of ancient Susa were broken in two by vandals, and their inscriptions were destroyed. “The reason for the destruction of artifacts is not clear,” said Mojtaba Gahestuni of the Khuzestan Cultural Heritage Lovers Society.

Kuelap, Peru, was home to the Chachapoya from around 800 A.D. to the mid-sixteenth century. This article from The Los Angeles Times offers a good introduction to the Chachapoya and the current excavations at their citadel.

The French city of Rouen is still trying to return the preserved head of a Maori man to New Zealand, but the national government reportedly continues to claim that Rouen’s natural history museum doesn’t have the right to do so.

National Geographic News has also picked up the story on the invention of bone ice skates in what is now Finland back in 3000 B.C.

In south China’s Minqing County, 1,000-year-old kilns stretch along the hillside in the shape of a dragon, and the region was famous in antiquity for its blue and white ceramics. A recent television program has made Minqing famous once again, and the kilns and porcelains are being destroyed by looters.

Here’s another article on the studies planned for “Lyuba,” the frozen baby mammoth carcass discovered last spring in northern Siberia. Scientists hope to learn “everything about the mammoth,” and maybe even something about climate change.

DNA testing identified the contents of some of the amphorae recovered from a fourth-century wreck off the coast of the Greek island of Chios.

A chaotic layer of rubble and other archaeological evidence on Crete indicates that a giant tsunami hit Minoan civilization after the powerful eruption of a volcano on the island of Thera.

Researchers have identified a mutation on human chromosome 21 responsible for the condition microcephalic osteodysplastic primordial dwarfism type II. At the end of their article on the discovery in Science, the team suggests that this mutation might account for the stature and brain size of Indonesia’s hobbits, Homo floresiensis. But physical anthropologist Charles Hildebolt, who has studied the hobbit bones, responds to the idea that “Flores man” carried this mutation “the pathology of the week.”

The University of Virginia will return to Italy two acroliths looted from Morgantina. The university received the sculptures as a gift in 2002. This second article from the university’s student paper, The Cavalier Daily, was published last September. It gives more information about the parts of the acroliths that the museum had, and what was known of their provenance.

Here’s a short interview with Egyptologist Bob Brier to publicize his new IMAX film, Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs.

A second Koguryo Dynasty (37 B.C. to 668 A.D.) tomb was uncovered in Pangyo, South Korea. Most Koguryo tombs have been found in North Korea.

National Public Radio has produced a three-part series on the impact of China’s Three Gorges Dam. The third part focuses on how the dam has affected the region’s cultural heritage, including the Stone Treasure Fortress, now surrounded by a protective wall, and the ancient village of Dachang, which was moved and rebuilt on a hill as “a sort of theme park.” This link will take you to an overview of the entire series.