The 12,000-year-old grave of a Natufian woman is being called one of the earliest known shaman burial sites by Leore Grosman of Hebrew University. The woman’s body had been held in a special position with large stones. Complete tortoise shells, and body parts from a wild boar, an eagle, a cow, a leopard, two martens, and a human foot, had been buried with her.   A diagram of the grave can be seen at Live Science.

  The buildings that once housed the world’s first large-scale rocket development program still stand in Kummersdorf, Germany. The lab opened on November 1, 1932. “Because these were powers that were trying to catch up [and re-arm after World War I], they were willing to entertain rather outlandish ideas like rockets,” said Michael Neufeld, head of space history at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.  

A pottery kiln dating to the seventh and eighth centuries has been discovered in Ha Long City, Vietnam. Archaeologists think the pottery may have been produced for travel, since the site was located near a busy port in Ha Long Bay.  

Historic clocks stolen from the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem in 1983 have finally been recovered from the widow of the thief, the notorious Naaman Diller. She had tried to sell them, but “The clocks are so well-known that nobody would buy them,” said Rachel Hasson, artistic director of the museum.  

National Geographic News takes a crack at the claim that a 3,000-year-old pottery shard bearing five lines of Proto-Canaanite text is evidence of a real-life King David and his biblical kingdom.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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