William Fash, director of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, wants to return some 50 pieces of carved Maya jade collected in the early twentieth century by American consul Edward Herbert Thompson. Mexico accused Thompson at the time of taking the artifacts illegally, and filed an unsuccessful lawsuit.

French mineralogist Francois Farges is 99 percent sure that the Hope Diamond, now housed in the Smithsonian Institution, was owned by the kings of France until it was stolen during the French Revolution. “It’s more than a hypothesis. We have carried out analyses by scanner and laser, which have been validated by experts in gemology,” he said.   

Early human ancestors may have had floppy, flexible feet like gibbons. Such feet allow gibbons to walk upright and climb trees.  

A seventeenth-century engraving thought to depict English explorers meeting New World people in Massachusetts has been re-identified as an encounter in Newfoundland. “It’s so obvious. I wanted to reclaim this image for Canadian history,” said historian Bill Gilbert.  

The 600-year-old main gate of South Korea’s Gyeongbok Palace has been found under a road near Seoul.  

A large, Han Dynasty bronze horse was unearthed in a tomb in central China.  

Who first settled western China? The New York Times investigates the possible origins of the mummies of the Tarim Basin, and modern political claims to the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.  

Here’s an introduction to the underground cities of Cappadocia, Turkey.  

Spain, Peru, and descendents of nineteenth-century businessmen have all claimed ownership of coins recovered by Odyssey Marine Exploration. This article updates what is happening in Spain’s lawsuit against the salvage company.  

The story of the 12,000-year-old Natufian woman’s grave containing 50 tortoise shells, a leopard pelvis, a cow tail, and part of an eagle wing has popped up again. Previous articles had called the woman a shaman, but this one refers to her as a witch doctor.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, November 19, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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