NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will photograph Apollo landing sites, and try to determine if the flag planted by the Apollo 11 crew is still standing. “We need to know where our material culture resides on the moon. Many parts and pieces of our time, certainly in the era of the early robotics on the moon, are missing from the database,” said Beth O’Leary of New Mexico State University. The Lunar Legacy Project seeks to have the landing site designated a National Historic Landmark.   The original video recordings of the NASA 1969 moon landing are gone-they were recorded over when the space agency was low on tape.  “It was a mistake, no doubt about that. This is a problem inside the entire federal government. They don’t think that preservation is all that important,” said Smithsonian curator Roger Launius. He added that federal storage facilities really are “kind of like the last scene of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark.’ It just goes away in this place with other big boxes.” Copies of the historic footage are being restored by a Hollywood film company.   Artifacts from the Apollo 11 space flight haven’t fared much better.

An army officer is among the 100 terracotta warriors unearthed at the tomb of China’s first emperor in Xi’an. The statue was found lying face down behind four chariots and was largely intact. “The original colors have faded after more than 2,000 years of decay, but a corner of the officer’s robe suggested it was in colors other than the grey-ish clay,” said chief archaeologist Xu Weihong.  

A study of mitochondrial DNA from the fossils of six Neanderthals suggests that their population between 38,000 and 70,000 years ago never exceeded 3,500 females. “Because there never really were millions of them, they probably were more susceptible to some event that made them go extinct, which to me, suspiciously coincides with the emergence of modern humans,” said Adrian Briggs of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.  

The children sacrificed by the ancient Maya priests of Chichen Itza were likely male, according to Guellermo de Anda of the University of Yucatan. “It was thought that the gods preferred small things and especially the rain god had four helpers that were represented as tiny people,” he said.  

Police in Tacoma, Washington, raided an auction house and took possession of nearly 100 woven baskets and beaded items they say were stolen from the home of a Puyallup tribal leader.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, July 17, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.