Deforestation, air travel, and satellite imagery have allowed archaeologists to spot the signs of an ancient civilization in the Amazon basin. “Every week we find new structures,” said Denise Schaan of the Federal University of Pará in Brazil.

Here’s a photograph of France’s President, Nicolas Sarkozy, with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, during the hand-over of a wall painting from a raided tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Egypt had demanded that the artifacts be returned and cut ties with the Louvre Museum to drive the point home.  

Recent archaeological discoveries in Seoul, Korea, have brought attention to the country’s preservation laws. “If city development projects in Seoul continue in the way that they’re conducted now, it’s just a matter of time before the history of the city totally disappears,” said Ji Geon-gil of the Cultural Heritage Administration.  

In Iraq, the site of the Babylonian city of Shadupum has reportedly been left unguarded since 2003.   

Restoration of the storage facilities at Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace Museum, which was the seat of the Ottoman Empire for 380 years, is planned. Some 80,000 artifacts are housed there.  

Wild Dingoes are capable of attending to human gestures without special training, just as domesticated dogs do. Australia’s wild dogs are descended from semi-domesticated dogs from Southeast Asia.  

Archaeoastronomer Alun Salt’s study of the orientation of Greek temples on Sicily is in the news again. Salt thinks that temples in the Greek colonies were built to face the sunrise in order to strengthen their ties to mainland Greece, even though such an alignment is less frequent on the mainland.   

The eleventh-century metalworking site in York, England, which may have served as a Viking weapons center, is featured in National Geographic News. “Any metal was a precious material that would be recycled. Whoever won a fight in this period would collect what was left on the battlefield,” said Søren Sindbæk of the University of York.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, December 14, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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