A mitochondrial DNA link between Aboriginal Australians and people from traditional tribes in India supports the idea that humans traveled out of Africa, along India’s southern coast, and then into Australia. Raghavendra Rao of the Anthropological Survey of India says that a common ancestor for the two populations existed up to 50,000 years ago.

A lawyer for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has denied that there are any archaeological sites at the embattled politician’s Sardinian villa. “The whole area was subject to an exhaustive search by judicial authorities a short time ago, including the villa and the park. Another search can be conducted at any time,” said Niccolo Ghedini.  

Oncologist Stephen Brincat claims that the marble blocks that once made up the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, were used to construct a dock in Malta.  

Fishermen pulled a 40,000-year-old skull fragment out of the waters off the Dutch coast. A hand ax and flints were also recovered.  

A 3,000-year-old hut near Switzerland’s border with Austria is being called the oldest in the Alps. “We’ve known that people have used these summer pastures for thousands of years but the oldest proof of an actual shelter up until now is medieval,” said Thomas Reitmaier of Zurich University.  

A list of Scotland’s historic battlefields should be completed by 2011. Battlefields on the list will be offered some protection from development. “This is not to say that there won’t be change, there’s always change in every landscape, but the change has to be sensitive and the change has to take account of the fact that these are very important places,” said Culture Minister Michael Russell.  

Federal lands in Arkansas have been plundered, and looters have been convicted of felonies. “There’s a huge concern that the public doesn’t know what’s allowed. We want them to know so we can focus on the industrial-strength bad guys who don’t give a hoot whose property they are looting on,” said National Park Service archaeologist Caven Clark.  

The 4,000-year-old skeleton of a man suffering from a rare disorder has been unearthed in northern Vietnam. Bioarchaeologist Marc Oxenham of Australian National University says the bones could represent the oldest-known paraplegic in the world.  

Vietnam’s archaeologists lack the funding and staff necessary to protect the country’s underwater heritage, and historic shipwrecks end up salvaged for profit.  

Here’s more information on the altar discovered within Hadrian’s Wall at the Roman fort of Vindolanda. “What should have been part of the rampart mound near to the north gate of the fort has turned out to be an amazing religious shrine,” said archaeologist Andrew Birley.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, July 27, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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