American Indians began farming in eastern North America at least 3,800 years ago, even though wild food was plentiful. Evidence of five different cultivated plants has been discovered at the Riverton site in Illinois. Brian Redmond of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio says that this “crop complex” may have “added to what was [already] a successful life,” for the Riverton people.

Two manuscripts were confiscated at Yemen’s Sana’a International Airport. It was not clear if they were ancient or not. “This prompts us to confiscate all items that we are suspicious of,” explained Waleed Al-Aghbari, antiquities inspector at the airport.   

A Civil War-era gun platform has been found at the Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site in North Carolina, overlooking the Cape Fear River.  

Traces of a medieval monastery were uncovered in Scotland’s Crarae Garden.   

Is modern life speeding up the pace of human evolution? Anthropologists say the growth of the world’s population has multiplied the size of the gene pool available to launch new, beneficial gene mutations. “Human evolution didn’t stop when anatomically modern humans appeared or when they expanded out of Africa. It never stopped,” said Henry Harpending of the University of Utah.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, April 9, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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