Three of the five men arrested for stealing the sign that hangs over the entrance to Auschwitz demonstrated to Polish police how they tore it from the gateposts. The tools used in the theft were found at the home of one of the suspects.

Scientists have continued to excavate and study the 60 skeletons discovered in a 3,000-year-old cemetery in Vanuatu. Many of the skeletons are headless, their limbs broken in order to fit them into coral reef cavities. “The way these people are buried, bears witness of a body concept which is different from the whole-body concept in Europe the last 5,000 years,” said Mads Ravn of the University of Stavanger’s Museum of Archaeology in Norway.   

Chimpanzees living in Senegal, where people set fires annually to clear the land, remain calm around the fires and even have a “fire dance,” and a special vocalization. “If chimps can understand and predict the movement of fire, then maybe that’s the thing that allowed some of the very earliest bipedal apes to eventually be able to control fire,” said primatologist Jill Pruetz of Iowa State University.  

Here’s more information on the “modern use of space” by human ancestors living at the site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel. An international team of archaeologists uncovered evidence of the mastery of fire and distinct areas for cooking and tool making at the 800,000-year-old encampment.  

This article from The Jerusalem Post wraps up the excavation at the proposed site of a visitors center near the Western Wall of the Second Temple. “All the excavations that have been done in the past few years have completely revolutionized our understanding of that period inside Jerusalem,” said Jon Seligman of the Israel Antiquities Authority.   

Construction workers in New York City’s Times Square uncovered a mysterious stone wall that will be preserved for future generations to investigate.   

Seven hundred people celebrated the winter solstice at Stonehenge this year, despite the fog.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, December 22, 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.