The kingdom of Jordan has asked Canada to seize the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are on display at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. Jordan has also filed a complaint with UNESCO. “Israel seized the scrolls and other antiquities from the Palestinian Museum, which was managed by Jordan, in East Jerusalem when it occupied this part of the city in 1967,” said Rafea Harahsheh of Jordan’s antiquities department. 

An 8,000-year-old building found near Tel Aviv offers the first evidence of a permanent, Neolithic settlement in the area. Archaeologists also found hippo bones and pottery. “This discovery is both important and surprising to researchers of the period,” said lead excavator Ayelet Dayan.   

Last week, skeletons said to belong to the builders of Egypt’s pyramids were discovered buried in deep shafts, along with beer and bread.   “These tombs were built beside the king’s pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves,” said Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s archaeology department.   

More pictures of the Centaur, a World War II-era Australian hospital ship, have been taken. The ship was torpedoed by the Japanese in 1943, killing 268 people. “We found the bell with the name on it. You can’t get any better than that,” said shipwreck hunter David Mearns. The site will be protected as a war grave.   

Excavations continue at Wari Bateswar, in Bangladesh. The 2,500-year-old fort city was a trading post on the Buriganga River.  

Shells containing black, yellow, and red pigment residues have been called Neanderthal “make-up containers” by a team led by Joao Zilhao of Bristol University. “This is the first secure evidence for their use of cosmetics,” he said.  

A crypt containing a man’s skeleton was discovered under a room of the Templo de las Pinturas at Mexico’s Maya site of Bonampak. He may have been a relative of ruler Chaan Muan II, or a sacrificed war captive, since his skull is missing.  

A monumental statue of the 25^th dynasty Nubian pharaoh Taharqa has been discovered in Sudan. According to Julie Anderson of the British Museum, this pharaoh statue was found further south of Egypt than any other. “That’s one reason it’s so exciting and very interesting,” she said.  

Did human ancestors travel from northern Africa to Europe over water? Thomas Strasser of Providence College says that stone hand axes found in caves and rock shelters on Crete resemble those made by Homo erectus in Africa 800,000 years ago. “We’re just going to have to accept that, as soon as hominids left Africa, they were long-distance seafarers and rapidly spread all over the place,” he explained.  

Pieces of 81 bronze mirrors were unearthed from a looted stone tomb in the Sakurai Chausuyama burial mound in Japan. “We could assume the tomb had more than 100 mirrors. It suggest the power held by the King of Wa [an ancient name for Japan],” said Taichiro Shiraishi of the Chikatsu Asuka Museum.   

Gregory Aldrete of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has suggested that Alexander the Great and his soldiers wore body armor made of layers of linen laminated together. “Our controlled experiments basically dispelled the myth that armor made out of cloth must have been inferior to other available types. Indeed, the laminated layers function like an ancient version of modern Kevlar armor, using the flexibility of the fabric to disperse the force of the incoming arrow,” he said.  

Scholars at the British Museum announced that it will delay sending the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran because of the inscriptions found on two cuneiform tablets in the museum’s collections. The clay pieces could “shed light” on the cylinder’s “missing” or “obscure” passages. “The agreement has been made with our colleagues in Iran that we’ll postpone the loan to investigate this exciting discovery with them,” said press person Hannah Boulton.   

Artist Andy Holden knit a giant replica of a bit of stone he swiped from the Great Pyramid while visiting Egypt as a child. He returned the guilt-inducing rock before undertaking the project. “I suppose the gesture of knitting a colossal replica is an absurd work of penance on my behalf for the original crime,” he said.  

Here’s an update on the attempt to identify a saddled horse skeleton discovered in a California state park.  

The title of this one says it all: “Wanted: volunteer to become mummy on TV.”

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, January 11, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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