A tiny fragment of clay tablet is said to be inscribed with the oldest writing yet found in Jerusalem. “It was written by a highly skilled scribe who, in all likelihood, prepared tablets for the royal household of the time,” said Wayne Horowitz of Hebrew University. The tablet is estimated to be 3,400 years old, and is thought to have been sent from the Canaanite ruler of Jerusalem to the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten.

How did primates make the switch to bipedalism? This installment of NPR’s series on human evolution investigates the when, how, and why questions anthropologists ask about the “mobile savage.”  You can also see the differences between the skeletons of humans and chimps in this interactive article.  

Archaeologists are attempting to map the battlefields of the Pequot War, fought between English colonists and the Pequot tribe in the 1630s, on land in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York.  

The bones of a tortoise have been discovered among the remains of cats and dogs at Stafford Castle in England’s West Midlands region. The tortoise was probably kept as a pet in the nineteenth century. “It seems very likely that this specimen was imported from North Africa or the Mediterranean,” said Richard Thomas of the University of Leicester.  

You can help in the search for the tomb of Genghis Khan, using satellite imagery. A team on the ground in Mongolia will check out areas of possible archaeological interest.  

Excavation of the undisturbed slave quarters at Montpelier, the home of James Madison, is underway in Virginia.  

Flooding has damaged the Harappan site of Jognakhera in northern India, where 5,000-year-old copper smelting furnaces have been found.  

A spear point discovered by a family on a hike in Boone’s Cave State Park in North Carolina turns out to be 10,000 years old. “For somebody to find something like this in the park, it’s the first one I’ve heard of being found and actually turning it in. Most people don’t think about the historical value,” said park ranger Sheila Zuccaro.  

There are a few more pictures of the two 4,300-year-old tombs recently unearthed in Saqqara at National Geographic Daily News.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, July 12, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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