Archaeologists found stone tools beneath a layer of volcanic sediment, indicating that the Indonesian island of Flores was inhabited one million years ago, or much earlier than previously thought. “We don’t know which hominins made the million-year-old tools because, regrettably, no human fossils were found with the tools,” said Adam Brumm of the University of Woollongong. He thinks the tools may have been produced by ancestors of Homo floresiensis, the Hobbits.   There’s a photograph of the tools, and criticism of the claim that they are one million years old, at National Geographic Daily News.

Human bones unearthed in an English garden have been dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. A medieval settlement is known to have occupied that area of Northumberland.   

Here’s more information on the recent study that found that modern domesticated dogs probably descended from wolves in the Middle East. “Our results show that Middle Eastern wolves were a critical source of genome diversity, although interbreeding with local wolf populations clearly occurred elsewhere in the early history of specific lineages,” according to the article, which appears in Nature.  In addition, Australia’s wild dingo and the New Guinea singing dog are genetically closest to wolves, out of the 85 dog breeds tested in a study conducted by Alan Wilton of the University of New South Wales.  

There’s also more information on the re-identification of a 1,300-year-old building in Israel as the Umayyad palace, al-Sinnabra.  

A 400-year-old shipwreck has been uncovered by winter storms on the coast of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. “It’s going to go to pieces. I would love to see them save it,” said beachcomber Ray Midgett, who discovered the wreck.  

Archaeologists and police officers in Norfolk, England, have teamed up to crack down on illegal metal detecting. “Norfolk has a national reputation as a place to come and filch and steal archaeological material,” explained archaeologist Andrew Rogerson.  

Korean history professor Li Jine-mieung thinks he has identified several more Korean cultural items in the National Library of France that were removed from the Joseon Dynasty royal library in the nineteenth century.  

Once-and-future king Ruben Mita, age 11, pulled a sword out of the ground in his New Zealand backyard. His mom called the Auckland War Memorial Museum, and they put her in touch with the Royal Armories Museum in England in order to try to identify the unusual artifact.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, March 18, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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