A comparison of 11,000-year-old human skeletons and more recent bones suggests that two distinct groups from Asia settled in the New World. The differences between the skeletal remains “are so large that it is highly improbable that the earliest inhabitants of the New World were the direct ancestors of recent Native American populations,” according to an international team of paleoanthropologists.

A new law in Alabama will provide more protection to American Indian burial and ceremonial sites. The bill was the result of the controversy over a mound destroyed by the construction of a new shopping center in the city of Oxford. “The mound situation was horrible. We looked for quite some time for some legal hook with the Oxford mound. The really frustrating thing there was there was nothing we could leverage legally,” said Robert Thrower of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.  

Vandals have damaged a nineteenth-century site in Jaffa, Israel, and equipment left there by archaeologists.  

A year has passed, and it seems that salvage company Odyssey Marine Exploration is renewing its public-relations campaign and its quest to bring the HMS Victory to the surface. Odyssey’s representative will meet with Britain’s Department of Culture, Media, and Sport and the Ministry of Defense, advocating for the recovery of the eighteenth-century flagship.  

A Chamorro burial pit was discovered on Guam.  

Here’s another article on the ancient artifacts that have been revealed by the melting of ice in the Canadian High Arctic. “The implements are truly amazing. There are wooden arrows and dart shafts so fine you can’t believe someone sat down with a stone and made them,” said Tom Andrews of the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Center.  

In Finland, the bones of animals have been uncovered at seitas, the sacred stone arrangements of the Sami people. “Based on radiocarbon dating, the oldest findings have been dated back to the twelfth century,” said archaeologist Tiina Aikas.  

Greece’s tourism industry is suffering from striking workers in the wake of the financial crisis. Some 20,000 reservations have been cancelled, and new bookings have dropped by 10 to 12 percent. “It’s like we’re poking out our own eyes,” said Anna Anifanti, director of the Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, June 15, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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