Fragments of pottery discovered in a cave in southern China are 20,000 years old, according to a team of archaeologists led by Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University. The pot was probably used to cook food in water or even brew alcohol. “Hunter-gatherers were under pressure to get enough food. If the invention is a good one, it spreads pretty fast. And it seems that in that part of southern China, pottery spread among hunter-gatherers in a large area,” he explained. It had been thought that pottery was invented some 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture and more sedentary culture.

The image of a reindeer engraved on a cave wall in south Wales has been confirmed as the oldest-known rock art in Britain. Uranium dating indicates that it was carved into a mineral deposit 14,000 years ago.

Researchers have discovered a second reference to the end of the 13^th bak’tun of the Maya long-count calendar, due on December 21, 2012. This one is carved into a staircase at the site of La Corona in Guatemala, which was found in 2010. The inscription commemorates the visit of Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’, king of Calakmul, to La Corona. He linked his reign with the end of the thirteenth cycle of the calendar in an effort to improve his political situation. “What this text shows us is that in times of crisis, the ancient Maya used their calendar to promote continuity and stability rather than predict apocalypse,” said Marcello Canuto of the Tulane University Middle America Research Institute.

Thirty-seven gold coins produced in eighteenth-century Holland have been unearthed in Azerbaijan. The coins would have been widely accepted around the world by traders. The oldest coin is dated 1781; the latest is dated 1800.

The last of the Beothuk people of Newfoundland was a woman named Shanawdithit, who died in 1829. Skeletal remains of her family members and other Beothuk are held in museums in Scotland and Canada. Members of other Canadian First Nations have asked for those remains to be repatriated. “Study is study, and I understand that. But after all this time, enough is enough. It’s already been done in other parts of Canada,” said Misel Joe, chief of the Mi’kmaq reserve at Conne River in southern Newfoundland. There are no known descendants of the Beothuk.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, June 29, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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