Police in Italy have seized more than 16,000 artifacts and ten metal detectors while investigating 70 people for trading looted objects on eBay. Most of the artifacts came from the Calabria region of southern Italy and had been sold to private collectors.

A shipwreck discovered in 2003 in the Solent, the strait separating the Isle of Wight from mainland England, has been identified as The Flower of Ugie, which sank in 1852. The Flower of Ugie was built in 1838 and carried cargo around Africa and to India and the Far East, the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and across the Atlantic Ocean to America and Canada. The ship was grounded during a storm and broke apart the next day.

A new genetic study of domesticated dogs indicates that modern animals have very little in common with their ancient ancestors. Patterns of human movement, population sizes, and lots of cross breeding in the past 150 years have impacted the genetic diversity of dogs, making it difficult to trace their first ancestors. “Ironically, the ubiquity of dogs combined with their deep history has obscured their origins and made it difficult for us to know how dogs became man’s best friend,” said evolutionary biologist Greger Larson of Durham University.

Celia Sánchez Natalís of the University of Zaragoza has translated two late-Roman lead curse tablets that were recently rediscovered in the holdings of the Museo Archeologico Civico di Bologna. The inscriptions depict a deity, possibly the Greek goddess Hekate, with snakes coming out of her hair. The Latin texts, which were probably written by two different people, curse a Roman senator named Fistus and a veterinarian named Porcello and his wife, Maurilla.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, May 22, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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