An artificial underground cave, the largest in Israel, has been exposed in the Jordan Valley in the course of a survey carried out by the University of Haifa’s Department of Archaeology. Prof. Adam Zertal, who headed the excavating team, reckons that this cave was originally a large quarry during the Roman and Byzantine era and was one of its kind. Various engravings were uncovered in the cave, including cross markings, and it is assumed that this could have been an early monastery. “It is probably the site of “Galgala” from the historical Madaba Map,” Prof. Zertal says.
Mystery Cave found in Jordan
The enormous and striking cave covers an area of approximately 1 acre: it is some 100 meters long and about 40 meters wide. The cave is located 4 km north of Jericho. The cave, which is the largest excavated by man to be discovered in Israel, was exposed in the course of an archaeological survey that the University of Haifa has been carrying out since 1978.
As with other discoveries in the past, this exposure is shrouded in mystery. “When we arrived at the opening of the cave, two Bedouins approached and told us not to go in as the cave is bewitched and inhabited by wolves and hyenas,” Prof. Zertal relates. Upon entering, accompanied by his colleagues, he was surprised to find an impressive architectonic underground structure supported by 22 giant pillars. They discovered 31 cross markings on the pillars, an engraving resembling the zodiac symbol, Roman letters and an etching that looks like the Roman Legion’s pennant. The team also discovered recesses in the pillars, which would have been used for oil lamps, and holes to which animals that were hauling quarried stones out of the cave could have been tied.
The cave’s ceiling is some 3 meters high, but was originally probably about 4 meters high. According to Prof. Zertal, ceramics that were found and the engravings on the pillars date the cave to around 1-600 AD. “The cave’s primary use had been as a quarry, which functioned for about 400-500 years. But other findings definitely indicate that the place was also used for other purposes, such as a monastery and possibly as a hiding place,” Prof. Zertal explains.
The main question that arose upon discovering the cave was why a quarry was dug underground in the first place. “All of the quarries that we know are above ground. Digging down under the surface requires extreme efforts in hauling the heavy rocks up to the surface, and in this case the quarrying was immense. The question is, why?” For a possible answer to this mystery, Prof. Zertal points to the famous Madaba map. This is a Byzantine mosaic map that was found in Jordan and is the most ancient map of the Land of Israel. Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley are depicted with precision on the map, and a site called Galgala is depicted next to a Greek inscription that reads “Dodekaliton”, which translates as “Twelve Stones.”
This place is marked at a distance from Jericho that matches this cave’s distance from the city. According to the map, there is a church next to Dodekaliton; there are two ancient churches located nearby the newly discovered cave. According to Prof. Zertal, until now it has been hypothesized that the meaning of “Twelve Stones” related to the biblical verses that describe the twelve stones that the Children of Israel place in Gilgal. However, it could be that the reference is a description of the quarry that was dug where the Byzantines identified the Gilgal. “During the Roman era, it was customary to construct temples of stones that were brought from holy places, and which were therefore also more valuable stones. If our assumption is correct, then the Byzantine identification of the place as the biblical Gilgal afforded the site its necessary reverence and that is also why they would have dug an underground quarry there,” Prof. Zertal concludes. “But” he adds, “much more research is needed.”
The first wolverine to be recorded in Colorado for 90 years
A wolverine that researchers have tracked since early April has crossed into northern Colorado, the first known incidence of a wolverine in the state for 90 years (since 1919).
Wolverines are the largest land-dwelling members of the weasel family. Adult wolverines average about 30 pounds. Resident adults occupy arctic habitats in Alaska and Canada, and range south into the lower 48 states only high in mountains where near-arctic conditions exist.
The Colorado wolverine, a young male labeled M56, was captured near Grand Teton National Park and traveled approximately 500 miles during April and May, successfully navigating significant man-made features including Interstate 80, wildlife officials announced today.
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) researchers affixed a radio-tracking collar to the wolverine as part of an ongoing study to understand these wide-ranging little-known animals. A growing body of research is showing that wolverines need large areas to survive and that the young often disperse long distances between mountain ranges to find a territory and mates.
A wolverine’s home range is often as large as a grizzly bear’s, scientists explained in a statement. The size of a wolverine’s territory, as much as 500 square miles for some adult males, limits the number of individuals that a given area can support. Adults tend to inhabit areas above timberline where there are snow-covered avalanche chutes and freezing temperatures much of the year.
New evidence underscores the theory of human origin that suggests humans most likely share a common ancestor with orangutans, according to research from the University of Pittsburgh and the Buffalo Museum of Science. Reporting in the June 18 edition of the Journal of Biogeography, the researchers reject as “problematic” the popular suggestion, based on DNA analysis, that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, which they maintain is not supported by fossil evidence.
Jeffrey H. Schwartz, professor of anthropology in Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences and president of the World Academy of Art and Science, and John Grehan, director of science at the Buffalo Museum, conducted a detailed analysis of the physical features of living and fossil apes that suggested humans, orangutans, and early apes belong to a group separate from chimpanzees and gorillas.
Chimpanzee, not our closest cousins?
They then constructed a scenario for how the human-orangutan common ancestor migrated between Southeast Asia—where modern orangutans are from—and other parts of the world and evolved into now-extinct apes and early humans. The study provides further evidence of the human-orangutan connection that Schwartz first proposed in his book The Red Ape: Orangutans and Human Origins (Westview Press, 2005).
Schwartz and Grehan scrutinised the hundreds of physical characteristics often cited as evidence of evolutionary relationships among humans and other great apes—chimps, gorillas, and orangutans—and selected 63 that could be verified as unique within this group (i.e., they do not appear in other primates). Of these features, the analysis found that humans shared 28 unique physical characteristics with orangutans, compared to only two features with chimpanzees, seven with gorillas, and seven with all three apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans). Gorillas and chimpanzees shared 11 unique characteristics.
Human looking Orangutan?
Schwartz and Grehan then examined 56 features uniquely shared among modern humans, fossil hominids—ancestral humans such as Australopithecus—and fossil apes. They found that orangutans shared eight features with early humans and Australopithecus and seven with Australopithecus alone. The occurrence of orangutan features in Australopithecus contradicts the expectation generated by DNA analysis that ancestral humans should have chimpanzee similarities, Schwartz and Grehan write. Chimpanzees and gorillas were found to share only those features found in all great apes.
Schwartz and Grehan pooled humans, orangutans, and the fossil apes into a new group called “dental hominoids,” named for their similarly thick-enamelled teeth. They labeled chimpanzees and gorillas as African apes and wrote in Biogeography that although they are a sister group of dental hominoids, “the African apes are not only less closely related to humans than are orangutans, but also less closely related to humans than are many” fossil apes.
Research which finally proves that bones found in Shropshire, England provide the most geologically recent evidence of woolly mammoths in North Western Europe publishes today in the Geological Journal. Analysis of both the bones and the surrounding environment suggests that some mammoths remained part of British wildlife long after they are conventionally believed to have become extinct.
The mammoth bones, consisting of one largely complete adult male and at least four juveniles, were first excavated in 1986, but the carbon dating which took place at the time has since been considered inaccurate. Technological advances during the past two decades now allow a more exact reading, which complements the geological data needed to place the bones into their environmental context. This included a study of the bones’ decay, analysis of fossilised insects which were also found on the site, and a geological analysis of the surrounding sediment.
The research was carried out by Professor Adrian Lister, based at the Natural History Museum in London, who has conducted numerous studies into ‘extinction lag’ where small pockets of a species have survived for thousands of years longer than conventionally thought.
Life size Mammoth
“Mammoths are conventionally believed to have become extinct in North Western Europe about 21,000 years ago during the main ice advance, known as the ‘Last Glacial Maximum’” said Lister. “Our new radiocarbon dating of the Condover mammoths changes that, by showing that mammoths returned to Britain and survived until around 14,000 years ago.”
As the Shropshire bones are the latest record of mammoths in North Western Europe they not only prove that the species survived for much longer than traditionally believed it also provides strong evidence to settle the debate as to whether mammoth extinction was caused by climate change or human hunting.
“The new dates of the mammoths’ last appearance correlate very closely in time to climate changes when the open grassy habitat of the Ice Age was taken over by advancing forests, which provides a likely explanation for their disappearance,” said Lister. “There were humans around during the time of the Condover mammoths, but no evidence of significant mammoth hunting.”
A new dinosaur with nut-cracking jaws found in the Gobi desert ate like a bird—a parrot, to be exact.
The 3-foot-long (0.9-meter-long) Cretaceous creature had a boxlike skull and beaklike jaw that resemble those of modern parrots, which have beaks that can crack open nuts, a new study found.
The 110-million-year-old skull—as well as “a huge pile” of 50 stomach stones found with the fossil—suggests that the beast was chewing hard, fibrous nuts and seeds, the researchers say. Stomach stones are rocks ingested by some animals to grind food in their digestive systems.
The skull, found in the Gobi desert in Mongolia in 2001, once had giant jaw muscles attached to broad sheets of extremely rigid cheekbone, giving the animal a powerful bite.
Like a parrot, the dinosaur was able to move its jaws both vertically and horizontally, allowing it to “shear” tough plants.
If confirmed, Psittacosaurus gobiensis (“parrot dinosaur of the Gobi”) would be the world’s first known nut-eating dinosaur.
The skeleton of a whale that died around 10,000 years ago has been found in connection with the extension of the E6 motorway in Strömstad. The whale bones are now being examined by researchers at the University of Gothenburg who, among other things, want to ascertain whether the find is the mystical “Swedenborg whale”.
There are currently four species of right whale. What is particularly interesting is that the size and shape of the whale bones resemble those of a fifth species: the mystical “Swedenborg whale”, first described by the scientist Emmanuel Swedenborg in the 18th century.
“Bones from what is believed to be Swedenborg’s right whale have previously been found in western Sweden. However, determining the species of whale bones found in earth is complicated and there is no definitive conclusion on whether the whale actually existed, it could equally well be a myth,” says zoologist Thomas Dahlgren and his colleague Leif Jonsson.
This superb photograph of a dolphin was captured by Sallie Longman off Mudeford Beach on Saturday 13th June 2009. It is thought to have been one of a pod of between 12-15 dolphins.
Ho hum, I’m not a religious man, more spiritual these days, but a smoke ring or smoke ring shaped flying object has been dubbed a sign from God, by a family visiting a theme park!
Smith and her family were at Kings Dominion when they saw a black floating ring in the sky. “Is this the end of the world, what is going on?” Smith wondered.
Kings Dominion says the ring is smoke from a ride called Volcano. UFO investigator, Cameron Pack, agreed. Pack said he’d be convinced it was just smoke if it weren’t for pictures of a similar sighting at Fort Belvoir, taken sometime in the 1950s.
Smith says she’s positive it wasn’t smoke.
“Smoke usually looks smokey and cloudy. This ring of smoke was a perfect circle. It was lined up so tight like it was a cut in the middle of the sky,” said Smith. She also doesn’t think it was a UFO.
“It was like a sign, God gives you signs and I just felt like that was a sign and I’m not sure what that sign meant but it meant a great deal to my family because when we got home we all got in line and prayed together. We were freaking out,” Smith continued.
Given away by strange, crop circle-like formations seen from the air, a huge prehistoric ceremonial complex discovered in southern England has taken archaeologists by surprise.
A thousand years older than nearby Stonehenge, the site includes the remains of wooden temples and two massive, 6,000-year-old tombs that are among “Britain’s first architecture,” according to archaeologist Helen Wickstead, leader of the Damerham Archaeology Project.
Discovered during a routine aerial survey by English Heritage, the U.K. government’s historic-preservation agency, the “crop circles” are the results of buried archaeological structures interfering with plant growth. True crop circles are vast designs created by flattening crops.
For such a site to have lain hidden for so long is “completely amazing,” said Wickstead, of Kingston University in London.
The 500-acre (200-hectare) site is “etched” into farmland near the village of Damerham, some 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Stonehenge.
(Westview Press, 2005).
