Fire, water to help unravel archaeological objects’ age

September 9th, 2009 LIMA - Archaeologists in Peru have discovered a tomb containing the remains of a woman believed to be around 2,900 years old in the country's northern Cajamarca region, a media report said. "On the night of Sep 2, under a full moon, we were finally able to get to the remains of the person who occupied the tomb we had located Aug 31," Yuji Seki of Japan, the lead researcher, told the Peruvian daily El Comercio Wednesday.

August 24th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists is all set to test nearly 300 engraved stones in a new laboratory in Mexico, in order to decipher the ancient Zapoteca Writing. The laboratory will be operating at Monte Alban Archaeological Zone in Oaxaca, Mexico.

August 21st, 2009 LONDON - A team of archaeologists has uncovered what they believe could be remains of the only medieval stone castle in South Northamptonshire, UK. According to a report in the Northampton Chron and Echo newspaper, archaeologists from Northamptonshire made the discovery at The Mount in Alderton, near Towcester, after they picked up where Time Team's archaeologists left off eight years ago.

August 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of archaeologists has come across evidence which proves that the "Peking Man" was able to use fire roughly 200-000 to 500,000 years ago. "Peking Man" is referred to a group of fossil specimens, hundreds of thousands of years old, discovered in 1923-27 during excavations at Zhoukoudian near Beijing (at that time known as Peking), in China.

August 1st, 2009 LONDON - A stargazer has filmed and posted on YouTube the video of what he claims to be a cluster of "UFOs" flying in formation "higher than a plane". Jason Goldthorpe, 37, of St Helens, Lancs, says that he could not believe his eyes when he saw the cluster.

July 31st, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is introducing a new Web site that will provide a centralized resource for information on near-Earth objects - those asteroids and comets that can approach Earth. The "Asteroid Watch" site also contains links for the interested public to sign up for NASA's new asteroid widget and Twitter account.

July 28th, 2009 MOSCOW - The Russian navy has declassified its records of encounters with unidentified flying objects, popularly known as UFO's, which indicate that extraterrestrial intelligences like to stick to oceans while visiting Earth. According to a report in Russia Today, the records, dating back to soviet times, were compiled by a special navy group collecting reports of unexplained incidents delivered by submarines and military ships.

July 27th, 2009 SOFIA - A team of archaeologists has found a sanctuary in Central Bulgaria where the nymph cult used to be celebrated in ancient times. According to a report in the Balkan Travellers, the sanctuary was found by archaeologists in the vicinity of the Nicopolis ad Istrum ancient site, located near the town of Veliko Tarnovo in central Bulgaria.

July 23rd, 2009 LONDON - A new computer simulation has suggested that millions of objects in the solar system's main asteroid belt may be icy interlopers from beyond Neptune that were flung into their present orbits after a violent migration of the giant planets. The solar system's main asteroid belt is a diverse mix of objects that orbit between Mars and Jupiter.

July 12th, 2009 TEHRAN - Archaeologists have discovered what is being dubbed as Iran's largest Paleolithic area in the Mirk hill, located in the southern part of the city of Semnan. The 4-hectare area, which dates back to the middle-Paleolithic era, has yielded numerous ancient objects belonging to Neanderthals.

July 2nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Dutch researcher Laurens van der Maaten has developed a new analytical technique that enables the computer to recognize archaeological material and fake works of art. According to a report in www.physorg.com, the technique not only enables the computer to better interpret the content of photos and images, but also of data.

June 18th, 2009 LIMA - Archaeologists at the National Institute of Culture (INC) have found a pre-Inca tomb in the Salapunku archaeological site, located inside the Machu Picchu Archaeological Park in Cusco, southeastern Peru. Resident archaeologist Francisco Huaycaya Quispe said that these remains would belong to a woman from the Quillke culture, an indigenous which flourished before the Inca Empire.

June 17th, 2009 Washington, June 17 (ANI): A new study suggests that humans' expertise in recognising faces may be attributed to their tendency to see people and faces as individuals. Vanderbilt University researchers, who led the study, say that the same approach can be learnt and applied to other objects as well.

May 31st, 2009 SOFIA - The latest archaeological research at the ancient observatory of Kokino in north-eastern Macedonia has revealed layers from the Iron Period, around the seventh century BC. "At the moment, there is intensive archaeological research on several sectors of the site," Minister of Culture Elizabeta Kancheska-Milevska explained during a Parliament session dedicated to questions of members of parliament.

May 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has developed a new way of dating archaeological objects, by using fire and water to unlock their 'internal clocks'. The scientists, from the University of Manchester and the University of Edinburgh, call this technique as 'rehydroxylation dating', which can be used to date fired clay ceramics like bricks, tile and pottery.