Other stories from history.
Previously Unknown Ancient Civilizations Are Still Being Discovered
As advanced as we like to think that we are, the truth is that ancient civilizations are still being discovered today. Just recently, researchers believe that they have found two previously unknown ancient civilizations - one on the sea floor of the Caribbean and the other deep in the forests of the Amazon. The reality is that as scientists and researchers make additional discoveries, it just underlines the fact that there is much more to the ancient history of the earth than we have been led to believe. The sea floors and the dense jungles throughout the earth contains some amazing mysteries. As researchers delve into these mysteries, they are often learning that ancient humanity was much more advanced than most people would think.
In particular, these latest finds have got researchers and scientists very excited.
The very first photos from the Caribbean sea floor of what is believed to be the archaeological remains of an ancient civilization have been released.
The coordinates of the exact location are being guarded carefully for now, but the project’s leader insists that the large city found there could be thousands of years old. He says that the city could possibly even pre-date the ancient Egyptian pyramids at Giza.
In fact, the leader of the project says that they have found what appears to be a tall, narrow pyramid. That would be quite notable, as ancient pyramids have been discovered all over the globe in recent years. It appears that civilizations all over the globe had a tendency towards building pyramidal structures even though they may have never had contact with one another.
It is also said that the team investigating the undersea city has also found large platform structures with small buildings on them. They hope to have more findings to announce once they secure more funding.
A previously unknown ancient civilization has also recently been uncovered by deforestation in the Amazon.
According to one report, approximately 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil's border with Bolivia.
Denise Schaan of the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil, is quoted by New Scientist as saying this following about the pace of discoveries in this region....
"Every week we find new structures."
Excavations in the area have unearthed ceramics, grinding stones and other signs of human habitation at some of the sites but not at others.
The thought is that some of the sites had purely ceremonial roles, while others may have had more common purposes.
Alex Chepstow-Lusty of the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima, Peru is quoted by New Scientist as saying that researchers expect to find much more in the area....
"I have no doubt that this is only scratching the surface."
So what does all of this mean?
It means that there is a whole lot more out there that is still waiting to be discovered.
Much about the ancient world still remains a mystery, and the truth is that as we learn more about our past, more about our future will likely be revealed.
The face of Egypt's most famous ancient ruler, King Tutankhamun, has been put on public display for the first time.
Archaeologists took the mummy from its stone sarcophagus and placed it in a climate-controlled case inside his tomb in Luxor's Valley of the Kings.
The event comes 85 years to the day after the pharaoh's tomb was discovered by British explorer Howard Carter.
Until now, only about 50 living people have seen the face of the boy king, who died more than 3,000 years ago.
As experts lifted Tutankhamun from his coffin they briefly set aside the white linen covering his remains, revealing a shrivelled black face and body.
The move is part of a plan to protect the remains. Archaeologists say they are under threat from the heat and the humidity brought into the tomb by the vast numbers of tourists visiting each year.
"The golden boy has magic and mystery and therefore every person all over the world will see what Egypt is doing to preserve the golden boy, and all of them I am sure will come to see the golden boy," Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told reporters before the body was moved.
Tutankhamun ruled Egypt from 1333-1324 BC and is believed to have ascended to the throne aged about nine.
Although in life he was of only moderate historical significance, in death Tutankhamun achieved worldwide fame thanks to the virtually intact state of his tomb when it was opened by Carter in 1922.
The tomb was packed with a fabulous trove of gold and ebony treasures of such luxury that when Carter first looked inside the tomb and was asked if he saw anything, his famous reply was: "Yes, wonderful things."
Cause of death
The centrepiece of the tomb was the pharaoh's mummified body, covered in amulets and jewels and wearing a solid gold burial mask.
In an effort to extricate the treasures, Carter and his team cut the body into pieces, chopping off the limbs and head, and using hot knives and wires to remove the gold mask which was fused to Tutankhamun's face by the embalming process.
The body was reconstructed and returned to its original sarcophagus in 1926, only being removed for x-ray testing three times in subsequent years.
The treasures that were unearthed have captivated the world and drawn millions to the Valley of the Kings.
Questions over why Tutankhamun died at about the age of 19, and rumours of a curse prematurely killing those involved with the excavation of his tomb, have only increased the pharaoh's fame.
When the body was x-rayed in 1968, a shard of bone was found in his skull, prompting speculation that he was killed by a blow.
Some historians have argued he was killed for attempting to bring back polytheism having succeeded Akhenaten, who had abandoned Egypt's old gods in favour of monotheism.
However a CT scan of his remains in 2005 led researchers to say that he was not murdered and may have died of complications from a broken leg.
Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said the research suggests the boy king died after the wound became infected, and though not all of the team agreed with the diagnosis, all rejected the long-standing murder charge.
Read more:http://www.meta-religion.com/Archaeology/Africa/Egypt/king_tut_face.htm#.Ug834JK1GSo#ixzz2cDLJc5OH
Mummies of the world gather in Los Angeles
10:18 13 July 2010
Most people think about ancient Egyptian pharaohs when they think about mummies. But a new exhibition in Los Angeles promises to change that: it features an 18th-century Hungarian family, a Chilean woman with tattooed breasts and a monkey in a skirt.
The Detmold child
Known as the Detmold child, this 8-to-10-month-old baby died in Peru around 4480 BC – more than 3000 years before the birth of Tutankhamun. According to a recent scan (PDF) using X-ray computed tomography, the child was born with a malformed heart.
"The heart defect has caused a flooding of the lungs and has most probably led, in combination with the pulmonary infection, to the death of the young child," according to Wilfried Rosendahl, curator of the Reiss-Engelhorn Museumin Mannheim, Germany, home to many of the mummies in the exhibition. The baby also suffered from pneumonia and turricephaly, a disease that elongates the skull.
The CT scan also revealed a small, flat, rectangular object nestled beneath the fabric around the child's neck, assumed to be a kind of pendant, “perhaps an amulet made of bone," says Rosendahl.
(Image: J. Ihle/Lippisches Landesmuseum, Detmold, Germany)
Known as the Detmold child, this 8-to-10-month-old baby died in Peru around 4480 BC – more than 3000 years before the birth of Tutankhamun. According to a recent scan (PDF) using X-ray computed tomography, the child was born with a malformed heart.
"The heart defect has caused a flooding of the lungs and has most probably led, in combination with the pulmonary infection, to the death of the young child," according to Wilfried Rosendahl, curator of the Reiss-Engelhorn Museumin Mannheim, Germany, home to many of the mummies in the exhibition. The baby also suffered from pneumonia and turricephaly, a disease that elongates the skull.
The CT scan also revealed a small, flat, rectangular object nestled beneath the fabric around the child's neck, assumed to be a kind of pendant, “perhaps an amulet made of bone," says Rosendahl.
(Image: J. Ihle/Lippisches Landesmuseum, Detmold, Germany)
Isis is the feminine archetype for creation - the goddess of fertility and motherhood. She has gone by many names and played many roles in history and mythology - as goddess and female creator. Her name literally means female of throne, i.e. Queen of the throne. Her original headdress was an empty throne chair belonging to her murdered husband, Osiris. As the personification of the throne, she was an important source of the Pharaoh's power. Her cult was popular throughout Egypt, but the most important sanctuaries were at Giza and at Behbeit El-Hagar in the Nile delta. The hieroglyph for her name originally used meant (female) of flesh, i.e. mortal, and she may simply have represented deified, real, queens. The most commonly used name for this deity, Isis, is a Greek corruption of the Egyptian name; and its pronunciation as eye-sis is a further corruption by English speakers. The true Egyptian pronunciation is unknown, as Egyptian hieroglyphs only recorded consonants, and left out most of the vowels. The Egyptian hieroglyphics for her name are commonly transliterated as jst; as a convenience, Egyptlogists pronounce that as ee-set. |
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