Europe's Changing Border Over Last 1,000 Years

My Comment: Things do not last forever.

Richard III Remains Are Confirmed

It IS Richard III: Scientists Reveal DNA Results Confirm 15th Century King's Body Has Been Found Under A Car Park In Leicester -- Daily Mail 

* University of Leicester academics unveil their findings at press conference 

* DNA sample matches that of a descendant of the king's maternal line 

 * Skeleton's spinal curvature also matched accounts of the humpback king 

 * Remains were uncovered by archaeologists at former church in Leicester 

* Historical records say he was taken to the city after he was killed in 1485 

Human remains found buried beneath a social services car park in Leicester are those of Richard III who was killed in battle in 1485, archaeologists confirmed today. 

In an extraordinary discovery which rewrites the history books, the skeleton of the last of the Plantagenet kings was identified by DNA analysis after researchers traced his living descendants. 

Investigators from the University of Leicester today revealed that the remains bore the marks of ten injuries inflicted shortly before his death. 

More gruesome, however, was evidence of ‘humiliation’ injuries, including several head wounds - part of the skull was sliced away - a cut to the ribcage and a pelvic wound likely caused by an upward thrust of a weapon, through the buttock.  

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My Comment: This closes the chapter on one fascinating archaeological hunt.

Finding Buried Treasure

Exciting: Silver and gold, pictured here among the coins, has been discovered by experts working on the record £10million coin hoard that was discovered in Jersey last week

Silver And Gold Discovered Among Record £10Million Jersey Hoard Of Coins That Date Back To Julius Caesar's Invading Army -- Daily Mail

Silver and gold has been discovered by experts working on the record £10million coin hoard that was discovered in Jersey last week.

The haul contains between 30,000 and 50,000 Celtic coins and was discovered by metal detector enthusiasts Reg Mead and Richard Miles.

They are currently in one solid mass and work is being carried out to evaluate what else is in the find.

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My Comment: Makes one wonder how many more hidden hoards of treasure exist in England.

'Vampire' Skeletons Found In Bulgaria

People believed the rod would pin the dead into their graves and stop them from becoming vampires

'Vampire' Skeletons Found In Bulgaria Near Black Sea -- BBC

Archaeologists in Bulgaria have found two medieval skeletons pierced through the chest with iron rods to supposedly stop them from turning into vampires.

The discovery illustrates a pagan practice common in some villages up until a century ago, say historians.

People deemed bad had their hearts stabbed after death, for fear they would return to feast on humans' blood.

Similar archaeological sites have also been unearthed in other Balkan countries.

Bulgaria is home to around 100 known "vampire skeleton" burials.

Searchers stumbled across the latest two specimens, dating back to the Middle Ages, in the Black Sea town of Sozopol.

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My Comment: I guess the vampire legends have a little truth to it.

Sweden's Stonehedge

Could this megalithic structure, known as Ales Stenar, be much older than we thought? Getty images

Swedish Stonehenge? Stone Structure Spurs Debate -- Discovery News

A series of 59 boulders placed at a seaside cliff in Sweden might represent Stonehenge's "sister" site.

* An ancient stone structure in Sweden may be 1,500 years older than previously thought.
* New analysis suggests the stones represent an ancient astronomical calendar.
* Some researchers argue the stones were placed with the same underlying geometry of Stonehenge.

Ancient Scandinavians dragged 59 boulders to a seaside cliff near what is now the Swedish fishing village of Kåseberga. They carefully arranged the massive stones -- each weighing up to 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms) -- in the outline of a 220-foot-long (67-meter) ship overlooking the Baltic Sea.

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Skeleton Of Amazon Warrior Discovered In Scotland

Photo: Re-constructed heads of an unknown female and of a medieval knight whose skeletons were found during the recent refurbishment of the Palace at Stirling Castle.

From The Scotsman:

THE discovery of the remains of an aristocratic Scottish "Amazon", killed in battle during the Wars of Independence, is set to rewrite the history books.

Her skeleton was among the remains of five "high status" individuals - all of whom had suffered violent deaths - found beneath the paved floor of the "lost" Royal Chapel at Stirling Castle.

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How Did the Vikings Navigate Their Ships When Cloud Or Fog Hid The Sun

No sun here (Image: Doughoughton/Alamy)

Vikings' Crystal Clear Method Of Navigation -- New Scientist

Viking sagas may have been more truthful than we realised. Crystal "sunstones" could have helped Viking sailors to navigate even when cloud or fog hid the sun.

Vikings navigated using sundials calibrated to show the direction of the North Pole. While there is no physical evidence for the navigational techniques adopted on cloudy days, there are references in the Viking sagas to "sunstones" being used.

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Climate In The Past Had An Impact On Europe's Rise And Fall

Tree rings can show environmental changes throughout history, which can be linked to major ups and downs in European history, according to new research. Credit: iStockPhoto

Climate Matched Europe's Rise And Fall -- Cosmos

WASHINGTON: Ancient tree rings show links between climate change and major events in human history, like migrations, plagues and the rise and fall of empires, according to a new study.

The study, which appears in the journal Science , shows moist, balmy temperatures were seen during prosperous Medieval and Roman times, while droughts and cold snaps coincided with mass migrations.

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Google Launches The Holocaust Archive

Holocaust Memorial Day: Google Launches Holocaust Archive To Help Keep Memories Of Tragedy Alive -- The Telegraph

Google has partnered with Israel’s Yad Vashem museum, to help digitise the largest collection of Holocaust photos and documents in the world, to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The search giant is working with the Jerusalem-based archive to properly index and store in Google’s cloud 130,000 photographs, some of which are currently available on Yad Vashem’s website, but until now have been difficult to locate and discover online.

Google is also applying the same indexing and optical character recognition (OCR) technology to lots of documents, ranging from visas to survivor testimonials, in order to help people locate more easily online.

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My Comment: Once in a while Google gets involved in a good project .... this is one of them. The Yad Vashem's website is here.

'Mini-Pompeii' Found In Norway

From Discovery News:

Norwegian archaeologists have unearthed a Neolithic “mini Pompeii” at a campsite near the North Sea, they announced this week.

Discovered at Hamresanden, not far from Kristiansand’s airport at Kjevik in southern Norway, the settlement has remained undisturbed for 5,500 years, buried under three feet of sand.

“We expected to find an 'ordinary' Scandinavian Stone Age site, badly preserved and small. Instead, we discovered a unique site, buried under a thick sand layer,” lead archaeologist Lars Sundström, of the Museum of Cultural History at the University in Oslo, told Discovery News.

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Mediterranean Shipwrecks Reveal Shift To Modern Shipbuilding

A cannon from the shipwreck of a vessel, likely British, recently discovered near Turkey. RPM Nautical Foundation

From Live Science:

Three recently discovered shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea could give archaeologists new insights into the transition between medieval and modern shipbuilding.

The remains of the three craft – all dating from between 1450 and 1600 – were found in the straits between Turkey and the Greek island of Rhodes. One ship appears to be a large English merchant ship, while the other two are smaller – perhaps a patrol craft from Rhodes and a small trading boat that could have been Turkish, Italian or Greek.

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Olderst House In Britain Discovered

Oldest House In Britain Discovered To Be 11,500 Years Old -- The Telegraph

Archaeologists have discovered Britain's earliest house dating back 11,500 years.

The home is so old that when it was built Britain was still part of Continental Europe.

The circular structure near Scarborough, North Yorkshire, which dates back to the Stone Age 8,500 years BC, was found next to a former lake.

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My Comment: This is why history is fascinating.

Weymouth Ridgeway Skeletons 'Scandinavian Vikings'

From The BBC:

Fifty-one decapitated skeletons found in a burial pit in Dorset were those of Scandinavian Vikings, scientists say.

Mystery has surrounded the identity of the group since they were discovered at Ridgeway Hill, near Weymouth, in June.

Analysis of teeth from 10 of the men revealed they had grown up in countries with a colder climate than Britain's.

Archaeologists from Oxford believe the men were probably executed by local Anglo Saxons in front of an audience sometime between AD 910 and AD 1030.

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How Settler Farmers Fathered Europe's Males

From The Independent:

They came, they saw, they farmed and then they stole our women. Stone age farmers from the middle east not only brought their agricultural know-how with them to western Europe, they settled down with the local womenfolk and had children.

A genetic analysis of present-day male Europeans has revealed that the first farmers spread both their agricultural technology and their genes across the continent, out-competing the resident hunter-gatherer males for female attraction.

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Why Did The Collapse Of Old Europe Bring A Shift From Female To Male Power?

Female Figurine (Front), Fired Clay. Marius Amarie

From The Independent:

The exhibition "The Lost World of Old Europe," in New York, has raised some very interesting questions about prehistoric societies and how they changed. David Anthony, guest curator of the exhibition and a leading anthropologist specializing in prehistoric Europe, Eurasia, and North America, raised a particularly powerful issue - why did the collapse of a highly sophisticated, matriarchal culture in what is now Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova, lead to a shift of power to men?

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Did Ancient Sicilians Build Temples to 'Fit In?'

A Greek temple dating from the fifth century BC. It's more likely to have been dedicated to the Dioscuri (the Gemini twins) than Concord. Some researchers theorize that such temples on Sicily were built facing east as to adhere to Greek conventions. Credit: Dr. Alun Salt

From Live Science:

Ancient Greeks living in Sicily built their sacred temples to face the rising sun, new research suggests.

Almost all of the temples constructed on the island of Sicily during its Greek period over 2,500 years ago are oriented toward the eastern horizon, according to a new study by Alun Salt, an archaeoastronomer with the University of Leicester, in England.

Though many temples on mainland Greece also line up with the sunrise, it is less frequent on the mainland than on outlying colonies, implying an effort by outlying colonies to strengthen their ties to the home territory, Salt told LiveScience.

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Ancient Site Reveals Signs Of Mass Cannibalism

Photo: The site contains remains of 500 "intentionally mutilated" humans.

From The BBC:

Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports.

The authors say their findings provide rare evidence of cannibalism in Europe's early Neolithic period.

Up to 500 human remains unearthed near the village of Herxheim may have been cannibalised.

The "intentionally mutilated" remains included children and even unborn babies, the researchers say.

The German site was first excavated in 1996 and then explored again between 2005 and 2008.

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French Immigrants Founded First British Farms

From New Scientist:

THE British may owe the French more than they care to admit. Archaeological finds from Britain show that farming was introduced 6000 years ago by immigrants from France, and that the ancient Brits might have continued as hunter-gatherers had it not been for innovations introduced by the Gallic newcomers.

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How A Prehistoric 'Super River' Turned Britain Into An Island Nation

From The Daily Mail:

A prehistoric 'super-river' is the reason why Britain became an island and was cut off from Europe.

An Anglo-French study has revealed that long before the English Channel there was a giant river which ran south from an area of the North Sea.

Previous research found that 500,000 years ago a range of low hills connected Britain to Europe between the Weald in South-East England and Artois in northern France.

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Ancient Weapons Dug Up by Archaeologists in England

Over 5000 worked flints came from one small area, including flint cores used for tool creation, blades, flakes and 'debitage' (small chips from tool-working), and scrapers, piercers and microlith tools with the latter being used in composite arrowheads. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Leicester)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 17, 2009) — Staff at the University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) have been excited by the results from a recently excavated major Prehistoric site at Asfordby, near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. The Mesolithic site may date from as early as 9000 BC, by which time hunter-gatherers had reoccupied the region after the last ice age. These hunters crossed the land bridge from the continental mainland -- 'Britain' was only to become an island several thousand years later.

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