More Archaeology

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 10:05 am

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/wol ... 93038.html

A ROCK platform in the heart of the Wollemi wilderness may be the closest thing Australia has to Mount Olympus, the seat of the gods in Greek mythology.

Last spring archaeologists discovered an enormous slab of sandstone, 100 metres long and 50 metres wide, in the 500,000-hectare Wollemi National Park. It was covered in ancient art.

The article doesn't say whether or not this slab of sandstone was in situ or not. The Australian aborigines have not belonged to the "megalithic club" so far.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:05 am

Fancy not explaining that Beag, that's a big question mark that is.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:07 am

I'm hoping that more facts will be out soon.

Gotta go for a while. Have fun gents.

kbs2244 · Post by **kbs2244** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:50 am

Don't you love the word "Ancient"?
How old is that?
Theories of ancient visits to Australia go from the Chinese, to the Egyptians.
This will be fun to watch.
Anybody in for 2800 BC?

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:55 am

My grandson thinks I'm ancient!

kbs2244 · Post by **kbs2244** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 12:03 pm

I was going to say that, but I am too vain.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Sat Apr 28, 2007 10:19 am

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... &cset=true

PHOENIX -- Workers digging at the future site of a Wal-Mart store in suburban Mesa have unearthed the bones of a prehistoric camel that's estimated to be about 10,000 years old.

Arizona State University geology museum curator Brad Archer hurried out to the site Friday when he got the news that the owner of a nursery was carefully excavating bones found at the bottom of a hole being dug for a new ornamental citrus tree.

Camels. Right in Mins' back yard.

From Archaeologica News.

Post by **Minimalist** » Sat Apr 28, 2007 10:38 am

Poor Arch will be screaming that it was the Flood that killed them but it was only 4,000 years ago!

Forum Monk · Post by **Forum Monk** » Sat Apr 28, 2007 11:46 am

Thats interesting. 10,000 years is not all that prehistoric, so it must clearly look like a camel. I can't get to the article because a rgistration is required.

So a ship of the desert has managed to "float" its way to Arizona; only to die in the desert. Lots of irony in this story.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Sat Apr 28, 2007 11:58 am

Depends on the type of 'Camel' Monk. The proto Camels, along with Horses arose in the New World then spread.
Makes me ask why HSS is supposed to have wiped all these large animals out in the Americas but not in the Old World.
How old is Macdonalds?

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Tue May 08, 2007 3:19 pm

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V127/N24/bridges.html

Conquistadors from Spain came, they saw, and they were astonished. They had never seen anything in Europe like the bridges of Peru. Chroniclers wrote that the Spanish soldiers stood in awe and fear before the spans of braided fiber cables suspended across deep gorges in the Andes, narrow walkways sagging and swaying and looking so frail.

Yet the suspension bridges were familiar and vital links in the vast empire of the Inca, as they had been to Andean cultures for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. The people had not developed the stone arch or wheeled vehicles, but they were accomplished in the use of natural fibers for textiles, boats, sling weapons — even keeping inventories by a prewriting system of knots.

So bridges made of fiber ropes, some as thick as a man's torso, were the technological solution to the problem of road building in rugged terrain. By some estimates, at least 200 such suspension bridges spanned river gorges in the 16th century. One of the last of these, over the Apurimac River, inspired Thornton Wilder's novel "The Bridge of San Luis Rey."

How they made these bridges is pretty remarkable, but I get dizzy just seeing one in a movie. Archaeologica News.