Archaeologica.org

evolutionary theory actually works

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

Hence the discovery of a dwelling mound near Oberröblingen in Saxony-Anhalt has caused something of a stir in the German archaeological establishment. Thought to be 7,000 years old, the oval-shaped mound, which is roughly 100 meters long, 60 meters wide and 1.8 meters high, consists of the clay remains of centuries of previous structures.

"This is a unique find in Germany," Robert Ganslmeier of the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle told the news agency DPA. "People have been living and building here since the early Stone Age."

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Canary Islands - British scientists have embarked on a mission to study a huge area on the Atlantic seabed where the Earth's crust is mysteriously missing and instead is covered with dark green rock from deep inside the planet.

A Look at Earth's Fate

The new study also reveals clues to Earth's long-term fate, says Norman Sleep, a geophysicist at Stanford University who was not involved in the project.

When the planet was young, steam came from the deep interior to the surface as volcanic gas and eventually produced today's oceans. But as Earth's interior ages and cools, it becomes easier for water to return below the surface.

"So, rather than degassing, now [Earth] may be losing water into the mantle," Sleep said.

This gradual suction of water back below the surface may be a good thing for Earth's geological stability, he notes.

Underground water acts as a kind of lubricant that allows plates in Earth's crust to keep shifting at their present rate, Sleep explains.

This helps keep the thickness and elevation of the continents relatively stable.

If things changed, he said, "we'd have Pike's Peak boat tours."

Known as the OneGeology project, it will pool existing knowledge about what lies under our feet, and present it through one web portal.

Led by the British Geological Survey (BGS), the effort calls on scientists from more than 55 nations.

It hopes to be able to display searchable rock data for the entire Earth down to the scale of 1:1,000,000.

MUNCIE -- The Delaware County Office of Geographic Information System stumbled onto what scientists believe to be a well-preserved earthwork built by pre-historic, Woodland Indians.

The site, only 150 feet from Ind. 32 between Muncie and Yorktown, recently came to the attention of the Indiana Department of Transportation, which plans to widen that segment of the highway to four or five lanes.

But the effort to preserve them has been poor.

The two researchers and other scholars said it was not surprising that the Ashkelon inscriptions were in an Aegean type of writing. The biblical Philistines are assumed to have been a group of the mysterious Sea Peoples who probably originated in the Greek islands and migrated to several places on the far eastern shores of the Mediterranean.