Archaeologica.org

'I hope it chokes him!'

Tough game....darts!

Ever see the damage that can be done with a snooker ball Min? That can be really tough!

How in the world did we get here?
Beat all the drums you want about your favorite sport, but I will never bet against a Big Ten collage, let alone a NFL starting interior lineman, in any contest that combines reaction time and brute strength. They are the most under rated athletes in pro sports. The guys in the so called “skill positions” get all the newspaper ink, but the interior linemen are the true blue collar workers that make it happen. I love American foot ball. But I have to watch it on TV. The slow motion replays are the only way to appreciate what happens. A play is over in less than 2 heartbeats. And in those two heart beats you have had eleven one on one ballets of strength, reaction time, and brutality.
Anyone know where I can get a ticket to the Coliseum?

Meanwhile, how many cultures Earth wide, over how long a period, had a thing going for pyramids and/or feathered serpents?
Some one said the Welsh dragons were not feathered.
But they flew? How big a jump is that?
All those “mounds” across northern France and Britain sure seem to have a pyramids type link.
We have the same kind of thing in the Western Hemisphere. Wide spread in both time and location, but reappearing.

Why does this theme keep coming back?

Because everybody wants to be king of the hill. So if you haven't got one around, you build one.

There are plenty of hill in Central America

Those are communal hills.
Everybody wants to be king of his own hill.

Good point.
So when and why did everybody, across time and distance, agree it was a good idea to let our leader, king, whatever, talk us into building HIS HILL?
It is still a reoccurring theme. Hills, mounds, pyramids, whatever you want to call them, as memorial graves.
And serpents, dragons, etc as objects of worship.

Well....it's hardly "everybody" but it was repeated often enough to be curious.

I will never bet against a Big Ten collage

Normally true KB, but be careful this year. The Big 10 is looking bad.

kb, just watched a show about pyramids around the world from Egypt, Iraq, Central America and the U.S. According to it, if you wanted to build something that would take you to the gods the pyramid shape is best. Thinking about it, it makes sense. Watching my kids when they were little, and now my grandchildren, playing with blocks everything but the pyramid shape came down before it got very high. But if they made the pyramid they would use all their blocks. How high they could go depended on how many blocks they had. So if you are a king and you want to make sure that you had the best way to reach the heavens, you built a pyramid because a square or round tower didn't make it.

Which explains why we keep finding them with successive layers of new laid over old.
Not just because it was a good spot, but also if I want to be more important than my predecessors, and thus have a higher tomb, I have to not only cover up all evidence of there existence, but my engineers need the bigger base to get the higher peak.
Engineering and religion in partnership again.
No wonder the priests served as both.
Has anybody actually figured out how the Babylonians dug that tunnel under the Euphrates?
That would be a trick even in this day and age.

Has anybody actually figured out how the Babylonians dug that tunnel under the Euphrates?

I didn't find any one link with enough info, after just a quick look, but the tunnel was built in 2180 BC. It was done by diverting the flow of the Euphrates and then digging a ditch across the riverbed. Then bricking in the interior and covering it over. I don't know how they waterproofed it.

In that area Beag they probaly used pitch, the ancients in that area were familiar with it.

Sorry. Been away. Morroco of all places. Hard work but kind of interesting.
I'm English and Cricket makes no sense to me whatsoever, I'm afraid - though I have to say that kind of demands my respect for it as an institution, though I think a return to traditional cricket whites should be enforced.
Pyramids. How come no-one ever asks "Wow - look at all these wheels in different cultures spread across the globe. Isn't it spooky that they're all circular?"

A wheel is a bit like an oar. The shape determines the function. An oar without a wide end is basically a stick and not terribly useful for moving a boat.

Egyptian, Mesoamerican and Mesopotamian "pyramids" really don't look alike, though.