Coolest thing I've read in quite a while...

Evidence of flax use by humans 34,000 years ago!!!

I've been watching the local news again...

A wooden spear was found by archaeologists in Little Salt Springs in Sarasota, Florida. The spring has no oxygen in it, so things are very well preserved there. The wooden spear has been carbon dated to 12 thousand years ago. According to traditional anthropological thinking, humans did not reach Florida until about 9 thousand years ago. O.O

The archaeologists will be searching the same area of the spring in July to see if they can find more artifacts.

Other interesting recent finds: A prehistoric, 1100 year old canoe has been uncovered in the sand on Weedon Island in Pinellas County (that's near St. Pete and Clearwater). It was found by a local man, who reported the find to authorities at which time professional archaeologist took over the job of uncovering it. It was originally about 45 feet long, the longest ancient canoe ever found in Florida.

Body of St. Mark may actually be Alexander the Great

So I recently stumbled upon this website: http://www.alexanderstomb.com/ . To summarize the site for those who don't want to go stumble around there, this historian and achaeologist, Andrew Chugg, has reason to believe that historians and archaeologists have missed a few things when looking for the tomb of Alexander and that the local Alexandrian story that it is under the Mosque of Daniel in Alexandria (which can't be confirmed since they won't allow excavation under the holy site) is actually false and that it was made up after the stone sarcophagus of Alexander was moved by the British to London in 1802. His mummified remains were not in the sarcophagus, and it had been found about 5 years earlier by Napoleon empty, and appeared to have been empty for quite some time. It being Alexander the Great here, and Napoleon being who he was, I don't think he would have lied about that.

So having gone over the surviving ancient sources on Alexander's tomb, the location of his body and the history of Alexandria, Chugg has come to the conclusion that it may have become misidentified by the time Muslim forces took over Alexandria from the Christians and that they may have by that time started venerating the remains as the remains of St. Mark, the founder of Christianity in Alexandria, much as Alexander's remains had been venerated by the pagans as the founder of Alexandria itself. In the earliest records of the death of St. Mark, he was said to have been martyred and his remains burned. Later records say that a miracle occurred and that his remains were spared from the flames and protected by his Christian followers. In 828 CE, the remains officially identified (though not scientifically identified) as those of St. Mark were smuggled out of Alexandria by Venetian tradesmen when the Arabs took the city and taken to Venice where they were housed and continue to be housed in the Basilica of St. Mark (or San Marco). I shudder to think of Alexander's remains in a city so wet and prone to flooding, not that Alexandria, Egypt was much better, but supposedly they have been moved, as flooding has grown worse in recent years, to a part of the church safe from flooding.

Now, as of July 2005, the Vatican is still refusing Mr. Chugg's requests for an investigation of St. Mark's remains to determine their date of origin, cause of death, and, in fact, if they are not the remains of St. Mark, but rather the remains of Alexander the Great... At which time, I hope they are removed to a safer, drier, more stable location. One can well imagine all the reasons why the Vatican would not want that to be proven. Mr. Chugg has information on his site about how you can help his cause to get permission from the Vatican under "St. Mark Testing."

Homo Florensis and other amazing things

Went to an Anthro. department lecture at USF tonight given by Dr. Peter Brown, who identified homo florensis earlier this year in Flores, Indonesia. It was a fascinating lecture! I could go on and on about it for hours. The lecture lasted about an hour and half and there were probably three or four dozen people who stood through the entire thing because there were no chairs left... There were easily 400 people in attendance. They should have held it in a larger auditorium instead of the Student Union Ballroom... but I digress. Dr. Brown is an excellent lecturer, very funny and passionate about his work, and if you get an opportunity to see him speak at another university or organization, I highly recommend going! It was a lovely evening... He told us a lot of info that hasn't been published yet. They've discovered a lot of new info in the last several months, and now have 7 - 9 individuals at the Liang Boa cave site in Flores. He said the cave was continually inhabited by homo florensis and then later modern humans for the last 94,000 years up until the last several thousand years. They have a lot of history to cover, and unfortunately for thoroughness and preserving information, the site director bypassed all the modern human remains and artifacts and they went 12 meters down through roughly 20,000 years of deposition in 2 months of excavations. Their original goal was to find out info on the earliest modern humans or human ancestors who lived in Indonesia, their main goal being to hypothesize how and exactly when modern humans reached Australia... What they found was something completely different, as we all now know...

But as I said, I could go on for hours!! I have lots of notes, and I'll answer questions if I can.

I saw a friend from high school, Laura, there. She graduated the same year I did and has had the same kind of issues wadding through USF as I have so we commiserate with each other on that level. She's thinking of majoring in Anthropology now, thanks to a Biological Anthro class that she's taking right now and finding particularly inspiring. She asked why I was there. I told her about the Archaeology class I'm in and that I have a family member in the field up in the Carolinas. I told her about the Borough House too and all that's going on there... I think if there are digs there in the next few years, there will be a few volunteers from Florida helping out... Me, Laura, and Laura's friend Liz, who was also at the lecture, is seriously into archaeology, is an anthro major, and is looking for somewhere to dig next summer. I promised to keep them both informed. Very exciting stuff!!

Other cool things that have happened this week:

I saw 4 wild peacocks looking for food along Dale Mabry Hwy in Carrollwood this afternoon, during rush hour. They were all young males (they had a peacock's bright coloring, but their tail feathers had not completely developed yet).

On Monday, I noticed that they just opened a Whataburger on Hillsborough Avenue... It's the first one I've seen in Florida, and although I have no plans to go there, I think it's kinda cool that a place I had previously only heard of on "King of the Hill" is now in town.

Also on Monday, I saw a doe grazing in the planned community "Westchase." It was about 200 feet in from Sheldon Road, a fairly busy four-lane road in the western part of Hillsborough County, near a man-made pond in a clearing on the other side of a densely wooded area from the street. She was beautiful, a grayish kind of bown and white... She perked her head up for a second when I looked over at her and then went back to munching on grass. It was really cool...