A research team from the University of Bordeaux has discovered a set of 270 ostrich eggshell fragments from a cave in South Africa depicting what appear to be man-made symbols and patterns.
Headed by Pierre-Jean Texier, the team unearthed the fragments, which represent at least 25 different eggs, from a subterranean location in Howieson Poort Shelter in South Africa. The find’s excitement stems from the richness of what appears to be evidence for abstract thinking in early man; the shells date to 60,000 years ago. Texier is treating the diverse patterns as an “artistic movement” as opposed to potentially written language, studying the limited number of motifs that seem to have been used by the many different people who etched the shells found.
Modern hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari still collect and use ostrich eggs as food, containers and decoration, leading some familiar with the find to speculate that an entire artistic tradition is seem in its barest form in the 270 fragments. The idea that the patterns denote some form of language, such as ownership, also seems to me to be an avenue worth exploring.
An archeological survey in a Polish cave has turned up three Neanderthal teeth, giving Mikaolaj Urbanowski and his team from Poland’s Szczecin University the opportunity to learn more about our extinct cousins.
The teeth were discovered in the Stajnia Cave, north of the Carpathian Mountains, in the southern part of the country and represent the first bodily remains of Neanderthal found in Poland. Flint tools and discarded bones of woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, both also extinct species, were found alongside the teeth. The findings were rounded out by a hammer made of reindeer antler and bones of several cave bears sporting cut marks, indicating that they served as nourishment for the Neanderthal people who lived there.
Testing is currently being done on all items but one tooth has received the most scrutiny, proving to be the molar of a Neanderthal man about 20 years old and dating to 80,000-100,000 years ago. Researchers hope that the unexpected locale and evidence of cave bear hunting will help to prove that the fellow hominids were more efficient and intelligent hunters and wanderers then they currently receive popular credit for.
The findings were reported by the German science journal Naturwissenschaften in an online article dated January 28, 2010.
A newly uncovered Mayan tomb dating back about 1,100 years is being studied by Mexican archeologists in the hopes of learning more about the eventual fall of the famous civilization.
The team currently studying the find, lead by archeologist Juan Yadeun, hope that the tomb will and its contents will give them some indication of who occupied the Matan site on Tonina during the twilight years of the once mighty civilization. While popular ideas point to internal conflict or environmental degradation as the likely cause of the fall of the Mayans in about 800 CE, the artifacts from this most recently found tomb dates to around 850-900 CE.
It is clear that this is a new wave of occupation, the people who built this grave of the Toltec type. This is very interesting, because we are going to see from the bones who these people are, after the Maya empire.
archeologist Juan Yadeun
The Toltec people, who originated in Mexico’s central highlands, are believed to have expanded their influence into southern Mexico, dominating the land from the capital city of Tula in between the 10th and 12th centuries CE, before the people known as the Aztecs established themselves.
Archaeologists not associated with the find are cautioning researchers to not draw too many conclusions from the site until further study is conducted.
Of the two rovers sent to Mars in 2004, Spirit has always been the unlucky one. While its twin Opportunity has been roaming the red planet for the past five years quietly gathering and sending data back to Earth, hardware issues and stuck wheels have presented an unending series of problems for poor Spirit.
After an initial scare only weeks after landing in a Martin crater in 2004, the rover malfunctioned and began transmitting incoherent information to its Earth-bound operators, but NASA scientists were eventually able to nurse the rover back to mechanical health. Nearly six years later, the end may be near for one of NASA’s robotic geologists.
Since April, Spirit has been attempting to free itself from a sandy trap that has kept it locked nearly in place. Driving backwards due to an already lame wheel (one of six the rover sports), Spirit fell through a layer of crust and found itself lodged in fluffy sand, leaving it with only its five working wheels available for an escape attempt.
Fast-forward to the dawning of 2010 and NASA scientists have found that the stuck wheel is no longer operable at all, making the chances of Spirit escaping from its sandy trap before Martian winter arrives very unlikely. With the winter comes a severe lack of sunlight, the energy source the rovers use to operate – and stay “alive” through warming and system maintenance even during the coldest days on Mars.
Plan B, if an escape is not possible, will see NASA scientists attempt to re-position Spirit’s solar arrays in order to provider the power needed to keep it running through winter, effectively turning the rover into a lander with the ability to continue to gather data. Whether or not this will work is not known as tilting the rover may prove as impossible as driving it at this point, but officials continue to hold out hope.
Given the original planned six month life span of the twin rovers, a demise almost six years later is nothing to mourn too deeply, but the engineers and operators who have worked with Spirit and Opportunity from the beginning will be sure to do everything they can to keep the “kids” alive and kicking for as long as possible.
Good luck, Spirit!
A research team from the University of Bordeaux has discovered a set of 270 ostrich eggshell fragments from a cave in South Africa depicting what appear to be man-made symbols and patterns.
