Stonehenge On Google Street View

I've been to England although I didn't make it out to the Salisbury Plain but that's no longer a problem thanks to Google Street View. You can check out the giant wristwatch or calender or whatever it is here. Take a walk around, sacrifice a few virgins but just watch out for the Griswolds. Cheers.

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Picture Of The Day

This window view is representative of two great cultures' major contributions to the world:

Conventional photographs of the Sphinx, such as the one featured in this month’s issue of Smithsonian magazine, are taken looking west and give the impression that the figure and the three pyramids sit in a remote Egyptian desert. The reality is that urban development of Cairo and Giza have brought the cities to within easy walking distance, as one can see from a Google satellite view. This photo, taken from inside a nearby fast food location, emphasizes that reality in a dramatic fashion.

I can't decide if my love of archaeology or my love of grease is why I dig this view so much but the fact that I'll be able to combine them by enjoying a Meaty P'Zone when I visit the Giza plain someday has moved that destination up my travel list by at least three spots. Oh, and that sound you're hearing? Khufu softly weeping...

Silence Is The Most Powerful Scream...

My sincerest apologies for the lack of posting over the past week. Although this wasn't a pre-planned break I still should have said something by way of explanation for those of you who are nice enough to come here on a regular basis to read my stuff. It was rude and neglectful of me and I really am sorry.

If I were going to stay true to form as to my past compulsions I'd lie and come up with some type of innocuous explanation for my lack of commentary, like that I've just been too busy with other things or that life has just been so exciting lately that I couldn't make the time to sit here and write. I could lie to you all (I'm actually pretty damn good at it) but none of that would be the truth. The truth is that I just stopped caring. I stopped wanting to write, to rant, to rave, to debate, to piss off other people and to be pissed off myself. My fire went out, and I found myself not giving a damn anymore.

To your collective credit (and frankly, somewhat to my surprise) several of you noticed this change in tone and tenor well before my self-imposed hiatus, emailing me privately to say so and ask whether I was OK or not. I was aware that I wasn't writing much and rather just posting soulless minutia culled online but I guess that I should have given you more credit than that. Some of you I answered and some of you I ignored (again, I apologize for my lack of manners on that count) but please know that I really did appreciate the sentiments and your attempts to reach out. Sometimes people are so much nicer to me than I feel I deserve.

It was recently suggested to me by a friend who knows about such things that I might be manic depressive, and it's a possibility that I've seriously been considering over the past several weeks. It would certainly explain some of the patterns I've noticed over the course of my life: charging headlong into some new endeavour or project, throwing the entire weight of my heart and soul into the breach only to abruptly stop caring at some point and letting everything I've worked towards wither and die while I float seemingly rudderless on a sudden and inexplicable sea of ennui.

And that's where I now find myself: emotionally anchorless, rudderless and every other ship part I can recall from my nautical archaeology courses-less. I'm in a very dark place right now. The future currently appears very bleak to me and I don't see any clear course ahead that gives me any kind of hope for tomorrow. And to be totally honest the Christmas holidays, which I've always eschewed mainly for reasons of blatant consumerism and seasonal goodwill hypocrisy, are not making things any easier. I understand why suicides always peak around this time of year.

And to be completely clear, this is not a suicide note nor is it even a precursor of such an event (although I'd once again be lying if I said that I'd never contemplated that possibility in the past). This is neither a cry for help nor is it a plea for attention. In fact, I expressly do not want to discuss my feelings on this subject nor do I want to engage in any of that other weak, pathetic therapeutic bullshit. As always, I can and will handle whatever life throws at me on my own. This is merely an explanation to those of you who were concerned enough to inquire as to my current state of mind and also to those who were too polite to do the same. I sincerely appreciate that type of personal respect.

So there it is. I hope that this uncharacteristic bout of emotional honesty has not ruined your Christmas holidays and if it has I once again apologize; that was never my intent by writing this. I sincerely hope that everyone reading this has one of the best Christmases ever along with a comparably kick ass new year to boot. Regular posting will resume at some point in the very near future but I'll be honest one more time and tell you that this declaration is neither written in stone nor blood. Happy holidays to you all, and thank you for indulging my wasted intellect and shattered psyche once again. I truly appreciate it.

Barack "Tutankhamun" Obama

I take the title of this post from some asshat who thinks that giving President Obama this nickname is somehow demeaning (although it would probably carry a bit more intellectual heft had he spelled it correctly). Just some fun video from his visit to the Great Pyramid in Egypt:


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Neanderthals Likely Eaten By Humans

The latest news in the search for the fate of our prehistoric cousins:

One of science's most puzzling mysteries - the disappearance of the Neanderthals - may have been solved. Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert.

The controversial suggestion follows publication of a study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences about a Neanderthal jawbone apparently butchered by modern humans. Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

Fernando Rozzi, of Paris's Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, said the jawbone had probably been cut into to remove flesh, including the tongue. Crucially, the butchery was similar to that used by humans to cut up deer carcass in the early Stone Age. "Neanderthals met a violent end at our hands and in some cases we ate them," Rozzi said.

The idea will provoke considerable opposition from scientists who believe Neanderthals disappeared for reasons that did not involve violence. Neanderthals were a sturdy species who evolved in Europe 300,000 years ago, made complex stone tools and survived several ice ages before they disappeared 30,000 years ago - just as modern human beings arrived in Europe from Africa.

It's long been postulated that the Neanderthal extinction was caused at least in part by modern humans either through competition for food resources and/or by more brutal means as suggested above, and while this new piece of evidence is revelatory I'm reserving judgement until more examples can be found. And of course as we've seen before, cannibalism is fairly common amongst humans despite Western society's anathema to the practice. I'm not suggesting that it's a practice we should embrace but only rather that we must acknowledge who we were and where we've come from before we can understand who we will become and where we're going as a species.

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The Oldest Sculpture In The World

I realize that I'm a few days late on this one, especially considering my education in archaeology, but late is still preferable to never, ya?:

A remarkable ivory carving is arguably the oldest sculpture of a human figure yet found, scientists say.

The distorted object, which portrays a woman with huge breasts, big buttocks and exaggerated genitals, is thought to be at least 35,000 years old.

The 6cm-tall figurine, reported in the journal Nature, is the latest find to come from Hohle Fels Cave in Germany.

Previous discoveries have included exquisite carvings of animals, and an object that could be a stone "sex toy".

Professor Nicholas Conard, from the department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, at Tübingen University, said is was understandable that many would also view the new discovery in a pornographic light, but he cautioned against jumping too quickly to a particular interpretation.

These types of Venus fertility goddesses are fairly prolific throughout ancient history, as were various phallic representations as well. Our ancient ancestors thankfully did not share our repressed, Puritanical mindset concerning sex and the beauty of the human body.

On a completely unrelated note, I've been fairly busy of late with real-world concerns and the volume of new posts has quite obviously suffered as a result. I'd like to say that this is only a temporary speed bump but as I do not derive any income from this endeavour I don't want to lie to you. That said, I will make every effort to return my output to it's previous levels as soon as it is humanly possible. As always, thanks for taking the time to read my stuff.

Famed Nefertiti Bust "A Fake"

And I become just a bit more cynical. I'll explain after the link:

PARIS (AFP) — The bust of Queen Nefertiti housed in a Berlin museum and believed to be 3,400 years old in fact is a copy dating from 1912 that was made to test pigments used by the ancient Egyptians, according to Swiss art historian Henri Stierlin.

Stierlin, author of a dozen works on Egypt, the Middle East and ancient Islam, says in a just-released book that the bust currently in Berlin's Altes Museum was made at the order of German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt by an artist named Gerardt Marks.

"It seems increasingly improbable that the bust is an original," Stierlin told AFP.

The historian said the archaeologist had hoped to produce a new portrait of the queen wearing a necklace he knew she had owned, and was also looking to carry out a colour test with ancient pigments found at the digs.

But on December 6, 1912, the copy was admired as an original work by a German prince and the archaeologist "couldn't sum up the courage to ridicule" his guest, Stierlin said.

I studied archaeology in college and while I didn't specialize in ancient Egypt (I'm a much bigger fan of the Roman Empire) I've always found it to be an equally mysterious and fascinating culture. So I spent the summer of 2003 backpacking across Europe where I visited about a dozen countries, Germany being one of them and Berlin being one of the cities I spent some time in there.

Long story short: I visited this museum (amongst dozens of others that year) and I viewed this specific bust. More to the point, the museum was fairly crowded that day and when I walked into a small side room with this bust set on a pedestal in its middle and encased in a square glass cover it was surrounded by about 10-12 noisy and fairly annoying people. Just as I was lamenting the fact that I had to share the space with so many others (which I almost always do when I'm in a museum; if you have the same problem do what I did: become a museum member and donor. It's a completely different experience walking through silent and deserted galleries alone at night) everyone suddenly cleared out and moved on to the next exhibit.

And there I was, suddenly all alone in silence and face to face with this exceptionally gorgeous and ancient work of art. Now I'm not saying that I felt an explicit kinship with Nefertiti at that moment or that I suddenly channeled a past life as a pyramid builder in ancient Egypt or anything like that, but merely that in those few fleeting moments I felt a very real yet also surreal calm and enjoyment as I privately looked into the face of this beautiful woman who ruled over an entire kingdom thousands of years before I was born. It was a feeling that I still remember quite vividly, so much so that it is one of the more lucid and cherished memories of my trip.

And now I just found out that it's a fake. And while the moment and the feelings that it elicited are still and will always be with me, I must admit that the entire experience now feels slightly cheapened by this recent revelation. And I become just a bit more cynical. And I subsequently open my second bottle of Chardonnay of the night...

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My Sister's Birthday: Atonement, Day 2

On day 2 of my atonement for missing my sister's birthday, Shannon finds herself in sunny and mysterious Egypt, home of ancient ruins, ruinous ancients and several bad Brendan Fraser movies. On the other hand, it also gave us some great scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Funky Tut and camels. Be careful though: they spit.

World's Oldest Cannabis Found

It now appears that even ancient China had a more progressive approach to the cultivation and use of cannabis than the United States does today:

Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.

The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odour.

"To our knowledge, these investigations provide the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent," says the newly published paper, whose lead author was American neurologist Dr. Ethan B. Russo.

The article goes on to say that it took ten months of wrangling through red tape to get the sample back to England for testing; with the myriad of problems we face these days I still find it hard to believe that people are still so hung up on this. Alcohol is responsible for 50,000 deaths in this country every year, and cigarettes cause 650,000 deaths per year; Cannabis? None, ever, in the history of human civilization. Yeah, the war on drugs makes a lot of sense.

Raping Indy

Oh my God. I just finished watching the newest South Park episode, "The China Probrem" and my sides are still sore from laughing. If you haven't seen it yet stop reading right now, go to Comedy Central's website and do so immediately; I'll wait. OK; pretty funny shit, huh? I wrote what I now consider an all too generous review of The Crystal Skull after having too many glasses of wine back in May but I excuse my initial enthusiasm because of my great love for the original trilogy: I was once again watching an Indiana Jones movie filled with Nazis, jungle temples and a fedora and I think this blinded me to the craptacular CG sequences, the unimaginative alien ending and Shia LeBeouf.

I was watching a downloaded copy on my PS3 with a friend the other day and I started to remember watching the parts that I really didn't enjoy but just looked past at the time as Indy fought the aforementioned Nazis and I felt a little dirty for it. Then today I watched this South Park episode, and I almost died laughing as the boys had to work through the trauma of having seen Indy getting repeatedly raped by Lucas and Speilberg because I knew exactly how they were feeling. And dude did they rape his ass, all in multiple homages to some of cinemas most famous rape scenes but it was the actual acting out of the metaphor and the psychological scarring it had on the audience members that really made the scenes hilarious.

Now if you're sitting there reading this and thinking, "Jesus, James sure is one cold bastard to be laughing during a rape scene," all I can say is lighten up, it's a cartoon. Seriously. Oh, and the subplot of Cartman and Butters taking over the P. F. Chang's to stop the Chinese invasion was great but you knew it would be. I've heard rumors of a supposed fifth Indiana Jones sequel and I'm not expecting anything good to come of it; my only hope is that Lucas and Speilberg will come to their senses and go back to what made me love these movies so much in the first place but their behaviour of late has been decidedly less than encouraging. Chin up, Indy.

Jesus Is Magic

Now there's no hard evidence that the Christ referred to in this story is the actual Jesus that my Christian friends and family members insist healed the sick and made lunch for everybody 2000 years ago (my own ancient Greek is a little rusty) so take it with a grain of Dead Sea salt:

A team of scientists led by renowned French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio recently announced that they have found a bowl, dating to between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D., that is engraved with what they believe could be the world's first known reference to Christ, providing evidence that Christianity and paganism at times intertwined in the ancient world.

The full engraving on the bowl reads, "DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS," which has been interpreted by the excavation team to mean either, "by Christ the magician" or, "the magician by Christ."

I toyed with the idea of titling this post "Two Apostles And A Cup" but decided that I really didn't like the mental images that it conjured up (if you don't get that reference be thankful).

Dead Sea Stone

News from the land of the bible:

A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew found near the Dead Sea in Jordan that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is raising eyebrows in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it is believed to speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days, suggesting that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, which is similar in style to the Dead Sea Scrolls, is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

From what I've read there were a lot of so-called messiahs running around the Middle East 2000 years ago, so it's no surprise that the mythology surrounding Jesus incorporated a recognized tradition from Jewish folklore. From what I can tell though this isn't exactly earth shattering news; we know no more now about the actual Jesus than we did before this discovery and I don't expect that to change any time soon.

Americans Can't Visit

Like most people who enjoy traveling, I have quite a list of things and places around the globe that I would like to see someday. Unfortunately, I also have another more depressing list of things and places that I'll probably never get to see because of politics and/or safety issues; here are five more that just made the latter.

Giant LEGO Boulder

As I wrote in a previous post, one of the great things about San Francisco is the constant stream of people rolling interesting and surreal things down the twisting, hilly streets. Case in point, Indiana Jones if he was kind of a dork and lived in a world of LEGOs:

Indy's Fedora: A Warning

In the wake of the release of the newest addition to the Indiana Jones saga, a Wired.com writer has some harsh words of reality for any would-be archaeological adventurers (with the obvious exception of myself, I'm sure).

The Hat Is Back

Just saw the new Indiana Jones flick with some friends tonight and I have to say that it was much better than I was expecting. For those who don't know, I'm a huge IJ fan; Raiders is my favorite movie of all time and I even own an official fedora, courtesy of my oldest sister after a visit to Universal Studios. So, I kind of consider myself a bit of an Indy expert and I have to say that this latest venture was definitely worth seeing.

Now before I effuse any more praise, I'll admit right up front that I was extremely wary going into this thing. As a virtual lifelong fan, I found myself actually starting to resent this new addition to the IJ trilogy. It was simply the corporatism; I should explain: I don't remember a time before I knew Raiders, Temple of Doom was the first movie I ever saw with a buddy without our moms driving us to the theatre and Last Crusade came out almost two decades ago. In short, I've grown up having watched these flicks without any hint of the marketing machine churning behind them; I was just too young to have noticed all of the product tie-ins and other callous corporate funding ventures.

Not so with this latest cinematic foray: it seems that I can't get away from Indy Whopper deals and Indy Lego sets no matter how hard I try to ignore the ensuing advertising blitz. I know, I know, the previous films were released under similar money-grubbing circumstances but I was never cognizant of it; I saw those films within an age-specific, advertising-proof bubble that has almost certainly mythologized them in my movie-going consciousness. Indiana Jones has always been cool to me without my having seen him on my large cup of Dr. Pepper.

That mythologizing aside, I definitely recommend this movie to anyone with a love of archaeology and fictional treasure hunting, a tangential sense of adventure and a healthy dose of cinematic suspension of disbelief. The disbelief is paramount during the 3-4 instances where Indy would have surely perished were he not wrapped firmly within a comfortable Spielberg/Lucas cocoon of inevitable survival. Aside from those few reality-based shortcomings, the schmaltzy ending and the overtly gross killer ant scene, make sure you check out the latest addition to my favorite trilogy ever; I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

First European Homos Discovered

Pictured above is the skull of Homo Antecessor, or "pioneer man" reconstructed from fossils discovered in the Sima del Elefante cave in Atapuerca in north-western Spain. These fossils, along with other animal bones and stone tools found at the site, suggest that southern Europe began to be colonized from western Asia much sooner after the emergence of humans from Africa than was previously thought. The fossils are 1.1-1.2 million years old and are from a possible ancestor of both modern humans and Neanderthals. Here is the complete article from The Guardian UK.