Building blocks of Angkor Wat were shipped in by canal
IT IS never too late to find a shortcut. Centuries after the construction of Cambodia's Angkor Wat, archaeologists have uncovered traces of a series of canals that suggest the 5 million tonnes of sandstone used to build the temples took a far shorter route than previously thought.
The sandstone blocks each weigh up to 1.5 tonnes and originate from quarries at Mount Kulen. It was thought they were taken 35 kilometres along a canal to Tonlé Sap Lake, rafted another 35 km along the lake, then taken up the Siem Reap River for 15 km, against the current. |  |
Two Months 'Til Doomsday? Mayan Apocalypse Set for Dec. 21
If you believe in that sort of thing, humanity can expect a mere two months left of existence before the Mayan apocalypse hits Dec. 21.
Today (Oct. 21) starts the two-month countdown toward doomsday, according to an interpretation of the Mayan calendar that has taken hold in some New Age and spiritualist communities online. Two ancient texts confirm the end date of the Mayan Long Count calendar on the winter solstice of this year, which is Dec. 21, 2012. That day is the last day of the 13th bak'tun, or 144,000-day cycle, of the calendar. Ancient Maya would have seen the end of the 13th bak'tun as the end of a full cycle of creation. |  |
Farmer finds Maya murals under home's plaster
CHAJUL, Guatemala — In a ramshackle home in Guatemala's rural highlands, farmer and odd job man Lucas Asicona made for an unlikely guardian of ancient Mayan treasures — until he decided to redo his kitchen.
When he pulled back the plaster in his humble colonial-era home of stone, adobe and haphazard wooden boards, he discovered 300-year-old murals, a priceless piece of Guatemalan history. Scenes of tall Europeans beating drums and playing flutes stare out over the one-room dwelling where his family including five children cooked, slept and played. |  |
Egypt reopens Pyramid of Chefren to tourists
Egypt has reopened one of its great pyramids as it attempts to revive a tourism industry hit by last year's uprising.
Antiquities Minister Muhammad Ibrahim reopened the Pyramid of Chefren (Khafre) and six ancient tombs at Giza after a long restoration project. He said he was keen to stress that Egypt is a safe country for tourists. The BBC's Jon Leyne in Egypt says visitor numbers have only just begun to pick up after last year's revolution. The problem, he says, is that many Westerners still see Egypt as something of a war zone. |  |
Cosmic Old Faithful: Are There Geysers on Mars?
The rule for space aesthetics has always been clear: First comes the science, then comes the art. You can’t take the most distant cosmic photographs ever captured unless you build and launch the Hubble Space telescope first. You can’t capture close-up shots of Neptune’s aquatic blue or Jupiter’s spin-painted atmosphere or Saturn’s braided rings until you get the Voyager spacecraft out to their neighborhood.
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Could Martian Bacteria Have Seeded Earth?
If you were a passenger aboard the meteorite from Mars bearing down on the town of Tata, Morocco in July 2011, you would be in a decidedly unenviable position. For one thing you’d be a bacterium — a nifty Martian bacterium, to be sure, but still. For another thing you’d be either freeze-dried or in a state of suspended animation — the better to survive the thousands or even millions of years you might have spent in space. And the odds are that even if you were alive and well when you stowed away on the rock while it was on Mars, the life would have been snuffed out of you the moment the asteroid hit that blasted you into space in the first place.
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Curiosity Mars rover starts 'to eat dirt'
Nasa's Curiosity rover has ingested its first Martian soil sample.
The robot has taken a pinch of dust into the CheMin instrument, one of its two big onboard analytical tools. It is a key moment for the $2.6bn mission - Curiosity's internal apparatus will play a central role in its investigation of the Red Planet. "The most important thing about our mobile laboratory is that it eats dirt - that's what we live on," chief scientist John Grotzinger told the BBC. |  |
Cambridge University sheds light on illuminated manuscripts
Conservators and scientists studying illuminated manuscripts in Cambridge say their work could help uncover ancient techniques used by artists.
The Fitzwilliam Museum worked with scientists at Cambridge University to analyse the composition of manuscripts. Fibre optic and X-ray technology was used to analyse pigments and reveal sketches beneath the paintings. The museum said it could provide insights into their production and help conservators repair "priceless" art. |  |
Prehistoric 'Kennewick Man' Was All Beefcake
For nearly a decade, scientists and Northwest tribes in Washington state fought bitterly over whether to bury or study the 9,500-year-old bones known as Kennewick Man. Scientists won the battle, and now, after years of careful examination, they're releasing some of their findings.
For starters, Kennewick Man was buff. I mean, really beefcake. So says Doug Owsley, head of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and the man who led the study of the ancient remains. |  |
Akulivik woman recalls encounter with hairy bigfoot
Maggie Cruikshank of Akulivik has an incredible story to tell.
Late in the afternoon on a rainy, windy September Saturday she and a cousin went out from Akulivik to pick berries. “We moved around a lot because we were looking for big berries,” said Cruikshank, a 46-year-old language teacher with the Kativik School Board. “My cousin noticed something — she thought it was a hunter, but I ignored her because I wanted to go home while the sun was still up. Then, she started to be scared. I got up and looked to where she pointed. It was a very large animal, a bigfoot.”. |  |
Ancient Farmers’ Dances Threatened With Extinction
As globalization and urbanization push cultural change across India, many ancient art forms are dying out from lack of interest and funding.
Purulia Chhau, a form of masked dance performed by farmers in West Bengal to celebrate the harvest season, is one. A farmers’ dance, Chhau is held during the three-month spring festival of Chaitra Parva to thank the gods for a good harvest before the next agricultural cycle.
Purulia Chhau, a form of masked dance performed by farmers in West Bengal to celebrate the harvest season, is one. A farmers’ dance, Chhau is held during the three-month spring festival of Chaitra Parva to thank the gods for a good harvest before the next agricultural cycle.
Ancient tree offers clues for a warming planet
On a windswept Swedish mountain, a 10,000-year-old spruce with a claim to be the world's oldest tree is getting a new lease of life thanks to global warming, even as many plants are struggling.
Scientists are finding that the drift of growing areas for many plants out toward the poles is moving not in a smooth progression but in fits and starts, causing problems for farmers aiming to adapt and invest in cash crops that are more sensitive to climate than is this ancient conifer known as "Old Tjikko". At a range of latitudes, but especially in the far north, climate change is bringing bigger than expected swings, putting billions of dollars at stake in a push to develop varieties with resilience to frost and heatwaves, drought or flood. |  |
Brazil: Saving endangered monkey helps forest
SILVA JARDIM, Brazil (AP) — Three tiny flaming orange monkeys crouched on a tree branch, cocking their heads as if to better hear the high-pitched whistles and yaps that came from deep within the dense green foliage. Then they answered in kind, rending the morning with their sharp calls and cautiously greeting each other in the forest.
That the cries of Brazil's endangered golden lion tamarins should fill the air at all on a recent afternoon was cause for celebration, the result of one of the world's most inspired species restoration efforts. In fact, that campaign has transformed the lush forest where the monkeys live and has become a model widely cited for saving other animals.
That the cries of Brazil's endangered golden lion tamarins should fill the air at all on a recent afternoon was cause for celebration, the result of one of the world's most inspired species restoration efforts. In fact, that campaign has transformed the lush forest where the monkeys live and has become a model widely cited for saving other animals.
Public opposition to animal testing grows
Public opposition to the use of animals in medical research is growing and trust in both scientists and the rules governing the controversial practice is falling, new government-funded research shows.
More than one in three people (37%) now class themselves as "objectors" to the practice. Their number has been rising steadily since the 29% recorded in 2006 and 35% seen in 2010, though is still lower than the 39% found in 2002, according to the latest research into public attitudes on the issue by Ipsos MORI. |  |
Private Spaceflight Industry at Big Turning Point, Experts Say
LAS CRUCES, N.M. — The burgeoning field of commercial spaceflight is at a major turning point, industry experts say.
"It's not an exaggeration to say that 2012 has really been an inflection point," former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria said Wednesday (Oct. 17) here at the eighth annual International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight. |  |
Violent Origin of Saturn's Oddball Moons Explained
Saturn's icy medium-size moons were born when a few much bigger satellites collided to form the ringed planet's huge moon Titan, a new study suggests.
The Saturn system started out with a family of several relatively large moons like the Galilean satellites of Jupiter (Ganymede, Europa, Callisto and Io), according to the new theory. But things changed with a few dramatic moon mergers, which created the Titan we know today and shed enough material to form satellites such as Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea and Iapetus, researchers said. |  |
Tractor beam built from rings of laser light
Stand aside, Wesley Crusher: there's a new tractor beam on deck that pulls objects using nothing more than laser light. The device has already grabbed NASA's attention as it could one day prove useful on space missions.
It is well known that light can push on objects – this is the basis for using solar sails to propel a spacecraft. But getting light to pull on something is a bit trickier. |  |
Martian genome: Is there DNA on the Red Planet?
Craig Venter helped crack the human genome, created the first synthetic cell and has scoured the sea for novel genomes. Now he has set his sights on Mars.
Earlier this week at the Wired Health Conference in New York, he outlined plans to send a robotically controlled genome-sequencing unit, or "biological teleporter", to the Red Planet in order to sequence the genome of alien life that may be there. He's not the first to suggest doing this. Do any of these missions stand a chance?. |  |
Muddy lake bed holds radiocarbon 'Rosetta stone'
Mud is not renowned for its clarity, but the murky gloop at the bottom of a Japanese lake could provide the clearest, most accurate way yet of calibrating radiocarbon dates. The finding promises to help us pin down exactly when important events in prehistory occurred, including periods of climate change and the date of the Neanderthals' extinction.
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