Monday, October 28, 2013

You're looking at the oldest human brain in the world. About 1400 years older than the previous cerebral pudding discovered near the University of York—which looks really gross, see below—this one is four thousand years old. Scientists have a weird theory about how it survived all this time.

Although the brain appears to be sightly burned outside, it's in a good state. Archeologists believe that the brain—along with others—was preserved by a unique combination of environmental circumstances. First, its Bronze Age owner was buried and burned by an earthquake in Seyitömer Höyük, Turkey. The fire reacted with the soil's contents—rich in magnesium, potassium and aluminum—and that froze the brain in time, forever petrified.According to Antonio Martínez, of Neurolab, these brains help scientists understand some of the sickness that affect us today.

Scientists discover oldest human brain in the world

Delicious: 2600-year-old brain pudding from York.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Upcoming tests!

5th Grade Egypt and Nubia test will be on Wednesday 10/30. The Study guide can be found here.

6th Grade Byzantine Empire and the Rise of Christianity will be on Tuesday 10/29. The study guide can be found here.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Clues to lost prehistoric code discovered in Mesopotamia

The original article can be found here!

Oct 11, 2013 11:30 AM EDT

Researchers studying clay balls from Mesopotamia have discovered clues to a lost code that was used for record-keeping about 200 years before writing was invented.
The clay balls may represent the world's "very first data storage system," at least the first that scientists know of, said Christopher Woods, a professor at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, in a lecture at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, where he presented initial findings.
The balls, often called "envelopes" by researchers, were sealed and contain tokens in a variety of geometric shapes the balls varying from golf ball-size to baseball-size. Only about 150 intact examples survive worldwide today. [See Photos of the Clay Balls & Lost Code]
The researchers used high-resolution CT scans and 3D modeling to look inside more than 20 examples that were excavated at the site of Choga Mish, in western Iran, in the late 1960s. They were created about 5,500 years ago at a time when early cities were flourishing in Mesopotamia.
Researchers have long believed these clay balls were used to record economic transactions. That interpretation is based on an analysis of a 3,300-year-old clay ball found at a site in Mesopotamia named Nuzi that had 49 pebbles and a cuneiform text containing a contract commanding a shepherd to care for 49 sheep and goats.
How these devices would have worked in prehistoric times, before the invention of writing, is a mystery. Researchers now face the question of how people recorded the number and type of a commodity being exchanged without the help of writing.
Peering insideThe CT scans revealed that some of the balls have tiny channels, 1-2 millimeters (less than one-tenth of an inch) across, crisscrossing them. Woods said he's not certain what they were used for, but speculates the balls contained fine threads that connected together on the outside. These threads could have held labels, perhaps made out of wax, which reflected the tokens within the clay balls.
The tokens within the balls come in 14 different shapes, including spheres, pyramids, ovoids, lenses and cones, the researchers found. Rather than representing whole words, these shapes would have conveyed numbers connected to a variety of metrological systems used in counting different types of commodities, Woods suggested. One ovoid, for instance, might mean a certain unit, say 10, which was used while counting a certain type of commodity.
The researchers, however, were perplexed when their CT scans found one clay ball containing tokens made of a low-density material, likely bitumen, a petroleum substance. "When we make a three-dimensional model of the cavity you get this very strange amoeba like-looking shape," Woods said during the lecture.
The tokens, in this instance, had air bubbles around them, suggesting they were wrapped in cloth before being put in the ball, the cloth disintegrating over time. In addition, it appears that a liquid, likely liquid bitumen, was poured over the tokens after they were inserted into the balls. What someone was trying to communicate by creating such tokens is unknown.
"That's a mystery," Woods told LiveScience in an interview. "I don't really have a good answer for that," he said, adding that the bitumen tokens may represent a divergent accounting practice, or, perhaps even, that the transaction recorded involved bitumen.
In ancient Mesopotamia bitumen was used as an adhesive and to waterproof things like baskets, boats and the foundations of buildings, Woods said. [In Photos: Treasures from Mesopotamia]
Cracking the prehistoric codeAll of the clay balls contain, on the outside, one "equatorial" seal (running through the middle) and quite often two "polar" seals, running above and below.
The equatorial seals tend to be unique and more complex containing what appear to be mythological motifs; for instance a ball from the Louvre Museum shows human figures fighting what appear to be serpents. The polar seals, on the other hand, are repeated more often and tend to have simpler geometric motifs.
Based on this evidence, Woods hypothesizes the seal in the middle represents the "buyer" or recipient; the polar seals would represent the "seller" or distributor and perhaps third parties who would have participated in the transaction or acted as witnesses.
Many people would have acted as the buyers, but only a limited number of sellers or distributors would have been around to transact business with, explaining why the polar seals are repeated more often.
After a transaction of some importance was complete, one of these clay devices was created to serve as a "receipt" of sorts for the seller, as a record of what was expended. "There's a greater necessity to keep track of things that have been expended than things that are on hand," Woods said in the lecture.
Deciphering what transaction each clay ball represented is a trickier problem. Woods suspects the tokens represent numbers and metrical units. It's possible that, through the different token shapes, people in prehistoric times communicated numbers and units in a way similar to how the first scribes did 200 years later when writing was invented. If that's the case, Woods and other scientists may be able, in time, to crack the code by uncovering how token types cluster and vary.
"If they are, then there is at least some hope of deciphering the envelopes and with it uncovering the earliest evidence for complex numerical literacy," Woods said.
Technological achievementThe amount of detail the scientists gleaned from the CT scans and 3D modeling was extraordinary, Woods said during the lecture. "We can learn more about these artifacts by non-destructive testing than we could by physically opening the envelopes," he said.
Woods will publish the full research results in the future and plans to put the images and 3D models online.
To peer inside the balls Woods worked with Jeffrey Diehm, who arranged for them to be CT scanned on a state-of-the-art industrial scanner (which is better suited for this work than a medical version), and Jim Topich, who had the CT images converted into detailed, dissectible, 3D models. Diehm was with North Star Imaging in Minnesota at the time the scans were done in 2011 (he is now the managing director of Avonix Imaging) and Topich is director of engineering and design at Kinetic Vision in Cincinnati.
The Royal Ontario Museum has a special exhibition on Mesopotamia that runs to Jan. 5, 2014. Woods' presentation is part of a lecture series that is appearing along with it.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Did Archimedes build a death ray?

DEA / VENERANDA BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA/De Agostini/Getty Images

Did Archimedes build a death ray?

During the siege of Syracuse in 214 BCE, the city-state's resident genius, Archimedes, built a number of clever war machines to thwart the invading Roman fleet. One invention, the death ray, has been considered the stuff of legend. But could it have been real?

Listen to the podcast here!

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Did the Chinese discover America?

Does this map from 1418 prove historian's controversial claim that the New World was discovered by the CHINESE 70 years before Columbus?

Gavin Menzies, a British historian, claims Chiense Admiral Zheng He set up colonies and sailed round South America before Columbus
Menzies' new book, 'Who Discovered America?' also claims the Chinese have been sailing to the New World since 40,000 BC across the Pacific Ocean
His theories are not widely accepted by academia and he has been labeled a 'pseudo-historian'

By MICHAEL ZENNIE

PUBLISHED: 07:42 EST, 8 October 2013 | UPDATED: 09:06 EST, 9 October 2013

676

View
comments

A copy of a 600-year-old map found in a second-hand book shop is the key to proving that the Chinese, not Christopher Columbus, were the first to discover the New World, a controversial British historian claims.

The document is purportedly an 18th century copy of a 1418 map charted by Chinese Admiral Zheng He, which appears to show the New World in some detail.

This purported evidence that a Chinese sailor mapped the Western Hemisphere more than seven decades before Columbus is just one of Earth-shattering claims that author Gavin Menzies makes in his new book ‘Who Discovered America?’ - out today, just in time for the Columbus Day holiday.

‘The traditional story of Columbus discovering the New World is absolute fantasy, it’s fairy tales,’ Mr Menzies told MailOnline.

Enlarge

Map of the World? It is claimed that this is an eighth century copy of the map Admiral Zheng He made in 1418. The map clearly shows the new world (left half) - more than 70 years before Columbus discovered it

Mr Menzies believes that this portion of the map depicts the Chinese mapping of North and South America in 1418 - showing major rivers.

Explorer: Chinese Admiral Zheng He is known to have sailed the to Europe and Africa with a massive fleet of ships. Historian Gavin Menzies says he also reached the New World

Among Menzies other claims are that the first inhabitants of the Western hemisphere didn’t come over land from the Bering Strait, but instead were Chinese sailors who first crossed the Pacific Ocean 40,000 years ago.

He also writes that DNA markers prove American Indians and other natives are the descendants of several waves of Asian settlers.

More...

Furthermore, he says a majestic fleet of Chinese ships, commanded by Zheng He, sailed around the continent of South America - 100 years before Ferdinand Megellan supposedly became the first the undertake the task.

Columbus features heavily in the book - insofar as Menzies has devoted the last 20 years to finding and laying out evidence that Columbus not only didn’t discover America - he was 40 millenia late.

Mr Menzies believes that Columbus actually had a map of the world that was plotted by the Chinese Admiral Zheng He, who created the map when he sailed to the New World in 1421, more than seven decades before Columbus.

Author: China fleet landed in Americas before Columbus

Mr Menzies believes that this portion of the map depicts the Chinese mapping of North and South America in 1418 - showing major rivers.

His book includes what Menzies says is a copy of that map. discovered by Beijing attorney Liu Gang in a second-hand bookshop that he says proves his theory.

The document, he says, is an 18th century copy of Admiral Zheng He's 1417 map. Mr Menzies argues that it clearly shows North American rivers and coasts, as well as the continent of South America.

Mr Menzie's assertion about Zheng He's voyage to the New World isn't new - he first wrote about it in 2002 - but the map is.

Mr Liu had the map authenticated by an appraiser from Christie's Auctions, who said that the document was 'very old' and was not a newly-made fake.

After Mr Liu brought the map forward, Menzies also had a team of historians analyze every word on it. He concluded that it was originally written in the Ming Dynasty - a Chinese period that lasted from 1368 to 1644.

In the region of the map that Mr Menzies believes refers to Peru are written the inscriptions - 'Here the people practiced the religion of Paracas' and 'Here the people practice human sacrifice' - clear references peoples known to have inhabited Peru at the time.

The map is further corroborated, Mr Menzies says, by the Chinese names of numerous towns and regions in Peru.

He says old Peruvian maps show places with names like Chawan - Chinese for 'land prepared for sowing' and Chulin - 'wood or forest.'

Ko-Lan - a remote Peruvian town at the bottom of a ravine translates to 'difficult passage.'

Controversial: Gavin Menzies, 76, has been arguing for more than a decade that the Chinese and other Asians discovered the Ne World. 'Who Discovered America? - due out today - is his fourth book on the topic

Mr Menzies calls the story that Christopher Columbus' discovered America in 1492 a 'fairy tale' - saying he was not only not the first explorer - he was 40,000 years late

Mr Menzies has no formal training as a historian and no advanced degree from a major university - he was a submariner in the British Royal Navy - but he can no longer be called an ‘amateur.’

‘Who Discovered America?’ is Menzie’s fourth book in which he tries to re-write history and orient it East.

He has plowed millions of dollars of his proceeds from his books into continuing his world-traveling research into his theories. He has turned his north London home into a de facto research institute, employing up to six research assistants at a time.

But his theories are not accepted by the mainstream academic community. In 2008, University of London history professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto told the Daily Telegraph that his books are 'the historical equivalent of stories about Elvis Presley in (the supermarket) and close encounters with alien hamsters.'

Even Wikipedia characterizes Menzies as a 'pseudo-historian.'

That has not stopped him from gaining millions of readers - and thousands of followers who contribute to his website and contribute research of their own.

Menzies say this map of the Ancash province of Peru shows numerous Chinese names of villages

Each of these dots represents a Peruvian town that reportedly has a Chinese name. It is claimed this is evidence of Chinese colonization before Columbus

Mr Menzies debuted his Asia-centric theories with 2002's '1421: The Year China Discovered the World.' In it, he said that the famed Chinese sailor Admiral Zheng He, who is known to have reached Europe and Africa, also crossed the Pacific Ocean to the Western Hemisphere.

He claims that Zheng He not only reached the New World, he left colonies there. His fleet also sailed around the tip of South America - through the Strait of Megellan around the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi.

There is evidence, both archaeological and genetic, Menzies says, that Zheng He left his mark in California, Florida, Virginia and even the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

In 'Who Discovered America?' Menzies focuses on theories that Asians also made it to North and South America by sea long before even Zheng He.

'It appears certain that man reached the Americas by sea at least forty thousands years ago,' Menzies writes.

This Venetian map was made from information brought back from China by Marco Polo and Nicolo da Conti. Mr Menzies says it shows North and Central America - upside-down, oriented with north at the bottom

'Doubtless this date will be continuously pushed back, probably to 100,000 BC, which was when the first peoples sailed the Mediterranean to Crete and (separately) in the south from Asia to Australia.'

Most scientists believe man first widely populated the Western Hemisphere 13,000 to 16,500 years ago.

The almost universally-held theory among academics is that man came to the New World by crossing the Bering Strait land-bridge between Asia and North America.

'The more I thought about the Bering Straight theory of populating the Americas, the more ridiculous it became,' Mr Menzies writes about his investigation of the topic

Mr Menzies says the idea that man was able to cross the Pacific Ocean around 40,000 BC isn't nearly as dramatic as it seems.

'If you just go out in a plastic bath tub, the currents will just carry you there,' he told MailOnline. 'They just came with the current, it’s as simple as that.'

He added: 'There’s nothing terribly remarkable about. Man has been seafaring for vastly longer than convention credit has given them credit for.'

'Who Discovered America? The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas' by Gavin Menzies, published by William Morrow, is due out today.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Diamonds may fall as rain and form oceans on Saturn and Jupiter

The original article can be found here

Diamonds may fall as rain and form oceans on Saturn and Jupiter

Saturn and Jupiter may be a girl's best friend after scientists have claimed that diamonds may fall from the sky as rain to create large oceans on the giant planets.

Carbon may be crushed and melted to form diamond oceans on Jupiter Photo: AP

By Richard Gray, Science correspondent

11:42AM BST 10 Oct 2013

Comments

Diamonds may fall from the sky on the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.

Astrophysicists have calculated that the conditions on the two biggest planets of the solar system are enough to produce stable oceans made from diamond.

They claim that powerful lightning storms in the planets’ atmospheres cause particles of carbon to form, which then drift down though the gas.

As the carbon falls, it is crushed by the enormous pressures that exist on the two planets, causing them to form dense chunks of diamond.

At even greater depths, the scientists say the diamond will eventually melt to form liquid diamond, which may then form a stable ocean layer.

Dr Kevin Baines, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who conducted the work along with Dr Mona Delitsky, from California speciality Engineering, said: “At the boundaries – locations of sharp increases in density – on Jupiter and Saturn, there may be diamond rain or diamond oceans sitting as a layer

“Previously, only Uranus and Neptune were thought to have conditions in their interiors that would allow the formation of diamond at their cores.”

Dr Baines and Dr Delitsky are due to present their findings to the annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.

They used new data from experiments on how diamond changes state at extremely high pressures temperatures.

They calculated the altitude on each planet at which diamond reaches its melting point.

They say that while on Jupiter most of the diamond material will melt to form a liquid, on Saturn there may be chunks of diamond floating around.

They said that it was unlikely that diamonds could form liquid oceans on the other giant gas planets in the solar system - Uranus and Neptune - despite previous research suggesting these did form.

Instead they said these planets were likely to have solid diamond crystals at their core.

Dr Delitsky said: “It appears that the interior of Jupiter gets hot enough to reach the liquid diamond region of the carbon phase diagram, whereas the interior of Saturn includes regions of temperature and pressure where carbon could exist as solid diamond.”

Diamonds are a form of carbon that forms under high pressure where the attoms are arranged in a regular diamond-shaped cyrstal lattice.

On Saturn, it is thought that lightning storms produce carbon by splitting gases like methane into their constituent atoms.

However, for those wanting to find diamonds in even greater quantities, it may be worth looking beyond the boundaries of our own solar system.

Two years ago scientists announced they had found a planet that was five times the size of Earth and composed almost entirely of diamond.

However, there are some suggestions that another planet, 40 light years from Earth, which was thought to have a thick layer of diamond beneath its crust may actually be formed of gas.

Monday, October 7, 2013

6th Grade Test on 10/11

6th Grade will be testing on their Crash Course on Ancient History on Friday 10/11. This test will mostly focus on Rome, but will have a few questions on Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece.

The study guide is here.

Friday, October 4, 2013

Attention 6th Grade Parents

This is due on Friday, 10/11/13.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Mummified Chicken Legs!

Attention 5th Grade parents! I would like to have our classes mummify chicken legs. This process this going to take 4 weeks. I would appreciate your help. I need:

~~Around 40 chicken wings (bone in)~~
~~120 Sandwich baggies (ones that seal)~~
~~160 disposable gloves~~
~~A few lbs of salt~~
~~A few boxes of baking soda~~
~~2 or 3 bottles of Cinnamon and rosemary~~
~~Gauze or cloth to wrap~~
~~And lastly, a volunteer or two for 9:30-11:30 on 10/10, 10/17, 10/24, and 10/31.~~

Please contact me by email if you can help!

Wow thank you all so much for being so supportive and making this project possible. On the 31st you all should be having little Pharaohs at your house!

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Was Hatshepsut killed by her skin care regimen?

The original article can be found here.

According to CT scans of her mummy, Egyptian queen and pharaoh Hatshepsut died of metastatic bone cancer in 1458 B.C. She was in her 50s by then, obese, probably diabetic, and had arthritis and bad teeth. (In fact it was a broken molar found in a box with her name inscribed on it that allowed hermummy to be identified in 2007.)

Now researchers at the University of Bonn’s Egyptian Museum have added a chronic skin condition to the list of Hatshepsut’s ailments and the lotion she used to alleviate the heartbreak of psoriasis may be what killed her. The museum has a vessel from her tomb in the Valley of Kings in its permanent collection. It was thought to contain perfume, but after two years of study researchers determined that it contained a skin lotion, and not just a light moisturizer either.

Michael Höveler-Müller, curator of the Egyptian collection, enlisted experts from the university’s radiology department to CT scan to flask. Once they had the lay of the land, Höveler-Müller had a professor from the ear, nose and throat clinic slip an endoscope inside the vessel to extract a sample of the contents.

Dr Helmut Wiedenfeld from the pharmaceutical institute was the next to help out, analysing the contents. It was quickly apparent that it contained palm oil and nutmeg oil. “I immediately thought that no-one would put so much fat on their face,” said Wiedenfeld.

But further analysis revealed that the substance contained many unsaturated fatty acids which are used to treat skin diseases.

“It has long been known that Hatshepsut’s family suffered from skin complaints,” said Höveler-Müller.

The mixture however also include tar residue, a substance now banned in cosmetics because it can cause cancer – but still used on prescription to treat chronic skin diseases.

If Hatshepsut did indeed suffer from a chronic skin condition like eczema or psoriasis, she would have applied that lotion repeatedly over the years thus exposing herself constantly to the same tar residue found in cigarette smoke.

There are no written records of her cause of death. After she died, her stepson and disgruntled co-ruler Thutmose III had references to her kingship erased. His resentment of the woman who had declared herself king early in his reign (some time between the second and seventh years of his taking the throne after the death of his father, her husband and half-brother Thutmose II) and then ruled for 22 years with him as nominal, but powerless, co-ruler, may be the reason her mummy was so hard to find. Howard Carter discovered her tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1902, but her sarcophagus was empty.

The tomb of her wet nurse, In-Sitre, however, included an unidentified female mummy with one arm posed in the traditional burial posture of Egyptian pharaohs. It was that mummy which was found to have an empty socket in her jawbone that exactly matched the broken molar in the wooden box. The box was found in 1881 along with a cache of royal mummies in a nearby temple and was inscribed with her name. The tooth had probably fallen out during the mummification process.