Fossils Show Upright Walking as Early as Six Million Years Ago

George Washington University Professor Brian Richmond and Stony Brook University Professor William Jungers have discovered that humans’ early ancestors were adapted to walking upright on two legs almost six million years ago, settling scientific debate over fossils discovered in 2000. This finding shows that the fossils belong to very early human ancestors and that upright walking is one of the first human characteristics to appear in our lineage, just after the split between human and chimpanzee lineages..........

GW News Cen

First Ever: First Temple Building Remains Found Near Temple Mount

The Israel Antiquities Authority announces the first time in the history of the archaeological research of Jerusalem that building remains from the First Temple period have been exposed so close to the Temple Mount – on the eastern slopes of the Upper City..........

Arutz Sheva

Ancient Graves Found in Greece

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek workers discovered around 1,000 graves, some filled with ancient treasures, while excavating for a subway system in the historic city of Thessaloniki, the state archaeological authority said Monday.

Some of the graves, which dated from the first century B.C. to the 5th century A.D., contained jewelry, coins and various pieces of art, the Greek archaeological service said in a statement.

Thessaloniki was founded around 315 B.C. and flourished during the Roman and Byzantine eras. Today it is the Mediterranean country's second largest city.

Most of the graves — 886 — were just east of the city center in what was the eastern cemetery during Roman and Byzantine times. Those graves ranged from traces of wooden coffins left in simple holes in the ground, to marble enclosures in five-room family mausoleums.

A separate group of 94 graves were found near the city's train station, in what was once part of the city's western cemetery.

More findings were expected as digging for the Thessaloniki metro continues. Digging started in 2006 and the first 13 stations are expected to be done by the end of 2012. A 10-station extension to the west and east has been announced.

Associated Press

Dredging Hauls Up Ancient Artifacts

A haul of 28 flint hand-axes, dated by archaeologists to be around 100,000 years-old, have been unearthed in gravel from a licensed marine aggregate dredging area 13km off Great Yarmouth..........

ybw.com

Archaeologists to Drill in Bexley for Evidence of Ancient Occupation

Archaeologists from Durham University will be returning to a London borough site where a 19th century historian once found flint tools and animal bones.

This time, however, the latest sonic drilling equipment will be used to take samples from the earth, for the ongoing Ancient Human Occupation of Britain II project (AHOB).

Initial drillings were carried out at Holmscroft Open Space in September 2007 by the archaeologists, who are looking at human occupation of the country right from the first people who lived here about 700,000 years ago, up to the end of the last Ice Age, roughly 8,800 years ago..........

24 Hour Museum News

Cannibalism May Have Wiped Out Neanderthals

A Neanderthal-eat-Neanderthal world may have spread a mad cow-like disease that weakened and reduced populations of the large Eurasian human, thereby contributing to its extinction, according to a new theory based on cannibalism that took place in more recent history..........

Discovery News

Centuries-old May Blue mystery finally solved

Anthropologists from Wheaton College (Illinois) and The Field Museum have discovered how the ancient Maya produced an unusual and widely studied blue pigment that was used in offerings, pottery, murals and other contexts across Mesoamerica from about A.D. 300 to 1500..........

EurekAlert

Royals weren't only builders of Maya temples, archaeologist finds

An intrepid archaeologist is well on her way to dislodging the prevailing assumptions of scholars about the people who built and used Maya temples.

From the grueling work of analyzing the “attributes,” the nitty-gritty physical details of six temples in Yalbac, a Maya center in the jungle of central Belize – and a popular target for antiquities looters – primary investigator Lisa Lucero is building her own theories about the politics of temple construction that began nearly two millennia ago.

Her findings from the fill, the mortar and other remnants of jungle-wrapped structures lead her to believe that kings weren’t the only people building or sponsoring Late Classic period temples (from about 550 to 850), the stepped pyramids that rose like beacons out of the southern lowlands as early as 300 B.C..........

News Bureau

Oldest Urban Site in the Americas Found, Experts Claim

A circular plaza found under an existing archaeological site in Peru could be the oldest known human-made complex in the New World, experts report..........

National Geographic News