The scientists believe their findings may represent one of the earliest examples of the over-exploitation of marine organisms by humans.
T. costatahas “very peculiar characteristics” that set it apart from two other species of giant clam that are also found in the area.
The Latin word costatus means “ribbed” and T. costata has a disitinctive, zig-zag outline to its shell.
“The new species are mid-sized clams - up to 40cm long and a couple of kilograms heavy,” explained co-author Dr Claudio Richter, from the Alfred-Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Germany.
The new species has a distant relative, T. gigas, which can grow up to 1.4m long.
Live specimens of T. costata appear to be restricted to very shallow waters. Other species were also found in deeper reef zones.
The clam has an earlier and shorter breeding season that coincides with the seasonal plankton bloom. Genetic analysis confirmed the status of the new species.
‘Time travel’
“One of the great features of the desert-enclosed Red Sea is that you can literally time-travel from the present, several hundred thousand years into the past,” said Dr Richter.
The research team uncovered well-preserved fossil evidence that suggested stocks of these giant clams plummeted some 125,000 years ago - during an interval between Ice Ages.
They believe this period coincides with the appearance of modern humans in the Red Sea area.
Giant clams were abundant, large in size and easily accessible - making them an attractive food source for hunter-gatherers.
In “pre-human times”, T. costata may have been up to 60cm long. Since then, shell size has also decreased dramatically.
A shocking short video documenting the Irish government’s plan to build a motorway through the historic Tara-Skryne valley
From the Socialist Unity Blog in Britain, from an item there by Derek Wall, of the left wing of the English-Welsh Green party:
Jean Thierry of the Danish Green Party on the crisis of European Greens
The Danish Green Party has been expelled from the European Green Party, while I would not share their 100% opposition to the EU and it is fair to see they have not been active as an independent electoral party, I feel it was wrong for them to be expelled. Jean Thierry outlines why he thinks green politics is fading amongst some European Greens. Food for thought, can the Green Party of England and Wales remain green and left in contrast to much of the movement in the wrong direction for sister parties in Europe. …
[Jean Thierry]: You are actually doing something very important by organising this Green Left tendency as a possible opposition to the alignment of the Greens in Europe.
For years I did try to make an alliance, a network even an organisation of the really Green parties within the EGP. But it was and especially is clear that consequent opposition is not wanted and eventually not accepted.
We will not try to rejoin the EGP, since it is clear that it is [un]reformable like the EU which it is a treaty stated part of. But we would like to participate in the formation of a network of Greener parties and ideological group that at least in some countries can participate in elections with Red or Red-Green parties and groups giving a real Green alternative to the withered EGP mainstream.
What the EGP leadership, the Committee, does is not maintaining the original green ideas and excluding those who oppose these ideas. It is rather the opposite, they are in a top-down approach imposing change away from the Green principles of anti-authoritarianism, direct democracy, ecology in a broad sense, real global thinking and responsibility.
During the ten years EFGP/EGP has become more and more aligned, and moved further away from the original Green ideas. Each voting in the Council or Congress is not important, because the real issue is that every time you vote, you are voting yourself into the EGP, accepting the convergence. It is only socialisation into the EGP and the EU. ..
his was exactly what happened in Ljubljana when our resolution on maintaining the more than once decided support for referenda on the Lisbon Treaty (aka the EU Constitution) was voted down.
Because the Committee spokespersons had been speaking out in the against referenda in the name of the EGP and thereby speaking against the decisions. But the belief in authorities means more to most member parties than their own decisions in council. And their own opinion as party at home. More than one party actually opposing the Lisbon Treaty at home and campaigning for a referendum did not vote in favour of our resolution. ….
EGP also accept SF from Denmark, because this party is successful and a probable governing party three or six years from now, even though their move towards the right have included harsh statements about immigrants, especially Muslims but lately also Catholics from Poland.
Almost everything in the political debate in mainstream media in Denmark is about foreigners and especially Muslims, so when it was revealed that the EC Court had made a decision which in a strange way made it difficult to maintain the strict limitations on taking a foreign wife or husband to Denmark, the power of this Court became a big issue in Denmark.
Good thing is that it highlighted how much power the EU has and that the politicians haven’t told the voters about it. It did get much more attention than other already made and much more severe decisions of the EC Court of so-called justice. These are only negative and concerns workers rights, animal welfare, the environment and food safety.
The view of The Greens and the Red-Green Alliance are similar: The Danish policy on foreigners shall be changed by the people and the parliament in Denmark and not the EU/EC court. It is not sustainable to do it in an undemocratic way, which could lead to more xenophobia, mutual understanding is very important in these issues. And next time it can easily go in the opposite direction.
We also want that human rights are ensured by the Human Rights Court of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and not the EC/EU market Court in Luxembourg. ..,
Actually the way the EU exploits Africa reminds of the way USA used to exploit Latin America. Already the opposition against the EU is quite strong in the Third World especially in Africa, and for good reasons, even though we never hear about it in mainstream media in Denmark.
More than one African artist have made songs against the Economic Partnership Agreements that the EU have tried to impose on the African countries.
A small group is peering into a hole the size of a bomb crater, about a metre deep. At the bottom are young archaeologists, dusting off the bones of five mangled skeletons. One skull looks up to the sky, its open-mouthed expression like a cry for help. Between what were the eyes, there is a hole. This is where a 9mm bullet entered.
In this wretched hole in the ground, near the tiny village of San Juan del Monte, in Castilla y León, are the remains of five more of Spain’s “disappeared”. Julio Maroto San José, his father Roman Maroto Rico, Rogelito Tello, and the brothers Marcos Parra Barberra and Salvador Parra Barberra were shot by supporters of General Francisco Franco on August 25 1936. The four youngest were all in their 20s; most had children. One night they were hauled off by civil guard officers in a lorry, made to dig their own graves and shot in the head. They were not condemned by a court. Their “crime” was to belong to the Spanish equivalent of the General Workers Union. Now, 72 years later, a small band of volunteers has arrived in San Juan del Monte to exhume the bodies of these five and give them a decent burial.
Historians believe there could be as many as 100,000 others like them, buried across the country.
One man of the cloth has come up with an ingenious solution to the mystery of the pyramids which also “disproves” evolution. Maltese evangelist pastor Vince Fenech believes that dinosaurs helped build the pyramids, presumably after being domesticated. There is a certain eccentric beauty to this “Flintstones” theory: the ancient Egyptians didn’t have any mechanical heavy-lifting equipment that we know of, so let’s give them a biological variety.
But even when human agency behind the pyramids is acknowledged, the credit for them is disputed. The most famous alternative theory is that Israelite slaves built these colossal structures. The late Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, stirred up a furore in Egypt when he claimed, prior to arriving for the first official visit by an Israeli leader to Cairo, that his ancestors built the pyramids.
Using cow’s milk for direct consumption, cheese, butter and yoghurt looks like a typical Dutch tradition. Yet, Syrians eight thousand years ago were the first people to milk cattle. A group of archaeologists discovered this. In Nature of 7 August they will report on this.
Tomorrow, Wednesday 6 October, at 18:00 Central European time, a more extensive article on this will be at the Leiden University site.
In the Magdeburg region, archaeologists are digging now in a sensational discovery: they believe that they have discovered the German equivalent of Stonehenge [in England]; in Pömmelte. Their only problem: as the building was made in wood, not in stone, few remains have been left.
An archaeological discovery described as the most important in 18 years has been made at the site of the Tarxien temples.
Malta Environment Planning Authority (Mepa) officials discovered megaliths and other remains, which are most probably prehistoric, during development works within the buffer zone of the Neolithic temples.
The site was described by archaeologist Kevin Borda as the most important one since a burial ground was unearthed at the Brockdorff Circle in Xagħra in 1990. It lies within a plot of land measuring 25 by eight metres towards the back of the plot. …
During the inspection it was noted that demolition and site clearance works had uncovered a number of features which date back to 4,100-2,500 B.C.
Archaeologists Find Silos And Administration Center From Early Egyptian City
(July 1, 2008) — A University of Chicago expedition at Tell Edfu in southern Egypt has unearthed a large administration building and silos that provide fresh clues about the emergence of urban life. The discovery provides new information about a little understood aspect of ancient Egypt—the development of cities in a culture that is largely famous for its monumental architecture.
The archaeological work at Tell Edfu was initiated with the permission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, headed by Zahi Hawass, under the direction of Nadine Moeller, Assistant Professor at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. Work late last year revealed details of seven silos, the largest grain bins found in ancient Egypt as well as an older columned hall that was an administration center.
Long fascinated with temples and monuments such as pyramids, scholars have traditionally spent little time exploring the residential communities of ancient Egypt. Due to intense farming and heavy settlement over the years, much of the record of urban civilization has been lost. So little archaeological evidence remains that some scholars believe Egypt did not have a highly developed urban culture, giving Mesopotamia the distinction of teaching people how to live in cities.
“The traditional view of ancient Egypt has been biased by the fact that most excavation work so far has focused on temples and tombs. The mounds which comprise the remains of Egyptian cities were either ignored, buried under modern towns, or else destroyed by modern agricultural activities.
A additional reason why archaeologists have often focused on temples and tombs is that Egyptian secular buildings, including even pharaoh’s palaces, were mainly built in mud bricks, which do not survive centuries as well as the stones of temples and tombs.
Edfu is one of the very few remaining city mounds that are accessible for scientific study,” said Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute.
“The work at Edfu is important and innovative in that it finally allows us to examine ancient Egypt as an urban society, whose cities and towns housed bureaucrats, craft specialists, priests, and farmers. Nadine Moeller’s discovery of silos and local administrative buildings shows us how these cities actually functioned as places where the agricultural wealth of the Nile valley was mobilized for the state. Grain as currency provided the sinews of power for the pharoahs,” he added.
“Ancient Egyptian administration is mainly known from texts, but the full understanding of the institutions involved and their role within towns and cities has been so far difficult to grasp because of the lack of archaeological evidence with which textual data needs to be combined,” Moeller said.
At Tell Edfu, archaeologists have uncovered what amounts to a downtown area. The community, halfway between the modern cities of Aswan and Luxor, was a provincial capital an important regional center. Tell Edfu is also rare, in that almost 3,000 years of Egyptian history are preserved in the stratigraphy of a single mound.
The administrative building and silos were at the heart of the ancient community. Because grain was a form of currency, the silos functioned as a bank and a food source. The silos’ size indicates the community was apparently a prosperous urban center.
The grain bins are in a large silo courtyard of the 17th Dynasty (1630-1520 B.C.) and consist of at least seven round, mud-brick silos. With a diameter between 5.5 and 6.5 meters, they are the largest examples discovered within a town center.
The team unearthed an earlier building phase for the hall that predated the silos. In that phase, a mud-brick building with 16 wooden columns stood at the site. The pottery and seal impressions found in the hall date it to the early 13th Dynasty (1773-1650 B.C.). The building layout indicates that it may have been part of the governor’s palace, which was typical of provincial towns.
There is no exact parallel for such a columned hall being part of the administrative buildings. Scribes did accounting, opened and sealed containers, and received letters in the column hall. The ostraca, or inscribed pottery shards, list commodities written on them.
The administrative center was used when Egypt’s political unity was lost and a small kingdom developed at Thebes (modern Luxor) and controlled most of Upper Egypt.
“During this period, we can see an increase in connections between the provincial elite, such as the family of the governor, to the royal family at Thebes, who were keen on strengthening bonds through marriage, or by awarding important offices to these people,” Moeller said.
“It is exactly at this period when Edfu seems to have been very prosperous, which can now be confirmed further by archaeological discoveries such as this silo-court, a symbol for the wealth of the town,” she said.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago.
An underwater robot will be used to search for the sarcophagus of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Menkaure of more than 4,500 years ago off the Spanish coasts, the Egyptian MENA news agency reported on Saturday.
Egyptian and Spanish archeologists will launch the search in the historical city of Cartagena at the depths of the sea with the help of the hi-tech equipped robot, Egyptian Secretary General of Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities, Zahi Hawwas, was quoted by MENA as saying.
The merchant ship Beatrice carrying the sarcophagus of the ancient Egyptian king along with other antiquities sank off Cartagena in the early 19th century en route from Egypt to Britain, where some scientific studies were supposed to be conducted on them, Hawwas said.
Egypt and Spain will cooperate in a joint venture to locate the sarcophagus of Menkaure, the 5th king of the 4th Dynasty of Egypt who ruled from 2,551 BC to 2,523 BC.
This exhibition shows beautiful 17th, 18th and 19th century plaster casts of the finest sculptures of Antiquity. The timeless beauty of classical sculpture is the focal point of this exhibition. Further attention is paid to the role played by plaster casts in science, art criticism and art education in the past four hundred years.
He started with talking about Rome, as in that city, in the sixteenth century, were the origins of copying sculptures from antiquity. When, early in that century, visitors came to Rome, they might know from writings that during antiquity, there had been many sculptures in public places. However, when they visited the city, they saw only a few sculptures said to have survived from the Roman empire or earlier: the she-wolf of Capitol hill; the Marcus Aurelius statue; Trajan’s Column.
When, while building churches or other buildings in medieval Rome, sculptures or parts of them from antiquity had been found, they had been recycled as building material. After 1500, however, people found out that discoveries like these might add to knowledge about antique art. In this way, new sculptures which became famous, were found, like the Laocoön group and the Apollo of the Belvedere. They attracted many artists and other visitors from many European countries to Rome.
The popes and other elite people from the papal state sometimes, as a favour, started giving plaster copies of antique sculptures to princes in other countries. One example was Trajan’s column, a copy of which was given to King Louis XIV of France. In 1824, these plaster copies were found in a windmill in Leiden. the Netherlands. It is not known how they had ended up there. As, since the seventeenth century, in the open air of Rome, the original Trajan’s column has suffered much from pollution, these plaster copies are today valuable, as they show details which are no longer clear in the original.
In the exhibition are also cork models of ancient Roman buildings, which used to be sold to tourists. And reproductions of idealized paintings of ancient Roman remains, by the neo-classicist Giovanni Paolo Panini (1692 - 1765).
During the eighteenth century, drawing academies, based on neo-classicist views, arose in many countries. First, the students had to learn to draw skeletons and muscles for human anatomy. Then, they had to make drawings of Greek and Roman sculptures, considered as models of perfect human bodies. Only after that did they draw nude human models, with bodies not as perfect as antique sculptures.
Among the plaster copies often found in drawing academies were the Venus of Arles. And the “Borghese gladiator” which does not really depicts a gladiator, as gladiators did not fight while naked. The nude statue probably depicts a hero.
The Venus of Arles was considered the ideal female form, until 1820, when the Venus de Milo was discovered in Greece.
One of the drawings, depicting a statue of the Greek god Apollo, at the exhibition, is by nineteenth century drawing academy student, later famous painter, George Hendrik Breitner.
When female students had to draw plaster copies of statues, fig leaves were attached to prevent the women from seeing male genitalia.
Certainly since the 1960s in the Netherlands, neo-classicist ideas in art education became weaker. For the plaster copies, that often meant they were hidden away or even destroyed.
In the sixteenth century, mainly Roman sculpture and Roman copies of Greek sculpture had become known in western Europe. In the early nineteenth century, for the first time, classical Greek sculpture became widely known. Eg, after the Parthenon marbles arrived in London. People had difficulty in getting used to them. The poet John Keats was one of not very many people admiring the Marbles right from the start. While fellow poet Lord Byron attacked Lord Elgin for taking the sculpture from Athens.
When sculpture from the Aegina temple, still older than the Parthenon, became first known in Germany, famous author Goethe did not like it, as it did not conform to his preconceived ideas of what Greek art should be.
