Sun, Feb 17, 2008
The Inca empire of greater Peru is known as South America's grandest, but most of its fabulous gold, with a technique they couldn't equal, stems from the 600 year older Lambayeque culture, a merchant culture which built around three Peruvian sites including Tucuma the greatest pyramids in the world, up to thrice Cheops's, with tombs -at the outer side- but in adobe, which was badly damaged by the very floods around 1300 which finished off the culture. A German engineer discovered them and realized their significance a century ago, a German professor now heads its thorough archaeological investigation, revealing a lot of truth in the myth of their founding god-king.
Sun, Mar 2, 2008
In 1944, the approach of the Soviet Red army caused most of the 'Prussia treasure' to be removed from the museum in capital Koenigsberg's castle, to be separated until the 'Wende' (German reunion after the fall of the Iron Curtain). Recently German researchers followed its trail, and discovered more then they expected. It's a unique collection of pieces from the Preussen (Prussians), the long-extinct tribe the German region Prussia by the Ostsee is named for, who traded a lot, mainly in precious amber (which the region is the world's best source of), notably with the Vikings. Although their culture had no writing, its jewelry proves a refined technology.
Sun, Mar 9, 2008
Arabian and German researchers examine the ancient legend that a mighty ruler of Babylon would have spend ten years in the measly desert oasis of Teyma, in present Saudi Arabia, on the Ancient incense trade route, which a Swede explored in 1879, finding ruins with an Aramaic inscription, referring without legible name to a Babylonian king. Teyma's still conserved spring, remains one of the world's largest, was an amazing engineering feat, able to serve 50 camels simultaneously. The fortified city once covered over 500 hectares, including a giant, repeatedly transformed temple. Recent finds, including cuneiform inscriptions on several spots, testify to intense trade as far as Egypt, and indicate the exiled monarch was Nabonit, Babylon's 6th century BC last king, his residence and motive for refuge or even banishment (on account of his veneration for his mother's regional god from another part of Mesopotamia?) remain unknown, but his son and representative at the Babylonian capital was the one who received the biblical writing on the wall before the kingdom was overrun. Teyma obviously remained important many more centuries, probably also in the Nabathaean realm (capital Petra, in modern Jordan).
Sun, Mar 16, 2008
The Roman 'Il Ghesu' mother church of the Jesuit order contains a remarkable relic, a 'baptism' (i.e. right) arm ,which hasn't started decomposing in 450 years. Modern researchers trace its antecedents and theories about a hokes in the Vatican archives. It is attributed to saint Francis Xaverius, the Basque Jesuit missionary who converted hundreds of thousands of Hindus -under threat of colonial force, however- around Goa, the first and by far largest, heavily fortified Portuguese base on the Indian coast, end point of the early European (essentially commercial, not territorial) circumnavigation and colonization of Africa from Gibraltar to the Arabian Sea, prolonged to its goal, the rich spices trade of the Far East, which brought such immense wealth, especially trading with the then largest and richest Indian hinterland city (Vij... which perished in Muslim-Hindu religious strife) that Goa thrived to more inhabitants and churches then even Rome in the Renaissance age. The arm is attributed to the fabulous reliquary (started for the bones of a Georgian queen martyr shipped from Persia) of an Augustinian monastery, notably its chapter house, which is painstakingly tracked down during a 20 years long archaeological dig in Goa.