Transfer to new server

We will be taking a few days off; please note that Cronaca may be down for a short time over the weekend as we move to a new server.

Dextrous Neanderthals

From the BBC:

The popular image of Neanderthals as clumsy, backward creatures has been dealt another blow. . . computer reconstructions of fossilised bones show their hands had almost the same manual dexterity as ours. . .

The finding is important because it casts doubt on the idea that Neanderthals died out because of a physical inability to use stone tools.

Iraq historical sites bypassed

The U.S. military expedition into Iraq has skirted ancient sites named in Jewish and Christian scriptures and apparently avoided sacred turf where Shi'ite Muslims had their historic and bloody showdown with rival Sunnis.

Slow earthquake under way

A widespread earthquake is taking place beneath the Northwest, slowly unleashing energy that may be equivalent to the magnitude 6.7 Nisqually quake that rocked the region two years ago, experts say.

But the so-called "silent" or "slow" earthquake is releasing that energy over weeks rather than in the sharp, seconds-long jolts of a typical quake. No one can feel it.

14h-century warriors reinterred in Scotland

Two brave medieval warriors badly injured by marauding English soldiers have been laid to rest for a second time.

Both men suffered brutal sword wounds to their skulls during hand-to-hand fighting with troops loyal to English monarch Richard II.

The fighters’ remains were buried in a forgotten cemetery within the ancient Scots abbey they defended so bravely - but centuries later their bones were disturbed, along with the skeletons of 135 medieval Scots, by workmen laying a sewer.

Tate to get Reynolds' Omai after all

An anonymous benefactor is giving the Tate £12.5m so the gallery can buy the picture and keep it in the UK. The portrait of Omai had been offered for sale in 2001, but the Tate's offer was rejected at the time. It eventually sold for £10.3m, the second-highest price for a British painting. . .

The government placed a temporary bar on Sir Joshua's painting leaving the UK in December because of its historical importance. The painting, which was first shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1776, has been kept in the stores of the auction house Christie's in Vauxhall, south London.

Omai was discovered by explorers on an island near Tahiti and brought back to England where his exotic looks led him to be feted as a noble savage by London society.

Bronze Age gold ring found in Wales

A 3,000-year-old gold ring found by a metal detector enthusiast is an important archaeological find for Wales, a coroner at a Treasure Trove Inquest ruled yesterday.

Swansea and Gower Coroner Richard Morgan declared the Bronze Age "hair ring," discovered by 38-year-old Nigel Powell in Swansea Bay, was officially Treasure Trove and belonged to the Government. . .

It is thought the delicate, gold-foil covered copper ring will eventually be valued at around £3,000. Finds of such rings are extremely rare and it is thought the piece of jewellery may have belonged to a person of wealth and influence, such as a Bronze Age chieftain or possibly a princess.

Field Museum to return Indian bones

Just in from Chicago:

The Field Museum will return bones--mostly skulls--from about 160 native people who lived, logged and fished from islands off the coast of British Columbia.

The remains were dug up from cemeteries on the Queen Charlotte Islands and brought to Chicago in the early 1900s.

Earliest deliberate human burials

From the BBC:

a 350,000-year-old pink stone axe. . . discovered at an archaeological site in northern Spain, may represent the first funeral rite by human beings. . .

Spanish researchers found the axe among the fossilised bones of 27 ancient humans that were clumped together at the bottom of a 14-metre- (45 feet) deep pit inside a network of limestone caves at Atapuerca, near Burgos.

It is the only man-made implement found in the pit. It may confirm the team's belief that other humans deposited bodies in the pit deliberately.

Dogs dig up mummy

Two dogs digging for a buried bone in their owner's backyard in Chile found a 2,500-year-old mummy.

Ivan Paredes, who lives in Arica, could not believe his eyes when his dogs dug up the ancient body. He told La Cuarta online: "The dogs were trying to find bones buried in the backyard as usual, but they started to bark very loud and I came to check what was going on and found the mummy of a child."

UFO = exploding cat

With apologies to my sister and cat lovers at large:

Experts say a reported UFO sighting in Norway was probably an electrocuted cat.

People in Lardal reported seeing a fire ball explode in the night sky and fall slowly down to earth. But investigators think they've solved the mystery after the charred body of a cat was found at the foot of an electrical mast. They believe the unlucky cat climbed up the mast and touched a live wire, reports Aftenposten. Lars Helge Sogn says what people saw was the cat exploding and falling off the mast.

Toupee-eating hawk

A mischievous hawk is stepping down from his perch after a series of embarrassing incidents involving members of the public at a display.

The problems began when Harry, a Harris hawk, flew off with a spectator's toupee and tried to eat it - thinking it was live prey.

Fog of war

A salutary reminder from Stephen Den Beste:

It's natural that we all are worried about what is happening in this war. It's natural that we want to know what's going on. And in the Internet age, we're used to information propagating across the globe in minutes. But it's important to understand that fog of war is a very real phenomenon, and the Internet didn't abolish it. A lot of the news reports that you're going to see, or hear about second hand, are going to turn out to be false. We all need to practice patience.

Titanic wreck plundered?

Just in from Virginia:

A pirate ship from England may have plundered the Titanic in violation of a Norfolk court order.

Rumors of the illegal salvage operation surfaced in November in Norfolk’s federal court. Since then, a Portsmouth maritime lawyer has investigated the rumors and concluded they may be true.

In letters to Norfolk’s federal court, lawyer Mark S. Davis said evidence suggests that a Florida company may have used a ship from England and a submarine from France to salvage pieces of the Titanic in November and December. . .

Four nations — the United States, Canada, Britain and France — have tried to outlaw the Titanic’s salvage, but an international agreement is still unsigned. The Titanic was discovered in 1985 by a joint American-French expedition.

Victory or death

For Iraqi athletes, losing has not been an option -- grim reading in this Sports Illustrated article.

The dark side of death Roman-style

For most of us, Roman culture is a byword for civilisation in an otherwise 'barbarian' ancient world. When we think of the Romans, what springs to mind are their achievements in art and literature, architecture, engineering, law - and all the rest.

Yet the undeniable sophistication of the Romans has led many archaeologists to expect civilised treatment of the dead. When excavating cemeteries in Roman Britain, we go to huge lengths to explain away graves that suggest violence and mistreatment of dead bodies. We avoid any suggestion of Roman practices that would be regarded as abhorrent today.

Evidence, however, tells a different story. It points to religious and ritual killings in Roman Britain, infanticide, punishment burials and mutilation of bodies after death. Some of the evidence is very strange; and not all of it can be explained with certainty. But one thing is clear. The Romans in Britain did not always treat the dead as we would wish to be treated now.

"Stab City"

Isn't this lovely:

Limerick's reputation as “Stab City” may be justified. A new medical study appears to support the perception that the city has a higher rate of stabbings than others.

Doctors at the city’s regional hospital analysed records of patients attending the casualty department during the course of 2001 and concluded that there were almost two stabbings a week. The incidence of stabbings in Limerick was nine times the rate of those recorded in a similar study in Cardiff.

Fabergé egg hunt

It is an exquisite irony that the art objects which have done most to rekindle interest in the imperial dynasty — fetching prices of up to £6 million per egg in recent years — were in fact sold onto the international art market for pitifully low prices by the communist regime which most despised them.

Out of the original 50 imperial eggs, only ten are now known to remain in Russia, most of them held back by courageous Kremlin curators who risked execution to hide them from the plundering regime. The rest are scattered around the world — including three in the collection of Queen Elizabeth (which can be seen shortly at Holyroodhouse), and nine at the Forbes Magazine Galleries in New York. Four are in private ownership, surfacing sporadically in auction houses to change hands for seven-figure sums — as the Diamond Trellis egg is expected to do in Christie’s on April 11. More tantalizing still, eight remain unaccounted for.

Gondole all'Americana

For centuries the secrets of gondola-building have been jealously guarded by an elite band of Venetian craftsmen. Their monopoly is now being challenged by an upstart American.

Thom Price, 32, from North Carolina, has become the first foreigner to open a squero or gondola-making yard in the city. His arrival has provoked scorn from locals, unable to believe anyone from outside Venice could master the esoteric art traditionally handed down from father to son.

Price, who studied anthropology and boat-building, has long been fascinated by gondolas. But when he arrived in Venice in 1996 seeking an apprenticeship with a boat maker he was met with disbelief. “They were polite,” he said. “But the whole thing was too weird for them to contemplate.” Several months later he was about to give up when he met Daniele Bonaldo, a cantankerous semi-retired maestro. After seeing pictures of the flat- bottomed boats Price had made in America Bonaldo, who had no son, agreed to take him on.

Price made his first gondola under Bonaldo’s supervision in about six months. It was followed by six more — all of which went to cities in America where they ferry tourists around local waterways. After working as a guest in Bonaldo’s squero for several years, Price began looking for his own premises. He eventually found a deserted yard and named it Squero Canaletto — after a painting of the building by the 18th-century artist.

Price’s basic 34ft vessel costs £17,000; a top-of-the-range model with cherrywood carving, brass sea horses, velvet curtains for privacy and gilding can easily fetch double that. To the horror of purists, he is also introducing “improvements” — such as making boats stronger by using two pieces of wood rather than three, and bronze rather than iron nails.

“The Venetian way is to build boats fast and strong, without worrying about the quality of the joinery,” Price said. “Then they cover it all up with paint and stucco to make it look nice. My approach is slower to concentrate on quality.”

(Re)building the Wright Flyer

Wilbur and Orville Wright beat long odds when their powered box kite pierced the skies 100 years ago and left gravity in the dust. . . The Wrights' design was good enough to get off the ground, but just barely. Modern engineers and pilots say it is inherently unstable at best, and downright dangerous in unpracticed hands.

The Federal Aviation Administration claims eight reproductions of the pioneering aircraft are under construction, with four others completed. However, those are just the ones that are complying with federal regulations. You can build any kind of airplane, but before it can fly, the FAA generally has to certify it is airworthy, and you must have a pilot's license. . .

Indeed, in the last year the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum has sold more than 3,000 sets of blueprints for the 1903 aircraft, at $50 apiece. Wright State University in Dayton also sells the plans. And neither is in any position to determine whether people want them for building aircraft or just for hanging on the wall.

Roman slave receipt found in London

The first evidence of Roman Britain's slave trade has been unearthed: a receipt for a young French girl bought for the equivalent price of a small sports car today.

Faint scratchings on a wooden writing tablet show that a wealthy slave working for the imperial household bought a girl named Fortunata (Lucky), a member of a Celtic tribe living on the borders of Normandy and Brittany. The silver-fir tablet had been preserved in wet London soil for 2,000 years. . .

The 5.5in by 4.5in tablet, found at a City building site, shows that Fortunata cost 600 dinarii, two years' salary for a Roman soldier. The deed, written around AD80, states that she was "warranted healthy and not liable to run away".