Scottish gold rush

Panning for gold in the Highlands? It's actually nothing new. Read more here; the Scottish and British Gold Panning Championships are also coming up next weekend (lessons also available).

Thunder and lightning

Guess I should count myself lucky, but a passing thunderstorm this morning appears to have fried my main business PC's USB controller. How this happened is a bit of a mystery, as everything else in the network seems OK and there was no USB device connected to any external wires of any sort.

Time to go buy a USB PCI card, I guess.

PS Realized I had a spare USB adaptor card in one of the other household computers; swapped it in and all is OK (remembering to disable the fried onboard controller in the startup BIOS settings screen). Cheapie replacement USB card for the other computer is on its way, just under $11 including shipping from MonoPrice.com.

Warrior queen of Peru?

She was a woman who died some 1,600 years ago in the heyday of the Moche culture, well before the rise of the Incas. Her imposing tomb suggests someone of high status. Her desiccated remains are covered with red pigment and bear tattoos of patterns and mythological figures.

But the most striking aspect of the discovery, archaeologists said yesterday, is not the offerings of gold and semiprecious stones, or the elaborate wrapping of her body in fine textiles, but the other grave goods.

She was surrounded by weaving materials and needles, befitting a woman, and 2 ceremonial war clubs and 28 spear throwers — sticks that propel spears with far greater force — items never found before in the burial of a woman of the Moche

From today's NY Times. Apparently weapons have never before been found in Moche women's burials, leaving open the question of whether their presence in this burial is a sign of rulership or of a female warrior. Further forensics should answer this question decisively, as martial training develops the body in unmistakeable ways; it does seem odd, however, that any warrior would have owned so many atlatls.

Getty yields to the Greeks

The Greek government has persuaded the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles to return four priceless artefacts to Greece.

For a decade Greece has fought for the return of a rare gold funerary wreath, a tombstone, a stone torso and a votive relief that were allegedly illegally removed from the country.

But, after four hours of talks in Athens between the museum's director, Michael Brand, and the Greek culture minister, George Voulgarakis, a deal has been struck.

The board of trustees will still have to sign off on this, however. From the Telegraph.

Stradivarius record

A Stradivarius violin almost 300 years old has smashed the record for the amount paid for a musical instrument at auction, selling for $3.5m (£1.8m).

The instrument, made in 1707, broke the previous record of $2.03m (£1.07m) paid for a Stradivarius in 2003.

From the BBC, which also has a link to a video of the violin being played. A friend of mine went down to New York for the auction (I believe he was seeking slightly smaller game, however), but I haven't heard his report yet.

Christie's press releases (pre- and post-sale, in .pdf) are here and here.

Livestock gourmets

Given a choice of flavors, goats and sheep prefer truffle, according to a new study of the animals' food faves.

The study, published in this month’s Small Ruminant Research journal, found that while sheep and goats have similar tastes, sheep have a more discriminating palate. . .

In order of preference, sheep enjoy truffle, garlic, onion, apple, caramel, maple and orange flavors, according to the new research. Goats prefer truffle, onion, apple and garlic.

From Discovery News. You will be relieved to know that no real truffles were consumed (by the animals, at least) in the course of this study: only synthetic flavorings were used, added to ordinary food pellets.

Revolutionary War shipwrecks at Newport

A bit of interesting local news:

The remains of four ships sunk by the British during the American Revolution have been found in Newport Harbor, according to an announcement made yesterday by researchers from the University of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project.

The research team said the ships were part of a fleet of 13 British transport ships that brought troops and supplies into the American Colonies.

The British deliberately sank their own vessels in 1778 . . . to prevent a planned French bombardment and amphibious landing in Newport. . .

So far, nine 18th century shipwrecks have been found off the Rhode Island coast, according to Mather, who said the state is home to the largest fleet of Revolutionary War shipwrecks in the world.

From Discovery News.

AND this adds a fascinating twist:

One of four 18th-century ships found on the sea bed off Rhode Island could be the Endeavour, the vessel Captain Cook commanded on his first epic voyage across the Pacific Ocean, according to US archaeologists. . .

"Archaeology is a slow and meticulous process but maybe a few years down the line, we might find out [which ship] is the Endeavour," Rod Mather, a professor of maritime history and underwater archaeology at the University of Rhode Island, told the Guardian. "We have quite good construction details for her, so the best chance is finding a very close match."

Getty Museum update

At lunch today the Getty came up in conversation, and I realized that I had completely missed the reopening of the Malibu villa. Though I've been busy and have certainly missed some stories, there's more going on here, and it may be that the Getty is trying to keep a low profile -- and especially regarding anything having to do with antiquities.

There's an article in yesterday's NY Times that gives a bit of background, complete with interviews with the Getty's new director.

Poisonous mammals

The platypus has the distinction of being the only mammal with a venomous stinger (two, actually, on the insides of their hind legs). But what is the exception now, might once upon a time have been the rule, as this article discusses.

Libraries R Us

What will happen when all books have been digitized, and when every library can provide access to the holdings of every other library? And when that access can be had anywhere one has Internet access?

That future is closer than you think -- a whole lot closer, as the New York Times Sunday Magazine reports:

At most, one book in 20 has moved from analog to digital. So far, the universal library is a library without many books.

But that is changing very fast. Corporations and libraries around the world are now scanning about a million books per year. Amazon has digitized several hundred thousand contemporary books. In the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford University (one of the five libraries collaborating with Google) is scanning its eight-million-book collection using a state-of-the art robot from the Swiss company 4DigitalBooks. This machine, the size of a small S.U.V., automatically turns the pages of each book as it scans it, at the rate of 1,000 pages per hour. A human operator places a book in a flat carriage, and then pneumatic robot fingers flip the pages — delicately enough to handle rare volumes — under the scanning eyes of digital cameras.

Meanwhile, digitization is going full speed ahead in China:

Superstar, an entrepreneurial company based in Beijing, has . . . already digitized 1.3 million unique titles in Chinese, which it estimates is about half of all the books published in the Chinese language since 1949. It costs $30 to scan a book at Stanford but only $10 in China.

Yes, there are roadblocks -- discussed at length in the article -- but the trend is unstoppable.

Romany blood in Anglo-Saxon England

Experts from Norfolk Archaeology Unit based at Norwich Castle have discovered a rare form of mitochondrial DNA identified as Romani in a skeleton discovered during excavations in a large area of Norwich for the expansion of the castle mall.

The DNA was found in an 11th century young adult male skeleton, and with the first recorded arrival of the Romani gene in this country put at 500 years later, historians may need to re-think the ethnic mix of the city's early population.

From the 24 Hour Museum. As the article notes towards the end, the Romany were in Byzantium by the 10th century, so it is quite possible that the Norwich skeleton is not so much indicative of a Romany presence in 11th-century Norwich as suggestive of mixed marriages in Constantinople among the Varangians and other northern mercenaries.

Stonehenge in the Amazon

Yet more evidence that apparently pristine wilderness may prove to be anything but:

Brazilian archaeologists have found an ancient stone structure in a remote corner of the Amazon that may cast new light on the region's past.

The site, thought to be an observatory or place of worship, pre-dates European colonisation and is said to suggest a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy.

Its appearance is being compared to the English site of Stonehenge.