Egypt tombs suggest pyramids not built by slaves
(Reuters) New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday. Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts. "These tombs were built beside the king's pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves," Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement. "If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king's." He said the collection of workers' tombs, some of which were found in the 1990s, were among the most significant finds in the 20th and 21st centuries. They belonged to workers who built the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre. Hawass had earlier found graffiti on the walls from workers calling themselves "friends of Khufu" -- another sign that they were not slaves. The tombs, on the Giza plateau on the western edge of Cairo, are 4,510 years old and lie at the entrance of a one-km (half mile)-long necropolis. Hawass said evidence had been found showing that farmers in the Delta and Upper Egypt had sent 21 buffalo and 23 sheep to the plateau every day to feed the builders, believed to number around 10,000 -- or about a tenth of Greek historian Herodotus's estimate of 100,000. These farmers were exempted from paying taxes to the government of ancient Egypt -- evidence that he said underscored the fact they were participating in a national project. The first discovery of workers' tombs in 1990 came about accidentally when a horse stumbled on a brick structure 10 meters (yards) away from the burial area.
Indian tribes buy back thousands of acres of land
(Associated Press) Native American tribes tired of waiting for the U.S. government to honor centuries-old treaties are buying back land where their ancestors lived and putting it in federal trust. Native Americans say the purchases will help protect their culture and way of life by preserving burial grounds and areas where sacred rituals are held. They also provide land for farming, timber and other efforts to make the tribes self-sustaining. Tribes put more than 840,000 acres — or roughly the equivalent of the state of Rhode Island — into trust from 1998 to 2007, according to information The Associated Press obtained from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs under the Freedom of Information Act.
Those buying back land include the Winnebago, who have put more than 700 acres in eastern Nebraska in federal trust in the past five years, and the Pawnee, who have 1,600 acres of trust land in Oklahoma. Land held in federal trust is exempt from local and state laws and taxes, but subject to most federal laws.
Three tribes have bought land around Bear Butte in South Dakota's Black Hills to keep it from developers eager to cater to the bikers who roar into Sturgis every year for a raucous road rally. About 17 tribes from the Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and Oklahoma still use the mountain for religious ceremonies.
Emily White Hat, a member of South Dakota's Rosebud Sioux, said the struggle to protect the land is about "preservation of our culture, our way of life and our traditions. All of it is connected," White Hat said. "With your land, you have that relationship to the culture."
Other members of the Rosebud Sioux, such as president Rodney Bordeaux, believe the tribes shouldn't have to buy the land back because it was illegally taken. But they also recognize that without such purchases, the land won't be protected. No one knows how much land the federal government promised Native American tribes in treaties dating to the late 1700s, said Gary Garrison, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. The government changed the terms of the treaties over the centuries to make property available to settlers and give rights-of-way to railroads and telegraph companies.
President Barack Obama's administration has proposed spending $2 billion to buy back and consolidate tribal land broken up in previous generations. The program would pay individual members for land interests divided among their relatives and return the land to tribal control. But it would not buy land from people outside the tribes. Today, 562 federally recognized tribes have more than 55 million acres held in trust, according to the bureau. Several states and local governments are fighting efforts to add to that number, saying the federal government doesn't have the authority to take land — and tax revenue — from states.
In New York, for example, the state and two counties filed a federal lawsuit in 2008 to block the U.S. Department of Interior from putting about 13,000 acres into trust for the Oneida Tribe. In September, a judge threw out their claims.
Putting land in trust creates a burden for local governments because they must still provide services such as sewer and water even though they can't collect taxes on the property, said Elaine Willman, a member of the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance and administrator for Hobart, a suburb of Green Bay, Wis. Hobart relies mostly on property taxes to pay for police, water and other services, but the village of about 5,900 lost about a third of its land to a trust set up for the state's Oneida Tribe, Willman said.
So far, Hobart has been able to control spending and avoid cuts in services or raising taxes, Willman said. Village leaders hope taxes on a planned 603-acre commercial development will eventually help make up for the lost money.
The nonprofit White Earth Land Recovery Project has bought back or been gifted hundreds of acres in northwestern Minnesota since it was created in the late 1980s. The White Earth tribe uses the land to harvest rice, farm and produce maple syrup. Members have hope of one day being self-sustaining again.
Winona LaDuke, who started the White Earth project, said buying property is expensive, but it's the quickest and easiest way for tribes to regain control of their land.
Tribal membership has been growing thanks to higher birth rates, longer life spans and more relaxed qualifications for membership, and that has created a greater need for land for housing, community services and economic development.
"If the tribes were to pursue return of the land in the courts it would be years before any action could result in more tribal land ... and the people simply cannot wait," said Cris Stainbrook, of the Little Canada, Minn.-based Indian Land Tenure Foundation. Thirty to 40 tribes are making enough money from casinos to buy back land, but they also have to put money into social programs, education and health care for their members, said Robert J. Miller, a professor at the Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., who specializes in tribal issues. "Tribes just have so many things on their plate," he said.
Some tribes, such as the Pawnee, have benefited from gifts of land. Gaylord and Judy Mickelsen donated a storefront in Dannebrog, Neb., that had been in Judy Mickelsen's family for a century. The couple was retiring to Mesquite, Nev., in 2007, and Judy Mickelsen wanted to see the building preserved even though the town had seen better days. The tribe has since set up a shop selling members' artwork in the building on Main Street. "We were hoping the Pawnee could get a toehold here and get a new venture for the village of Dannebrog," Gaylord Mickelsen said.
Egypt archaeologists discover huge tomb near Cairo
(BBC) Archaeologists in Egypt have said they have discovered the largest known tomb in the ancient necropolis of Sakkara, to the south of Cairo. The tomb dates back 2,500 years to the 26th Dynasty and contains important artefacts, including mummified eagles. It is one of two newly discovered tombs found by an Egyptian team working close to the entrance of Sakkara, the burial ground for Egypt's ancient capital. The tomb consists of a big hall hewn out of the limestone rock. There are a number of small rooms and passageways where ancient coffins, skeletons and well-preserved clay pots were discovered, as well as the mummies of eagles. Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, who announced the discovery, said that early investigations showed that although the tomb dated back to the 26th Dynasty, it had been used several times. He said it was most likely to have been robbed at the end of the Roman period. Other excavations at Sakkara are continuing and Dr Hawass said the latest finds confirm that the site still contains undiscovered secrets.
Google Earth Reveals Sixth Sense of Cattle, Deer
(WIRED) Though my farm-raised father insists differently, there’s something a bit spooky about cows standing in a field. They’re just a bit too placid; I’ve always suspected that those limpid eyes hide strange secrets. And what do you know — I was right! German and Czech biologists have shown that cattle, along with deer, instinctively stand in a north-south direction. They appear to possess a sixth sense of magnetism. After studying Google Earth satellite images of cattle herds, along with their own observations of roe deer, the researchers realized that the animals routinely stood along a north-south axis. "The magnetic field is the only common and most likely factor responsible for the observed alignment," write the researchers in a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Our analysis … clearly provides the crucial proof in favor of the Earth’s magnetic field being the responsive cue." They think the ability evolved to help guide the animals’ ancestors during migrations (which could explain why the results are stronger in deer than cattle, which having been domesticated and restrained no longer migrate.) What’s the physiological mechanism? That’s not yet known. "Our findings … challenge neuroscientists and biophysics to explain the proximate mechanisms," the researchers write. You hear that, neuroscientists and biophysics? You got served!
Brain implant turns thought into sound
(Times of India) In what could be a revolution in communication for paralysed people, a man with locked-in syndrome has “spoken” three different vowel sounds using a voice synthesiser controlled by an implant deep in his brain. Scientists say such systems could be a scientific breakthrough in communication if they could add more sounds to the repertoire of brain signals the implant can translate. “We’re very optimistic that the next patient will be able to say words,” Frank Guenther, a neuroscientist at Boston University who led the study, said. Eric Ramsey, 26, has locked-in syndrome, in which people are unable to move a muscle but are fully conscious. Guenther said that while a brain implant with invasive surgery could be drastic, but lifting signals directly from neurons may be the only way that locked-in people like Ramsey, or those with advanced forms of ALS, a neurodegenerative disease, will ever be able to communicate quickly and naturally. Devices that use brain signals captured by scalp electrodes are slow, allowing typing on a keyboard at a rate of one to two words per minute. “Our approach has the potential for providing something along the lines of conventional speech as opposed to very slow typing,” said Guenther. The study’s breakthrough was to translate chaotic firing patterns of neurons into the acoustic “building blocks” that distinguish different vowel sounds. Ramsey, who suffered a brain-stem stroke when he was 16, has an electrode implanted into a brain area that plans the movements of the vocal cords and tongue that underlie speech. Over the past two decades, the team has developed models that predict how neurons in this region fire during speech. They used these predictions to translate the firing patterns of several dozen brain cells in Ramsey’s brain into the acoustical building blocks of speech. “It’s a very subtle code; you’re looking over many neurons. You don’t have one neuron that represents ‘aaa’ and another that represents ‘eee’. It’s way messier than that,” said Guenther.
Archaeologists find ancient geoglyphs carved in the Amazon Jungle
As deforestation clears away more and more of the Amazon Jungle, archaeologists are discovering some surprising things hidden beneath the thick green canopy. Researchers have found a number of ancient geometric shapes, known as geoglyphs, that are believed to have been carved into the earth more than 700 years ago by indigenous tribes living in the region. According to this story from Treehugger.com, researchers are using Google Earth to examine recently cleared sections of the Amazon Rainforest. So far, they've been able to identify more than 300 geoglyphs, most of which had previously gone unseen due to being covered by the jungle and in some cases, the enormous size of the carvings. As of yet, scientists are unsure as to the purpose of the geoglyphs, as they are often completely undetectable from the ground and seem to serve little practical purpose. To give you a sense of the scale of these geoglyphs, Archaeologists say that they are often as much as 12 meters wide and 4 deep, and can spread out over hundreds of meters in length. They were apparently constructed while the jungle was at the height of its growth, which makes their existence all the more puzzling and astounding. While the researchers discovering these carvings continue to be amazed by what they find, it comes with a bit of sadness as well. These ancient constructs would remain hidden if it wasn't for the massive deforestation that continues in the Amazon, a process that could have an irrevocable impact on the Earth's environment.
'Earth's magnetic pole racing towards Russia'
(Times of India) A new research has determined that Earth's north magnetic pole is racing toward Russia at almost 40 miles a year due to magnetic changes in the planet’s core. The core is too deep for scientists to directly detect its magnetic field. But experts can infer the field's movements by tracking chnages in Earth's magnetic field. Now, according to a report in National Geographic News, newly analyzed data suggest that there's a region of rapidly changing magnetism on the core's surface, possibly being created by a mysterious "plume" of magnetism arising from deeper in the core. "It's this region that could be pulling the magnetic pole away from its long-time location in northern Canada," said Arnaud Chulliat, a geophysicist at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France. Right now, magnetic north is close to Canada's Ellesmere Island. Navigators have used magnetic north for centuries to orient themselves when far from recognizable landmarks. Although global positioning systems have largely replaced such traditional techniques, many people still find compasses useful for getting around underwater and underground where GPS satellites can't communicate. A rapidly shifting magnetic pole means that magnetic-field maps need to be updated more often to allow compass users to make the crucial adjustment from magnetic north to true North. Geologists think Earth has a magnetic field because the core is made up of a solid iron center surrounded by rapidly spinning liquid rock. This creates a "dynamo" that drives our magnetic field. Scientists had long suspected that, since the molten core is constantly moving, changes in its magnetism might be affecting the surface location of magnetic north.
