archaeology 
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SOURCE: KVUE
5/17/2022
Discovery of Earliest Known Record of Mayan Calendar
A fragment discovered at the Las Pinturas pyramid site in San Bartolo, Guatemala connects the ancient site to a calendar system used by indigenous Mayan people today.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/8/2022
The Paradox of Sourness
Of all the major taste categories, the relationship between human thriving and sensing sourness is the least understood.
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SOURCE: BBC
1/10/2022
Thank a Hungry Badger for Discovering a Vast Cache of Roman Coins
The badger could not be reached for comment.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/3/2022
Richard Leakey, Finder of Fossils Key to Story of Human Origins, Dies at 77
Leakey's discoveries were foundational both to the study of human origins and the model of scientific investigation.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
11/13/2021
Discovering the World's Oldest Figurative Paintings
The Sulawesi pig is estimated to be 10,000 years older than the Lascaux cave drawings and shows that figurative art didn't originate exclusively in Europe.
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SOURCE: Hyperallergic
11/14/2021
When a Bible Isn't a Bible
by Kathleen E. Kennedy
The British press has bungled its accounting of the discovery of a gold bead in the form of an open book. If it's not a Bible, what is it?
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SOURCE: TIME
11/3/2021
How Christian Archaeologists Fed Today's Strife in Jerusalem
by Andrew Lawler
The incursions of 19th century Christian archaeologists onto Jerusalem's historic acropolis created a sense of seige on the part of Palestinian Muslims, which is echoed today in ongoing conflict over the city's religious sites.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
10/18/2021
David Graeber and David Wengrow Have Given Human History a Rewrite
by William Deresiewicz
A new effort at a synthesis of the sweep of human history upends what recent popularizers have presented as a progressive path from hunter-gatherer society to corporate capitalism by emphasizing choice, contingency, and the possibility of doing things differently.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/18/2021
Diver Discovers 900-Year-Old Sword Dating to the Crusades
The sword is dated at 900 years old, and originated in the Third Crusade.
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10/10/2021
Tracing World War 2's Impact on Sicily's Cultural Heritage Sites and Museums
by Antonino Crisà
World War II profoundly affected museums and antiquities in Sicily; a new research project is examining this underappreciated destructive consequence of war.
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SOURCE: New York Times
9/23/2021
Discovery of Human Footprints Pushes Back Date of Earliest Humans in Americas
Discovery of preserved human footprints is another element of evidence to challenge the "Clovis" hypothesis that humans populated the Americas only at the end of the last ice age. The footprints are estimated at about 10,000 years older than Clovis tool artifacts.
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SOURCE: Daily Beast
9/12/2021
Why are Historians Facing Online Abuse Over Whether Atlantis Existed?
Archaeologists who debunked a popular television series interpreting Plato's references to Atlantis as fact instead of allegory soon discovered the affinity many eugenicists, neonazis and white supremacists have for the myth.
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SOURCE: NPR
9/14/2021
Osage Nation Denied Purchase of Cave With Ancient Drawings at Auction
Serving both as a sacred burial site and the location of 290 prehistoric glyphs, the cave holds cultural significance for the Osage Nation, which called the sale "heartbreaking."
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SOURCE: New York Daily News
8/31/2021
Don't Buy Egyptian Antiquities – Even Fakes
by Erin L. Thompson
Buying antiquities without due diligence into their provenance feeds a black market for looted archaeological objects.
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8/29/2021
New Discoveries Chip Away at Myths about Viking Shipbuilding
by Nancy Marie Brown
Recent archaeological work, and field-testing of replica boats, is overturning the common image of the Viking warship.
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SOURCE: Inverse
8/4/2021
Proto-Geometry Found in Babylonian Tablet, a Thousand Years Older than Pythagoras
"It’s generally thought that trigonometry — a subset of geometry and what’s displayed on the tablet in a crude sense — was developed by ancient Greeks like the philosopher Pythagoras. However, analysis of the tablet suggests it was created 1,000 years before Pythagoras was born."
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SOURCE: New York Times
8/3/2021
Iraq Reclaims 17,000 Looted Artifacts, Its Biggest-Ever Repatriation
"The institution that held about 12,000 of the items was the Museum of the Bible, a four-year-old Washington museum founded and funded by the Christian evangelical family that owns the Hobby Lobby craft store chain."
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7/18/2021
1920s "Tutmania" and its Enduring Echoes
by Gill Paul
A remarkable confluence of events and circumstances launched a cultural mania for ancient Egypt in Britain and the US with the 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
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SOURCE: History.com
7/12/2021
Why the Nile River Was So Important to Ancient Egypt
Read an overview of the centrality of the river to Egyptian civilization and the history of efforts to harness the life-sustaining and destructive capacity of the Nile.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
6/29/2021
A Scholarly Screw-Up of Biblical Proportions
by Ariel Sabar
The author of a book on the high-profile forgery of papyrus fragments indicating Jesus had a wife discusses how an article based on those fraudulent documents passed peer review.
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