HoodedHawk

Last Saturday I attended a very interesting all-day seminar in Washington, DC. The Pre-Columbian Society of Washington DC has an annual symposium at the U.S. Navy Memorial’s Naval Heritage Center. At right is the design on the symposium T-shirt. It is a feline character (I’m going to assume a jaguar) from an adobe mural at Huaca Partida, Nepeña Valley, Peru (something like > 1500 years ago). Neat.

This location is very convenient; right at the Archives Metro stop on the Green line. This year’s topic was “The Dawn of the Andean Civilization. The link above goes to the symposium website; here is a synopsis:

Chavín de Huántar, the massive ceremonial center constructed more than 3,000 years ago high in the Peruvian Andes, attests to the great antiquity of Andean civilization, but the roots of this florescence occurred at least two and possibly three millennia earlier. During this one-day symposium some of the world’s most renowned Andean scholars will present new research that challenges current notions about the genesis of Andean society. Did a singular, linear progression emanating from one early center lead to the magnificence of Chavín de Huántar and, later, the splendor of the Moche kings and the majesty of Tiwanaku? Or did the many pinnacles of achievement that make up the rich tapestry of ancient Andean culture emanate from multiple centers? Did different traditions emerge along the coast and in the highlands? In the north and in the south? Did these developments occur everywhere at the same time? This symposium will examine these and other questions, revealing a dynamic period that witnessed the first large-scale monumental architecture, large permanent settlements, intensive food production, social stratification, and widespread distribution of shared art forms and religious practices. So please join us for a day of new insights into the dawn of Andean civilization.

I really enjoyed the seminar; I have visited Peru (on my honeymoon) but that was basically to see Machu Picchu (Incan, ca. 1500 AD). This seminar focused on the northern coast of Peru (north of Machu Picchu), from about 1200 BC to 600 AD – much earlier. Prior to this series of talks, I had almost no knowledge of the Pre- Moche civilizations of the Andes so this was a very enlightening day.

Plenty of breaks, and for lunch I visited Teaism (right across the street) for a delicious “chicken curry” dish and an IPA. Then back for more talks. I’ll post a synopsis of the talks from my notes at a later time…

PROGRAM
8:15 a.m. — REGISTRATION, Morning Refreshments
9:00 a.m. — WELCOME AND OPENING ANNOUNCEMENTS
9:15 a.m. — Playing in the Dark: Archaeological Analysis and Evidence at the Dawn of Andean Civilization *Tom Dillehay
10:15 a.m. — BREAK
10:45 a.m. — Household Archaeology and the Emergence of Social Complexity at Peru’s North Central Coast: New Perspectives from the Late Preceramic Site of Bandurria, Huacho Alejandro Chu
11:35 a.m. — The Role of the Casma Valley in the Development of Early Andean Civilization Tom and Shelia Pozorski
12:25 p.m. — LUNCH
1:45 p.m. — The Settling of the Landscape: What This Meant to Formative People in the Titicaca Basin, Bolivia Christine Hastorf
2:35 p.m. — Changing Views on the Andean Formative Period: The Perspective from Chavín de Huántar John Rick
3:25 p.m. — BREAK
3:50 p.m. — The Dawn of Andean Civilization as Viewed from the Shores of Peru’s Central Coast Richard Burger and Lucy Salazar
4:40 p.m. — BOOK DRAWING BREAK
4:50 p.m. — Panel Discussion All Speakers (Moderated by Dr. Dillehay)

2012 Science and Prophecy of the Ancient Maya (showing glyph date on left)

Last Saturday I went to an all-day symposium, “Under Cover of Darkness: The Meaning of Night in Ancient Mesoamerica” sponsored by the Pre-Columbian Society of Washington, D.C. While there, Professor Mark Van Stone was signing copies of his book, “2012: Science & Prophecy of the Ancient Maya. What was really neat is that he signed my copy by writing the current date in Maya glyphs. Really neat!

maya date glyphs

Preston, Dylan and I went to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History yesterday. Preston just loved the Insect Zoo. No way was Dylan going to hold a bug, but it was hard to keep Preston away. He also held a big beetle, but I couldn’t get a picture as I had to help keep Preston from squishing it.

Click any picture below for larger slideshow…

Preston holds a Giant Caterpillar at the Insect Zoo, Natural History Museum

Preston at the Insect Zoo, Natural History Museum

The new Ocean Hall is quite good. Even Dylan was impressed by the giant jellyfish (seen in foreground). Full-size right whale hangs from the ceiling, and videos of ocean scenes line the walls. Lots of informative exhibits about the ocean.

Ocean Hall, Natural History Museum

Mural and Skeleton, Natural History Museum

T-Rex, Natural History Museum

A 3-D image of Cleopatra has been rendered by computer imaging based on images from ancient artifacts.

Egyptologist Sally Ann Ashton of Cambridge University says the image(s) reflect the Queen’s Greek heritage. Cleopatra was born in 69BC into an Egyptian – Greek dynasty. She took the throne at 17 and by 20 had seduced Julius Ceasar…

Researchers at PennState have published the DNA sequence of an extinct Woolly Mammoth; see the news article at Nature.com, or the November 20, 2008 issue of Nature for a paper by Miller, et al. (Nature 456, 387-390: “Sequencing the nuclear genome of the extinct woolly mammoth“).

Mammoths went extinct some 10,000 years ago, but have been found preserved in Russian permafrost. The hair from one of these preserved (mummified) ancient beasts was used to retrieve DNA. Hair is useful for such extractions as it is relatively easy to wash away contaminating (foreign) DNA.

One tidbit that I found quite interesting: where did the researchers get the Mammoth hair? They bought the hair on Ebay.com! You can too, for only $175.00 for 2.5 grams. Yes, the researchers did verify that this was actual mammoth hair. Anyway, the big question is whether or not we will shortly have a Mammoth clone. Short answer: not any time soon. This is just the first step, but is a major one.

Our ancestors did see live woolly mammoths; here’s a cave painting in France depicting one:

Thursday evening Dylan and I went to see Prof. Bob Brier give a talk on the Secret of Egypt’s Great Pyramid. He presented evidence that supports French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin’s theory that an *interior* ramp was built and used to raise the huge blocks to the top of the 480-ft. high Great Pyramid of Giza. A few *million* such blocks (averaging about 2.5 tons each) were used to construct the pyramid. Fascinating talk/slide show.

After the talk Prof. Brier was signing copies of his book, The Secret of the Great Pyramid. He inscribed my copy with the neatest inscription I have yet to get from an author. He wrote an Egyptian prayer – in hieroglyphs. It reads, “May you be given life, stability, and prosperity like Ra, forever.“. Beat that!

A 5200 year-old goblet (see image below) from the Burnt City in Iran has a series of images depicting a wild goat jumping up to get leaves from a tree. The animation shown is from an 11-minute documentary about the goblet (which was actually found ~1970). Basically, if you take each image in succession (like a flip-book), you get the animation. Neat.

Note that the post-revolutionary Iranian archaeologists kinda got things wrong; they attribute the tree on the goblet to the “Assyrian Tree of Life”. But the goblet is from 1000 years before any mention of the Assyrian civilization in historical records. Ooops.

This giant frog lived 70 million years ago in Madagascar, and was the size of a beachball. From what scientists can tell, it ate whatever could fit in it’s (huge) mouth. The thing looks like it could eat a Yorkie. The little frog in front of it in the picture is the largest frog living in Madagascar today…

Last week I went to a lecture on the Stonehenge Riverside Project, by Professor Michael Parker Pearson. Prof. Pearson spoke for almost 2 hours; he is a very engaging speaker. I videotaped the lecture (got a nice front-row seat); the shot at left is a still from the lecture.

This was part of National Geographic’s “Live” series of lectures on the past [I also attended the Maya lecture]. Nice venue, and they open the employee parking lot (right under the lecture hall) for the public on these evenings. Very convenient as parking in DC is nasty.

The true purpose of Stonehenge is not known, but they are trying to answer that question in the context of the wider surrounding area – which hold other monuments such as Woodhenge and Durrington Walls. The talk focused mostly on Durrington Walls, where the floors of neolithic dwellings are being excavated. It is thought that these may well have been the houses of the workers who actually built stonehenge.

A recent paper in Science used genetic analysis of ancient Neandertal DNA to show that at least some individuals had red hair and fair skin (similar to their modern European counterparts). The researchers were able to extract a pigmentation gene, mc1r, from the bones of two Neandertals (one from Spain, the other Italy).

The picture at right is a reconstruction of what a Neandertal who possessed these particular genes would have looked like.

The same researchers also recently isolated the FOXP2 gene from Neandertals, and showed that it was identical to modern humans. The FOXP2 gene is one of the genes known to play a major role in speech and language. Since the Neandertals had an identical version of this gene, they may well have had the capacity for speech.