It's not the End of the World

The King Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’ also known as Fire Claw or Jaguar Paw

on a visit to an ancient Maya city called Saknikte.

 Carved on stone on the great Maya capital of Calakmul on Jan. 29, 696 A.D

Photo credits: David Stuart

Is there any chance that the world will end on a nearby future?
Is it just another folk story or does any of the doomed forecasts have something correct underneath?

Is the ancient Maya's civilization doomed day correct, for December 21, 2012?

The apocalyptic revelations on the Mayan world were once again looked up after the discovery of a carved stone bearing a 56 hieroglyphs, refering to the year 2012 as the date where the world will end.
The Mayan apocalyptic prophecies are legendary so this last carved stones, that emerged from the jungle of Guatemala, is part of a main puzzle which gives archaeologists some clues about the day when the world will end. 

By what was found the discovery is consistente with Mayan Cycles and their hope in a regenarated future.

"This was a time of great political turmoil in the Maya region and this king felt compelled to allude to a larger cycle of time that happens to end in 2012," Stuart said.

"What this text shows us is that in times of crisis, the ancient Maya used their calendar to promote continuity and stability rather than predict apocalypse," Canuto said.  more here

Under cover Warriors - The Rainbow Coalition

It was a vast world under covered by some inches of earth, mud and the debris that accumulate with the past of the centuries. But some day, a terracotta head comes out of nothing and a vast army comes to life giving the world the biggest terracotta museum ever discovered.

It was in China, on the mid 70's, near the city of Xi'an.
The artifacts belonged to a vast man-made army meant to guard the tomb of Qin Shi Huang Di, the third-century-B.C. leader whose dynasty, Qin (pronounced CHIN), likely gave the country its modern name.
When the emperor was buried, more than 2,000 years ago, he took a legion of brave terracotta warriors with him, in order to assure that he'd rest in peace.

The magnificent statues were brightly painted and 2.000 years after it's amazing that so much of the color has survived on the figures.

Along with the warrior statues, archaeologists found terracotta horses, chariots, weaponry and drums as well as the clay army's first known shield—proof of the equipment real-life soldiers would have carried.

These terracotta troops represent Qin Shi Huang Di's main army, which he sent out from his home state to conquer his warring neighbors and create a unified empire.
By including the terracotta warriors in his cemetery, the emperor hoped to allow his spirit to "take up his proper position in the other world, which in many ways was seen as a perfect image of this one," said Stanford's Dien.

See National Geographic magazine pictures: "Terra-Cotta Warriors in Color."

Illustration by Pure Rendering GmbH, National Geographic  -  from here

A XVI-XVII Century Ship Found in Lisbon Down Town

Credits: © Boas Notícias

Portugal has always been a country with a vast history regarding navigation. For centuries, fearless navigators crossed stormy seas expanding the Portuguese influence in the four corners of the world. Therefore, it is not surprising that a group of archaeologists found in Cais do Sodre, (somewhere near downtown Lisbon and side beside the river Tagus), remains of a merchant ship and possibly some of the goods that were part of its usual load.
Based on the discovery, archaeologists believe that the boats came up the river beach passing at what is now the Square D. Louis, near the Mercado da Ribeira, to repair the large yard of wood that was found, six feet deep. After months of work, excavations revealed an old wooden structure with about 300m2, "architecturally composed of four levels of beams" that would be deployed on an ancient river beach and remained preserved until today in a state of submersion. Alexander Sarrazola, archaeological project coordinator, said,

"We were faced with what we have already concluded that it was a structure shipyard, ship repair, which would make repairs along the keel or parts of the vessel, while navigating structure, would be submerged"

The definition of the construction period has a range between the XVI and XVII centuries. Already the most recent layers of the structure refer to the eighteenth century.
Traces and evidence of exotic imports, coming from beyond borders, were found. Among them, remains of fauna, soles of shoes, ropes and pottery. Sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but also kaolin pipes "of Dutch production" and "Ottoman tradition" and a series of "elements of botany, for example, remnants of tropical fruits," lists the coordinator.

There are no record of other structures of its kind in Lisbon but, and this is undoubtedly the largest and best preserved of all, the only shipyard shipbuilding found until today.

Ancien Swedish Farmer Came from Mediterranean

Remains of a 5.000 woman were discovered in Sweden. From the DNA analysis a surprising discovery. The human bears an enormous genetic similarly with the people who lived on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea.

The discovery is important in order to understand the Neolithic population movements and the spread of agriculture habits across Europe.

“The farmer is most genetically similar to people living in Cyprus and Sardinia today,” says Pontus Skoglund, an evolutionary geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden and the lead author of the study, which is published today in Science.

Named "Gök4" the 5,000-year-old remains were found in Gökhem parish, southern Sweden. The discovery of her ancestry feeds into a long-running debate over the transition from foraging to farming in prehistoric Europe, a process that archaeologists refer to as Neolithization.  from here

Stonehenge Stones Were Moved from Wales

 Stonehenge

Some of the volcanic bluestones in the inner ring of Stonehenge officially match an outcrop in Wales that's 160 miles (257 kilometers) from the world-famous site, geologists announced this week. See Wales pictures.

The discovery leaves two big ideas standing about how the massive pieces of the monument arrived at Salisbury Plain: entirely by human hand, or partly by glacier.

As it looks today, 5,000-year-old Stonehenge has an outer ring of 20- to 30-ton sandstone blocks and an inner ring and horseshoe of 3- to 5-ton volcanic bluestone blocks. See Stonehenge pictures

The monument's larger outer blocks, called the Sarsen stones, were likely quarried some 20 to 30 miles (32 to 48 kilometers) away in what's now England, where sandstone is a common material. more here

Outcrop in Wales