3,000-year-old Olmec-style stone monument discovered in southern Mexican state of Chiapas

We may never know who the statue represents.

(PhysOrg.com) -- With one arm raised and a determined scowl, the figure looks ready to march right off his carved tablet and into the history books. If only we knew who he was - corn god? Tribal chief? Sacred priest?

"It's beautiful and was obviously very important," says University of Wisconsin-Madison archaeologist John Hodgson of the newly discovered stone monument. "But we will probably never know who he was or what the sculpture means in its entirety."

The man is the central figure on a stone monument discovered in 2009 at a site called Ojo de Agua in far southern Mexico in the state of Chiapas along the Pacific coast. Hodgson, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at UW-Madison, describes the new monument in the cover article of the current issue (December 2010) of Mexicon, a leading peer-reviewed journal of Mesoamerican studies. The article, titled "Ojo de Agua Monument 3: A New Olmec-Style Sculpture from Ojo de Agua, Chiapas, Mexico," is co-authored with John E. Clark, of Brigham Young University, and Emiliano Gallaga Murrieta, director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Chiapas.

Monument 3 is just the second carved monument found in Ojo de Agua. Monument 1 was discovered accidently when a local farmer hit it with a plow in the 1960s. Monument 3 was a similarly fortuitous finding, uncovered in the process of digging an irrigation ditch. (Monument 2 is a large boulder with a flat surface and no visible carving, which Hodgson found in 2005 and reported in the January/February 2006 issue of Archaeology magazine in an article on Ojo de Agua.)

Read more here.

Ancient Snakes Had Legs

New X-rays reveal the details.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A novel X-ray imaging technology is helping scientists better understand how in the course of evolution snakes have lost their legs. The researchers hope the new data will help resolve a heated debate about the origin of snakes: whether they evolved from a terrestrial lizard or from one that lived in the oceans. New, detailed 3-D images reveal that the internal architecture of an ancient snake's leg bones strongly resembles that of modern terrestrial lizard legs. The results are published in the 8 February issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

(YouTube)- New, detailed 3-D images reveal that the internal architecture of an ancient snake's leg bones strongly resembles that of modern terrestrial lizard legs. The results are published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Source: European Synchrotron Radiation Facility.

Oldest domesticated dog in North America remains found

9400 years old... He appears to have been eaten.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Maine graduate student has discovered evidence of the oldest identifiable domestic dog in the Americas.

Samuel Belknap III, a graduate research assistant working under the direction of Kristin Sobolik in UMaine’s Department of Anthropology and Climate Change Institute, found a 9,400-year-old skull fragment of a domestic dog during analysis of an intact human paleofecal sample.

The fact that the bone was found in human waste provides the earliest proof that humans in the New World used domesticated dogs as food sources.

Ancient Bible fragments give up their secrets

Ancient Bible fragments offer a rare glimpse of Byzantine Jewish life.

PHYSORG: New research has uncovered a forgotten chapter in the history of the Bible, offering a rare glimpse of Byzantine Jewish life and culture.

The study by Cambridge University researchers suggests that, contrary to long-accepted views, Jews continued to use a Greek version of the Bible in synagogues for centuries longer than previously thought. In some places, the practice continued almost until living memory.

The key to the new discovery lay in manuscripts, some of them mere fragments, discovered in an old synagogue in Egypt and brought to Cambridge at the end of the 19th century. The so-called Cairo Genizah manuscripts have been housed ever since in Cambridge University Library

Multicellular Life is Over Two Billion Years Old

(Credit: Copyright CNRS Photo Library / A. El Albani & A. Mazurier)

New fossils from Gabon move proof of multicellular life from 600 million to 2.1 billion years ago.

Complex, Multicellular Life from Over Two Billion Years Ago Discovered

New Computer Program Can Decipher Ancient Language

A computer program that could decipher ancient languages was thought impossible a few years ago.

Computer automatically deciphers ancient language

Read more here.

10,000 Years Old Hunting Weapon Found

(Credit: Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado)

10,000 years old hunting weapon found in melting ice at Yellowstone.

Hunting Weapon 10,000 Years Old Found in Melting Ice Patch

World's Oldest Leather Shoe Found in a Cave

The Shoe is 5500 years old and well preserved.

World's Oldest Leather Shoe Found in Armenia

Neanderthals In Britain 40,000 Years Earlier Than First Thought

(Credit: iStockphoto/Frank Ramspott)

The time-line for Neanderthals entering Britain is being revised.

Neanderthals Walked Into Frozen Britain 40,000 Years Earlier Than First Thought, Evidence Shows

Ancient Artifacts Revealed By Meltig Ice

New ancient artifacts have been revealed in the Canadian Arctic by melting ice.

Melting Ice Patches Reveal Ancient Artifacts

Hominid fossil Ardi came a million years before Lucy (video)

Hominid fossil Ardi came a million years before Lucy (video

Hominid fossil Ardi came a million years before Lucy

Absolutely Amazing "Persistence" Hunt!(video)

Absolutely Amazing "Persistence" Hunt!(video)

This is a "Persistence Hunt" of a Male Kudu, by tribesman of the San on the Kalahari Desert of Africa.

This.....this is hunting. An almost transcendental means of acquiring animal protein. The final act in and of itself is completely in tune with the Natural World and the ultimate in respect and honor both of and for it. This is how our distant ancestors survived.