The Beer Archaeologist

2nd C BC tomb, Thracian, from Bulgaria

Steven Pinker is currently working on a book about the decline of violence through human history. We like to think that we are living in a very violent time, that the future looks dark. But the data says that violence has declined every millennium, every century, every decade. The reduction in cruelty is just astounding. So we should not focus too much on the violence that has marked the twentieth century.

from an interview with Stewart Brand

The only part of the interview I thought was actually interesting, although there are some tantalizing possibilities that are not realized.

Discovery News with pictures are available. Interesting stuff.

Dielli.

The Telegraph has an interesting article about a Chinese village that appears to have descended from a lost legion.

Tests found that the DNA of some villagers in Liqian, on the fringes of the Gobi Desert in north-western China, was 56 per cent Caucasian in origin.

Many of the villagers have blue or green eyes, long noses and even fair hair, prompting speculation that they have European blood.
…
The genetic tests have leant weight to the theory that Roman legionaries settled in the area in the first century BC after fleeing a disastrous battle.

The clash took place in 53BC between an army led by Marcus Crassus, a Roman general, and a larger force of Parthians, from what is now Iran, bringing to an abrupt halt the Roman Empire’s eastwards expansion.

Blond haired, blue-eyed Chinese. That’s not a combination I would have thought of.

Chinese Noodle Dinner, 2500 years old

Noodles, cakes, porridge, and meat bones dating to around 2,500 years ago were recently unearthed at a Chinese cemetery, according to a paper that will appear in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Since the cakes were cooked in an oven-like hearth, the findings suggest that the Chinese may have been among the world’s first bakers. Prior research determined the ancient Egyptians were also baking bread at around the same time, but this latest discovery indicates that individuals in northern China were skillful bakers who likely learned baking and other more complex cooking techniques much earlier.

“With the use of fire and grindstones, large amounts of cereals were consumed and transformed into staple foods,” lead author Yiwen Gong and his team wrote in the paper.

for Dielli

The BBC has an article on the excavation of what was, in the 900s, the most magnificent city in the known world.

It has been 100 years since excavations started on the Madinat Al Zahra, the magnificent 10th century palace city near Cordoba in southern Spain.

Although only 11% of the city – built by the powerful caliph Abd Al Rahman III – has been uncovered, it is unlikely that it will take another century to unearth the remainder of the site given the rapid advances in excavation technology.

In a curious parallel, new techniques such a tele-imaging, that are being used in order to understand the 115-hectare site, reflect the revolutionary building techniques developed here a thousand years ago, and which came to define the distinct “Andalucian style”.