Two thousand years ago, a young man was buried in the royal mausoleum next to a huge and brightly festooned Moche pyramid, now known as the Huaca Rajada, at the site of Sipán. Studies have been conducted on this latest discovery that have determined his age at moment of death to be just 21, making him the youngest Moche noble yet found.

This is the important conclusion of scientific analysis conducted by physical anthropologist Luis Millones, who in the past weeks has studied the tomb of the mysterious youngster, determining his age and nobility, astonishing considering his contemporaries died in their 40s.

Luis Millones and team had recognized about the tomb at the Sipán site, location of one of world’s archaeology’s most inspiring discoveries in the form of the Lord of Sipán, since 2005.
Millones has taken bone samples from the skeleton’s right foot, which have been sent to a lab in the US in order to determine both the exact age and the degree to which the young Moche was associated to those in other tombs at the famous site.

The remains of the young noble have been unearthed and removed from the tomb to determine locally whether the bones show any signs of violence, or any other kind of evidence to explain the cause of death.

Head of the Sipan site, Luis Chero Zurita, told reporters today that from the studies carried out so far, the team is ready to publicize who they think the character was.

Based on the things found in the tomb – two ceramic containers, two another owl-shaped ceramic items and a gold mask also of an owl – the team is lead to the conclusion that he served spiritual functions.
Speaking with a reporter from Peru’s El Comercio newspaper, he explained:

“Similar objects were found in tomb 14 of the warrior-priest, in which many details featuring owls are seen. There are other objects, like the tip of a metal club or spear, which also reveals that it served military functions”.

Archaeologists digging up a car park in Staffordshire have unearthed 17th-century witch bottle used to fight evil spirits close to a former pub in England.

Experts say that previously the so-called cursed people often filled such bottles with bent toenails and fingernails, urine, and hair to keep evil spirits away.However, the x-ray of the newly found beer bottle, initially made in Germany, revealed that it does not contain any such bodily parts.

“It’s not a daily find. Most of what we find is broken bits of pots and people’s rubbish,” National Geographic News quoted excavation manager Andrew Norton of Oxford Archaeology, a U.K. archaeological-services company, as saying.

The salt-glazed stone bottle is imprinted with the face of a frowning man.The archaeologists consider it to be an image of anti-Protestant Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine who lived from 1542 to 1621.The myths dictate that Protestants damaged the jugs to defile the Catholic leader.Norton added that another reading suggests it is “green man,” a legendary evil spirit living in the forests.

He also described a crowned lion imprinted on the base of the bottle, which is assumed to be the bottle maker’s trademark.The witch bottles of the seventeenth century can be compared to “a modern equivalent of hanging a horseshoe on your door,” according to Norton.

The latest discovery of pre-historic tools and remains of hominids in Malawi’s isolated northern district of Karonga gives further proof that the area could be the cradle of humankind, a chief German researcher said.Professor Friedemann Schrenk of the Goethe University in Frankfurt informed Reuters that two students working on the excavation site last month had discovered prehistoric tools and a tooth of a hominid.

“This latest discovery of prehistoric tools and remains of hominids gives an additional proof to the hypothesis that the Great Rift Valley of Africa and perhaps the excavation site near Karonga can be considered the cradle of humankind,” Schrenk said.
A hominid is a member of a family of primates which consist of humans and their prehistoric ancestors.The finding was at Malema excavation site, 10 km (6 miles) from Karonga.
The site also holds some of the earliest dinosaurs which lived between 100 million and 140 million years ago and early hominids were supposed to have lived between a million and 6 million years ago.

Many primitive Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 meters record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions.

Some Tutsi men in Rwanda surpassed the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters throughout initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump at least their own height for the development of manhood.

Ex-bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle would have been beaten by any Neanderthal woman.

These and many other eye-catching claims are fully listed in a book by Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister entitled “Manthropology” and provocatively sub-titled “The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male.”
McAllister sets out his stall in the opening sentence of the prologue.

“If you’re reading this then you — or the male you have bought it for — are the worst man in history.
“No ifs, no buts — the worst man, period…As a class we are in fact the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet.”

Investigating into a wide range of source material McAllister found facts that made him believe that modern man is inferior to his predecessors in, among other fields, the basic Olympic athletics disciplines of running and jumping.
His conclusions about the rapidity of Australian aboriginals 20,000 years ago are based on a set of footprints, conserved in a fossilized claypan lake bed, of six men running after prey.

FLEET-FOOTED ABORIGINALS

An examination of the footsteps of one of the men, named T8, shows he arrived at speeds of 37 kph on a soft, muddy lake edge. Bolt, by contrast, reached a top speed of 42 kph during his world 100 meters record of 9.69 seconds at last year’s Beijing Olympics.

In an interview in the English university town of Cambridge where he was temporarily resident, McAllister said that, with present training, spiked shoes and rubberized tracks, aboriginal hunters might have arrived at speeds of 45 kph.
“We can assume they are running close to their maximum if they are chasing an animal,” he said.
“But if they can do that speed of 37 kph on very soft ground I suspect there is a strong chance they would have outdone Usain Bolt if they had all the advantages that he does.”

Archaeologists have revealed fragments of a 2,000-year- old bronze Roman equestrian statue of Emperor Augustus in a stream near Giessen, the Hessian state science ministry has announced.

“There has never been a find of such quality and preservation in Germany,” a statement from the ministry said, adding up that it was a “sensational” discovery.

On August 12, archaeologists found the gold-gilded, life-sized head of a horse and a shoe of the emperor – who ruled the Roman Empire between 23 BC and 14 AD – from a stream in what was once the Roman outpost Germania Magna. Experts there have unearthed several bits – including a horse hoof and a decorated chest strap – from the statue among some 20,000 artefacts uncovered at the site in recent years.

Scientists from the University of Jena think it may have been destroyed by Roman soldiers retreating after the legendary Varusschlacht, or the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, when Germanic tribes trapped and wiped out three Roman legions. As the remaining Roman troops retreated after the sudden defeat, they destroyed most of what they could not take with them.

The horse’s bridle is inflated with images of the Roman god of war Mars and the goddess Victoria, who personified victory.

Restoration and examination of more than 100 statue fragments is in progress in Hessen’s state archaeology workshop.