#aitpus

#aitpus

"The trade of frankincense is something that's well over 6,000 years old," says Anjanette DeCarlo, an adjunct professor at the University of Vermont. "Traded on the Silk Route into China and also, of course, brought into Europe, so widely used across the ancient world, right up till today."

Video mapping technology and 4K laser projection brings the altar's original vivid polychrome back to life, accompanied by narration, music and sound effects.

"It doesn't matter what [story] you want to tell-maps help bring it to life, they help you connect to spaces. And it has to be interactive. You have to be able to read, to click."

The discovery of a few pages from an original edition of Hugo's work would then be a momentous event. This is precisely what specialists in Empedocles are experiencing today.

The corrective fluid analysed using light infrared photography revealed a mixture of huntite and calcite, while images made using a 3D digital microscope show that there also are flecks of yellow orpiment, probably to make it blend in better with the fresh papyrus, which would have originally been pale cream in colour.

Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered a 1,400-year-old tomb in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca that had been lost to history. The stone structure, built by the Zapotec culture, known as Be'ena'a, or 'The Cloud People', is adorned with sculptures, murals and carved symbols that suggest ritual significance. The Zapotec believed their ancestors descended from the clouds and that, in death, their souls returned to the heavens as spirits.

An ancient Egyptian papyrus held by the British Museum has been cited as possible evidence supporting some of the Bible's most controversial claims about giants. The 3,300-year-old document, known as Anastasi I, has been in the museum's collection since 1839 and has recently resurfaced on the Associates for Biblical Research, renewing interest in its possible links to biblical accounts. The papyrus describes encounters with the Shosu people, said to stand 'four cubits or five cubits' tall, up to eight feet in height.

Berat is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its unique historic downtown characterized by 18th and 19th century Ottoman structures and urban design, but human presence in the area goes back to the 4th/3rd millennium B.C. and there is evidence of an urban settlement in Berat defined by defensive walls dating to the 7th-6th century B.C.

The excavation ultimately unearthed 34 burials, 15 of them belonging to children between two and ten years old when they died. The graves are clustered in groups, probably reflecting family nuclei. Most the grave types are earthen pits covered with roof tiles angled against each other.

Seven were the strings of the lyre (unless there happened to be eight or nine), seven were the gates of Thebes, and seven were the "wandering stars" in the night sky (if you count the sun and moon). The identity of the wonders was less important than the length of their list, and indeed, additions and changes were proposed since the beginning.

His investigation began after identifying recurring giant T-shapes, three-level indents, and step pyramids carved into ancient stones worldwide. 'These specific symbols that are built in different size proportions, and the symbols are found in ancient stones around the world, are not supposed to exist; no cultures are supposed to have any cross-platform,' LaCroix explained. The symbols appear in locations ranging from Turkey's Van region to South America and Cambodia.

While the bone was worn and poorly preserved, archaeologists managed to identify its origin by comparing it with modern elephant and mammoth bones. Despite there not being enough DNA to confirm the exact species, the researchers were able to carbon date a tiny sample of the bone. This places the elephant's death between the late fourth and early third centuries BC - right in the middle of the Second Punic War.

The team identified multiple buildings aligned roughly west-east, in several sizes, ranging from about 8 × 7 metres to 14 × 8 metres. Within these structures are rectangular halls-some interpreted as spaces for worship-alongside smaller rooms that may have served devotional or practical functions for the monks. Excavators also noted evidence of plastered wall surfaces and tiled floors, as well as architectural features such as entrances and surviving supports, including beams.

Adjacent to the masonry house is a burial ground in use from the 4th century through the first half of the 6th century. Approximately 60 individual inhumation burials have been unearthed, arranged in rows that are increasingly dense with graves as they approach the dwelling. The deceased were buried in cysts formed by reused tegulae (large clay roof tiles) or by rubble walls that supported wooden planks. They were placed in the graves in supine position facing west, north or south.

A conversation with Alicia Walker on the pseudo-Arabic inscriptions (or pseudo-kufic) that appear on a number of tenth- and eleventh-century churches in Greece, most notably at the monastery of Hosios Loukas. What did the Arabic script signify in Orthodox culture at the time if not tension with Islam? Alicia Walker is Professor of History of Art at Bryn Mawr College.