Okay, what happened to all those Neanderthals? They were around for at least 170,000 years and we came along and then within the space of a few years they disappeared? I often wonder about this. Did man decide that he was going to hunt down and kill all of them, did some mysterious disease come along that was only fatal to Neanderthals or did our friends, the extraterrestrials, remove all the Neanderthals when we came along? Maybe they did this to allow us to expand our horizons? Could it be that there is a planet out there somewhere where they were all deposited and are living a good Neanderthal life? Did anyone notice that we are now being told that Neanderthals could speak and that most scientists have been wrong all these years? They have even synthetically produced sounds on the model of the Neanderthal's larynx. I see where the Parthenon in Greece is really starting to disintegrate from all the pollution that we are dumping into the atmosphere. One can not help but wonder if solid stone is crumbling from the effects of pollution, what is it doing to our bodies? A suggestion has been made that the plaques in the Parthenon be removed and stored in a museum to protect them from the elements and that reproductions be put into their place.

Some people have more nerve than brains and clearly this was the case in Madrid, Spain recently. A ring of about twenty people were busily selling all sorts of archaeological objects that had been stolen from ancient sites. The objects ran the gambit of Stone Age to Ancient Roman. It seems what they would do is go to these sites and bring metal detectors and when they found something that set off the detection devices, they would just dig it up without regard to any laws governing the finding of such objects. The sites that they went to seemed to all be in Spain. The gang even posted their finds on the internet. I wouldn't exactly call this laying low. When the police found the people, they needed three vans to cart all the objects away. Just to give you an idea of what they found, there were over 12,000 coins, stone and metal axes and a wealth of Roman swords. I guess if one had no scruples, he could make a fantastic living stealing this stuff and selling it, but announcing to the world that you have this stuff is not the way to go. Lucky for the world of archaeology, that these people were not the brightest.

A breaking story has just reached the wires. It states that an archeological breakthrough was just made. So where did this happen? By a bizarre coincidence it happened in one of the most studied ancient monuments in the world, Stonehenge. They claim that they found a series of what they called sockets. These sockets held bluestones. They say that these were part of the original structure. It has been thought that ancient peoples believed that bluestones had some sort of healing power. The dig was conducted inside the henge and it is the first dig there since 1964. The team of archeologists said that the first week went extremely well, but it is a slow process. The next step is dating the sockets. To do this, organic material must be removed so that it can be dated. A cash of ancient stone hammers were found during the excavation. Stonehenge never ceases to amaze us. Just when you think that you know everything there is to know about it, something new pops up.

A significant archeological find has been made by Italian archeologists. They think that they have found the cave where ancient Romans honored Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. In case you don't remember, the story goes that Romulus and Remus were saved by a wolf. The cave itself is buried under the ruins of Emperor Augustus's palace on Palatine Hill. Pictures have been taken of the cave and they show a domed cavern that is decorated with well preserved mosaics, along with seashells. In the center is a white painted eagle, the symbol of the Roman empire. The reason why this cave is so important is that the legend of Rome talks about Lupercal, a cave where Romulus and Remus, who were the sons of Mars and abandoned, were discovered by a female wolf who suckled them, until they were found by a shepherd named Faustulus who raised them as his own. The two got into a battle and Romulus killed his twin brother, because of a power struggle. The cave was then used by the priests of Lupercus until 494 A.D. to celebrate the brothers and the founding of Rome. It is felt that this discovery is one of the most important or all Roman discoveries. Now the big problem is, how to excavate the cave since there is so much around it that could collapse?

Australia is considered one of the places that people have inhabited the longest. In line with that, tools have been found that have been dated to at least thirty five thousand years ago. Hundreds of tiny sharp stones were found that were used as knives. The Aborigines have consistently stated that Australia has been inhabited for over tens of thousands of years and now the proof that they are right has been found. I am sure that this really makes them feel good. One elder said, I'm over the moon, because it's now indisputable," It seems that ancient man was using a crevice in a hillside as a shelter and these things were found more than six feet under the floor. Other things were also found, such as seeds and bark. One thing that amazes me about Australia, it is the lack of technical advancement made by the native people there in all that time. When the place was discovered, the people there were not much further ahead than their ancient ancestors, in the way they lived.

We are finding out that older and older races inhabited the Americas. We know that they were prolific in working with gold. Now the oldest piece of worked gold in the Americas has been found. It is a gold necklace that dates back about four thousand years. It was found in a burial site near Lake Titicaca. It was thought that most of the people of that time were hunter gathers and finding this necklace was quite a surprise. Scientists thought that the only way elaborate things like this would be created was if they came from a more traditional society, one that lived in villages and such. Either they were wrong, or people were living a more sedentary life and maybe even in villages that far back and we just haven't discovered that fact yet. The archaeologists believe that this was the time when social values were just changing and people were just beginning to compete with each other for wealth and prestige. The necklace contained nine gold beads that had been hammered into cylinders and eleven circular beads made from a green stone.

Scientists are now saying that there was a place, that is now under the ocean, where humans took a twenty thousand year rest from their travels toward the Americas. The area was called Beringia and it is now under the waters of the Bering Strait. They go on to say that upwards of five thousand people may have colonized the New World. I would love to know how they can make this statement? One scientist claims that there were three different expansion events and that there were thousands of generations between them. So why did people stop moving for so long? This is easy to answer, they had to wait for the glaciers that blocked their way, to melt. Why did they move at all? It is thought that life was very hard where they were and that they were looking for a better life. This is probably true, after all, isn't that why most people leave where they are today?