Valley in Jordan inhabited and irrigated for 13,000 years

You can make major discoveries by walking across a field and picking up every loose item you find. Dutch researcher Eva Kaptijn succeeded in discovering - based on 100,000 finds - that the Zerqa Valley in Jordan had been successively inhabited and irrigated for more than 13,000 years. But it was not just communities that built irrigation systems: the irrigation systems also built communities.

http://www.physorg.com/news177784568.html

BOSNIAN PYRAMID PROJECT: FOUR MESSAGES FOR MALAYSIA

The Founder of the "Archaeological Park: Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun" Foundation dr. sci. Sam Semir Osmanagich visited Malaysia in a period November 7th - November 15th, 2009. During his stay in the state of Sarawak dr. Osmanagich participated in Malaysian Global Business Forum dedicated to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Participants from the Bosnian side were the President of the Country dr. Haris Siljadzic, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sven Alkalaj, Minister of Defense dr. Selmo Cikotic, Rector of University of Sarajevo dr. Faruk Caklovica and several dozens of Bosnian business leaders.

Final day of the Forum both delegations met at the closed-door session. Malaysian delegation was lead by dr. Mahathir Mohamad, ex-prime minister of Malaysia and most distinguished statesman in Asia. Dr. Osmanagich had a speech in front of both delegations and said:

"It's been three and half year since I hosted the visit of H.E. dr. Mahathir. In the meantime, we've spent 200.000 hours in archaeological digging, lab sample analysis, radiocarbon dating, we had First International Scientific Conference about the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids and published a Conference Proceedings with 50 scientific articles about the Bosnian pyramids phenomenon. Those activities are getting us closer to five profound conclusions:

First European pyramids have been discovered in tiny Bosnia
These pyramids are the biggest on the Planet
Bosnian pyramids are most probably the oldest in the world
The most ancient cemented concrete blocks have been discovered in pyramid walls
There exist the most extensive tunnel network under the pyramids
These conclusions require us to re-write our understanding of ancient European and world history. Time has come for positive news from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

I have four messages for students, businessmen and media from Malaysia:

I invite Malaysian and regional philanthropists to support and donate to the investigation of the Bosnian Pyramids project;
I'd like to see Malaysian businessmen invest in touristic infrastructure in the middle Bosnia
I wish Malaysian tour-operators and travel agencies start bringing more Malaysian tourists to Bosnia
I invite students from Malaysia and those who feel young in their hearts to join us in International Summer Camp for Volunteers next summer in Visoko."
Dr. Osmanagich presented dr. Mahathir the ICBP Proceedings during the closed door session.

Two Universities from Malaysia hosted the lectures of Dr. Osmanagich about the "Pyramids in the world and Bosnia". Swinburne University, Sarawak campus, with over 350 students and professors were amazed with the fact that pyramids were built all over the world and, at the same time, that the biggest pyramidal structures are located in Bosnia.

Leading Malaysian University in design Lim Kok Wing University of Creative Technology in Kuala Lumpur had a magnificent reception for the discoverer of the Bosnian pyramids. Over 300 students and professors were at his lecture. President and Founder of the University of 44,000 students spread out in three continents dr. Lim Kok Wing shared the idea for the city of the future that he's been designing for the Malaysian government. The city is to consist of the glass pyramids. Dr. Wing offered dr. Osmanagich position of scientific advisor at Faculty of Architecture.

New insights into the life of the Maya

Ancient artifacts are almost always concerned with rich and powerful religious and political leaders, but new excavations of an ancient Maya site have unearthed a pyramid decorated with murals depicting the marketing and trading of goods by ordinary people around 1,350 years ago.

http://www.physorg.com/news177582245.html

Forest clearances sealed ancient civilisation's downfall

Archaeologists examining the remains of the Nasca, who once flourished in the valleys of south coastal Peru, have uncovered a sequence of human-induced events which led to their "catastrophic" collapse around 500 AD.

The Nasca are probably best known for the famous "Nazca Lines", giant geoglyphs which they left etched into the surface of the vast, empty desert plain that lies between the Peruvian towns of Nazca and Palpa.

The depictions have spawned various wild theories, including that they were created by aliens. Most scholars now believe that they were sacred pathways which Nasca people followed during the course of their ancient rituals.

Other aspects of Nasca history and culture remain less clearly understood, however. In particular, experts have struggled to explain why a society which clearly prospered during the first half of the first Millennium AD then collapsed into a bloody resource war and eventually vanished.

Some have argued that a mega-El Niño, which hit the region at around that time, may have been the cause. Writing in the journal Latin American Antiquity, however, a team of researchers led by Dr. David Beresford-Jones from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge University, suggest that the Nasca inadvertently wrought their own demise.

Using plant remains gathered in the lower Ica Valley, the team found evidence that over the course of many generations, the Nasca cleared areas of forest to make way for their own agriculture. Studies of pollen samples taken by co-researcher Alex Chepstow-Lusty, of the French Institute of Andean Studies in Lima, showed that the huarango tree, which once covered what is now a desert area, was gradually replaced by crops such as cotton and maize.

As the paper explains, however, the huarango was more than just a tree - it was a crucial part of the desert's fragile ecosystem, which enhanced soil fertility and moisture and helped to hold the Nasca's narrow, vulnerable irrigation channels in place.

Eventually, they cut down so many trees that they reached a tipping point at which the arid ecosystem was irreversibly damaged. The authors do not dispute that a major, El Niño-style event then occurred - finding hard evidence for this for the first time. But they also find that the impact of this flood would have been far less devastating had the forests which protected the delicate desert ecology still been there.