I intended to wait until tomorrow to do a final archeology post, but got too excited.

Who doesn't know Coleridge's "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree; Where Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea"? Marco Polo trod the streets of Xanadu, or Shangdu rather, and the Chinese have now mapped it out. They hope for Yuan Shangdu, Kublai Khan's summer home, to be declared a World Heritage site. It seems inevitable to me. Very wonderful indeed. It was an extraordinary city, this summer home of the Mongol Emperors, and I am very excited about this news.

Amazing the stuff archeologists used to just throw away. This cache of oddments found buried outside the  Cairo museum.

We do love our dogs. Roman pottery, coins, medieval remains uncovered as part of Oxford's long, historic past. Its the dog bones that warrant a photograph.

Once, slavery was part of ALL of this country, not just the south. Dig at 18th century Rhode Island slave traders house. What would Roger Williams have thought?

DNA analysis of Copernicus' remains. I'm impressed.

We killed the neanderthals. . .with our diseases. This makes sense to me. We certainly can see other historical instances of similar events.

British Library puts world's oldest bible online: Codex Sinaiticus. The British Library's online publishing program is extremely impressive.

Construction uncovers 1,500 year old tomb in China. Worth playing the video to see the frescoes.

I'd posted about the Ilisu dam in Turkey previously. It looks like this project is indeed halted. Germany, the World Bank, the Austrians and the Swiss pulled out. Social and cultural violations are the reason.

Update on Mt. Zion dig, this is from the team's website and is not yet published officially, so it's an extra cool peek at their work, and you can read the excitement in their notes about the finds. Murex shells used to dye priestly garments, mikvot, Herodian lamps, etc. They are digging through several different eras, and seeing time overlap like this gives you an idea of what time travel would be like. Really great read. Worth the time, and the accompanying photos are good.

2,000 year old statue shed light on metal corrosion, storing nucelar waste, and other amazing things. You can download the PDF from this abstract if you are so inclined. The sculpture itself has a fascinating history.