Author: MARS

Ecce panis—try your hand at the kind of loaf that Mel Brooks’ 2000-year-old man might have sunk his teeth into. Literally.

In 1930 a loaf of bread dating to AD 79 (the year Vesuvius claimed two prosperous Roman towns) was excavated from the site of a bakery in Herculaneum.

Eighty-three years later, the British Museum invited London chef Giorgio Locatelli, above, to take a stab at creating an edible facsimile for its Pompeii Live exhibition.

The assignment wasn’t as easy as he’d anticipated, the telegenic chef confesses before whipping up a lovely brown miche that appears far more mouth watering than the carbonized round found in the Herculaneum oven.

OpenCulture.com

Sarah Parcak, ‘space archaeologist’ and winner of the 2016 TED Prize, announced on Tuesday her plan to create a citizen science platform, so users can help map antiquities sites in the Middle East and stop looting.

Global Xplorer sounds like a video game. Users log on, watch a quick tutorial, then receive a digital card with a satellite image of 400 to 2,500 square meters of ground. “Players” then scan for tombs and list what they find, earning score points as they go.

CSMonitor.com |By the Christian Science Monitor

Scientists know a lot about Neandertals these days, from their hair color to their mating habits. Still, a basic mystery remains: Did they know how to start a fire? Archaeologists have long known that Neandertals, like the family pictured in this artist’s representation, used fire, but they could have merely taken advantage of naturally occurring lightning strikes and forest fires to supply the flames.

Science Magazine