Historic Church's Subterranean Secrets Revealed

Researchers from Kingston University in London have carried out a full scientific survey of an historic churchyard widely believed to be the site of the crowning of at least two Anglo-Saxon kings. The team used an earth resistance meter to survey a graveyard at the site where possibly as many as seven kings were crowned, during the 10th Century, including Athelstan, the first king of a unified England in 925, and Ethelred the Unready in 978-9.

An archaeological team from Kingston University in South West London has gone beneath the surface of the historic churchyard at the borough's All Saints Church to try to find out more about its history. The team carried out a full scientific survey of the site in the heart of Kingston's town centre, with local people and school children also taking the opportunity to get involved.

A church has stood on the grounds for well over 1,000 years and is of great historical significance. It is widely believed to be the site of the crowning of at least two Anglo-Saxon kings, and possibly as many as seven, during the 10th Century, including Athelstan, the first king of a unified England in 925, and Ethelred the Unready in 978-9. Nothing remains above ground of the original Saxon church except for outlines marked by stones outside the south door of the present building.

Dr Helen Wickstead, an archaeology expert from the University, and her colleagues used an earth resistance meter to survey the entire graveyard. The device measures the resistance the weak electrical current it produces encounters as it passes through Earth. The results mean that a two-dimensional image can be created of exactly what lay below ground.

Dr Wickstead was asked by the church to carry out the survey ahead of redevelopment work. "We discovered three possible brick vault structures but have no idea who was actually buried there. Usually they contain coffins of members of a family in an underground chamber," she said. "We know exactly where these vaults are now and we're hoping to use the documentary evidence available -- historical maps, church records and aerial photographs -- to find out who was laid to rest there and precisely when they date from. It would be fascinating to find out their stories."

Students from Kingston University's MA in Museum and Gallery Studies and BSc (Hons) in Forensic Science took part in the project along with pupils from Nonsuch High School for Girls in Cheam. Local people also had the chance to get involved during the weekend of exploratory activity.

"Several passers-by came along and showed a real interest in what we were doing," Dr Wickstead said. "Some of the mapping was actually done by interested people who just happened to be out and about in Kingston on the day. From that point of view it was also a huge success and the school children and students involved really enjoyed it and learned a lot. We got to make some new discoveries and gave people the opportunity to explore archaeology and geophysics in a way they wouldn't normally do."

Vicar of All Saints Parish Church Reverend Jonathan Wilkes said he had been delighted to work with the University on the project. "An important element of our redevelopment concerns the heritage the site holds and represents, so gaining a deeper understanding of what's below the surface will inform and educate us as we move forward," he said. "We're particularly interested in what the survey tells us about the site of St Mary's Chapel which lies to the south of the current building and which is only acknowledged now by plaques that mark where the walls would have been. We were really pleased that through this open event Helen and the university team were able to bring archaeology to anyone who was in the town on those days. This approach is something that we hope to develop further in the future."

Leah Rogers, 23, who is originally from New York and currently completing the Museum and Gallery MA at Kingston University, said she had got a lot out of taking part. "One of my major projects at the moment involves deciding what a hypothetical museum focusing on Kingston would look like in 2030," she said. "Being from the United States originally, it was fascinating to get an understanding of one of the borough's heritage sites and how important it might be to local people in the future. This ended up being a great example of community participation. People were very curious about what we were doing, especially when they saw us holding the Earth resistance meter, which looks a bit bizarre if you haven't seen one before."

Following the success of the All Saints project, final year forensic science students from the University will be taught the practical part of their forensic archaeology module at the church.
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References:

Kingston University. 2011. "Historic Church's Subterranean Secrets Revealed". Science Daily. Posted: April 21, 2011. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110421130312.htm

Egypt’s Head Archeologist Avoids Jail Time

Zahi Hawass will not get jail time for refusing to implement a court ruling about a bookstore inside the Egyptian Museum, according to the Egyptian archaeologist’s blog.

Hawass, the minister of state for antiquities affairs in Egypt, has faced criticism in Egypt for his close ties to the regime of now-deposed president Hosni Mubarak. Shortly after Mubarak stepped down, Hawass resigned in protest of the criticisms; within a month, he accepted a reappointment to his post. [Read: Egypt’s ‘Indiana Jones’ at Center of Archaeology Uproar]

The current court case, however, derives from more mundane business. According to Ahram Online, the English-language website of Egypt’s largest news organization, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), now the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs (MSAA), opened a bidding process to rent out a bookstore in the Egyptian Museum. The previous renter, a merchant named Farid Attiya, was not allowed to place a bid. According to the MSAA, Attiya constantly paid his rent late and broke his lease.

Attiya filed a lawsuit with an administrative court, which forced the MSAA (then the SCA) to allow him to bid. However, the verdict came too late, a MSAA supervisor told Ahram Online. By the time the court issued its decision, another company had already been chosen.

That’s where Hawass comes in. Because the court verdict was never enacted, Attiya filed a suit in criminal court against Hawass as the head of the SCA. That court announced Sunday (April 17) that Hawass would have to resign his government duties, pay a 1000-pound (168 dollar) fine and serve one year in jail.

However, Hawass announced on his blog today that the Department of Legal Affairs at the MSAA had appealed the decision, and the court had accepted the appeal.

“Due to this decree, I will not serve any jail time, and will remain in my position as Minister of State for Antiquities,” Hawass wrote.

Visit Dr. Hawass' website. There is no obvious link to his blog from his website, however, you can visit the blog here.
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References:

Pappas, Stephanie. 2011. "Egypt’s Head Archeologist Avoids Jail Time". Live Science. Posted: April 18, 2011. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/13758-egypts-head-archeologist-avoids-jail.html

Endangered languages: the full list

How many endangered languages are there in the World and what are the chances they will die out completely?

This week the Guardian reported that the last two fluent speakers of the language Ayapaneco aren't speaking to each other.

This poignant story got us thinking about the number of endangered languages in the World.

To get to the bottom of this we turned to United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), who regularly publish a list of endangered languages.

UNESCO provide a classification system to show just how 'in trouble' the language is:

Vulnerable - most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains (e.g., home)

Definitely endangered - children no longer learn the language as a 'mother tongue' in the home

Severely endangered - language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves

Critically endangered - the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently

Extinct - there are no speakers left

...

Finally, here is the full list of languages in danger and there is even more detail in the spreadsheet that goes with this post.

The UNESCO provide an Alas of endangered languages on their website. Do you have a nice idea for displaying this same data?

Full Endangered Language List
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References:

Evans, Lisa. 2011. "Endangered languages: the full list". Guardian. Posted: April 15, 2011. Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/apr/15/language-extinct-endangered

Richard Leakey Reflects On Human Past—And Future

Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey talks about what several generations of fossil finds reveal about human origins, and how modern Homo sapiens are threatening the future of life around the globe. Evolutionary biologist Quentin Atkinson joins to discuss the origins of language, which, like hominids, he's traced to Africa.

TRANSCRIPT

IRA FLATOW, host:

You're listening to SCIFRI. I'm Ira Flatow. If you've even remotely - if you're ever even remotely interested in anthropology and human origins, chances are you've heard about the name Leakey, a dynasty of fossil-hunters in East Africa of whom my next guest is a member.

His father and his mother, Louis and Mary Leakey, contributed volumes to our understanding of human evolution with the fossils they uncovered at the Olduvai Gorge, along with Mary Leakey's later discovery of a long trail of footprints left by bipedal hominids three and a half million years ago in Tanzania.

My next guest added to the human family tree with many finds of his own, including the nearly complete skeleton of Turkana Boy, a Homo erectus. He also has served as the head of the Kenya Wildlife Service in his time there, sparing many elephants and rhinos from being poached for their ivory.

And he's spent a fair amount of time in Kenyan politics too. So he's sort of led three different lives, and he's here with us to talk about it. Richard Leakey is founder of the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya, where he lives. He's a professor at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York. And he's here in our New York studios. It's my pleasure to welcome you to SCIENCE FRIDAY.


To read the transcript or hear the rest of the interview, go to the NPR site.

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References:

NPR. 2011. "Richard Leakey Reflects On Human Past—And Future". NPR. Posted: April 15, 2011. Available online: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/15/135442954/richard-leakey-reflects-on-human-past-and-future

The 'Singular Woman' Who Raised Barack Obama

I don't think I've done a book review before, but I think this is an important book for Anthropologists to read.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. — BARACK OBAMA, MARCH 18, 2008

In 1990, Barack Obama became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. A year later, he was approached by a literary agent, who asked if he would be interested in writing an autobiography about his life.

Obama said yes, and in 1995, his book Dreams from My Father was published. As the title suggests, it focused mainly on the relationship he had with his father, Barack Obama Sr. When articles about the book started coming out, they referred to his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, as simply "a white anthropologist from Kansas."

But the characterizations of Obama's mother — first as "a white anthropologist from Kansas" and then as "a single mother on food stamps" and "the woman who died of cancer while fighting with her insurance company at the end of her life" — don't encompass who she was, the unconventional life she led or the influence she had on the future president of the United States, says writer Janny Scott.

Scott's biography of Obama's mother, A Singular Woman, traces Dunham's life and the relationship she had with her son, whose rise in the political world came largely after her death in 1995. But he has said he largely thanks his mother for the values that led him to the work he now does.

"He credits her with impressing upon him the importance upon one's duty to others — perhaps that the best thing that one can do is to give opportunities for others," Scott tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "And her work in many ways foreshadows his. There was a period in 1979 where she was working in what her boss described to me as 'community development in Java.' That's five years before he becomes a community development person in Chicago."

Obama's Roots

In 1960, Dunham's family moved to Hawaii, where she enrolled in college. It was in Hawaii that she met a Kenyan student named Barack Obama. Three months pregnant with their child, she married him in 1961. Obama Sr. stayed in school in Hawaii, and Dunham returned to Seattle with her newborn baby, Barack. She returned to Honolulu in 1963; she and Obama divorced in 1964. In 1966, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian man studying in Honolulu on a student visa.

Obama was largely raised in Hawaii for the first six years of his life, but in 1967, he moved to Indonesia with his mother to join Soetoro, who worked as a surveyor for the Indonesian government and then a consultant for Mobil. Dunham taught English, worked in rural development and consulted on microfinance projects. Obama attended local schools in Jakarta. He also, at her insistence, took English correspondence classes and regularly woke up before dawn to go over his English language skills.

"She believed that he deserved the kind of opportunities that she had had [like] the opportunity to a great university," Scott says. "And she believed that he would never get that if he didn't have a strong English-language education. So at a certain point, she decided she wasn't serving his interests well by keeping him in Indonesia and in Indonesia schools."

Four years later, Obama moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents while his mother stayed in Indonesia with her second husband and daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng. It was a complicated decision — and one that most people don't give her credit for, Scott says:

"She was juggling a number of things: She wanted her son to get a good English-language education, which wasn't available to her in Indonesia. She had an Indonesian daughter and an Indonesian husband at the time. She needed to be able to work to pay for the education she wanted for her son and her daughter. In order to work, she was going to need some kind of advanced degree. So she was juggling a lot of things." In 1972, Scott says, Dunham rejoined her son in Hawaii and stayed there during his middle school years. She returned to Indonesia to do anthropological field work shortly after he entered high school.

Obama decided not to return to Indonesia with his mother. In 1985, she wrote a list of her long-range goals, which included "finish[ing] her dissertation, making a salary of 60K, los[ing] weight ... and having constructive dialogue with Barry" — a nickname used for the junior Barack Obama.

Scott says she doesn't know of any problems between Obama and his mother, but there were some indications that his mother felt some sadness about the physical distance between them.

"At different moments in her life she is upset, and at one point, in his senior year of high school in Hawaii, she goes back just to be with him because she realizes it's the last year of his childhood," she says. "Later, one friend describes her as wistful about his decision to move to Chicago and root himself in Chicago and emphasize the sort-of black part of himself. So I think there was a theme — and this is just snippets of little things I've stumbled upon — that she had a kind of longing for a closer relationship with him."

Read an excerpt from the book.
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References:

NPR. 2011. "The 'Singular Woman' Who Raised Barack Obama". NPR. Posted: May 3, 2011. Available online: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/03/135840068/the-singular-woman-who-raised-barack-obama?sc=fb&cc=fp

Scott, Janny. 2011. A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother. Riverhead, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The History of Cinco de Mayo

Introduction

The holiday of Cinco De Mayo, The 5th Of May, commemorates the victory of the Mexican militia over the French army at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862. It is primarily a regional holiday celebrated in the Mexican state capital city of Puebla and throughout the state of Puebla, with some limited recognition in other parts of Mexico, and especially in U.S. cities with a significant Mexican population. It is not, as many people think, Mexico's Independence Day, which is actually September 16.

Setting The Stage

The battle at Puebla in 1862 happened at a violent and chaotic time in Mexico's history. Mexico had finally gained independence from Spain in 1821 after a difficult and bloody struggle, and a number of internal political takeovers and wars, including the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and the Mexican Civil War of 1858, had ruined the national economy.

During this period of struggle Mexico had accumulated heavy debts to several nations, including Spain, England and France, who were demanding repayment. Similar debt to the U.S. was previously settled after the Mexican-American War. France was eager to expand its empire at that time, and used the debt issue to move forward with goals of establishing its own leadership in Mexico. Realizing France's intent of empire expansion, Spain and England withdrew their support. When Mexico finally stopped making any loan payments, France took action on its own to install Napoleon III's relative, Archduke Maximilian of Austria, as ruler of Mexico.

France invaded at the gulf coast of Mexico along the state of Veracruz (see map) and began to march toward Mexico City, a distance today of less than 600 miles. Although American President Abraham Lincoln was sympathetic to Mexico's cause, and for which he is honored in Mexico, the U.S. was involved in its own Civil War at the time and was unable to provide any direct assistance.

Marching on toward Mexico City, the French army encountered strong resistance near Puebla at the Mexican forts of Loreto and Guadalupe. Lead by Mexican General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin, a smaller, poorly armed militia estimated at 4,500 men were able to stop and defeat a well outfitted French army of 6,500 soldiers, which stopped the invasion of the country. The victory was a glorious moment for Mexican patriots, which at the time helped to develop a needed sense of national unity, and is the cause for the historical date's celebration.

Unfortunately, the victory was short lived. Upon hearing the bad news, Napoleon III had found an excuse to send more troops overseas to try and invade Mexico again, even against the wishes of the French populace. 30,000 more troops and a full year later, the French were eventually able to depose the Mexican army, take over Mexico City and install Maximilian as the ruler of Mexico.

Maximilian's rule of Mexico was also short lived, from 1864 to 1867. With the American Civil War now over, the U.S. began to provide more political and military assistance to Mexico to expel the French, after which Maximilian was executed by the Mexicans - his bullet riddled shirt is kept at the museum at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City. So despite the eventual French invasion of Mexico City, Cinco de Mayo honors the bravery and victory of General Zaragoza's smaller, outnumbered militia at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.

Today's Celebration

For the most part, the holiday of Cinco de Mayo is more of a regional holiday in Mexico, celebrated most vigorously in the state of Puebla. There is some limited recognition of the holiday throughout the country with different levels of enthusiasm, but it's nothing like that found in Puebla.

Celebrating Cinco de Mayo has become increasingly popular along the U.S.-Mexico border and in parts of the U.S. that have a high population of people with a Mexican heritage. In these areas the holiday is a celebration of Mexican culture, of food, music, beverage and customs unique to Mexico.

Commercial interests in the United States and Mexico have also had a hand in promoting the holiday, with products and services focused on Mexican food, beverages and festivities, with music playing a more visible role as well. Several cities throughout the U.S. hold parades and concerts during the week following up to May 5th, so that Cinco de Mayo has become a bigger holiday north of the border than it is to the south, and being adopted into the holiday calendar of more and more people every year.
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References:

Mexonline.com. 2007. "The History of Cinco de Mayo". Mexonline.com. Posted: April 27, 2007. Available online: http://www.mexonline.com/cinco-de-mayo.htm

Article Sources: Encyclopedia Encarta, Encyclopedia Britanica, Prescott's Mexico:1900, HistoryChannel.com, other sources. minor edits April 25, 2007

Legendary Saints Were Real, Buried Alive, Study Hints

The skeletons of two married, early-Christian saints—said to have been buried alive nearly 2,000 years ago—may have been identified in Italy, scientists announced Thursday.

Analysis of the skeletons—sealed off for centuries in an Italian cathedral until recently—seems to support the legend of Chrysanthus and Daria, who are said to have been persecuted in the city of Rome for being Christians.

According to ancient stories, the Roman Empire killed the celibate Roman husband and wife in the third century A.D., after they had converted many Romans to the fledgling religion.

Though there's no way to identify the skeletons with 100 percent certainty, "all of the evidence we have gathered points toward the relics having belonged to Chrysanthus and Daria," investigation leader Ezio Fulcheri, a paleopathologist at Italy's University of Genoa, said in a statement.

Saintly Evidence

In 2008 workers renovating the cathedral, in the northern Italian town of Reggio Emilia (map), found more than 300 bones in a sealed crypt beneath the main alter.

The remains were found to form two nearly complete skeletons. The skulls of the bodies turned out to be in a pair of silver-and-gold busts deep in a cathedral vault, into which they'd been transferred nearly 500 years ago, University of Turin anthropologist Allesandra Cinti told National Geographic News via email.

Examining the bones, study leader Fulcheri and his team concluded that the remains belonged to a man and woman who were generally healthy at the time of their deaths.

Based in part on its slender and petite frame, wide pelvis, and pointed chin, one of the skeletons was presumed to have been a female in her mid-20s. The sex was later confirmed by DNA analysis, according to Fulcheri, whose work was partly funded by the National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council.

The team suspects this skeleton was Daria, who, according to legend, was a vestal virgin—a high priestess of Rome dedicated to the goddess Vesta—before converting to Christianity.

"The bones show that she probably lived a life with very little physical stress," the University of Turin's Cinti says in a new documentary about the project—Explorer: Mystery of the Murdered Saints—which airs at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Tuesday, April 19, on the National Geographic Channel.

"She had the characteristics of a vestal virgin," Cinti added. "But of course, we can't be certain."

The second skeleton's bones appear nearly adult but aren't fully formed—parts of them were still fusing together at death. This suggests the remains belonged to a 17- or 18-year-old, the researchers say. DNA tests later reveal the individual to be a male.

If the legends—and the team's conclusions—are to be believed, this may be Chrysanthus.

Also, like the Chrysanthus and Daria of legend, the recently unearthed couple appears to have been upper-class. For example, the bones showed no signs of deformities or wear from physical labor.

By analyzing trace elements in the bones, the team also uncovered signs of lead poisoning—a uniquely aristocratic ailment in ancient Rome. The toxic metal was present in the city's plumbing system, which reached only the homes of the wealthy.

The team also carefully picked out a single rib from each skeleton, ground the ribs into a fine powder, and performed a carbon dating test on them.

The test revealed the skeletons date to between A.D. 80 and 340—the martyrs are thought to have been killed around A.D. 283.

Murdered Saints: Legend of Chrysanthus and Daria

In ancient tales Chrysanthus, the son of a rich Roman senator, converts to Christianity as a teenager.

Desperate to prevent Chrysanthus from making what he thinks is a huge mistake, his father arranges to have him married to the vestal virgin Daria.

At Rome's Temple of Vesta, virgins maintained a holy fire that symbolized procreation and which the Romans believed kept their city safe.

"In the ancient thinking, there was this belief that religion and politics were intertwined. So when something went wrong in the political sphere, there was a religious problem somewhere," explained Sarolta Takács, a historian at Sage College in Albany, New York, who wasn't involved in the study.

As their name suggests, the vestal virgins were supposed to remain celibate during their time of service.

Miracles and Martyrdom

According to legend, the plan to distract Chrysanthus from Christianity backfires. He converts Daria to his religion, and the two marry but take a vow of celibacy and devotion to God.

"That people should live together as if they're married but not actually have sex and produce children goes against everything that Roman society stood for," Candida Moss, an expert in early Christian martyrdom at the University of Notre Dame, said in the documentary.

What's worse—in the eyes of the Roman Empire—is that the pair successfully converted many to Christianity.

For their crimes, Chrysanthus and Daria are arrested and tortured.

The typical punishment for a vestal virgin who'd broken her vow of celibacy was death by starvation. The punishment for conversion to Christianity, though, would have been a life of prostitution—the worst possible fate for a priestess of Vesta, Sage College's Takács explained.

The Romans would have believed Daria's conversion to Christianity endangered their entire city, Takács explained. For one thing, there were only six vestal virgins at any one time, so the loss of even one priestess would have been a serious setback for Rome.

"What's important about the vestals is that they were intimately connected with Rome," Takács said.

"When they did everything correct and properly, Rome thrived. And if they made mistakes, then Romans suffered problems."

According to the story, Chrysanthus is sent to prison, while Daria is condemned to prostitution. Both are said to have been saved from their fates by miracles—his prison turns into a garden; she is protected from would-be johns by a lioness.

Despite supposedly divine intervention, Chrysanthus and Daria are eventually sentenced to death, the story goes. According to the most popular version of the legend, the pair is buried alive in Rome.

"No Evidence in Contrast"

It's said that a Christian shrine was erected at Chrysanthus and Daria's burial site. Later their venerated bones were transferred several times before eventually arriving, around the year 1000, in Reggio Emilia, hundreds of miles north of Rome—a story the new analysis appears to corroborate, scientists say.

"I think there is no evidence in contrast of this hypothesis," study leader Fulcheri told National Geographic News.

The University of Turin's Cinti added in the documentary, "These results confirmed two fundamental facts for us.

"They confirmed their antiquity and the fact that they were both from the same time period. We were able to relax, let out a sigh of relief and say okay, maybe it's actually them."
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References:

Than, Ker. 2011. "Legendary Saints Were Real, Buried Alive, Study Hints". National Geographic Daily News. Posted: April 15, 2011. Available online: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/04/110415-saints-murdered-chrysanthus-daria-science-rome-roman-christians/