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Chinese civilization, which stands as a shining star in human civilizations, is distinct in its nature and development path. Although it suffered numerous turns of devastation in its 5,000 years of history, it has resiliently remained uninterrupted in its growth and radiance. Characterized by continuity, innovation, unity, inclusiveness, and longstanding commitment to peace, it also exhibits strong cohesion, vitality, flexibility, and adaptability. These characteristics emerged in the Paleolithic Period, indicating that the Chinese civilization did not emerge overnight. Its roots run deep with a long history, sprouting in the Paleolithic Period, breaking ground in the late Neolithic period, and gradually growing into the towering trees it is today. How did the ancient people in China evolve into today's Chinese nation? How did the ancient culture of prehistoric times develop into the current Chinese civilization? What are the connections between the history buried underground and the society we see today? Obviously, there is no clear answer to these questions. There are still many gaps in prehistoric China that need to be filled, and the process of and reasons for the evolution of ethnic groups and cultures still need to be further interpreted. The author tries to trace the roots of the Chinese nation and its civilization back to the Paleolithic Period, using archaeological materials to connect the survival and reproduction process of ancestors and delve into studying the ancient roots of the Huaxia people and Chinese civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reconstructing temperature changes along the Silk Road (SR) over the last two millennia can provide insights into past global changes and their impact on the rise and fall of ancient civilizations in this region. Numerous high-quality single-site paleotemperature records have been produced for the eastern part of the SR (mainly for the Xinjiang region and its surrounding areas), which provide the data basis for a comprehensive synthesis. In this study, we used objective criteria to select 10 high-quality ones from 30 temperature reconstructions derived from various geological archives including lacustrine sediments, ice cores, and tree rings in this region. Our aims are to summarize the pattern of temperature change over the past 2000 years, to provide a long-term viewpoint on the present warming, and to evaluate the impact of climate change on civilizations along the SR. The principal results are as follows: (1) The temperature variations over the last millennium are mutually consistent within these records. The study area experienced typical climate anomalies during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP, AD 1000–1250), the Little Ice Age (LIA, AD 1450–1850), and the Current Warm Period (CWP, AD 1850 to present); however, contrary to previous knowledge, the amplitude of climatic warming during the CWP did not exceed that during the MWP. (2) Fewer temperature records were available for the interval AD 1–1000, and there were large differences between them. For example, the reconstructed climate during both the Han Dynasty and the Sui-Tang Dynasties was either warm or cold, without prevailing consensus. (3) The warming during the MWP favored the rapid development of the SR route along the northern slopes of the Tianshan Mountains, and the cooling during the LIA contributed to the decline of the SR marked by the closure of the Jiayuguan Pass. Notably, the scarcity of temperature records and the discrepancies between them during AD 1–1000 in the eastern part of the SR have hindered our understanding of the hydroclimatic changes and their influence on the development of civilizations along the SR. Thus, it is important to obtain an increased number of high-quality reliable records spanning the past 2000 year, and to examine the occurrence of local signals of temperature changes during the period of AD 1–1000. On the other hand, the paleotemperature investigation on the western part of the SR over the last two millennia is wholly insufficient, and thus more high-quality single-site and integrated studies are needed, to facilitate more comprehensive insights into the coupled relationship between climate change and the rise and fall of civilizations along the entire length of the Silk Road. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural relics are man-made objects left from ancient times, with historical, artistic, and scientific values. Multi-interdisciplinary research of cultural relics would enable people to obtain a variety of information associated with them, from which the restoration of ancient civilization was possible. Due to natural weathering, many cultural relics are in a fragile state, and conservation treatments that can prolong their lifetime are important, which may involve the use of conservation materials. In this paper, we define the new term "Herit-Materials" as two types of materials, including ancient cultural relics themselves and novel functional materials for conservation purposes. For the first type of Herit-Materials-cultural relics themselves, as one type of ancient materials, the concept of the relationship between the structure, composition, performance, and technology of them was introduced. The research paradigm for ancient cultural relics is also proposed. Following such a paradigm, the way how analysis and research were performed on ancient cultural relics are illustrated in detail with examples of ancient ceramics and textile dyes. Meanwhile, as the second type of Herit-Materials, three categories of conservation materials, such as emergent conservation materials on archaeological sites, consolidation materials, and cleaning materials were reviewed in detail, including basic concepts, criteria for choosing appropriate materials for conservation purposes, evaluation of the conservation effects after application, along with the application methods of those conservation materials. Finally, as Herit-Materials' studies have attracted more and more researchers and have also created new inter-disciplinary research fields, the following research directions are recommended for scholars who have an interest, including the development of the advanced and comprehensive analytical technique of Herit-Materials, non-destructive and in-situ characterization & testing of Herit-Materials, the database of composition-structure-performance for Herit-Materials and their real-time environmental conditions, the green Herit-Materials for conservation purposes and their application methods, as well as the type and pattern analysis research of Herit-Materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the common physical materials in Chinese archaeological excavations, ancient bronzes are an essential basis for studying the development of Chinese bronze culture, which is of great significance for exploring the development law of ancient human civilization and reconstructing ancient human society. As China's infrastructure advances, the number of bronzes unearthed by archaeological excavations continues to increase. However, environmental damage to artefacts is very complex, whether the buried environment of the artefacts or the above-ground environment when the artefacts are unearthed, leading to different health problems for the excavated bronzes. A scientific assessment of these bronzes needs to be carried out prior to extraction to inform staff how they should be extracted, moved, and transported and how they should be restored afterwards. In response to the above problems, this paper takes excavated bronzes from archaeological sites as the research object and, by analysing and studying the relevant industry standards and the disease characteristics of bronzes, establishes a three-tier indicator framework for assessing the health of bronzes in a layer-by-layer refinement and proposes quantitative indicators with typical correlations. Through extensive research and testing, we screened out efficient, non-destructive, convenient and reliable assessment and testing methods and assessment models that combine subjective and objective aspects suitable for archaeological sites. On this basis, the paper achieves a scientific and practical assessment of the health status of bronzes excavated from archaeological sites. After repeated experiments, a set of comprehensive methods for quickly and conveniently assessing the health status of excavated bronzes was proposed for the first time and successfully applied to the archaeological excavation site of Sanxingdui site in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaic manuscripts are an important part of ancient civilization. Unfortunately, such documents are often affected by various age related degradations, which impinge their legibility and information contents, and destroy their original look. In general, these documents are composed of three layers of information: foreground text, background, and unwanted degradation in the form of patterns interfering with the main text. In this work, we are presenting a color space based image segmentation technique to separate and remove the bleed-through degradation in digital ancient manuscripts. The main theme is to improve their readability and restore their original aesthetic look. For each pixel, a feature vector is created using color spectral and spatial location information. A pixel based segmentation method using Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) is employed, assuming that each feature vector corresponds to a Gaussian distribution. Based on this assumption, each pixel is supposed to be drawn from a mixture of Gaussian distribution, with unknown parameters. The Expectation-Maximization (EM) approach is then used to estimate the unknown GMM parameters. The appropriate class label for each pixel is then estimated using posterior probability and GMM parameters. Unlike other binarization based document restoration method where the focus is on text extraction, we are more interested in restoring the aesthetically pleasing look of the ancient documents.The experimental results validate the usefulness of proposed method in terms of successful bleed-through identification and removal, while preserving foreground-text and background information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 4.2 ka BP climate event was a phase of severe global drought. Its evidence has been attested in many regions of the world and was reported to have played an important role in the collapse of major ancient civilizations. This article provides a comprehensive literature review using several proxies on the 4.2 ka BP climate event in Ancient Egypt. It applies a multidisciplinary approach that integrates archaeological, geoarchaeological, and bioarchaeological evidence. The conclusion is that the event had critical environmental, economic, and political impacts. It led to aridification, a decline in the Nile level and Nile-fed lakes, encroachment of aeolian desert sand into the Nile Valley, lower crop yields, and famine across ancient Egypt. Therefore, as a compound event, it played an important role in the collapse of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2181 BC), and its effect continued in the First Intermediate Period (ca. 2181–2055 BC) when Egypt witnessed political fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medicinal plants have been discovered and used in the traditional medicine practices since prehistoric times. The medicinal plants should be dried after harvesting as soon as possible. Drying with the conventional methods such as open sun drier decrease the quality of the product with increased cost and time of the drying process. The records of herbs have been considered from the ancient civilizations such as the Sumerian civilization, where hundreds of medicinal plants were listed on clay tablets and from the ancient Egypt, where over 850 plant medicines were described. The moisture of the fresh medicinal herbs at harvesting is about 70–80%. Drying of medicinal plants by active ventilation to the conditioned moisture level of 10 − 13% is accompanied by the sorption process. The chemical components of the essential oil of the medicinal plants haven't affecting by the different drying methods. The drying rate of the medicinal plants achieve its smallest value at the highest value of the surface load, while, it has the largest value with drying air temperature and velocity of 55 °C and 2.7 m/s, respectively. The drying process has an optimum temperature of 30–40 °C and relative humidity range of 50–60%. The enzymatic activity in the medicinal plants slows down at temperatures of 50–60 °C, this temperature range is recommended for drying medicinal plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flood control initiated Chinese civilization. Chinese civilization has a long history, and Chinese ancestors invented "aquatic engineering technology" for flood control and water management, including the Fascine body, as early as two thousand years ago. The Fascine body is a structure used to protect the bank and prevent breaching of an ancient Chinese flood control project. Excavation of the Shahe ancient bridge ruins in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, China led to discovery of a Fascine body structure. Through 14C dating, fibre, slice observations, infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analyses and SEM energy spectrum analyses of the fascine material, microbes in the structure and the surrounding soil were identified, the dominant microbial community was analyzed, and microbial diseases were controlled in a targeted manner. Research on the fascine bank ruins identified the width and length boundaries of the Shahe ancient bridge, determined the exact age of the Shahe ancient bridge, provided important materials for research on ancient bridges, river embankments and other ruins, and provided important clues for the traffic and layout around Chang'an during the Qin and Han Dynasties of Chinese history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of script-using ancient civilizations and their achievements in sciences such as astronomy and mathematics have been well researched. Illiterate cultures were able to attain an adequate level of knowledge and transferred this knowledge to succeeding generations via oral tradition and mnemonic artefacts. The constructions of the square ditched enclosures (Viereckschanzen) of the last phase of the La Tène period (LT D, 150-1 BC) are documentations of the mathematical knowledge of this culture and served as a kind of mnemonic artefact. The constructions comprise the application of Pythagorean theorem (in terms of Pythagorean triangles) and square-root approximation triangles. Via these types of triangles, convex quadrangles are constructed (i.e., trapezium, parallelogram, rectangle, kite, lozenge, and square). The constructions were laid out in the terrain on the basis of a consistent 'Babylonian/Egyptian' metrology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing historical silk, which has great historical and academic research value, is an indispensable and important carrier for the study of global ancient civilization. It is very important to scientifically evaluate the preservation status of such silk. In this paper, the corresponding relationship between the surface resistance and the retention rate of breaking strength was established by testing simulated samples of photoaged silk fabrics. The effectiveness of the surface resistance method was suggested by amino acid analysis and infrared spectroscopic analysis. The test results show that the surface resistance method is a simple and fast nondestructive test to establish improved rules of consideration for the aging degree of silk relics. According to the corresponding relationship between the surface resistance and the retention rate of breaking strength, the current breaking strength of the fibers of historical silk can be inferred, which provides a scientific basis for the aging evaluation and protection of historical silk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary criminological discourses identify the emerging phenomena of water theft in societies experiencing drought and water insecurity (Brisman et al. 2018). Such analyses point to policies of privatization, to the marketization and commodification of freshwater, and to state politics premised on trade and fiscal prosperity. Notwithstanding the relevance of such debates, this article demonstrates that water theft and regulations prohibiting and punishing such offenses are indeed not new. Throughout history, various civilizations and societies have created and administered laws to protect freshwater and to punish and prevent water theft. This article seeks to contribute to contemporary criminological discourses by identifying and analyzing the laws and regulations of water theft within select ancient civilizations. Such analyses provide insights at both a conceptual and practical level. Such past examples of water management, non-compliance and sanction provide useful insights into contemporary acts of water theft, water justice, and the future governance of life's most essential resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and analyzes paleo-liquefaction features found in the State of Kuwait. The features are cemented sand and gravel-filled dikes of Pleisto–Holocene age with appearance and composition similar to typical "sandstone pipes." The significant age difference between the cemented dikes and the surrounding loose sand, the size and spatial distribution of the dikes, and the local geologic and hydrologic setting all suggest that the feature probably results from a single large event of seismic origin. Likely hypotheses include shaking during large earthquakes or seiching of tsunami-like waves. Additional research is needed to identify the exact cause of these dike formations, which is important for the purpose of improving seismic risk and vulnerability assessment of the Arabian Gulf countries. The search may also help explain the disappearance of an ancient civilization that lived in the same region approximately seven thousand years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research is part of a wider scientific Italian-Indo project finalised to shed lights on pottery fabrication and trade circulation in Tamil Nadu region during Early Historical Period. The recent archaeological excavations carried out in Alagankulam—a famous harbour trading with the eastern and western world—and in Keeladi—the most ancient civilization centre attested in Tamil Nadu region—provided numerous fragments of archaeological ceramics. The typological analysis enabled the identification of different pottery classes, suggesting the presence of local productions, possible imports and imitations. Studied shards included common Indian vessels, fine wares and luxury ware repertoire. The provenance identification of some of the studied typologies is still debated in the literature; for long time, the misattribution of several ceramic classes has led to wrong interpretations on the commercial connections between India and the Western and Eastern Mediterranean area. The minero-petrographic and spectroscopic investigation of several ceramic fragments from the two investigated archaeological sites enabled the systematic compositional characterization of specific ceramic classes both locally manufactured and imported. The obtained results contributed to draw short-range and long-range connections in Tamil Nadu area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congenital anomalies of the limbs have been observed since ancient human civilizations, capturing the imagination of ancient physicians and people. The knowledge of the era could not possibly theorize on the biologic aspects of these anomalies; however, from the very beginning of civilization the spiritual status of people attempted to find a logical explanation for the existence of such cases. The next logical step of the spiritual and religious system of the ancients was to correlate these anomalies with the Gods and to attribute them to a different level of existence in order to rationalize their existence. In these settings, the mythology and religious beliefs of ancient civilizations comprised several creatures that were related to the observed congenital anomalies in humans. The purpose of this historic review is to summarize the depiction of congenital anomalies of the limbs in mythology and antiquity, to present several mythological creatures with resemblance to humans with congenital anomalies of the limbs, to present the atmosphere of the era concerning the congenital anomalies, and to theorize on the anomaly and medical explanation upon which such creatures were depicted. Our aim is to put historic information in one place, creating a comprehensive review that the curious reader would find interesting and enjoyable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamics of ancient civilisations according to credited historians can be explained by means of a simple linear time-invariant (LTI) feedback model whose loop only consists of a first-order process and a pure time delay. It is shown that, despite its simplicity, this model can give rise to a variety of responses, either oscillatory or aperiodic, such as those envisaged by A. Toynbee. Since modern civilisations are characterised by fast parameter variations, their description calls instead for a time-variant model. Simulations with the linear parameter-varying model obtained from the aforementioned LTI model by letting its parameter vary are carried out to show the influence of different scenarios on the system response. Even if this model is elementary, it is believed that it may serve as a stimulating “tool for thought” in the ever-popular debate on the growth and decline of civilisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monumental architectural remains are among the most impressive relics of the ancient civilizations. Of course, this is also true for ancient northeast Africa. In this contribution, monumental architecture is considered not just as a static marker and manifestation of power, often embedding the state itself in the landscape, but as a location, a setting for performing public activities which are producing and replicating social relations. Some case studies of the Kerma and Meroitic cultures of ancient Nubia are discussed. Hypotheses on the ceremonies taking place are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of ancient Indian civilizations. Topics discussed include the oral tradition in the early education system in India, the progress in scientific research and education in India, and the Ayurvedic medicine in India. Other topics include specialization in medicine, pediatric neurosurgery, and medical care.

The article examines orthopaedic practices in ancient Egypt. Topics discussed include the splinting of fractures by pieces of bark or wood padded with linen, the Edwin Smith surgical papyrus, and the ancient Egyptian surgeon's practice of autopsy. Also mentioned are cases of tuberculosis of the spine, and congenital anomalies, deformities and hormonal disturbances in ancient Egyptian history.

We used two sediment cores from the ancient harbour of Rome (Italy) for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. The imperial harbour of Rome and its town, Portus, were constructed in the Tiber Delta area. Today, they are ~3 km from the coast, close to Leonardo da Vinci International Airport. The port was excavated during the reign of Emperor Claudius, inaugurated by Nero in 64 AD, and substantially enlarged under Emperor Trajan. This paper focuses on analyses of ostracods in sediment cores from the harbour and provides insights into the palaeoenvironmental evolution of the harbour water bodies. Pollen data complement this ostracod-based reconstruction, providing information about the vegetation around the port. One core (PTS13) was taken from the dock area ( darsena) excavated at the time of Claudius. The second core (PTS5) was collected from the Trasverso Channel ( Canale Trasverso), excavated after the port inauguration and later dredged during the fourth century AD because it had filled in with silt. Radiocarbon, archaeological and pollen data indicate the two cores overlap in time slightly, or perhaps not at all, the core from the dock site (PTS13) containing the older record. Ostracods recovered from the two sites represent very different aquatic environments, driven in one case by the Tiber River input and in the other by 'marine' harbour waters. Parallel study of ostracods and pollen in the cores reveals the impact of harbour management activities, which are linked to ship hull maintenance, as well as erosion and siltation in this coastal setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the primitive counting, tally marks, and the progress of mathematics. It says that the primitive form of counting involved the correspondence between the objects to be counted and other convenient set of objects, such as the fingers of one's hand. It also states that the process of counting evolves into a more sophisticated process of tally marks on bones or stones. Furthermore, ancient civilizations had their own positional notation and grouping scheme by using symbols.

Currently, the debate about the nature of the human mind is taking new directions through the development of several studies in the field of neuroscience which investigates the location of brain functions. These studies have contributed to a better understanding of the neural substrates of mental functions and the etiology of various mental disorders. However, the knowledge developed by neuroscience did not occur abruptly. Indeed, the study of mind-brain relationship is not new. From pre-history to the present days, various different types of inquiries have been made about the possible materiality and location of human mental functions. This paper presents, in a historic manner, how prehistoric populations as well as early civilizations located in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China developed and employed concepts related to the soul, the mind and the human brain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civilization can be at least partially determined by climatic constraints upon net primary productivity and heat dissipation from the human body (Kleidon ). I discuss how these “metabolic” limitations were historically overcome: first, because large rivers in dry regions provided water to ancient civilizations; second, because fossil fuel energy servants working externally to muscle-limited bodies have produced economic well-being in a number of world areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in the lowland Maya collapse is stronger than ever, and there are now hundreds of studies that focus on the era from approximately A.D. 750 to A.D. 1050. In the past, scholars have tended to generalize explanations of the collapse from individual sites and regions to the lowlands as a whole. More recent approaches stress the great diversity of changes that occurred across the lowlands during the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods. Thus, there is now a consensus that Maya civilization as a whole did not collapse, although many zones did experience profound change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on the southern highlands and Pacific Coast of Mesoamerica has investigated topics of interest to all archaeologists. Although best known for studies on the development of early social complexity, research in the region also has addressed hunter/gatherer subsistence patterns, early sedentism, the origins of food production, the development of the state, migration, the construction of social identity, political economy, and the collapse of complex societies. Research has accelerated in the past ten years, fueled by efforts of scholars from a number of disciplines. Recent paleo-ecological studies have provided much needed data for understanding human social action against the backdrop of the natural environment, while the region also has been the scene for testing numerous innovative theories of social change. Studies of identity and its manifestation in material culture have been especially productive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents briefly the nature and the properties of extended defects in relation to the light they shed on the history of ancient objects and their conservation. Chemical reactions, phase transitions and plastic deformation of materials, which take place during the fabrication of objects, leave their imprints under the form of specific crystalline imperfections such as grain boundaries, twins and dislocations. Observations of the microstructure of objects from the cultural heritage can reveal many details about ancient civilisations and technologies. Besides optical microscopy, these observations rely on various dedicated techniques based on X-rays and electron microscopy to identify extended defects, viz. grain boundaries, twins, and dislocations. Defects due to powder processing of lead compounds have been studied recently. Such compounds have been used for centuries in the fabrication of cosmetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil erosion negatively affects crop yields and may have contributed to the collapse of ancient civilizations. Whether erosion may have such an impact on modern societies as well, is subject to debate. In this paper we quantify the relationship between crop yields and soil water available to plants, the most important yield-determining factor affected by erosion, at the European scale. Using information on the spatial distribution of erosion rates we calculate the potential threat of erosion-induced productivity losses. We show that future reductions in productivity in Europe as a whole are relatively small and do not pose a substantial threat to crop production within the coming century. However, within Europe there is considerable variability, and although productivity in northern Europe is not likely to be significantly reduced by soil erosion, for the southern countries the threat of erosion-induced productivity declines is stronger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article undertakes a diachronic survey of the literary and artistic reception of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, from the Flavian period down to the 20th century. The epic was influential in its own time, but has left fewer marks on the literature of later antiquity. It appears to have been in only limited circulation in the medieval period: but Chaucer, for one, makes various references to it, and Joesph Iscanus probably used it as well. Following rescue from obscurity by Poggio and a proliferation of editions in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, it seems to have enjoyed a vogue in elevated literary circles, to have supplied the subject for one or more Renaissance artists, and to have prompted more acts of literary reception than is generally recognized—including sustained engagements by Camões in the Lusiadas and William Morris in his Life and Death of Jason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 2004, a Chinese claim that the ancient Kingdom of Koguryo (37 BC-AD 668) was China's vassal state ignited a firestorm of protest in South Korea. The decade-long South Korean love affair with China appears to have ended, as increasing numbers of South Koreans have begun to view their colossal neighbor with new suspicion. What were the causes and consequences of this controversy? Rather than forwarding the usual political, economic, and security explanations, this paper interrogates the deeper identity politics at stake, arguing that the Koguryo controversy implicates the very meaning of being Korean or Chinese in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract It is universally accepted that the need for defining precise lines of separation and points of contacts between states is the byproduct of the emergence of nation-states and ‘world economy’ in the 19th century Europe. Nevertheless, it is hard to overlook the fact that these modern notions are rooted in periods prior to the emergence in Europe of nation-states. There are indications that ancient civilizations were familiar with the notion of ‘state’ in connection with the concepts of territory and boundary. Ancient texts reveal that this basic principle existed in ancient Persian literature in respect of matters of state, territory, and boundary. Similarly, the likelihood exists that these Persian notions could have influenced Roman civilization. It is widely believed that a combination of ancient Greco-Roman and Persian civilizations is a major contributor to what culturally constitutes ‘West’. Later in the Sassanid period the inter-linked notions of state, territory, and boundary developed substantially, coming quite close to their contemporary forms. On the other hand, considering that ‘justice’ was the corner stone of ancient Persian Political philosophy, the idea that ancient Persian spatial arrangement might have contributed to the evolution of the concept of democracy in the West may not be too difficult to contemplate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processing technologies available during the time of ancient Egypt are of present concern to the field of Archaeology and Egyptology. Materials characterization is the best tool for establishing the processing history of archaeological objects. In this study, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is used, in addition to other techniques, for phase identification and study of the microstructure and characteristic defect structures in ancient Egyptian cosmetic powders. These powders generally consist of a mix of Pb-containing mineral phases: galena (PbS), cerussite (PbCO&sub3;), and phosgenite (Pb&sub2;Cl&sub2;CO&sub3;), among others. Modern materials are fabricated according to recipes found in ancient texts to mimic the processing of ancient times and to compare with the archaeological specimens. In particular, a comparison between the dislocation structures of PbS crystals deformed in the laboratory and PbS from archaeological specimens from the collections of the Louvre Museum is presented . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks into the association of Themistocles' "amousia" to a variety of issues. Ancient and Early Modern authors emancipated "amousia" from its original context and instrumentalized it according to their own agendas. Themistocles was very wise in spite of his amousia and his music is of unquestionable value. Themistocles' "amousia" raised questions whose counterpoint to the deeds of music's heroes resonated for some 2000 years and exemplified ancient and Early Modern ways and byways of the Classical Tradition. Furthermore, the accounts of Themistocles' and Philomathes' humiliation reveal the symposium, ancient and Early Modern, as the kind of social ritual by which groups define themselves while excluding those who do not "belong," and musical training as the prerogative of a privileged elite.

Reports the occurrence of starch grains identifiable as manioc, yams and arrowroot on assemblages of plant milling stones from preceramic horizons at the Aguadulce Shelter, Panama, dated between 7,000 and 5,000 years before present. Evidence for root crop cultivation in the Americas, which the data provides; How the data supports an ancient and independent emergence of plant domestication in the lowland Neotropical forest.

The article focuses on efforts to determine the meaning of undeciphered scripts used by the Indus civilization which flourished from 2,600 B.C. to 1,900 B.C. It states the Indus civilization covered parts of Pakistan and northwestern India and contained at least five substantial cities which included street planning, the world's first known toilets, and house drainage. It comments on debate the Indus script is a form of early Sanskrit and mentions it is likely a logo-syllabic script representing words and concepts.

The article reviews the essay "The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations," by Max Weber. Capitalism, in Karl Marx's view, could only come into existence when labor-power had become a commodity, when it had been freed of feudal restrictions on its mobility, and when the laboring class had been freed of possession of the means of production. Capitalism brought about the most profitable exploitation of labor by increasing its productive power, Marx argued. The systematic development of the productivity of labor, and the expanding process of surplus accumulation, were created first of all through new social relations of production. For Marx, the revolutionary character of capitalism lay in its structural requirement that productive techniques and organization steadily improve, permitting the accumulation of surplus at an ever-increasing rate. Weber goes on to argue that the predominance of slave rather than the free labor in ancient Rome also poses a problem. He approaches it from a comparative perspective. From the first, free labor and unfree labor coexisted, he observes, a situation similar to that in feudal society. And in both ancient and feudal cases the relationship of free to unfree labor was one of natural antagonism.

Pakistan is located at an important cross-road of human history and has been a passageway for many invaders and dynasties in the past. The historic human migrations across this country have resulted in a blend of ancient civilizations, which are still reflected in the current socio-cultural fabrication of this population. This makes Pakistan an ideal country to study the genetic differentiation and various other genomic aspects of a human population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the historical background and studies about nutrigenomics. Claus Leitzmann, human nutritionist of the University of Giessen in Germany, explains the knowledge of the ancient civilization on the link between good health and food. Meanwhile, it cites the efforts of chemists Antoine Lavoisier and Jean Baptiste Boussingault in conducting research about digestion and excretion. The exploration of macro and micronutrients is also mentioned.

Discusses evidence of unexpected complexity in an ancient community in Uruguay. Diffusion of cultural traits into other portions of the continent; Details of ecological adaptations that allowed the survival of traditional Indians; Evidence of the existence of pre-ceramic agricultural sites throughout the world.

In this article the author discusses the restoration of social difference. He cites the perception of the book "What Makes Civilization? The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West," by David Wengrow that convincingly concludes the parallel development of Mesopotamia and Egypt, demonstrating deep attachment of human societies to the concepts they live by. He also contends how most archeologists focus on single regions despite the trends for interconnections of ancient civilizations.

This article discusses research conducted by Daniel Sandweiss and colleagues at the University of Maine in Orono showing that climatic and environmental changes were critical to the rise of ancient Peruvian urban societies based on maritime fishing. Shifts in environmental conditions are recorded in coastal geological features that correlate to high Andes glacial cores.