Some great news today…

Ireland’s ancient Hill of Tara, once the seat of the high kings, was today named one of the world’s 100 most endangered heritage sites.

The New York-based World Monument Fund placed Tara on its crisis list after campaigns and court battles failed to reroute a controversial motorway away from it.

Since 1965, the body has saved 420 irreplaceable sites around the world, including the ancient Buddhist temple of Preah Khan at Angkor, Cambodia, built in 1191.

Read the rest here.

via BreakingNews.ie
30/12/2006 – 21:53:48

Irish language courses are more popular than ever with a record number of people attending the Gaeltacht this year.

Over 25,000 people studied in the Gaeltacht in 2006, the most there has ever been.

A thousand of those attending Irish language courses were adult learners, while the rest were young students going to summer colleges.

Gaeltacht Minister Eamon O Cuiv was very happy with the news.

“Certainly Irish is alive and kicking,” he said.

“A number of things have happened to strengthen the language in recent times: TG4, the Language Act and the recent statement by the Government in relation to the language are all major boosters.”

Things will be somewhat odd here for a while, as I’m working on the new theme. Please don’t mind the dust.

Got the webring code re-added, although I had to rewrite it and code it properly, and it passes XHTML 1.0 Strict!

I’ve recently created a very nice Amazon affiliated online store with some personally chosen Featured Products that may be of interest to this site’s visitors. It comes complete with a secure shopping cart for multiple item purchases, as well as discounts on shipping (on some items with purchases over $25), and a nice search tool if you’re looking for something specific but don’t see it in my Shoppe.

I’ve created this to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online. Information and tools for buying at Amazon.com are now at your fingertips.

Visit Áine’s Shoppe today, and thank you in advance for your patronage. Proceeds from Amazon.com help to keep this web site alive.

After a brief hiatus, it looks like we’re back online with all entries, comments, and miscellaneous bits intact. Much thanks to Rob Beckett, who helped tremendously in solving our MySql importation problems. Without his help, it might have taken months to painstakingly put this site back together after having moved it from the old server to the new one. Thanks to Rob for the assist!!

**Note for the future: When exporting an SQL file from within phpMyAdmin, make sure the following checkboxes are checked before saving as a File:

Under Structure – Add DROP TABLE
Under Data – Complete Inserts, and Extended Inserts

We’re both still scratching our heads over WHY mySql table collations are under latin1_swedish_ci, since some variation of UTF-8 would be the one that would tend to leave all special characters intact, but this is, apparently, the default setting for mySql. Because of this, you may notice that special characters that are required in the Irish language may not look proper in various entries here. I’m correcting them by hand, little by little, but may not have gotten to the funkiness you’re looking at just yet. Be patient, I’ll get there eventually.

by James Owen
for National Geographic News
January 20, 2006

Up to three million men living around the world today could be descended from a fifth-century Irish king, according to a new study.

Research suggests as many as 1 in 12 men in Ireland carry the genes of Niall of the Nine Hostages, bolstering claims that the ancient warlord founded a dynasty that dominated Ireland for centuries.

Some historians doubt Niall’s existence, comparing his legend to that of King Arthur.

But scientists at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland say a distinctive genetic signature on the male Y chromosome, which is passed down from father to son, leads to Niall or some similar figure.

Niall had 12 sons, according to folklore, and took nine key hostages, including Saint Patrick, as way to subdue opponents and consolidate power.
(more…)

The End of the Rainbow

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 29, 2005
New York Times
Dublin

Here’s something you probably didn’t know: Ireland today is the richest country in the European Union after Luxembourg. (more…)

By WILLIAM McCALL
Associated Press Writer
39 minutes ago

After nearly a decade of court battles, scientists plan to begin studying the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man next week.

A team of scientists plans to examine the bones at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum in Seattle beginning July 6, according to their attorney, Alan Schneider.

Four Northwest Indian tribes had opposed the study, claiming the skeleton could be an ancestor who should be buried. The Interior Department and the Army Corps of Engineers had sided with the tribes.
(more…)

Archaeologists find more Iron Age buildings
The Truro Packet, Cornwall, UK

An archaeological excavation has been carried out at Truro College playing fields before construction work for the Fal Building begins. The work, by a team of archaeologists from Cornwall county council’s historic environment service (HES), has been funded by Truro College.

Three large areas were stripped by machine, targeting anomalies of possible archaeological interest indicated by a geophysical survey carried out last autumn.

The archaeological work then concentrated in one of the areas adjacent to the site of the new Richard Lander School where an Iron Age settlement of 12 hut circles was discovered by HES last summer. An oval-shaped house, part of the same settlement, was excavated and fragments of Iron Age pottery, known as South Western Decorated Ware dating to the 2nd or 1st century BC, were recovered from the eaves-drip gully surrounding the house. A La Téne Celtic brooch of broadly the same date was discovered alongside the pottery.

Even more exciting was the discovery of another Iron Age settlement, comprising three round houses within an enclosure ditch. All that remained of these houses were holes in the ground to hold the posts that would have supported the wattle walls and thatched roofs and pits in which their hearths were lit.

The pottery from the second settlement has still to be identified but appears to be of the Cordoned Ware style which, according to its type, can belong to three different phases spanning the later Iron Age and Roman-British periods and may indicate the second settlement represents a slightly later phase of occupation on the site.

The help of volunteers from the Cornwall Archaeological Society and Truro College’s archaeology department has been much appreciated. It is proposed to exhibit some of the finds in a permanent display in one of the new buildings, probably in the public entrance area.

Iranian, Japanese archaeologists to study Neolithic caves at Tang-e Bolaghi

TEHRAN, June 18 (Mehr News Agency) — A team of Iranian and Japanese archaeologists is to study two Neolithic caves located at the ancient site of Tang-e Bolaghi in Iran’s southern province of Fars, an expert of Iran’s Archaeological Research Center announced on Saturday.

According to an agreement signed between the Archaeological Research Center and the University of Tsukuba, several Iranian archaeologists and eight experts from the Japanese university will begin work at the site next month,� Karim Alizadeh added.

“Due to the dearth of studies on Iranian Neolithic caves, the upcoming studies on the two caves will be very important,” he noted.

The caves are located in the area that is to become the reservoir of the Sivand Dam, which is scheduled to come on stream in March 2006, flooding some very significant ancient sites.

Tang-e Bolaghi is situated only four kilometers away from Pasargadae, the first capital of the Achaemenid dynasty (about 550-331 BC) and the residence of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. Even the mausoleum of Cyrus the Great is believed to be at risk. Pasargadae was registered on UNESCO’s World Heritage List last July.

Tang-e Bolaghi also contains sites from the Paleolithic period, the early, middle, and late Elamite era (2700-645 BC), and the Sassanid era (224-651 CE).

Alongside the Iranian experts, teams of Italian, French, Polish, German, Australian, and Japanese archaeologists have been assigned to save 129 ancient sites at Tang-e Bolaghi.

The Neolithic period pertains to the last phase of the Stone Age, marked by the domestication of animals, the development of agriculture, and the manufacturing of pottery and textiles. It is commonly thought to have begun circa 9000–8000 BC in the Middle East.

Possible Great Plains Campsite 700 Years Too Early
By Associated Press

GOODLAND, Kan. (AP) — Archaeologists have returned to a dig near the Colorado-Kansas border for a third summer, but this year’s dig has taken on new importance. Radiocarbon dating results finished in February showed that mammoth and prehistoric camel bones found at a rural site near Kanorado, about a mile from the Colorado border, dated back to 12,200 years ago.

That would mean people who once camped at the site may have arrived in the Great Plains 700 years before historians previously thought. (more…)