David Attenborough Digs Into Silbury Hill
guardian - 'The past," says David Attenborough, "is a haunting and fascinating place." The great naturalist is revealing a little-known side of himself: his love of archaeology – and his fascination with Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. The tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe, Silbury Hill rises to a height of 37 metres, making it comparable with the Egyptian pyramids and the ziggurats of Mesopotamia.
In a new English Heritage book about the hill, Attenborough tells how, in 1968 as controller of BBC2, he commissioned a programme that involved tunnelling into its depths to discover why it was there. At the time, the programme was judged a flop, since it found no treasure, no tomb, no real answers at all.
Attenborough is now seeking to set the record straight. He argues that, far from failing, TV's first live dig triggered an unlikely chain of events that recently led to the tunnel being reopened and re-examined, using modern techniques. "They did not unearth any material treasure either," he writes, but instead "added more details to our knowledge and understanding." And this, you could say, is the true purpose of archaeology. In fact, the reopening of the tunnel vindicated the project Attenborough is so proud of: it revealed perhaps as much as will ever be known about this most mysterious of ancient monuments.
Silbury Hill is near Avebury, a quaint English village set inside a prehistoric stone circle. The village is part of a world heritage site that takes in Stonehenge and Silbury Hill. Raised in the same era as the mighty Stonehenge, and just as much of an enigma, the hill boasts chalk sides covered with grass. Construction of the vast, flat-topped cone would have required hundreds of workers and taken an age, but the people who built it left no records as to why.
BBC2 was a new channel in the 60s, with a brief to experiment. "We were going to do new television," says Attenborough. "Everything we did would be in some way identifiable as new. With archaeology we thought, 'Why can't we do a live excavation?' We would have cameras there so, if necessary, we could interrupt other programmes."
The plan was to dig a tunnel into the heart of the hill. Professor Richard Atkinson, who led the dig, had interesting ideas about what might be in there. "Richard was the first to notice Mycenean daggers on Stonehenge," says Attenborough. These made Atkinson believe Stonehenge was built by a culture in contact with ancient Greece, whose chief wanted a dramatic tomb.
This was TV as real adventure, and it captured the public imagination. Some saw it as a treasure hunt; others as a mix of horror and science-fiction. "Atkinson," says Attenborough, "didn't necessarily think there was going to be a burial [site]. The press said, 'This is a treasure hunt, isn't it?' I said, 'No, it's about little bits of mud.'"
As the tunnel took shape, with news reported continually, nothing much emerged. "People kept saying, 'It's a failure,'" says Attenborough. "But we did discover how it was made." Some people maintained the dig was actually harmful. "Since then, if there have been slumps in the top, people have said, 'Ah ha, it's the BBC's tunnel.' "
In 2000, not just a slump but a hole appeared. Was the tunnel collapsing? No: this was caused by an 18th-century shaft, but archaeologists were still worried. They decided to reopen the BBC tunnel, deploying the latest tools and tests, and then seal it forever.
The new dig suggested that the hill was not a tomb, but a temple – perhaps the greatest in Europe 4,000 years ago. It also showed the hill started as a sacred site, where people came bearing stones; they may have believed they possessed healing powers. Certainly, stones are embedded in the structure and are thought to be highly meaningful by archaeologists. It is like Britain's later cathedrals, which rose up over shrines. Sun worship flourished in prehistoric Britain, so perhaps this was – like those ancient ziggurats – a stairway to heaven to let priests get closer to the sun.
Atkinson's tunnel is now sealed, but its creation marked a time when TV set out to bring drama and glamour to archaeology. As Attenborough says: "Anybody would be thrilled to find a Roman coin in their garden. I know I would."
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Tattoo Assault!
nzherald - A Queensland man faces criminal charges after allegedly tattooing a 40cm-long penis onto his mate's back.
Police have charged a 21-year-old man from Bundamba, near Ipswich, with two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm and one offence relating to the public safety act.
He will appear in Ipswich Magistrates Court on November 15.
It will cost the 25-year-old alleged victim about $2000 to remove the lewd tattoo.
It depicts a 40cm-long image of a penis and a misspelled slogan implying the man is gay.
Police said the pair had a disagreement before the tattooing.
Ipswich Detective Constable Paul Malcolm said the victim was mortified by what happened to him.
"The victim wasn't interested (in a tattoo) at first but he was talked into it and he said he wanted a Yin and Yang symbol with some dragons," Det Malcolm told the Queensland Times.
"The bloke started doing the tattoo and there was another bloke standing there watching saying, 'Mate, it's looking really good.'
"He was told not to go out into the sun and not to show anyone for a few weeks.
"When he got home he showed it to the person he lives with and she said: 'I dont think it's the tattoo you were after'."
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Spirits Blamed for Girls Fainting
smh - Teachers of 10 teenage girls who collapsed one after another at their rural Cambodian school blamed the mysterious ailment on angry spirits on Saturday.
The girls, aged between 14 and 18, were treated in hospital after fainting but doctors could not ascertain why the youngsters were struck down, said Ruos Lim Chhee, head of the high school in Pnov, northern Cambodia.
He said that all of the girls were found to be healthy, with no signs of food poisoning, although two were a little low on glucose.
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"We are afraid we are under a spell because we didn't offer any traditional dancing and music to the spirits on the opening day this year," he said.
"But we have just offered fruits, boiled chickens and wine to the spirits today, and we hope the students will get better and the spirits will take care of us."
Mil Khim, a teacher who witnessed the string of incidents on Thursday, said one of his students started to complain of chest pains early in the morning and then suffered convulsions before falling unconscious.
"The strange phenomenon lasted only a few hours, as eight seventh graders and two from eighth and ninth grade fainted subsequently," he said.
Cambodians in rural areas often believe supernatural forces are behind unexplained events.
"We think that perhaps the spirits are angry because the doctors, teachers and even police found no trace of poison or physical weakness," said district governor, Pech Sophea.
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Blame it on the Aliens!
Kevin Horner said it may have just been a coincidence the chicken with two extra legs was born as he was passing through Wycliffe Well, 1100km south of Darwin, last Wednesday, the Northern Territory News said.
He has dubbed the chirpy little hy-line brown chicken "Drumstick" on account of her unexplained extra limbs.
"I have never seen or heard of a four-legged chicken," he said.
"I've bred about 100,000 chickens over the years. I've never seen anything like this.
"The first thing I saw was it sitting in there and thought it was sitting on a dead chicken.
"I just saw these other extra little feet.
"I think it formed from a double yolk egg, I don't think it's all that uncommon, but I've never seen it before."
Mr Horner, 59, of Noonamah said not everyone believed him when he first revealed his bizarre new pet.
"I said it to my wife and she said, 'what have you been drinking'," he said.
"I told a few people down at the pub about her and they said I must have done some good drugs."
Drumstick is reportedly not facing any segregation from the other chickens. And the chicken will be spared from becoming a meal and will instead be a prized pet.
Did the aliens do it?
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NASA to Lead Global Asteroid Response
nature - NASA will play a leading part in protecting the United States and the world from the threat of a dangerous asteroid strike, according to letters sent by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), to Congressional committee leaders on Friday.
Holdren's letters to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House Committee on Science and Technology assign responsibilities to the US space agency that go beyond its 2005 Congressional mandate to detect and track 90% of potentially hazardous asteroids with a diameter greater than 140 metres. To date the agency has found 903 of the estimated 1,050 asteroids with diameters of a kilometre or more passing within about 50 million kilometres of the Earth.
NASA will be mandated to notify other organizations, including the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), if a dangerous asteroid is found, and to drive research and development on the capability needed to deflect the rock.
In assigning NASA's new asteroid defence role by 15 October, Holdren was meeting a requirement of the 2008 NASA Authorization Act. Under the act OSTP is also required to choose an agency or agencies that would protect the United States and implement a deflection, if one were necessary.
Ramping up funds
So far, NASA's mandate to track near-Earth objects has been largely unfunded.
Former US astronaut Russell 'Rusty' Schweickart, who has advocated for the United States and other countries to be more active in planetary defence against asteroids, says that NASA's amplified responsibilities give it a platform for asking Congress for extra funds. "This is a major step forward," he says. Schweickart co-chairs NASA's Ad-Hoc Task Force on Planetary Defense, set up by the agency in March with the expectation that it would be assigned a leading role in coordinating asteroid defence.
Holdren also envisions a key role for FEMA in passing along news of the impending strike to states and territories that could be affected. "The essence of the planned notification approach is to utilize existing communications resources and mechanisms resident at FEMA," he wrote in the letters.
The letters add that NASA would make additional notifications through the US State Department and diplomatic channels to other countries that could be affected, and to the United Nations. Those notifications would be updated by NASA as more information became available about the threat, up until one day in advance of the projected impact, Holdren says.
Strategic defense
The ad-hoc task force released a report on 6 October listing actions NASA should take on planetary defence. It recommended the establishment of a Planetary Defense Coordination Office, with an annual budget of around US$250 million, and the initiation of a mission to prove capability to deflect an asteroid.
Holdren notes in his letters that the President's budget for the 2011 fiscal year asks for a three-fold increase in funds for near-Earth object detection activities, from $5.8 million to $20.3 million. It remains to be seen whether next year's budget request will cater for the agency's additional responsibilities. "It's especially important that those activities discussed by the OSTP be supported by a proposed budget to cover those modest costs required," says Tom Jones, another former astronaut and co-chair of the ad-hoc task force.
Despite being fairly specific about notification procedures, Holdren's letters were much vaguer about the methods for deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. He says that the US government's assessment of deflection options is still at an early stage.
"As NASA tests in space the techniques and technologies needed for deflection, the OSTP should re-examine this question and identify the lead agency — or agencies — to actually execute a deflection demonstration," says Jones.
