by JESSICA E. SARACENI
A lead tube discovered in the hull of a second-century A.D. Roman ship could be a piece of a pumping system for on-board fish tanks. “It would change completely our idea of the fish market in antiquity. We thought that fish must have been eaten near the harbors where the fishing boats arrived. With this system it could be transported everywhere,” said marine archaeologist Carlo Beltrame of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
Three human skulls and a 2,000-year-old mummy from the Paracas culture on Peru’s coast were recovered by customs agents at Argentina’s central post office.
A string of fortresses on a pre-Columbian border between the Inca and the Cayambe of Ecuador suggests that the two groups may have battled each other, as suggested by later Spanish chroniclers.
Sediment cores taken from lakes in Greenland indicate that cooler temperatures in the twelfth century may help explain why the Vikings abandoned their colonies. “You have an interval when the summers are long and balmy and you build up the size of your farm, and then suddenly year after year, you go into this cooling trend, and the summers are getting shorter and colder and you can’t make as much hay,” said William D’Andrea of Brown University.
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