Paul and Barbara Brown have discovered, recorded and published hundreds of marked rock faces in northern Britain. The latest example comes from Swaledale in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Stone number 1594 in their collection is a wedge shaped sandstone boulder with 81 cups, 16 of them surrounded by single rings and one with three rings, all incorporated within a sea (or sky?) of shallow 'pecked' grooves. It doesn't seem to have any connection with plasma or aurorae but the ring as a shape was of course reproduced in henges and stone circles, and round barrows.

The big fightback is now in earnest it seems. Over in Australia the ABC science correspondent of many years, Robyn Williams, said in 2007 he actually thought it was possible that global sea levels will rise 100m in the next 100 years. He is now saying that AGW supporters are not agressive enough and need to fight back against the rising tide of scepticism (see www.climategate.com ).

http://praguemonitor.com March 8th ... Czech archaeologists have found remnants of a 150,000 years old prehistoric settlement at Arbil in northern Iraq - what is now Kurdistan. The find consisted mainly of stone tools 9m under the surface.

www.google.com/hostednews/ March 6th ... this is another version of a story posted last week but has some interesting detail not in the initial news report. Indonesian archaeologists on the island of Flores are scouring the cave complex for clues about the ancestors of the fossilised skeleton of the Hobbit. On one side are those who claim the Hobbit is a throwback to much earlier times and critics who say they are modern humans with a genetic disorder that caused the body and brain to shrink - or become dwarf.