At www.physorg.com/print202991457.html Sept 6th … there is a report that says Irish scientists have found fragments of Egyptian papyrus in the leather cover of an ancient book of psalms that was unearthed from a peat bog where it had been preserved. This is the first tangible connection between early Irish Christians and the Coptic Church, according to the National Museum of Ireland. The manuscript’s leather binding also has an origin in Egypt – but the manuscript inside the cover was produced in an Irish monastery. Basically, the leather cover had been recycled as a folder for the psalter.
At www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/342790,1200-year-old-global-trade-route.html is a story about the discovery of silver coins of Arab origin found in a field in North Germany and dating back to 820AD – evidenceof trade between Slavs and the Islamic empire of the Abbasids. The site was near the Baltic coast and suggests a trade route between the Scandinavians and the Slavs ultimately reaching the Middle East via the Black Sea, Dneiper and Volga rivers.
BBC News Sept 4th … a Saxon boat almost 10 feet long has been found in a Norfolk river bed, while at www.aina.org/ata/2010082916908.htm a written trade agreement in cuneiform script has been identified from excavations in SE Anatolia. At Kultepe-Karum, a site first dug as long ago as 1948, some 23,000 clay tablets have been unearthed. The site was an Assyrian trade colony in the Middle Bronze Age, a short distance from Kanesh.
At the Peoples Daily online site, www.english.people.com.ch/90001/90782/90873/7131352.htm some 400 ancient tombs going back four and a half thousand years in Inner Mongolia, China, have been opened up and finds include hats made of bones found tightly pushed on to the heads of skeletons constructed out of up to 16 separate pieces of bone. Meanwhile, over in Canada (www.heritagekey.com August 31st) a four and a half thousand year old house, and settlement, near the shore of Lake Huron in Ontario, seems to show that people were living a sedantory lifestyle at the time – without pottery or obvious traces of agriculture. The house was engulfed in a flood disaster and somewhat later rubbish was piled on top of the remains (www.worldbulletin.net/news_detail.php?id=63181 )