BS: Lovers...

Subject: BS: Lovers...
From: beardedbruce
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 01:46 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/02/07/prehistoric.love.ap/index.html

"ROME, Italy (AP) -- It could be humanity's oldest story of doomed love.

Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period locked in a tender embrace and buried outside Mantua. The site is just 25 miles south of Verona, the romantic city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of "Romeo and Juliet.""

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 01:58 PM

Romance is so wonderful but when you get down to the bare bones of relationships.......

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:03 PM

You mean from where Shakespeare stole an already popular love story....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: beardedbruce
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:07 PM

True, LTS. MOST of Shakespeare was from popular stories of the day- Almost no original plots. just a well written stage production.


But then, he did expect to gain fame and respect from his sonnets...

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:13 PM

This is really interesting.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: catspaw49
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:24 PM

I wonder if one of them was wearing a diaper and packing pepper spray?

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Amos
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:28 PM

Well, we're assuming they were lovers, but they could have just been two obstinate neighbors who starved to death refusing to blink or back down from a staring contest.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:30 PM

Wanna feel my bone honey?

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: dianavan
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:30 PM

This is terribly romantic and just at the right time - just before Valentines Day.

I wonder about the mythology that might have preceded Shakespeares production of Romeo and Juliette. It must have been a pretty good story to have survived neo-lithic times.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: beardedbruce
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:31 PM

Not likely, from the picture...

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: GUEST,Cruz
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:35 PM

What a way to Go!

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:53 PM

Actually they look like 'Romeo and Jules'

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 02:58 PM

Yeah, but they're both males.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Wesley S
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 03:01 PM

Traces of a Snickers bar was found between them....

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: fat B****rd
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 03:14 PM

Obviously catwalk men.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: GUEST,Cruz
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 03:40 PM

I would guess after that long with the same partner and same postion, the sex was agittin' a little old.

Song connection:

"I'm diggin' up bones, I'm diggin' up bones, diggin' up bones
Exhuming things that's better left alone
I'm resurrecting memories of love that's dead and gone
Yeah tonight I'm sittin' alone diggin' up bones"

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Scoville
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 04:26 PM

Jack and Ennis.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: dianavan
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 04:48 PM

Really? Both Males? This could put a modern edge on an old story, "Romeo and Julian."

Do we know for sure the sex of both?

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 04:54 PM

Musta been a wrestling match gone wrong, then ...

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: bobad
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 04:57 PM

Could it be Pyramus and Thisbe?

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: beardedbruce
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 07:06 PM

"Buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric pair are believed to have been a man and a woman and are thought to have died young, as their teeth were found intact, said Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig."


Perhaps those commenting could bother to read the article....

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 07:30 PM

Wow. The state of preservation is amazing. Most neolithic remains are stone tools, or fragments of skull, not perfect skeletons. The double burial is intriguing as well...

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: beardedbruce
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 08:04 PM

3000 to 4000 BCE? Lots of complete sets of remains. Still Neolithic, I guess- at least in Italy.
The Villanovan culture was the earliest Iron Age culture of central and northern Italy, abruptly following the Bronze Age Terramare culture and giving way in the 7th century BCE to an increasingly Orientalizing culture influenced by Greek traders, which was followed without a severe break by the Etruscan civilization. Villanovan cultural origins, but perhaps not all its peoples, lay in the Eastern Alps, with connections to the Halstatt culture. The Villanovans introduced iron-working to the Italian peninsula; they practiced cremation and buried the ashes of their dead in pottery urns of distinctive double-cone shape.

The culture is broadly divided into a proto-Villanovan culture (Villanovan I) from 1100 BC to 900 BC and the Villanovan culture proper (Villanovan II) from 900 BC to 700 BC, when the Etruscan cities began to be founded.


Terramare or Terramara is a Bronze Age archaeological culture of Italy and Dalmatia, dating to ca. 1500-1100 BC. It takes its name from the "black earth" (terremare) residue of settlement mounds.

This civilization is represented by a number of finds, once thought to be sepulchral, but really the remains of human habitations, analogous to shell heaps or kitchen middens, the "black earth" used by later farmers as fertilizer. They are found chiefly in north Italy, in the valley of the Po, in the vicinity of Modena, Mantua and Parma. A summary of early results as to these mounds was published by Munro (Lake Dwellings) in 1890, but scientific investigation really began only with the excavation of the terramare at Fontanellato (province of Parma) in 1889. From this and succeeding investigations certain general conclusions have been reached.


The Bronze Age was a period in the civilization's development when the most advanced metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use) consisted of techniques for smelting copper and tin from naturally occurring outcroppings of ore, and then alloying those metals in order to cast bronze. The Bronze Age forms part of the three-age system for prehistoric societies. In that system, it follows the Neolithic in some areas of the world. In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Neolithic is directly followed by the Iron Age.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: beardedbruce
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 08:13 PM

The Neolithic[1], or "New" Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology that is traditionally the last part of the Stone Age. The Neolithic era follows the terminal Holocene Epipalaeolithic periods, beginning with the rise of farming, which produced the "Neolithic Revolution" and ending when metal tools became widespread in the Copper Age (chalcolithic) or Bronze Age or developing directly into the Iron Age, depending on geographical region.

Neolithic culture appeared in the Levant (Jericho, Palestine) about 8500 BC. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered wild cereal use, which then evolved into true farming. The Natufians can thus be called "proto-Neolithic" (11,000-8500 BC). As the Natufians had become dependent on wild cereals in their diet, and a sedentary way of life had begun among them, the climatic changes associated with the Younger Dryas forced people to develop farming. By 8500-8000 BC farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Anatolia, North Africa and North Mesopotamia.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: beardedbruce
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 08:17 PM

Neolithic settlements include:

Franchthi Cave in Greece, epipalaeolithic (ca. 10,000 BC) settlement, reoccupied between 7500-6000 BC
Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, ca. 9000 BC
Gobustan in Azerbaijan, ca. 5000-8000 BC
Jericho in the Levant, Neolithic from around 8350 BC, arising from the earlier Epipaleolithic Natufian culture
Nevali Cori in Turkey, ca. 8000 BC
Çatalhöyük in Turkey, 7500 BC
Pengtoushan culture in China, 7500-6100 BC
'Ain Ghazal in Jordan, 7250-5000 BC
Dispilio in Greece, ca. 5500 BC
Jiahu in China, 7000 to 5800 BC
Mehrgarh in Pakistan, 7000 BC
Knossus on Crete, ca. 7000 BC
Lahuradewa in India, 6200 BC
Porodin in Republic of Macedonia, 6500 BC [1]
Vrshnik (Anzabegovo) in Republic of Macedonia, 6500 BC [2]
Hemudu culture in China, 5000-4500 BC, large scale rice plantation
around 2000 settlements of Trypillian culture, 5400 BC -- 2800 BC
Knap of Howar and Skara Brae, Orkney, Scotland, from 3500 BC
Brú na Bóinne in Ireland, ca. 3500 BC
lough gur in ireland from around 3000 BC

The world's oldest known engineered roadway, the Sweet Track in England, also dates from this time.

The wheel was invented in the late Neolithic (5th millennium BC), and writing emerged from proto-writing at the period's end, in the 4th millennium BC.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 09:48 PM

Actually, I knew that they were thought to be male and female since I'd read the story yesterday.

Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Beer
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 10:05 PM

Saw a picture of the couple in yesterdays paper. Makes one wonder what really happened.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Amergin
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 10:51 PM

"Til death do us part",

I guess some people don't even get to escape that way....

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: dianavan
Date: 09 Feb 07 - 01:27 AM

I can just see the Valentine cards, now.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 09 Feb 07 - 02:54 AM

I believe they are the unborn twins, complete with teeth, of a twenty six foot woman who became extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs.

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 09 Feb 07 - 02:58 AM

To save someone the trouble of posting...NO I was not implying someone with twenty six legs!

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Lox
Date: 09 Feb 07 - 07:56 PM

wow - weird

That would imply 13 feet on each leg then? assuming she was symmetrical?

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: Charley Noble
Date: 09 Feb 07 - 08:41 PM

Spaw-

LOL

Thanks. That really fouled the keyboard! It wasn't protected with plastic sheeting.

Bearded Bruce-

Are you by chance trying to educate us? Thanks for trying.

I think they were mud wrestlers who fell into a sinkhole.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Lovers...
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Feb 07 - 03:25 PM

Prehistoric skeletons won't be separated



"Menotti also has said there is little doubt the couple's pose was born of a deep love, but warned it could be impossible to determine the exact nature of their relationship and how they died.

Mantua's archaeological office said in a statement Tuesday that, in some cases of the period, the wife would be sacrificed when her husband died and buried with him. However, the statement said that "at the current stage of research" there was no evidence that this was what happened to Mantua pair.

Alongside the couple, archaeologists found flint tools, including an arrowhead and a knife. Experts plan to analyze the tools along with the earth the couple was buried in to see if there are remains of flowers or plants that might have decorated the bodies, Menotti said.

They will also look at the skeletons to verify their sex and search for signs of illness or other possible causes of death, she said.

After undergoing lab tests, the couple are to be displayed at Mantua's Archaeological Museum.

The discovery was made in a region rich in Neolithic treasures, including some 30 burial sites, all single, as well as the remains of prosperous villages filled with artifacts made of flint, pottery and animal horns."