And you thought this was all settled - apparently not:

A leading expert on the shroud of Turin has won the support of an Oxford University laboratory for new carbon dating tests on the venerated but controversial relic, which was dismissed two decades ago as a fake.

Carbon dating tests carried out in 1988 indicated that the shroud, long revered as the winding-sheet in which the body of Jesus was wrapped for burial and bearing his imprint, had been made between 1260 and 1390.

The Catholic church admitted at the time that the shroud could not be authentic.

John Jackson, a physicist at Colorado University and a prominent expert on the relic, has argued that the tests were skewed by 1,300 years because of high levels of carbon monoxide. He said many other elements of the shroud, including details of the image, indicate that it is much more ancient.

Jackson will now work with the Oxford University lab to reassess the age of the relic. However, for now he'll have to work theoretically, because a Catholic spokesman has said that any tests will have to wait until after it is put on public display in 2010 - if the Vatican agrees at all to the new testing.

If modern civilisations were to fall in the same manner as ancient Egypt, would future generations be able to figure out the basics of our languages? The discovery of the Rosetta Stone provided the key to unlocking the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs. But modern writing is largely on paper or computer disks, which do not have the lifetime of stone.

Influential tech-geek/journalist Kevin Kelly has a fascinating rundown on how the Long Now Foundation addressed this problem, with their 'Modern Rosetta Stone':

During a Long Now field trip to a southwest archaeological site, the idea of a modern Rosetta Stone came up -- a backup of human languages that future generations might cherish. At a winter retreat in 1999, Long Now board member Doug Carlston suggested that for the parallel common text of this modern Rosetta Stone we should use the book of Genesis, since it was most likely already translated into all languages already. We hatched a plan to produce a 3-inch non-corroding disk which contained at least 1,000 translations of Genesis and other linguistic information about each language.

Following the archiving principle of LOCKS (Lots of Copies Keep 'em Safe) we would replicate the disk promiscuously and distribute them around the world with built in magnifiers. This project in long term thinking would do two things: it would showcase this new long-term storage technology, and it would give the world a minimal backup of human languages. We thought it might take a year to do.

Long story short, it took eight years. Last night at a ceremony at the Long Now museum in Fort Mason, one of five prototype disks Rosetta disk was presented to the Oliver Wilke Foundation, a Frankfurt-based linguistic center, who help support the project.

Check out Kelly's article for more details of this fascinating project. Also pretty cool is this tidbit of information regarding an earlier prototype, which is the stuff science fiction books are made of:

But it was not the very first disk. That one is in space. In 2004 the Rosetta Space Probe was launched by the European Space Agency. This small craft was created to land on a comet in 2014. Before it blasted off, the ESA contacted us because we share names. They asked if we'd like to mount a version of the disk on their probe. Of course we would! We had manufactured a pure nickel disc with a subset of 6,000 pages of language translations, which was mounted on the payload section of the probe.

So assuming the mission continues well, in 2014 the Rosetta Probe will land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, where it will measure the comet's molecular composition. Then it will remain at rest as the comet orbits the sun for hundreds of millions of years. So somewhere in the solar system, where it is safe but hard to reach, a backup sample of human languages is stored, in case we need one.

Or perhaps, not so much fiction. Who knows what's out there orbiting our Sun, unbeknownst to us...

Long-time readers of TDG will know that I'm very interested in archaeoastronomy (take a look at my essay on "The God With the Upraised Arm" as an example). MSNBC has just published a cool online feature titled "Ten ancient observatories spied from space" which is worth checking out.

Today, cutting-edge astronomers use space-based observatories to gain a sharp view of the stars and advance our understanding of the cosmos. But appreciation for celestial bodies dates back to ancient times. Many cultures built structures in ways that suggest they were in tune with Earth's annual trek around the sun. Other structures appear to take constellations and planets into account... Each page includes an image taken by GeoEye's Ikonos satellite, as it flew 423 miles above Earth at an average speed of 17,000 miles per hour.

Included are obvious sites such as Stonehenge and Chichen Itza, but also lesser known locations including Casa Rinconada and Chankillo.

Previously on TDG: Google Earth Tour of ancient and mysterious places.

Andrew Bayuk has posted his annual "Guardian's Spotlight interview with Dr Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. The interview covers a number of topical areas, including the restoration work on (and laser survey of) the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, and also that the Great Pyramid of Giza will no longer be part of the yearly closing cycle of the Giza pyramids - it will remain open always from now on (though limited to only 300 people per day).

Also mentioned in the interview is the 'persistent' matter of the Queen's Chamber shafts in the Great Pyramid (the site of the "Gantenbrink Door", first discovered...oh, 16 years ago now?):

I meet now with people from Singapore, and scientists from Manchester University, and also from Hong Kong, and we built a kind of a tunnel in the desert, similar to the one in the Great Pyramid, and they made 3 times experiments. And next month we have the final experiment. After that, we’ll choose the team to continue the work...

...We will hope that it’s the beginning of next year, maximum.

Also worth checking out, while you're in the neighbourhood, is this recent update on the Great Sphinx:

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) said that the scientific studies carried out by the Ecology and Engineering Center revealed that the groundwater in front of the sphinx is potable water, found at a depth of 4,8 metres below ground – a level which has not changed since ancient times. He asserted that within two months, the water in front of the Sphinx will be pumped out within the framework of a 2 million LE project being carried out by the Archeological Engineering Centre at Cairo University (AEC).

Needless to say, that area is another that has had it's fair share of rumour and controversy...

The second issue of the new journal Time and Mind has been published:

• "The Symbolic Use of Fire: A Case for its Use in the Late Neolithic Passage Grave Tradition in Wales", by George Nash.
• "Continuity, Causation And Cyclicity: A Cultural Neurophenomenology Of Time-Consciousness", by Charles D. Laughlin and Jason C. Throop.
• Paul Devereux interviews Professor Timothy Darvill regarding 'The Magical Stones of Preseli'
• "Medicine Wheels or "Calendar Sites": Indian Time or the Space/Time Continuum", by Herman E. Bender.
• "Making Sense of the Maltese Temple Period: An Archaeology of Sensory Experience and Perception", by Robin Skeates.

Full details are available via the link, including purchasing options (full mag, or individual articles). Issue 1 remains available for free, if you would like a sample of the content. Thanks Filip.

For those who have always wanted to tour Egypt (something I've been lucky enough to experience), the following might be a fun option: 'alternative Egypt' author Robert Bauval (The Orion Mystery) is conducting two separate group tours of the awe-inspiring sites of ancient Egypt before the end of the year.

The Grand Gathering of the Souls II tour has as its centerpiece a private visit to the foot of The Great Sphinx at dawn on the Autumn Equinox. The complete experience is 11 days, from the 19th to the 30th of September - the first part centered around Cairo, with a later Nile Cruise visiting many of the sites further to the south.

Robert is also hosting another tour in October, a "Romantic tour of the Egyptian Sahara and Desert Oases", which will take in some of the lesser-known treasures of Egypt:

Join a group party of 15 with intrepid desert explorer and discoverer, Mahmoud Marai, and international bestselling author and Egyptologist, Robert Bauval, on a once-in-a-lifetime trip into the deep desert. Visit places like Gilf Kebir and be amongst the first to set eyes on the latest discoveries at Gebel Uwainat, including the Marai-Borda prehistoric cave with rock art. See the world-famous pharaonic inscriptions at the Water Mountain.

The October tour runs from 4th to the 18th. Visit the links above for more details about the tours, as well as information on pricing and reservations.

The provenance of one of archaeology's most mysterious artifacts, the 'Phaistos Disc', has been called into question by Jerome Eisenberg, a specialist in faked ancient art. Eisenberg believes that Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier may have created the Phaistos Disc, and planted it at the palace of Phaistos in Crete, in order to outdo the discoveries of contemporary, English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans:

Dr Eisenberg, who has conducted appraisals for the US Treasury Department and the J. Paul Getty Museum, highlighted the forger's error in creating a terracotta “pancake” with a cleanly cut edge. Nor, he added, should it have been fired so perfectly. “Minoan clay tablets were not fired purposefully, only accidentally,” he said. “Pernier may not have realised this.”

The Greek authorities have refused to give Dr Eisenberg permission to examine the disc outside its display case, arguing that it is too delicate to be moved. His misgivings could be laid to rest by a thermoluminescence test — a standard scientific dating test — but the authorities had refused, he said.

One of the key mysteries surrounding the disc is the spiral of stamped symbols upon it; no-one has successfully identified or decoded their meaning. Under Eisenberg's theory, there would be a good reason for that - they are meaningless. Defenders of the Phaistos Disc have brought up the Arkalochori Axe - which features some characters similar to the Phaistos Disc - as a possible hitch in Eisenberg's hoax claim.

Eisenberg's findings are published in the July-August edition of the archaeological journal Minerva.

The Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge (CPAK) is back again this year, with another excellent line-up of speakers. Scheduled for the weekend of October 4th and 5th, the conference will be held at the University of California, San Diego, and features a mix of new and old blood, including Dr. Robert Schoch, Marie D. Jones, John Anthony West, David Hatcher Childress, Walter Cruttenden and John Dering:

CPAK will again bring together a cadre of authors, scientists and independent researchers to explore the ancient idea that consciousness and history move in a vast cycle of time with alternating Dark and Golden Ages, a cycle Plato called: The Great Year. This once world wide belief in a rise and fall of the ages, is finding increasing support in new interpretations of myth and folklore, discoveries of anomalous artifacts, revisions of archaeological site dating, astronomical insights and new theories of consciousness. .

You can find full details at the CPAK website. While there, you can also watch video from last year's CPAK (e.g. an excerpt from Robert Schoch's lecture from last year) and listen to audio of other presenters (past and present) discussing their pet topics (such as Graham Hancock).

The Rennes-le-Chateau Research and Resource page have added yet another seminal documentary for your viewing pleasure: The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem:

In 1972, British script writer Henry Lincoln introduced the mystery of Rennes-le-Château to the English speaking world through his documentary The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem. It immediately created a storm of publicity and eventually led to the production of a 2nd documentary The Priest the Painter and the Devil in 1974 and the Shadow of the Templars in 1979. This last documentary was already co-researched by Michael Baigent which later led to Henry, Michael and the late Richard Leigh writing the international bestseller Holy Blood Holy Grail.

And as we know, Holy Blood Holy Grail went on to influence many more works of (apparent) non-fiction, and fiction as well - top of the pile, sales-wise, being Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Here's your chance to take a look back and see where it all started (at least in English-language countries).

(Previously on TDG: Shadow of the Templars online.)

Last week Channel 5 in the UK ran a special feature titled "Legend of the Crystal Skulls Revealed". Emps gave a rundown of the show over at Cabinet of Wonders under the heading "Death of a Crystal Skull", so titled on account of the documentary's dismissal of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull as a modern forgery:

In it, the skull was subjected to the kinds of study that have revealed the British Museum and Smithsonian skulls to be fakes, and they found the same kind of tool marks. The people running the tests were pretty clear - they are from cutting machines that only appeared at the end of the 19th century.

However, the official Mitchell-Hedges website posted a prompt response to the Channel 5 feature, calling into question the motives of the producers, and in particular calling out a few dubious lines of reasoning:

[I]t is particularly annoying to see how throughout the length of the documentary, there were dozens of inaccuracies and false claims.

...The gravest of errors committed by the documentary is that it accepted the false premise that pre-Columbian cultures did not have any tools to make the skulls. It is none other than Michael Coe who has said this statement should not be taken as dogma, yet it is precisely that which several researchers, whether Jane Walsh, Margaret Sax, or television producers such as those making this documentary, hold...

Furthermore, the full verdict of the Hewlett-Packard and British Museum claims – both of whom did extensive testing on the skulls, unlike the few hours Walsh has spent with the skull – were not all fully put together and explained, as if they did not matter.

Perhaps the strangest piece of sleight-of-hand though is the removal of Thomas Gann from a photo of Mitchell-Hedges and his co-explorer in Lubaantun - and the photoshopping required to make the image look natural again.

Emps has since posted another entry looking at the Mitchell-Hedges critique, though finding much of it wanting. Also worth noting is that he has also posted YouTube videos of the actual documentary, so you can check it out for yourself.