Egill Skallagrimsson almost certainly had a bone disorder called Paget's Disease, which would account for a number of his bizarre characteristics, physical and temperamental.

Another phenomenal crop of links from xthread, including ( Read more... )

Skeleton described as "more important than Lucy" has features unlike either humans or modern apes.

A guy with a metal detector just found an Anglo-Saxon gold hoard bigger than the Sutton Hoo burial.

Okay, the skeletons here are cool, but check out the 8000-year-old life-size stone carving of a giraffe!

From languagelog:

This evening I stumbled on a fascinating web site that some of you may also find interesting. It is The Vindolanda Tablets Online. The site provides access to the tablets excavated from a Roman fort of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries C.E. in Britain, just south of Hadrians Wall. There is background information about history, geography ( Read more... )

Expanding circular table. A thing of beauty.

Zunafish: a site for swapping books/CDs/etc. with other people. $1 per trade.

Stonehenge was rebuilt in the 20th century.

Foodieview: a recipe search engine ( Read more... )

The ancient Egyptians may have cast the higher pyramid stones from powdered limestone, rather than moving solid blocks. Thanks, meowse.

2000-year-old astronomical calculator. tugger and I saw a TV show about this thing some time ago--fascinating stuff!

Turns out, the Essenes had careful ritual toilet habits that were exactly wrong for desert living. Sad. Thanks, elfs.