Archaeologist Abdul Qader Hussan of the Rihab Centre for Archaeological Studies believes he has located the first Christian church, which lies beneath Saint Georgeous Church in Rihab, Mafraq.
“We have evidence to believe this church sheltered the early Christians: the 70 disciples of Jesus Christ,” the scholar said.
The early Christians, described in the mosaic inscription on St. Georgeous floor as “the 70 beloved by God and Divine”, are said to have fled from Jerusalem during the persecution of Christians, to the northern part of Jordan, particularly to Rihab, he added.
Citing historical sources, the expert said the 70 lived and practised their rituals in secrecy in this underground church.
We believe that they did not leave the cave and lived until the Christian religion was embraced by Roman rulers.
“It was then when St. Georgeous was built,” said Hussan.
Saint Georgeous is believed to be the oldest “proper” church in the world, built in 230AD. This status is only challenged by a church unearthed in Aqaba in 1998, also dating back to 3rd century.
The findings in the graveyard near the cave offer valuable clues, according to Hussan.
“We found pottery items that date back from the 3rd to 7th century,” he added. The findings show that the first Christians and their offshoot continued living in the area till the late Roman rule.
So when did product branding first begin? According to David Wengrow of the University College of London, it all started 5,000 year ago in Mesopotamia.
Many stoppers have been found in the ancient city of Uruk, now in Iraq, where some 20,000 people lived 5000 years ago. The symbol impressions are the first images produced mechanically in human history, says Wengrow. The images have long been regarded as works of art, but he believes that what we now consider art may actually have been promotional branding.
"I think Wengrow is onto something," says Mitchell Rothman, an anthropologist at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, although he is not convinced that the ancients were using branding "in the commercial sense".
LiveScience has posted their weekly article examining ancient discoveries that continue to influence modern life. This time around, Heather Whipps explores how Chinese alchemists were experimenting with elixirs in their quest for immortality and inadvertently stumbled upon the recipe for gunpowder. From life to death in one fell swoop.
Chinese scientists had been playing with saltpeter — a common name for the powerful oxidizing agent potassium nitrate — in medical compounds for centuries when one industrious individual thought to mix it with sulfur and charcoal.
The result was a mysterious powder from which, observers remarked in a text dated from the mid-9th century, "smoke and flames result, so that [the scientists'] hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down."
It never seems to fail: the majority of earth-changing discoveries are found by accident.
Brainiacs at UC Irvine have discovered a cluster of galaxies in the early stages of formation, pegging the age at a whopping 11.4 billion years old, which stands as the new record holder.
“When you observe objects this far away, you are actually seeing the universe as it was a very long time ago,” said Jeff Cooke, a McCue Postdoctoral Fellow in physics and astronomy at UCI and lead author of this study. “It is as if a timeline is just sitting out there in front of you. These galaxies represent what the universe looked like well before the Earth existed.”
“Our finding suggests that this is a monster structure being born in a very bright, catastrophic event with a lot of gas and matter collapsing at once,” Bullock said. “We are not just seeing one solitary galaxy. We are seeing a bunch of bright galaxies coming together at the dawn of structure formation in the universe.”
The journal Science is slated to report in its online edition that scientists have discovered the oldest asteroids ever detected in our solar system. Three rocks in particular were observed by Hawaii's Mauna Kea telescope using infrared and visible light, offering up results that showed huge amounts of calcium and aluminum.
From Space.com:
An abundance of these elements indicates that the objects were formed when the solar system was young because during that time the first materials to condense into solid particles were rich in calcium and aluminum. These three asteroids contain two to three times the amount of calcium and aluminum-rich material of any space rock found on Earth.
According to scientists at Lancaster University in the UK, new research has revealed that ancient geysers on Mars spewed forth towering jets of...carbonated water! This is huge news for Coca-Cola, assuming they have any interest in terraforming the Red Planet.
The evidence for this appears at two sites on Mars where cracks hundreds of kilometres long called Mangala Fossa and Cerberus Fossae stretch across the surface. Both cracks are the starting points for broad channels that appear to have carried huge quantities of water – between 10 and 100 times the flow of the Amazon River.
How was Mars able to generate enough power to send a jet of carbonated water 3-4 kilometers into the air? Answers...and more questions, on page 2.
