August 29, 2004

MERSEYSIDE fights off a plague of foreign wasps ic Liverpool - Southport,England,UK By Deborah James, Daily Post. WASP infestations have tripled in parts of Merseyside this summer, with pest control officers in one ...

RUSSIAN mystery has otherworldly explanation Taipei Times - Taipei,Taiwan ... He suggests it is part of the core of a comet. "There are plenty of amateurs who organize trips to the site of the Tunguska cataclysm," said Anna Skripnik of ...

FOUR Ravens wipe out 141 grebes in Yellowstone The Bozeman Daily Chronicle - Bozeman,MT ,USA But last May, the Yellowstone National Park ornithologist saw something that really blew his hair back: four ravens systematically killed 141 grebes that were ...

SCIENTISTS bored by UFOs
ABC Science Online - Australia... No meteorite debris was found and scientists concluded that the core of a comet or an asteroid had exploded. Researcher Yuri Lavbin .

WELL-PRESERVED layer of material ejected from Chesapeake Bay ... EurekAlert - Washington ,DC,USA People in Georgia's Dodge and Bleckley counties have for years picked up small pieces of natural glass called "Georgiaites," which were produced by an unknown ...

TWO Airliners Crash In Mysterious Circumstances
Radio Free Europe - Prague,Czech Republic The separate but nearly simultaneous crashes of two Russian passenger jets late last night remains unexplained. Authorities say ...

BRITISH pensioner hit by meteorite ABC Online - Australia TONY EASTLEY: Astronomers are wondering whether a British pensioner has become the first known person to be struck by a meteorite

ANTARCTIC craters reveal asteroid strike Guardian - UK... One thing that did happen at exactly the same time was the reversing of the Earth's magnetic field. There is no other explanation

COULD a meteorite or comet cause all the fires of 1871? Cadillac News - Cadillac,MI,USA... time. Some believe a meteorite or comet was to blame. ... ago. "We started doing an investigation on where the meteorite came from," he said. (EH Note-In the 1970's I lived in this area and remember stories from people passed down by families of massive fireballs flying across Lake Michigan)

SOLAR-POWERED toothpaste-less toothbrush engadget - USA ... more convergence than we're looking for these days, Compact-Impact is selling a titanium oxide toothbrush called the Soladey-3 that uses solar energy

POSSIBLE Meteorite Lands in Turlock Backyard KXTV - Sacramento,CA,USA ... Darmousseh. The family believes what landed in their backyard was a meteorite that likely broke into three pieces on impact.

ATLANTIS "Evidence" Found in Spain and Ireland National Geographic - USA Whether or not Atlantis actually existed has been a great topic of debate for thousands of years. Plato-whose celebrated "dialogues ..

BEE-LINE for safety as swarm moves in ic Solihull.co.uk - Solihull,UK A CONSTRUCTION worker who tried to dislodge a swarm of 10,000 bees which landed on his dumper truck could have lost his life if he had continued with efforts ..

YELLOW peril as plague of wasps invades countyic SurreyOnline.co.uk - Surrey,England,UK By Sarah Cooper. HUNDREDS of people are having to wait for help in dealing with a plague of wasps that has invaded East Surrey.

CLOSING in on a missing legendSan Francisco Chronicle - San Francisco,CA,USA... colors and formations, underground waterfalls, a chain of rooms, tunnels and chutes ... caves in their primal state -- and keep the exact location secret between us ...

BREWERY seeks help over riddle of the deep ic Liverpool - Southport,England,UK... in Toxteth, Liverpool, said he has heard many stories about the "secret" lake from ... the town was wet and flooded and there was lots of water underground to the ...

WOMAN hanging out washing 'hit by meteorite'This is London - London,England,UK By Mark Prigg, Evening Standard. A woman believes she was hit by a meteorite fragment while hanging out her washing. Pauline Aguss ...

STRANGE Things on the MoonAbout U.S. Politics - USA... As mentioned above, strange things have been seen on the moon for centuries-- usually flashes of light or color, or lights that appear to move across the ...

DIVING deep for burials at sea
The Age - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia
... Designs for the Atlantis Memorial Reef, to be built in 10 metres of water, reveal a lavish fantasy city with lofty columns, plazas and statues.

THE FLORIDA KEYS
Atlanta Journal Constitution (subscription) - Atlanta,GA,USA
... We're tempted to keep these places a secret, but they're too wonderful... pool featuring a pirate ship with a moat, slides, cannons and tunnels- all squirting ..

.ARCHAEOLOGISTS to seek Kyrgyz AtlantisWashington Times - Washington,DC,USA... Local people call the disappeared island Atlantis, as in the legendary island said to have existed in the Atlantic Ocean and to have sunk beneath the sea. ...

BIZARRE News: Injured monkeynow acts like a human! Female First - United Kingdom After just one day of being released back into her enclosure Natasha stood upright like a person. Shocked zoo vet Igal Horowitz ...

STRANGE Lights Spotted BeforePower Outage KPHO Phoenix - Phoenix,AZ,USA ... one week ago. Now some are pointing to strange lights in the skies as a possible link to that massive outage! You'll remember the ..

.WINGED Cat from Hell Put to Death in Central Russia
MOSNEWS - Russia... Kursk. The locals drowned the deformed puss after believing it was a messenger of Satan, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reports.

MYSTERY Creature Lurks In Baltimore County WBAL Channel.com - Baltimore,MD,USA.. woods there.". Jay Wroe: "Very bizarre. I went ... hyena and a coyote.

MYSTERIOUS Animal Captured In MarylandWJXX - Jacksonville,FL,USA By First Coast News Staff. GLYNDON, MD -- All it took was a cage and a sirloin steak.

Cleaned May 2006

October 25, 2004

On the Trail of the Analemma
Wired News - USA... to become the eighth known person in the world to have ever photographed a perfect solar analemma. ... If the camera fails -- like the electronics, the battery, etc ...

Officials report bubonic plague case acquired in county
The Torrington Telegram - Torrington,WY,USA Wyoming Department of Health officials said today that they are investigating a bubonic plague case they suspect was acquired in Wyoming by a Colorado man.

Mars rover enjoys mysterious power boost
New Scientist - London,England,UK
Not only are NASA's seemingly unstoppable Mars rovers continuing their progress half a year beyond their design lifetimes, but Opportunity has recently shown ...

Light shed on mysterious Caucasian community in China ABC Online - Australia Chinese archaeologists have started unearthing hundreds of tombs in an arid north-western region once home to a mysterious civilisation that most likely was ...

Plague Found In West Colorado Springs news4colorado.com - Denver,CO,United States COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) Plague has been confirmed in a squirrel on the city's west side, and health officials launched a campaign to eradicate fleas that ...

FarShores News: Bolide Theory Linked To Twin Fireballs Above ...
... Bank Observatory in Cheshire believes the cause could be a bolide - a meteor ... in yesterday's MEN, dozens of people called the police and fire service after

October 21, 2004

Multiple Impacts?
Astrobiology Magazine - USA
... One way such impact clustering happens is to have a single bolide break up as ... whole northern part of the sky appeared to be covered with fire." -Farmer Sergei ...

October 18, 2004

"Fireball in sky" clue to blast
Manchester Evening News - Manchester,England,UK
... Bank Observatory in Cheshire believes the cause could be a bolide - a meteor ... in yesterday's MEN, dozens of people called the police and fire service after ...

Review: 'Evil Genius' amuses with strategy, satire
CNN - USA
... The first order of business is to build a secret underground base on an island. This lair will eventually house everything from ...

One arrest as station 'invaded'
BBC News - London,England,UK
... "They were running around in the London Underground, the main station and the surrounding area," a British Transport Police spokesman said.

October 14, 2004

Searching for the 'Mayan Atlantis'
Independent Online - South Africa
Mexico City - A team of international archaeologists have set sail from Mexico to seek a sunken city that has been dubbed the "Mayan Atlantis", press reports ...

Officials, former followers dispute rumors of tunnels at Samanta ...
Shawano Leader - Shawano,WI,USA
... The activity has fueled rumors that Samanta Roy and his group have been building extensive underground tunnels, and even bunkers.

Hurricanes reveal new Indian sites
Palm Beach Post - Palm Beach,FL,United States... Jeanne swept away some artifacts. What's a midden? ... Then Frances sliced them open, exposing a wall of artifacts atop a slab of Anastasia rock. ...

Franz JT Lee: DIANA versus HAARP Venezuela Electronic News - Venezuela ... We also informed the public about the Philadelphia Experiments, Mkultra, Operation Paper-Clip, the Manchurian Candidate, HAARP, Pentagon Aliens, Tesla's free

October 11, 2004

Secret Underground Bases: Lecture by Phil Schneider ... Sixty-six secret service agents, FBI, Black Berets and the like, died in that firefight.
I was there. ... Deep Underground Military Bases and the Black Budget:

Drivers Report Mysterious Flash Of Light In Sky WDIV - Detroit,MI,USA A local radio station's phone lines lit up Thursday morning after motorists reported seeing a mysterious flash of light in the sky, Local 4 reported. ...

Mysterious Earth 'hum' solved
New Zealand Herald - Auckland,New Zealand Seismologists believe they have pinpointed the source of a mysterious low-frequency "hum" that emanates from the Earth, Nature reports.

Last cleaned May 2006

November 29, 2004

When the bare necessities of life are the greatest luxury
The Scotsman - Edinburgh,Scotland,UK
... Spruce poles. On to these poles I attached that vital piece of wilderness survival equipment: the portable loo seat. After adding ...

November 25, 2004

Mysterious papers found in monarch's Paris statue
Expatica - Netherlands
PARIS, Nov 22 (AFP) - French scientists and historians are trying to unravel the secrets behind a cache of documents hidden nearly two centuries ago inside one ...

November 22, 2004

Ancient Tibetan city 中国西�信�中心 - Beijing,China ... buzzing lives a millennium ago, with well -planned residential areas, ritual and public buildings, defence walls and even secret underground tunnels," said

Locusts invade Israel News24 - South Africa Jerusalem - Thousands of red locusts swarmed into southern Israel on Friday, threatening the region's agriculture with a biblical-like plague. ...

Master Outlook's Bizarre Addressing Mysteries PC World - USA When I start to type a name in the 'To:' field of a new Outlook e-mail message, the program completes the name and corresponding e-mail address.

American Research Says: 'It's definitely Atlantis' My Wise County - Virginia,USA ... Although the most prevailing story of a world cataclysm is listed in the Biblical Old Testament, several ancient cultures do list accounts of civilizations ...

November 18, 2004

Fires plague Baltimore schools
Barre Montpelier Times Argus - Barre,VT,USA
By Foster Klug Associated Press. BALTIMORE -- Four firefighters and a fire truck are stationed outside Walbrook High School every day. ...

November 15, 2004

Does Utah Have an 'Area 51'?
KSL-TV - Salt Lake City,UT,USA
... Dave Rosenfeld/ Pres. Utah UFO Hunters: "We've seen some interesting things out there. A lot of strange lights, of course. Recently we've seen a 'beam test.'".

KPHO Phoenix - Strange Lights Spotted After Power Outage
Strange Lights Spotted After Power Outage, ... Now, some are pointing to strange lights in the skies as a possible link to that massive outage. ...

Definition of Mount Weather
Definition of Mount Weather, Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center Photo courtesy FEMA. The Mount Weather Emergency Operations ...

Ancient Nelly bommies died suddenly Magnetic News - Magnetic Island,Australia ... instantaneously. The most likely hypothesis, is, she thinks, that they were the victims of a massive storm nearly 6,000 years ago. ...(Noah's Ark anyone?)

I Was a Witch Christianity Today Magazine - USA ... Yet as strange as it sounds, we still considered ourselves to be Christian. Then, when I was 17, my mother's slow, agonizing battle with cancer ended. ...

November 11, 2004

Two cats in Larimer County test contract plague 9NEWS.com - Denver,CO,United States LARIMER COUNTY - Two pet cats have been diagnosed with plague in the Glacier View area, the Larimer County Health Department says. ...

Probe will uncover secrets of the Moon Guardian - UK ... 'We have shown that even a small ion engine like Smart's can ... The solution to this problem will be to build a new type of electricity generator, say engineers. ...

November 4, 2004

Plague of pink locusts hits Cyprus
The Times - London,England,UK
MILLIONS of pink locusts have made a freakish appearance in Cyprus and clouds have been sighted in Lebanon for the first time in nearly a hundred years. ...

Scientists search for signs of life in underground Antarctic lake
Taipei Times - Taipei,Taiwan
... water. Now called Lake Vostok, the scale of the underground reservoir stunned experts -- about 14,000km2 and up to 1,200m deep. ...

Competitive Technologies Announces Patent For Nanotechnology Bone ... PR Newswire (press release ) - USA ... (Amex: CTT) announced today that patent number 6,808,561 has been issued by the US Patent Office for Dr. Brian R. Genge's nanotechnology bone biomaterial ...

Riding the Moscow Metro
IAfrica South African News - Cape Town,South Africa ... a parallel secret subway system said to have been built by Stalin linking the Kremlin with key buildings, outlying airports, strategic underground command ...

November 1, 2004

A plague of turkey vultures upon her house MSNBC - USA
MUNCIE, Ind. - Turkey vultures have taken over a woman's backyard, making a mess of the lawn, shrubbery, patio furniture and roof. ...

Mysterious Moonscape Seen on Saturn's Titan Washington Post - Washington,DC,USA High-quality images of Titan, Saturn's mysterious moon, tantalized and bewildered scientists yesterday, and they warned that NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have ...

Images of Democrat in Iowa show 'beastly' number all over TV ...
WorldNetDaily - Grants Pass,OR,USA
... "The imagery of 666 appearing everywhere was too much to be ignored. I had to rewind my TIVO and shoot these photos of the TV screen.". ...

Going underground in EU
Taipei Times - Taipei,Taiwan
... exotic is a long-established rumor that a secret line runs from the center of London to the Burlington Bunker, a vast post-war underground government complex ...

Viewer Descriptions Of Flash In Sky NBC4 Columbus.com - Columbus,OH,USA ... I saw something twirling down leaving a glowing trail like no other meteorite I have ever seen. I then saw something large drop ...

Cleaned May 2006

December 28, 2004

Scientists clash over origin of 'the Great Dying'
San Francisco Chronicle - San Francisco,CA,USA
A cataclysm 250 million years ago wiped out nearly all life in the Earth's oceans, and nearly three-quarters of the plants and animals on land vanished too

More evidence of Extra Terrestrial contacts with Indian Government ...
India Daily - Whitehouse Station,NJ,USA... The terrain is such that it is impossible to find hidden underground structures under massive mountains -- you are looking at core Himalayas. ...

God works in mysterious airways as nun scoops Ryanair jackpot
Galway Advertiser - Galway,Ireland
BY SINEAD MCGOVERN. A nun originally from Kiltormer near Ballinasloe scooped € 100,000 this week for being the 100 millionth passenger to travel with Ryanair.

Decenber 18, 2004

Gavin Scott plans movie on Krakatoa
Washington Times - Washington,DC,USA
... UPI) -- Gavin Scott, the creator of "The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne" is making a Hollywood movie on the 1883 eruption of the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa.

Mysterious dance of life of 'tree couple'
China Daily - Beijing,China
Two intertwined trees which over the years have grown and withered as if guided by an unseen choreographer, have been dubbed the "tree couple" by locals in ...

Possible meteor lights up night sky in Gansu
æ¯�æ—¥ç"˜è‚ƒ - Lanzhou,Gansu,China
... By press time, the strange burning object, or what remains of it, had not been found by officials. Chen said he is among hundreds ...

Mysterious disease hits Orissa village
Sify - Delhi,India
Sriram village: Dozens of people, especially children, are in the grip of a mysterious disease, which has hit the remote Sriram village in Orissa. ...

December 13, 2004

Meteorite passes over
Port Macquarie News - Port Macquarie,New South Wales,Australia
By CLARE HAYES. PORT Macquarie found itself in the path of a meteorite on Monday morning as the speeding fireball shot through the earth's atmosphere. ...

Meteorite lands in Polonnaruwa
Daily News - Columbo,Sri Lanka
Further studies are being conducted into the fallen meteorite found at the Sankabodhi Viharaya, Polonnaruwa by the Arthur C Clarke Institute for Modern ...

Mount St. Helens: Arrest That Volcano!
Useless-Knowledge.com - USA
... But, how do you take a volcano to court? ... If you remember the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines though, that one eruption is said to have put more ...

Nicaragua A hidden gem
Washington Times - Washington,DC,USA
... changing. More than 20,000 years ago, Mombacho's violent eruption threw the top half of the volcano into Lake Cocibolca. The rocks ...

December 9, 2004

Mysterious Structure Found on Top of Dormant Volcano
KSL-TV - Salt Lake City,UT,USA
... not edited for web reading. On top of a dormant volcano in Central Utah, there's a very mysterious structure... It is something so ...(Note:was this structure a early form of reneable energy? Does anyone know?)

Boom Update
WRIC - Richmond,VA,USA
The city is still waiting for seismic equipment that could pinpoint the origin of the mysterious booms on Richmond's northside. ...

Called To Be A Light; Then Forced To Assemble Lights
American Daily - Stow,OH,USA
... According to WorldServe, persecution of the Chinese underground church has been growing ... An estimated 80 million believers participate in secret, illegal church ...

CIA's remote viewers initiated quest for WMD in Iraq
Pravda - Moscow,Russia
... 001" was shown a spot on the map of the USSR, where the mysterious secret object was ... A huge underground warehouse filled with lethal weapons.Not only missiles. ...

December 6, 2004

Hobbits? We've got a cave full.
Sydney Morning Herald (subscription) - Sydney,New South Wales,Australia
... Liang Bua, before being apparently wiped out by a volcanic eruption, was hailed ... the villagers tell about the legendary Ebu Gogo on the volcano have convinced ...

Northside Booms Investigation
WRIC - Richmond,VA,USA
... twin booms. The city is bringing in seismic equipment in the hopes it will help pinpoint any future underground explosions. So far ...

December 3, 2004

Hobbits locked away as scientists argue
The Age (subscription) - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia
They may be tiny, but the hobbits - the extinct one-metre-high human species whose discovery rocked the palaeontology world last month - are provoking a giant ...(Note: Intelligence has little to do with the size of the brain rather the level of their wisdom. This story proves small thinking can come from big brains)

Cleaned May 2006

News Burrow was originally started around the year 2000 with links to articles on the web or interesting news sites. In August 2004 we decided to start including some of the strange stories we stumbled on. As in all stories the weirdness is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. Still I like to think many of these news stories I include here will grab and hold you in many cases.

Year 2004

Homeless kids fight for survival underground
By KENTARO KURIHARA, The Asahi Shimbun
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Their numbers are shrinking, but sinister jobless adults pose a new threat in Mongolia.

ULAN BATOR-On a snowy night with temperatures dipping to a bone-chilling minus 26 degrees, a manhole cover was pushed open on a street in this capital city, releasing warm steam. Four teenage boys then climbed out of the hole.

They are known as ``manhole children,'' street children who seek warmth from underground water pipes. They use cardboard boxes as their homes.

They left home for various reasons, including poverty and domestic violence. Although reports say the number of manhole children has declined in recent years, new problems have surfaced, including homeless adults driving the children out of their only shelter in the brutal Mongolian winter or forcing them to commit crimes.

``Not many grown-ups knew of this location,'' says Sukhbold, a 14-year-old who gulps down the soup offered by staff members of the Verbist Care Center, a Catholic child welfare organization. ``But recently, grown-ups have been coming here and beating up the children or demanding cash from them.''

According to local police, unemployed homeless adults are increasingly ordering street children to steal money or bring food. The children are assaulted or thrown out of into the cold if they refuse to obey.

For many of these children, they have nowhere to go.

Sukhbold, for example, says he left his family home three or four years ago when his stepfather began to physically abuse him. He has been living underground for about a year , and spends his days collecting empty cans for change and buying bread with the little money he makes.

Sukhbold and the three other teenage boys say their underground residence offers them protection from the harsh elements.

The heat from hot-water pipes connected to thermoelectric power plants produces underground temperatures of at least 20 degrees.

The nation's economic struggles have been particularly harsh on rural areas. More adults are coming to Ulan Bator seeking work, but they often remain jobless, and some end up fighting the manhole children for the warmth of the underground shelters.

No one knows the full extent of the problem of homeless adults abusing the children, partly because the young homeless do not report such cases to the police.

Badamkhand, a senior inspector with the community policing division of the Mongolian national police agency, said: ``Homeless adults and children living in manholes are responsible for about 2 percent of crimes committed nationwide. About 70 percent of them are thefts.''

Since the nation's democratization in 1990, Mongolia's rapid economic liberalization has widened the economic gap among its people. The nation's first non-Communist government, which formed in 1996, implemented drastic economic reforms that led to serious inflation.

Exacerbating matters, severe snowstorms in 2000 and 2001 devastated the nation's main industry of nomadic stock breeding, slashing the number of livestock from 33.6 million in 1999 to 23.9 million in 2002.

Many nomadic people lost their only source of income. And basic necessities like electricity, water, and medical care have worsened in rural Mongolia since the days of the Communist government.

Currently, nearly 40 percent of the population lives in poverty, earning less than 20,000 togrog (about 2,000 yen) a month.

In a country of about 2.6 million, more than 35,000 people are officially registered as unemployed. But some say up to 175,000 people are actually without jobs, and many of them are streaming into the nation's capital. In the past two years, Ulan Bator's population has increased by almost 200,000, according to official data.

The government has no statistics on how many homeless people are living underground, but police and child welfare agencies estimate that 50 to 100 children live underground in Ulan Bator.

But thanks mainly to the efforts of the government and foreign aid organizations, the number of street children has been decreasing and more aid has been provided.

The Verbist Care Center, the organization that fed Sukhbold and the other teens, distributes meals for street children once a week.

Mongolian police have set up temporary shelters for homeless children. At one such shelter, 28 children aged 3 to 17 played in a large room.

An 11-year-old girl came up and introduced herself in Japanese: ``Konichiwa. Watashi no namae wa Ariungerel desu (Hello, my name is Ariungerel).''

She said she learned Japanese in her elementary school.

Asked how she ended up in this shelter, Ariungerel explained that after her parents divorced, her father, whom she had been staying with, was sent to prison. Ariungerel was supposed to have stayed at an aunt's house, but she ran away because she was bullied there. Police took her in when she was found wandering the streets.

Mongolian police typically spend two weeks trying to identify these children, contact their families or find a facility where they can live.

Children like Ariungerel, who need protection from their relatives, are placed in child welfare institutions like those run by the Verbist Care Center.

About 120 children now live at Verbist Care Center's facility. One resident, 17-year-old high schooler named Amarsanaa, lived as a manhole child for two years with his sister, who is a year younger.

When his father became an alcoholic, the family fell into heavy debt and eventually lost their home. Now that Amarsanaa has been taken into the center with his sister, he has shown he is a bright student who favors math and computer science.

``I want to go to college, learn economics and be an academic,'' Amarsanaa says eagerly.

To ensure that homeless children do not return to the streets, the police keep an eye on the children. About 1,150 children are currently being cared for at about 20 welfare facilities, from where they go to school or receive vocational training.

Foreign aid agencies donate about 200 million togrog, or about 20 million yen, every year via a governmental child welfare committee that distributes the aid to each children's facility, according to an official of the committee. In addition, foreign nongovernmental organizations offer financial help directly to facilities in need.

The number of homeless children has decreased over the past years. In 1997, when divorce cases and unemployment were the highest in the past 10 years, an estimated 3,700 children were living near underground pipes in Mongolia, mainly in Ulan Bator. That number fell to 200 in 2001, governmental officials say, due to the establishment of the protective facilities. The number of street children now is estimated at between 50 and 100.

But there is little hope for any improvement in the stagnant economy, which is the root cause of the homeless problem. While the number of children taken into protective custody has risen, the number of orphans has also shot up from 3,892 in 1999 to 5,435 in 2004.

``With so many children's facilities, it may look like the problem has been solved,'' says Javzankhuu, a senior officer at the Mongolian National Committee for Children. ``But that is not the case. With the shrinking economy and the continued breakdown of the family, the problem of manhole children will not go away.''(IHT/Asahi: March 5,2005)


http://www.asahi.com/english/world/TKY200503050152.html

Spirits in the Stones

The summer of 2004 has seen interesting discoveries in Canada and India that highlight a new branch of archæological research – archæoacoustics. Old rocker PAUL DEVEREUX explains how we may now be able to hear the soundtrack of the Stone Age.

October 2004
Fortean Times

Photo: Voices in the wall: Aboriginal rock-shelter art in the Kimberley region of Australia. The curvature of the rock wall tends to produce focused echoes from specific parts of the panel, so that the figures of gods or spirits appear to have their own 'voices'. Image: Paul Devereux

In the early summer of 2004, a research expedition consisting of two colleagues and me visited Canada to find out if the mysterious engraved and painted glyphs and signs of prehistoric American Indian rock art could, in a fashion, speak to us. 1 We wanted – literally – to listen rather than to look. As perverse as this seems, it was in keeping with a newly recognised aspect of archæology called "archæoacoustics". Archæologists have finally realised that ancient people had ears, and have discovered that various kinds of acoustic effects – from eerie echoes to resonant frequencies that can affect the brain – seem to have been an intentionally planned component of a number of prehistoric sites worldwide, from ruined temples to rock art locations. 2, 3 Prehistory is at last gaining its own soundtrack.

Rock Medicine

Our expedition's interest was directed at two of Canada's most important prehistoric rock art sites, both of them in Ontario: hundreds of engravings on a rock outcrop in Petroglyphs Provincial Park, and a profusion of ancient Algonkian rock paintings daubed in red ochre on a mighty cliff-face protruding out of Mazinaw Lake in Bon Echo Provincial Park. Canadian rock art interested us because of a traditional Algonkian Indian belief that manitous – spirits – lived inside rocks and cliff-faces, and that shamans in trance could enter the rock surfaces and meet with them in order to exchange tobacco offerings for supernatural power, usually referred to as "rock medicine". (If the shaman failed to carry out this operation correctly, though, it was said he could become trapped in the cliff or rock he had spiritually entered and never return to his body outside. In our terms, he would die or go mad.) We wanted to test the hypothesis that such rock art marked venerated, magical places where the spirits could be heard; perhaps places where echoes were unusually strong. Had the Indians, like the ancient Greeks, believed echoes to be the sound of spirits calling, mimicking human-made noises to do so? Although there had been no previous linking of either of these Ontario rock-art sites with special acoustic properties, we had come to find out for sure.

The Teaching Rocks

Two hours driving time east of Toronto lies the Kawartha Lakes region, a wild, scenic area popular with visitors for camping, canoeing and hiking. At its heart lies the town of Peterborough, which lists as one of its visitor attractions Petroglyphs Provincial Park, 40 km (25 miles) to the north-east. This park gives the region a unique heritage claim, for the petroglyphs form the largest concentration of ancient rock-face engravings in Ontario – some say in the whole of Canada.

I didn't quite know what to expect as we made our way along a woodland trail to what the local Indians call Kinomagewapkong, The Teaching Rocks, the outcrop containing the prehistoric carvings. There appeared to be no hint in the generally available literature that sound was in any way associated with the place, so our visit was something of a long shot.

The first surprise was encountering a large-windowed building amid the trees; it had been constructed in 1985 to house and protect the carvings. Inside the building, a gallery allows visitors to walk around the edge of the great sloping mass of marble containing the mysterious glyphs. Their presence was known locally from at least the 1920s, and probably much earlier, but didn't become apparent to outsiders until 1954, when a group of prospectors chanced across them. An initial assessment of the site yielded a count of 92 engravings, but a much more thorough study in 1967 showed that there were fully 10 times that number, though many are incredibly faint and easily missed by the untrained eye.

Photo: Everett Davis, one of the prospectors who discovered Petroglyph Rock. Image: Ontario Parks, Petroglyphs provincial Park

The engravings are reckoned to be between 600 and 1,100 years old. There are depictions of human figures with sunbursts around their heads, birds, canoes, snakes, turtles, and humanoid beings with long ears, together with a welter of abstract signs.

What were they all about? The long-eared figure is thought to represent Nanabush, or Nanabozho, a trickster-type spirit who sometimes took the form of a hare, and present-day Indian (First Nation) people ascribe specific symbolic meanings to many of the other markings. But the truth is that no one knows for sure; after all, the people who made them are long gone.

What is clear is that this huge, flattish slab of white crystalline marble (metamorphosed limestone) was once the focus of intense spiritual interest, and the aim of our little expedition was to find out why this had been so. After all, there were other marble outcrops around, so what was special about this one? Lisa Roach, assistant superintendent of the site, told us that as the slab slopes in a south-easterly direction; one suggestion was that it might face sunrise at a time of year which was important to the ancient people.

Photo: Petroglyph Rock with some of the carvings and part of the deep fissure from which voice-like sounds occasionally eminate. Image: Ontario Parks, Petroglyphs rovincial Park

Such an explanation seemed inadequate – at least to us – to explain the site's unique profusion of rock art. Lisa then pointed out a distinctive fissure that cuts across the rock surface. It is 5 metres (16ft) deep in places, she informed us, and at certain times of year the sound of underground water can be heard issuing from its depths. We had an acoustic connection at last! After further discussion, Lisa told us that the roaring noise sounded exactly like the babble of human voices. Perhaps this was why the marble outcrop was so venerated: the voices of the manitous issued from it. Perhaps it had even been used as an oracle site.

The noise made by the water is apparently well known to locals, and is even alluded to in the little printout sheet given to the site's visitors, but, like the petroglyphs themselves, it had never been thought particularly worthy of mention to outsiders.

This unexpected discovery drove home to me the adage that until one asks the right question the correct answer cannot be forthcoming. There is no doubt that questions regarding sound – and how it might extend information about archæological sites and their uses – have for too long remained unasked.


Pictures in the water

Heartened by our finding at the petroglyphs outcrop, we set off for Bon Echo Provincial Park, 75km (47miles) to the east. We knew the site contained the largest single concentration of ancestral Algonkian rock paintings or "pictograms" in Canada – but its suggestive name also drew us there.

There are around 200 paintings, daubed in red ochre, on Mazinaw Rock , a cliff-face over 1km (0.6 mile) long rising up to 100metres (330 ft) out of Mazinaw Lake, one of Ontario's deepest. The name "Mazinaw" derives from the Algonkian word mu-zi-nu-hi-gun, meaning, variously, writing, picture, painting, book, and often interpreted by extension as meaning "pictures in the water" at the Bon Echo and other smaller but similar sites.

Photo:

Northern section of Mazinaw Rock, Bon Echo Park. Image: Paul Devereux

The only markings on Mazinaw Rock that most casual visitors know about are lines of Walt Whitman poetry that Flora MacDonald Denison had carved in foot-high (30cm) letters in the 1920s. But the more ancient "writing on the wall" consists of the mainly abstract images painted up to 1,000 years ago by ancestral Algonkian peoples. The paintings can only be accessed by boat, and it is an awesome experience floating dangerously close to the jagged rock face seeking panels of faded ochre markings, all of them just above the waterline.

Bon Echo park is a sizeable chunk of wilderness containing other cliffs and bodies of water, but we found that our hunch had proven correct: the "echo" name relates specifically to the Mazinaw Rock cliff-face. It is locally renowned for the exceptional echoes it produces; demonstrations of the phenomenon are even given during tourist boat cruises on the lake. Exceptional echoes and an exceptional concentration of pictograms – we felt their coincidence was unlikely to be due to mere chance.
 

Photo: Algonkian red ochre painting at Mazinaw Rock. The motifs have not been deciphered. Image: Paul Devereux

We worked our way along the cliff-face, photographing the many markings; some of them were still fairly strong, others weathered to near invisibility. Although most of the paintings are abstract glyphs, there are a few representational images, including boats containing bird-headed humanoid figures (usually interpreted by rock-art experts as being spirit canoes); a strange, almost camel-like animal plus a few other more recognisable ones; and a couple of depictions of our long-eared friend. (Big ears? We couldn't help but idly wonder if that was a reference to the acoustics associated with powerful manitou places, the spots where the spirits spoke.) As we proceeded, we made periodic digital recordings of echoes; how these related to specific pictogram panels will be covered in a more detailed academic paper elsewhere at a later date, but it became apparent to us that the areas of the loudest, fastest-returning echoes coincided with the greatest concentrations of pictograms.

In addition to the echoes, other phenomena may also have marked out this place as being supernaturally powerful. For instance, one earlier archæological researcher paddling alongside the Mazinaw Rock admitted to being "more than a little startled" to see water nearby begin an inexplicable whirling motion, accelerating "till it lifted suddenly into a miniature waterspout". We also experienced the water around us occasionally behaving in an inexplicably erratic manner, just as if restless spirits were agitating it.

Rock music

Unknown to us, while we were listening to rock art in Canada, another case of acoustic archæology was being discussed in the mainstream academic literature. It involves the rediscovery of inscribed, naturally musical boulders in the Sanganakallu-Kupgal area of the Southern Deccan, India, by the Cambridge–Karnatak universities' "Bellary District Archæological Project", directed, coincidentally, by a Canadian archæologist called Nicole Boivin. 4, 5 The use of acoustic effects there seemingly dates back to Stone Age times.

The key rock art sites occur on the prominent landmark of Hiregudda Hill, where hundreds of petroglyphs are to be found along a dolerite cliff . Some of the rock art is fairly recent, but much of it dates back to the Neolithic era. Depictions of cattle – showing long-horned, hump-backed animals of the sort still common in southern India – are the most common, along with those of human beings. Some of the human figures appear to be males engaged in sexual activity, while others seem to be shown dancing. Other images include elephants, tigers, birds, wheeled carts, footprints, and what Boivin calls "religious symbols". Certain engravings are in such inaccessible places that whoever made them must have been suspended from rock overhangs in order to carry out the work. The rock art was clearly considerably more serious than mere doodling. The whole site had originally been discovered in 1892, but had subsequently become "lost" to researchers. The Bellary Project managed to identify it again with the help of local people.

"Amidst the petroglyphs at this site," writes Boivin, "there are also round , polished grooves that emit musical ringing tones when struck with granite stones." The "gong-like" effect was demonstrated to the archæologists by a local informant, who referred to the inscribed boulders as "musical stones". Similar naturally sonic rocks were also identified at another rock art site in the district.

Due to the masculine nature of some of the rock art imagery at Hiregudda, and the difficulty of its production in some cases, the current interpretation is that the site was seen as a male sacred site, and that shamans came there to communicate with the spirits of the place – the production of the musical tones from the rocks being part of formalised rituals to help in that process.

Face the music

There may be trouble ahead, as the old song puts it, because many important archæological sites in the Bellary district are unprotected. This includes the musical rock sites, which are threatened by both large-scale commercial quarrying and local granite quarriers who target surface boulders. Damage from quarrying has already occurred at some of the district's archæological sites, so the threat is pressing. The Bellary District Archæological Project hopes to be able to bring this danger to general attention through publicity, and also to try to get local authorities to see the heritage and tourist value of preserving these rare sites in the hope of securing guaranteed protection for at least some of them. If the Project fails in these attempts, then Hiregudda's ancient ringing rocks will be literally silenced forever. It will be a tragic irony if this should happen just when archæology is beginning to listen.

http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/188_stones1.shtml