Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
Science & Health Sep 23, 2013
Transit project brings macabre past of London to the surface
by Anthony Faiola
In an open pit near the old Bedlam insane asylum, where the curious once ogled chained lunatics for the price of a shiny coin, the skeletons in London’s closet are climbing to the surface. And dead men do tell tales. Take, for example, one ...
Science & Health Sep 20, 2013
Royal toothbrush, toothpaste among Rio dig discoveries
An ivory toothbrush thought to have belonged to Brazilian Emperor Pedro II and a minty toothpaste made for the Portuguese queen are among more than 200,000 pieces dating from the 17th through 19th centuries that archaeologists have unearthed from a site in Rio de ...
Science & Health Sep 4, 2013
Study dates origin of Egypt as a single state
Archaeologists, drawing on a wide range of tools, said Wednesday they had pinpointed the crucial time in world history when Egypt emerged as a distinct state. Experts have wrangled for decades as to when turbulent upper and lower Egypt were brought together under a ...
Environment Aug 15, 2013
Climate change linked to ancient civilizations' fall
A cold, dry spell that lasted hundreds of years may have driven the collapse of Eastern Mediterranean civilizations in the 13th century B.C., researchers in France said Wednesday. In the Late Bronze Age, powerful kingdoms spanned lands that are now Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Syria, ...
Issues | THE FOREIGN ELEMENT Aug 12, 2013
Ainu fight for return of plundered ancestral remains
by Simon Scott
Shigeru Kayano, one of the most well-known and respected Ainu figures of modern times, writes in his autobiography “Our Land Was a Forest” about the loathing he felt as a young man for the shamo (Japanese) researchers who used to visit his village and ...
Science & Health Aug 8, 2013
Incan child sacrifice victims may have been drugged
More than 500 years ago, three children climbed the Llullaillaco volcano in Argentina and never returned, the probable victims of human sacrifice. Their bodies — naturally mummified in the cold, dry mountain air — have been studied by scientists since they were discovered, sitting ...
Science & Health Jul 25, 2013
Ancient flint blade found in Spain
Archaeologists said Wednesday they have found a flint blade dating back 1.4 million years in the caves of Atapuerca in Spain, the earliest sign of a human presence at the site. The 3-cm-long blade was found in the so-called Elephant Chasm cave, where researchers ...
Asia Pacific | Focus Jul 2, 2013
Cambodian jungle graveyard mystifies cultural experts
More than 100 burial jars and a dozen coffins arranged on a ledge in remote Cambodian jungle have for centuries held the bones — and secrets — of a mysterious people who lived during the Angkor era. Why the bones were placed in jars ...
Science & Health May 25, 2013
Hunter-gatherer cave paintings found in Mexico
Archaeologists have found nearly 5,000 cave paintings made by hunter-gatherers in a northeastern Mexico mountain range where pre-Hispanic groups were not known to have existed. The yellow, red, white and black paintings depict humans, deer, lizards and centipedes, suggesting the groups hunted, fished and ...
Science & Health Apr 29, 2013
Evolutionary biologist says cave-man diet is flawed
Living like cave men — or at least eating like them — is being hailed by some as an ideal lifestyle. The paleo diet, based on the idea that our bodies have not adapted sufficiently to eat foods that were not available 10,000 years ...
Science & Health Apr 19, 2013
Remote Turkmen desert yields ancient riches
Over four millenniums ago, the fortress town of Gonur-Tepe might have been a rare advanced civilization before it was buried for centuries under the dust of the Kara Kum Desert in remote western Turkmenistan. After being uncovered by Soviet archaeologists in the last century, ...
World Mar 18, 2013
Hairstylist revives coiffs of antiquity
By day, Janet Stephens cuts and colors at a hair salon. By night, she is an amateur archaeologist, meticulously re-creating hairstyles dating back to the times of Roman antiquity. Stephens, 54, who has worked as a hairdresser for more than two decades, re-creates dos ...