Many ancient races have been found to have observatories where they watched the movement of the heavens and sometimes plotted them. Some of these observatories are extremely old, but none rival the age of the Wurdi Youang stone arrangement which was built 11,000 years ago by the aborigines. The aborigines have passed a lot of the history down by word-of-mouth and studies are being run to try and find out what the ancient aborigines knew about the heavens. This is being accomplished by speaking to tribal elders. The Observatory, which is an arrangement of stones, has been compared to Stonehenge in England. Some investigators are beginning to ask the question is Stonehenge just a version and copy of the aboriginal Observatory? While the site has been dated as 11,000 years old, if it turns out to be more than 7000 years old it will still be the oldest ancient Observatory ever found. Scientists have said if you’re going to build an Observatory that tracks the seasons and the planets then it probably means there was permanent habitation at the site. When they looked for signs of this they found signs of past terraces used for farming and also noticed the site was close to water. In other words it had everything you would need to sustain people.

We know the boomerang has been around for quite a while and many speculate it was used as a weapon for hunting and destroying enemies. What is truly amazing is the fact the aborigines lived for 40,000 years before being discovered by Europeans. There has been a lack of skeletal remains found which indicate wars. This led us to believe the aborigines lived in harmony most of the time if not all of the time. Researchers have found something which suggests everything may not have been so hunky-dory. They have found the remains of an aborigines whose head was cut into by a boomerang which had a blade attached. This made scientists wonder, because they knew the aborigines didn’t use metal weapons. When the body was examined further it was noted its ribs were broken and part of an arm had been hacked off. A war scene has been found carved into a rock near a river which suggests a boomerang which was sharpened was used to go around a shield after it was thrown. It looks like the aborigines may not have been as peaceful as first suspected.

Most of the dinosaurs were gone, but the last ones were still around before dying out. One of these remaining dinosaurs decided to lay down in a muddy area. Over millions of years that mud became covered with sand and became sandstone. The sandstone formed a perfect record of what the scales were like on the dinosaur and is one of the only representations of a dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period. This is the time when the last of the dinosaurs were wiped out and hardly any remains or imprints from dinosaurs from that period have ever been found. To illustrate how rare this find is, it is the only such find in all of Europe from that time. As a matter of fact there are very few skin fossils of dinosaurs which have ever been found from that period. The only two places where they have been found are the United States and Asia. All other examples of dinosaur skin are from earlier periods.

As genetics advance we find out more about ourselves. Most scientists have believed that all human beings come from Africa. A new study was conducted on groups of people who were not normally studied, such as Native Americans, Papuans and Australians. The conclusion of these studies was that most non-African DNA in the world comes from a single human exodus from Africa roughly 50,000 to 80,000 years ago. Scientists don’t know why this exodus was conducted and they couldn’t find genes which would account for the accelerated progress human beings have experienced in the last 50,000 years or so. One scientist stated, “There does not seem to have been one or a few enabling mutations that suddenly appeared among our ancestors and allowed them to think in profoundly different ways.” One idea is that humans left Africa to look for food and another is that environmental factors could have been responsible or even both could have been responsible.

Some people believe we have just found out a lot more about the pyramids in Egypt. This is due to the fact archaeologists have recently discovered ancient diaries which detail the construction of the pyramids. Archaeologists have found the oldest papyrus ever discovered and it was thought to belong to a pyramid builder as it reveals the exclusive details about the Egyptian workers who worked on the pyramids. The diary also listed the diets of the laborers in intricate detail and how much meat they ate. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo has begun the process of displaying these documents which date back 4500 years. They also detail the lives of workers who would transport massive blocks from the sea to Cairo during construction. The diaries were found in the caves at the port of Wadi El-Jarf. It is interesting to note that 4500 years ago this port was fully functional. Will we ever find even more ancient Egyptian documents? Maybe not. It would truly be interesting if it turns out these documents show how these Egyptians lifted huge stones into place as the pyramid rose. This is one of the greatest mysteries in human history and these feats of moving huge stones were accomplished by many ancient races, but the secret is lost was now.

Biologists have found what is considered the best preserved Mammoth skull. It was found by a National Park Service biologist on Santa Rosa Island a Channel Island off the coast of California. There is a mystery attached to the find however, because the scientists cannot relate it to any Mammoth species. The skull has been estimated to be 13,000 years old. It is believed human habitation of the Channel Islands might have started 13,000 years ago or earlier, which means the humans that lived there, if scientific speculation is correct, may have seen these mammoths. Mammoths had been in North America for about 2 million years before they became extinct. It is believed the mammoths got to the Channel Islands during the Ice Age and when the ice receded they had no way to get off. It is also believed the mammoths which were trapped became pygmy mammoths which were endemic to the Channel Islands and which grew only to about 6 feet tall.