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I had seen this mentioned in the Denver Post a little while back - a crack is endangering part of the Cliff Palace ruin at Mesa Verde National Park. Visitors have been kept away from one of the kivas at the cliff dwelling. Our friend Kathy Fiero was in charge of ruins stabilization at the park for many years. I'm not sure who has that job now.

A wide-ranging study of mitochondrial DNA from domesticated chickens seems to indicate that they are all descended from a few mother hens in Southeast Asia.

 In another "food archaeology" finding (like my post on black drink last week) researchers have found cacao residue on 2,500 year-old Mayan ceramics. These traces were found on plates, rather than in bowls or cups. We have known for a long time that cacao was used to make drinks in prehistoric Mesoamerica, but this may be the first indication it was used in food preparation, a great-grandfather of the mole' sauce we know today.

William Faulkner's famous novel "The Sound and the Fury" is known as a tour de fource in stream of consciouness writing. Everyone (Faulkner included) has always said that it is very difficult to follow. Especially the sections dealing with the developmentally challenged Benjy, who has no sense of time: past present and future are all as one with him. Faulkner apparently wanted Benjy's various past and present thought streams printed in color-coded type to make them easier to follow. He didn't think that was practical however, in the publishing world that he inhabited. Now the Folio Society has taken on his challenge and is issuing a new edition trying the colored type approach.

An archaeologist believes she may have discovered two new Egyptian pyramid complexes using Google Earth. No one's gone out to field-check them yet. You'd think they would have waited for that, wouldn't you?