Yeah, but with a site of that size (and importance!) that really isn't all that unusual, I don't think. It takes a long time to do a really serious, proper dig... and the fact that it's in the Sahara has probably complicated things by limiting the length of their work season.
The political situation may also play into it. I'm not saying it's unusual. I'm saying that this kind of scope and commitment impresses me, as an amateur with no background in archaeology beyond the Stargate movie.
My faculty has been excavating a town on the northwestern shore of lake Galilee for ten years this Summer, and they're not even close to finishing. And it's a site nobody really cares about beyond us and the Germans. It's also worth noting that an excavation season is never the whole year (there's the surveys, cataloguing and publishing to be getting on with too), so the actual digging may only take a few months of every one year.
It's decently normal - the reason it takes so long is that all the finds have to be first dug up, and then cataloged, before anybody's going to make any kind of big announcement (unless it's something so huge that they can't keep it quiet that long). Even a regular dig takes more than a few years sometimes, and this was a big one. It probably came out first in the scientific journals, and now is making its way into the regular media. :D
It is! I love this kind of stuff - every time people say "oh, haven't they found everything by now?" it's nice to have awesome stuff like this to point to!
I love the pose of the mother and children and that there's evidence they were buried on a bed of flowers. It's somehow reassuring that even ancient cultures were sentimental about their dead.
It is, isn't it? It's weirdly comforting to know that yeah, humanity is pretty much the same as it's always been, for millions of years. Everything in our lives that is such a shock and so terrible to us, all the worries and fears, it's exactly the same kind of thing people have been dealing with since the dawn of consciousness. Makes it hard to get too upset about it all - it puts everything in perspective, I think.
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Date: 2008-08-14 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 06:41 am (UTC)I'm not saying it's unusual. I'm saying that this kind of scope and commitment impresses me, as an amateur with no background in archaeology beyond the Stargate movie.
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Date: 2008-08-15 07:56 am (UTC)But this is awesome news!
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Date: 2008-08-14 11:17 pm (UTC)of time? Thanks for sharing the link!
So very cool!
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Date: 2008-08-15 05:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 05:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 04:25 am (UTC)Cool link. Thanks for sharing. ^_^
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Date: 2008-08-15 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 07:15 am (UTC)Like the person above, I was touched by the woman buried with the children on the bed of flowers.
Man I wish I had a time machine. That was totally safe... Hmmm.