25,000-year-old pendant found in Spain

San Sebastian (Spain): A pendant some 25,000-years old has been found in northern Spain’s Basque region by archaeologists.

The piece, an oblong gray smooth stone some 10 centimeters in length, is perforated at one end and apparently was hung from a cord around a person’s neck, according to the director of the excavation, Alvaro Arrizabalaga, who added that the other end of the stone was used as a tool to retouch the edges of tools made from flint, like arrows or scrapers.

The object comes from the Cromagnon epoch.

Arrizabalaga said that the pendant is older than other such items found so far in the Praileaitz cave which are estimated to be some 15,000 years old.

In addition, he said that there have been “some 20 pieces from this same epoch” found on the Iberian peninsula to date, with the peculiar unifying element that they have always been found in caves.

“The piece is very well preserved and we’ve been lucky to be able to remove it without damaging it in any way” from the dig near the town of Zestoa, Arrizabalaga said.

The dig leader said the pendant “is not going to need any more restoration”, and after experts study it and include it in the collection of Cromagnon discoveries found at the site, it will be placed in the hands of a public museum.

“Twenty-five thousand years ago, human beings of our species came to this place that functioned as a hunting place for wandering groups” the archaeologist said, adding that the groups of humans “moved eight times per year to zones where there were specific types of resources”.

The Irikaitz deposit, where archaeologists began working in 1998, is known for being the site of discoveries of pieces up to 250,000 years old, a period when the precursors of Homo sapiens were still in existence. (IANS)

 NZ school discovers real skeleton in closet

Wellington: Teachers at a New Zealand school received a macabre surprise when they realised a supposedly plastic skeleton to be used in anatomy lessons was actually a real set of human bones, a report said today.

Totara North School principal Bastienne Kruger had removed the skeleton from storage and was about to use it in class when on close examination she saw that the teaching aid was not plastic as she had assumed.

Kruger said no one knew how long the skeleton had been at the school, which opened in 1852, the Northern Advocate newspaper reported.

“When we realised it was real, we wanted to do right by this poor person, but we didn’t know how, so we phoned the hospital and they suggested we bring it to the police,” she told the newspaper. Police approached the Historic Places Trust, a heritage agency whose regional manager Stuart Park concluded that the remains — a skull and bones from one side of the body — belonged to a slightly-built adult male. He said the bones did not appear to have been dug up and their polished appearance meant they were most likely to have been professionally prepared for medical purposes in the 19th or early 20th century.

Park added that the jaw shape showed the skeleton did not belong to a Maori and it probably came from India or China, where the trade in human remains once thrived.

Kruger said the school had not decided what to do with the remains, which were being stored at the local police station. (AFP)

 NY schools to make sex education mandatory

NEW YORK: New York City public schools will teach mandatory sex education classes to all middle- and high school students, part of a citywide initiative to help reduce teenage pregnancies, officials said.

The required classes, the first mandated sex education in nearly two decades, will be taught to children as young as 11 years old and tackle such topics as the proper use of condoms and ways to resist unwelcome sexual advances.

Public schools will be required to teach a semester of sex education to sixth or seventh grade classes and again to ninth and tenth graders, Chancellor Dennis Walcott said in a letter announcing the plans.

The move is part of an effort by the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg to improve the lives of black and Latino students who are disproportionately undereducated and unemployed, and far more likely to have unplanned pregnancies, according to city officials.

Research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that 41 per cent of New York City youth said they were sexually active by 9th grade and 58 per cent by 12th grade.

”We must be committed to ensuring that both middle school and high school students are exposed to this valuable information so they can learn to keep themselves safe before, and when, they decide to have sex,” Walcott said.

Opposition from conservative groups and some school board members defeated a city mandate approved in the 1980s for a sex-education curriculum.

Separately, in 1987, New York state mandated an HIV/AIDS curriculum in every school from kindergarten through 12th grade which is still in effect.

New York state also requires middle and high school students take one semester of health education classes. But some schools do not include sex education in health classes. (Reuters)

 Russia’s Muslim curbs alcohol sales at Ramadan

NAZRAN: The head of Russia’s mainly Muslim Ingushetia region has set up a body of mullahs and officials to clamp down on black market alcohol sellers during the holy month of Ramadan, his spokesman said.

Officially designed to curb illegal sales, the move appeared to take aim at alcohol consumption in general, much of which is sold underground. Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov described the new body as a ”morality police”.

Since the collapse of communism 20 years ago, when alcohol was readily available throughout the Soviet Union, Russia’s Muslim regions have become increasingly dry as they undergo an Islamic revival. The Koran prohibits alcohol.

”The group is tasked, during the holy month of Ramadan, with ensuring that retailers and cafes do not sell alcohol without all the proper permits,” said Yevkurov’s spokesman Khusein Pliyev.

Alcohol licences are increasingly hard to obtain in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus, where many officials publicly speak out against hard liquor, forcing many merchants to go underground.

Efforts to sell liquor are also harmed by rebels waging an Islamist insurgency across the region, where they regularly stage attacks on alcohol-sellers.

In neighbouring Chechnya, alcohol is very difficult to find despite the fact that the North Caucasus republics are allowed by Russian law to buy and sell it. Analysts say an all-out official ban would violate the constitution.

The Ingush body will conduct raids to ensure that establishments selling alcohol have the correct permits and properly follow safety and tax regulations.

Among those Muslims who choose to drink alcohol, many in the North Caucasus abstain during Ramadan, which started in Russia on August 1. (UNI)