Danger Cave, Old Iron Town may get new state designation
By Amy Joi O’Donoghue
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Gov. Gary Herbert’s office wants state park officials to further refine the criteria for possible new state monument candidates, but did give its endorsement on the first two designations that will need approval by Utah lawmakers.
The two candidates — Danger Cave State Park Heritage Area near the Nevada border
and Old Iron Town in Iron County — received unanimous legislative endorsement by the
Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee last month. The committee
will draft a concurrent resolution that will need the support of the full Legislature.
Jeff Rasmussen, director of the Utah Division of Parks and Recreation, told the
committee the initial criteria for possible state monument candidates includes that it must
be the first, last, only, most important or best preserved site of its kind in the state, or
offer a major contribution to pre-history or history, or feature outstanding scenic value.
Candidates must be “extraordinary” in one of those ways, be self-sustaining and not add
more financial burden to the division and also must have the support of local and other
community stakeholders.
The criteria was developed after lawmakers spent three years developing a state law that
provides for monument designations on public property.
Danger Cave is one of North America’s most significant archaeological sites, once home
to artifacts and relics detailing the history of Native Americans as far back as 11,000
years ago. The site has been excavated and provided the first opportunity for
archaeologists to use radio carbon dating to trace the age of artifacts, Rasmussen said.
Just a bit off in the distance is Jukebox Cave, given its name because it still contains a
World War II era dance floor installed by military members stationed at the nearby
Wendover Airfield and test range so they had a cool cavern to host social gatherings out
of the summer heat. Rasmussen said reclassifying Danger Cave to monument status would actually help temper people’s expectations about the site, since the words “state park” often denotes the existence of campground facilities and amenities such as restrooms, and none of those features are currently there.
Old Iron Town in Iron County was home to several hundred residents in early statehood
history as pioneers tried to hold onto their independence from the federal government. In
its short existence from 1868 to 1876, the area played a critical role in iron ore supplies,
feeding the Utah Western Railroad and still includes an iconic charcoal kiln from its era
featuring iron works and a foundry. Old Iron Town also supplied the materials to sculpt the 12 oxen at the baptismal font of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ St. George Temple, Rasmussen said. Both sites are ideal candidates because they are already owned and managed by the state parks division and most critically, the possible new designations have support from local and county leaders, he told committee members. Sen. David Hinkins, R-Orangeville, and a cosponsor of the 2019 legislation that allows the possible designations, cautioned committee members that all sites under consideration must be self-sustaining because in an economic downturn, the state of Utah doesn’t want to be faced with the prospect of any park closures due to financial constraints. Rasmussen said both of these potential candidates would only require some updates in signage so the public is aware of their status.
Although these two candidates have the support of the governor’s office, parks
spokesman Eugene Swalberg said later that the executive branch informed park officials
the criteria’s language should be tightened to be more discerning of potential candidates.
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2019/11/2/20944290/new-utah-state-monument-
candidates-emerge-after-3-year-process

According DAILY SABAH a fortress wall dating 7,000 years back to the Chalcolithic Age has been unearthed at the Yumuktepe Mound in southern Turkey’s Mersin province. The Yumuktepe Mound is highly significant as a continuous settlement for 9,000 years since the Neolithic Age.
Two and a half months of excavations at the mound are coming to an end on Friday. This
year’s excavations, focused on the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, were carried out by
a 30-person team led by Isabella Caneva – a professor of archeology at the University of
Salento in Lecce, Italy. Caneva said that the 7-meter fortress wall discovered this season can now be shown to the public. While every year’s excavations have provided historical insights, this year’s dig produced especially “striking” Neolithic and Chalcolithic findings, Caneva said. Caneva said the layer in Yumuktepe Mound is special in that it contains very special architecture.
The fortress wall was made with a variety of materials, including a 1.5-meter-thick
support wall made of limestone at the bottom, 2 meters of well-cut stones and 3 meters of
mudbrick. Previous excavations had discovered the existence of the castle, dating back to 5,000 B.C., but the team did not uncover the wall until this season’s deeper dig in the area.
“We didn’t know that there was such a technology in that period in technical terms. Now
we see it and it’s a special structure. There was certainly a special product being made
there, because a normal village would not require such a thick and solid wall,” Caneva
said, explaining that the village is the oldest site in the world known to produce molten
copper.
“This is a very important product. Later on, there was a war for metal. It was an
important technology and a valuable substance. Tools, flashy objects and weapons were
all made with copper,” she said. The team also discovered that homes in the Neolithic period were built in a certain way, continuously constructed on top of one another, for 2,000 years. Caneva expressed hopes that the site will be developed into an open-air museum for visitors in the future.

Fire spread quickly through 600-year-old site dating back to Ryukyu kingdom in Okinawa A fire has swept through a historic castle on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, destroying much of a structure that had come to symbolise the ancient Ryukyu kingdom
and the island’s recovery from the second world war .
Flames engulfed Shuri castle, a Unesco world heritage site located in the island’s capital Naha, at around 2:40 am and quickly spread to other buildings in the complex, local police said.
There were no initial reports of injuries, but nearby residents were evacuated while
firefighters spent several hours attempting to bring the fire under control.
The castle, a popular tourist spot, dates back to the days of the Ryukyu kingdom, which
began in 1429 and ended in the late 1800s when it was annexed by the government in
Tokyo.
More recently, the castle has come to symbolise Okinawa’s struggle to overcome the
devastation of war. More than 200,000 Americans and Japanese, including around a
quarter of Okinawa’s civilian population, died during a fierce 82-day battle from April to
June 1945. The island is still home to a large number of US military bases.
As the headquarters of the imperial Japanese army, Shuri castle was relentlessly shelled
by US forces, who occupied the island until it reverted to Japanese control in 1972, two
decades after the rest of Japan regained full independence. The castle was extensively
restored and reopened as a national park in 1992.

As we are getting closer to the Cyrus the Great Day 2019, we at WCHV look at parts of the world where people celebrate the life of the great Persian King, Cyrus.
One of these countries is the Republic of Tajikistan. Tajikistan is a country in Central Asia surrounded by Afghanistan, China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It’s known for rugged mountains and popular for hiking and climbing. The Fann Mountains, near the national capital Dushanbe, have snow-capped peaks that rise over 5,000 meters. The range encompasses the Iskanderkulsky Nature Refuge, a notable bird habitat named for Iskanderkul, a turquoise lake formed by glaciers.
Tajikistan was a part of Persian Empire and today, the country still celebrate the Persian New Year, Nawruz and most people speak Farsi. In fact, Cyropolis or “The City of Cyrus” which was an ancient city founded by Cyrus the Great in 544 BCE to mark the northeastern border of his Achaemenid Empire is believed to be the same location as the modern day city of Istaravshan in Tajikistan.

In the capital city, Dushanbe, the Cyrus (the) Great Park is a beautiful park with beautiful
statutes of animals as well as a large statute of the Persian King, Cyrus. In the video created by the Tajikistan tourism (below), they show the Cyrus Great Park on a beautiful spring day with women in colorful clothing walking and children playing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Y-_MdQ-yE

The love of Persian culture in fact is quite apparent in Tajikistan as Dushanbe also has another park named after the great Persian poet, Rudaki. Abū ‘Abd Allāh Ja’far ibn Muḥammad al-Rūdhakī, better known as Rudaki, and also known as “Adam of Poets”, was a Persian poet regarded as the first great literary genius of the Modern Persian language. Rudaki composed poems in the‌ modern Persian alphabet and is considered a founder of classical Persian literature.

In another part of Dushanbe one can find the statute of another Persian poet, Ferdowsi. Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi, or Ferdowsi was a Persian poet and the author of Shahnameh, which is the world’s longest epic poem created by a single poet, and the national epic of Greater Iran.

The Egyptian government is hailing the discovery of more than 20 wooden coffins as “one of the largest and most important” archaeological finds in the past few years. The coffins were found in Assasif, a necropolis on the west bank of the Nile River. Egyptian officials have not given the time frame from which the coffins date, but the site where they were found was once part of the ancient city of Thebes.

Thebes was the royal capital of the ancient Egypt. Early monuments can be traced as far
back as the 11th dynasty, which occurred between 2081 and 1939 BCE. Authorities said more details about the coffins would be divulged in a news conference Saturday.

Egypt is on a roll with its digging into the past. Last week, the Antiquities Ministry announced that archaeologists had found 30 workshops for the manufacturing and processing of funeral furniture for the tombs of kings in the Valley of the Kings, which served as the primary burial site for pharaohs from the 18th to the 20th dynasty.

Archaeologists have found the skeletons of six babies in a medieval “house of the dead” near Poland’s border with Ukraine. In 2017, famers started noticing bones appearing in their fields in the village Gródek nad
Bugiem, so they swiftly informed the nearby Hrubieszów Museum about the grisly findings. Rightfully so as the bones led to astonishing discoveries – burials from 11th century, the times of Bolesław I the Brave and his famous battle with Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Rus, which took place somewhere nearby.
Excavation work on the site was led by Dr Tomasz Dzieńkowski from the Maria Curie-
Skłodowska University’s Institute of Archaeology and has covered a site about 300
meters from a medieval stronghold. Scientists uncovered fragments of fabric with golden thread near a skeleton, and this year’s works were yielding similar finds until they came across a large pit with a three-metre diameter. Inside were the numerous remains of incinerated people, as well as a dog’s skull, the bones of an adult’s hand and a broken clay pot. On its edge, archaeologists, to their surprise, came across well-preserved baby skeletons.
Bartłomiej Bartecki from the Hrubieszów Museum told PAP: “It could have been a so-
called ‘house of the dead’ or a monumental family tomb, with a similar form to the
homes of that time. Half-dugout, which were partly burrowed in the ground, and were
usually covered by a gable roof.” The unusual discovery dates back to 11th century.
Read more:
https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/skeletons-of-six-babies-found-during-
archaeological-dig-8067