Bronze Age

Brown Jordan has reissued Walter Lamb's iconic outdoor furniture line, first designed for the El Monte company in 1947. Although the metal-tube and cotton-rope furniture is often referred to as the Bronze Collection, it's actually made of brass, says Steve Elton, Brown Jordan's director of sales. "The outdoor furniture was originally made from salvaged brass tubing taken from sunken ships in Pearl Harbor after World War II," Elton says.

Reporting from Urumqi, China ? Almost invariably when visitors approach the middle-aged woman enshrined in a climatized exhibit case in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Museum, they pause and do a double take. What gets the most attention is her nose: high-bridged, slightly hooked, the sort of nose that reminds you of Meryl Streep. Then a little gasp. " Weiguoren!" (A foreigner!), one young woman exclaimed to her friends. They were touring the museum earlier this month on a Chinese public holiday.

The Ventura County Archeological Society will host guest speaker Antonio Gilman of Cal State Northridge at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Nazarene Church, 2770 Borchard Road, Newbury Park. Gilman's discussion will focus on his work at a well-preserved Bronze Age site in La Mancha, Spain, and about how European chiefdoms operated. For more information, call Ted Fautz at 657-3325 or (818) 354-8486.

Barry Goldman's objections to religious and spiritual diversity, as articulated in his Jan. 3 Times Op-Ed article, are too cynical and trite to even merit space in this newspaper. His Aunt Mary's quotation, "Whatever Jews believe, that's what I believe," is the policy of someone without intellectual or spiritual hunger. For Goldman to laud this attitude as proper shows an amazing amount of disdain on his part for the curiosity and exploration that religious growth requires. Using terms such as "superstitious hocus pocus" is simply another way of calling unfamiliar beliefs unfounded.

Romanian archaeologists have discovered a Bronze Age tomb in Sultana in southern Romania, the national news agency Rompress reported Monday. Romanian experts told Rompress the tomb contained the skeleton of a man whose body had been coated with a thick layer of ocher--clay tinted yellow or reddish brown by iron oxide--and buried in a sitting position.

Officials in the Irish Republic are taking steps to curtail public access to Dun Aengus, one of Europe's most spectacular Bronze Age monuments. According to the Times of London, up to 100,000 people a year visit the monument, which stands atop a 300-foot cliff on the southern side of Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands off the County Galway coast.

Forget pink. This summer makeup is going bronze with shimmering colors to accent any tan--real or fake. The best thing about these products is they wash off with soap and water. "We have been doing a tremendous business in bronzing [cosmetics], especially anything with shimmer. That includes both powders and liquid bronzers, which are big this year," reports Cynthia Olson, manager of cosmetics superstore Sephorain Costa Mesa.

Archeologists said they have found evidence of crude surgery on the skull of a child who died 4,200 years ago. The 8-year-old child apparently died during the operation, the Antiquities Authority said Sunday. Bronze Age surgeons using metal scrapers opened an oblong, matchbox-size hole in the top of the skull to either release pressure or drain an infection, archeologist Joe Zias said.

Archeologists have excavated 17 bronze shields offered to the gods about 3,000 years ago in the biggest such find in Europe, experts said Wednesday. "This is a find that would earn a place in the British Museum or in the Louvre," said Ulf-Erik Hagberg of the regional museum in Lidkoping, 155 miles southwest of Stockholm. The 17 bronze shields were lowered into a lake--now farmland--in a sacrificial offering during the Nordic Bronze Age between 1500 BC and 500 BC, Hagberg said.

A thriving Bronze Age drug trade supplied narcotics to ancient cultures throughout the eastern Mediterranean as balm for the pain of childbirth and disease, proving a sophisticated knowledge of medicines dating back thousands of years, researchers say.

Ian McKellen is still adjusting to the fact that he turned 70 this year. "You always think that 70 is the end of the road: 'Somebody died when they were 73; good life,' " he mused on a recent bright fall afternoon, looking wistfully out a hotel window at the flame-tipped trees of Central Park below. "You're closer to death, and you better make sure you don't waste too much of your time doing things you don't want to do. No point in saying things you don't believe in." The renowned Shakespearean was in town to promote his latest project, "The Prisoner," a remake of the cult 1960s British drama about a Big Brother society, which begins Sunday on AMC. It was the day after the New York premiere, and a round of morning interviews seemed to have sapped his energy.

Archaeologists in the ancient city of Troy in Turkey have found the remains of a man and a woman believed to have died in 1,200 B.C., the time of the legendary war chronicled by Homer, a leading German professor said on Tuesday. Ernst Pernicka, a University of Tubingen professor who is leading excavations on the site in northwestern Turkey, said the bodies were found near a defense line within the city built in the late Bronze Age. The discovery could add to evidence that Troy's lower area was bigger in the late Bronze Age than previously thought, changing scholars' perceptions about the city of "The Iliad."

Brown Jordan has reissued Walter Lamb's iconic outdoor furniture line, first designed for the El Monte company in 1947. Although the metal-tube and cotton-rope furniture is often referred to as the Bronze Collection, it's actually made of brass, says Steve Elton, Brown Jordan's director of sales. "The outdoor furniture was originally made from salvaged brass tubing taken from sunken ships in Pearl Harbor after World War II," Elton says.

Matt Leinart became the second USC quarterback in three years to win the Heisman Trophy when he was awarded college football's most prestigious award Saturday night in New York. So much for that "West Coast bias" theory. "Oh my goodness," an emotional Leinart said as he leaned into the microphone. It was a sentiment shared by many -- including Leinart's mother, Linda, who dabbed back tears, and father Bob, so proud he might have busted his shirt buttons.

Someone finally caught Wayne Gretzky. Not until he had been retired for three years, of course, and after he had passed his 41st birthday. And it was no ordinary defenseman or checking forward who snared him. It took Eric Blome, an artist of supreme talent, to capture him--or at least his essence--in lovingly sculpted bronze with a granite base, creating a commanding, 1,300-pound statue that was unveiled Wednesday in the Star Plaza in front of Staples Center.

The Ventura County Archeological Society will host guest speaker Antonio Gilman of Cal State Northridge at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Nazarene Church, 2770 Borchard Road, Newbury Park. Gilman's discussion will focus on his work at a well-preserved Bronze Age site in La Mancha, Spain, and about how European chiefdoms operated. For more information, call Ted Fautz at 657-3325 or (818) 354-8486.

Even Bronze Age women had osteoporosis despite their presumably active lives, according to researchers from the Vienna University Hospital. The team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that they used X-rays to determine the density of bones from 14 women buried at Unterhautzental, Austria, and found that they were about 11% less dense than bones from five men, indicating that the women were at greater risk for fractures.

Alpine trekkers discovered a mummified body in a glacier, and a scientist examining the corpse said Wednesday that it is about 4,000 years old. The Bronze Age man is thus believed to have died 2,000 years before the birth of Jesus. Local police had initially put the age of the body at 500 years. However, a bronze ax and a stone knife found with the body were "typical" of the early European Bronze Age and helped date it as much older, said Prof.

A thriving Bronze Age drug trade supplied narcotics to ancient cultures throughout the eastern Mediterranean as balm for the pain of childbirth and disease, proving a sophisticated knowledge of medicines dating back thousands of years, researchers say.