Word: ancient
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...Ethiopia and you probably think of famine. And Live Aid. And Bob Geldof. And that's been bugging Ethiopians for 20 years. Ethiopia is a proud nation, the only place in Africa never to be colonized and a place with a civilization that dates back as far as ancient Egypt. Christianity flourished in Ethiopia before it took hold in Europe, and it was a Christian king of Ethiopia who gave shelter to the first Muslims in 615 A.D. after they were thrown out of Saudi Arabia as heretics - as a result, in the Koran, Mohammed tells all Muslims that they...
...winds, drought and soaring temperatures has been blamed for more than 3,000 forest fires this year. But this week alone, a rash of deadly and uncontrollable wildfires raced through the nation, swallowing thousands of acres of scrubland in the Peloponnese - even the sacred grounds of the ancient site of the birthplace of the Olympic Games, Olympia. Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis declared a nationwide state of emergency. More controversially, the Prime Minister suggested that sabotage was behind the blazes. "So many fires, breaking out simultaneously in so many places can not be a coincidence," he said in a nationally televised...
...away the rock around a 120 million-year-old fish fossil that she plans to sell for $3. Zhang, 38, went from selling vegetables a decade ago to hawking fossils on a street corners. Now, she owns her own store, The Treasure Mansion, which stocks the fossilized remains of ancient fish, trees, plants and insects - but no dinosaurs, which are officially illegal...
...Most fossils find their way to Ancient Street, the pedestrian boulevard that, despite its name, opened only last year, boasting over 60 stores that make it by far the biggest commercial fossil market in the world. There's a noticeable hierarchy here, with the newly minted dealers competing with each other, as well as peddlers of gaudy flowers and pirated books, out on the street. More established dealers set up booths in a crowded three-story building. Only the shrewdest, like Zhang, can afford the stand-alone storefronts...
...Ancient Street is for the casual fossil buyer, of course; Chinese moguls and Western collectors head instead for dealers like Wang Facai (literally meaning "fortune"), whose store called Rare Stones, carries no precious jewels, just some dusty Ming vases (likely fakes) and cheap fish fossils scattered on the shelves. The bulky Wang, in a muscle T-shirt, glances around before beckoning me into one of two back rooms. From a secret closet behind a mirror, he pulls out a slab of rock which contains the profile of a half bird, half dinosaur, Confuciusornis sanctus, whose discovery in 1994 helped scientists...