Secret HistoryS


Info

Earliest direct evidence of milk consumption found in prehistoric British farmers

Researchers have found the earliest direct evidence of milk consumption anywhere in the world in the teeth of prehistoric British farmers.
Researcher
© University of YorkThe study represents the earliest identification of the milk whey protein BLG so far.
The research team, led by archaeologists at the University of York, identified a milk protein called beta lactoglobulin (BLG) entombed in the mineralised dental plaque of seven individuals who lived in the Neolithic period around 6,000 years-ago.

The human dental plaque samples in the study are the oldest to be analysed for ancient proteins to date globally and the study represents the earliest identification of the milk whey protein BLG so far.

Binoculars

Russia, WWII and the forgotten liberation of Majdanek concentration camp

concentration camp
On July 22, the world should have remembered the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Majdanek, the first of Hitler's infamous extermination camps to be captured and shut down. But of course the brave Russian - and Ukrainian, Kazakh and other Soviet nationalities - soldiers of the Red Army got no credit across the West for doing so.

It was one of the most important liberations of World War II. On that day in 1944, troops of the Soviet Second Tank Army liberated the notorious death camp near Lublin in Poland.

What happened at Majdanek dwarfed the future discoveries of at Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and the other well-publicized German concentration camps uncovered by the Western allies. Probably close to a quarter of a million people were killed there. First estimates at the time put the figure as high as 1.5 million. (Current conventional estimates of 78,000 victims are simply ludicrously low, as respected Polish historian Czeslaw Rajca has rightly pointed out)

The horrific facts of Majdanek were reported around the world almost immediately. Alexander Werth of the British Broadcasting Corporation, one of the greatest of Western war correspondents sent graphic reports which ran on BBC News. But they were virtually totally ignored in the West as (supposedly) communist propaganda.

Fire

Burned buildings reveal sacking of ancient Turkish city 3,500 years ago

Zincirli
© Henrik BraheTurkish student Menekşe Türkkan, at left, and Assistant Director of the Chicago-Tübingen Expedition to Zincirli and OI postdoctoral fellow Kathryn Morgan, at right, work on the excavation of an ancient city called Sam'al. Photo by
More than 3,500 years ago, a rising kingdom called the Hittite Empire was expanding, testing the limits of its strength. It would soon destroy Babylon, but first, its army sacked and burned a city nestled in the mountains of modern-day Turkey called Sam'al — located on a major route of trade between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean Sea.

The charred ruins from that fateful day were uncovered for the first time in millennia during an excavation by the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The excavation is part of the OI's mission to understand the ancient Middle East, which has helped shape our picture of Western civilization.

"It's an incredibly lucky find. Every archaeologist hopes for an intact destruction layer because it gives you a snapshot of a day in the life of this town," said David Schloen, a professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a leading scholar of the ancient Middle Eastern world who co-directs the excavation. "Pottery is still sitting inside the buildings where the inhabitants left it in 1650 B.C. You know that everything is where it would be on a typical day, which is really valuable cultural knowledge."

Comment: See also:


Sheeple

Earliest spread of millet agriculture outside China linked to herding livestock

Dzhungar
© Paula DupuyHerding sheep and goat in the Dzhungar Mountains of Kazakhstan c. 2011
5000 years before the modern rise of millet as a popular grain, this Chinese crop was spread far and wide by ancient food aficionados, not for their plates but instead for their animals, suggests new research from an international collaboration led by Kiel University (Germany) and Washington University in St. Louis (USA).

At the newly discovered Dali settlement, ancient DNA from the skeletal remains of sheep and goats show that animals first domesticated in the Near East had reached eastern Kazakhstan by 2700 BC. Stable isotope analysis illustrates that these animals were fed millet spreading westward from its center of domestication in China to help them survive the punishingly cold winters of Inner Asia.

"A thriving pastoralist economy using Chinese millets at 2700 BC is a massive leap forward in understand the earliest food globalization processes in Eurasia," said Taylor Hermes, lead author of the study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, who is a post-doctoral researcher at Kiel University.

Comment: See also:


Dig

Archeologists in awe at 2,100 year old iPhone-like belt buckle unearthed in Atlantis grave in Siberia

Ancient Xiongnu-era woman took stylish accessory to the afterlife
iphone burial site russia
© HMC RAS/Pavel Leus'This site is a scientific sensation', said Dr Marina Kilunovskaya from the St Petersburg Institute of Material History Culture, who leads the Tuva Archeological Expedition.
To archeologist Pavel Leus the striking new find resembled a modern smartphone.

The black rectangular object was located in a burial site known as 'The Russian Atlantis' in mountainous Republic of Tuva, for it only appears from under water for few weeks a year.

Archeologists jokingly nicknamed the ancient female Natasha, while her accessory was called 'an iPhone'.

''Natasha's' burial with a Xiongnu-era iPhone remains one of the most interesting at this burial site,' Pavel Leus said in a new publication summarising results of several years of recent archeological expeditions to the Ala-Tey burial site.
iphone burial siberia
© HMC RAS/Pavel Leus
In fact, the discovery is a large - 18cm by 9cm - chic belt buckle made of gemstone jet with inlaid decorations of turquoise, carnelian and mother-of-pearl.

The woman's belt was decorated with Chinese wuzhu coins which helped the scientists to date it.

They believe it might be up to 2,137 years old because this is when such coins were first minted.

Comment: That is one impressive piece of craftsmanship. Jet (lignite) is soft enough to be cut and polished to either a matt or luster finish, but that thing still looks like it was machined!


Quenelle

The legacy of Israel's first person to refuse military service

Joseph Abileah
© Adi AbileahJoseph Abileah
Joseph Abileah is considered as the first person in Israel to go on trial for refusing to join its military.

Appearing in a Haifa court a few months after Israel was founded in 1948, the violinist made clear that he would play no part in the war Israel was then fighting against its neighbors. He regarded Arabs as his brothers, not his enemies.

As his case was heard, the Austrian-born Abileah made no apologies for his stance. This included his objection to the establishment of a distinctly Jewish state.

Even before Israel was founded, he had refused to join the Haganah - the main Zionist militia in Palestine.

Abileah escaped a prison sentence, but the judges failed to persuade him to take on a noncombat role, which, in the words of the late Anthony Bing, author of Israeli Pacifist: The Life of Joseph Abileah, "he likened to the case of a thief who watched for the police while another thief performed the actual robbery."

"I feel very honored to be a descendant of the Abileah family - and I've been specifically inspired by Joseph's work and his courage," said his grand niece Rae Abileah, a Jewish Voice for Peace activist living in Colorado. Rae is best known for disrupting an address made by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to the US Congress in 2011.

Comment: Adi Abileah's conscience fueled his refusal to be a part of an organization that is hell bent on dominance, wanton destruction and slow-motion genocide. His legacy continues on with many others - who the Israeli government would rather we know nothing about.

See also:


Bulb

100 years ago Sears invented society's most disruptive technology

old sears catalog
1920 Sear Catalog
The history of US consumerism starts with the Sears Roebuck mail order catalog. Yes, the very same Sears that is struggling to emerge from bankruptcy today. But 125 years ago the company was every bit the disruptive innovator. A brief summary of how that happened:
  • Mail order became viable in the late 1800s because of the expansion of the US rail system, post office regulations that allowed for catalog mailers at 1 cent/pound, and Rural Free Delivery.
  • The first Sears catalog was published in 1894 with the slogan "The Cheapest Supply House on Earth".
  • Its target audience was rural America, which in 1900 was 60% of the US population. This was a deeply underserved community, often with just a thinly stocked general store to supply all their needs.
  • The 1903 catalog added the commitment of "Your money back if you are not satisfied", reassuring customers that buying a product sight-unseen was a viable way to shop.

Dig

Largest-ever ancient-DNA study illuminates millennia of South and Central Asian prehistory, including Indus Valley Civilization

indus tomb skeleton
© Vasant Shinde/CellThe first sequenced genome from an archaeological site associated with the ancient Indus Valley Civilization came from this woman buried at the city of Rakhigarhi.
The largest-ever study of ancient human DNA, along with the first genome of an individual from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, reveal in unprecedented detail the shifting ancestry of Central and South Asian populations over time.

The research, published online Sept. 5 in a pair of papers in Science and Cell, also answers longstanding questions about the origins of farming and the source of Indo-European languages in South and Central Asia.

Geneticists, archaeologists and anthropologists from North America, Europe, Central Asia and South Asia analyzed the genomes of 524 never before-studied ancient individuals. The work increased the worldwide total of published ancient genomes by about 25 percent.

By comparing these genomes to one another and to previously sequenced genomes, and by putting the information into context alongside archaeological, linguistic and other records, the researchers filled in many of the key details about who lived in various parts of this region from the Mesolithic Era (about 12,000 years ago) to the Iron Age (until around 2,000 years ago) and how they relate to the people who live there today.

Dig

Dead Sea scrolls study raises even more questions over texts' age and origins

Temple scroll
© Michael Kappeler/AFP/Getty ImagesPart of the Temple scroll, one of the Dead Sea scrolls.
The Dead Sea scrolls have given up fresh secrets, with researchers saying they have identified a previously unknown technique used to prepare one of the most remarkable scrolls of the collection.

Scientists say the study poses a puzzle, as the salts used on the writing layer of the Temple scroll are not common to the Dead Sea region.

"This inorganic layer that is really clearly visible on the Temple scroll surprised us and induced us to look more in detail how this scroll was prepared, and it turns out to be quite unique," said Assistant Professor Admir Masic, co-author of the research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.

"These salts are not typical for anything we knew about associated with this period and parchment making," he added.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:


Attention

Ex-CIA analyst: Putin warned Bush about impending attack two days before 9/11

9/11 wtc lights
© Reuters / Ueslei MarcelinoThe Tribute in Light installation in New York City, marking the location of the World Trade Center buildings destroyed on September 11, 2001
Russian President Vladimir Putin had called his US counterpart George W. Bush two days before the 9/11 attacks in 2001, warning about an imminent terrorist plot coming from Afghanistan, a former CIA analyst has revealed.

The urgent warning coming from the Russian leader is mentioned in the book 'The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe,' released earlier this week and written by George Beebee, a senior Bush-era CIA analyst.
Putin had telephoned President Bush two days before the attacks to warn that Russian intelligence has detected signs of an incipient terrorist campaign, 'something long in preparation,' coming out of Afghanistan.
The revelation by the former CIA operative appears to be yet another proof that Washington has been repeatedly warned about the attacks that ultimately happened on September 11, 2001.

While the existence of a warning from Moscow has been public knowledge for years - senior Russian intelligence officials spoke about them shortly after the attacks - Beebee's book suggests that it was not limited to exchange between the intelligence agencies, and that Bush was warned by Putin personally.