Secret HistoryS

Info

Winter dust storms may have collapsed Akkadian Empire


Hokkaido University
Thu, 24 Oct 2019 18:24 UTC
Fossil coral records provide new evidence that frequent winter shamals, or dust storms, and a prolonged cold winter season contributed to the collapse of the ancient Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia.
Archaeologist
© Hokkaido Univerity
The Akkadian Empire (24th to 22nd century B.C.E.) was the first united empire in Mesopotamia and thrived with the development of irrigation. Yet, settlements appear to have been suddenly abandoned ca. 4,200 years ago, causing its collapse. The area would also not experience resettlement until about 300 years later.

Past studies have shown that the Akkadian Empire likely collapsed due to abrupt drought and civil turmoil. However, the climatic dynamics which caused widespread agricultural failures and the end of an era have yet to be sufficiently explored.

Researchers from Hokkaido University, the KIKAI Institute for Coral Reef Sciences, Kyushu University, and Kiel University made paleoclimatic reconstructions of the temperature and hydrological changes of the areas around the archaeological site of Tell Leilan, the center of the Akkadian Empire. They sampled six 4,100-year-old fossil Porites corals from the Gulf of Oman, just directly downwind. The samples were aged by radiocarbon dating and geochemically analyzed to confirm they have not been significantly altered from their present state.
Read More...
Info

Cause of Alexander the Great's death revealed by Greek researchers


Sputnik News
Fri, 25 Oct 2019 18:10 UTC
Alexander the Great
© CCOAlexander cuts the Gordian knot.
Between 334 and 323 BC, the great military commander and king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon forged the largest empire in the ancient world, with his kingdom stretching from modern day Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey to Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, India and much of Central Asia. And he did it all by his early 30s.

A team of researchers led by Dr. Thomas Gerasimidis of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki has completed nearly a quarter of a century of painstaking studies on the last days of Alexander the Great's life, concluding that the conqueror died of pancreatic necrosis, and not malaria, typhoid fever or pneumonia, as previously thought, Sputnik Greece has reported.

Dr. Gerasimidis, a veteran professor of medicine, began studying Alexander's final days in 1995, carefully analysing the symptoms experienced by the Macedonian king, as described by ancient historians including Arrian, considered one of the best sources on Alexander's campaigns, and others ranging from Ptolemy and Plutarch to Quintus Curtius. He called this approach "evidence-based medicine."
Read More...
Dig

Medieval Scottish man was 'short, balding, with bad teeth and back problems'

Mindy Weisberger
Live Science
Fri, 25 Oct 2019 09:40 UTC
medieval scotland
© AOC Archaeology GroupA digital facial reconstruction reveals the face of "Skeleton 125," or "SK125," a man who lived in medieval Scotland and died when he was about 46 years old.
Archaeologists have reconstructed the weathered face of a balding, middle-age man suffering from back trouble and severe dental disease. He died more than 600 years ago and was buried in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Using facial reconstruction technology, researchers crafted a digital model that offered a glimpse of the man โ€” known as "Skeleton 125," or "SK125" โ€” showing what he may have looked like in life, Aberdeen City Council representatives said in a statement.

The result reveals the 46-year-old man's face, with blue eyes that are set close together and a jaw that is missing many of its teeth. The skull's condition indicated years of serious tooth and gum problems, which led to tooth loss, a chronic abscess and cavities, according to the statement.

Comment: What a difference a millennium makes: Brutally murdered Pictish chieftain was heavily built and ate "nothing but suckling pig"

See also:

Read More...
Star of David

Best of the Web: How the Israeli military censor killed a story about a Mossad 'terrorist' bombing campaign in Lebanon in 1980s

Rรฉmi Brulin
MondoWeiss
Wed, 23 Oct 2019 15:28 UTC
New York Times in 1983
Front page story in the New York Times in 1983 on a terrorist bombing that killed Palestinians in Lebanon. The bombing campaign has now been confirmed as an Israeli one that claimed 100s of innocent lives.
June, 1980. Over the previous weeks Israeli air and sea attacks on "Palestinian and leftist positions" have been "almost nightly events." According to Christian Science Monitor journalist Helena Cobban, however, a "more sinister Israeli hand is seen behind some of the increased unrest throughout the country." Indeed, "several enormous car bombs have exploded here recently in locations with a heavy concentration of Palestinian or Syrian population." At least two were claimed by a group calling itself the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners (FLLF).

The mysterious group's modus operandi, Cobban writes, "seem[s] to indicate the influence of some Israeli extremist groups" like the ones behind car-bomb attacks against three Palestinian mayors in the West Bank on June 2. To an "embittered Palestinian scholar," who spoke to Cobban, they also brought to mind "the terror-bombings launched against Palestinian villages by Mr. Begin's own Irgun extremist group" in the 1940s. "Then, the aim was to drive us out of Palestine, and they largely succeeded... Now they want to drive us out of Lebanon. Where can we go? The Israelis are going mad, but this time round, the world cannot support their terror. Or can it?"
Read More...
Dig

Mysterious skeleton of woman and girl discovered in lost Tower of London chapel

Brandon Specktor
Live Science
Thu, 24 Oct 2019 10:19 UTC
Tower of London
© Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images ImagesNot everyone buried within the walls of the Tower of London got there by the hand (or ax) of Henry VIII.
The Tower of London is perhaps best known as a dungeon and burial ground where Anne Boleyn, Thomas More and various other friends and exes of Henry VIII were laid to rest after losing the king's favor (and their heads).

But for much of its 950-year history, the tower was also a thriving palace and community center. Within the medieval castle's walls were chapels, pubs, government offices and residences for the hundreds of Londoners who kept the place running. And as the first new skeletal discovery in nearly 50 years reminds us, not all who were buried there were ministered by the headsman's ax.

Two intact skeletons โ€” one of a woman who died at approximately 40 years old and one of a 7-year-old girl โ€” were recently exhumed from connected burial plots below the tower's Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. The pair are the first skeletons discovered at the tower since the 1970s and the first complete skeletons from the tower to ever have their bones analyzed by an osteoarchaeologist, curators at the tower said in a news release.

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Boat

Early humans moved through Mediterranean earlier than believed


Science Daily
Wed, 16 Oct 2019 12:00 UTC
early human
© Stephane De Sakutin/AFP/Getty ImagesScientists have unearthed new evidence in Greece proving that the island of Naxos was inhabited by Neanderthals and earlier humans at least 200,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years earlier than previously believed.
An international research team led by scientists from McMaster University has unearthed new evidence in Greece proving that the island of Naxos was inhabited by Neanderthals and earlier humans at least 200,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years earlier than previously believed.

The findings, published today in the journal Science Advances, are based on years of excavations and challenge current thinking about human movement in the region -- long thought to have been inaccessible and uninhabitable to anyone but modern humans. The new evidence is leading researchers to reconsider the routes our early ancestors took as they moved out of Africa into Europe and demonstrates their ability to adapt to new environmental challenges.

"Until recently, this part of the world was seen as irrelevant to early human studies but the results force us to completely rethink the history of the Mediterranean islands," says Tristan Carter, an associate professor of anthropology at McMaster University and lead author on the study. He conducted the work with Dimitris Athanasoulis, head of archaeology at the Cycladic Ephorate of Antiquities within the Greek Ministry of Culture.

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

Read More...
Dig

Who was the "Glorious Martyr" of 1,500 year old Byzantine church newly discovered in Israel?


Arutz Sheva
Wed, 23 Oct 2019 14:39 UTC
Ramat Beit Shemesh
© (Asaf Peretz, Israel Antiquities Authority)The Eagle, symbol of the Byzantine Empire, discovered at a Byzantine-era church complex in Ramat Beit Shemesh, October 2019.
An ancient Byzantine-era church, complete with a floor mosaic and Green inscriptions, has been discovered in Ramat Beit Shemesh, with a mysterious dedication to an unnamed "Glorious Martyr".

Who was the "Glorious Martyr" immortalized by the Greek inscription, in whose memory this magnificent church was built and later enlarged under the patronage of the Byzantine Emperor Tiberius II himself?

This mystery has fixated archaeologists of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) for the past three years during excavations conducted in Ramat Beit Shemesh, financed by Jerusalem district in The Israel Ministry of Construction and Housing and the CPM Corporation.

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Comet 2

New evidence that an impact event triggered abrupt climate change 12,800 years ago

Christopher R. Moore
The Conversation
Tue, 22 Oct 2019 18:51 UTC
Younger Dryas Event
© Christopher R. Moore, CC BY-NDThe muck thatโ€™s been accumulating at the bottom of this lake for 20,000 years is like a climate time capsule.
What kicked off the Earth's rapid cooling 12,800 years ago?

In the space of just a couple of years, average temperatures abruptly dropped, resulting in temperatures as much as 14 degrees Fahrenheit cooler in some regions of the Northern Hemisphere. If a drop like that happened today, it would mean the average temperature of Miami Beach would quickly change to that of current Montreal, Canada. Layers of ice in Greenland show that this cool period in the Northern Hemisphere lasted about 1,400 years.

This climate event, called the Younger Dryas by scientists, marked the beginning of a decline in ice-age megafauna, such as mammoth and mastodon, eventually leading to extinction of more than 35 genera of animals across North America. Although disputed, some research suggests that Younger Dryas environmental changes led to a population decline among the Native Americans known for their distinctive Clovis spear points.

Conventional geologic wisdom blames the Younger Dryas on the failure of glacial ice dams holding back huge lakes in central North America and the sudden, massive blast of freshwater they released into the north Atlantic. This freshwater influx shut down ocean circulation and ended up cooling the climate.

Some geologists, however, subscribe to what is called the impact hypothesis: the idea that a fragmented comet or asteroid collided with the Earth 12,800 years ago and caused this abrupt climate event. Along with disrupting the glacial ice-sheet and shutting down ocean currents, this hypothesis holds that the extraterrestrial impact also triggered an "impact winter" by setting off massive wildfires that blocked sunlight with their smoke.

The evidence is mounting that the cause of the Younger Dryas' cooling climate came from outer space. My own recent fieldwork at a South Carolina lake that has been around for at least 20,000 years adds to the growing pile of evidence.
Read More...
Info

3000-year-old Assyrian seal unearthed in southeastern Turkey


Arkeolojik Haber
Tue, 22 Oct 2019 18:04 UTC
Archeologists have unearthed an engraved stone seal some 3,000 years old in southeastern Turkey.
Assyrian Seal
© Anadolu Agency
3000-year-old Assyrian Seal was discovered around Zerzevan Castle, also known as Samachi Castle, a onetime important military base for the Byzantine Empire now in the southeastern Diyarbakir province.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Aytac Coskun, head of the excavation team, said that the castle had been known as 800-year-old military base but recent excavations showed that its history dates back much farther.
Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Declassified files tell dramatic story of how first Soviet atomic bomb was made


RT
Mon, 21 Oct 2019 17:40 UTC
Soviet atomic bomb
© Sputnik / Maksim BlinovThe first Soviet atomic bomb, RDS-1.
After the US nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the USSR needed to develop its own A-bomb fast to keep parity. The declassified papers provide a glimpse into how the elaborate task was achieved just four years later.


Comment: US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not to end WWII, they were to intimidate the Soviet Union


First Soviet first atomic bomb, RDS-1 or Pervaya Molniya (First Lightning), was successfully tested on August 29, 1949 at a range in the town of Semipalatinsk in the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. The files, published by Russia's nuclear agency, Rosatom, contained the photos of the menacing weapon while it was still a work in progress.

Comment: See also:

Read More...