Secret HistoryS


Nuke

20 years on: RT documentary reveals the toxic legacy of NATO's 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia


RT
Sat, 23 Mar 2019 13:42 UTC
1999 NATO campaign Yugoslavia
© Reuters / Hazir RekaA building bombed during the 1999 NATO campaign against Yugoslavia.
Two decades ago, NATO started its 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. RT America's Alex Mihailovich revisits the Balkans to recall how the intervention happened and see the harm the people in the Balkans still suffer from.

The 1999 NATO operation was the culmination of Yugoslavia's decade of bloody dissolution, which split the entire region along ethnic and religious lines. Mihailovich was there when the cruise missiles started hitting Novi Sad and other major cities. Touted as a surgical humanitarian intervention to stop the violence in Kosovo, in reality, Operation Allied Force killed more civilians than troops and devastated civilian infrastructure of the nation.

It had plenty of unintended consequences too, from hitting a civilian train, a marketplace and the Chinese Embassy, to polluting the land with depleted uranium. The toxic substance is used for armor-piercing munitions and is believed to be the cause of a spike of cancer cases today.

Comment: The moniker 'empire of chaos' is well-deserved - everything it touches turns to ashes. See also:

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Jet1

Why did US defense giant Northrop Grumman test a 75yo Nazi prototype stealth bomber?


Sputnik
Sat, 16 Mar 2019 19:39 UTC
Horton Ho 229 airframe
© CC BY 3.0/Michael.katzmannLast surviving Horton Ho 229 airframe, Smithsonian Museum's storage facility.
In late 2018, aerospace and defence giant Northrop Grumman passed a development review of its B-21 program, a secretive flying-wing strategic bomber design meant to succeed the B-2 Spirit. However, as it turns out, the company has also been tinkering with some unique designs developed in the 1940s by a certain central European country.

In September 2008, in preparation for a 2009 National Geographic documentary called Hitler's Stealth Fighter, a team of engineers from Northrop Grumman dusted off the last surviving airframe from a Horten Ho 229 V3 prototype Nazi bomber design at a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum storage facility in Maryland to engage in testing of the aircraft's stealth properties.

Building a mockup of the aircraft using "modern techniques," including stereo-lithography, engineers were able to simulate its performance against period British Chain Home radar network components, designed to help ward off Luftwaffe attacks.

stealthplane diagram
© CC0H.IXV1 drawing
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War Whore

Secret report reveals how NATO war against Gaddafi could have started in mid-80s


Sputnik
Fri, 22 Mar 2019 15:46 UTC
gaddafi
© Sputnik / В. Кузнецов
In April 1986, nearly a quarter century before the devastating 2011 NATO-led air campaign which left the North African country in ruins, the US military launched airstrikes against Libya in an attempt to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi over a nightclub bombing in West Berlin which was allegedly perpetrated by Libyan intelligence.

The UK's Ministry of Defence drew up plans to defend the British overseas territory of Gibraltar against a potential Libyan attack amid fears that London's support for the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi may have prompted a Libyan retaliation, a recently declassified top secret report has shown.

"Following US military action against Libya there is an increased risk of Libyan attack on UK targets," the report, cited by The Times, indicated. "The relative proximity of Gibraltar and the fact that its naval installation and airfield have in the past provided support for US units makes it a potential target for such an attack," the report added.

Judging Libya's Soviet-supplied Tupolev Tu-22 bombers to have sufficient range to strike Gibraltar with five 1,000 kg bombs dropped from an altitude of up to 35,000 feet, the report cited guidelines approved by the cabinet allowing for enemy aircraft demonstrating "hostile intent" to be attacked.
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Info

Unknown ancient Mesopotamian city discovered in Iraqi Kurdistan

Jean-Baptiste Veyrieras
CNRS News
Tue, 19 Mar 2019 23:44 UTC
Cuneiform tablet discovered in Kunara
© A. Tenu/Mission archéologique française du PeramagronThe first cuneiform tablet discovered in Kunara. It is an administrative text recording deliveries of different types of flour.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, excavations carried out by a French archaeological mission have revealed an ancient city on the site of Kunara. Towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC, this city stood in the heart of an unknown kingdom: that of the mountain people, who had until then remained in the shadow of their powerful Mesopotamian neighbours.

"The first excavations were perplexing!" This was not ArScAn [1] researcher Aline Tenu's first archaeological mission in the Middle East, yet the discovery that she made with her colleague in Iraqi Kurdistan continue to yield many surprises. "You could call it a small revolution," confirms their colleague Philippe Clancier, an epigraphist at ArScan.

What exactly did they find? Over the course of six excavation campaigns, conducted between 2012 and 2018, the archaeologists unearthed the traces of an unexpected ancient city at the site of Kunara. It is located on the outskirts of the Zagros Mountains, on two small hills overlooking the right bank of a branch of the Tanjaro River, approximately 5 km southwest of the city of Soulaymaniyah (modern-day cultural capital of Iraqi Kurdistan). "This area near the Iran-Iraq border was not very well explored until now," Tenu points out. The ban on venturing into Kurdistan under Saddam Hussein's regime as well as successive wars-the most recent against ISIS-did not make things any easier. "The situation is much more favourable now," enthuses the archaeologist, emphasizing the warm support offered by local authorities.
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Dig

Ancient monkey bone tools pushes back date for human migration into jungles

Lorraine Boissoneault
Smithsonian
Mon, 18 Mar 2019 12:00 UTC
Sri Lanka
© O. WedageExterior view of the entrance of Fa-Hien Lena cave in Sri Lanka, where archaeological evidence suggests humans lived about 45,000 years ago.
Sing, archaeologist, an ode to the African savanna. Legendary homeland of Homo sapiens, evolutionary proving ground for our species. Grasslands with sparse trees contributing to upright walking and long-distance hunting. An environment filled to the brim with large, meaty animals providing the fuel for our growing brains. Could any other habitat compare? Certainly not rain forests, overgrown and lacking easy food resources. They may as well be green deserts.

At least, that's how the story goes.

"For quite a long time, research has been making a strong case that humans originated from East African savannas, and that's how we ended up colonizing the rest of the world. But this model doesn't really hold true anymore," says Eleanor Scerri, an archaeologist and professor at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

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

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Info

The first farmers were direct descendants of hunter-gatherers and not migrants, new study reveals

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Wed, 20 Mar 2019 20:41 UTC
Ancient Remains
© Douglas BairdThe remains of a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer.
The first farmers in Europe were direct descendants of the region's hunter-gatherers, geneticists have discovered, dispelling an earlier theory that farming was introduced by migrants from further east.

For several years it has been broadly acknowledged that agriculture in Europe was first established in the Anatolian peninsula in modern day Turkey, and then spread westward.

Researchers led by Choongwon Jeong of the Max Planck Institute of the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, analysed eight prehistoric humans, including a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gather from whom they extracted a complete genome.

They discovered that the Neolithic farmers were direct descendants of the hunter-gathers. The finding strongly indicates that farming became commonplace because the indigenous population changed its subsistence strategy, rather than because it was overrun by incomers who brought the practice with them.
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Boat

Oldest astrolabe discovered in sunken Portuguese ship

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Tue, 19 Mar 2019 02:42 UTC
Astrolabe
© David MearnsThe astrolabe recovered from Vasco da Gama's fleet.
An astrolabe recovered from a sunken Portuguese armada ship has been verified - twice - as the oldest of its type ever discovered.

Astrolabes are instruments that were widely used from the classical period through to the late Middle Ages. They were deployed by astronomers and navigators as a reliable method of calculating position in relation to the sun, other stars, and the horizon.

So useful were they that in a recent interview Loiuse Devoy, curator of England's Royal Observatory in Greenwich described them as the medieval equivalent of a smartphone.

Given their ubiquity and value it is hardly surprising they were present on ships commanded by the famous Portuguese explorer (or vanguard of European imperialism, take your pick), Vasco da Gama, who died in 1524.

The astrolabe that has been subject to the latest scrutiny is one such, recovered from the sunken wreckage of a ship that was part of da Gama's second voyage to India, which took place in 1502 and 1503.
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Sherlock

Virgin with laughing child: Scholars unveil Leonardo da Vinci's "only surviving sculpture"

Jonathan Jones
The Guardian
Sat, 09 Mar 2019 07:00 UTC
da vinci sculpture
© Victoria & Albert Museum, LondonThe Virgin with the Laughing Child, said to be Leonardo da Vinci's only extant sculpture.
The curators of an exhibition in Florence have this week unveiled what they claim is the only surviving sculpture by Leonardo da Vinci.

It's always been part of Leonardo's legend that he made sculptures, including a giant horse, but not a single extant three-dimensional work by him had been identified.

The Virgin with the Laughing Child is the miraculous exception, according to the curators of the exhibition Verrocchio: Master of Leonardo, at Palazzo Strozzi, where it has just gone on display. It has an unambiguous label: Leonardo da Vinci. He is said to have created it around 1472, when he was 19 or 20 and a pupil of the Florentine artist Andrea del Verrocchio.

The UK has a special interest in the find, which has belonged to the V&A since 1858 but had long been credited to another artist, Antonio Rossellino. That is because scholars had been bamboozled by the posthumous authority of the late art historian and British Museum director John Pope-Hennessy, according to Francesco Caglioti, the Italian academic who is leading the new attribution.

Comment: If true, it wouldn't be the first time Leonardo's work was said to contain "blasphemous" details: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Dig

Ancient DNA research shines spotlight on Iberian Peninsula


Phys.org
Thu, 14 Mar 2019 00:00 UTC
Bronze Age site of Castillejo de Bonete in Spain
© Luis Benítez de Lugo Enrich/José Luis Fuentes Sánchez/OppidaA man and woman buried side by side at the Bronze Age site of Castillejo de Bonete in Spain had different genetic ancestries.
The largest study to date of ancient DNA from the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Portugal and Spain) offers new insights into the populations that lived in this region over the last 8,000 years. The most startling discovery suggests that local Y chromosomes were almost completely replaced during the Bronze Age.

Starting in 2500 B.C. and continuing for about 500 years, the analyses indicate, tumultuous social events played out that reshaped Iberians' paternal ancestry continuing to today.

"This is one of the strongest pieces of evidence in ancient-DNA research of sex bias in the prehistoric period," said Iñigo Olalde, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of David Reich at Harvard Medical School and first author of the study.
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Boat

Nile shipwreck discovery proves Herodotus' puzzling description of large trading boat right

Dalya Alberge
The Guardian
Sun, 17 Mar 2019 08:30 UTC
shipwreck
© Christoph Gerigk/Franck Goddio/Hilti FoundationAn archaeologist at work on a wreck in the waters around the sunken port city of Thonis-Heracleion.
In the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt and wrote of unusual river boats on the Nile. Twenty-three lines of his Historia, the ancient world's first great narrative history, are devoted to the intricate description of the construction of a "baris".

For centuries, scholars have argued over his account because there was no archaeological evidence that such ships ever existed. Now there is. A "fabulously preserved" wreck in the waters around the sunken port city of Thonis-Heracleion has revealed just how accurate the historian was.

"It wasn't until we discovered this wreck that we realised Herodotus was right," said Dr Damian Robinson, director of Oxford University's centre for maritime archaeology, which is publishing the excavation's findings. "What Herodotus described was what we were looking at."

Comment: See also: Also check out SOTT radio's: The Truth Perspective: Interview with Russell Gmirkin: What Does Plato Have To Do With the Bible?

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