Secret HistoryS


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The mystery of human bipedality

Tom Garlinghouse
Sapiens Org
Wed, 29 May 2019 23:40 UTC
Bipedality
© Julie Delton/Getty Images
Bipedality, the ability to walk upright on two legs, is a hallmark of human evolution. Many primates can stand up and walk around for short periods of time, but only humans use this posture for their primary mode of locomotion.

Fossils suggests that bipedality may have begun as early as 6 million years ago. But it was with Australopithecus, an early hominin who evolved in southern and eastern Africa between 4 and 2 million years ago, that our ancestors took their first steps as committed bipeds. Yet scientists still know little about the circumstances that led to this trait's emergence.

Carol Ward, a paleoanthropologist and anatomist at the University of Missouri, studies this question. A specialist in human origins, Ward has spent a number of field seasons at various paleontological sites, including at Kanapoi and Lomekwi in West Turkana, Kenya, where she and her colleagues recovered australopithecine fossils. Her latest work repurposes 3D medical-imaging technologies to compare modern primate anatomy, including soft tissues and organs, with the skeletal fossil record of ancient hominids. That technique allows her to make inferences about our ancient ancestors and how their bodies supported different forms of locomotion. As she discussed in a short lecture at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in February, figuring out how and why humans became bipedal could be essential to understanding human evolution more broadly.

The following conversation with Ward has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Black Magic

Bill and Hillary Clinton delved deeply into Haitian voodoo and black magic ceremonies

Corey Lynn
Corey's Digs
Sun, 29 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
Clintons
Yes, I'm going there, and here's why: To understand the evil motivations of another human, one must explore their psyche to see how and why they operate the way they do. When reviewing the Clintons' countless money laundering and pay-to-play schemes, one may ask, what the hell do they need all of this money for? Well, buying people off requires a lot of money. And why do they need to buy people off? Simple: the Clintons' thirst for power is insatiable. Let me say that again: the Clintons' thirst for power is insatiable. So much so that they stop at nothing to get what they want while enjoying the stain of destruction they leave along our path. In fact, their hunger for power is so strong, they even seek assistance through the help of voodoo and black magic with the hope of ensuring outcomes.

Some may already be aware of Bill and Hillary Clinton's experience with voodoo from the passage in Bill Clinton's memoir "My Life". However, I don't believe anyone is aware of their dark secret regarding the former President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his black magic. Did someone say secret? Shhh

Surely their story begins long before the 70's when it comes to their lust for power and the dark arts, but this journey begins in 1975 when the Clintons took their first trip to Haiti shortly after they married. Bill Clinton found a particular experience to be "the most interesting day of the trip", and he decided to include it in his memoir. Bill, Hillary, and their friend David Edwards had the opportunity to see voodoo in practice in a village near Port-au-Prince. The priest was Max Beauvoir, who had abandoned his career as a chemical engineer when his voodoo-priest grandfather died and named him as his successor.

Beauvoir gave them a "brief course in voodoo theology" as Clinton described it. Later that afternoon, the ceremony began. Clinton wrote:

Comment: See also: Sickos: Wikileaks reveals Podesta bros participate in disturbing, occult-themed "spirit cooking" involving copious bodily fluids?

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Star of David

Declassified documents show how Israel made sure expelled Arabs would never be able to return to their villages

Yotam Berger
Haaretz
Wed, 29 May 2019 14:33 UTC
Eshkol Rabin Harel israel palestine
© Moshe Milner / GPOWar criminals: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin and Eshkol aide Isser Harel visiting the Negev, 1965.
Trove of archival documents reveals how Israel prevented Arabs from returning to villages they had left in 1948 - chiefly, by razing structures and planting dense forests

Israel lifted its military rule over the state's Arab community in 1966 only after ascertaining that its members could not return to the villages they had fled or been expelled from, according to newly declassified archival documents.

The documents both reveal the considerations behind the creation of the military government 18 years earlier, and the reasons for dismantling it and revoking the severe restrictions it imposed on Arab citizens in the north, the Negev and the so-called Triangle of Locales in central Israel.

These records were made public as a result of a campaign launched against the state archives by the Akevot Institute, which researches the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Comment: For a comprehensive history of the Nakba, see Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which was based on the IDF's own records of the war for Palestine and the systematic expulsion of the native Arab population.
Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking book revisits the formation of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint.


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Magnify

'Giants On Record': Author Hugh Newman explores the hidden history

Bryce Fessier
Palm Springs Desert Sun
Thu, 23 May 2019 08:00 UTC
giants on record
Everyone knows the first line of the English fairy tale, "Fee Fi Fo Fum."

But how many know the rest of the verse, which gets a little dark:

"I smell the blood of an Englishman/ Be he alive, or be he dead/ I'll grind his bones to make my bread."

What the hell kind of bedtime story is that?

Actually, it derives from the early 18th century tale of Jack and a cannibalistic giant called "Jack the Giant Killer." The origins of that can be traced through oral histories to prehistoric England, when giants may have roamed not just the UK, but the Earth.

The 16th century scribe, Raphael Holinshed, wrote in "Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland," that Britain's oldest acknowledged name was taken from a prehistoric king named Albion, who ruled a race of giants that dominated the UK for hundreds, possibly thousands of years B.C.

The Bible is filled with stories of Middle Eastern giants, including the Nephilim tribe that spawned the Amorites, Emim and Anakim, who the Sumerians called the Annunaki.

Comment: To can listen to or read our interview with Jim Viera and Hugh Newman, authors of Giants on Record: America's Hidden History, Secrets in the Mounds and the Smithsonian Files below:

The Truth Perspective: Giants on Record with Jim Vieira and Hugh Newman

See also:

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Dig

New evidence uncovered for Roman conquest of Scotland


Heritage Daily
Fri, 24 May 2019 12:00 UTC
roman scotland
The discovery was made during archaeological excavations undertaken by GUARD Archaeology prior to the building of the new Ayr Academy in 2015. The GUARD Archaeologists discovered a hitherto unknown Roman marching camp that was constructed during the Roman conquest of Scotland.

At the time it was not obvious that a Roman camp had been found, because there were no Roman artefacts present, only fragments of much earlier Neolithic pottery and an Iron Age bangle from a seemingly random spread of pits and post-holes. However, during the subsequent post-excavation analyses, radiocarbon dates revealed a regular pattern of features that date to the Roman conquest of Scotland in the latter part of the first century AD.

'The Roman features comprised 26 large, often double, fire-pits that were distributed evenly in two parallel rows 30m apart,' said Iraia Arabaolaza, who directed the excavation and who will present the talk tomorrow. 'The arrangement and uniformity of these features implies an organised layout and the evidence suggests that they were all used for baking bread.

Comment: See also: Is key to indecipherable Pictish stones to be found in ancient Tibetan symbols?

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Seismograph

Ancient America: Oral history of tribe confirmed, area hit by 5 tsunamis over last 2,700 years

Tom Banse
KNKX
Tue, 07 May 2019 17:32 UTC
Klallam
© Sarah Sterling / PSUA mural in Port Angeles shows Klallam plank houses, as they might have looked after being rebuilt following a long-ago tsunami.
A legend about a great flood has been passed down through the centuries among the Klallam people on the north side of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. As re-told by Klallam elder Ed Sampson on a recording preserved by a University of North Texas linguist, the people noticed the fresh water turning salty -- a detail from which we infer a tsunami.

In the story, a wise man warned the people to get ready. They scrambled into canoes provisioned with food and water. The survivors rode out the flood by tying cedar ropes to the tops of the tallest mountains of the nearby Olympic Range.

Lower Elwha Klallam tribal chairwoman Frances Charles said now there's proof this story "is not a myth."

Comment: See also:

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Dig

Dionysus returns to Rome: Archeologists stumble on 2,000-year-old marble head near remains of ancient Roman Forum


Sputnik
Tue, 28 May 2019 15:34 UTC
Dionysus sculpture Rome
© EPA-EFA/Municipality of RomeAccording to Claudio Parisi Presicce, director of Rome's archaeological museums, the head dates to between the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD.
Rome continues to bear priceless ancient gifts as archeologists recently made a remarkable find during excavations in the heart of the Italian capital, near the remains of the ancient Roman Forum.

Rome's archeologists literally stumbled upon a fascinating discovery during excavations in the heart of the city, near the remains of the ancient Roman Forum.

The marble head they dug up would have belonged to a large statue of the god Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, the ancient Roman god of wine, dance and fertility, dating back to the imperial era.
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Archaeology

Archeologists uncover more of Egypt's oldest fortress

Stephanie Valera
Geek.com
Wed, 22 May 2019 12:10 UTC
egypt fortress
© Egyptian Ministry of AntiquitiesAnother major discovery in Egypt: Archaeologists have unearthed two towers of a military fortress that dates from the 26th Dynasty in Sinai.
An archaeological mission in Egypt has uncovered the remains of two towers of a military fortress dating back to the 26th Dynasty, the last native dynasty to rule Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525 BC.

The discovery was made in north Sinai, in an archaeological site known as Tal al-Kidwa, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.

Head of the Egyptian Antiquities Department Ayman Ashmawy the mission discovered southeastern and northeastern towers and part of a wall extending for 85 meters (around 278 feet). In 2008, archaeologists had excavated the eastern wall, but the fortress is so large, it took until now to unearth more of its remains.

In a statement, Ashmawy said another fortress, discovered previously, had been built on the ruins of this newly discovered fortress.

Comment: See also:

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Bulb

Is key to indecipherable Pictish stones to be found in ancient Tibetan symbols?

Alison Campsie
Scotsman
Sat, 25 May 2019 20:16 UTC
Buddhist Drawing
© British Library.Drawing of ancient Buddhist ceremony which shows Tibetan monks holding a bell and dorje - a thunderbolt symbol - which Dr TA Wise believed inspired the Pictish double disc symbol which can be found on standing stones across the north and east of Scotland.
Thomas A Wise, a doctor from Dundee, left Scotland 1827 to take up a position in the Bengal Medical Service. It was a journey made by many Scots medical graduates before him.

His 23 years in in India fuelled an intense interest in the cultural and social aspects of his adopted home. He wrote treatise on the Hindu system of medicine, diseases of the eye and preservation of ice while investing heavily in a hospital and servings as the Secretary to the Committee of Public Instruction in Calcutta.

But it was his theory that suggested the ancient Buddhists of Tibet travelled to Scotland to meet the Picts of the North and East that truly consumed the polymath.

Comment: While it's not inconceivable that Tibetan's could have travelled to Scotland, it's more likely that these symbols represent a shared experience encoded in similar symbology. In the same way the swastika appears all over the world, these symbols may be a simplified representation of an actual event these cultures witnessed, such as how comets everywhere have been depicted as dragons, snakes and thunderbolts. If the Tibetans conceived the image to represent a shift in human consciousness, it's intriguing to think that may be, at least in part, what they were documenting:

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Laptop

The compiler: Computing's hidden hero and the woman who created it

Tim Harford
BBC
Sat, 25 May 2019 19:27 UTC
computr bits binary
© iStock
One, zero, zero, one, zero, one. Zero, one, one...

That is the language of computers. Every clever thing your computer does - make a call, search a database, play a game - comes down to ones and zeroes.Actually, it comes down to the presence (one) or absence (zero) of a current in tiny transistors on a semiconductor chip.Thankfully, we do not have to program computers in zeroes and ones.

Microsoft Windows, for example, uses 20GB, or 170 billion ones and zeroes. Printed out, the stack of A4 paper would be two and a half miles (4km) high. Imagine setting every transistor manually.

Ignoring how fiddly this would be - transistors measure just billionths of a metre - if it took a second to flip each switch, installing Windows would take 5,000 years.

Early computers really were programmed rather like this.
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