Secret HistoryS


Footprints

The 1508 League of Cambrai and BRICS reveal how to not repeat history

Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture Foundation
Wed, 11 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
lionPAX
© Strategic Culture Foundation
"The nature of the time, most serene prince, requires this, an observance of an old proverb, which enjoins kissing the hand we are unable to cut off."

~ Sebastien Guistinian, Venetian Ambassador to England's Henry VIII
The Russia-China alliance has become an unstoppable powerhouse of visionary infrastructure projects across the Arctic, Eurasia, Africa and Europe exemplified beautifully by the evolving Belt and Road Initiative and BRICS. This cooperative alliance has tapped into a strategic reality of mankind's genuine common interests which is so powerful that even countries formerly at war with each other and subjects of imperial manipulation have increasingly broken free in order to participate in this new paradigm.
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Black Magic

Ritual killing of high status Mayan prisoners of war revealed in isotope analysis

University of Bonn
Phys.org
Wed, 11 Dec 2019 12:00 UTC
maya
© Nicolaus SeefeldAfter the bodies had been dismembered, the body parts were placed at the bottom of an artificial water reservoir and covered with large stone blocks.
Several years ago, Maya archaeologists from the University of Bonn found the bones of about 20 people at the bottom of a water reservoir in the former Maya city of Uxul, in what is now Mexico. They had apparently been killed and dismembered about 1,400 years ago. Did these victims come from Uxul or other regions of the Maya Area? Dr. Nicolaus Seefeld, who heads the project that is funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation at the University of Bonn, is now one step further: A strontium isotope analysis by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) showed that some of the dead grew up at least 95 miles (150 kilometers) from Uxul.

Strontium is ingested with food and stored like calcium in bones and teeth. The isotope ratios of strontium vary in rocks and soils, which is why different regions on earth have their own characteristic signatures. "As the development of tooth enamel is completed in early childhood, the strontium isotope ratio indicates the region where a person grew up," says Dr. Nicolaus Seefeld, who heads a project at the University of Bonn on the mass grave of Uxul and the role of ritualized violence in Maya society.

Comment: It's notable that, even though climate stressors have been recorded around that time, the ancient Maya practiced 'total war' even before this wrought havoc on their civilization.

See also:

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Pharoah

Rare bust of Ramses II discovered near Giza

Hannah Osborne
Newsweek
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 17:27 UTC
Bust of Ramses II
© Ministry of Antiquities
A rare statue of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II has been discovered near Giza. The pink granite statue, which is almost 3.5 feet tall, was found to have the symbol 'Ka' — thought to be an aspect of the soul or spirit by the civilization.

The discovery was announced by Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities. The statue was found on the land of a man who had been arrested earlier in the month for carrying out illegal excavations. The land was located near the Temple of Ptah, which is about 15 miles from Giza.

In a statement, Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the rare statue was "intended to provide a resting place for the Ka (life-force or spirit) of the person after death." Previously, only a wooden statue of Ramses II with the Ka symbol had been discovered.

"This discovery is considered one of the rarest archaeological discoveries. It is the first ever Ka statue made of granite to be discovered. The only Ka statue that was previously found is made of wood and it belongs to one of the kings of the thirteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt," he told China's Xinhua news agency.
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Archaeology

Strange ancient Egyptian 'head cones' discovered in burials

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Wed, 11 Dec 2019 12:00 UTC
egypt hats
© (Stevens et al., Antiquity, 2019)
Most of the garments depicted in ancient Egyptian art are relatively straightforward to decipher, but there's a particular wearable article that has baffled archaeologists. In statuary, murals, funerary stelae, coffins and relief sculptures dating between 3,570 and 2,000 years ago, people repeatedly appeared wearing cones on their heads, a bit like party hats.

Now, for the first time, archaeologists have actually identified two such cones, crafted out of wax and adorning the heads of skeletons dating back some 3,300 years. The finds were excavated from the cemeteries of the city of Akhetaten, also known as Amarna.

This discovery may finally help to resolve several hypotheses over the meaning of these head cones, and what their function may have been back in the day.

Comment: See also:

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Palette

Earliest known cave art by modern humans found in Indonesia

Hannah Devlin
The Guardian
Wed, 11 Dec 2019 18:00 UTC
oldest cave art indonesia
© Ratno Sardi/Griffith UniversityThe drawings are nearly twice as old as any previously known narrative scenes.
Cave art depicting human-animal hybrid figures hunting warty pigs and dwarf buffaloes has been dated to nearly 44,000 years old, making it the earliest known cave art by our species.

The artwork in Indonesia is nearly twice as old as any previous hunting scene and provides unprecedented insights into the earliest storytelling and the emergence of modern human cognition.

Previously, images of this level of sophistication dated to about 20,000 years ago, with the oldest cave paintings believed to be more basic creations such as handprints.

Comment: Could this cave art have a deeper meaning than simply the depiction of a hunt? It's notable that archeologists are impressed by this painting's age, of 44,000 years old, when only very recently a 45,000 year old lion statuette was found in Denisova Cave in Russia, and there's a 175,000-year-old circular structure in France, and that's believed to have been built by Neanderthals.

See also: Prehistory Decoded posted a interesting survey of other cave art dated to the same era:



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Colosseum

Roman shipwreck from around 1BC carrying thousands of wine amphorae is found on the Greek seafloor

Jonathan Chadwick
Daily Mail
Tue, 10 Dec 2019 12:33 UTC
kefalonia shipwreck
The ship's cargo, around 6,000 Roman pots, is in good condition despite the wreckage dating as far as 1 BC
A Roman shipwreck that dates from the time of Jesus Christ has been discovered in Greece, with a cargo of around 6,000 amazingly well-preserved pots used for transporting wine and food.

The 110-foot-long ship and its cargo, discovered off the coast of the Greek island of Kefalonia, could reveal new information about the shipping routes taken by Roman traders across the Mediterranean.

The wreckage was found using sonar equipment and contains thousands of amphorae, elaborate pots used for moving food and wine.

The wreck was found near the fishing port of Fiskardo on the north coast of Kefalonia, dates between 1 BC and AD 1, Greek researchers say.

The cargo is visible on the seafloor and is in a good state of preservation.
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Bug

Flashback The first US-led Iraq war was also sold to the public based on a pack of lies

Joshua Holland
Common Dreams
Tue, 24 Jun 2014 00:00 UTC
Vice President George H.W. Bush
Then Vice President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, arrive in New Orleans for the 1988 Republican National Convention
Polls suggest that Americans tend to differentiate between our "good war" in Iraq — "Operation Desert Storm," launched by George HW Bush in 1990 — and the "mistake" his son made in 2003.

Across the ideological spectrum, there's broad agreement that the first Gulf War was "worth fighting." The opposite is true of the 2003 invasion, and a big reason for those divergent views was captured in a 2013 CNN poll that found that "a majority of Americans (54%) say that prior to the start of the war the administration of George W. Bush deliberately misled the U.S. public about whether Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction."

But as the usual suspects come out of the woodwork to urge the US to once again commit troops to Iraq, it's important to recall that the first Gulf War was sold to the public on a pack of lies that were just as egregious as those told by the second Bush administration 12 years later.

The Lie of an Expansionist Iraq

Most countries condemned Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. But the truth — that it was the culmination of a series of tangled economic and historical conflicts between two Arab oil states — wasn't likely to sell the US public on the idea of sending our troops halfway around the world to do something about it.
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War Whore

Best of the Web: The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war

Craig Whitlock
The Washington Post
Mon, 09 Dec 2019 09:02 UTC
afghan war 1
© Moises Saman/Magnum PhotosKonar province, 2010
A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.

The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.

The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.

In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.

With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.

Comment: For a closer look at the released documents, see here: The Afghanistan Papers

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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: MindMatters: Ordinary Men: What Makes Normal People Do Monstrous Things

Corey Schink and Harrison Koehli
Sott.net
Sat, 07 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
ordinary men
© SOTT
Are killers born or made? Depending on who you ask, you'll get a variety of responses: all humans are good - it's only the 'environment' or 'society' that makes them do bad things; anyone who engages in murder must be a cold-blooded psychopath, born to kill. But simple explanations come from simple minds. It's not a matter of either/or. Some people are born that way, like psychopaths. Some have the strength of character to resist the impulse to conform. But most people are somewhere in between, easily swayed to do the will of whoever is giving the orders.

On today's MindMatters we delve into the hellish depths of World War II and Christopher Browning's excellent but disturbing book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. His research confirms what studies like those of Milgram demonstrated in the lab: normal people show a spectrum of responses to the influence of authority. A small minority are very willing to inflict harm to others. Another small minority refuses. But the vast majority go along, even if it makes them sick to the stomach and traumatized for life.


Running Time: 01:24:17

Download: MP3 — 112 MB

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Dig

Exceptional 23,000 year old "Venus" discovered in Amiens, France


Art Faily
Fri, 06 Dec 2019 13:53 UTC
paleolithic venus
© DENIS CHARLET / AFP.This picture taken on December 4, 2019 shows a 4 centimeters high paleolithic statuette named "Venus of Renancourt", in Amiens. A small paleolithic statuette, from the series called "Venus of Renancourt", exceptionally well preserved, was discovered last July in a prehistoric site in Amiens (northern France), constituting a rare testimony of the gravettian art typical of hunters - gatherers, revealed the Inrap on December 4.
The prehistoric site of Renancourt, in Amiens, has been known for many years and long remained one of the few sites providing evidence for human presence in northern France during the Early Upper Paleolithic (35,000 - 15,000). Discovered in 2011, during an Inrap diagnostic operation, the site of Amiens-Renancourt 1 has been under full excavation since 2014. During the 2019 season, an exceptional Gravettian "Venus," some 23,000-years-old, was discovered.

A Paleolithic hunting camp

Comment: See also:

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