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Ancient faeces reveals early settler parasite infection

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Fri, 31 May 2019 20:34 UTC
Excavation
© Scott HaddowArchaeologists carefully excavating the neolithic village.
Researchers picking though 8000-year-old human faeces have identified the earliest evidence of intestinal parasite infection in the mainland Near East.

A team led by archaeologist Piers Mitchell of Cambridge University in the UK travelled to the well preserve remains of a prehistoric village called Çatalhöyük, in southern Anatolia.

The site was occupied from about 7500 to 5700 BCE, and is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Apart from the extraordinarily good state of its survival, the village is of key interest because it was occupied around the period that populations in the region shifted from foraging to farming.

The change in both diet and lifestyle - particularly the emergence of permanent settlements - introduces the question of whether such a shift in living conditions also brought about a consequent change in disease profiles.

One key challenge all early settlers faced was the need to manage human waste. In the matter of Çatalhöyük, faeces was disposed of in the village midden, or dumped. It is thought that villagers either went to the toilet directly in the midden, or did their business in their homes in clay bowls and then carried the results.

Either way, Mitchell and his colleagues were able to excavate four fossilised human turds, known as coprolites, from the site. They also took samples of soil beneath the pelvic areas of skeletons resting in graves.
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Palette

'Domachowo Paupers Bible': Centuries old polychrome paintings discovered under floorboards of Polish church

Anne Chatham
ThefirstNews
Sat, 12 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
polychrome paintings Domachowie Poland
© Parafia Rzymskokatolicka pw Św. Michała Archanioła w DomachowieThe paintings were found during conservation work in the Church of Michael the Archangel in Domachowo, a village in the Wielkopolska region.
Polychromes have been discovered in a church in western Poland.

Forgotten for centuries, they were found by accident under the floorboards, where they had been protected from wear and tear.

While their colours have faded, their images of Biblical scenes, the Holy Trinity and even a dragon are clearly visible.

During the Middle Ages, the interiors of churches were often decorated with colourful paintings, known as polychromes, yet few have survived in good condition.

The paintings were found during conservation work in the Church of Michael the Archangel in Domachowo, a village in the Wielkopolska region.

Built in the mid-16th century, the church is celebrating its 450th birthday this year. With its dark exterior and roof covered in wooden shingles, it is one of the oldest churches made of wood in Wielkopolska.

Comment: More on polychromatic art:
The word is simply used for multi-coloured art, or things decorated in- or having several colours. The term was first used to describe the decoration of wood and stone carving in full colour and gold. Much Egyptian, Greek was originally polychrome with sculptures painted in strong colours. So was ancient architecture such as the Parthenon in Rome according to pigment traces found on the building.

Polychrome representations have always been used in all most cultures in the world. With the advent of Christian medieval- and Renaissance art, the Europeans were subjected to a true bombardment of colours to evoke emotion and religious awe. Sophisticated Islamic art served much the same purpose though it was mostly abstract and geometric in comparison.


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Archaeology

Oldest-known Christian church unearthed outside Egypt's Alexandria


Sputnik
Fri, 31 May 2019 15:29 UTC
ancient church alexandria
© T. Skrzypiec/pcma.uw.edu.plThe experts were working on a ruined basilica when they found the remains of an even older church.
The newly-unearthed ancient temple's structure resembles those found on the Greek islands and mainland, which are also alleged to date back to the mid-fourth century AD.

Polish archaeologists made a remarkable discovery as they unearthed the over 2,000-year-old port city of Marea, to the southwest of the ancient Egyptian stronghold of Alexandria, claiming that it might have been a hotspot of early Christianity in Egypt.

Marea was home to a large Christian basilica, which served its religious purpose from the fifth to the eighth century, and right underneath there was found an even older Christian temple.

Comment: More from The Express:
Specific construction techniques used in raising the church suggest its walls were built sometime around the mid-fourth century.

Dr Babraj said: "It is, therefore, one of the oldest Christian temples found in Egyptian territories, today."

In the expert's opinion, the structure was built by locals but it shared architectural features with churches found on the Greek islands and mainland around the same time period.

The archaeologist said: "Our discovery is also important because we practically do not know of any church remains from the neighbouring metropolis of Alexandria, from this time period.

"Now we know, how they could have looked like, which is is why it is crucial we continue our research, which we have only just begun in the vicinity of the old church."

The ancient Egyptian city of Marea was a port city built during the conquests of Alexander the Great. The port developed from around the time of the third century BC up until the Byzantine era of the eighth century AD.

Marea served as a transport hub on the Nile, connecting goods from deep within Egypt to the Mediterranean.

The ancient city may have also been known in the past as Philoxenite.


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Butterfly

5000 year old "birdman" burial in Siberia puzzles scientists


Siberian Times
Wed, 29 May 2019 12:00 UTC
bird man siberia
© Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, The Siberian Times5,000 years old graves reveal shamans in bird beak ‘collar’ and bronze ‘spectacles’.
5,000 years old graves reveal shamans in bird beak 'collar' and bronze 'spectacles'.

Two unique burials of the Odinov culture (early Bronze) were unearthed last year at the Ust-Tartas site in Novosibirsk region.

Inside one of them researchers found several dozen long beaks and skulls of large birds assembled into something looking like a collar, a head dress, or armour.

'Nothing of this kind was ever found as part of Odinov culture in all of Western Siberia' said researcher Lilia Kobeleva from Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography.

Comment: See also:

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Info

Possible traces of 'lost' Stone Age settlement discovered beneath the North Sea

Tom Metcalfe
Live Science
Wed, 29 May 2019 13:58 UTC
Doggerland
© Anton Balazh/ShutterstockDoggerland once covered a vast swath of land between what is now the east coast of England and the European mainland.
Deep beneath the North Sea, scientists have discovered a fossilized forest that could hold traces of prehistoric early humans who lived there around 10,000 years ago, before the land slipped beneath the waves a few thousand years later.

The discovery gives the researchers new hope in their search for "lost" Middle Stone Age - or Mesolithic - settlements of hunter-gatherers, because the find shows that they have found a particular type of exposed ancient landscape.

The scientists took sediment samples from the submerged fossilized forest during their 11-day voyage in the North Sea aboard the research ship RV Belgica, in the Doggerland region known as Brown Bank or Brown Ridge. The scientists say they are certain they are close to finding traces of a prehistoric human settlement in the submerged lands. [See Images of a Treasure Trove Found Beneath North Sea]

"We are absolutely dead sure that we are very close to a settlement," said archaeologist Vincent Gaffney of Bradford University in the U.K., one of the project leaders. "The numbers of artifacts historically from that region tell us there is something there."

"We have now identified the areas where the Mesolithic land surface is close to the surface [of the seafloor]," he said. "So we can use the dredges or grabs to get larger samples of whatever that surface is."

The scientists now plan to revisit the Brown Bank area on a Dutch research ship in the fall, with heavier dredging equipment that will let them take more samples from the submerged fossilized forest, Gaffney said.
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Info

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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