Secret HistoryS


Archaeology

Dressing for the ages - ancient Egyptian style

Jarrett A. Lobell
Archaeology.com
Wed, 01 Jun 2016 14:50 UTC
tarkhan dress oldest woven garment
© UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian ArchaeologyThe Tarkhan Dress likely was worn by a young or slim female member of the royal court, and then placed in the tomb as a funerary object. Although the bottom does not survive, it may once have been full-length.
Over the two-plus years Alice Stevenson has been curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London, she has looked at the delicate cream-colored garment hundreds of times, wondering at both the fineness of its workmanship and its extraordinary age. Thought to date from nearly 5,000 years ago, the "Tarkhan Dress" was once part of a large pile of dirty linen cloth excavated by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1913 at the site he named Tarkhan after a nearby village 30 miles from Cairo. In 1977, researchers from the Victoria and Albert Museum, while sorting through the pile of textiles as they prepared to clean them, discovered the dress, remarkably well preserved. They conserved the fabric, sewed it onto a type of extra-fine, transparent silk called Crepeline to stabilize it, and mounted it for display. The dress came to be known not only as Egypt's oldest garment, but also as the oldest woven garment in existence. Yet in the absence of a precise original archaeological context - the mudbrick tomb in which the linen had been found had been plundered in antiquity - the exact age of the dress remained a subject of contention.
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Star of David

Flashback The myth of the generous offer: Distorting the Camp David negotiations

Seth Ackerman
FAIR.org
Tue, 02 Jul 2002 00:00 UTC
Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton, Yasser Arafat at Camp David
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, President Bill Clinton and Palestinian Authority chair Yasser Arafat at Camp David.
The seemingly endless volleys of attack and retaliation in the Middle East leave many people wondering why the two sides can't reach an agreement. The answer is simple, according to numerous commentators: At the Camp David meeting in July 2000, Israel "offered extraordinary concessions" (Michael Kelly, Washington Post, 3/13/02), "far-reaching concessions" (Boston Globe, 12/30/01), "unprecedented concessions" (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 12/4/01). Israel's "generous peace terms" (L.A. Times editorial, 3/15/02) constituted "the most far-reaching offer ever" (Chicago Tribune editorial, 6/6/01) to create a Palestinian state. In short, Camp David was "an unprecedented concession" to the Palestinians (Time, 12/25/00).

But due to "Arafat's recalcitrance" (L.A. Times editorial, 4/9/02) and "Palestinian rejectionism" (Mortimer Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report, 3/22/02), "Arafat walked away from generous Israeli peacemaking proposals without even making a counteroffer" (Salon, 3/8/01). Yes, Arafat "walked away without making a counteroffer" (Samuel G. Freedman, USA Today, 6/18/01). Israel "offered peace terms more generous than ever before and Arafat did not even make a counteroffer" (Chicago Sun-Times editorial, 11/10/00). In case the point isn't clear: "At Camp David, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an astonishingly generous peace with dignity and statehood. Arafat not only turned it down, he refused to make a counteroffer!" (Charles Krauthammer, Seattle Times, 10/16/00).

This account is one of the most tenacious myths of the conflict. Its implications are obvious: There is nothing Israel can do to make peace with its Palestinian neighbors. The Israeli army's increasingly deadly attacks, in this version, can be seen purely as self-defense against Palestinian aggression that is motivated by little more than blind hatred.

Comment: See also:

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Dig

115,000 year old neanderthal child's bones 'eaten by a giant bird' found in Poland

Aleksander Nowacki
The First News
Fri, 05 Oct 2018 10:00 UTC
neanderthal bone bird
© Jacek Bednarczyk/PAPThe remains were found mixed with other animal bones several meters below the contemporary floor of the cave. It was only after detailed analysis that archaeologists realised they belonged to a member of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.
Archaeologists have discovered the oldest hominid remains ever found in Poland.

"The bones discovered by our team at Jaskinia Ciemna [a cave in the southern Małopolska region] are the oldest hominid remains from the area of Poland," Professor Paweł Valde-Nowak of the Jagiellonian University of Kraków told PAP.

The discovery of finger bones from the hand of a Neanderthal child that died roughly 115,000 years ago are more than twice as old as the previous oldest find of hominid bones in the area.

Previously, the oldest Neanderthal remains were three teeth dated to 52,000-54,000 years.

Comment: The Out of Africa theory has been proven to be incorrect by a number of different disciplines already, but, as is often the case, scientific dogma lags behind. And, in recent years, an increasing number of finds are pointing to a much more complex story of the history of humanity:

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Palette

Secrets of child's sock from ancient Egypt revealed with new imaging tool

Caroline Davies
The Guardian
Thu, 04 Oct 2018 19:44 UTC
ancient child sock egypt
© The British MuseumStripy child’s sock dating from 300AD was found in a rubbish dump in Egypt.
Non-invasive technique devised by British Museum sheds light on dyeing and weaving process

The ancient Egyptians famously gave us paper and the pyramids, but were also early adopters of the stripy sock.

Scientists at the British Museum have developed pioneering imaging to discover how enterprising Egyptians used dyes on a child's sock, recovered from a rubbish dump in ancient Antinoupolis in Roman Egypt, and dating from 300AD.

New multispectral imaging can establish which dyes were used - madder (red), woad (blue) and weld (yellow) - but also how people of the late antiquity period used double and sequential dying and weaving, and twisting fibres to create myriad colours from their scarce resources.
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Bad Guys

James Comey and the Bush Torture Scandal

James Bovard
Future of Freedom Foundation
Fri, 05 Oct 2018 10:56 UTC
Comey
The vast regime of torture created by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks continues to haunt America. The political class and most of the media have never dealt honestly with the profound constitutional corruption that such practices inflicted. Instead, torture enablers are permitted to pirouette as heroic figures on the flimsiest evidence.

Former FBI chief James Comey is the latest beneficiary of the media's "no fault" scoring on the torture scandal. In his media interviews for his new memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, Comey is portraying himself as a Boy Scout who sought only to do good things. But his record is far more damning than most Americans realize.

Comey continues to use memos from his earlier government gigs to whitewash all of the abuses he sanctified. "Here I stand; I can do no other," Comey told George W. Bush in 2004 when Bush pressured Comey, who was then Deputy Attorney General, to approve an unlawful anti-terrorist policy. Comey was quoting a line supposedly uttered by Martin Luther in 1521, when he told Emperor Charles V and an assembly of Church officials that he would not recant his sweeping criticisms of the Catholic Church.
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Archaeology

Girl, 8, pulls a 1,500-year-old pre-Viking sword from Vidöstern Lake, Sweden


BBC
Thu, 04 Oct 2018 02:11 UTC
pre-viking sword Sweden
© Jönköpings Läns MuseumExperts at the local museum believe it may date to around 1,500 years ago.
An eight-year-old found an ancient pre-Viking-era sword while swimming in a lake in Sweden during the summer.

Saga Vanecek found the relic in the Vidöstern lake while at her family's holiday home in Jönköping County.

The sword was initially reported to be 1,000 years old, but experts at the local museum now believe it may date to around 1,500 years ago.

"It's not every day that you step on a sword in the lake!" Mikael Nordström from the museum said.
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Archaeology

Fragments of 20-million-year-old elephant tusks unearthed in Iran


Iran Front Page
Mon, 01 Oct 2018 16:29 UTC
elephant tusk fossil Iran
© Ardabil Department of Environment
The remnants of two Proboscidean fossils including two elephant tusks have been unearthed in Iran's northwestern city of Ardabil, said the General Director of Ardabil's Department of Environment.

Mohammad Khodaparast said the remnants date back to the Miocene, the first geological epoch of the Neogene period, from about 23.03 to 5.333 million years ago.
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Evil Rays

Did the US NAVY deliberately bombard the people of Eugene, Oregon with disabling EMF waves in 1978?

Melissa Dykes
Sott.net
Thu, 04 Oct 2018 00:00 UTC
radio wave tower
In 1978, dozens of inhabitants in the sleepy town of Eugene experienced disorientation, a variety of negative physical symptoms, strange vibrations and the hearing of voices. The official government line is that EMF waves are harmless and could not produce such effects on human beings. But is that really true - and if not - could the effects that were felt by the people affected be anything less than a deliberate attempt to test a weaponized form of electromagnetic wave on an unsuspecting population?

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Marijuana

Rainbow Farm: The FBI siege forgotten in the haze of 9/11

Jeff Winkler
The Outline
Tue, 02 Oct 2018 14:44 UTC
In 2001, two men were killed by the FBI at a farm in Michigan. Then, 9/11 happened.
Rainbow Farm, Doug Leinbach
© Elizabeth De La Piedra/The OutlineDoug Leinbach.
In September of 2001, the buildings burned, filling the bright blue sky with black smoke that could be seen for miles. Locals remember exactly where they were when it happened. When the ash settled, many were left in shock. To some, the razed site had been a symbol of freedom, liberty, and enterprise. To others, it had been a manifestation of vice, turpitude, and lawlessness. Either way, it seemed obvious that such an event would be covered and discussed from coast to coast. As a country, we'd eventually begin to truly examine the costs of an overly broad and ill-defined war.

Then, about a week later, 9/11 happened.

And with that, the five-day standoff at Rainbow Farm was mostly forgotten. The 34-acre campground in rural Michigan had, for several years, proudly and defiantly hosted pro-marijuana festivals. Dead and gone were its owners, Tom Crosslin, 46, and Rolland "Rollie" Rohm, 28, killed by the feds and buried by a national emergency.

So much has changed in the past 17 years. Well, some things, at least.

Doug Leinbach, Rainbow Farm's former manager, still remembers when Merle Haggard arrived at the property for his headlining gig in the summer of 2000. The country outlaw took one look at the huge marijuana-themed party happening on a back road in Cass County, about three hours from Detroit, and said, "I can't believe they haven't killed you boys already."
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Red Flag

Flashback Best of the Web: Later Communism totalitarian and oppressive? 'It was best time of my life' says Hungarian

Zsuzsanna Clark
Daily Mail, UK
Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:49 UTC
Image
The golden years before Anglo-American 'free trade' (debt-slavery) devoured the world: Zsuzsanna, right, aged 14 with a friend
When people ask me what it was like growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary in the Seventies and Eighties, most expect to hear tales of secret police, bread queues and other nasty manifestations of life in a one-party state.

They are invariably disappointed when I explain that the reality was quite different, and communist Hungary, far from being hell on earth, was in fact, rather a fun place to live.

The communists provided everyone with guaranteed employment, good education and free healthcare. Violent crime was virtually non-existent.

But perhaps the best thing of all was the overriding sense of camaraderie, a spirit lacking in my adopted Britain and, indeed, whenever I go back to Hungary today. People trusted one another, and what we had we shared.

I was born into a working-class family in Esztergom, a town in the north of Hungary, in 1968. My mother, Julianna, came from the east of the country, the poorest part. Born in 1939, she had a harsh childhood.

Comment: Whew, living under later Communism sounded truly horrid. Thank goodness the US and British governments saw to it that it was destroyed.

Now we can all be free and happy... together... in the gutter... as atomized automatons... with the NSA watching over us all... as the endless War on Terror... grinds on into infinity.



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