Secret HistoryS


Colosseum

Important Gallo-Roman worship complex discovered near Rennes, France

Gallo-Roman temple
An essential Gallo-Roman worship complex was unearthed by Inrap (National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research) archaeologists at Chapelle-des-Fougeretz (Ille-et-Vilaine), near the city of Rennes in northwest France.

The site in the village of Chapelle-des-Fougeretz has been slated for development, triggering a comprehensive preventative archaeology excavation of more than seven hectares of the site.

Excavations began in March, and archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a Gallo-Roman worship complex built just after the Roman conquest in the 1st century BC. The sanctuary was originally established in the period following the Roman conquest in the 1st century BC and operated for at least five centuries until the 4th century AD.

Comment: Footage of the complex in Dutch:


See also: Secrets of the exceptional diatretic vase revealed, recently discovered at 4th century Paleo-Christian necropolis in Autun, France


Sun

Rise of Islam followed extreme drought of sixth century

Stalagmite
© Timon Kipfer, University of BaselStalagmite from the Hoti Cave. Holes are created by sampling for radioactive dating, and scratch marks by sampling for isotope analysis.
Extreme dry conditions contributed to the decline of the ancient South Arabian kingdom of Himyar. Researchers from the University of Basel have reported these findings in the journal Science. Combined with political unrest and war, the droughts left behind a region in disarray, thereby creating the conditions on the Arabian peninsula that made possible the spread of the newly emerging religion of Islam.

On the plateaus of Yemen, traces of the Himyarite Kingdom can still be found today: terraced fields and dams formed part of a particularly sophisticated irrigation system, transforming the semi-desert into fertile fields. Himyar was an established part of South Arabia for several centuries.

However, despite its former strength, during the sixth century CE the kingdom entered into a period of crisis, which culminated in its conquest by the neighboring kingdom of Aksum (now Ethiopia). A previously overlooked factor, namely extreme drought, may have been decisive in contributing to the upheavals in ancient Arabia from which Islam emerged during the seventh century.

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


Colosseum

New excavations of China's mysterious Sanxingdui culture reveal more exquisite & bizarre objects that hint at exchange and integration

Sanxingdui
© Xinhua/Shen BohanPhoto taken on June 1, 2022 shows artifacts including a bronze head with gold mask excavated from the No.8 sacrificial pit at Sanxingdui Ruins site in southwest China's Sichuan Province. Archaeologists have recently made some stunning discoveries at the famed Sanxingdui Ruins site in southwest China's Sichuan Province.
Archaeologists have recently made some stunning discoveries at the famed Sanxingdui Ruins site in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

A treasure trove of exquisite bronze, gold and jade wares, including at least 10 bronzewares unearthed for the first time in the history of human civilization, have been excavated at the site.

A joint team of archaeologists from Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, Peking University, Sichuan University and other research institutions and universities have carried out the excavation of six sacrificial pits at this site since 2020.

Comment:

See also: China's mysterious Sanxingdui ruins reveal more stunning relics


Bizarro Earth

Ancient women's teeth may reveal origins of 14-century Black Death

mass grave bones
© unknownFILE PHOTO: Black Death burial pit.
In 1338 or 1339 "Bačaq, a faithful woman" in her 40s who stood just four feet, eight inches, died and was buried in the Kara-Djigach cemetery, about seven miles outside Bishkek, the capital of what is now Kyrgyzstan. Her tombstone was inscribed in Syriac, an Aramaic dialect. She was one of 114 people buried there during those two years — who accounted for one quarter of all the cemetery's burials while it was in operation from 1245 to 1345. Bačaq's tombstone does not mention a cause of death, but other 1338-1339 tombstones do: mawtānā, or pestilence. Today it is called plague.

Bačaq's teeth, as well as those of another woman buried nearby, have now yielded genomic evidence of what researchers suggest is the ancestral strain of the Yersiniapestis bacterium responsible for the 14th-century Black Death pandemic, according to a study published on Wednesday in Nature. The paper also points to this region as the source of that notorious plague, which killed at least an estimated 30 to 60 percent of Europe's population in a handful of years.

Comment: There are a number of unanswered questions over the origin, transmission, and even the pathogen, that caused the Black Death; with the last point being perhaps key to unraveling the mystery. Because other researchers conclude that it was not Yersinia Pestis that was the cause of the plague, but instead a primitive form of hemorrhagic small pox; and for more on that, see: Bill Gates renews warnings over 'small pox terror' threat, FDA approved drug in May for disease that was 'eradicated' in 1980


Map

Poland and Ukraine

Duda/Zelensky
© ReutersPoland President Andrzej Duda • Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky
Poland and Ukraine have a complex history of massacres on both sides. However, for eight years, they have been united against Russia. After having considered annexing a Russian territory if Moscow loses the war, Warsaw would like to annex a Ukrainian territory, if Kiev loses. President Andrzej Duda has reportedly received guarantees from his counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky that, in gratitude for his military aid against the Russians, his country could annex Galicia.

From the Carpathian Mountains to the Urals, there are no mountains. Consequently, Eastern Europe is a vast plain in which many peoples have passed and sometimes settled without the relief allowing to delimit the borders of their territory. Poland, Moldavia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and the European part of Russia are corridors of passage whose history is dominated by flows. Most of these states back onto a sea or a mountain. Only Belarus and Ukraine have no natural borders.

MIB

CIA man's 'tell-all' book reveals more about internal agency incompetence than Russian malfeasance

cia sad
© AFP / SAUL LOEB
In The Fourth Man, former CIA officer Robert Baer crafts a narrative full of speculation and short on facts

In 1984, the CIA and the FBI were riding high. Each of these powerful organizations were managing portfolios of Soviet agents who were ostensibly doing their bidding, spying against the USSR, and providing the United States with troves of secret information about the inner workings of the former superpower.

Then, between 1985 and 1986, the walls came tumbling down. Thanks to three American traitors, the entire portfolio of spies being run by the CIA and FBI were rounded up by Soviet authorities. Responsibility for this intelligence disaster would ultimately be assigned to two CIA officers (Edward Lee Howard, who gave away Adolf Tolkachev, the "billion dollar spy," so named because the information he provided on Moscow's military capabilities saved the US a billion dollars in research and development costs, and Aldrich Ames, who betrayed 25 Soviet moles, 10 of whom were allegedly arrested and subsequently executed for their crimes) and one FBI man (Robert Hansen, who betrayed scores of Soviet agents, along with the names of so-called double agents - Americans recruited by the Soviets to spy, but who were really working for either the CIA or FBI).

Blue Planet

DNA from 16 ancient peoples found on Indonesian island spanning last 3,000 years

Topogaro
© Rintaro Ono/ZengerCave entrance of the Topogaro 2 site, one of the cave sites of the Topogaro complex located in Central Sulawesi. Topogaro 2 has been excavated since 2016. Human remains from the past 2,000 years were found in the upper layers.
An international team of experts has sequenced the DNA from 16 ancient people and found that a group of Indonesian islands were a melting pot for humans thousands of years ago.

The Wallacean islands, in what is now Eastern Indonesia, have a long and rich history of being home to modern humans going back thousands of years, according to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

The islands, separated by deep straits and located between the Asian and Australian continental shelves, have yielded evidence that there was repeated genetic mixing between distinct groups of human beings going back at least 3,000 years, the experts said.

Dominoes

The Russian language in post-Soviet Ukraine: 30 years of discrimination against the country's most popular tongue

Flag switch
© Romain Carre/NurPhoto/Corbis/Getty imagesPro-Russian gathering in Lenin Square in Donetsk, March 23, 2014 to take down Ukrainian flag and replace with Russian and Donetsk insignia flags
If you go to Ukraine and walk through the streets of Kiev, Vinnitsa, Chernigov, or Kharkov, it may seem like you're in Moscow or Rostov-on-Don, as the majority of the people in these cities speak Russian.

At the same time, Ukraine is a country with one of the harshest language law regimes in the world. Russian, which is spoken by the vast, vast majority of the country's population, is almost de jure banned there. How did this happen?

You can, but you can't

One of the favorite phrases of Ukrainian nationalists is the sarcastic: 'Who says you can't speak Russian?'

Until 2019, when the law 'On Ensuring the Functioning of Ukrainian as the State Language' was adopted, this sarcasm was partially justified. Officially, Ukrainians were obliged to speak Ukrainian, but, in fact, they spoke whatever was convenient for them. And no one paid much attention, at least in the first couple of decades of independence.

Question

Where is the tomb of Genghis Khan?

Do modern Mongolians even want it to be found?

Genghis Khan
© Francesco Vaninetti Photo via Getty ImagesHere we see a close-up of the Genghis Khan Equestrian Statue found in Erdene, Tov province, Mongolia.
Genghis Khan unified the Mongols and created an enormous empire that stretched from the Pacific Ocean to Ukraine by the time of his death in 1227; and his successors would go on to conquer even more territory.

So, where is this charismatic leader buried? Does he have a monumental tomb like the pyramids built for the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, or a mausoleum with terra-cotta warriors, like the one built for China's first Qin emperor?

The answer is that the location of Genghis Khan's tomb is unknown and unlikely to be found anytime soon. Moreover, some people in Mongolia might prefer that it is never found, as Genghis is regarded by some today with an almost religious reverence, experts tell Live Science.

The tomb, wherever it may be, "is very important to the people of Mongolia with almost religious overtones," William Honeychurch, an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, told Live Science in an email. He declined to speculate on where the tomb may be located.

One possibility is that Genghis Khan was buried in Mongolia's eastern Khentii province, where he was born. "I think the tomb is in [the] mountains in Khentii Province," Nancy Steinhardt, a professor of East Asian art at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Museum, told Live Science in an email. "I don't think it will be found any time soon," she added.

Info

Gobekli Tepe to ancient Egypt?

Predynastic Egyptian carving
© PreHistory DecodedPredynastic Egyptian carving
There are now plenty of clear symbolic similarities between Gobekli Tepe and later 'intercultural' symbols found across Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran and the Indus Valley. Apart from all the zodiac-like animal symbols, which seem to have informed some of the earliest deities in Ancient Egypt, we have the above figure, probably a time-controlling or creation deity, with a double-V neck symbol. We see a similar figure at Sayburc,

Urfa Man,
© PreHistory Decoded
which is also probably the same deity as Urfa Man,
Urfa Man,
© PreHistory Decoded