For the past ~40,000 years, Homo sapiens — modern humans — has been the only Homo species on Earth. But for most of our history, there were close evolutionary cousins of ours, human but not quite like us, coexisting and evolving at the same time in different regions.

Some of our now-extinct relatives, such as the Neanderthals, are well known. Others, like the recently-discovered Denisovans or Homo naledi have hardly made it into textbooks yet. And hints of even more human forms have been found in incomplete fossils and genetic patterns, although these relatives are poorly understood. Modern humans were just one of many variations on the Homo theme.

Now, as cutting-edge techniques uncover new evidence and reassess old finds, we're closer to knowing how many types of humans coexisted with our ancestors

Unlike a dozen other leading archaeologists, Prof. Yosef Garfinkel had no intention of searching for the lost biblical town of Ziklag when he commenced excavations in 2015 at Khirbet a-Ra'i, located between Kiryat Gat and Lachish. However, as the twice-yearly dig seasons progressed at the site, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of Jerusalem, he and his two co-excavation directors, Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Dr. Kyle Keimer of Macquarie University in Sydney, noted that it was starting to resemble the biblically attested Philistine town of Ziklag, a well-recorded site where the future King David sought refuge from King Saul.

After seven dig seasons that uncovered some 1,000 sq.m., the archaeological team found evidence of a Philistine-era settlement from the 12-11th centuries BCE under layers of a rural settlement dating to the early 10th century BCE, largely considered the Davidic era. Among the findings were massive stone structures and typical Philistine cultural artifacts, including pottery in foundation deposits — good luck offerings laid beneath a building's flooring. Some of the olive pits and other organic objects found in the deposits were sent for carbon dating, which confirmed their contexts, said the archaeologists.

With the nearly weekly revelations that the British Foreign Office, MI6, and GCHQ have been behind the long standing agenda to undermine the Presidency of Donald Trump and undo the peaceful alliance between nationalist leaders in America, Russia, China and elsewhere, a new focus on the British hand in undermining the United States has become a serious thought for many citizens. In the first week of the new year, fuel was added to this fire when internal memos were leaked from the British-run Integrity Initiative featuring a startling account of the techniques deployed by the anti-Russian British operation to infiltrate American intelligence institutions, think tanks and media.

For those who may not know, The Integrity Initiative is an anti-Russian propaganda outfit funded to the tune of $140 million by the British Foreign office. Throughout 2019, leaks have been released featuring documents dated to the early period of Trump's election, demonstrating that this organization, already active across Europe promoting anti-Russian PR and smearing nationalist leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn, was intent on spreading deeply into the State Department and setting up "clusters" of anti-Trump operatives. The documents reveal high level meetings that Integrity Initiative Director Chris Donnelly had with former Trump Advisor Sebastien Gorka, McCain Foundation director Kurt Volker, Pentagon PR guru John Rendon among many others.

In the dead-flat desert of northwestern Utah, archaeologists have uncovered a scene from a distant, and more verdant, time.

Just a few centimeters below the sun-baked surface, researchers have discovered a campsite used by prehistoric hunter-gatherers 12,300 years ago — when Utah's West Desert was lush wetland.

Artifacts found at the site include the charred remains of an ancient hearth, a finely crafted spear point, and, most surprising, a collection of tobacco seeds — likely the earliest evidence of tobacco use ever found in North America.

"What makes this interesting is there's no direct evidence of anybody using tobacco past 3,000 years ago," said Dr. Daron Duke, senior archaeologist with the Nevada-based Far Western Anthropological Research Group, in a press statement.

"And this was 12,000-plus years ago!"

Before I begin. No, D-Day was not the largest military operation of all times. No, D-Day was not the decisive battle of the war. No, the Western Allies did not defeat Hitlerism with minor help from the USSR. The largest military operation of all time was surely Operation Bagration which was planned in coordination with D-Day. The decisive battle - much argument there, so my personal opinion - was the Battle of Moscow in 1941 although David Glantz has persuasively argued that the German victory at Smolensk sealed their defeat. Either way, the only path to German victory was a quick one and that hope was gone by the end of 1941. (Hitler's rant to Mannerheim is instructive.) 80% of nazi military casualties were on the Eastern front, the rest of us did for the other 20%. But D-Day was important. And much more difficult than my Russian interlocutors think it was. And it had to succeed the first time.

The extensive influence of ancient Gnosticism on the Matrix movies is by now well known. Gnosticism itself was heavily influenced by Platonism, and I believe Plato provides an even closer analogue to the Matrix than Gnosticism does at certain crucial points. I am thinking of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Let's refresh our memories. Plato asks us to picture a small community dwelling in a huge cavern. The troglodytes have been born and raised there and do not even suspect the existence of the outer, surface, sunlit realm. Reality as they know it is pretty much two-dimensional. You see, each individual is bound firmly in place, head braced to face forward. They can converse with adjacent voices, but all they ever see is a sequence of shadows passing before them, projected from behind them by other individuals who hold up plywood cut-outs of men, women, animals, etc. The prisoners of the Cave see nothing amiss in all this, but one day one man somehow breaks free, moves his stiff neck from side to side, and is amazed to view the true situation!

He manages to escape the Cave, stumbling up the tunnel and into the blinding noonday sunlight. For a time he can see nothing, less than he could see down below. But his eyes soon adjust, and he looks about him in wide-eyed wonder and astonishment! He beholds the wonder of the world of living and substantial objects that you and I take for granted every day. Have you ever seen those videos in which a person, usually a child, congenitally blind or deaf, is fitted with some new device to supplement his senses? At once he or she is beaming with joy! And so is Plato's escapee. For the first time, he sees the real world. What he had seen previously he now recognizes as a false world of shadows, dim, flat effigies of things in the surface world.

"I can't keep this to myself!" he reflects, resolving to return to the Cave long enough to tell the dwellers what has happened to him and to reveal that a more real world awaits outside. (This is Morpheus in The Matrix.) Picture him making the descent and interposing himself between the cut-out bearers and their audience, proclaiming his gospel. And picture his chagrin at the jeering and abuse he receives from those he sought to liberate! The guardians of the Cave, whoever they may be, need not trouble themselves to seize or silence him. Their prisoners, who do not even know themselves to be prisoners, drive him forth, back to the surface world whose existence they refuse to acknowledge.

Archaeologists have discovered the oldest paintings on Czech territory. They seem to have been made using charcoal more than 6,000 years ago in a Moravian cave. A common place for scribbling messages, they were undetected until now, hidden among many other drawings made in latter periods.

The Catherine Cave lies just a few kilometres from the Moravian capital of Brno. It has been a popular place to visit for thousands of years, and its walls are littered by many scribbled pictures and messages, from various ages.

It is for this reason that its most ancient message may have been overlooked, says speleologist Petr Zajíček, who made the discovery with his colleague Martin Golec, an archaeologist from the Palacký University in Olomouc.

It all started when Dr. Golec got inkling that the Catherine Cave may be hiding something very old, says Mr. Zajíček.

"Dr. Golec had a feeling there could be something there. He is also a member of a group researching the nearby Býčí Skála cave, where one pre-historic painting was already found. He thought that since this cave was also settled in the pre-historic era, there was a chance one could find something here. So I let him in, we studied the walls and found them. They are actually quite visible, but no one attributed much importance to them before."

More abstract scribbles than paintings, the drawings were likely made with pieces of charcoal from the cave dwellers' fireplace, the research team believes.

Russophobia emerged quite late in the United States compared to other European powers. The so-called "Testament of Peter the Great," a spurious text that spelled out a blueprint for Russian imperial domination, undergirded Russophobia in France and Britain throughout the 19th century. Its contents were so potent Napoleon I ordered the French press to pen articles showing that "Europe is in the process of becoming booty for Russia." The "Testament" enjoyed repeated resurrection in every European war with Russia until World War I.

Though the U.S. magazine Niles' National Register published the "Testament" in 1843, the claims of Russia's imperialist impulses fell flat. The Register even stressed that U.S.-Russian relations "have been and will long necessarily be of the most amicable nature." Nor was there an American version of Britain's preeminent Russophobe David Urquhart, who, in the words of one contemporary, was "successful in his design to diffuse a feeling of terror and a spirit of hatred toward Russia in the public mind." Indeed, the trope of Russia as a giant octopus threatening to ensnare Europe had little currency in the United States until the Cold War.

The wave of Russophobia around Donald Trump is mostly a product of a profound shift in American discourse about Russia in the 20th century. In fact, to reduce Russia's place in the American imagination to merely the absence or presence of Russophobia is itself an act of injurious reductionism. Historically, Russia has had a much more ambiguous and contradictory place in the American mind. Historically, Americans relate to Russia with indifference and amicability, as an object of fascination and mystery, and even as an analogous and kindred nation.

At the same time, Russia has served as a symbol of ignobility, a prototype of despotism, a barometer of backwardness and even evil itself. Where Russia stood on this spectrum had less to do with Russia as it did the United States. For Russia, as David Foglesong has argued, served as a "dark double" or "imaginary twin." In American eyes, Russia has appeared as a distortion of the American self, reflected through a carnival mirror. It's a distorted, disfigured, inchoate, even horrifying image, but still an enigmatic source for American self-juxtaposition and psychological displacement.

New historical research in Germany has given some clues as to the origins of the ancient Philistines. DNA testing on bones found in a cemetery on the Israeli coast suggest Aegean beginnings.

Bones unearthed in Israel and analyzed in Germany may have revealed the origins of the ancient Philistine people.

The Philistines were believed to have arrived in modern-day Israel in the 12th century BC, though there was little evidence to suggest where the people had come from.

But the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, one of the key Philistine cities, may have finally unearthed their origin to be European. Ashkelon is a city on the Mediterranean coast of Israel, 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of present-day Tel Aviv.

On Saturday June 8, a Memorial event occurred in New York City celebrating the life of an American personality whose name is widely respected throughout Eurasia yet whose important accomplishments have remained hidden from the minds of most American and European citizens.

Lyndon LaRouche died on February 12, 2019 and his passing at the age of 96 has caused many people to take a deeper look at this fascinating personality who ran for the presidency eight times, led international political, scientific and artistic organizations for decades, has spent years in jail as an American political prisoner and has advised many government officials since 1976. Just a handful of those statesmen who have sought LaRouche's council and who have adopted key elements of his policy proposals over the years includes India's PM Indira Gandhi, Guyana's Foreign Minister Fred Wills, Mexico's President Lopez Portillo, and American President Ronald Reagan. [A timeline of these incredible relationships can be accessed here].

His policy for a New Silk Road program for international development, which has now become Russia and China's joint initiative dates back to 1992 and which he and his wife have promoted through countless conferences, speeches and writings ever since.