Scientists think they may have found the smoking gun that explains why humans colonised the thousands of scattered islands of the South Pacific - and it lies in a sherd of pottery found hidden on a small island in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

The peopling of the Pacific islands is one of humanity's most epic migration stories. In just three millennia, an ancestral cultural group called the Lapita spanned a third of the Earth's surface, reaching some of the most isolated landmasses on the planet.

As they moved, these ancestral Pacific Islanders are thought to have brought with them Austronesian languages, new domestic animals species like pigs, dogs and chickens, and a distinctive kind of pottery.

"For a long time it was thought Lapita groups avoided most of Papua New Guinea because people were already living there," says Ben Shaw, lead researcher of the new study published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution. But, as this new research shows, that wasn't always the case.

Brooker Island is a small finger of land that juts out into the sea near the southern tip of PNG, an early step in the chain of islands that makes up the South Pacific.

The Gutunka archaeological site nestles in a north-facing bay at the edge of an epic lagoon on the island that is, according to researchers, one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems in the world.

Analysis of skeletons bridging the Roman to the Victorian eras show ancients (unsurprisingly) carried parasitic stomach bugs, but patterns changed with the advent of sanitation.

It may come as no surprise to you that ancient humans played host to a smorgasbord of bugs and diseases, but science, as a rule, likes to tease out the details in the data.

So, in that spirit of curiosity, researchers from the University of Oxford have investigated the history of parasitic worm infections in Britons who lived between the Roman and Victorian eras - and the results aren't pretty.

Humans are infected with roundworms and whipworms through contact with contaminated faecal matter. In a society with poor hygiene practices, then, these nefarious critters can thrive on a virtual parade of poop that spreads, in tiny increments, from person to person. Other parasitic infections, like tapeworm, can come from eating undercooked meat or fish.

In September 2021, volunteer Daniel Ludin was prospecting in a wooded area not far from Wildenstein Castle with his metal detector. A strong signal from the device prompted him to dig. After he had recovered several Roman coins and ceramic fragments, the full extent of his discovery became apparent: a treasure of coins buried in a pot came to light.

Daniel Ludin acted with extreme deliberation. He covered up the find and informed Archaeology Baselland. Thanks to this professional approach, an excavation team from Archaologie Baselland was able to recover the pot - professionally fixed - in a block.

The advantage of recovering finds of this kind in a block is that the coins can be documented and uncovered under laboratory conditions. In this case, the composition of the find was also examined in advance by means of a computer tomography at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (EMPA) in Dubendorf.

By inviting an Azov fighter to address Greece's parliament, Zelensky opened the country's historic wounds and triggered angry demonstrations that have shaken its pro-US government.

"Solidarity with the Ukrainian people is a given. But the Nazis cannot have a say in parliament." These are the words of Alexis Tsipras, the former PM and leader of Greece's left-liberal Syriza Party.

Tsipras was reacting to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's attempt to legitimize the Azov Battalion, an umbrella of far-right and fascist fighters trained by the US to battle Russians in Ukraine, as he toured foreign capitals to appeal for direct and indirect military support.

Zelensky stirred controversy with his April visit to Greek parliament in an effort to win support for his country's anti-Russian war effort. Mariupol, home to a significant number of ethnic Greeks who have faced persecution from the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade, was a particular area of concern in Athens.

During his visit to parliament, Zelensky played a video featuring an Azov fighter who claimed that his relatives had fought the German Nazis in the Second World War. This was seen as a cynical attempt to whitewash the fascist organization. It was particularly painful for Greeks still haunted by the ghosts of World War II, when the country boasted a strong left that resisted the Third Reich.

In a statement issued on July 27, 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stressed the importance of Canada's contribution to the Korean War, a catastrophic conflict whose outbreak he entirely blamed on North Korea. He described the crossing of the 38th parallel by North Korean forces as "the first open act of aggression since the establishment of the United Nations," and stated that in response, 26,000 Canadian soldiers were deployed to the peninsula "to protect the sovereignty of South Korea." Over 500 Canadians died in the fighting, making it Canada's "third deadliest overseas conflict" after the First and Second World Wars.

"The war was devastating for Koreans," Trudeau said, "as people struggled to find safety, and saw their homes, schools, and memories shattered. Families were separated, and many lost loved ones. By the time the armistice was signed in Panmunjom on July 27, 1953, the war had claimed the lives of millions of people, many of whom were civilians." While this statement is true, there is a notable omission: which side inflicted the majority of the devastation.

It easily falls into the 'conspiracy' category - but that doesn't mean it isn't a fun story to tell.

We are all taught that empires rise and fall and that every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt were no exception. The year was 1336 BC and the Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhenaten, had just died.

Akhenaten was a strange Pharaoh who shook many of the essential foundations of Ancient Egyptian culture. For one thing, Akhenaten was a monotheist. He only believed in Aten, a Ra-like sun God, a fact that drives some scholars to debate whether he is a founding father of Judaism.

New scientific analysis of the composition of Roman denarii has brought fresh understanding to a financial crisis briefly mentioned by the Roman statesman and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero in his essay on moral leadership, De Officiis, and solved a longstanding historical debate.

Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Liverpool have analysed coins of the period and revealed a debasement of the currency far greater than historians had thought, with coins that had been pure silver before 90 BC cut with up to 10 per cent copper five years later.

Dr. Ponting at the University of Liverpool said: "The Romans had been used to an extremely fine silver coinage, so they may well have lost confidence in the denarius when it ceased to be pure. The precise level of debasement might have been less important to contemporaries than the mere realisation that the coin was adulterated and no longer made of true 'silver'."

Professor Butcher at the University of Warwick said "The discovery of this significant decrease in the value of the denarius has shed new light on Cicero's hints of a currency crisis in 86 BC. Historians have long debated what the statesman and scholar meant when he wrote "the coinage was being tossed around, so that no one was able to know what he had." (De Officiis, 3:80) and we believe we have now solved this puzzle."

The reference is part of an anecdote describing self-serving behaviour by Marius Gratidianus, who took credit for a proposal for currency reform worked out jointly by the tribunes and the college of praetors and became hugely popular with the public as a result.

But what was the cause of the coinage being 'tossed about', and what were the solutions for which Gratidianus took credit?

"A common theme [of the book] is the CIA's ability to deceive and propagandize the American public through its impenetrable government-sanctioned shield of official secrecy and plausible deniability.

Book Description, Douglas Valentine, "The CIA As Organized Crime"

Valentine's book, The CIA As Organized Crime, was published November 28, 2016. This author is a serious journalist who started investigating the agency when "when [then-] CIA Director William Colby gave him free access to interview CIA officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam."

This is not the work of a conspiracy theorist or part-time hobbyist speculating about Ukraine. Valentine is not only a published author, but a serious and respected researcher. Parts of his work, per the book description, "are archived at Texas Tech University's Vietnam Center, at John Jay College, and at the National Security Archive, in both a Vietnam Collection and a separate Drug Enforcement Collection."

"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, unknown people far from any political game. The reason was quite simple - to force the people to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

- Vincenzo Vinciguerra, convicted Italian terrorist, former member of the Avanguardia Nazionale ("National Vanguard") and Ordine Nuovo ("New Order")

This is part 3 to a five-part series. [Refer here for Part 1 and Part 2, the latter which goes over how the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement Post WWII was Bought and Paid for by the CIA.]

Nazi Germany: The Bulwark of the West against Communism

A celestial event mentioned in an ancient Chinese text turns out to be the oldest known reference to a candidate aurora, predating the next oldest one by some three centuries.

A celestial event mentioned in an ancient Chinese text turns out to be the oldest known reference to a candidate aurora, predating the next oldest one by some three centuries, according to a recent study by Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs, an independent researcher based in Canada, and Hisashi Hayakawa from Nagoya University. This finding was recently published in the journal Advances in Space Research.

The Bamboo Annals, or Zhushu Jinian in Mandarin, chronicle the history of China from the earliest legendary time to the time of their probable composition, in the 4th century BCE. Historical events aside, unusual observations in the sky make an occasional appearance in the text. Although this chronicle has been known to scholars for a long time, a fresh look at such old texts sometimes yields surprising new insights. In this case, the authors examined the mention of a "five-coloured light" seen in the northern part of the sky on a night towards the end of the reign of king Zhao of the Zhou dynasty. While the exact year is uncertain, they used up-to-date reconstructions of Chinese chronology to settle on 977 and 957 BCE as the two most likely years, depending on how Zhao's reign is dated. They found the record of the "five-coloured light" to be consistent with a large geomagnetic storm. When the mid-latitude aurora is sufficiently bright, it can present a spectacle of multiple colours. The researchers cite several examples of this from historical records much closer to our time. The earth's north magnetic pole is known to have been inclined to the Eurasian side in the mid-10th century BCE, about 15° closer to central China than at present. Therefore, the auroral oval could have been visible to observers in central China at times of significant magnetic disturbance. The study estimates that the equatorward boundary of the auroral oval would have been located at a magnetic latitude of 40° or less on the occasion.