Secret HistoryS


Gold Coins

1,000 year old coin hoard is UK's most valuable collection ever discovered - UPDATE: Medieval tax scam?

Anglo-Saxon
The 2,571 silver coins are made up of King Harold II (pictured) pennies from the end of Anglo-Saxon England and William the Conqueror coins, after the 1066 Norman conquest
A metal-detecting couple have found one of the biggest treasure hoards in British history which is believed to be worth around £5million.

Adam Staples and partner Lisa Grace unearthed the 'once in a lifetime' find of almost 2,600 ancient coins that date back 1,000 years.

Although the find is smaller than the famous Staffordshire Hoard - the biggest collection of buried coins and artefacts discovered in Britain - it is thought to be at least £1million more valuable.

The 2,571 silver coins are made up of King Harold II pennies from the end of Anglo-Saxon England and William the Conqueror coins, after the 1066 Norman conquest.

Comment: Insights derived from ancient coinage can be invaluable; date stamps, heraldry, purity, and so on, can often provide a much more impartial view of history; and sometimes in stark contrast to the official narrative: UPDATE 29th August 2019:

The Guardian reports on the speculation surrounding the recent find:
The British Museum announced the discovery of the coins from a pivotal moment in English history on Wednesday. Some depict Harold II, the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England, and an almost equal amount show the man who replaced him after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror, the first Norman king of England.

Gareth Williams, the museum's curator of early medieval coinage, said the hoard of 2,528 coins was unusually large and "massively important" in shining light on the history of the period.

"One of the big debates amongst historians is the extent to which there was continuity or change, both in the years immediately after the conquest and across a longer period," he said. "The coins help us understand how changes under Norman rule impacted on society as a whole."

Three of the coins have been identified as "mules", a combination of two types of coin - essentially an early form of tax-dodging by the moneyer, the person who made them.

coin hoard
© Aaron Chown/PAIan Richardson, treasure registrar at the British Museum, holding a rare example of a mule coin.
These coins have designs and language that relate to both Harold and William, and would have been easy to pass off as legal tender as the average Anglo-Saxon was illiterate and the stylised images of the kings looked similar.


They may have been illiterate but could they not differentiate between faces and symbols? Also, is it normal for two kings to have such similar coins? Does this assumption really explain what's going on?


The find was made in January in a farmer's field near the Chew Valley in Somerset by Lisa Grace and Adam Staples, a couple from Derbyshire who were teaching friends how to use their new metal detectors.

One of the friends came across a single William the Conqueror silver coin, "an amazing find in its own right", said Staples, something a detectorist might only find once in 30 years. "Two steps later, there was another signal and it was another coin. Then there were beeps everywhere, it took four or five hours to dig them all up."

They soon had a bucket containing a staggering number of coins, probably worth millions of pounds. The total hoard value would have been enough to buy a flock of 500 sheep in 1067-68, but its precise value today has yet to be revealed.

The legal process will involve a coroner's examination to confirm whether it is treasure. If it is, it will then be valued by an independent treasure valuation committee and museums will have to raise money to acquire the hoard. Interest has already been expressed by the Roman Baths and Pump Room in Bath.

The reward would then be shared between the land owner and the metal detectorists who made the discovery.

One of the most tantalising questions is why someone would bury so much money. Williams said the south-west of England was a violent place in the aftermath of 1066, with raids by the Welsh and the return of Harold's sons from Ireland.

"Imagine a period of instability with someone in charge of the country that not everybody actively supports and uncertainty in terms of the relationship with the continent," he said.

"It is the sort of circumstances in which anyone might choose to bury their money."



Dig

1,200 year old Pictish stone discovered at early Christian church in Scottish Highlands

Pictish
A Pictish stone described as a 'once-in-a-lifetime find' has been uncovered in the Scottish Highlands
A Pictish stone described as a 'once-in-a-lifetime find' has been uncovered in the Scottish Highlands.

The stone, thought to have been carved around 12,000 years ago, is decorated with a number of Pictish symbols and is said by experts to be of national importance.


Comment: This above age appears to be a typo as the stone is thought to be 1,200 years old.


It is believed the stone, discovered at an early Christian church site in Dingwall, originally stood at more than 7.8 feet (2.4 metres) high.

It now measures around 4.9 feet (1.5 metres), having been broken over the years and been reused as a grave marker in the 1790s.

A Pictish stone described as a 'once-in-a-lifetime find' has been uncovered in the Scottish Highlands

Comment: For more recent discoveries and insights into the mysterious Picts, see: Also check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: Everything's a Remix: Origins of the World's Mythologies


Info

A wall discovered surrounding the ancient Mayan city of Uxmal

Pyramid of Magician - Uxmal
© La Jornada MayaPyramid of Magician - Uxmal.
A nearly two-mile-long wall surrounds Uxmal, and a close look at it tells a story, said the director of the archaeological site in Yucatan.

Jose Huchim Herrera said the wall was built thousands of years ago to protect the ancient Mayan community from invaders.

Although documented in the 19th century, today it is buried in jungle thicket. But INAH has taken an interest in the structure and has begun to study and plan its restoration.

Huchim and an assistant used machetes to cut through the brush to reveal the wall to a group that included a La Jornada Maya reporter.

The archaeologist and an assistant easily sliced through the brush to reach a stretch of wall, despite the day's humidity and heat. At times they had to stop and wait for the fatigued guests who had lagged a little behind, the Jornada reporter observed.

Not even half of Uxmal's ruins have been discovered by modern-day researchers, said Huchim, and the city's ancient secrets continue to reveal themselves.

Rocket

Looking back 25 years, did the Soviets actually build a better space shuttle?

Buran obiter
© PinterestSoviet Buran reusable orbiter
A quarter-century ago, it seemed like the space shuttle suddenly got a new sibling. On Nov. 15, 1988, the Buran reusable orbiter, the crowning achievement of the Soviet space program, made its first flight. It would prove to be the Buran's last. But looking back 25 years later, some space experts say the USSR might have built a better shuttle, one that would have laid the groundwork for a new generation of launch vehicles, had it been able to weather the economic storms of the 1990s and the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Copycat?

Once the Soviet winged spacecraft finally made its public debut after years of secret development, an urban myth spread that it was an exact replica of the American space shuttle. It was easy to believe. A long list of Soviet equivalents of Western technology, from vacuum cleaners and cars to aircraft and rockets, were straight-up copies. But while the resemblance between the spacecraft is striking, it turned out to be deceiving.

At the outset of the Buran project in 1976, the Soviet leadership, indeed, gave its industry the task of developing a system with similar technical capabilities to the space shuttle. However, politicians left room for engineers to choose the exact path to such a vehicle, an opening that Buran chief architect Valentin Glushko exploited. As we now know from numerous unclassified documents and eyewitness accounts, Glushko's engineers did not blindly copy the shuttle but instead went through the long and painful process of determining an original architecture for the Soviet equivalent.


Books

Best of the Web: The Arabian cradle of Zion: Moses, Muhammad, and Wahhabo-Zionism

moses


When Yahweh resided in an Arabian volcano


"Yahweh came from Sinai" (Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalms 68:18). It is in Sinai that Moses first encounters Yahweh; it is back to Sinai that Moses leads Yahweh's people from Egypt; and it is from Sinai that, two years later, on Yahweh's order again, Moses sets off with them to conquer a piece of the Fertile Crescent.

But where is Sinai, with its Mount Horeb? Exodus unequivocally places it in the land of Midian. After fleeing "into Midianite territory," Moses is hosted by "a priest of Midian with seven daughters" (2:15-16). He "agreed to stay on there with the man, who gave him his daughter Zipporah in marriage" (2:21). Moses' father-in-law is named Reuel in Exodus 2:18, but Jethro in Numbers 3:1, "Hobab son of Reuel the Midianite" in Numbers 10:29, and "Hobab the Kenite" in Judges 1:16. We'll call him Jethro, his most popular name. His daughter Zipporah gave Moses two sons: Gershom (2:22) and Eliezer (18:4). It is while grazing his father-in-law's flocks that Moses finds himself near Mount Horeb, "to the far side of the desert" (3:1), where he hears Yahweh call his name. By implication, Sinai is in Midian.

Comment: More from Lauren Guyénot: Also check out SOTT radio's:


Info

Submerged 8000-year-old wooden structure discovered off southern Great Britain

A historian examining the wooden planks.
© Maritime Archaeological TrustA historian examining the wooden planks.
Archaeologists have spotted an 8,000-year-old wooden platform in the waters off southern Great Britain.

The mostly intact find sat in a larger archaeological site 35 feet below the water's surface. It represents a substantial increase in the amount of ancient worked wood found in the United Kingdom, and scientists hypothesize that it was a platform used to build ships.

"As a feature by itself it's quite incredible," Garry Momber, director of the Maritime Archaeological Trust in the United Kingdom, told Gizmodo. "This is the most cohesive, intact structure from the Middle Stone Age ever recovered in the United Kingdom."

Archaeologists first found the site in 2005, which included a pile of cut wood and artifacts like remnants of wheat and string. This past year, further excavation revealed the large, intact wooden platform — layers of cut wood atop a wooden foundation. Carbon dating combined with tree ring data and the depth of the site revealed its age to be around 8,000 years old.

Shortly after the end of the last ice age, sea levels were much lower, and there was no water separating the United Kingdom from France. Early humans could have migrated north into Great Britain and built sites like this. Rising sea levels eventually engulfed the site, while the dark, cold, wet conditions prevented the wood from rotting away.

SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: MindMatters: Everything's a Remix: Origins of the World's Mythologies

jupiter jesus
© SOTT
For as long as cultures have had contact with each other, attentive observers have noticed the similarities between their respective myths. Today, scholars hypothesize that these similarities are either the result of accident, cultural sharing or diffusion, or a shared collective unconscious of symbols. But in his revolutionary book, The Origins of the World's Mythologies, E.J. Michael Witzel argues that there's a better reason for many shared features: common origin. Like linguistics or genetics, he argues that with enough data, you can trace back versions of myths to shared mythologies from the past, all the way back through human history. In the process, he has identified a common, complex storyline shared by mythologies spanning Europe, Asia, the Americas, and stretching out into Northern Africa and Southeast Asia. His work suggests that in the distant past, humanity shared a common set of myths, but prior to the spread of humanity into Eurasia and the Americas, a new storyline developed, which has been retained but modified over the past 40,000 years of history.

Today on MindMatters we discuss the basics of Witzel's theory, the two major types of mythology he has identified, and what it says about human creativity.


Running Time: 01:14:19

Download: MP3 — 68 MB


Umbrella

'Mystery' eruption that cooled ancient world traced to El Salvador's Ilopango volcano

El Salvador's Ilopango volcano
© NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS; U.S./JAPAN ASTER SCIENCE TEAM
The sixth century was a rough time to be alive: Lower-than-average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere triggered crop failure, famine, and maybe even the onset of bubonic plague. The ultimate culprit, scientists say, were two back-to-back volcanic eruptions — one in 536 C.E. and another around 540 C.E. The first likely happened in Iceland or North America. But the location of the second one has remained a mystery — until now.

Researchers studying ancient deposits from El Salvador's Ilopango volcano knew that a massive eruption had taken place there sometime between the third and sixth centuries. That event, dubbed Tierra Blanca Joven (TBJ), or "white young earth," sent a volcanic plume towering nearly 50 kilometers into the atmosphere.

To better pin down the date of this eruption, the scientists collected slices from three tree trunks embedded in TBJ volcanic ash 25 to 30 kilometers from the present-day lake that covers the caldera (above). The tropical hardwood trees likely died after being engulfed by the searing hot, gale-force winds containing the volcanic gases, ash, and pumice that would have swept outward after the eruption.

Comment: See also: 536 AD: Plague, famine, drought, cold, and a mysterious fog that lasted 18 months


Dig

Tombs of Iberian prince and 24 aristocrats unearthed in Spain

Tomb Iberian
© [Credit: UCLM]Tomb of an Iberian prince found in Alarcos
The general landscape of the Iberian Peninsula in 300 BC consisted of a variety of communities that included the Celts, the Iberians, the Celtiberians and the Lusitanians, while the two main powers of Rome and Carthage fought each other to the death on their turf.

The Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca invaded Iberia in 235 BC, laying waste to the various communities that he came across. Finally, these groups banded together and waged war on him in what became known as the battle of Heliké - possibly Elche in Alicante or Elche de la Sierra in Albacete - where Hamilcar met his death in 228BC.

Last year, the archeologists and historians María del Rosario García Huerta, Francisco Javier Morales Hervás and David Rodríguez González came to the end of their research after three years excavating and two years analyzing the remains of the Iberian necropolis of Alarcos, in the Spanish province of Ciudad Real, where they unearthed 25 tombs belonging to Iberian aristocrats, including one the experts believe could have belonged to a prince, from the period when Hamilcar was killed in battle.

Comment: See also:


Dig

Ancient skeletons with cranial deformation unearthed in Croatia

cranial deformation
© M Kavka/CC By 4.0CT scans of the skull that had a "circular-erect"deformation
Archaeologists have unearthed three ancient skeletons in Croatia — and two of them had pointy, artificially deformed skulls.

Each of those skulls had been melded into a different shape, possibly as a way to show they belonged to a specific cultural group.

Artificial cranial deformation has been practiced in various parts of the world, from Eurasia and Africa to South America. It is the practice of shaping a person's skull — such as through using tight headdresses, bandages or rigid tools — while the skull bones are still malleable in infancy.

Ancient cultures had different reasons for the practice, from indicating social status to creating what they thought was a more beautiful skull. The earliest known instance of this practice occurred 12,000 years ago in ancient China, but it's unclear if the practice spread from there or if it emerged independently in different parts of the world, according to a previous Live Science report.

Comment: See also: