Secret History
New studies on the cremated remains of 25 Neolithic people buried at the site show that nearly half of them lived nowhere near the now world-famous monument.
A team from University of Oxford analysed the 25 skull bones, discovering that ten of those cremated originated from western Britain. Five of the ten were potentially from southwest Wales; the same area from which the bluestones that made the monument's original structure originated from.
The other 15 people appear to be local to the Wiltshire and Stonehenge area.

This copper band was interred with the cremated remains of at least seven people.
Widespread trade networks once linked communities in northeastern US with those around the Great Lakes and the Ohio River Valley and extended south to the Tennessee River Valley. Around 5,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer societies in eastern North America started to become more settled, and their populations started to grow. As these communities grew, they also developed long-distance social and economic connections with other communities.
In the archaeological record, we can only really see evidence for the exchange of goods, especially shells, beads, raw stone for working into tools, and copper. But those are probably just the tangible pieces of a more complex set of relationships that may have included political marriages to cement alliances and large ritual gatherings to bring people together and demonstrate wealth, power, and status.

The first jewellery (above) was extracted here two years ago, although in the time of Russian ruler Peter the Great some treasure was removed
Some 3,000 golden and precious items were found in a burial mound in the remote Tarbagatai mountains.
The treasure trove - described as 'priceless' - is believed to belong to royal or elite members of the Saka people who held sway in central Asia eight centuries before the birth of Christ.
Among the finds are earrings in the shape of bells, gold plates with rivets, plaques, chains, and a necklace with precious stones.
Gold beads decorating clothes were made with the use of sophisticated micro-soldering techniques, indicating an exceptional level of development jewellery-making skills for the period.
Comment: With such exquisite craftsmanship and stunning originality, one wonders what other secrets we have yet to uncover regarding the life of the Scythian people:
- Siberia: 50,000 year old bones may be the oldest Homo sapiens outside Africa and Middle East
- Oldest of its kind: Ancient icy tomb of Scythian prince discovered in Siberia
- The Scythian bow was the AK-47 of the Ancient Near East
- Gold artifacts found in Scythian grave mounds support claims of ancient Greek historian
- Siberia was a major centre of early skull surgery in ancient times
- 1700 year old mummified Hun warrior finally in museum with his bow and 'whistling arrows'
- Arctic island's mysterious stone spheres
He trained notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal and masterminded the hijack of an Air France plane that was flown to Entebbe in Uganda and later rescued by Israeli commandos.
Not surprisingly, the Israeli secret service, Mossad, wanted him dead. But six years after they first put out a 'kill order', Haddad was still very much alive, living in apparent comfort in Baghdad.
What happened next was worthy of a James Bond thriller. On January 10, 1978, a Mossad agent inside Haddad's inner circle, known only as Sadness, switched his toothpaste for an identical tube laced with a deadly toxin, developed in a secret laboratory near Tel Aviv.
Comment: And this is just what we know:
- By way of deception: MH17 sabotaged by Israeli security team at Amsterdam Schiphol airport
- By Way of Deception: Israel Increases Covert Operations, Says Military chief
- By way of deception: Hamas blames "Israeli collaborators" for launching rockets
- Litvinenko - By Way Of Deception Part 1
- Litvinenko - By Way Of Deception - Part 2
- Litvinenko: By Way of Deception Part 3: The Apartheid State Of Israel
Several week ago, we tackled this question while discussing the incredible shrinking cups the deep-sea scientists like to decorate and send into the wine-dark deep. While toilets and spam cans and beer bottles make for good headlines and shocking images of how extensive human impacts are on the deep sea, those are far from the strangest objects to grace the sea floor.
By most reasonable metrics, that honor has to go to the many nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon components that have been lost at sea over the last 70 years. While a few high-profile incidents have received tremendous coverage, most incidents remain largely shrouded in secrecy, with only sparse reports available. Which brings us to a question that's been lodged in my brain for the last month: just how many nuclear weapons are sitting at the bottom of the sea?
Tim Cullen collected many observations to support such an assumption.
The two maps below also show indisputable similarities between the political constellations in the Phoenician period of the Etruscans (9th-6th c.), and in the Punic period of the Romans (6th-3rd c.).

Researchers in Japan turned to detailed logs kept by farm families and government officials hundreds of years ago, looking for mentions of thunder and lightning events. Original copy of the Diary of Hirosaki Clan Government Office, held at the Hirosaki City Library, is shown
Researchers in Japan have turned to detailed logs kept by farm families and government officials hundreds of years ago, looking for mentions of thunder and lightning events.
The study shows this activity lined up with the time it takes sunspots to make a complete rotation, suggesting the cycle plays a 'very important role,' in daily weather.
Comment: Historical and archaeological records show a strong correlation with predictable solar cycles and the changes to our planets climate. And as we enter what is proving to be one of the weakest solar cycles for at least 200 years we're seeing record breaking cooling, a surge in extreme weather and a variety of other unexpected and ominous phenomena:
- Mysterious, massive and deadly algae bloom 'whirlpool' discovered in the Baltic Sea
- Cosmic rays increased 12% this year plus an awesome 'diamond dust' sun halo sighted in Montana (PHOTOS)
- Study: Cosmic rays trigger climate change on Earth by increasing cloud cover
- Revision to 400-year sunspot record makes current solar cycle weakest in 200 years
- Massive flooding in Europe during the Little Ice Age
- Little Ice Age foiled Europeans' early exploration of North America
- The Medieval warm period and how grapes grew where polar bears now roam
The burial ritual, which is unlike anything ever seen in Europe, was unearthed along the river Dniester in Ukraine.
Experts believe the markings were made after the woman's body had completely decomposed, allowing ancient people to draw directly on the bones.
No other comparable prehistoric custom has ever been recorded in Europe.
Researchers say the baffling new find proves how complicated and elaborate funeral rituals were millennia ago.

The medieval gaming board used to play Norse strategy game Hnefatafl.
Archaeologist Ali Cameron said the board found near Old Deer was a "very rare" find with it used to play the Norse strategy game of Hnefatafl.
A date for the board has yet to be established but a similar piece found in Birsay, Orkney, in 1989 was dated to the Late Iron Age/Pictish period from the 5th to 9th Century AD. Ms Cameron said: "It is a very rare object and only a few have been found in Scotland, mainly on monastic or at least religious sites."
The cemetery is located in Dahan Village of Tengzhou City, according to the provincial cultural heritage and archaeology institute.
Liu Yanchang, a researcher from the institute said that the excavation of the cemetery started in October last year.
So far, 100 small tombs, 36 large and medium-sized tombs, as well as more than 800 items of ceramic, jade, bone and bronzeware have been found.
"Based on the size of the tombs, distribution and number of burial objects, the large and medium-sized tombs might belong to nobles. Their nationalities haven't been identified yet," Liu said.
Comment: See also:
- Mystery of ancient Chinese civilization's disappearance explained
- Early contact? Mayan calendar similar to ancient Chinese
- Ancient Chinese skull suggests humans may have come out of Africa AND Asia
- "Dongzhi Man" - China's latest ancient human fossil find
- China: Indecipherable Ancient Books Found in Chongqing
- Ancient board game discovered in looted China tomb













Comment: These findings are very interesting and the new technique will likely prove valuable for a great many more sites, however it seems that the great mysteries of Stonehenge such as who built it, how they built it and why, have yet to be revealed: