Archeologists from the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen have uncovered a large Bronze Age city not far from the town of Dohuk in northern Iraq. The excavation work has demonstrated that the settlement, which is now home to the small Kurdish village of Bassetki in the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, was established in about 3000 BC and was able to flourish for more than 1200 years. The archeologists also discovered settlement layers dating from the Akkadian Empire period (2340-2200 BC), which is regarded as the first world empire in human history.

Scientists headed by Professor Peter Pfälzner from the University of Tübingen and Dr. Hasan Qasim from the Directorate of Antiquities in Dohuk conducted the excavation work in Bassetki between August and October 2016. As a result, they were able to preempt the construction work on a highway on this land. The former significance of the settlement can be seen from the finds discovered during the excavation work. The city already had a wall running around the upper part of the town from approx. 2700 BC onwards in order to protect its residents from invaders.

Large stone structures were erected there in about 1800 BC. The researchers also found fragments of Assyrian cuneiform tablets dating from about 1300 BC, which suggested the existence of a temple dedicated to the Mesopotamian weather god Adad on this site. There was a lower town about one kilometer long outside the city center. Using geomagnetic resistance measurements, the archeologists discovered indications of an extensive road network, various residential districts, grand houses and a kind of palatial building dating from the Bronze Age. The residents buried their dead at a cemetery outside the city. The settlement was connected to the neighboring regions of Mesopotamia and Anatolia via an overland roadway dating from about 1800 BC.

The historic eruption of the Greek volcano Thera in about 1650 B.C. triggered massive tsunamis and led to the end of the dominant civilization in the Mediterranean. Now, researchers say these destructive tsunamis may have been generated by the flow of volcanic material into the sea, challenging previous explanations, according to a new study.

Studies of the Bronze Age disaster led scientists to think the collapse of the volcanic crater (called the caldera) into the sea caused tsunamis after the eruption of Thera, on the island now known as Santorini. However, in the new study, scientists used volcanic and seismic data, along with detailed mapping of the seafloor, to disprove this theory and offer a new explanation.

Their research revealed that the caldera was not connected to the sea when it collapsed and, therefore, could not have caused the tsunamis. Instead, the researchers propose that large volumes of volcanic material flowing rapidly into the sea could have displaced enough water to create tsunamis.

Pyroclastic flows are fast-moving currents of volcanic material (rock fragments; lava; and hot, expanding gases) that flow down a volcano after an eruption. These flows can reach scorching temperatures of more than 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius) and move at speeds of up to 45 mph (70 km/h), the researchers said. As this material flows into the ocean, it solidifies and displaces massive amounts of water, they added.

Almost six years have passed since the death of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi - a death that changed Libya forever. Arguably, once a stable country, it now fights an inner disease, known as Daesh or ISIL. However, the murder of the Libyan leader was orchestrated, some say because of his plan to question the standard money system. Gaddafi also wanted to introduce actual gold in the form of money - as the African Gold Dinar. This Dinar wouldn't be just paper money, but would represent value in the form of tangible precious metals itself, rather than within the government's vault. Gaddafi also wanted to trade oil for gold, not the American Dollar.

Apart from Libya being the largest oil producer in the upper African region (when under Gaddafi) and wanting the returns in gold (which obliviously made the west very upset) - Gaddafi's death makes things a bit different. If you remember his murder, then you would remember how he begged for mercy while covered in wounds and blood, and it going viral on the Internet. While these videos raced across the entire world, for all to see; this wasn't the case for another so-called terrorist, out of respect for the burial customs of the locals. Osama bin Laden, who was a supposed open threat to the United States, who was, at the time held accountable for the 9/11 attacks, had his body taken and thrown into the ocean without the humiliating torture and degradation posed in front of the world.

A: It has happened four times.

The 2000 election was the most recent when the candidate who received the greatest number of electoral votes, and thus won the presidency, didn't win the popular vote. But this scenario has played out in our nation's history before.

In 1824, John Quincy Adams was elected president despite not winning either the popular vote or the electoral vote. Andrew Jackson was the winner in both categories. Jackson received 38,000 more popular votes than Adams, and beat him in the electoral vote 99 to 84. Despite his victories, Jackson didn't reach the majority 131 votes needed in the Electoral College to be declared president. In fact, neither candidate did. The decision went to the House of Representatives, which voted Adams into the White House.

In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes won the election (by a margin of one electoral vote), but he lost the popular vote by more than 250,000 ballots to Samuel J. Tilden.

In 1888, Benjamin Harrison received 233 electoral votes to Grover Cleveland's 168, winning the presidency. But Harrison lost the popular vote by more than 90,000 votes.

In 2000, George W. Bush was declared the winner of the general election and became the 43rd president, but he didn't win the popular vote either. Al Gore holds that distinction, garnering about 540,000 more votes than Bush. However, Bush won the electoral vote, 271 to 266.

More than 120 images of ancient Egyptian boats have been discovered adorning the inside of a building in Abydos, Egypt. The building dates back more than 3,800 years and was built near the tomb of pharaoh Senwosret III, archaeologists reported.

The tableau, as the series of images is called, would have looked upon a real wooden boat said Josef Wegner, a curator at the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the excavation. Only a few planks remain of the wooden boat, which would have been constructed at Abydos or dragged across the desert, Wegner said. In ancient Egypt, boats were sometimes buried near a pharaoh's tomb.

Etchings and a boat

Archaeologists found that the tableau was incised on the white plaster walls of the building.

Updated on Nov. 7 at 9:12 a.m. ET.
The partial skeleton of a castaway found in the 1940s on the Pacific island Nikumaroro shows some similarities to Amelia Earhart, scientists say.

Though extensive searches have failed to turn up the bones, scientists have found a record of the bones' measurements taken by a British doctor in 1941, they said. And those measurements match up with Earhart's build, according to Richard Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which launched a project to piece together Earhart's disappearance in 1988.

"The match does not, of course, prove that the castaway was Amelia Earhart, but it is a significant new data point that tips the scales further in that direction," TIGHAR representatives said in a statement.

However, forensic anthropologist Ann Ross, who is not involved with the TIGHAR study, said the methodology used by TIGHAR is not reliable. What's more, Ross, who is director of the Forensic Sciences Institute at N.C. State University, questions the doctor's notes due to some of the language in the writing.

The remains of a secret World War II German base have been rediscovered on an island near the North Pole by a team of Russian researchers.

The wartime "Schatzgrabber" ("Treasure Hunter" in German) weather station was built by the German military in 1943 on Alexandra Land, one of the isolated Franz Josef Land islands in the Barents Sea, located more than 680 miles (1,100 kilometers) north of the Russian city of Arkhangelsk.

The islands are snowy and ice-bound for much of the year and the site was last visited in the 1980s, the researchers said. But earlier this year, in August, a Russian archaeological team was able to explore and catalog the remains of the wartime weather station for the first time.

"This summer in the Arctic was very warm, so the entire area of Schatzgrabber was completely free of snow and ice, which made it possible to explore the area fully," team leader Evgeny Ermolov, a senior researcher with the Russian Arctic National Park, which now administers the island, said in a statement.

A lavishly illustrated medieval book, full of gold leaf and finely painted images, the "Aberdeen Bestiary" had remained somewhat of a mystery.

Now, with new high-resolution images of each page of the 12th-century manuscript, scientists have found that it was likely seized from a monastic library by scouts of King Henry VIII during the dissolution of monasteries in the 1500s.

As such, the book was likely used as a tool for teaching rather than as a treasure for a royal elite, like one of the king's ancestors, the researchers said.

"The book was used for teaching — many words have accents on them to indicate emphasis for reading out loud," lead researcher Jane Geddes, an art historian from the University of Aberdeen, told Live Science. "On one page, there is an area of dirty finger marks at the center top of the page. This would occur if you regularly turned the page upside down to show an audience."

Only a few weeks after Christopher Columbus reached the New World in October 1492, another foreign explorer—this time an errant space rock—touched down on firm ground following its own protracted journey across an inhospitable expanse.

This extraterrestrial visitor came to be known the Ensisheim meteorite, named for the Alsatian town adjacent to the wheat field where it impacted on the morning of November 7, 1492 (according to the Julian calendar). It is the oldest meteorite impact with a confirmed date on record, and has become famous for its dramatic fall from the heavens, an event that was witnessed by onlookers and recorded for posterity by writers like the Italian priest Sigismondo Tizio.

"At this point there has to be mention of the immense portent which was seen this year in Germany: for on the seventh day of November [1492], near the city of Ensisheim and the village of Bauenheim above Basel, a great stone fell out of the sky, triangular in shape, charred, the color of metallic ore, and accompanied by crashing thunder and lightning," Tizio said in his History of the Sienese. "When it had fallen to earth it split into several pieces, for it had traveled at an oblique angle; to the amazement of all, indeed, it flattened the earth when it struck."

A young boy is said to have found the impact site first, attracting a crowd of awed spectators. In an age when comets, shooting stars, and other celestial phenomenon remained unexplained, the appearance of the meteorite was quickly attributed to divine intervention.

Naturally, everyone wanted a chunk of the rock that God had deemed fit to chuck at Earth. Any superstitious reservations they might have had about the "thunderstone" or "firestone" as some took to calling it, did not prevent them from breaking off pieces to take home as souvenirs. Some slices were also saved to be sent to dignitaries, like Cardinal Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius III.

The following contains replies to various comments and questions in recent e-mails from Russia, Holland, Great Britain, France and the USA

Q: Why are there so many misunderstandings about Nicholas II and so many strident criticisms of him?

A: In order to understand Tsar Nicholas II, you have to be Orthodox. It is no good being secular or nominally Orthodox, semi-Orthodox, 'hobby Orthodox' and retaining your unconverted cultural baggage, whether Soviet or Western - which is essentially the same thing. You have to be consistently Orthodox, consciously Orthodox, Orthodox in your essence, culture and world view.

In other words, you have to have spiritual integrity - exactly as the Tsar had, in order to understand him. Tsar Nicholas was profoundly and systematically Orthodox in his spiritual, moral, political, economic and social outlook. His Orthodox soul looked out on the world through Orthodox eyes and acted in an Orthodox way, with Orthodox reflexes. So we too have to be Orthodox from inside in order to understand him.

Q: Is that why academics are so negative about him?

A: Western academics, like Soviet academics, are negative about him because they are secularists. For example, I recently read the book Crimea by the British historian of Russia, Orlando Figes. This is an interesting book on the Crimean War, with many well-researched details and facts, written as senior academics should write. However, the author starts out from unspoken, purely Western secularist criteria, that since the Tsar of the age, Nicholas I, was not a Western secularist, he must have been a religious fanatic, and that his intention was to conquer the Ottoman Empire. Through his love of detail, Figes overlooks the main point - what the Crimean War was actually about from the Russian side. All he can see is Western-style imperialist aims, which he then attributes to Russia. This attribution is a projection of his Western self.

What Figes misunderstands is that the parts of the Ottoman Empire which Nicholas I was interested in were those where an Orthodox Christian population had for centuries suffered under the Muslim Yoke. The Crimean War was not a colonial, imperialist Russian war to expand into the Ottoman Empire and exploit it, like those conducted by Western Powers to expand into Africa and Asia and exploit them. It was a struggle to liberate from oppression - in fact an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist war. The aim was to free Orthodox lands and peoples from oppression, not to conquer someone else's empire. As for Nicholas I being a religious fanatic, in the eyes of secularists all sincere Christians must be 'religious fanatics'. This is because secularists do not have a spiritual dimension. They are always one-dimensional, unable to see beyond their own secular cultural conditioning, 'to think outside the box'.