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Dead Sea Scrolls: New discoveries and what they might mean

Alexis Moran
ABC
Tue, 23 Jan 2018 15:40 UTC
A fragment of a Dead Sea scroll, 2010
© Alex Levac
A fragment of a Dead Sea scroll, 2010.
A decades-old mystery has been deciphered in one of the last remaining parts of the 900 Dead Sea Scrolls that date back to at least the 4th century BC.

Researchers of the Department of Bible Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel spent more than a year carefully reassembling more than 60 tiny sections written in secret code.

They decrypted the ancient code through annotations in the margins written by a second scribe correcting the errors made by the author.

Comment: Also See:

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Snakes in Suits

US experimented on hundreds of pregnant women with radiation during the Cold War

John Vibes
The Free Thought Project
Tue, 23 Jan 2018 13:56 UTC
pregnant woman nuclear radiation
Nearly 1,000 pregnant women were given radioactive iron by their doctors without their knowledge, as part of a series of experiments for the US military during the Cold War.

Between the years of 1945 and 1947, researchers at Vanderbilt University conducted a twisted experiment in which hundreds of pregnant women were exposed to radiation intentionally for the purpose of testing how it affected both the child and mother.

The study was funded by the U.S. Public Health Service and overseen by the Tennessee State Department of Health. All of these women were poor and had no knowledge of the experiment, and were never informed that they were a part of a study.

Comment: Further reading:

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Pi

Two Brothers: DNA solves the mystery of how these mummies were related

Bruce Bower
Science News
Tue, 16 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
The duo had the same mother, but different dads
MAMMA’S BOYS - Egyptian mummies
© Manchester Museum, University of Manchester
MAMMA’S BOYS Ancient Egyptian mummies known as the Two Brothers, found in these coffins, had the same mother but different fathers, DNA evidence indicates.
A pair of ancient Egyptian mummies, known for more than a century as the Two Brothers, were actually half brothers, a new study of their DNA finds.

These two, high-ranking men shared a mother, but had different fathers, say archaeogeneticist Konstantina Drosou of the University of Manchester in England and her colleagues. That muted family tie came to light thanks to the successful retrieval of two types of DNA from the mummies' teeth, the scientists report in the February Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. The finding highlights the importance ancient Egyptians placed on maternal lines of descent, Drosou's group contends.

Questions have swirled about the biological backgrounds of the mummified men ever since they were found together in a tomb near the village of Rifeh in 1907. The tomb dates to ancient Egypt's 12th Dynasty, between 1985 B.C. and 1773 B.C. Coffin inscriptions mention a female, Khnum-Aa, as the mother of both men. And both mummies are described as sons of an unnamed local governor. It has always been unclear if those inscriptions refer to the same man, but discoverers decided the mummies were full brothers, because the two were buried next to each other and had the same mother.
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Heart - Black

Newly declassified files reveal strong British government support for Uganda dictator Idi Amin


Sputnik
Mon, 22 Jan 2018 01:49 UTC
UK Foreign Office
© Wikipedia/ Innotata
UK Foreign Office
Idi Amin has gone down as one of the most brutal dictators in history. His eight-year stranglehold in Uganda saw parliament dissolved, elections ended, vicious secret police agencies created, and courts and media alike made totally subservient to his will. In the process, perhaps 500,000 were killed, and hundreds of thousands more displaced.

Idi Amin's story is fairly well known - he seized power through a military coup, overthrowing elected President Milton Obote, in 1971. Less well known is the UK's strong financial, political and military support for Amin and his government, during the earliest years of his rule.

Nonetheless, newly published British government files shine fresh light on this ignored and suppressed period in modern UK political history.
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Sherlock

Historian compiles online database of declassified documents exposing 'the true history of British foreign policy since 1945'

Rachel Lang
RT
Mon, 22 Jan 2018 17:23 UTC
top secret
© Chromorange / Global Look Press
A historian determined to blow the lid on the UK government's shady international dealings is releasing hundreds of declassified documents on an online database. "The British public has little idea what has been done," he told RT.

Mark Curtis has recently created his own online database, aptly named 'Declassified' - a veritable A-Z of all secret dealings between Britain and virtually every country in the world. The comprehensive list of documents, sourced mostly from the UK's National Archives, aims to provide a "snapshot only of the true history of British foreign policy since 1945" - think everything from Nazis to nuclear warfare.

In an interview with RT, Curtis said he decided to compile the documents online as the "British public has little idea what has been done, and is being done, in their names."
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Archaeology

5,500-year-old human remains found in Mayo, Ireland


The Journal.ie
Fri, 19 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Ben Gorm Mountain
© T Kahlert via Department of Culture
Ben Gorm Mountain, Mayo, Ireland
The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht has revealed that ancient human remains, which were discovered by a local hillwalker on a Mayo mountainside in 2016, date back as early as 3,600 BC.

The research found that the natural boulder chamber in which the remains were found was used for human burial practice through the Neolithic period.

A least 10 individuals - adults, teenagers and children - were placed in the chamber over a period of up to 1,200 years, according to the research. One of the adult bones dated to 3,600 BC, while a bone of a child skeleton dated to 2,400 BC.
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Butterfly

Fossilized scales found from 200m-year-old butterflies

Helen Briggs
BBC News
Thu, 11 Jan 2018 21:31 UTC
200 million year old butterfly wing scale
© Bas van de Schootbrugge
One of the scales under the microscope
Newly discovered fossils show that moths and butterflies have been on the planet for at least 200 million years.

Scientists found fossilised butterfly scales the size of a speck of dust inside ancient rock from Germany. The find pushes back the date for the origins of the Lepidoptera, one of the most prized and studied insect groups.

Researchers say they can learn more about the conservation of butterflies and moths by studying their early evolution.

They used acid to dissolve ancient rocks, leaving behind small fragments, including "perfectly preserved" scales that covered the wings of early moths and butterflies.
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Archaeology

Archeologists unearth evidence of 'unusually sophisticated' technology beneath ancient 'pyramid' on Greek island of Keros


RT
Fri, 19 Jan 2018 09:06 UTC
Cambridge Keros Project
© Cambridge Keros Project
Archaeologists were not aware that the ancient civilization that occupied the site was capable of such feats of engineering, and are continuing their research to find out more about who lived there.
Archaeologists excavating an ancient pyramid-like structure on the Greek island of Keros have found evidence that its creators were far more sophisticated than previously thought.

The builders of the settlement of Dhaskalio carved the headland into stepped terraces, and added approximately 1,000 tons of white stone to make it look like a giant, gleaming, stepped pyramid. The stone was transported from 10 kilometers away.

New research on the 4,000-year-old site has revealed a range of impressive features, including a complex series of drainage tunnels, and metalwork that was "unusually sophisticated" for the time.

Comment: Read more about discoveries on Keros:

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Che Guevara

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1967 speech: 'A genuine revolution of values'

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg
Mon, 15 Jan 2018 13:33 UTC
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Earlier today, I read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1967 speech on Vietnam at Riverside Church. It was both uplifting and depressing.

Uplifting in the sense that he so eloquently expresses the timeless spirit necessary for humans to take the next evolutionary step forward into a more conscious paradigm. Depressing in the sense it's crystal clear the American public quite spectacularly rejected his plea, further descending quite enthusiastically into a culture defined by depravity, violence and selfishness over the past 50 years.

While the entire speech is illuminating, the following paragraphs really connected with me on a deep level, as they reflect many of the themes I've been exploring over the past year or so.
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
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Star of David

Book Review: Norman Finkelstein's 'Gaza' is an exhaustive act of witness

Marilyn Garson
Mondoweiss
Wed, 17 Jan 2018 12:59 UTC
Norman Finkelstein book Gaza

GAZA

An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom
Norman Finkelstein
440 pp. University of California Press. $34.95.

After the 2012 war, I told my Gazan team that we needed a new word. 'War' was a goal-oriented pursuit, tempered by mortal and strategic risk. Israel's conflict maintenance was neither.

After the 2014 war, while we still wore those 1000-yard stares, I set out to assign proportionate responsibility. I read books on military accountability, the arc from force projection to force protection, law of war handbooks, and every report I could find. I could not unpick their crazy-making inconsistencies. From their conclusions, I could not recognize what I had seen. I told my team that we needed a new kind of scholarship.

Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom, enables a different scholarship. Norman Finkelstein has set out to deconstruct the false narrative of war in Gaza, by refuting its component parts. One by one. Finkelstein is an author, activist and scholar with decades of archives and outrage to bring.

Gaza is one exhaustive act of witness. I differ with some of its choices, and I note that in order to emphasize that agreement is not required. I found Gaza hugely valuable as an argument, a demand for accountability, and as a response to the question my team repeated, "What do they think we are?"
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