Secret HistoryS


Fish

Ancient fish hook reveals women did all the hard work 12,000-years-ago

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Mon, 11 Dec 2017 15:31 UTC
Fish Hook
© O'Connor et al, ANUFish-hooks placed around the neck and jaws of an adult Indonesian woman.
The discovery of five 12,000-year-old fish-hooks has exploded the assumption that during the Pleistocene era fishing was men's work.

In a paper published in the journal Antiquity, a team led by Sue O'Connor from the Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific, reports finding fish-hooks fashioned from sea snail shells in a rock shelter on the island of Alor in Indonesia.

The hooks had been deployed as grave goods - items left on or next to a corpse. In this case, they had been placed carefully under the chin and around the jaws of a deceased adult female.

Items used in burial or other funeral practices provide strong clues to the cultural values of the people involved, because they are inevitably either items associated with the person during life or things thought to be required for success in the afterlife.
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Cow

The medieval craze for almond milk and how cows milk was mainly consumed as butter or cheese

Jim Clarke
Atlas Obscura
Fri, 08 Dec 2017 12:00 UTC
A woodcut illustration from the Kuchenmaistrey, the 15th century-era German cookbook, depicting two cooks in the kitchen. Public Domain
© Public DomainA woodcut illustration from the Kuchenmaistrey, the 15th century-era German cookbook, depicting two cooks in the kitchen.
In recent years, almond milk has been touted as the future of non-dairy delicacies. It's become a staple for lactose-intolerants and coffee shops alike. Yet almond milk's popularity today pales in comparison to the high and late Middle Ages, when the upper class went nuts for it.

Almonds have been central to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines as far back as the Roman era, yet almond milk is likely a religiously-motivated, European innovation. The first mention of almond milk appears in a medical context in 12th century Salerno, but it quickly spread from the Mediterranean as far as Germany, England, and Denmark. During Lent, European Christians were barred from consuming milk, as well as eggs and meat. So they needed a substitute.

While making almond milk is straightforward, it involved a considerable amount of labor. First, cooks ground up a generous number of almonds and steeped them in hot water. Then, they strained the mixture through a fine mesh or cheesecloth. The resulting mixture-fairly thick, and not chunky or textured at all-became an ideal thickener for a dish.
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Archaeology

Archaeologists confirm multiple ancient Bronze age tools made from meteorites, knowledge of time needs to be 'revised'

Chris Ciaccia
Fox News
Sat, 09 Dec 2017 12:00 UTC
Using cutting-edge technology, scientists have discovered that ancient Bronze Age tools were created using iron from meteorites at a time before humans were unable to smelt iron ore.
Using cutting-edge technology, scientists have discovered that ancient Bronze Age tools were created using iron from meteorites at a time before humans were unable to smelt iron ore.
Using cutting-edge technology, scientists have discovered that ancient Bronze Age tools were created using iron from meteorites at a time before humans were unable to smelt iron ore.

Archaeologists have unearthed new ancient iron artifacts that utilize iron from meteorites, at a time when early humans were not thought to be able to smelt iron ore.

According to a study in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the artifacts were determined to have extraterrestrial iron using an x-ray fluorescence spectrometer. The spectrometer is used to detect iron elements in the tools and other objects and has been an advancement in techniques used for testing as it does not degrade the items, a key fear for archaeologists.

Comment: Also See:

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Pyramid

Trove of statues depicting lioness goddess Sekhmet discovered in Egypt

James Rogers
Fox News
Sun, 10 Dec 2017 07:57 UTC
Trove of statues depicting lioness goddess discovered in Egypt Sekhmet
© Egyptian Ministry of AntiquitiesOne of the statues unearthed during the Luxor excavation
One of the statues unearthed during the Luxor excavation (Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities)

A trove of black granite statues depicting the lioness goddess Sekhmet have been discovered at an ancient site in Egypt.

Researchers with the Egyptian-European Archaeological Mission unearthed the 27 fragmented statues during excavation work at the temple of Pharaoh Amenhotep III in Luxor.

Comment: Also See:

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Jet3

Cold War airmen found fun where they could: Pilot reveals Soviet bomber crews asked US jets to barrel-roll & took pics


RT
Sun, 10 Dec 2017 17:39 UTC
russian bomber barrol roll
© US Navy / Sputnik /FileAn F4D Phantom fighter of the U.S. Air Force escorting a Tu-95 Bear strategic bomber above the Arctic Ocean
An aviation blog has posted a photo of a US AF F-4 jet flying upside down as it intercepts a Soviet Tu-95 strategic bomber. The story behind it is one of how mid-air encounters now deemed "unsafe" were once regarded as professionals having a bit of fun.

The picture was published by the popular military aviation blog The Aviationist on December 4 as an illustration of how the definition of recklessness has changed since the Cold War. Maneuvers like barrel rolls or aggressive turns during interception missions are now usually branded by the Pentagon as "unprofessional" or "unsafe" if performed by Russian or Chinese pilots responding to American aircraft.

But a few decades ago such stunts were quite routine and not perceived as anything dangerous. Military aviation blogger David Cenciotti cited a US spy plane veteran pilot calling such episodes "ho-hum." He added that American pilots actually behaved in the same manner, as evidenced by the photo with the 'Phantom' flying upside down alongside the 'Bear.'
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Archaeology

Ancient Roman shipwrecks containing stunning artifacts discovered near Egyptian port

James Rogers
Fox News
Wed, 22 Nov 2017 10:01 UTC
votive bark
© Egyptian Ministry of AntiquitiesThe votive bark, or boat, depicting the pharaonic god Osiris found in Abu Qir Bay
Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered three Roman-era shipwrecks and other stunning ancient artifacts on the Mediterranean seafloor off the coast of Alexandria.

Al Ahram reports that the discoveries were made in Alexandria's Eastern harbor and Abu Qir Bay, during excavations by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities' Underwater Archaeology Department and the European Institute of Underwater Archaeology.

In a post on Facebook, Dr. Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said that the shipwrecks were found in Alexandria's Eastern harbor. Experts are confident that a fourth wreck will also be located, citing the discovery of large wooden planks and pottery remains that may be from the ship's cargo.
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Blue Planet

The 1648 Peace Treaty of Westphalia and what it was intended to do for international relations

Vladislav B. Sotirovic
Oriental Review.org
Sat, 09 Dec 2017 00:00 UTC
Peace Treaty of Westphalia
International relations (IR) from the mid-17th century to the mid-20th century were founded on the decisions by the Peace Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years War. However, from the beginning of the 21st century, the IR are once again more and more framed by the international standards established in 1648. The Thirty Years War (1618−1648)

This (First Pan-European) war was a confessional-political conflict, in essence, between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic leaders with very catastrophic consequences in population losses and material destructions as, for instance, the German lands lost approximately one-third of its pre-war population with some regions depopulated up to 90%. From the late 16th century onward, Europe, especially her central part, was experienced by religious confrontations between, on one hand, the Roman Catholics, and, on other hand, the Protestants (the Lutherans, Calvinists, and Zwinglians), who seriously challenged the right of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to decide on their religion. It is estimated that almost 8 million people in Europe lost their lives during the war.[1]

Comment: It's difficult to know what the net benefit of the Treaty of Westphalia has been for the average person aside from effectively ending the horrific Thirty Year War. As the article states, the Treaty gave rise to new institutions in newly defined nation-states that, however sovereign, gave rise to new acts of imperialism. And how many hundreds of millions of people have suffered and/or were killed by imperial rule since then? If the world's countries had followed the Treaty of Westphalia in spirit - instead of just a politically expedient agreement to end the Thirty Year War, we would be living in different reality today.

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Bad Guys

Operation Paperclip: Nazi science goes West

Jeffrey St. Clair & Alexander Cockburn
Counterpunch
Fri, 08 Dec 2017 15:30 UTC
Operation Paperclip
The bleak truth is that a careful review of the activities of the CIA and the organizations from which it sprang reveals an intense preoccupation with the development of techniques of behavior control, brainwashing, and covert medical and psychic experimentation on unwitting subjects including religious sects, ethnic minorities, prisoners, mental patients, soldiers and the terminally ill. The rationale for such activities, the techniques and indeed the human subjects chosen show an extraordinary and chilling similarity to Nazi experiments.

This similarity becomes less surprising when we trace the determined and often successful efforts of US intelligence officers to acquire the records of Nazi experiments, and in many cases to recruit the Nazi researchers themselves and put them to work, transferring the laboratories from Dachau, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Auschwitz and Buchenwald to Edgewood Arsenal, Fort Detrick, Huntsville Air Force Base, Ohio State, and the University of Washington.

Comment:

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Cross

Church Leader's chilling letter to Lenin reveals the truth about the revolution in 1918


Patriarch Tikhon
Thu, 07 Dec 2017 12:00 UTC
Patriarch Tikhon was head of the Russian church during the revolution,
Patriarch Tikhon head of the Russian church during the Russia revolution
This article appeared on a new site about the Christian renaissance in Russia, called Russian Faith. Their introductory video is at end of this article.

Patriarch Tikhon was head of the Russian church during the revolution, and courageously condemned what he saw as a demonic attack on a Christian civilization. Previously he had been a bishop in the US, from 1898 - 1907, where he was a very successful missionary.

The first Bolshevik government, which consisted mostly of atheist Jews, tolerated the popular Patriarch for a while, realizing that if they martyred him, it would only increase the church's influence, but eventually, they pushed him out, put him under house arrest, and demonized and harassed him until his death in 1925. The Russian church made him into a saint in 1989.

This remarkable letter survives as a testimony of what was really happening in Russia at the time, and to the extraordinary courage of this man to speak the truth, knowing it would cost him his life.

It is all the more important because the accounts to the West that came out of Russia at the time, and subsequent histories, were mostly written by left-leaning sympathizers who cheered the revolution on, having little idea what it really was. This obfuscation continues to this day.

Take a few minutes to read this passionate and poetic condemnation of evil. Its startling clarity comes down to us through the years with great force. We highlighted a few of the more moving lines, but honestly, almost every sentence is gripping.

This view of what actually happened during the revolution is as important today as it was 100 years ago. The 100-year commemoration of the Russian revolution shows starkly divergent views of what it was to our own day.

This excellent translation is by Nun Cornelia Rees.
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Document

Document reveals possible U.S./Saudi collusion with Israel before the Six Day War


Middle East Monitor
Fri, 01 Dec 2017 23:23 UTC
king faisal
© Knudsen, Robert L./WikipediaFaisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was King of Saudi Arabia from 1964 to 1975
A historical letter sent from the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia to the then US President, Lyndon B Johnson, in 1966 reveals the monarch's possible collusion with the US over Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula. Published by Al Motamar net news website, it has been described as "dangerous" by former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has long promised to reveal the contents of the document.

"King Faisal's letter to US President Lyndon Johnson said that the Egyptian forces would not withdraw from Yemen unless Israel moved to occupy Gaza, Sinai and the West Bank," explained Saleh. The Head of the General People's Congress urged the current Yemeni president and the rest of the Arab countries participating in the Saudi-led coalition, especially Egypt, to withdraw immediately from the alliance fighting in Yemen. "The events in Saudi Arabia, the blockade on Qatar, and the Sudanese President's visit to Russia are all a part of the changing equations [in the Middle East]," he claimed.

According to Saleh, the letter mentions what King Faisal described as Egypt's dangerous role in Yemen and the region in general through its support of the rebels and provoking the people's emotions against "us all" - the US and Saudi Arabia - as well as Egypt's ongoing and historical efforts to overthrow "our governments". Faisal also called Egypt "the greatest enemy" of Saudi Arabia and the US.

In his letter, the then Saudi monarch stressed the need for the US to support Israel to carry out a swift operation against Egypt by which it would control vital areas in the country - the Sinai Peninsula - not only forcing the government in Cairo to withdraw its forces from Yemen, but also to distract Egypt with Israel for as long as possible. King Faisal also suggested that the Gaza Strip under Egyptian control should be seized immediately, and believed that it was important to take control of the West Bank from Jordan in order for the Palestinians to lose hope of having control of any land administered by an Arab government.
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