Secret HistoryS


Bad Guys

The hidden truth about the war in Ukraine

Jacques Baud
The Postil Magazine
Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:00 UTC
Map Ukraine
© Unknown
The cultural and historical elements that determine the relations between Russia and Ukraine are important. The two countries have a long, rich, diverse, and eventful history together.

This would be essential if the crisis we are experiencing today were rooted in history. However, it is a product of the present. The war we see today does not come from our great-grandparents, our grandparents or even our parents. It comes from us. We created this crisis. We created every piece and every mechanism. We have only exploited existing dynamics and exploited Ukraine to satisfy an old dream: to try to bring down Russia. Chrystia Freeland's, Antony Blinken's, Victoria Nuland's and Olaf Scholz's grandfathers had that dream; we realized it.

The way we understand crises determines the way we solve them. Cheating with the facts leads to disaster. This is what is happening in Ukraine. In this case the number of issues is so enormous that we will not be able to discuss them here. Let me just focus on some of them.

Did James Baker make Promises to Limit Eastward Expansion of NATO to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990?

In 2021, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that "there was never a promise that NATO would not expand eastward after the fall of the Berlin Wall." This claim remains widespread among self-proclaimed experts on Russia, who explain that there were no promises because there was no treaty or written agreement. This argument is a bit simplistic and false.
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Pirates

Feminism was never about equality: The true history of a movement dominated by male-hating zealots

Bettina Arndt
bettinaarndt.substack.com
Tue, 24 Jan 2023 00:00 UTC
Bettina Arndt
Man hating feminism? The question is whether there is any other kind. I used to think so. I started calling myself a "feminist" as a young woman in the 1970s after reading Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch, ironically whilst working a university vacation job as a Hertz Rent-a-car girl, dressed in my bright yellow perked cap and mini skirt and flirting with American tourists.

I convinced myself that feminism was all about equality, about creating a level playing field where women could take their rightful place in the world, embracing opportunities once denied to them. But then I watched with increasing alarm as the current misandrist culture took hold, with the male of the species as the punching bag, and women shamelessly promoted and protected, infantilized and idealized. Feminism had gone off the rails, I concluded.

But it turned out that was wrong. Now I know the truth about feminist history - thanks to my recent re-education by the formidable Janice Fiamengo, who has spent much of the last year putting out videos based on a powerful body of scholarship that shows feminism was never about equality. The result of Fiamengo's deep dive into feminist history is that this normally calm, measured scholar now seethes with righteous indignation.
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Info

11,000-year-old human remains discovered in northern Britain


University of Central Lancashire
Tue, 24 Jan 2023 04:17 UTC
Martin Stables
© University of Central Lancashire
An international team led by archaeologists at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) has discovered the earliest human remains ever found in northern Britain.

Human bone and a periwinkle shell bead unearthed at Heaning Wood Bone Cave have been analysed and dated at around 11,000-years-old.

UCLan's Dr Rick Peterson and PhD student Keziah Warburton have examined the human remains and prehistoric artefacts excavated in Cumbria's Great Urswick by local archaeologist Martin Stables.

Dr Peterson, a Reader in Archaeology, said: "This is a fantastic discovery! We've been delighted to confirm Martin's unbelievable find dates back around 11,000-year-ago and gives us clear evidence of Mesolithic burials in the north. This is particularly exciting as these are some of the earliest dates for human activity in Britain after the end of the last Ice Age."

The enthusiast has been excavating the site since 2016 and has discovered human and animal bone, stone tools, prehistoric pottery and beads made from perforated periwinkle shells.
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Info

5000-year-old stoneware workshop found in Iran

Leman AltuntaลŸ
Arkeonews Net
Tue, 24 Jan 2023 04:04 UTC
Ancient Excavation
© Tehran TimesThe image of the Konar Sandal archaeological site south of Jiroft city.
Iranian archaeologists found the ruins of a stoneware workshop estimated to date back to the 3rd millennium BC, during their excavations at Jiroft in Iran's Kerman Province.

A team of archaeologists from the University of Tehran has discovered a wide variety of stone vessels and stone ornamentations from the site of Hajjiabad-Varamin in Jiroft, IRNA reported.

According to the archaeologists, stone containers and objects that were used or broken by people were not discarded in Jiroft, but their broken pieces were brought to the production workshop to make smaller containers and objects such as beads and pendants.

The Jiroft culture also referred to as the Intercultural style or the Halilrud style is a presumed early Bronze Age (late third millennium BC) archaeological culture that was present in the region of the modern Iranian provinces of Sistan and Baluchestan and Kerman.
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Info

Archaeologists shed light on the lives of Stone Age hunter-gatherers in Britain


University of Chester
Wed, 18 Jan 2023 16:15 UTC
A team of archaeologists from the Universities of Chester and Manchester has made discoveries which shed new light on the communities who inhabited Britain after the end of the last Ice Age.
Excavation
© University of Chester
Excavations carried out by the team at a site in North Yorkshire have uncovered the exceptionally well-preserved remains of a small settlement inhabited by groups of hunter-gatherers around 10,500 years ago. Among the finds that the team recovered were the bones of animals that people hunted, tools and weapons made from bone, antler and stone, and rare traces of woodworking.

The site near Scarborough originally lay on the shore of an island in an ancient lake and dates to the Mesolithic, or 'Middle Stone Age' period. Over thousands of years the lake slowly filled in with thick deposits of peat, which gradually buried and preserved the site.

Dr Nick Overton from The University of Manchester said: "It is so rare to find material this old in such good condition. The Mesolithic in Britain was before the introduction of pottery or metals, so finding organic remains like bone, antler and wood, which are usually not preserved, are incredibly important in helping us to reconstruct peoples' lives."

Analysis of the finds is allowing the team to learn more and change what has been previously understood about these early prehistoric communities. The bones show that people were hunting a wide range of animals in a number of different habitats around the lake, including large mammals such as elk and red deer, smaller mammals such as beavers, and water birds. The bodies of hunted animals were butchered and parts of them were intentionally deposited into the wetlands at the island site.

The team also discovered that some of the hunting weapons made of animal bone and antler had been decorated, and had been taken apart before being deposited on the island's shore. This, they believe, shows that Mesolithic people had strict rules about how the remains of animals and objects used to kill them were disposed of.
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Pharoah

Child buried with 142 dogs in Ancient Egyptian Necropolis


Heritage Daily
Tue, 17 Jan 2023 10:43 UTC
child burial egypt
© CEI RAS
Archaeologists have found the grave of a young child, buried with 142 dogs during excavations in the Faiyum Oasis necropolis.

The Faiyum Oasis is a depression in the desert, west of the Nile River, or just 62 miles south of Cairo, Egypt.

Faiyum was known to the ancient Egyptians as the twenty-first nome of Upper Egypt, Atef-Pehu ("Northern Sycamore"). Around the Oasis are the ruins of many ancient villages, and nearby is the Ancient Egyptian city of Crocodilopolis/Arsinoe, which was dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek.

Archaeologists from CEI RAS have been excavating a necropolis at Fayoum for several years, revealing burials that date from the 4th century BC until the 7th century AD.

Comment: See also:

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Chalkboard

World's oldest runestone found in Norway


The Guardian
Tue, 17 Jan 2023 18:01 UTC
runes
© Javad Parsa/NTB/AFP/Getty ImagesAP in CopenhagenThe discovery of millennia-old runic writing is a 'sensational' find, say archaeologists.
Archaeologists in Norway have found what they claim is the world's oldest runestone, saying the inscriptions are up to 2,000 years old and date back to the earliest days of the enigmatic history of runic writing.

The flat, square block of brownish sandstone has carved scribbles, which may be the earliest example of words recorded in writing in Scandinavia, the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo said.

It said it was "among the oldest runic inscriptions ever found" and "the oldest datable runestone in the world".

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: Meaning All the Way Down: The Wonders and Mysteries of Language with Juliana Barembuem



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Magnify

Under Nazi siege: How Saint Petersburg survived the bloodiest blockade in human history

Anatoliy Brusnikin
RT
Wed, 18 Jan 2023 21:39 UTC
russian ww2 soldier
© RT
Saint Petersburg, then Leningrad, was the scene of one of the bloodiest and most tragic episodes of the Second World War.

Nazi Germany's siege of Russia's former capital lasted 872 days, claiming the lives up to a million civilians and about half-a-million soldiers. Eighty years ago, in a colossal military effort, a breach was made in the blockade of the city: Operation Iskra opened a narrow, bare, exposed, but nevertheless operational land corridor from the 'mainland.'

This was the first relatively successful attempt to break through the Nazi lines after four catastrophic failures over the previous years. The success of the operation was incredibly important, but the victory took such a toll and is associated with so much indescribable grief and destruction that, even in Russia, it is recalled very rarely.
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Better Earth

Most humans haven't evolved to cope with the cold, yet we dominate northern climates

Laura Buck, Kyoko Yamaguchi
The Conversation
Mon, 16 Jan 2023 07:05 UTC
eskimo inuit
© Yvette Cardozo / Alamy Stock PhotoHumans have used technology to adapt to the cold.
Humans are a tropical species. We have lived in warm climates for most of our evolutionary history, which might explain why so many of us spend winter huddled under a blanket, clutching a hot water bottle and dreaming of summer.

Indeed all living apes are found in the tropics. The oldest known fossils from the human lineage (hominins) come from central and eastern Africa.


Comment: One must bear in mind that most human origins theories are not compatible with known fossils, and so the 'Out of Africa' theory for humanity remains just a theory, which however may be true for certain lineages, but not necessarily all.


The hominins who dispersed northwards into higher latitudes had to deal with, for the first time, freezing temperatures, shorter days that limited foraging time, snow that made hunting more difficult and icy wind chill that exacerbated heat loss from their bodies.


Comment: It's worth noting here that, as Pierre Lescaudron explicates in his article Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes there's a variety of data showing that the climate on our planet has varied significantly over time, with just one example being that at least 15,000 years ago, and possibly even more recently, regions of Siberia appear to have been much more hospitable than they are today,: Mammoths survived in Siberia until just 3,900 years ago, climate change likely responsible for extinction, new study reveals


Given our limited adaptation to the cold, why is it that our species has come to dominate not only our warm ancestral lands but every part of the globe? The answer lies in our ability to developed intricate cultural solutions to the challenges of life.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?

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People 2

Fathers have been older than mothers for the past 250,000 years, study finds

Giulia Carbonaro
Euronews
Mon, 16 Jan 2023 18:11 UTC
father child
A recent study found that men have been on average seven years older than women when having their first child.
A great many things have changed for humanity since the first of our species appeared on Earth. But throughout human history, one thing has apparently remained the same: men have always approached parenthood much later in life than women, new research suggests.

A study conducted by scientists at Indiana University in Bloomington in the US tracked genetic mutations in modern human DNA sequences to estimate when men and women conceived babies over the past 250,000 years, since our species emerged.

To do that, they created a model based on data tracking the age of conception and DNA mutations over three generations of 1,500 Icelanders and their parents. They first applied this model to a sample of 2,500 modern people living around the world, and then dated back the emergence of different mutations to create a timeline of motherhood and fatherhood through the ages.

Comment: See also:

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