At the outset of the nineteen eighties the State of Israel is in need of a new perspective as to its place, its aims and national targets, at home and abroad. This need has become even more vital due to a number of central processes which the country, the region and the world are undergoing. We are living today in the early stages of a new epoch in human history which is not at all similar to its predecessor, and its characteristics are totally different from what we have hitherto known. That is why we need an understanding of the central processes which typify this historical epoch on the one hand, and on the other hand we need a world outlook and an operational strategy in accordance with the new conditions. The existence, prosperity and steadfastness of the Jewish state will depend upon its ability to adopt a new framework for its domestic and foreign affairs.

This epoch is characterized by several traits which we can already diagnose, and which symbolize a genuine revolution in our present lifestyle. The dominant process is the breakdown of the rationalist, humanist outlook as the major cornerstone supporting the life and achievements of Western civilization since the Renaissance. The political, social and economic views which have emanated from this foundation have been based on several "truths" which are presently disappearing — for example, the view that man as an individual is the center of the universe and everything exists in order to fulfill his basic material needs. This position is being invalidated in the present when it has become clear that the amount of resources in the cosmos does not meet Man's requirements, his economic needs or his demographic constraints. In a world in which there are four billion human beings and economic and energy resources which do not grow proportionally to meet the needs of mankind, it is unrealistic to expect to fulfill the main requirement of Western Society, [1] i.e., the wish and aspiration for boundless consumption. The view that ethics plays no part in determining the direction Man takes, but rather his material needs do — that view is becoming prevalent today as we see a world in which nearly all values are disappearing. We are losing the ability to assess the simplest things, especially when they concern the simple question of what is Good and what is Evil.

An analysis of dozens of British Iron Age skeletons has revealed that Celtic society was organized around women.
Celtic society in England was female-focused 2,000 years ago, a genetic study of Iron Age skeletons reveals. DNA analysis of dozens of ancient burials uncovered a community whose lineage could be traced back to one woman, and showed that men joined the group upon marriage.

"This is the first time this type of system has been documented in European prehistory," study lead author Lara Cassidy, a human geneticist at Trinity College Dublin, said in a statement, "and it predicts female social and political empowerment. It's relatively rare in modern societies, but this might not always have been the case."

Cassidy and her team analyzed the genomes of 57 people who were buried in cemeteries in Dorset, a county in southwest England, to investigate the social structure of the Durotriges, a Celtic tribe that occupied the coast between 100 B.C. and A.D. 100. Their study was published Wednesday (Jan. 15) in the journal Nature.

Historically, little is known about the pre-Roman people of Britain, although Julius Caesar wrote about the Iceni tribe, which was later ruled by Boudica, and noted that Celtic women were allowed to marry multiple men. But archaeological evidence from Celtic graves has long suggested that women were buried with prestigious items, hinting at their high status.

To figure out who was buried in the Dorset cemeteries, the researchers first sequenced the buried individuals' genomes. They discovered that 85% of the people were related to one another. Additionally, more than two-thirds of these relatives shared a rare mitochondrial DNA lineage — U5b1 — and Y chromosome diversity was high, meaning most people had the same maternal ancestors but not the same paternal ones.

Butler's Darwin Among the Machines warned of a future mechanical race that could subjugate humanity.

While worrying about AI takeover might seem like a modern idea that sprung from War Games or The Terminator, it turns out that a similar concern about machine dominance dates back to the time of the American Civil War, albeit from an English sheep farmer living in New Zealand. Theoretically, Abraham Lincoln could have read about AI takeover during his lifetime.

On June 13, 1863, a letter published in The Press newspaper of Christchurch warned about the potential dangers of mechanical evolution and called for the destruction of machines, foreshadowing the development of what we now call artificial intelligence — and the backlash against it from people who fear it may threaten humanity with extinction. It presented what may be the first published argument for stopping technological progress to prevent machines from dominating humanity.

Titled "Darwin among the Machines," the letter recently popped up again on social media thanks to Peter Wildeford of the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy. The author of the letter, Samuel Butler, submitted it under the pseudonym Cellarius, but later came to publicly embrace his position. The letter drew direct parallels between Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the rapid development of machinery, suggesting that machines could evolve consciousness and eventually supplant humans as Earth's dominant species.

"We are ourselves creating our own successors," he wrote. "We are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race."

In the letter, he also portrayed humans becoming subservient to machines, but first serving as caretakers who would maintain and help reproduce mechanical life — a relationship Butler compared to that between humans and their domestic animals, before it later inverts and machines take over.

"We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man... we give them whatever experience teaches us to be best for them... in like manner it is reasonable to suppose that the machines will treat us kindly, for their existence is as dependent upon ours as ours is upon the lower animals," he wrote.

The text anticipated several modern AI safety concerns, including the possibility of machine consciousness, self-replication, and humans losing control of their technological creations. These themes later appeared in works like Isaac Asimov's The Evitable Conflict, Frank Herbert's Dune novels (Butler possibly served as the inspiration for the term "Butlerian Jihad"), and the Matrix films.

Butler's letter dug deep into the taxonomy of machine evolution, discussing mechanical "genera and sub-genera" and pointing to examples like how watches had evolved from "cumbrous clocks of the thirteenth century" — suggesting that, like some early vertebrates, mechanical species might get smaller as they became more sophisticated. He expanded these ideas in his 1872 novel Erewhon, which depicted a society that had banned most mechanical inventions. In his fictional society, citizens destroyed all machines invented within the previous 300 years.

A new analysis of the 6,000-year-old stone circle known as Rujm el-Hiri (also Gilgal Refaim) in Golan Heights suggests that it was not built to observe the heavens.

An ancient and enigmatic stone circle in the Middle East may not be a prehistoric astronomical observatory after all, according to a new study of satellite images. But some of the criticisms may be misguided, an expert on ancient astronomy told Live Science.

Archaeologists think the oldest parts of Rujm el-Hiri (which means "Heap of Stones of the Wildcat" in Arabic) were built more than 6,000 years ago. The site is in the disputed Golan Heights region, which is claimed by both Israel and Syria.

Some earlier investigations proposed that gaps in the stone circle aligned with astronomical events, such as the summer and winter solstices — the shortest and longest nights, respectively — and the monument has been likened to England's Stonehenge.

But the new study's geomagnetic analysis and tectonic reconstruction indicate that the entire landscape around Rujm el-Hiri and the nearby Sea of Galilee has moved over time, according to the study published Nov. 14 in the journal Remote Sensing.

"The Rujm el-Hiri's location shifted from its original position for tens of meters for the thousands of years of the object's existence," the authors wrote — a finding that raises questions about whether it served as an ancient astronomical observatory.

But astronomer E.C. Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, told Live Science that the dislocation was not quantified in the new research, so it could not determine whether Rujm el-Hiri once showed astronomical alignments.

A Cranfield University academic has used drone mapping to investigate a 3000-year-old 'mega fortress' in the Caucasus mountains. Dr Nathaniel Erb-Satullo, Senior Lecturer in Archaeological Science at Cranfield Forensic Institute, has been researching the site since 2018 with Dimitri Jachvliani, his co-director from the Georgian National Museum, revealing details that re-shape our understanding of the site and contribute to a global reassessment of ancient settlement growth and urbanism.

Fortress settlements in the South Caucasus appeared between 1500-500 BCE, and represent an unprecedented development in the prehistory of the regions. Situated at the boundary between Europe, the Eurasian Steppe, and the Middle East, the Caucasus region has a long history as a cultural crossroads with distinctive local identities.

Research on the fortress - named Dmanisis Gora - began with test excavations on a fortified promontory between two deep gorges. A subsequent visit in Autumn, when the knee-high high summer grasses had died back, revealed that the site was much larger than originally thought. Scattered across a huge area outside the inner fortress were the remains of additional fortification walls and other stone structures. Because of its size, it was impossible to get a sense of the site as a whole from the ground.

Two archaeological sites, one dating back 8,000 years to the Neolithic era, have been discovered in Kurdistan Region's Duhok, the province's Director of Antiques and Heritage, Bekas Brifkani, announced on Thursday.

Brifkani told Shafaq News Agency that the sites were discovered in Asinkran and Kanisban areas, located in the Nafkor plain near the Rovia district in eastern Duhok.

The discovery in Asinkran includes some of the earliest forms of pottery production, along with grain processing, dating back more than 8,000 years. Meanwhile, at the Kanisban site, a Neolithic settlement from the 7th millennium BCE, traces of early agricultural specialization and craft production were found.

At the nearby Asinkran site, two exceptional buildings dating back about 7,000 years were uncovered. "These buildings, the Rectangular Mudbrick Building and the White Building, were constructed on a high mound and likely served as residences for the social elite of that era," he explained.

The Dragon Houses of Euboea, which probably dates to the Preclassical period of ancient Greece, are one of the historical mysteries that have not yet been entirely solved.

In the mountains of the island of Euboea, the largest island in Greece after Crete, there are 23 ancient megalithic structures called 'Dragon Houses', mostly in the Ochi Mountain and Styra regions.

Although they had nothing to do with dragons, these structures, called "drakospita" or dragon houses, are still appreciated today for their architecture, simplicity, and endurance.

These megalithic houses are mortar-free constructions that resemble the stepped pyramid of Djoser in Pre-Dynastic Egypt and the pre-Columbian Teotihuacan temple complexes. They are constructed of stones, mostly square or rectangular.

The majority of the time, huge monolithic stones are employed. Another noteworthy feature is that they lack foundations. Their roofs are skillfully built with enormous plates stacked one on top of the other in a pyramidal pattern.

Psychological warfare is far more powerful than bullets. The government has been studying methods of brainwashing for decades. Perhaps the most infamous studies fall under the MKUltra program that the CIA conducted from 1953 to 1964 on unsuspecting victims who did not know they were participating in a brutal study. The MKUltra experiments have been shrouded in mystery after CIA director Richard Helms and longtime MKULTRA chief Sidney Gottlieb destroyed the majority of the evidence. However, newly declassified documents shed light on the extreme human rights abuses carried out by the US government.

MKULTRA began in 1953 amid the Cold War era. The US government allegedly wanted to learn mind control tactics that they believed the Soviet Union and Chinese governments had already mastered. Furthermore, the CIA was interested in the experiments carried out by Nazis on those held in concentration camps during World War II. Operation Paperclip was the prelude to MKUltra, beginning in 1945, when the CIA began investigating torture and brainwashing methods used by the Third Reich. In fact, 1,600 Nazi scientists were recruited by the US government and encouraged to continue their work on American citizens. Those scientists also looked into ways to carry out biowarfare by weaponizing the bubonic plague. There were other studies such as project Artichoke and Bluebird that took place before the CIA developed the infamous MKUltra experiment.

Richard Helms, the Assistant Deputy Director for Plans at the CIA, proposed the MKUltra project as a "special funding mechanism for highly sensitive CIA research and development projects that studied the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior." How could the government manipulate the human brain? The government wanted to find a "truth serum" to use on POW and their own citizens. CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb partnered with pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly to produce the psychedelic drug LSD to carry out these brutal experiments.

A joint French-Swiss archaeological mission has uncovered the mastaba tomb of "Teti Neb Fu," a royal physician from the reign of King Pepi II during the Sixth Dynasty.

Teti Neb Fu was a figure of great distinction, holding titles such as Chief Palace Physician, Priest and "Magician" of the Goddess Serket, Chief Dentist, and Director of Medicinal Plants.

He would have been partly responsible for the universally accessible healthcare system that included non-invasive surgeries, bone setting, dentistry, and an extensive range of pharmacological treatments.

The interior of the tomb is adorned with intricate carvings of funerary scenes, a painted false door, and a stone sarcophagus inscribed with the name of Teti Neb Fu and his titles.

American patriot General George C. Marshall strongly opposed the partitioning of Palestine because he knew that the creation of a Zionist state at the heart of the Arab world would severely undermine US regional interests while fueling endless conflicts across the Middle East.

In short, Marshall and his allies at the State Department grasped that Zionist leaders would never opt to get along with their Arab neighbors or pursue a path of peaceful coexistence but would relentlessly seek to dominate the region by duping Washington into destroying its perceived enemies.

Marshall's opposition suggests that — even before Israel achieved statehood — powerful members of the US foreign policy establishment anticipated that the prevailing ideology of the Israeli state would lead to widespread destabilization, conflagration and genocide.