Secret HistoryS


Gold Coins

Amazing treasures - and macabre slaughter - in Siberia's Valley of the Kings

Olga Gertcyk
The Siberian Times
Thu, 11 Feb 2016 14:33 UTC
9,300 decorative gold pieces
© Vera SalnitskayaIn all, some 9,300 decorative gold pieces were found here, not including the 'uncountable golden beads'.
Pictured: the gleaming riches no-one was meant to see belonging to an ancient nomad potentate, and his queen...or was she his concubine?

The royal tomb known as Arzhan 2 in the modern-day Republic of Tuva - to many, the most mysterious region in all Russia - is some 2,600 years old but its valuables match any trove from any era anywhere in the world.

Here inside a mound 80 metres wide was buried a warrior tsar with a sway that plainly reached over a vast territory of mountains and steppes, and whose magnificent possessions indicated close contacts with other civilisations.

Forget the notion of barbaric Siberian nomadic tribes in this epoch: well, don't quite forget. These ancient warriors used the skulls of their vanquished foes as drinking cups, according to no less an authority than Greek historian Herodotus.

And this queen or concubine was almost certainly sacrificed to that she could be buried beside the dead ruler. And yet, as the pictures show, their exceptional artwork predates the influence of the Greeks, and displays a high degree of sophistication.
Read More...
Penis Pump

Historians claim to have found medical records showing Hitler had an embarrassing little secret

Kate Scanlon
The Blaze
Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:14 UTC
Hitler
© Heinrich Hoffmann/Keystone Features/Getty Images
Two historians have claimed that they have proof that German dictator Adolf Hitler suffered from an embarrassing secret medical condition, according to The Telegraph.

In their new book, "Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute," historians Jonathan Mayo and Emma Craigie claim that they have discovered medical records proving that the fascist dictator had a condition known as hypospadias, which results in abnormally small and deformed genitalia, sometimes referred to as a "micro-penis."

"Hitler himself is believed to have had two forms of genital abnormality: an undescended testicle and a rare condition called penile hypospadias in which the urethra opens on the under side of the penis," Mayo and Craigie wrote.

Recently, a German historian also claimed that he has evidence that Hitler only had one testicle.
Read More...
Health

The Midol of the 19th century: Opium soaked tampons

Urvija Banerji
Atlas Obscura
Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:40 UTC
opium stamp
© Public Domain/Wikipedia CommonsMedicinal use of opium was widespread in the United States by the latter half of the 19th century.
On display at the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum is an item that you won't find in the women's aisle of your local drugstore today. Among pharmaceutical oddities such as leeches and tinctures, the museum houses a box of early tampons soaked in opium and belladonna.

What's more, these products were in fact prescribed to women back in the 19th century. "The opium was to relieve pain, and the belladonna was to dilate and relax the vagina," Elizabeth Sherman, the museum's executive director, tells The Guardian.

The tradition of lacing women's products with opiates goes back even further than that, though. In fact, since the tampon's first documentation, it has been associated with opium. In The Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine, it is revealed that ancient Romans used "wool tampons soaked in a variety of substances, including: opium, poppies, bitter almond oil, boiled honey, sea onion, ox marrow" - the list goes on.
Read More...
Books

Portable libraries kept lighthouse workers sane

Natalie Zarrelli
Atlas Obscura
Thu, 18 Feb 2016 14:09 UTC
lighthouse
© Boston Public Library/flickrA postcard showing Gay Head Lighthouse, Martha's Vineyard.
From the vantage point of a 19th century lighthouse, a small, slow ship would appear every few months on the horizon. A woman, her husband and their children might look out at the glistening sea in anticipation from their tower: the shipment was finally here. They'd haul supplies from the boat; cleaning rags, paint, milk, and possibly the most awaited item: a thick wooden carrying case with brass hinges, filled with books.

Portable lighthouse libraries, distributed across the United States in the 19th century, were a common but important part of life for families living under the constant work and near-isolation of the lighthouse watch.

The life of a lighthouse keeper sharply vacillated between dullness and danger. "You know what they say about pilots—hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror? There's something to that," says Bonnie Stacy, chief curator at the Martha's Vineyard Museum, which leads tours through local lighthouses and holds extensive records of historic lighthouse life.
Read More...
Binoculars

Archaeologists puzzled over mysterious ancient wall in Jordan

Owen Jarus
Live Science
Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:24 UTC
ancient wall jordan, khatt shebib
© Robert Bewley, Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle EastUsing aerial photography, archaeologists in Jordan have mapped a ruined wall known today as the "Khatt Shebib."
A new map of an ancient wall that extended 93 miles (150 kilometers) in Jordan has left archaeologists with a series of mysteries, including questions over when the wall was built, who built it and what its purpose was.

Known today as the "Khatt Shebib," the wall's existence was first reported in 1948, by Sir Alec Kirkbride, a British diplomat in Jordan. While traveling by airplane in Jordan, he saw a "stone wall running, for no obvious purpose, across country."

Archaeologists with the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan (AAJ) project have been investigating the remains of the wall using aerial photography. The researchers found that the wall runs north-northeast to south-southwest over a distance of 66 miles (106 km). The structure, they found, contains sections where two walls run side by side and other sections where the wall branches off.

"If we add the spurs and stretches of parallel wall, the total [wall length] may be about 150 km (93 miles)," wrote David Kennedy, a professor at the University of Western Australia, and Rebecca Banks, a research assistant at Oxford University, in a paper published recently in the journal Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie.
Read More...
UFO 2

The mystery of the Dogon tribe's advanced astronomical knowledge

Tara MacIsaac
Epoch Times
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 23:16 UTC
dogon,sirius
© Ferdinand Reus/Wikimedia CommonsLeft: Sirius A and Sirius B, shown in an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The white dwarf can be seen to the lower left. (NASA, ESA, H. Bond/STScI, M. Barstow/University of Leicester) Right: A man of Mali's Dogon tribe.
Skeptics and proponents of the ancient aliens theory have faced off for decades on the issue of the Dogon tribe's allegedly advanced astronomical knowledge.

Here's a look at some of the arguments on both sides concerning this tribe from Mali, Africa, and its purported knowledge of the motions of a star not visible on Earth without modern telescopes.

What The Dogon Are Said to Have Known

Sirius is the brightest star in the sky and had a prominent place in many ancient cultures. Sirius, which is about 8.7 light years from Earth, has a white dwarf companion star, Sirius B. Sirius B cannot be seen with the naked eye, and astronomers first guessed at its existence in the 1830s. They mathematically developed a theoretical model of its orbit around Sirius (now referred to as Sirius A) later in the 19th century.
Read More...
Question

Is agriculture the original GMO experiment?

Dr. Rita Louise
Waking Times
Thu, 18 Feb 2016 18:45 UTC
genetic engineering
When one considers the evolution of civilization, we tend to focus our attention on our major accomplishments such as the development of writing, the building of monumental structures and the wars, battles and conflicts that shaped a nation. The meteoric rise of nation-states around 6,000 years ago still confounds historians. Why did it occur? In their search, they tend to overlook the mundane things that set the stage for these rapid changes to transpire. Yet, even in the commonplace, how some of the simplest things came into being is still a mystery.

Agriculture is a defining achievement in the development of civilization. Other accomplishments, such as laws, cities and even the written language were built upon the structure that agriculture provided. For thousands of years our ancestors survived by living a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. They were omnivores and lived on a diet that included fresh meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, seed and nuts. Then about 10,000 years ago, people from remote parts of the world (Mesopotamia, China and Mexico), abandoned their foraging way of life and began cultivating crops. In cultures where agriculture became their base, civilization soon appeared. This was a remarkable change for nomadic groups that survived through hunting and gathering for hundreds of thousands of years.

Comment: For more on this topic see:

Read More...
Info

12,000-year-old ancient settlement unearthed in Jordan Valley

Enrico de Lazaro
Sci-News
Thu, 18 Feb 2016 19:25 UTC
Natufian building
© Grosman L. et alRemains of a Natufian building at NEG II: the wall of this structure is 90 cm high and is the best preserved wall excavated thus far; it is composed of 5 courses of limestone and basalt stones; the wall tilts slightly away from the structure to the northwest and two large stones mark its base at the top of the Natufian occupation level; only the western side of the structure survived, yet the contour of the curve suggests a diameter of at least 5 m.
Archaeologists excavating the Nahal Ein Gev II site in the Jordan Valley, Israel, have discovered the remains of an ancient settlement of the Natufian culture — a culture that existed from 12,500 to 9,500 BC in the Levant.

"Nahal Ein Gev II (NEG II) is located in Nahal (wadi) Ein Gev, at the middle of a perennial stream that flows west to the Sea of Galilee," said team member Dr. Leore Grosman, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

"The site is situated on a flat alluvial terrace on the right bank of a prominent meander in the streambed about 2 km east of the Sea of Galilee at the Natufian times."

At NEG II, the archaeologists found human remains, flint tools, faunal assemblage, ground stone and bone tools.

A rich art assemblage including personal ornaments, modeled limestone items and engraved bone and stone objects was retrieved from the site.

"Of the 210 personal ornaments recovered from the site, the majority are beads, mainly disc- or cylindrical-shaped," the scientists said.

"In addition to the personal ornaments, 20 complete and fragmented art objects were recovered."

"Two unique incised stone objects are worth mentioning. The first is a fragment of a limestone object decorated with a linear pattern on all three of its preserved faces. The decorative lines cover the object's entire surface. The linear patterns are slightly different on each face, but all include deeply incised curved lines overlapped by a second layer of more delicate straight lines. The depth and density of the lines suggest a three-dimensionally carved object, although the decorative approach is two-dimensional."
Read More...
Cloud Precipitation

An incredible 45-day storm turned California into a 300-mile-long sea in 1861 and it could happen again

Sean Kane
Tech Insider
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC
california 1862 flood
© A. Rosenfield
A massive 19th-century storm on the Pacific coast of the US opened up a 300-mile-long sea that stretched through much of the central part of California.

And it looks like the state is due for another mega flood.

For 45 days, from late 1861 to early 1862, it rained almost nonstop in central California. Rivers running down the Sierra Nevada mountains turned into torrents that swept entire towns away.

The storm was caused by an atmospheric river, a large concentration of water vapor that can cause devastating storms.

These storms "have the potential of hurricanes — or even more so because they go on for weeks," Lucy Jones of the US Geological Survey told NPR.

Atmospheric rivers carry concentrated channels of water vapor out of the tropics.

A famous example is the Pineapple Express, which, propelled by the jet stream, carries vapor from the waters near Hawaii all the way to the American Pacific coast, where it causes heavy storms.
Read More...
Briefcase

'Cabinet of Shame' sees the light of day: Italian govt declassifies documents related to Nazi and fascist war crimes


RT
Wed, 17 Feb 2016 17:29 UTC
A picture taken in September 1937, in Munich, shows German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (R) riding in a car with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini
© SNEP / AFPA picture taken in September 1937, in Munich, shows German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (R) riding in a car with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
The Italian government has released documents outlining fascist and Nazi war crimes committed in the country during World War II. Some of the papers are part of a "cabinet of shame" which concealed the crimes for decades.

Declassified by a parliamentary commission, the papers detail war crimes ranging from anti-Jewish persecution to massacres of civilians. In total, the crimes resulted in 15,000 deaths.

They include 695 files from the so-called "cabinet of shame," which for decades hid away original documents of war crimes inside a storeroom of the military prosecutor's headquarters, bearing the stamp "provisionally archived." Originally discovered in 1994, the cabinet kept files from the secret services, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Interior Ministry, and other offices.
Read More...