Secret HistoryS


Book 2

Colonial agenda of erasure: The United States has still not acknowledged it committed genocide against indigenous peoples

Mark Karlin
Truthout.com
Sun, 23 Oct 2016 14:07 UTC
indigenous peoples'history
© Photo: AJ SchroetlinIndigenous Americans protest the Columbus Day celebration in Denver, Colorado, on October 9, 2007.
What myths have most of us been taught about Native Americans? In a new book, All the Real Indians Died Off And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker show how generations of people in the United States have been misinformed about Indigenous Americans as part of a colonial agenda of erasure.

The following is the Truthout interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker.

Mark Karlin: I was profoundly enlightened when I interviewed you about your last book The Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Your new book, written with Dina Gilio-Whitaker debunks 21 myths about Native Americans. Before we get to the book, I want to start and ask you a truly global question, how is the Indigenous rights movement becoming increasingly transnational?

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: The international Indigenous movement is becoming increasingly visible, but it has been developing since the early 1920s, when the Haudenosaunee (six Nations of the Iroquois federation) sent a representative, Cayuga leader Deskaheh, to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1923 to address the League of Nations. From the 1930s onwards, Muskogee Creek, Cherokee and Hopi representatives built ties with Indigenous Peoples in Central Mexico, where their peoples had originated.

Comment: Read more from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: The colonization of America was genocidal by plan: Yes, Native Americans were the victims of genocide
US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twentieth century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories, forced removal of Native American children to military-like boarding schools, allotment, and a policy of termination.

Within the logic of settler-colonialism, genocide was the inherent overall policy of the United States from its founding, but there are also specific documented policies of genocide on the part of US administrations that can be identified in at least four distinct periods: the Jacksonian era of forced removal; the California gold rush in Northern California; during the Civil War and in the post Civil War era of the so-called Indian Wars in the Southwest and the Great Plains; and the 1950s termination period; additionally, there is the overlapping period of compulsory boarding schools, 1870s to 1960s. The Carlisle boarding school, founded by US Army officer Richard Henry Pratt in 1879, became a model for others established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Pratt said in a speech in 1892,
"A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man."


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Microscope 1

Theory of evolution proposed by Persian scientist 600 years before Darwin


Vintage News
Tue, 25 Oct 2016 11:57 UTC
Nasīr al-Dīn Tūsī
Nasīr al-Dīn Tūsī
Nasīr al-Dīn Tūsī was a Persian polymath and prolific writer: An architect, astronomer, biologist, chemist, mathematician, philosopher, physician, physicist, scientist, theologian and Marja Taqleed. He was of the Ismaili, and subsequently Twelver Shī'ah, Islamic belief. The Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332 - 1406) considered Tusi to be the greatest of the later Persian scholars.

Tusi has about 150 works, of which 25 are in Persian and the remaining are in Arabic, and there is one treatise in Persian, Arabic and Turkish.

During his stay in Nishapur, Tusi established a reputation as an exceptional scholar. Tusi's prose writings represent one of the largest collections by a single Islamic author. Writing in both Arabic and Persian, Nasir al-Din Tusi dealt with both religious ("Islamic") topics and non-religious or secular subjects ("the ancient sciences"). His works include the definitive Arabic versions of the works of Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Autolycus, and Theodosius of Bithynia.

Comment: Note that, unlike Darwin's version of the theory, which resulted in a proliferation of ideas about the 'survival of the fittest' that encouraged man's baser nature and justified European imperialism, Tusi's theory of evolution apparently underpinned ideas about higher man's spiritual development.

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Boat

3rd shipwreck from 16th-century Spanish fleet discovered off Pensacola Bay, Florida (VIDEO)


RT
Mon, 24 Oct 2016 11:40 UTC
Shipwreak
© uwf.edu
A team of archaeologists from the University of West Florida has uncovered a third shipwreck from a sunken 16th century fleet of Spanish ships in Pensacola Bay.

It was located near the first two discoveries which are believed to be a part of the Tristan de Luna y Arellano expedition, a Spanish explorer who attempted to colonize Florida in 1559.

Comment: See also: Could mysterious hexagonal clouds in Bermuda Triangle be behind centuries of bizarre disappearances?

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Info

5,000-year-old Stone Age map unearthed in Denmark

Ray W
CPH Post Online
Mon, 24 Oct 2016 05:10 UTC
Stone Age maps
© National MuseumMore and more Stone Age maps are turning up on Bornholm.
A mysterious stone found in a ditch on Bornholm by archaeology students during the summer has proven to be a 5,000 years old map.

According to the magazine Skalk, the stone was discovered during archaeological excavation work at the Neolithic shrine Vasagård.

The stone has been studied by researchers at the National Museum of Denmark.

Unlike previous and similar findings, archaeologist and senior researcher at the National Museum, Flemming Kaul, is reasonably certain that the stone does not show the sun and the sun's rays, but displays the topographic details of a piece of nature on the island as it appeared between the years 2700 and 2900 BC.

Ritual stones

Kaul called the stone "without parallel". In recent years, excavations at Vasagård have turned up several stones inscribed with rectangular patterns filled with different rows of lines and shading.

"Some of the lines may be reproductions of ears of corn or plants with leaves," said Kaul.

"These are not accidental scratches," said Kaul. "We see the stones as types of maps showing different kinds of fields."

The recent find was not complete. It is made up of two pieces and one piece is still missing. Archaeologists believe the stones were used in Stone Age rituals.
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Igloo

Secret Nazi Arctic military base code-named 'Treasure Hunter' discovered

Jay Syrmopoulos
The Free Thought Project
Sun, 23 Oct 2016 22:29 UTC
Nazi Military Base Code-named ‘Treasure Hunter’
© Ruptly
A secret Nazi-era tactical base has been discovered by Russian researchers on the island of Alexandra Land in the Arctic Circle, located 620 miles from the North Pole.

The site, code-named "Schatzgraber" or "Treasure Hunter" was built by Nazis in 1942 - a year after Hitler invaded Russia - and was primarily used as a tactical weather station that was crucial in planning the strategic movements of Nazi troops, warships and submarines.

"Before it was only known from written sources, but now we also have real proof," said Evgeny Ermolov, a senior researcher at the Russian Arctic National Park, in a statement. The written source Ermolov referenced is the book "Wettertrupp Haudegen," published in 1954, and written in German.
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Magnify

18th century Scottish 'Ossian' epic likely borrowed heavily from Irish mythology

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Fri, 21 Oct 2016 07:13 UTC
Ossian, Scottish bard
© Public DomainA painting of Ossian, the third-century Scottish bard, by Nicolai Abildgaard.
In 1760, Scottish poet James Macpherson published a volume of poems he claimed to have translated from the Gaelic works of a third-century Scottish bard named Ossian. The poems were an enormous hit and a major inspiration to the nascent Romantic period in literature and art.

They may also have been fakes — or, at least, far less authentic than Macpherson claimed. Early critics, including English poet Samuel Johnson, pointed out the poems' similarities to Irish mythology and that Macpherson never produced any ancient documents indicating the origin of the works.

Now, a new analysis of the relationships among the characters in the "Ossian" poems suggests they share more in common with their Irish cousins than their author would have liked to admit. The social structure of the world of "Ossian" is more similar to that seen in Irish mythology and less similar to that seen in the Homeric epics that Macpherson touted as being similar to the Scottish work.

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Dig

Ancient Roman battlefield uncovered in Jerusalem

Megan Gannon
Live Science
Fri, 21 Oct 2016 11:42 UTC
archeological dig
© Yoli Shwartz, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities AuthorityThe excavations, which took place in Jerusalem Russian Compound, revealed a thick wall, believed to be the city's "Third Wall," described by the historian Josephus.
Archaeologists say they've found evidence of a battlefield from the Roman emperor Titus' siege of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

Recent excavations revealed a section of the so-called "Third Wall" of Jerusalem that Titus' army breached on its way to conquering the city, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

Outside the wall, the archaeologists found that the ground was littered with large ballista stones (stones used as projectiles with a type of crossbow) and sling stones, suggesting that this area had been under heavy fire from Roman siege engines.

These archaeological remains were unearthed last winter at the site where the campus of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design is to be built, in an area of the city that is known today as the Russian Compound, IAA officials said.

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Roses

Remembered: The day Aberfan shocked the world 50 years ago

Jamie Bowman
The Rhyl Journal
Fri, 21 Oct 2016 19:26 UTC
Aberfan in 1966
Aberfan in 1966
The Aberfan Disaster of 50 years ago should never have happened, according to a former UNM official.

At 9.15am on Friday morning, a minute's silence was held to remember Aberfan.

Here, Jamie Bowman gets Ted McKay's view of the shocking incident half a century ago...

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan Disaster.

It started as a normal school day at Pant-glas Junior School but in the five minutes between 9.15 and 9.20 am, tragedy struck when thousands of tons of coal waste burst down the mountainside and engulfed the school.

The tragedy claimed 144 lives, including 116 schoolchildren.
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Archaeology

Australian farmer's dinosaur find may change theory of how dinosaurs spread around the world


RT
Fri, 21 Oct 2016 06:50 UTC
dinosaur discovery australia
© David Mercado / Reuters The discovery sheds new light on how dinosaurs travelled the world.
The discovery of a giant dino skeleton by a farmer in Australia has led to new theories as to how and why they spread around the world. Researchers have theorized that the 15-meter-long sauropod made its way to Australia thanks to global warming.

Savannasaurus elliottorum, named after David Elliott, the sheep farmer who discovered its remains, was unearthed in 2005 in Winton, Queensland, but has taken ten years to study, with the latest research published this week in Scientific Reports.
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Boat

Controversy surrounds artifacts on Azores Islands: Evidence of advanced ancient seafarers?

Tara MacIsaac
Epoch Times
Sun, 16 Oct 2016 10:14 UTC
Holes in rock
© Antoneita CostaMysterious marks found in rocks in the Azores archipelago, Portugal.
The Azores archipelago is about 1,000 miles off the coast of Europe, about a third of the way to North America across the Atlantic. The islands belong to Portugal, and the official historical record has long held that they were uninhabited until Portuguese expeditions colonized them in the 15th century. But a controversial alternative theory is gaining ground.

Some experts, including the president of the Portuguese Association of Archaeological Research, Nuno Ribeiro, have said rock art and the remnants of human-made structures on the islands suggest the Azores were occupied by humans thousands of years ago.

This assertion is controversial because it has been used to support a theory that a trade route existed between the Phoenicians, the Norse, and the New World—long before contact with the New World is conventionally thought to have taken place. We will explore this theory and its connection to the Azores in more detail later.

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