Secret HistoryS


Microchip

Flashback How a programmer broke the internet by deleting a tiny piece of code

code string internet
© Quartz
In 2016, a man in Oakland, California, disrupted web development around the world by deleting 11 lines of code.

The story of how 28-year-old Azer Koçulu briefly broke the internet shows how writing software for the web has become dependent on a patchwork of code that itself relies on the benevolence of fellow programmers. When that system breaks down, as it did then, the consequences can be vast and unpredictable.

"I think I have the right of deleting all my stuff," Koçulu wrote on March 20, 2016 in an email that was later made public.

And then he did it.

Info

New research shows life in ancient Saudi Arabia was complex and thriving

Archaeological evidence suggests strategic and adaptable community.
Life in Saudi Arabia
© University of Sydney
A team of researchers led by Jane McMahon from the Discipline of Archaeology find new evidence that shifts the perception of how people lived in north-western Saudi Arabia during the Neolithic period.

To date, little has been known about people living in north-western Saudi Arabia during the Neolithic - the period traditionally defined by the shift to humans controlling food production and settling into communities with agriculture and domesticated animals.

The piecemeal evidence available hinted traditional ideas - of small struggling groups constantly on the move across the barren lands - needed to be revisited.

Now, an Australian-led team has released new research on monumental buildings we call 'standing stone circles'. The findings are helping to rewrite what we know about the people who lived on this land between 6,500 and 8,000 years ago.

Our evidence reveals what they ate, what tools they used and even the jewellery they wore. It leads us to think these people weren't struggling so much after all, but rather had found complex and strategic ways to thrive on the land for millennia.

Info

Mysterious Maya underground structure unearthed in Mexico

Archaeologists in Campeche, Mexico, have found an underground structure beneath a Maya ball court, as well as offerings on top of a Maya pyramid at another site.
Underground Structure
© Visualization of the Žiga Koka LiDAR dataA lidar-created image showing the site with the ball court where parts of an underground structure were found.
Archaeologists in Mexico have discovered a mysterious subterranean structure with painted walls hidden beneath a Maya ball court.

The team found the building while excavating the ball court, the playing space for the ritual ball game played by the Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples.

"We located parts of an earlier building that had painted walls, but only further excavations may reveal the shape of that underlying building and what its function was," said Ivan Šprajc, an archaeologist at the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies in Slovenia and director of the excavation.

The finding is "evidently a very important structure, because ball courts are normally found only at major Maya sites, which were centers of the regional political organization," Šprajc told Live Science in an email. The structure could date to the Early Classic period (A.D. 200 to 600) and is covered with a layer of painted stucco, according to a translated statement from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.

Previously, Šprajc and his colleagues surveyed a large area of the Maya Lowlands in the Mexican state of Campeche with lidar, a technique that shoots millions of laser pulses from an aircraft. These pulses then bounce off the ground and return to the machine in the aircraft, allowing researchers to map the landscape's topography.

Archaeology

Cahokia mystery: Scientists unearth more clues about American civilization that vanished 600 years ago

Cahokia  largest city illinois vanished civilization
© Cahokia Mounds Historic State SiteAn artist's impression of the Cahokia's largest city, located in what is now Illinois
Archeologists have unearthed more clues about a Native American tribe of up to 50,000 people that mysteriously vanished without a trace.

The Cahokia people once thrived in what is now Illinois, only to abandon their six-square-mile city more than 600 years ago.

While the leading theory has been that the ancient city had become unlivable after massive crop failure that followed an epic drought, a new study has discovered evidence pointing toward another explanation.

Carbon-dating analysis of deep-cut layers of soil and agricultural remnants, the researcher said, now show that farming practices remained consistent in Cahokia even amid those punishing drought years.

Cahokia's indigenous residents, they now believe, might have more gradually left their city for better opportunities elsewhere or to connect with distant loved ones.

Comment: Further reading on the Cahokia people:


Microscope 1

The question of consent haunting the Human Genome Project

human genome project records
© Meron Menghistab for UndarkAn anonymous donor known only as RPCI-11 would prove central to the Human Genome Project. Frozen copies of the RPCI-11 library are seen here at the home of one of the project’s lead scientists.
One person's DNA became the centerpiece of a genetic sequence used by biologists the world over. Did he agree to that?

They numbered 20 in all — 10 men and 10 women who came to a sprawling medical campus in downtown Buffalo, New York, to volunteer for what a news report had billed as "the world's biggest science project."

It was the spring of 1997, and the Human Genome Project, an ambitious attempt to read and map a human genetic code in its entirety, was building momentum. The project's scientists had refined techniques to read out the chemical sequences — the series of As, Cs, Ts, and Gs — that encode the building blocks of life. Now, the researchers just needed suitable human DNA to work with. More exactly, they needed DNA from ordinary people willing to have their genetic information published for the world to see. The volunteers who showed up at Buffalo's Roswell Park Cancer Institute had come to answer the call.

Blue Planet

Plague caused Neolithic populations to collapse across Europe around 3,000BC, new study suggests

neolithic
© Mark Cartwright/Creative CommonsNew research sheds light on a potential cause of a dramatic population decline in many parts of Europe around 3000 B.C.


A neolithic burial chamber in Carnac, France
Early humans experienced a rapid population collapse across large parts of Europe five thousand years ago, the cause of which has been heavily debated. A new study published in the journal Nature suggests an early form of the plague may have played an important role.

The early Neolithic period was marked by substantial population growth, as the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture allowed for larger and more permanent settlements. Around 3000 B.C., however, Neolithic humans in many parts of Northern Europe are believed to have experienced a dramatic population decline, known as the Neolithic Decline. Several potential causes have been theorized, including the plague, but previous research has disagreed on whether early plague outbreaks could cause widespread epidemics.

Comment: What's perhaps most interesting is how this further supports the notion that the collapse of the Bronze Age seems to have coincided not only with climate change and other catastrophic events, but also plague. These same issues also seem to be implicated in the collapse of civilizations over the millennia, and we seem to be experiencing the rumblings of similar phenomena in our own time:


Beer

The only known Roman brewery recently discovered in Italy

brewery italy
© Università di MacerataThe Only Known Roman Brewery, Discovered in Italy by July 4, 2024 General view of the excavation in Macerata.
Archaeologists have discovered the only brewery from the Roman era found to date on the peninsula, famous for its winemaking tradition, in the region of Macerata. The find, which also includes kilns for pottery production and metal forges, was revealed during the 30th excavation campaign conducted by the Università di Macerata at the sites of Urbs Salvia and Villamagna.

In Villamagna, archaeologists found a Roman villa with impressive monumental structures and the mentioned brewery. This unusual discovery could be linked to the ancient Gallic roots of the region, as the Celtic tribes, before their arrival in Italy, were known for their beer consumption.

In the 4th century BC, the Senones Gauls, a Celtic tribe originally from present-day France, occupied various areas of the Marche region, including the province of Macerata, and it is likely that the owners of the villa maintained this ancestral tradition influenced by Celtic culture.

Comment: Apparently the Romans weren't too keen on beer, but they were keen on Garum: Factory for Romans' favorite funky fish sauce discovered near Ashkelon

See also: Secrets of Roman Barbegal water mills revealed in calcium deposits


Tsunami

The Rockefellers created 990 "Climate Change" institutions, foundations, and activist groups

estate
© UnknownThis is the most public of their estates, but trust me on this, Rockefeller houses, mansions, lodges, city palaces, beachfront estates, and dozens upon dozens of holiday houses litter America.
Every time you hear a "climate change" scare story, that person was PAID. He is a Rockefeller stooge. He may not know it; but his profession has been entirely corrupted.
book
In the climate change arena, the Rockefellers call the shots. The whole thing was their idea, they took a silly but interesting theory and amped it up with hundreds and hundreds of million of dollars. They founded institutions and linked the survival of those institutions to promoting climate change and population reduction. They adopted one likely politician after another.

The Rockefellers have created 990 Climate Change activist organizations. They give them directions, financing, and launch them on the world. The Green Movement was started, financed, organized, and militarized by the Rockefellers. By the late 40's the family was all in, on the same page. In the 50's they began to stand up countless institutions, committees, university departments, university institutes, foundations, and policy shops gathered around this one idea, as below:

Better Earth

Mysterious artifacts emerge from melting ice on Alps glaciers, includes 'incomparable', 2,000 year old wooden idol

iron age glacier
© alais History Museum, Sion; Michel MartinezItems recovered from a site where a wealthy traveler was frozen in the ice.
Hikers and mountaineers are stumbling on mysterious ancient objects in the Swiss Alps, and their discoveries are keeping archaeologists busy.

From the Iron Age to the Ancient Romans to the Middle Ages, people traveled across the Alps's icy mountain passes with cows, mules, oil, wine, skis, weapons, and more.

Their lost or abandoned belongings are now surfacing as the mountains' glaciers melt, revealing clues about past civilizations and eras.

Comment: See also:


Stop

The end of Obama's war on Syria

ErdoganAssad
© Reuters/SanaTurkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meets with Syria's President Bashar Assad in Aleppo • Feb. 6, 2011
Kessab is a tiny Syrian village on the Turkish border. In February 2011, Em Ahmad, a 30-year plus resident of Kessab, was coming back to Kessab through the international border crossing at Kessab. She and her family were shocked to see white tents set-up in Turkey on the border as the passed by. The so-called 'popular uprising' in Daraa, Syria did not begin until March 2011, and Em Ahmad had no inkling of the purpose of the empty tent community set-up waiting for Syrian refugees. Later, she would understand the role those tents played, and the fact they were ready long before any Syrian in Daraa, 371 kilometers away, would take to the streets.

Syria is now in the first steps toward ending the nightmare that destroyed many parts of the country, caused the largest migration since WW2, caused millions to become refugees living in tents in neighboring countries, displaced half of the country, and killed and injured hundreds of millions.

Recently, Turkey has changed their policy on Syria in an effort to restore diplomatic relations with Damascus. The Prime Minister of Iraq, al-Sudani, announced he expects a meeting between the Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad very soon.