Secret HistoryS


Info

New studies confirm that there was indeed a shipyard at Lothal, the commercial center of the Harappan civilization and world's oldest port

Leman Altuntaş
Arkeonews Net
Fri, 06 Sep 2024 17:09 UTC
The site of the dockyard at Lothal, Gujarat
© Harappa.comThe site of the dockyard at Lothal, Gujarat, during the Harappan or Indus Valley Civilisation.
Since the discovery of Harappan sites at Lothal, located about 30 kilometers inland from the coast of the Gulf of Khambhat in Gujarat, India, in the 1950s, archaeologists have been divided on whether a dockyard existed at the location during the Indus Valley Civilisation.

This may now change as a new study by the Indian Institute of Technology-Gandhinagar (IITGn) has found fresh evidence that can confirm the dockyard's existence. This pioneering research reveals fresh insights into how the region's hydrography shaped ancient trade and cultural interactions.

Harappan civilization, also known as the Indus Valley Civilisation or Indus civilization, is the earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent. The dates of the Civilisation appear to be about 2500-1700 BCE, though the southern sites may have lasted later into the 2nd millennium BCE. Among the world's three earliest civilizations — the other two are those of Mesopotamia and Egypt — the Indus Civilisation was the most extensive.

As an anomaly in the overall pattern of Harappan settlements, Lothal is situated in the southernmost part of this civilization. Around 2500 BCE, it is thought that indigenous groups of craftsmen and traders with strong ties to the Sindh and Kachchh regions started to occupy Lothal. The Harappans occupied Lothal over the course of the following two or three centuries, building a planned settlement with new industries and increased trade.

Also, Lothal is best known for its well-preserved brick dock and its warehouse, though the hypothesis that this structure served as a dockyard has been the subject of debate in the archaeological literature.

Artifacts of foreign origin found in Lothal confirm its intercultural trade relationships with other civilizations.
Read More...
Dollars

Flashback Anglo-American money masters as the organizers of the Second World War

Valentin Katasonov
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sun, 03 May 2015 00:00 UTC
Anglo-American flag
© Unknown
The initiative to start the Second World War did not belong to the "possessed Fuhrer", who supposedly by chance found himself at the helm of power in Germany. The Second World War is a project of the global financial oligarchy, the Anglo-American masters of money. It was they, relying on institutions such as the US Federal Reserve System and the Bank of England, who immediately after the end of the First World War began preparing for the next armed conflict on a global scale. And the plan for a new war was directed against the USSR.

Important milestones in this preparation were the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan, the creation of the Bank for International Settlements, Germany's announcement of the cessation of reparation payments under the Paris Peace Treaty and the tacit consent of Russia's former allies with this decision, powerful infusions of foreign investment and loans into the economy of the Third Reich, the militarization of the German economy in violation of the terms of the Paris Peace Treaty.

Comment:
1) The article has one link, but was published in two articles with different links:
03.05.2015 Англо-американские хозяева денег как организаторы Второй мировой войны (I)
04.05.2015 Англо-американские хозяева денег как организаторы Второй мировой войны (II)

2) The recent article Downfall: the empire's destiny includes a few paragraphs that can connect to this article, What happened preparation for WWII is a pattern that has been tried before.
During the 19th century, US economy endured three major financial crashes: in 1837, 1857, and in 1873. Each crash triggered major economic depressions with mass-scale culling of smaller banks and other businesses. The collapse enabled the ruling oligarchy to consolidate monopolies over all the key industries.
It would appear that the sequence of booms and busts followed by major wars is a feature of Western-style "free market capitalist economy." How and why this happens is never properly explained nor understood, but somehow, it's become our normal. Where explanations should be sought and offered we get shrugs and blank stares: "It's complicated..."

Sure. It's complicated, so let's not try too hard to understand it. Keep calm and carry on: get into debt, mortgage your property, enjoy some temporary prosperity, then struggle and go bankrupt. Then you may get to send your sons off to war. They'll tell you which enemy to hate and you may resign yourself to the unfolding dystopia. We've always been at war with Eurasia. What could you possibly do?
3) More confirmation can sometimes be gleaned from studying the Wikies of some of the main characters mentioned in the article.

American bankers
Gates McGarrah
Thomas Harrington McKittrick
Leon Fraser (Wikispooks) says that committed suicide, under odd circumstances, in April 1945. This announcement in the New York Times from February 16, 1935, "QUITS WORLD BANK FOR FIRST NATIONAL; Leon Fraser, 45, Head of International Body, Elected to Vice Presidency Here." So Fraser was the head for two years. The Wikispooks entry has a reference, which leads to a digital copy of Drew Pearson on The Washington Merry-Go-Round (April 13, 1945)
Drew Pearson
Drew Pearson on Leon Fraser
Would the views, and the testimony of Leon Fraser have been an impediment to the promotion of the Post World War II narrative?

British banker, British politicians
Montagu Norman, 1st Baron Norman
Neville Chamberlain
John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon

German Bankers
Kurt Freiherr von Schröder (German Wiki)
Emil Puhl (German Wiki, there is an English Wiki, but the German is more informative.)
Walther Funk
Hjalmar Schacht but the German Wiki has other details
The Wiki portrays him as a more nuanced character than the author of the article, for instance it is not mentioned that he was sent to a concentration camp, if translated, there is:
He was Reichsbank President from 1923 to 1930 and from March 1933 to January 1939 and Reich Minister of Economic Affairs from 1934 to 1937. He later fell out of favor with the regime and was deported to concentration camps because of his contact with the resistance against National Socialism.

Schacht was one of the 24 leaders of the National Socialist regime accused in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals before the International Military Tribunal. He was acquitted of all charges on October 1, 1946.
German banks and companies
Reichsbank, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Donat Bank (Probably: Danat Bank),
IG Farben (German company formed in 1925:
It was seized by the Allies after World War II and split into its constituent companies; parts in East Germany were nationalized.[a]

IG Farben was once the largest company in Europe and the largest chemical and pharmaceutical company in the world.[4] IG Farben scientists made fundamental contributions to all areas of chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry.
Central banks, private banks, plans and institutions
Bank of England, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Dawes Plan, Young Plan
Bank of International Settlements
Bretton Woods system this entry connects to the situation that was established after WWII and which paved the ground for US hegemony.
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, and Australia as well as 44 other countries[1] after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent states. The Bretton Woods system required countries to guarantee convertibility of their currencies into U.S. dollars to within 1% of fixed parity rates, with the dollar convertible to gold bullion for foreign governments and central banks at US$35 per troy ounce of fine gold (or 0.88867 gram fine gold per dollar). It also envisioned greater cooperation among countries in order to prevent future competitive devaluations, and thus established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to monitor exchange rates and lend reserve currencies to nations with balance of payments deficits.[2]

Preparing to rebuild the international economic system while World War II was still being fought, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, also known as the Bretton Woods Conference. The delegates deliberated from 1 to 22 July 1944, and signed the Bretton Woods agreement on its final day. Setting up a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system, these accords established the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which today is part of the World Bank Group. The United States, which controlled two-thirds of the world's gold, insisted that the Bretton Woods system rest on both gold and the US dollar. Soviet representatives attended the conference but later declined to ratify the final agreements, charging that the institutions they had created were "branches of Wall Street".[3] These organizations became operational in 1945 after a sufficient number of countries had ratified the agreement. According to Barry Eichengreen, the Bretton Woods system operated successfully due to three factors: "low international capital mobility, tight financial regulation, and the dominant economic and financial position of the United States and the dollar."[4]

On 15 August 1971, the United States "temporarily" suspended the convertibility of the US dollar to gold, effectively bringing the Bretton Woods system to an end and rendering the dollar a fiat currency.[5] Shortly thereafter, many fixed currencies (such as the pound sterling) also became free-floating,[6] and the subsequent era has been characterized by floating exchange rates.[7] The end of Bretton Woods was formally ratified by the Jamaica Accords in 1976.

In 1973, Nixon and secretary of state Henry Kissinger made a secret deal with Saudi Arabia to trade oil only in US dollars, thus pegging the US dollar to oil and birthing the petrodollar.[8]
It was said above that the Soviet Union is mention, its position was that 'the institutions they had created were "branches of Wall Street"' however,American Bankers also played role in the Russian Revolution:
SOTT Focus: MindMatters: Wall Street and the Russian Revolution, with Richard B. Spence
On SOTT, there are a few articles about the Bretton Woods agreement and its consequences, though more could be found if one refines the search to include summary and text. Here are four of five title with "Bretton Woods": Elements in the pre WWII situation can also be found today.

4) There is much missing from a short retelling that reduces history to economics and money owners, though it is part of the picture. There is another side, introduced in this article and the associated video:
Hyperdimensional Realities: The Most Dangerous Idea in the World, Explained by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
"If you think the government is hiding things about aliens, you're only scratching the surface of the mystery."

"We're not dealing with little green men or flying saucers. We're dealing with phenomena that challenge our very notions of reality." - Laura Knight-Jadczyk


Read More...
Info

Astronomers discover oldest known eclipse reference in 6,000-year-old Hindu text

Paul Sutter
Space.com
Tue, 03 Sep 2024 16:38 UTC
A flowery passage in a 6,000-year-old Hindu text may be the earliest known reference to a solar eclipse, describing the sun as being "pierced" with darkness and gloom and proposing that evil beings had caused the sun's "magic arts to vanish."
Solar Eclipse
© Kirby Lee / Contributor via Getty ImagesThe moon passes in front of the sun during a solar eclipse as seen from the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on April 8, 2024 in Cleveland, Ohio.
When astronomers combed through an ancient Hindu text known as the Rig Veda, they discovered that it referenced a total solar eclipse that occurred roughly 6,000 years ago — making it the oldest known mention of an eclipse.

The Rig Veda, a collection of sayings and hymns from various religious and philosophical schools, was compiled around 1500 B.C. Like nearly all religious texts, it mentions historical events. Most are contemporary to when it was written, but some stretch back much further. For example, various passages in the Rig Veda mention the location of the rising sun during the vernal equinox. One reference describes the vernal equinox as occurring in Orion, and another has it occurring in the Pleiades.

These descriptions allow astronomers to date those references, because as Earth spins on its axis, it wobbles like a spinning top, changing the relative position of important astronomical events. Currently, the vernal equinox is in the constellation Pisces. It was in Orion around 4500 B.C. and in the Pleiades around 2230 B.C., meaning the Rig Veda recorded some memories of events far earlier than its compilation.
Read More...
Info

Megalithic structure found in Kazakhstan

Oguz Buyukyildirim
Arkeonews Net
Mon, 02 Sep 2024 01:46 UTC
Structures in the Bronze Age Kazakhstan
© Sergey Yarygin et al.
Archaeologists investigating a megalithic monument in the Burabay district of the Akmola region of Kazakhstan have revealed that the monument may have been closely linked to gold mining activities in the region in the 2nd millennium BC and may possibly have been a place of worship for miners.

The results of the research were published by Dr. Sergey Yarygin and Dr. Sergazy Sakenov, researchers of the Margulan Archaeological Institute, and Zerrin Aydın Tavukçu, Associate Professor at Ataturk University in Türkiye.

The monument received the name Taskamal (from the Kazakh language "Stone fortress") from residents and tourists due to its monumentality and characteristic masonry of granite blocks.

The research focuses on recording the monument's architecture and understanding its cultural and chronological context, but it also provides important insights into the understanding of gold mining activities in the Late Bronze Age.

The Taskamal complex is home to some of the most remarkable architectural features, including a massive megalithic wall made of enormous granite blocks, an elevated platform in the center, two thoughtfully constructed access ramps, an external platform, several lithic stelae whose significance is yet to be unknown, and petroglyphs and reliefs that may hold important secrets about its purpose and cultural significance.
Read More...
Attention

GHQ's press code and Japan: Then and Now

Jason Morgan
The Postil Magazine
Sun, 01 Sep 2024 17:25 UTC
GHQ Tokyo 1952
© The Postil MagazineGeneral MacArthur’s GHQ for the Far East Command in Tokyo, Japan; photo ca. 1952.
The United States advertises itself as the "land of the free." When it fights wars, it boasts of bringing to others the freedom its citizens enjoy. But does this hold true in reality? When the United States fought the Empire of Japan in the middle of the twentieth century, Washington brought, not freedom to an unfree country, but unfreedom to the free. It accomplished this, in part, through the censorship regime which Washington imposed on Japan in the postwar (Yamamoto Taketoshi 2013). One aspect of this censorship regime was the press code.

Intellectual and author Eto Jun declared Japan under the control of GHQ occupation to be a "closed-off discursive space." (Eto 1994) The hatch closing off Japan discursively, and by extension epistemologically, was the September 19, 1945 directive, "SCAPIN-33 Press Code for Japan." (One of the main objectives of the Americans in imposing the press code was to conceal their own war crimes. (Kawasaki Kenko 2006, 38-40)) The press code banned discussion, in print or other media, of thirty topics. There was to be no criticism of the victors in the Greater East Asia War, no mention of the term "Greater East Asia War" (the term "Pacific War," although historically inaccurate, is used even today instead), no mention of the black market in occupied Japan, no mention of rapes by American GIs of Japanese women, and no criticism of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thus was born Washington's censorship regime in Japan (Hirai Kazuko 2023, Monica Braw 1991).

Washington's press code was urgent business, for Washington had many sins it needed to conceal, many crimes for which it desired to blame the Japanese. Many brave truth-tellers in Japan fought back. One such soul is Ishikawa Koyo, a photographer who documented the firebombing of Tokyo on March 9 and 10, 1945. GHQ tried to confiscate the negatives of the photos Ishikawa took, but Ishikawa refused. GHQ eventually relented, only forbidding Ishikawa to display his photos in public (Ishikawa 1974, 17-21, Richard Sams and Saotome Katsumoto 2015, Mark Clapson 2019, 219-221). But Ishikawa's bravery seems lost in the onslaught of disinformation. The War Guilt Information Program (WGIP) was a psy-op designed to convince both Japanese and Americans alike (for both knew the truth equally well, and Americans probably needed more convincing of that truth's opposite than did Japanese) that the war in Asia had been entirely the fault of Japan (Aoyagi Takehiko 2017, Takahashi Shiro 2019, Sekino Michio 2015). Americans were also directly subject to GHQ suppression. Helen Mears, for instance, an insightful critic of Occupation policy and Washington behavior, found publication of her book on the Occupation, Mirror for Americans: Japan, temporarily forbidden anywhere outside the United States (Kevin Y. Kim 2019, 145).
Read More...
Info

Submerged ancient bridge discovered in a Spanish cave reveals earlier human settlement in the western Mediterranean

Cassidy Delamarter
University of South Florida
Fri, 30 Aug 2024 16:58 UTC
phreatic overgrowths
© M.À. PerellóBogdan Onac studies the phreatic overgrowths seen in this photo. They grow exactly at sea level and offer a more accurate reconstrution of past sea level history. He used these to determine the age of the submerged bridge.
A new study led by the University of South Florida has shed light on the human colonization of the western Mediterranean, revealing that humans settled there much earlier than previously believed. This research, detailed in a recent issue of the journal, Communications Earth & Environment, challenges long-held assumptions and narrows the gap between the settlement timelines of islands throughout the Mediterranean region.

Reconstructing early human colonization on Mediterranean islands is challenging due to limited archaeological evidence. By studying a 25-foot submerged bridge, an interdisciplinary research team - led by USF geology Professor Bogdan Onac - was able to provide compelling evidence of earlier human activity inside Genovesa Cave, located in the Spanish island of Mallorca.

"The presence of this submerged bridge and other artifacts indicates a sophisticated level of activity, implying that early settlers recognized the cave's water resources and strategically built infrastructure to navigate it," Onac said.

The cave, located near Mallorca's coast, has passages now flooded due to rising sea levels, with distinct calcite encrustations forming during periods of high sea level. These formations, along with a light-colored band on the submerged bridge, serve as proxies for precisely tracking historical sea-level changes and dating the bridge's construction.
Read More...
Blue Planet

Isolation, endogamy, smallpox, present in early medieval, Christian, 'cave village' in Spain

Stockholm University
Phys.org
Wed, 28 Aug 2024 22:43 UTC
medieval
© GPAC (Grupo de investigación en Patrimonio Construido) Basque Country UniversityAerial view of the excavated area in the early medieval settlement of Las Gobas (Condado de Treviño, Spain). / GPAC (Grupo de investigación en Patrimonio Construido) Basque Country University.
An archaeogenetic study sheds new light on the isolated medieval community Las Gobas in northern Spain. Besides isolation and endogamy, researchers have also identified the variola virus, which can offer a new explanation of how smallpox entered Iberia.

Researchers from Sweden and Spain have conducted a comprehensive archaeogenetic study on a community that lived on the border between the northern Christian kingdoms and Al-Andalus during the early Medieval period. This dynamic era, especially in the Iberian Peninsula, was marked by religious competition, power struggles, and significant human mobility — factors that shaped the foundation of modern Europe.

The study, published in the journal Science Advances, focused on Las Gobas, a rural site in northern Spain's Burgos province, near the village of Laño. The community existed from the mid-6th to the 11th century and is notable for its church and living areas carved into caves. The site also provides evidence of violence, likely from sword blows, found on some of the buried individuals. Forty-one burials were excavated, and 39 of them were subjected to archaeogenetic analysis.

Comment: Other research suggests that, indeed, this certainly was an interesting period: And check out: In Search of the Miraculous: Holy Grail Symbolism & Early Christian Mystery, with Laura Knight-Jadczyk



Read More...
Bizarro Earth

How Qatar spreads chaos in the Middle East and fuels Islam in Europe

Adam Starzynski
ReMix
Mon, 26 Aug 2024 13:40 UTC
logo
© Kamran Jebreili/File/APQatari employee of Al Jazeera Arabic TV news channel and Logo
Qatar may be a tiny nation, but it packs a serious punch that threatens the global order, writes Polish journalist Adam Starzynski.

People who have been following international news closely in recent years might have noticed that Qatar keeps appearing in the headlines and clearly punches well above its weight in world affairs for a country with only 300,000 citizens.

Lately, Qatar has been in the spotlight for housing the Hamas leadership while at the same time playing the role of the main negotiator, together with Egypt, for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Qatar also served as a safe haven for the Taliban for many years, and in 2020, facilitated a peace agreement between the United States and the Islamist group.

In between, Doha has also managed to organize the World Cup in football and was behind the largest corruption scandal in the history of the European Parliament, known as "Qatargate."

However, Qatar's main influence operation is its decades-long campaign to sponsor the spread of radical Islamist movements and mosques in the Middle East and Europe. Apart from sponsoring the construction of huge mosques and associations, Qatar is running an advanced media and PR campaign, creating fertile ground for these foreign Islamist movements to take root in their new countries.
Read More...
Cassiopaea

6,000-year-old Dolmen of Menga suggests Neolithic builders had 'amazingly' precise understanding of science

Roff Smith
Nature
Sun, 25 Aug 2024 19:00 UTC
Dolmen of Menga
© Cavan Images/GettyArchaeologists used laser scans and diagrams from earlier excavations to investigate the construction of the Dolmen of Menga.
The Neolithic farmers and herders who built a massive stone chamber in southern Spain nearly 6,000 years ago possessed a good rudimentary grasp of physics, geometry, geology and architectural principles, finds a detailed study of the site.

Using data from a high-resolution laser scan, as well as unpublished photos and diagrams from earlier excavations, archaeologists pieced together a probable construction process for the monument known as the Dolmen of Menga. Their findings, published on 23 August in Science Advances1, reveal new insights into the structure and its Neolithic builders' technical abilities.

The dolmen pre-dates the main stone circle at Stonehenge in the United Kingdom by about 1,000 years, but the construction process described in the study would have involved similar techniques and demanded a similar level of engineering.


Comment: And yet the recent discovery at Stonehenge suggests that researchers consistently underestimate our neolithic forebears: Stonehenge altar stone hails from Scotland


Comment: There's a wealth of evidence showing that 'high civilisations' existed numerous times in the past, and that they likely even had scientific knowledge that our age has yet to discover:

Read More...
Info

Humans were living near West Papua at least 55,000 years ago, study finds

Dylan Gaffney, Daud Aris Tanudirjo
The Conversation
Tue, 13 Aug 2024 17:14 UTC
New evidence from West Papua offers fresh clues about how and when humans first moved into the Pacific.

Hand Stencils
© Tristan Russell, CC BY-SAHand stencils of unknown age from the Raja Ampat Islands. Research from these islands sheds light on early human history.
In the deep human past, highly skilled seafarers made daring crossings from Asia to the Pacific Islands. It was a migration of global importance that shaped the distribution of our species — Homo sapiens — across the planet.

These mariners became the ancestors of people who live in the region today, from West Papua to Aotearoa New Zealand.

For archaeologists, however, the precise timing, location and nature of these maritime dispersals have been unclear.

For the first time, our new research provides direct evidence that seafarers travelled along the equator to reach islands off the coast of West Papua more than 50 millennia ago.
Read More...