Secret HistoryS


Blue Planet

90,000-year-old footprints of multiple humans found on Moroccan beach

human footprint
© Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-52344-5Images of some of the hominin tracks in Larache. (a) Two tracks side by side at the bottom of the photo, which also depicts a ground control point (checkered cardboard) for differential GPS surveying. (b) Two cross trackways and photography for 3D footprint modeling. (c) to (g) Detailed view of some footprints. White Scale bars = 20 cm.
An international team of archaeologists has found and identified a trackway made by multiple humans approximately 90,000 years ago in what is now Morocco. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the group describes how they tested for its origins of the tracks.

Finding footprints left behind by people thousands of years ago is extremely rare due to their generally ephemeral nature. Still, occasionally, events will transpire to preserve footprints, such as encasement in sediment that hardens. Such prints can then over time be revealed as the material that once hid them erodes away. In this instance, the footprints were found in a sandy tract on a rocky part of the Moroccan shoreline.

Comment: Findings bringing into question the Out of Africa theory abound of late: Neanderthals and humans lived side by side in Northern Europe 45,000 years ago, genetic analysis finds


Star of David

The Biblical lens and the Nietzschean light

zionist soldier israel tank prayer
© Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty ImagesAn Israeli soldier prays standing in front of a Merkava tank on the outskirts of the northern town of Kiryat Shmona near the border with Lebanon on Oct. 8, 2023
On Christian guilt and responsibility

Christians worship two gods, Christ and Yahweh, but claim they are one. Certainly, the God of the Old Testament plays a secondary role in Christian consciousness. He remains behind the scenes. But he nevertheless pulls a number of strings. It was he who inspired the Christians to promise Palestine to the Jews in 1917 (by the British Balfour Declaration, preceded five months earlier by the French Cambon Declaration), and to give it to them in 1948.

There is a theory attributing geopolitical motives to the British: they needed Israel as a bridgehead in the Middle East, to control the Suez Canal. That's Chomsky's theory, and a blatant falsehood. From 1916, British foreign policy in the Middle East favored good relations with the Arab regimes they had set up in Arabia, Jordan and Iraq. The creation of a "Jewish home" in Palestine, leading predictably to the Jews' full takeover, was deeply upsetting to the Arabs, and conflicted with British Arab policy. That is why in May 1939, the British Government tried to get out of its commitment to the Zionists with a White Paper providing for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within ten years. It stated:
His Majesty's Government believe that the framers of the Mandate in which the Balfour Declaration was embodied could not have intended that Palestine should be converted into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population of the country. ... His Majesty's Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of the their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State. They would indeed regard it as contrary to their obligations to the Arabs under the Mandate, as well as to the assurances which have been given to the Arab people in the past, that the Arab population of Palestine should be made the subject of a Jewish State against their will.[1]

Better Earth

Neanderthals and humans lived side by side in Northern Europe 45,000 years ago, genetic analysis finds

human neanderthal
© Marcel Weiss, License: CC-BY-ND 4.0Excavating the LRJ layers 8 meters deep at Ranis was a logistical challenge and required elaborate scaffolding to support the trench.
A genetic analysis of bone fragments unearthed at an archaeological site in central Germany shows conclusively that modern humans — Homo sapiens — had already reached Northern Europe 45,000 years ago, overlapping with Neanderthals for several thousand years before the latter went extinct.

The findings establish that the site near Ranis, Germany, which is known for its finely flaked, leaf-shaped stone tool blades, is among the oldest confirmed sites of modern human Stone Age culture in north central and northwestern Europe.

The evidence that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis lived side by side is consistent with genomic evidence that the two species occasionally interbred. It also feeds the suspicion that the invasion of Europe and Asia by modern humans some 50,000 years ago helped drive Neanderthals, which had occupied the area for more than 500,000 years, to extinction.


Comment: There's no strong evidence that humans drove them to extinction, with researchers continuing to propose a number of theories, such as climatic changes.

Further, note that the 50,000 year 'invasion' date is brought into question by research from Asia which shows they were already in China 45,000 years ago (and likely much, much earlier than that).


Comment: These findings bring into question: just why did Neanderthals become extinct whereas their human neighbours, ultimately, went on to thrive?

Some researchers have suggested that at least one significant difference between the two was the Neanderthals' lack of ingenuity when compared to humans, which was further highlighted in a recent study: Prehistoric jewelry reveals 9 distinct cultures across Stone Age Europe

Notably this idea contradicts popular scientific thought which, particularly in recent years, has sought to push the idea that there was little difference between the two; seemingly as part of the 'everyone is equal' ideology.

Further insight on this topic can be found in the following article: The Golden Age, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction


Blue Planet

Prehistoric jewelry reveals 9 distinct cultures across Stone Age Europe

stone age
© J. Baker, et alA selection of beads dating to the Gravettian period in Europe.
Prehistoric humans adorned themselves with different types of beads depending on their culture and location in Europe.
Tens of thousands of years ago, prehistoric humans in Europe adorned themselves with such a wide variety of beads that researchers have classified nine distinct cultural groups across the continent based on their location and distinctive styles.

The researchers focused on the Gravettian period, which stretched between 34,000 and 24,000 years ago and was defined by hunter-gatherers who were also adept artisans, according to a study published Monday (Jan. 29) in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

The Gravettians' crafting skills can be seen in the variety of materials they used to make beads, such as ivory, bones, teeth (including those from bears, horses and rabbits), antlers, jet gemstones, shells and amber. These beads likely served as personal ornaments as well as cultural markers.

Comment: See also:


Star of David

The veil is being torn: the hidden truths of Jabotinsky and Netanyahu

Borrell
© UnknownJosep Borrell denounces the links between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas
The group that murdered 25,000 Palestinians in Gaza is not representative of Jews in general. It is the heir to an ideology that has been committing such crimes for a century. Thierry Meyssan traces the history of the "revisionist Zionists" from Vladimyr Ze'ev Jabotinsky to Benjamin Netanyahu.

Josep Borrell, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, receiving an honorary doctorate in Valadolid, declared:
"We believe that a two-state solution [Israeli and Palestinian] must be imposed from outside to bring about peace. Even if, and I insist, Israel reaffirms its refusal [of this solution] and, to prevent it, has gone so far as to create Hamas itself (...) Hamas has been financed by the Israeli government in an attempt to weaken the Fatah Palestinian Authority. But if we don't intervene firmly, the spiral of hatred and violence will continue from generation to generation, from funeral to funeral".
In so doing, Josep Borrell broke with the official Western line that Hamas is the enemy of Israel, which it attacked by surprise on October 7, justifying the current Israeli response and the massacre of 25,000 Palestinian civilians. He asserted that enemies of Jews can be supported by other Jews, Benjamin Netanyahu in particular. He rejected the communitarian reading of history and examined personal responsibilities.

This narrative shift was made possible by the UK's exit from the European Union four years ago. Josep Borrell knows that the European Union has financed Hamas since its 2006 coup, yet today he is free to say what's on his mind. He didn't mention Hamas's links with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose "Palestinian branch" the organization claims to be, or with MI6, the British secret service. He simply suggested withdrawing from the mess.

Better Earth

Tsunami that wiped out prehistoric communities in N England 8,000 years ago occurred alongside rapid drop in global temperatures

tsunami
© Shutterstock
A study by the University of York has revealed that a tsunami wiped out prehistoric communities living in Northumberland, England, causing wide-scale depopulation across the region.

According to the study, published in the Journal of Quarternary Science, a huge tsunami with 20 metre tall waves hit Britain's coastline and parts of Europe during the Mesolithic period around 8,000-years-ago.

The tsunami was likely caused by a large submarine landslide known as the Storegga slide, displacing 2400-3200 km3 of sediment off the coast of Western Norway. Traces of sediment deposits attributed to the event have been found in Northern England, Western Scotland, Shetland, Denmark, and as far as Eastern Greenland.

Comment: Notably we also recently learnt: Paleoclimate reconstructions show significant cold periods coincided with pandemics & plagues in ancient Rome

See also:


Dig

Bizarrely adorned ancient burials found in Ukraine

ukraine skeleton
© (Courtesy of Vyacheslav Baranov/ National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
A recently unearthed cemetery in Ukraine, dating back 1,000 years, has yielded an array of fascinating finds, including weapons, jewelry, and, unusually, buckets positioned around the feet of some of the interred. The men were found buried with weapons such as axes, spearheads, and swords, and several of the women were buried with thick twisted bronze neck rings in an 11th-century cemetery near the village of Ostriv, south of Kyiv, Ukraine.

Excavations Reveal Millenium Old Burial Site

The site, located roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Kyiv, encompasses 107 graves. According to archaeologists Vsevolod Ivakin and Vyacheslav Baranov from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, most burials were contained in wooden coffins.

This discovery was detailed in a paper presented at the Archaeological Institute of America's annual meeting in Chicago, held from January 4-7.

Boat

California's 'ARkStorm': Historic 1000-year floods of 1861-62 featured 8 weeks of atmospheric rivers

This 1861 photograph shows flooding at K and
This 1861 photograph shows flooding at K and Front streets Sacramento. A nine-year stretch of calm weather was broken with record flooding in the winter of 1861 to 1862.
Imagine Disneyland under feet of water for weeks. Rivers swelling to levels never seen before and never seen since. Days of rain stretch into weeks as floodwaters rise to epic levels.

California may have endured an onslaught of tropically-infused atmospheric river storms that filled the calendar for months at the end of 2022 and the start of 2023 and is staring at another atmospheric river this weekend, but those storms pale in comparison to the historic floods during the winter of 1861-1862.

Colloquially today known as an "ARkStorm" - a deft reference to an "atmospheric river (AR) 1,000 (k) year storm" - the storms were a recipe for disaster for a young region that had recently been settled. Abraham Lincoln was president at the time, and America was embroiled in the first months of the Civil War. But out West, California's population was bulging to about a half million in the wake of the great Gold Rush about a dozen years prior.

Bomb

German war crimes: 80th anniversary of the siege of Leningrad - 1.1 million dead

St. Isaac's cathedral Leningrad (St. Petersburg)
Boris Kudoyarov - "The Eastern Front in Photographs", John Erickson
(25 January 2024) (Edit. CH-S) The human cost and the horror the German war of aggression of 1941 meant for the Russian civilian population is quickly forgotten in our days. Today, once more the enemy is officially called Russia.

The mass killing of the civilian population of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) by a starvation blockade, which was calculated ice-cold by the German political leadership at the time, was one of the sad highlights of German "master race" behaviour.

Yet once again, attempts are being made to create an enemy image of Russia and to portray the people and their political leadership as "primitive". Has German policymakers learnt nothing from history? Where are the peace efforts? Where are the steps towards moderation?

Comment:

From 2015: 872 days of cold, hunger and death: Leningrad siege survivors share their memories

From 2018: Anniversary of the Siege of Leningrad: Putin visits his older brother's grave

From Michael Jabara Carley: Remembering Russia's V-Day (or, the history of World War II not often heard in the West)


Info

Occupants of the unspoiled 4th-century BCE Royal Tombs at Vergina in northern Greece have been identified

The tomb of Phillip II at Aigai
© Guillén Pérez/CC by-ND 2.0The tomb of Phillip II at Aigai.
The identities of the occupants of the unspoiled 4th-century BCE Royal Tombs at Vergina in northern Greece have been identified. The burials contain the remains of Alexander's father, stepmother, half-siblings, and son, along with armor and other items belonging to the man himself.

While there is never been any doubt that the human skeletal remains found in Royal Tombs I, II, and III belong to close relatives of Alexander, scholars have spent almost half a century bickering over who exactly lies within each grave.

The researchers examined the skeletal elements with the aid of macrophotography, radiographs, and anatomical dissection. The study authors combined osteological analyses, macro photography, X-rays, and anatomical dissections of the ancient remains with historical sources from the ancient past.

A knee fusion was found in the male skeleton of Tomb I consistent with the historic evidence of the lameness of King Philip II. Researchers also discovered that Tomb I contained the bones of a man with an injured knee, as well as a woman and a baby, who was just days or weeks old at the time of death.

They conclude that the male figure was Alexander the Great's father, King Philip II of Macedon, who was known to limp. The infant's extremely young age is also consistent with the story of Philip's assassination in 336 BCE.

According to most sources, Philip II was assassinated by his bodyguard only a few days after his wife Cleopatra gave birth. The murder is thought to have been ordered by Philip's previous wife, Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great. Almost immediately after the assassination, Olympias killed Cleopatra and her baby, possibly by burning them alive, paving the way for Alexander to succeed to the throne.