Secret HistoryS


Star of David

Armenia's six-pointed star - 5000 years old


PeopleOfAr
Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:39 UTC
armenian star
Marble tombstone of the Armenian Grand Prince Hasan Jalal Vahtangian (1214-1261)
A few months ago, I made a YouTube video about the history of the Armenian Wheel of Eternity. Maybe the most iconic among many ancient Armenian symbols. As expected people started to ask questions and post comments. Among the commentators a keen observer noticed that in some cases Armenians depicted the Wheel of Eternity inside a six pointed star. Because of the many questions I received since, I've decided to finally grant this symbol attention in a manner of a blog post.

Most people today associate the six pointed star (hexagram) with the Jewish Star of David (Magen David), as it is the modern symbol of Jewish identity and Judaism. In 1948 it was even adopted on the official flag of Israel. According to Wikipedia: "Its use as a symbol of the Jewish community dates to the 17th century." However, like many other aspects of Armenian culture, not much has been written about the Armenian usage of the hexagram. Even though its usage in science, art, architecture, decorations and even for religious purposes has been extensive throughout the history.
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Video

New film reveals that Prince William and Prince Harry had not seen Princess Diana in the month prior to her death

Nicholas Anthem
Cinemablend
Tue, 25 Jul 2017 00:00 UTC
William and Harry
The twentieth anniversary of Princess Diana's death is nearly upon us, and with the date looming, there's a new documentary with Prince William and Prince Harry looking back at their mother's life. The film shines a light on the fact that the Duke of Cambridge and his younger brother had not seen Princess Diana in a month when she passed away on August 1, 1997. At that time, the People's Princess and Prince Charles had a custody arrangement that kept the boys traveling back and forth. The princes were with their father when their mother died. In the documentary, Prince Harry illuminates this subject and says,
There was the point where our parents split, and we never saw our mother enough, or we never saw our father enough. There was a lot of traveling and lot of fights on the back seat with my brother -- which I would win. There was all that to contend with. And -- I don't pretend we're the only people to have to deal with that, but it was an interesting way of growing up.
It turns out Prince William and Prince Harry had plans to see their mother on the day that she and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, died in a car accident in Paris. The boys and Princess Diana had been apart for weeks. The princes were vacationing with Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II in Balmoral, Scotland. Meanwhile, Princess Diana was busy making humanitarian trips, including a journey to Bosnia to speak out against the use of landmines.

Comment: The loss and trauma of Princes William and Harry tragically losing their mother at such a young age is just another meaningless piece of 'collateral damage' to those who had Princess Diana killed: Unlawful Killing - The Murder of Princess Diana and Why it Matters

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Cow

Armenia: Spread of agriculture


The peopleofAR
Sun, 15 Dec 2013 00:00 UTC
Rock drawings
© Unknown
The invention of agriculture was a pivotal event in human history. The first animal tamed by people was the dog. Its domestication probably occurred in the Early Stone Age, in the period of hunting development. Centuries later, people managed to tame sheep, pigs, goats, and cows. The Armenian Highlands are crucial in this regard. The oldest center of stock farming can be traced to the Armenian plateau. In a paper: "Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact" Dr. Melinda A. Zeder (2008) argues that the early spread of agriculture known as the Neolithic revolution spread from the Armenian plateau through a mix of colonization and cultural diffusion, into Europe and elsewhere. [1] Dr. Zeder believes that in Europe the indigenous hunter gatherers adopted the new farming technologies by cultural diffusion. The map, from the article in the August 11 2008 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows the regions and dates where the four species were first domesticated.
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Archaeology

Newly discovered tablets reveal ancient Babylonians knew a form of trigonometry superior to modern version

Ian Johnston
The Independent
Fri, 25 Aug 2017 16:51 UTC
Babylonian tablet Plimpton
© UNSWThe Babylonian tablet Plimpton 322 has numbers written in cuneiform script
The Ancient Babylonians knew about a form of trigonometry more advanced than the modern-day version - about 1,000 years before its supposed invention by the Ancient Greeks, academics in Australia say.

The astonishing claim is based on a 3,700-year-old clay tablet inscribed with a table of numbers.

Known as Plimpton 322, it is already known to contain evidence that the Babylonians knew Pythagoras' famous equation for right-angled triangles, long before the Greek philosopher gave his name to it.

And researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have claimed it also shows the Babylonians developed a highly sophisticated form of trigonometry - the system of maths used to describe angles that has tortured generations of school pupils with sine, cosine and tangent.
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Horse

Armenian Highlands, land of the horse


People of AR
Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:00 UTC
Armenian horses
Horse breading, the domestication of the horses and the development of the chariot in Armenia dates back to the time immemorial. In fact, the Armenian Highlands were renowned for horse breeding and horsemanship throughout ancient times. Murals of the Iron Age (Armenian) kingdom of Ararat attest to the richness of this practice. Traditionally Armenians consider themselves as descended from the biblical Torgom (Togarmah), where the Bible refers to the House of Togarmah, a land known for its horses (Ez. 27:14). For this reason the ancient Persians would collect Armenian horses as part of taxation for their armies and the royal guard (Strabo, 20 B.C.). Equally revered was the Armenian cavalry of the ancient times.
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Brick Wall

Discovery of the Great Wall of Siberia, 1st millennium BC

Anna Liesowska
Ancient Origins
Wed, 16 Aug 2017 01:56 UTC
Great wall Siberia
© Ancient-origins.net
Giant ramparts guarded Altai Mountains against attack from the north, says leading archaeologist Professor Andrey Borodovsky. The wall complex - now almost hidden to the naked eye - is believed to date from a long era that also saw such constructions as the Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall.

Concealed under thick layers of turf are huge stones put in place by ancient man, says the scientist. Six rows of a parallel wall system limited access to the Altai Mountain complex from the north via the valley of the Katun River. Their width is a substantial ten meters with an impressive height of up to eight meters.

It is not known who built the giant ramparts. 'To the east of these walls is a fairly wide passage, which is limited at the mountainside by another series of walls, oriented west-east across the Katun valley,' he said.

There are nine walls adjacent to the mountain slope.

Professor Andrey Borodovsky said: 'These walls were clearly made to cut off crowds of people, and make them go through a narrow passage in the direction chosen by the creators of the (construction).'

In this way access from the steppes to the mountains - the home of ancient civilizations, for example of the Pazyryk people - could be controlled.

Some of the walls were destroyed by the construction of the Chuya highway in tsarist times, modernized by Stalin using prisoner labor. [...]

Prof Borodovsky insists geophysical analysis using scans shows the structures here were manmade not natural. He has announced plans to conduct detailed research here next year, which - while not long in total length, with more than 1 kilometer identified - are high in historical significance.

So far archaeological evidence of man from the areas around the walls points to a medieval presence yet the researcher from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk is convinced proof will be found of their construction much earlier.

'Geophysics has clearly confirmed that the Souzga walls were artificially created,' he told The Siberian Times.

For more of this article, go here.
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Pharoah

Analyzing mummy genes: Could ancient Egyptians be closely related to Middle Easterners?

Caleb Strom
Ancient Origins
Thu, 17 Aug 2017 18:52 UTC
Egyptians
© ancient-origions.com
Egypt has been thought of by many as a quintessentially African civilization. There is, however, evidence that the ancient Egyptians may have been less African than modern Egyptians, at least genetically. Recent genetic studies have shown that the people of ancient Egypt had ties to ancient Near Eastern populations such as Armenians. This is also consistent with the idea of a large migration out of the Middle East to settle parts of North Africa and Europe and mingle with local populations in those areas.

Modern Egyptians have a lot of genetic and cultural ties to Sub-Saharan Africa. It has long been believed by archaeologists that the Egyptian civilization grew from villages developing along the Nile which were similar to people farther south. So far, genetic studies of modern Egyptians as well as archaeological research have confirmed this. Studies of the ancient Egyptian mummies, however, tell a slightly more complex story.

Checking the Genes of Egyptian Mummies

In a recent study, genetic samples were taken from at least 90 mummies. What geneticists working alongside archaeologists found was that the mummies had closer genetic connections to the Middle East, specifically the Levant and Anatolia. This is an interesting find since it suggests that modern Egyptians are more African than ancient Egyptians.

One possible explanation for more genetic similarities between ancient Egyptians and Middle Eastern populations such as Syrians or Armenians would be the Hyksos. The Hyksos were a Middle Eastern people who occupied the Nile delta sometime before 1650 BC and came to rule Egypt until they were ousted by a native dynasty.
Egyptian mummy
© BigstockEgyptian mummy in laboratory
For more of this article, go here.
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Chalkboard

Mathematical secrets of ancient Babylonian tablet unlocked

Maev Kennedy
The Guardian
Thu, 24 Aug 2017 18:34 UTC
Dating from 1,000 years before Pythagoras's theorem, the Babylonian clay tablet is a trigonometric table more accurate than any today, say researchers.
Plimpton 322 tablet
© UNSW/Andrew KellyMathematician Dr Daniel Mansfield with the Plimpton 322 tablet.
At least 1,000 years before the Greek mathematician Pythagoras looked at a right angled triangle and worked out that the square of the longest side is always equal to the sum of the squares of the other two, an unknown Babylonian genius took a clay tablet and a reed pen and marked out not just the same theorem, but a series of trigonometry tables which scientists claim are more accurate than any available today.

The 3,700-year-old broken clay tablet survives in the collections of Columbia University, and scientists now believe they have cracked its secrets.

The team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney believe that the four columns and 15 rows of cuneiform - wedge shaped indentations made in the wet clay - represent the world's oldest and most accurate working trigonometric table, a working tool which could have been used in surveying, and in calculating how to construct temples, palaces and pyramids.

The fabled sophistication of Babylonian architecture and engineering is borne out by excavation. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, believed by some archaeologists to have been a planted step pyramid with a complex artificial watering system, was written of by Greek historians as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Comment: Details of the hypothesis can be found in:
Plimpton 322 is Babylonian exact sexagesimal trigonometry, Historia Mathematica, 2017

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Info

Paul Craig Roberts: The so-called Civil War was not fought over slavery

Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Wed, 23 Aug 2017 16:00 UTC
american civil war
When I read Professor Thomas DiLorenzo's article the question that leapt to mind was, "How come the South is said to have fought for slavery when the North wasn't fighting against slavery?"

Two days before Lincoln's inauguration as the 16th President, Congress, consisting only of the Northern states, passed overwhelmingly on March 2, 1861, the Corwin Amendment that gave constitutional protection to slavery. Lincoln endorsed the amendment in his inaugural address, saying "I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable."

Quite clearly, the North was not prepared to go to war in order to end slavery when on the very eve of war the US Congress and incoming president were in the process of making it unconstitutional to abolish slavery.

Here we have absolute total proof that the North wanted the South kept in the Union far more than the North wanted to abolish slavery.

If the South's real concern was maintaining slavery, the South would not have turned down the constitutional protection of slavery offered them on a silver platter by Congress and the President. Clearly, for the South also the issue was not slavery.
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Eagle

The 64th Anniversary of the West's Coup in Iran is Not Forgotten by the World

Andre Vltchek
Dissident Voice
Sat, 19 Aug 2017 00:00 UTC
Iran coup
After WWII, the West had one huge 'problem' on its hands: all three most populous Muslim countries on Earth - Egypt, Iran and Indonesia - were clearly moving in one similar direction, joining a group of patriotic, peaceful and tolerant nations. They were deeply concerned about the welfare of their citizens, and by no means were they willing to allow foreign colonialist powers to plunder their resources, or enslave their people.

In the 1950's, the world was rapidly changing, and there was suddenly hope that the countries which were oppressed and pillaged for decades and centuries by first the European and then North American geopolitical and business interests, would finally break their shackles and stand proudly on their own feet.

Several Communist countries in Eastern Europe, but also newly liberated China, were actively helping with a rapid de-colonizing process in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Those developments were exactly what the West in general and both the U.K. and the U.S. in particular, were not ready or willing to accept. 'Ancient' belief in some sort of 'inherited right' to colonize, to loot and to control entire the non-white world, was deeply engraved in the psyche of the rulers in both Europe and North America.
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