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Bronze Age hexagonal 'pyramid' not like anything 'found before in the Eurasian steppe'

Owen Jarus
Live Science
Fri, 22 Sep 2023 17:24 UTC
Archaeologists in Kazakhstan have discovered a hexagonal pyramid that served as a burial site in the Bronze Age.
Hexagonal-shaped pyramid in Kazakhstan.
© Ulan Umitkaliyev
An aerial view of the hexagonal-shaped pyramid in Kazakhstan. Notice how the inner stone walls form a maze-like path that leads toward the burial site at its center.
Archaeologists in Kazakhstan have discovered a 3,800-year-old hexagon-shaped structure that they describe as a "pyramid." The maze-like structure is not as tall as Egypt's monuments, but currently stands about 10 feet (3 meters) high and likely served as an elite burial site.

The discovery is not like anything "found before in the Eurasian steppe," according to a statement from Eurasian National University in Kazakhstan.

"This pyramid on the territory of Eastern Kazakhstan was found this year," Ulan Umitkaliyev, the head of Eurasian National University's archaeology and ethnology department who is leading excavations at the site, told Live Science in an email. "It is hexagonal in shape, with megaliths weighing up to 1 ton [0.9 metric tons] placed in each corner."

While archaeologists use the term "pyramid" or "step pyramid" to describe it, the Bronze Age monument is unlike the pyramids found in Egypt. Its outer stone walls form a hexagon, the structure's inner walls look like a maze that leads to a grave at its heart. Parts of it were once covered by an earthen mound, Umitkaliyev added. It's not clear if there was ever a roof over part of the structure or whether it was entirely open air.
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Info

A new Indo-European language discovered in the Hittite capital Hattusa

Leman Altuntaş
Arkeonews Net
Thu, 21 Sep 2023 22:00 UTC
Lion Gate Hattuşa Capital of Hittite Empire, Çorum
© historicalsites.goturkiye.com/
Lion Gate Hattuşa Capital of Hittite Empire, Çorum.
The Çorum Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism announced in a written statement that a new Indo-European language was discovered during excavations in the Boğazkale district of Çorum, which is home to Hattusa, the capital of the Hittites.

The Hittites lived in Anatolia around 3,500 years ago. They recorded state treaties and decrees, prayers, myths, and incantation rituals on clay tablets - in a language that could only be deciphered around 100 years ago. The basis for this is around 30,000 manuscripts, which are predominantly written in the Hittite language, but also to a lesser extent in other languages such as Luwian or Palaian. Now a new one has been added to these languages.

The Hittites, one of the most mysterious and powerful civilizations in Anatolian history, empire rose with the invention of the alphabet when humanity transitioned from the Middle to the late Bronze Age in the late 14th and 12th centuries B.C.

We know that they were one of the greatest military powers of their time - after all, they went head-to-head with the great pharaohs of Egypt, such as Ramesses the Great, before their power was finally put in check by the world's first peace treaty. And then one day, in around 1,180 B.C., their powerful empire suddenly broke apart, splintering into independent Neo-Hittite city-states, which slowly and mysteriously disappeared off the face of the earth.
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Archaeology

Evidence of a wooden structure predating our species uncovered

Mike McRae
Science Alert
Thu, 21 Sep 2023 15:08 UTC
stone age wood structure
© Barham, et al., Nature, 2023
The underlying log passes through a central notch cut into the upper log (object 1033) and extends into the section. Plan view of the unit (left) and during excavation (right). The numbers refer to the distance in centimetres.
A pair of interlocking logs that haven't seen sunlight in half a million years could challenge some fundamental assumptions about the technology and culture of our Stone Age ancestors.

Uncovered in 2019 at the Kalambo Falls in Zambia, the objects provide archaeologists with an exceptionally rare look at wooden technology from mid-Paleolithic Africa, a time better known for an acceleration in the innovations of stone tools. The logs also predate the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens.

An analysis conducted by an international team of researchers has now come to the astonishing conclusion that the wooden artifacts were once part of a permanent structure of some kind, such as a platform or building.

If so, the discovery complicates the conventional image of hominins as nomads hunting migrating herds or gathering seasonal flora with relatively basic tools.
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Pharoah

Underwater researchers found temples to ancient Egyptian gods in sunken city

Oğuz Büyükyıldırım
Arkeonews Net
Wed, 20 Sep 2023 18:48 UTC
Ancient Sunken Artefacts
© Christoph Gerigk Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation
Demonstrating the Greek presence in Ancient Egypt, a delicate bronze duck-shaped pourer was discovered among ceramics at the site of a newly discovered Greek sanctuary to Aphrodite in the submerged ruins of Thonis-Heracleion.
Two temples belonging to the Egyptian god Amun and the Greek goddess Aphrodite were found in the sunken city off the coast of Egypt by a team of archaeologists led by Franck Goddio.

The discovery was announced in a press release by the European Institute for Underwater Archeology (IEASM) on Tuesday.

The research team first found the ancient port city of Thonis-Heracleion on Aboukir Bay in 2000 and has now discovered temple ruins in the city's southern canal.

The remains of Thonis-Heracleion are located under the sea, 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) from the present coast of Egypt. The city was for centuries Egypt's largest port on the Mediterranean before the founding of Alexandria by Alexander the Great in 331 BC.

An underwater archaeological team, led by French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio, has made further discoveries at the site of a temple to the god Amun in the ancient port city of Thonis-Heracleion, the institute said.
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Info

Researchers discover complete Neolithic cursus on the Isle of Arran, Scotland


University of Glasgow
Wed, 06 Sep 2023 18:39 UTC
Cursus in Scotland
© Dr Kenny Brophy
Excavations through the cursus bank at Drumadoon.
A leading team of researchers have discovered what is believed to be a complete Neolithic cursus set within a rich prehistoric landscape on the Isle of Arran, Scotland.

This monument type is amongst the first that was built by farmers in Neolithic Britain and is huge - measuring 1.1km long and 50 metres wide.

A cursus is a vast Neolithic monument comprised of one or more rectangular enclosures. The cursus on Arran is defined by a large stone, earth and turf bank running around the entire perimeter of the enclosure. Constructing this monument would have involved staggering amounts of labour, transforming the entire local landscape.

This monument type could date to perhaps as early as 3500 BC, researchers say. It is the most complete example of this site type found in Britain and the opportunity to investigate a cursus bank is very rare and hugely exciting.

Prehistoric field boundaries, clearance cairns and round houses, at least some of which may be contemporary with the monument, have also found in the same landscape, all preserved within peatland, sealing the archaeological layers. Ancient soils representing the original Neolithic land surface, together with cultivated soils from the Bronze Age period, provide an unparalleled opportunity to understand how contemporary farming practice and settlement interacted with the cursus monument and how early farmers transformed this place.

The combination of investigating all these elements together is highly unusual. The inter-disciplinary team from the Universities of Glasgow, Birkbeck, Bournemouth, Reading, Coventry, Birmingham, and Southampton as well as archaeologists from Archaeology Scotland and Historic Environment Scotland, are using archaeological prospection, excavation and geoarchaeology, coupled with cutting-edge environmental scientific techniques, including ancient DNA, to understand how this unique landscape was constructed and used.
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Info

A new human species? Mystery surrounds 300,000-year-old fossil

Dyani Lewis
Nature
Tue, 19 Sep 2023 18:22 UTC
A chinless jawbone from eastern China that displays both modern and archaic features could represent a new branch of the human family tree.
juvenile skull
© Xiujie Wu
A digital reconstruction of the juvenile skull found in Hualongdong, China.
A fossilized jawbone discovered in a cave in eastern China bears a curious mix of ancient and modern features, according to a detailed analysis that compares it with dozens of other human specimens. The finding, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, indicates that the 300,000-year-old bone could have belonged to an as-yet undescribed species of archaic human1.

Scientists excavating a cave called Hualongdong, located in Anhui province in eastern China, have unearthed remains of 16 individuals that date to around 300,000 years ago2. Several fragments belong to the skull of a 12-to-13-year-old juvenile.

Xiujie Wu, a palaeoanthropologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, and her colleagues first described the skull in 20192. But in 2020, while sifting through trays of animal bones found in the cave, they identified a fragment of a mandible — the lower part of the jaw — that could be another piece of the same skull.

The discovery has enabled a more detailed analysis of where the Hualongdong people fit on the human family tree. The mandible has a mixture of both modern and archaic features. For example, the bone along the jawline is thick, a feature shared with early human species, such as Homo erectus. It also lacks a true chin, the presence of which is a key feature of Homo sapiens. But the side of the mandible that attaches to the upper jaw is thinner than those of archaic hominins and more reminiscent of that of modern humans.
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Cult

Letter showing Pope Pius XII had detailed information from German Jesuit about Nazi crimes revealed

Nicole Winfield
AP
Sat, 16 Sep 2023 07:27 UTC
Pope Pius XII
© AP
Undated file photo of Pope Pius XII. Newly discovered correspondence suggests that World War II-era Pope Pius XII had detailed information from a trusted German Jesuit that up to 6,000 Jews and Poles were being gassed each day in German-occupied Poland, undercutting the Holy See’s argument that it couldn’t verify diplomatic reports of Nazi atrocities to denounce them. The documentation from the Vatican archives, published this weekend in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, is likely to further fuel the debate about Pius’ legacy and his now-stalled beatification campaign.
Newly discovered correspondence suggests that World War II-era Pope Pius XII had detailed information from a trusted German Jesuit that up to 6,000 Jews and Poles were being gassed each day in German-occupied Poland. The documentation undercuts the Holy See's argument that it couldn't verify diplomatic reports of Nazi atrocities to denounce them.

The documentation from the Vatican archives, published this weekend in Italian daily Corriere della Sera, is likely to further fuel the debate about Pius' legacy and his now-stalled beatification campaign. Historians have long been divided about Pius' record, with supporters insisting he used quiet diplomacy to save Jewish lives while critics say he remained silent as the Holocaust raged.

Corriere is reproducing a letter dated Dec. 14, 1942 from the German Jesuit priest to Pius' secretary which is contained in an upcoming book about the newly opened files of Pius' pontificate by Giovanni Coco, a researcher and archivist in the Vatican's Apostolic Archives.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Another magical JFK assassination pseudo-debate and limited hangout

Edward Curtin
Off-Guardian Org
Sun, 17 Sep 2023 18:27 UTC
JFK and Jackie in Dallas
© Off-Guardian Org
Much has been made of the September 9, 2023 simultaneous reports in The New York Times and Vanity Fair of the claims of a former Secret Service agent, Paul Landis, who was part of the security detail in Dallas, Texas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Like so many reports by such media that have covered up the truth of the assassination for sixty years, this one about "the magic bullet" is also a red herring.

It encourages pseudo-debates and confusion and is a rather dumb "limited hangout," which is a strategy used by intelligence agencies to dangle some truth in order to divert attention from core facts of a case they are desperate to conceal. With these particular articles, they are willing to suggest that maybe the Warren Commission's magic bullet claim is possibly incorrect. This is because so many people have long come to realize that that part of the propaganda story is absurd, so the coverup artists are willing to suggest it might be wrong in order to continue debating meaningless matters based on false premises in order to solidify their core lies.

Despite responses to these two stories about Landis that credit them for "finally" showing that the "magic bullet" claim of the Warren Commission is now dead, it would be more accurate to say they have revived debate about it in order to sneakily hide the fundamental fact about the assassination: that the CIA assassinated JFK.

We can expect many more such red herrings in the next two months leading up to the sixtieth anniversary of the assassination.

They are what one of the earliest critics of The Warren Commission, Vincent Salandria, a brilliant Philadelphia lawyer, called "a false mystery." He said:
After more than a half century, the historical truth of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been finally established beyond rational dispute. The Kennedy assassination is a false mystery. It was conceived by the conspirators to be a false mystery which was designed to cause interminable debate. The purpose of the protracted debate was to obscure what was quite clearly and plainly a coup d'état. Simply stated, President Kennedy was assassinated by our US national security state in order to abort his efforts to bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion.
That the corporate mainstream should trumpet these reports as important is to be expected, but that they are also so greeted by some people who should know better is sad. For there is no mystery about the assassination of President Kennedy; he was assassinated by the CIA and the evidence for this fact has long been available. And the Warren Commission's claim that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the so-called "magic bullet" - Commission Exhibit 399 - that entered JFK's back and exited his neck and then went into the back of Gov. John Connally, who was sitting in the front seat, zigzagging in multiple directions, causing him five wounds and then emerging in pristine condition, has always been risible.

Only fools or those ignorant of the details have ever believed it, but desperate conspirators led by the late Arlen Specter, the future Senator, did desperate things for The Warren Commission in order to pin the rap on the patsy Oswald and cover-up for the killers.
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Info

Archaeologists reveal largest palaeolithic cave art site in Eastern Iberia


University of Southhampton
Mon, 11 Sep 2023 03:21 UTC
Ancient Cave Art1
© A Ruiz-Redondo/V Barciela/X Mart
Partly flooded chamber which contains most of the motifs.
Archaeologists have discovered a major Palaeolithic cave art site, arguably the most important found on the Eastern Iberian Coast in Europe.

Over a hundred ancient paintings and engravings, thought to be at least 24,000 years old, have been found in a 500 metre-long cave in 'Cova Dones' or 'Cueva Dones' - a site located in Millares near Valencia in Spain.

The cave site is well-known by locals and often visited by hikers and explorers, but the existence of Palaeolithic paintings was unnoticed until researchers from the universities of Zaragoza and Alicante (Spain), and affiliated to Archaeology at the University of Southampton (UK), made the exciting discovery in June 2021.

Findings of a study into the cave art, which highlight its true significance, are now published in the journal Antiquity.

Dr Aitor Ruiz-Redondo, Senior Lecturer of Prehistory at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) and research affiliate at the University of Southampton (UK) comments: "When we saw the first painted auroch [extinct wild bull], we immediately acknowledged it was important. Although Spain is the country with largest number of Palaeolithic cave art sites, most of them are concentrated in northern Spain. Eastern Iberia is an area where few of these sites have been documented so far.

"However, the actual 'shock' of realising its significance came long after the first discovery. Once we began the proper systematic survey we realised we were facing a major cave art site, like the ones that can be found elsewhere in Cantabrian Spain, southern France or Andalusia, but that totally lack in this territory."
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Pistol

Secret Service agent who was with JFK on day of his assassination breaks silence - suggests there WAS more than one shooter


The Daily Mail
Tue, 12 Sep 2023 20:32 UTC
Paul Landis secret service kennedy assassination
© Bettman Archive
Paul Landis, front in sunglasses, is seen with President Kennedy and First Lady Jackie Kennedy earlier on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination
A former Secret Service agent who was present at President John F. Kennedy's assassination has come forward with a new claim that would debunk the 'magic bullet' theory and raises questions about whether there was a second shooter.

Paul Landis, 88, broke his silence on Saturday, nearly 60 years after Kennedy was shot dead in a motorcade passing through Dallas, to share his bombshell recollection with the New York Times.

Landis, who in 1963 was a young Secret Service agent assigned to protect First Lady Jaqueline Kennedy, said that in the chaos following the shooting, he picked up a nearly pristine bullet sitting on the top of the back seat of the open limousine.

It was just behind where Kennedy was sitting when he was killed, he says. Landis says he took the projectile and placed it on the president's hospital stretcher to preserve it for the autopsy investigators.

Comment: A nurse who was on duty at the hospital when Kennedy was brought in adds corroboration, in long-forgotten interviews:
Multiple interviews given by nurse Phyllis J. Hall a decade ago appear to back up former Secret Service agent Paul Landis' claim, after she described seeing a bullet sitting on the mortally wounded president's stretcher next to his head.

Landis, 88, broke his silence in an interview on Saturday, nearly six decades after Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, to share a claim that upends the infamous 'magic bullet' theory and raises the possibility of multiple shooters.

In short, he claimed to have picked up a nearly pristine fired bullet from the back seat of the limousine where Kennedy was shot and placed it on the president's hospital stretcher to preserve as evidence.

That bullet would seem to be the one that the Warren Commission claimed was recovered from Texas Governor John Connally's stretcher -- the so-called 'magic bullet' that appeared nearly intact despite the Commission's theory that it struck both Kennedy and Connally.

Several interviews given by nurse Hall in 2013 seem to corroborate Landis' fresh claim.

'On the cart, halfway between the earlobe and the shoulder, there was a bullet laying almost perpendicular there, but I have not seen a picture of that bullet ever,' she told The Telegraph almost 10 years ago.

Separately, she told the Sunday Mirror:
'I could see a bullet lodged between his ear and his shoulder. It was pointed at its tip and showed no signs of damage. I remember looking at it - there was no blunting of the bullet or scarring around the shell from where it had been fired.

'I'd had a great deal of experience working with gunshot wounds but I had never seen anything like this before.

'It was about one-and-a-half inches long - nothing like the bullets that were later produced.

'It was taken away but never have I seen it presented in evidence or heard what happened to it. It remains a mystery.'
In fact, her description of the mystery bullet nearly perfectly matches the first piece of evidence logged by the FBI under the tag number 'C1' -- the bullet supposedly recovered from Connally's stretcher after falling from a wound on his leg.

Hall openly admits that she personally believes multiple gunmen, and also waited decades to come forward with her story, explaining that she feared harassment and retaliation.

She was not on the list of ER personnel who attended Kennedy, because she was not assigned to the emergency room, explaining that she was visiting a friend in triage when she was pulled into to assist the futile attempts to save the president's life.

Ms. Hall's remark about Johnson looking 'very frightened' is interesting. Some corners of the Kennedy research world have speculated that the assassination was not meant to be completed, but was only to scare Kennedy into complying with the agenda(s) of the various conspirators. Actually going through with it was a double-cross and a power-play by one of the factions involved.

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