Secret HistoryS


Sherlock

Newfound human species suggests Africa was evolutionary melting pot

Charles Q. Choi
Live Science
Wed, 29 Jun 2016 14:46 UTC
homo naledi skull
© John Hawks, Wits UniversityThe skull of Homo naledi, which was discovered within the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star cave system, in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa.
The most recently discovered extinct human species may have lived less than 1 million years ago, researchers have discovered.

This finding suggests that a diverse range of human species might have lived at the same time in Africa, just as they might have in Asia, researchers said.

In 2015, scientists reported South African fossils of a hitherto-unknown relative of modern humans that possessed an unusual mix of features, such as feet adapted for a life on the ground but hands suited for a life in the trees. The fossil's discoverers named the species Homo naledi, and noted that although the early human had a brain about the size of an orange, these humans may have performed ritual burials of their dead.

Comment: Further reading:

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Fireball 5

Comets and the early Christian mosaics of Ravenna


Malaga Bay
Sun, 01 May 2016 03:58 UTC
Justinian's Raging Bulls
© Wikimedia CommonsJustinian's Raging Bulls.
The Plague of Justinian has been associated with the extreme weather events of 535 - 536 AD which [in its turn] has been associated with "debris from space impacting the Earth".
The extreme weather events of 535 - 536 were the most severe and protracted short-term episodes of cooling in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 2,000 years.

The event is thought to have been caused by an extensive atmospheric dust veil, possibly resulting from a large volcanic eruption in the tropics, and/or debris from space impacting the Earth.

Its effects were widespread, causing unseasonal weather, crop failures, and famines worldwide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535%E2%80%93536
The Plague of Justinian (541 - 542) was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, especially its capital Constantinople, the Sassanid Empire, and port cities around the entire Mediterranean Sea.

One of the greatest plagues in history, this devastating pandemic resulted in the deaths of an estimated 25 million (initial outbreak) to 50 million (two centuries of recurrence) people.

Recent investigations relate this severe plague epidemic to extreme weather events of 535 - 536 considered as an example of volcanic winter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian
In a wonderful YouTube video Dr. Ruth Dwyer examines the Ravenna Mosaics and discovers the mosaics clearly depict "debris from space impacting the Earth".
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Nuke

70 years later Bikini islanders still deal with fallout of U.S. nuclear tests

Timothy J. Jorgensen
The Conversation
Fri, 01 Jul 2016 23:46 UTC
Bikini Atol
Operation Crossroad
In 1946, French fashion designer Jacques Heim released a woman's swimsuit he called the "Atome" (French for "atom") - a name selected to suggest its design would be as shocking to people that summer as the atomic bombings of Japan had been the summer before.

Not to be outdone, competitor Louis Réard raised the stakes, quickly releasing an even more skimpy swimsuit. The Vatican found Réard's swimsuit more than shocking, declaring it to actually be "sinful." So what did Réard consider an appropriate name for his creation? He called it the "Bikini" - a name meant to shock people even more than "Atome." But why was this name so shocking?

In the summer of 1946, "Bikini" was all over the news. It's the name of a small atoll - a circular group of coral islands - within the remote mid-Pacific island chain called the Marshall Islands. The United States had assumed control of the former Japanese territory after the end of World War II, just a few months earlier.

Comment: A world war has begun: We must break the silence
I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, "Where is that?" If I offer a clue by referring to "Bikini", they say, "You mean the swimsuit." Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island. Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 — the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years.

Bikini is silent today, mutated and contaminated. Palm trees grow in a strange grid formation. Nothing moves. There are no birds. The headstones in the old cemetery are alive with radiation. My shoes registered "unsafe" on a Geiger counter. Standing on the beach, I watched the emerald green of the Pacific fall away into a vast black hole. This was the crater left by the hydrogen bomb they called "Bravo". The explosion poisoned people and their environment for hundreds of miles, perhaps forever.


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Galaxy

Telescopes without lenses: Entrances to megalithic tombs may have been the first astronomical observing tools


Heritage Daily
Thu, 30 Jun 2016 00:00 UTC
prehistoric tomb, prehistoric astronomical observations
Astronomers are exploring what might be described as the first astronomical observing tool, potentially used by prehistoric humans 6,000 years ago.

They suggest that the long, narrow entrance passages to ancient stone or megalithic tombs may have enhanced what early human cultures could see in the night sky - an effect that could have been interpreted as the ancestors granting special power to the initiated.

Their idea is to investigate how a simple aperture, for example an opening or doorway, affects the observation of slightly fainter stars. They focus this study on 'passage graves', which are a type of megalithic tomb composed of a chamber of large interlocking stones and a long narrow entrance.

These spaces are thought to have been sacred, and the sites may have been used for rites of passage, where the initiated would spend the night inside the tomb, with no natural light apart from that shining down the narrow entrance lined with the remains of the tribe's ancestors.

These structures could therefore have been the first astronomical tools to support the watching of the skies, millennia before telescopes were invented.
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Treasure Chest

Skull bone alleged to have belonged to the Buddha found in Nanjing, China

Owen Jarus
Live Science
Thu, 30 Jun 2016 16:37 UTC
buddha relic
© Chinese Cultural RelicsA skull bone of the Buddha was found inside this gold casket, which was stored in a silver casket within the stupa model, found in a crypt beneath a Buddhist temple.
Archaeologists have discovered what may be a skull bone from the revered Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. The bone was hidden inside a model of a stupa, or a Buddhist shrine used for meditation.

The research team found the 1,000-year-old model within a stone chest in a crypt beneath a Buddhist temple in Nanjing, China. Inside the stupa model archaeologists found the remains of Buddhist saints, including a parietal (skull) bone that inscriptions say belonged to the Buddha himself.

The model is made of sandalwood, silver and gold, and is covered with gemstones made of crystal, glass, agate and lapis lazuli, a team of archaeologists reported in an article published in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics.
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Books

Did Lenin really order the execution of the Romanovs?

Ilia Belous
Fort Russ
Fri, 01 Jul 2016 18:08 UTC
Vladimir Lenin
Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ

Who needed the execution of the Royal family? Who overthrew the Tsar? Who destroyed the Russian Army? The current generation that grew up on the books of George Soros and Igor Chubais have already forgotten the truth about these events.

I will try to explain very briefly, succinctly, and to the point.

1. The interest of the Russian Empire in the First World War consisted of a solution to the Eastern question - control
over the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, longtime geopolitical needs of our country.

2. England and France promised the Russian Empire to solve the issue of opening the Eastern front (against Germany and Austro-Hungary).

Comment: See also:

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Bad Guys

State-sponsored terror: British government directly funded and organized those responsible for 1994 Loughinisland massacre


CS Globe
Thu, 30 Jun 2016 16:51 UTC
British collusion poster
An official investigation has revealed that the British government directly funded and organised terrorists in the Loughinisland massacre in 1994.

A 160-page report by Northern Ireland's Police Ombudsman reveals that the murder of 6 Catholic men watching a football match happened as a result of collusion with the British state.

Ombudsman Dr Michael Maguire declared: "I have no hesitation in unambiguously determining that collusion is a significant feature of the Loughinisland murders."

Ireland's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charlie Flanagan, said the findings were "deeply disturbing".

Irish opposition leader Mícheál Martin said the victims were simply watching Ireland playing Italy in the World Cup soccer competition when they were ruthlessly gunned down by loyalist killers.

"The fact that the police, who were entrusted with protecting the community, were embroiled in collusion with the death squad responsible for the massacre is sinister and disturbing," the Fianna Fáil leader said.

Comment: See also:

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Document

Ancient documents show sunspots, auroras and other solar activity before Galileo

Rachel Nuwer
Scientific American
Fri, 01 Jul 2016 10:04 UTC
A premodern drawing of what may be an aurora in the Chinese manuscript “Tianyuán Yùlì Xiángyìfù.”
© National Archives of JapanA premodern drawing of what may be an aurora in the Chinese manuscript “Tianyuán Yùlì Xiángyìfù.”
Until Galileo kick-started modern astronomy in the early 1600s, the record of the sun's activities was basically blank—or so scientists thought. To shed light on our star's history, researchers at Kyoto University in Japan have begun to comb through ancient texts. So far they have found dozens of apparent references to sunspots, auroras and other solar events that date as far back as the seventh century—albeit in terms that require more interpretation than Galileo's drawings.

"Although [scientists] can use ice cores, tree rings and sediments for clues as to past weather and climate change, things like space weather and auroras leave little or no trace," says Bruce Tsurutani, a space plasma physicist at NASA who is not involved in the Kyoto research. "So we need information that man has taken himself."

To that end, a team of historians and astronomers in Kyoto analyzed hundreds of handwritten Tang Dynasty documents from China as well as Japanese and European manuscripts from around the same period, the seventh to 10th centuries. As reported online in April in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, the researchers came across the terms "white rainbows" and "unusual rainbows" again and again. In fact, such spectacles were written about on the same dates in the documents from all three regions. Because people in such geographically distant locations simultaneously reported the phenomenon, the descriptions can only be explained as auroras, says lead author Hisashi Hayakawa, who is a student at Kyoto University's Graduate School of Letters. Auroras are caused by charged particles from the sun colliding with particles in Earth's atmosphere. They usually occur as rings around our planet's magnetic poles.
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Info

18th century bathing machines protected ladies' modesty

Kaushik
Amusing Planet
Wed, 29 Jun 2016 20:17 UTC
bathing machines
© vintage.es
Back in the 18th and 19th century, the ladies just couldn't strip to their swimwear and run towards the waves on the beach. There are certain sea-side etiquettes that needed to be observed and decorum to be maintained. Getting oneself seen in their bathing costumes by the members of the opposite sex was certainly not one of them.

To help women maintain their modesty and dignity, a simple contraption called the "bathing machine" was developed. A bathing machine resembled a wooden changing room commonly seen on beaches, but larger in size, and raised on wheels and with steps leading to the inside. The female bather would enter the small room of the machine while it was on the beach, wearing their street clothing. In the privacy of the machine, she would change into her bathing dress, which was exceedingly modest compared to today's standards, and place her street clothes into a raised compartment where they would remain dry.
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Flashlight

Archaeologists discover skeletons and gold coins in ancient bronze workshop buried during eruption of Mt. Vesuvius


Seeker
Mon, 27 Jun 2016 17:45 UTC
italy pompeii skeletons
French and Italian archaeologists excavating in Pompeii have brought to light the remains of at least four people who died trapped in the back of a workshop during Mt. Vesuvius devastating eruption.

Likely belonging to a bronze maker, the shop stood in the artisan area near Porta Ercolano, the gate that opened onto the road linking Pompeii to Herculaneum. The building was ransacked following the eruption by looters known as fossores, who tunneled in seeking treasures buried under the ashes.

As a result, the skeletons were pushed up against the wall.

"Since they were disturbed by looters, the bones are not connected. Anthropologists have yet to examine them, but we believe the skeletons may belong to four adults and a child," archaeologist Annalisa Capurso at the Archaeological Superintendency of Pompeii, told Discovery News.
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