Secret HistoryS


MIB

'In the Spider Web of the Secret Services': New book on how the CIA killed its own politicians and operatives during the Cold War

CIA kills
© FP 2017/ SCANPIX SWEDEN
German investigative journalist Patrik Baab and former Pentagon adviser Robert Harkavy have released a bombshell book, revealing the links between the murders of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, West German politician Uwe Barschel and former CIA director William Colby. Baab told Sputnik what their groundbreaking research has uncovered.

Baab and Harkavy's book, 'In the Spider Web of the Secret Services: Why Were Olaf Palme, Uwe Barschel and William Colby Murdered?', takes aim at the CIA's suspected involvement in the officials' deaths. Based on secret documents from seven different intelligence agencies, conversations with former agents, toxicology reports, and consultations with experts, the book seeks answers to long-standing questions about who was responsible for what have become among the most high profile political death and suspected suicide cases of the 20th century.

Speaking to Sputnik Deutschland, Baab, a renowned television journalist in his native Germany, said that there was a common thread tying all three of the officials' deaths together.

Archaeology

Archaeologists decipher symbols on 3,200-year-old stone slab telling of invasions of mysterious Trojan Sea People

Luwian script
Researchers say ancient writings could provide answer to 'one of the greatest puzzles of Mediterranean archaeology'
Ancient symbols on a 3,200-year-old stone slab have been deciphered by researchers who say they could solve "one of the greatest puzzles of Mediterranean archaeology".

The 29-metre limestone frieze, found in 1878, in what is now modern Turkey, bears the longest known hieroglyphic inscription from the Bronze Age. Only a handful of scholars worldwide, can read its ancient Luwian language.

The first translation has offered an explanation for the collapse of the Bronze Age's powerful and advanced civilizations.

The script tells how a united fleet of kingdoms from western Asia Minor raided coastal cities on the eastern Mediterranean.

It suggests they were part of a marauding seafaring confederation, which historians believe played a part in the collapse of those nascent Bronze Age civilisations.

Caesar

Roman site of Julius Caesar's assassination identified

site Caesar assassination
© Antonio Monterroso/CSICThe area of Largo di Torre Argentina where researchers believe Julius Caesar was murdered.
Researchers think they've unearthed the very spot where conspiring senators assassinated Julius Caesar on the Ides of March some 2,056 years ago.

Archaeologists from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) have pinpointed the exact spot where Roman senators stabbed Julius Caesar to death on March 14, 44 B.C., they announced yesterday. The site, located in Rome's Largo di Torre Argentina archaeological area, once housed the Curia of Pompey, a meeting place within the larger Pompey's Theater. The complex was built around 52 B.C. by Caesar's rival Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who would succumb to his own assassination in 48 B.C.

Gem

Early Bronze Age male skeleton wearing jewelry found in Turkey

Male skeleton in Turkey
© Daily Sahah
Archaeologists have uncovered a 4,500-year-old skeleton wearing jewelry from an early Bronze Age village in Turkey. The site has also revealed female skeletons were buried with weapons.

The discovery was made in the northern Turkish province of Corum, at the excavation site of the Ugurludag village of Resuloglu. The village is believed to have continued to be inhabited up to the Ottoman period.

The burial site revealed the inhabitants followed fashion trends, based on the jewellery found on their skeletons. They were found to have anklets, bracelets and necklaces.

Book

Theory says it's actually the year 1720 because the early Middle Ages were faked

Heribert Illig
© YoutubeHeribert Illig, creator of the Phantom Time Hypothesis
According to the Phantom Time Hypothesis, Charlemagne never existed, along with 297 years that were just made up.

In a world where every idea seems divisive, it can help to know there are at least a few things that the world as a whole agrees on. Time, the calendar, and the basic idea that history as we know it happened pretty much like historians say it did are just a few of those things. I mean, after all, at the very least we can all agree that the year is 2017, right?

Wrong.

According to German Historian Heribert Illig the year is actually 1720, the Gregorian calendar is a lie, and a chunk of Middle Ages was completely made up.

Attention

Newly found documents show bullet was found in JFK's limo, never reported

ford jfk
© Library of Congress / Wikimedia and AARCPresident Gerald Ford appearing at the House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, on pardoning former President Richard Nixon, Oct. 17, 1974. Letter to Ford from James M. Young, MD. (inset)
Today, a majority of Americans assume the government lied about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. New evidence seems to prove they are right.

This is the story of a bullet - a spent, misshapen, but otherwise intact, bullet - that James Young, a Navy doctor, said was found late at night, on the floor, in the back of Kennedy's limousine. He inspected it himself.

The bullet was found by two chief petty officers who, during the autopsy, were sent to retrieve any skull fragments they could find in the limousine. They came back with three pieces of bone, and the bullet. The skull fragments were reported - but not the bullet.

Years later, when reviewing a memoir he wrote in 1963, Young thought about that bullet, and tried to find some mention of it in the Warren Commission Hearings. To his dismay, he found nothing. In 2000, he wrote to President Gerald Ford to ask him about it. After all, Ford had been on the Warren Commission. But Ford said he knew nothing about it either. In 2001, two Navy historians interviewed Young who gave them a highly detailed account of the events of November 22, 1963, some of which he witnessed personally. And he mentioned the bullet.

Recently, Dr. Randy Robertson, a board member of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) came upon Young's papers at a Navy website. This was an exciting discovery.

Info

The story of King Arthur and his knights may have been created

Knight in Armour
© Csongor Döme / Getty Images‘Celtic Superhero’: King Arthur was actually created for 12th C Britons, study claims.
King Arthur, the legendary monarch who rose to the throne by pulling his sword Excalibur out of a stone and ruled Britain with the help of the knights of the round table and the wizard Merlin may not have been real after all.

Arthur's adventures have spawned countless books, and quite a few movies over the centuries; One of the most notable of these being Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which details how Arthur and his merry band of buffoons attempt to track down the goblet, battling the Knights of Ni, frenchmen and, of course, a killer rabbit in the process.

That film is just as factual as the fabled King himself, according to Miles Russell, a Senior Lecturer in Roman and Prehistoric Archaeology at Bournemouth University (BU), who believes Arthur was a fictional 'Celtic Superhero' created in the 12th century.

Archaeology

Recovering cuneiform, the world's oldest known writing

Cuniform writing
© Diego Delso/WikimediaA relief at the ancient Persian city of Persepolis (now in modern Iran), including inscriptions in cuneiform, the world's oldest form of writing.
It is a little-known piece of history that Saddam Hussein was a great fan of ancient Mesopotamian literature. His enthusiasm for epics written in cuneiform - the world's oldest known form of writing - can be seen in his own efforts at writing political romance novels and poetry. Hussein's first novel, Zabibah and the King, blended the Epic of Gilgamesh with the 1001 Nights, and was adapted into a television series and a musical.

Indeed, the Iraqi dictator was said to be so immersed in his novel-writing that he left much of the military strategising to his sons leading up to the 2003 war. He continued writing in prison, using a card table as a writing desk. This example from the modern genre of "dictator literature" provides an unusual insight into the diverse reception of cuneiform literature in the modern day.

The decipherment of cuneiform in the late 18th century, a tale of academic virtuosity and daring, revealed a "forgotten age" and challenged the traditional, biblical view of history. One scholar was even put on trial for heresy for the wonders he uncovered in the translated script.

For over 3,000 years, cuneiform was the primary language of communication throughout the Ancient Near East (roughly corresponding to the Middle East today) and into parts of the Mediterranean. The dominance of the cuneiform writing style in antiquity has led scholars to refer to it as "the script of the first half of the known history of the world". Yet it disappeared from use and understanding by 400 CE, and the processes and causes of the script's vanishing act remain somewhat enigmatic.

USA

3 mass shootings that the US government would rather you forgot - Because they were responsible for them

US government massacres
The Las Vegas shooting has been called "the deadliest shooting in US History," but there are several mass shootings from the past that have killed many more

As the death toll continued to rise from the Las Vegas shooting, media outlets were quick to call it "the deadliest shooting in U.S. History." However, that title was soon changed to "the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. History," as tales of past mass shootings on American soil were unearthed.

Here are three mass shootings in the United States with death tolls surpassing the Las Vegas shooting:

Sand Creek Massacre - Nov. 29, 1864

A horrific scene unfolded in Colorado in 1864, when a blood-thirsty army of U.S. Calvary members slaughtered over 500 peaceful Native Americans living in a village at Sand Creek. The Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes were living on land that was rightfully theirs, as was acknowledged by a treaty with the U.S. government.

Comment: And given the trajectory of the military-industrial-security-complex and apparatus currently in place, the worst, quite sadly, is probably yet to come.


Archaeology

Prehistoric humans developed sophisticated social systems to prevent inbreeding

prehistoric human remains
© José-Manuel Benito Álvarez / Wikipedia
Even 34,000 years ago, our ancestors knew having sex with their relatives was a bad idea. Analysis of ancient human remains found in Russia has revealed that even among an extremely small society, incest did not take place.

The study, led by Cambridge University and the University of Copenhagen, says prehistoric humans developed surprisingly sophisticated social and mating networks and deliberately sought partners beyond their families.

The study has led to speculation that this could partly explain why anatomically-modern humans proved more successful than other species such as Neanderthals that did not avoid inbreeding.

Researchers examined genetic remains of four anatomically-modern humans from Sunghir, an Upper Paleolithic site in Russia. Unusually for finds from this period, the people were found buried together.

To the researchers' surprise, the individuals were not closely related in genetic terms. At the very most, they were second cousins. This is true even in the case of two children who were buried head-to-head in the same grave.