Secret HistoryS


Archaeology

500,000yo hunter-gatherer 'paradise' discovered near busy Israeli roadway


RT
Sun, 07 Jan 2018 15:40 UTC
Artifacts
© Ronen Zvulun / Reuters
A prehistoric "paradise" was unearthed near a busy Israeli highway, archaeologists have announced. Hundreds of artifacts were found at the site, which once boasted a stream and an abundance of animals for hunters.

The rare discovery was made at Jaljulia, northeast of Tel Aviv, just next to a major Israeli roadway. In an announcement made on Sunday, the Israel Antiques Authority said that they have already uncovered hundreds of flint hand axes at the site, which dates back half a million years.
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Books

Pirate paper fragments reveal Blackbeard's reading habits


RT
Sun, 07 Jan 2018 15:39 UTC
Bluebeard map
© N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
Tiny fragments of paper, recovered from the cannon of Blackbeard's flagship, have provided remarkable insight into the reading habits of one of the world's most renowned pirates.

Archeologists from North Carolina's Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR) miraculously discovered and conserved the tiny pieces of paper, something that rarely survives on a shipwreck of all places.
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Archaeology

Baia: Ancient Rome's 'sin city" at the bottom of the sea

Adrienne Bernhard
BBC News
Fri, 05 Jan 2018 22:41 UTC
ancient rome baia party
© De Agostini/G.Carfagna/Getti ImageBaia, Italy
Baia was the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire - the place where the rich and powerful came to carry out their illicit affairs.

Rome's ultra-wealthy took weekend trips here to party. Powerful statesmen built luxurious villas on its beach, with heated spas and mosaic-tiled pools where they could indulge their wildest desires. One resident even commissioned a nymphaeum - a private grotto surrounded by marble statues, dedicated solely to 'earthly pleasure'.

More than 2,000 years ago, Baia was the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire - a resort town approximately 30km from Naples on Italy's caldera-peppered west coast that catered to the whims of poets, generals and everyone in between. The great orator Cicero composed speeches from his retreat by the bay, while the poet Virgil and the naturalist Pliny maintained residences within easy reach of the rejuvenating public baths.

It was also the place where the rich and powerful came to carry out their illicit affairs.
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Dig

Mysterious Aztec stone shrine found in natural pond near Mexico's Iztaccihuatl volcano

Lara Rebello
International Business Times
Fri, 05 Jan 2018 19:50 UTC
An aerial view of the tetzacualco (shrine) after water was drained out of the lake
© Isaac Gomez/INAHAn aerial view of the tetzacualco (shrine) after water was drained out of the lake
The mirror effect of the pond gives the underwater stone shrine a 'floating' effect.

A team of archaeologists in Mexico have discovered a stone shrine in a pond that depicts the design of the universe, as imagined by ancient Aztec civilisations. The stone "tetzacualco" or sanctuary was found at Nahualac, a site at the foothills of the Iztaccihuatl volcano.

According to the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), along with the stone shrine, ceramic fragments, lithic materials, lapidaries and organic remains were found nearby, which have been associated with the Aztec rain god Tlaloc.

Archaeologists discovered artifacts associated with the Aztec rain god Tlaloc at the Nahualac site in Mexico
© Isaac Gómez/INAHArchaeologists discovered artifacts associated with the Aztec rain god Tlaloc at the Nahualac site in Mexico
The researchers have surmised that the placement of the stones is meant to portray a miniature model of the mythical universe. The placement itself creates the effect of making it seem like the stones are 'floating' on the water's surface rather than lying on the pond bed.
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Black Cat

Horror masks crafted by notorious London gangster Ronnie Kray up for auction


RT
Fri, 05 Jan 2018 16:07 UTC
Masks crafted
© eastbourneauction.com
Four papier-mâché masks, crafted by infamous mobster Ronnie Kray while a prisoner, are going up for auction. Kray and his twin brother Reggie ruled London's East End with an iron fist in the 1950s and '60s.

The Kray twins, both of whom were portrayed by Tom Hardy in the 2015 blockbuster Legend, were at the forefront of organized crime in Britain. Their gang, nicknamed 'the Firm,' was involved in armed robberies, arson and protection rackets, using the proceeds of crime to procure nightclubs. With their growing infamy, they shot to stardom, partying with the biggest celebrities of their time, including Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.

The party life came to a grisly end however when each of the twins was convicted of murder.

Hitman Jack 'the Hat' McVitie was stabbed repeatedly in the face and body by Reggie Kray, and George Cornell was shot in the head at the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel by Ronnie Kray.
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Arrow Down

Communism 'failed miserably' by its own standards

Marian L. Tupy
CAPX
Fri, 01 Sep 2017 00:00 UTC
Communist banner
© John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images
Recently, I came across a letter that Estonian Justice Minister Urmas Reinsalu sent to his Greek counterpart, Stavros Kontonis. The letter was prompted by the Greek politician's refusal to attend a conference on the crimes of communism that Reinsalu had organized and by his observation that communist rule had some "positive aspects."

After thanking Kontonis, a communist deputy for the island of Zakynthos, for responding to the invite, Reinsalu's letter recounts the crimes of communism, especially those committed by the Soviets in Estonia.

He notes that, as Justice Ministers, the two share a duty to defend human rights and asserts that it "makes no difference to a victim if he is murdered in the name of a better future for the Aryan race or because he belongs to a social class that has no place in a communist society." While I agree with much in Reinsalu's letter and assume that it will convince most people, I wonder if those kinds of arguments are convincing to self-declared communists, like Stavros Kontonis.

Comment: Societal control mechanisms, with their various facets and consequences, are human experiments in theme and variation.

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Magnify

Newly declassified docs reveal post-war British concerns with Zionist terrorists operating in Europe


Sputnik
Thu, 04 Jan 2018 17:52 UTC
king david hotel attack 1946
© AFP 2017/ IntercontinentalPicture showing destruction of King David hotel in Jerusalem housing the British headquarters after it was bombed by Irgun
The newly declassified files center around the terrorist activities of two young militants who posted explosive letters to British officials in London and attempted to bomb the Colonial Office.

Official police documents from the late 1940s released by the National Archives in Britain have shed light on the terrorist activities of the Zionist underground movement in Europe as well as the UK authorities' efforts to stamp the movement out as it sought to hold onto colonial territory in Palestine and elsewhere after the Second World War.

Of particular concern to British police and intelligence were the actions of Betty Knout and Jacob Eliav, operatives of the Stern Gang, who were arrested for the posting of letter bombs to UK high officials in London. The two were arrested on the Belgian-French border. Ms. Knout was released from prison in Mons, Belgium after just six months. A newspaper article from the time recounts an extraordinary exchange of the reporter with 22-year-old Ms. Knout, who operated under the alias of "Elizabeth Lazarus," saying she was "sorry" that the letter bombs did not reach their targets which included the one-time Chief Secretary of the British Government in Palestine.
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Info

Unknown Native American population revealed by DNA study

Stephen Fleischfresser
Cosmos Magazine
Wed, 03 Jan 2018 18:26 UTC
American Indian Inhabitants of Alaska
© Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty ImagesAmerican Indian Inhabitants of Alaska drawn in 1805 by French diplomat Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (1757-1810).
A little girl who lived 11,500 years ago has helped scientists to understand the story of human migration to North America, and revealed a previously unknown Native American population.

In 2013 the remains of two infants were found at the Upward Sun River archaeological site in the Tanana River Basin in eastern Alaska. One appeared stillborn, while the other was six-to-12 weeks old when she died.

A team of researchers led by Eske Willerslev, who holds positions at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, has now conducted genetic analysis of the DNA of the older child, named Xach'itee'aanenh t'eede gay, or Sunrise Child-girl, by the local Native community. The results, published in Nature, are surprising.

It is generally accepted that the first humans came to North America via a land bridge across the Bering Strait exposed during the last Ice Age. That's where the consensus ends. What is known is that this founding population gave rise to the two acknowledged branches of early Native Americans: the imaginatively named Northern and Southern groups.
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Cloud Precipitation

England's soggy historical place names could predict the climate future

Richard Webb
New Scientist
Tue, 19 Dec 2017 18:46 UTC
flooded english island
© SWNS/Alamy Stock PhotoIsland story: Muchelney in January 2014
Anglo-Saxon England was unusually warm and stormy. Place names coined then could hold clues to how the weather will get wetter and wilder as the climate changes

It's blowy on the B4380 to Buildwas. A keen wind whipping across the floodplain from Shrewsbury flaps a misarranged saddle bag strap against my back wheel. As I cross the river Severn at Atcham, and bend right down the back road past Wroxeter, a black cloud delivers the first dribbles of rain.

England's place names are a treasure trove of hidden history - if only we could find the key. Shrewsbury: recorded in the 10th century as Scrobbesbyrig, the name's origin is as uncertain as its pronunciation today, but possibly means "the fortified place in the scrub". Atcham: a contraction of Attingham, "the homestead of Eata's children", a puzzling reference to an obscure 7th-century saint from England's far north. Wroxeter: origin disputed, but a rare Roman place name survival, as befits the site of what was Roman Britain's fourth largest town. Buildwas: we'll get to that.

In the title of one of her books, Margaret Gelling, the doyenne of English toponymists, called place names "signposts to the past". I'm cycling the road to Buildwas because they could be signposts to the future, too.
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Bad Guys

Asbestos' deadly come-back: US corporations would rather let workers die on factory floor than pay disability claims


RT
Tue, 02 Jan 2018 11:55 UTC
asbestos
© Brendan McDermid / ReutersARCHIVE: Workers wearing Hazmat suits clean up asbestos-tainted site in New York
US corporations have been using asbestos despite evidence it causes cancer in workers, and millions of dollars are being spent on lobbying to cover this up, according to Farron Cousins, executive editor of Trial Lawyer magazine.

Asbestos has been used all over the world for more than 100 years in all types of manufacturing, from insulation to paper products. Its use in America is now back on the rise in spite of decades of evidence proving that the substance can lead to death.

After the public became aware of the deadly nature of asbestos, the US government claimed it had taken action to reduce the risk of exposure. Average Americans believe that asbestos is no longer widely used, and the product has been banned for decades. In the late 70s, new rules were drafted in the US that would limit the amount of asbestos in the country, and these rules were finalized in 1989.

A 10-year investigation resulted in more than 100,000 pages of clear evidence confirming a link between asbestos exposure and cancer.

Comment: Though banned in 50 countries, it is still sold in some brake pads, auto clutches, roofing materials, vinyl tiles and has even been found in children's crayons and makeup.

Seven deadly poisons - and a law that won't protect you

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