Secret HistoryS


Pyramid

Scan pyramids project: Cosmic rays can show us what the inside of a pyramid looks like


alphr
Sat, 07 May 2016 02:09 UTC
Cosmic rays allow us to slice through the structure of a pyramid, revealing the ancient and fine engineering at its heart.
Pyramids
© Unknown
You may have wondered what the inside of a pyramid looks like. Not the cavities and passages you see on The Mummy - the actual structure of the creation, how it was built to last all these years.

The pyramids of ancient Egypt are around 4,500 years-old. They've stood the test of time, great monuments on the landscape. Dusty gold and majestic.

Now, we can learn a little more about them thanks to cosmic rays. Archeologies have begun to utilise new technology to better refine our understanding of pyramids' internal make up.
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Bizarro Earth

The sabotage and destruction of Egypt's Ptolemaic Kingdom may have been influenced by volcanic eruptions

Andy Coghlan
New Scientist
Fri, 29 Apr 2016 00:00 UTC
ptolemaic kingdom nile
© Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty
You won't find it in history textbooks, but the Roman Empire's rise to dominance in Egypt and the Middle East may have been influenced by a series of volcanic eruptions that reduced rainfall.

These eruptions could have contributed to the sabotage and destruction of the Ptolemaic Kingdom on the Nile, paving the way for the rise of Cleopatra and the Roman Empire - and, ultimately, the modern Western world.

The Ptolemaic Kingdom ruled Egypt and North Africa in the final three centuries BC, known as the Hellenistic period. Now, teamwork between volcanologists and historians has revealed a close match in timing between volcanic eruptions and domestic unrest, revolts and uprisings that led to the kingdom's downfall.

"So far, Hellenistic history has never had any climate component," says Joseph Manning, a historian at Yale University. Bringing in the impact of climate shocks on the unfolding of history is important, he says.

"There were revolts and social unrest from 245 BC onwards, down to the mid-first century BC," Manning told the meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna, Austria, last week. "One involved the entire river valley along the Nile for 20 years."

At the heart of the unrest were starvation and famine in the Ptolemaic Kingdom, where grain harvests were critically dependent on annual flooding of fertile plains by the East African monsoon.

Comment: For more in-depth information on how the rise and fall of civilizations are linked to catastrophic earth events and how the human mind and states of collective human experience can influence such cosmic and earthly phenomena, see:

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Magnify

Monster haul of 71 million years old dinosaur fossils unearthed in Antarctic


RT
Thu, 05 May 2016 20:15 UTC
dinosaur remains in Antarctica
© The University of Queensland / Flickr
A team of international scientists has made a remarkable discovery, unearthing more than a ton of fossils and dinosaur remains in Antarctica. Some of the fossils are believed to be 71 million years old.

The team, consisting of 12 scientists from the US, Australia, and South Africa, made the discovery during a trip to James Ross Island, located near the northeastern extremity of the Antarctic Peninsula.

"[We found] things like plesiosaurs and mosasaurs - a type of marine lizard made famous by the recent film Jurassic World," Dr. Steve Salisbury from the University of Queensland, who took part in the mission, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Salisbury added that the "really great fossils" were "all shallow marine rocks, so the majority of things we found lived in the ocean."
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Magnify

Ancient Persian inscriptions may link Siddhartha Gautama, the man who became Buddha with the Persian empire

Harvey Kraft
Ancient Origins
Thu, 05 May 2016 16:43 UTC
persian manuscript Buddha
‘Buddha offers fruit to the devil’ from 14th century Persian manuscript ‘The Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh’
Dramatic evidence has revealed the presence of Siddhartha Gautama, the man who became Buddha, as far west as Persia. Family seals and records found at Persepolis, the ancient capital of the fourth Persian Emperor, Darius the Great, have been identified and associated with the names of Siddhartha Gautama and his father, Suddhodana Gautama.

The Persepolis Seals identified royals and other important personages within the Persian ruling sphere. Guatama was the name of the royal family of the Saka kingdom.

Analysis of Seals PFS 79, PFS 796 and PF 250 found among the collection of important seals in Persepolis, the Persian capital of Emperor Darius I, are purported to be the Gautama family according to an interpretation by Dr. Ranajit Pal (The Dawn of Religions in Afghanistan-Seistan-Gandhara and the Personal Seals of Gotama Buddha and Zoroaster, published in Mithras Reader: An Academic and Religious Journal of Greek, Roman and Persian Studies. Vol. III, London, 2010, pg. 62).
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Binoculars

Palestine and Israel: The Zionist Version - or what actually happened

Anthony Bellchambers
Global Research
Wed, 04 May 2016 00:00 UTC
Palestine Israel
Do you believe the Likud Zionist version of history that, in 1946-­8, out of nearly one million indigenous Arabs whose families had lived and farmed in Palestine for over a thousand years, 700,000 voluntarily abandoned their homes, farms and possessions merely because they didn't want to live next to a peaceful Jewish minority migrant community from Europe,

or

Do you believe that 3/4 million Palestinian Arabs were forced to flee for their lives, leaving everything behind, in the face of the massacre of innocent families by armed European Zionist gangs who had committed documented atrocities such as the massacre in the Arab village of Deir Yassin where 107 Palestinians were killed, including women and children—some were shot, while others died when hand grenades were thrown into their homes.
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Arrow Up

A history of the Koreas - The dangerous tone of US media

Caleb Maupin
New Eastern Outlook
Tue, 03 May 2016 01:19 UTC
Propaganda Poster
© New Eastern Outlook
Often, when people are first becoming personally acquainted with me and my political views, I will be asked point-blank: "Do you support North Korea?" I always respond, "No, I don't support North Korea. I support all of Korea."

Among average Americans and even many who consider themselves activists and leftists, there is a great deal of confusion about issues involving the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and its history. Each time there is an escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the level of confusion seems to get worse. The US media makes no effort to educate the public about why Korea is divided — and often blatantly distorts and lies about it.

Why is Korea Divided?

Prior to the Second World War, the Korean Peninsula was occupied by Japan, which carried out horrendous atrocities against the Korean people. Korean women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military.
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Yoda

Rev. Daniel Berrigan's prophetic 1973 speech on Israel: 'Her absurd generals, her military junk'

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Sun, 01 May 2016 19:39 UTC
Rev. Daniel Berrigan radical vietnam war
Rev. Daniel Berrigan in the 70s
I believe this is called a drive-by shooting. The New York Times devotes a whole page or so to an obituary of the great Daniel Berrigan, the Catholic priest who died yesterday in NY at 94. But this is paragraph 39:
After visiting the Middle East, he bluntly accused Israel of "militarism" and the "domestic repressions" of Palestinians. His remarks angered many American Jews. "Let us call this by its right name," wrote Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, himself a contentious figure among religious scholars: "old-fashioned theological anti-Semitism."
The Boston Globe, too.
Father Berrigan's involvement with politics did not end with his release from prison. He drew widespread criticism for a 1973 speech denouncing Israel.
Sadly the Times did not quote from the speech in any fair measure. Here is the NYT's coverage of Berrigan's speech to the Association of Arab University Graduates in Washington 1973. The Times article came out two months after the speech, when Jewish organizations had made it controversial, and sought to have Berrigan stripped of honors for the remarks; after they were printed in a publication of the Clergy and Laity Concerned group.

The speech was an antiwar statement that denounced Israel as a military settler state in the same moral basket as the United States, which was pursuing an imperial adventure in Vietnam.

Comment: Another great voice gone.

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Info

New geoglyph discovered in Nazca

Erin Blakemore
Smithsonian
Mon, 02 May 2016 12:01 UTC
Nazca Lines
© Yamagata UniversityThis 98-foot-long figure appears to represent an animal sticking out its tongue.
Easter Island has its iconic statues. England has Stonehenge. And Peru has its own mysterious modification to the landscape—the Nazca lines. The enormous geoglyphs were made in the desert ground around 2,000 years ago and have long been the subject of speculation. Now, Japanese researchers have discovered an entirely new geoglyph in Nazca, showing how much more there is to learn about the puzzling designs.

Masato Sakai and Jorge Olano of Yamagata University in Japan recently announced the discovery of the 98-foot-long geoglyph, which is thought to represent a mythical animal sticking out its tongue. Its makers seem to have forged it by removing stones with darker colors from the plateau surface to expose whitish ground below. They then piled up the stones to shape the image. It's in the vicinity of another geoglyph the team discovered in 2011 that shows what they characterize as "a scene of decapitation."

Imaginary animals and gory scenes may seem like strange things to encounter in the vast pampas of Peru, but they're all part of the enigma of Nazca. Archaeologists now think that the lines were part of astronomical religious rituals enacted by the pre-Columbian Nazca culture, a group of ancient indigenous Peruvians who lived as farmers and warriors on the desert plains of Peru's Rio Grande de Nasca. Since the pampas are so untouched by wind and rain, the lines they contain have remained relatively unscathed over thousands of years.
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Pyramid

Fair-haired peoples dotted ancient Egyptian population

Bridie Smith
The Sydney Morning Herald
Sun, 01 May 2016 11:42 UTC
Dr. Janet Davey
© Penny StephensForensic egyptologist Dr. Janet Davey has proved that fair-haired Egyptian mummies were natural blondes, contrary to popular belief.
Fair-haired Egyptian mummies were natural blondes, according to a Melbourne researcher who has blown open the urban myth surrounding the appearance of some of the youngest mummified Egyptians.

Forensic egyptologist Janet Davey said while the blonde locks, brows and eyelashes were hard to miss on the mummified remains of ancient Egyptian children, many egyptologists believed the hair had lightened during the mummification process.

To solve the ancient mystery, Dr Davey from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine decided to do her own experiments and called on her friend, retired industrial chemist Alan Elliott.

Mr Elliott prepared a quantity of synthetic natron, a kind of salt used in the mummification process to dry out the remains.

Dr Davey then took 16 hair samples and covered them in the salty powder for 40 days, the same amount of time the ancient Egyptians took to dry out the bodies with natron.

The hair samples selected were dark, with one grey and one fair specimen for comparison. They came from male and female donors aged four to 92.

Dr Davey also used hair with henna on it, given this was used as a dye by the ancient Egyptian embalmers including those who worked on Ramesses II following his death, aged 90.
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Map

A river once ran through the Sahara


Sceientific American
Sun, 01 May 2016 20:39 UTC
Amazon river
© CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty ImagesAerial view of the Amazon river.
No one ever says of the Sahara that a river runs through it. But somewhere between 11,700 and 5,000 years ago, one did. In full flow, it would rank 11th among the largest rivers on the earth today.* Paleoclimatologist and geochemist Charlotte Skonieczny of the French Research Institute for Exploration of the Sea and her colleagues report the evidence for the ancient channel in a recent issue of Nature Communications. The team discovered the so-called Tamanrasett River when examining microwave data collected by a Japanese satellite that had been mapping geologic features in the area. The hidden bedrock valley winds for more than 500 kilometers from the Atlas Mountains in northern Africa to the Atlantic Ocean.
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