Secret HistoryS


Binoculars

Archaeologists puzzled over mysterious ancient wall in Jordan

Owen Jarus
Live Science
Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:24 UTC
ancient wall jordan, khatt shebib
© Robert Bewley, Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle EastUsing aerial photography, archaeologists in Jordan have mapped a ruined wall known today as the "Khatt Shebib."
A new map of an ancient wall that extended 93 miles (150 kilometers) in Jordan has left archaeologists with a series of mysteries, including questions over when the wall was built, who built it and what its purpose was.

Known today as the "Khatt Shebib," the wall's existence was first reported in 1948, by Sir Alec Kirkbride, a British diplomat in Jordan. While traveling by airplane in Jordan, he saw a "stone wall running, for no obvious purpose, across country."

Archaeologists with the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan (AAJ) project have been investigating the remains of the wall using aerial photography. The researchers found that the wall runs north-northeast to south-southwest over a distance of 66 miles (106 km). The structure, they found, contains sections where two walls run side by side and other sections where the wall branches off.

"If we add the spurs and stretches of parallel wall, the total [wall length] may be about 150 km (93 miles)," wrote David Kennedy, a professor at the University of Western Australia, and Rebecca Banks, a research assistant at Oxford University, in a paper published recently in the journal Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie.
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UFO 2

The mystery of the Dogon tribe's advanced astronomical knowledge

Tara MacIsaac
Epoch Times
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 23:16 UTC
dogon,sirius
© Ferdinand Reus/Wikimedia CommonsLeft: Sirius A and Sirius B, shown in an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The white dwarf can be seen to the lower left. (NASA, ESA, H. Bond/STScI, M. Barstow/University of Leicester) Right: A man of Mali's Dogon tribe.
Skeptics and proponents of the ancient aliens theory have faced off for decades on the issue of the Dogon tribe's allegedly advanced astronomical knowledge.

Here's a look at some of the arguments on both sides concerning this tribe from Mali, Africa, and its purported knowledge of the motions of a star not visible on Earth without modern telescopes.

What The Dogon Are Said to Have Known

Sirius is the brightest star in the sky and had a prominent place in many ancient cultures. Sirius, which is about 8.7 light years from Earth, has a white dwarf companion star, Sirius B. Sirius B cannot be seen with the naked eye, and astronomers first guessed at its existence in the 1830s. They mathematically developed a theoretical model of its orbit around Sirius (now referred to as Sirius A) later in the 19th century.
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Question

Is agriculture the original GMO experiment?

Dr. Rita Louise
Waking Times
Thu, 18 Feb 2016 18:45 UTC
genetic engineering
When one considers the evolution of civilization, we tend to focus our attention on our major accomplishments such as the development of writing, the building of monumental structures and the wars, battles and conflicts that shaped a nation. The meteoric rise of nation-states around 6,000 years ago still confounds historians. Why did it occur? In their search, they tend to overlook the mundane things that set the stage for these rapid changes to transpire. Yet, even in the commonplace, how some of the simplest things came into being is still a mystery.

Agriculture is a defining achievement in the development of civilization. Other accomplishments, such as laws, cities and even the written language were built upon the structure that agriculture provided. For thousands of years our ancestors survived by living a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. They were omnivores and lived on a diet that included fresh meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, seed and nuts. Then about 10,000 years ago, people from remote parts of the world (Mesopotamia, China and Mexico), abandoned their foraging way of life and began cultivating crops. In cultures where agriculture became their base, civilization soon appeared. This was a remarkable change for nomadic groups that survived through hunting and gathering for hundreds of thousands of years.

Comment: For more on this topic see:

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Info

12,000-year-old ancient settlement unearthed in Jordan Valley

Enrico de Lazaro
Sci-News
Thu, 18 Feb 2016 19:25 UTC
Natufian building
© Grosman L. et alRemains of a Natufian building at NEG II: the wall of this structure is 90 cm high and is the best preserved wall excavated thus far; it is composed of 5 courses of limestone and basalt stones; the wall tilts slightly away from the structure to the northwest and two large stones mark its base at the top of the Natufian occupation level; only the western side of the structure survived, yet the contour of the curve suggests a diameter of at least 5 m.
Archaeologists excavating the Nahal Ein Gev II site in the Jordan Valley, Israel, have discovered the remains of an ancient settlement of the Natufian culture — a culture that existed from 12,500 to 9,500 BC in the Levant.

"Nahal Ein Gev II (NEG II) is located in Nahal (wadi) Ein Gev, at the middle of a perennial stream that flows west to the Sea of Galilee," said team member Dr. Leore Grosman, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

"The site is situated on a flat alluvial terrace on the right bank of a prominent meander in the streambed about 2 km east of the Sea of Galilee at the Natufian times."

At NEG II, the archaeologists found human remains, flint tools, faunal assemblage, ground stone and bone tools.

A rich art assemblage including personal ornaments, modeled limestone items and engraved bone and stone objects was retrieved from the site.

"Of the 210 personal ornaments recovered from the site, the majority are beads, mainly disc- or cylindrical-shaped," the scientists said.

"In addition to the personal ornaments, 20 complete and fragmented art objects were recovered."

"Two unique incised stone objects are worth mentioning. The first is a fragment of a limestone object decorated with a linear pattern on all three of its preserved faces. The decorative lines cover the object's entire surface. The linear patterns are slightly different on each face, but all include deeply incised curved lines overlapped by a second layer of more delicate straight lines. The depth and density of the lines suggest a three-dimensionally carved object, although the decorative approach is two-dimensional."
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Cloud Precipitation

An incredible 45-day storm turned California into a 300-mile-long sea in 1861 and it could happen again

Sean Kane
Tech Insider
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC
california 1862 flood
© A. Rosenfield
A massive 19th-century storm on the Pacific coast of the US opened up a 300-mile-long sea that stretched through much of the central part of California.

And it looks like the state is due for another mega flood.

For 45 days, from late 1861 to early 1862, it rained almost nonstop in central California. Rivers running down the Sierra Nevada mountains turned into torrents that swept entire towns away.

The storm was caused by an atmospheric river, a large concentration of water vapor that can cause devastating storms.

These storms "have the potential of hurricanes — or even more so because they go on for weeks," Lucy Jones of the US Geological Survey told NPR.

Atmospheric rivers carry concentrated channels of water vapor out of the tropics.

A famous example is the Pineapple Express, which, propelled by the jet stream, carries vapor from the waters near Hawaii all the way to the American Pacific coast, where it causes heavy storms.
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Briefcase

'Cabinet of Shame' sees the light of day: Italian govt declassifies documents related to Nazi and fascist war crimes


RT
Wed, 17 Feb 2016 17:29 UTC
A picture taken in September 1937, in Munich, shows German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (R) riding in a car with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini
© SNEP / AFPA picture taken in September 1937, in Munich, shows German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (R) riding in a car with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
The Italian government has released documents outlining fascist and Nazi war crimes committed in the country during World War II. Some of the papers are part of a "cabinet of shame" which concealed the crimes for decades.

Declassified by a parliamentary commission, the papers detail war crimes ranging from anti-Jewish persecution to massacres of civilians. In total, the crimes resulted in 15,000 deaths.

They include 695 files from the so-called "cabinet of shame," which for decades hid away original documents of war crimes inside a storeroom of the military prosecutor's headquarters, bearing the stamp "provisionally archived." Originally discovered in 1994, the cabinet kept files from the secret services, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Interior Ministry, and other offices.
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Info

7,000-year old remains found in Germany buried upright

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:59 UTC
Ancient Skeleton
© A. KotulaThe young man was buried in a vertical pit in a 8,500-year-old cemetery, one of the oldest ever found in Europe.
A Mesolithic site in Germany has revealed the 7,000-year-old remains of a young man buried there in a strange upright position.

Placed in a vertical pit, the body was fixed upright by filling the grave with sand up to the knees. The upper body was left to decay and was likely picked at by scavengers.

The unique burial was found near the village of Groß Fredenwalde, on top of a rocky hill in northeastern Germany, about 50 miles north of Berlin.

Dating back 8,500 years, the site belongs to the Mesolithic era when Europe was inhabited by hunter-gatherers who rarely stayed in one place.

Nine skeletons have been excavated so far, including five children younger than 6 years and the 8,400-year-old skeleton of a 6-month-old infant, with arms still folded across the chest.

According to Thomas Terberger, the excavation director at the Lower Saxony Department of Historic Preservation, the site was one of the first true cemeteries in Europe, used by native central European hunter-gatherers and fisherman from about 6400 B.C. to 500 B.C.

"It is evidence for a more stable way of life some 8,000 years ago," Terberger said.
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Black Magic

DARPA's dirty deeds

Jake Anderson
Activist Post
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 18:15 UTC
DARPA's hellhounds
DARPA's hellhounds
In many ways, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is the engine of the military-industrial complex, the heart at the center of the Pentagon that keeps America in constant state of weapons innovation and defense spending. Even before the attacks of September 11, 2001, DARPA kept defense contractors lining their pockets; in our post 9/11 surveillance state, DARPA sits at the nexus of corporate war profits, national security, and military innovation.

Cloaked in clandestine secrecy, DARPA has been called the "Oh God Why" branch of the Department of Defense. In the fiscal year of 2015, their requested budget was $2.91 billion, which doesn't include classified and black budgets. Even still, through Freedom of Information Act requests and intrepid journalism, some of the historical truths and future plans of this nebulous government agency have come to light in recent years.
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Info

'Hobbits' found on Flores island are not Homo sapiens


ABC News, Australia
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 02:19 UTC
Homo floresiensis
© Bobin's Peter Schouten AMHomo floresiensis or 'Hobbit' illustration.
Diminutive humans who died out on an Indonesian island some 15,000 years ago were not Homo sapiens but a different species, according to a study that dives into a fierce anthropological debate.

Fossils of Homo floresiensis, dubbed "the hobbits" due to their tiny stature, were discovered on the island of Flores in 2003.

Controversy has raged ever since as to whether they were an unknown branch of early humans or specimens of modern man deformed by disease.

The study, based on an analysis of the skull bones, shows once and for all that the pint-sized people were not Homo sapiens, according to the researchers.

Until now, academic studies have pointed in one direction or another and scientific discourse has sometimes tipped over into acrimony.

One school of thought holds that so-called Flores Man descended from the larger Homo erectus and became smaller over hundreds of generations.

The proposed process for this is called "insular dwarfing". Animals, after migrating across land bridges during periods of low sea level, wind up marooned on islands as oceans rise and their size progressively diminishes if the supply of food declines.

An adult hobbit stood one metre tall and weighed about 25 kilograms.

Similarly, Flores Island was also home to a miniature race of extinct, elephant-like creatures called Stegodon.

But other researchers argue that Homo floresiensis was in fact a modern human whose tiny size and small brain, no bigger than a grapefruit, was caused by a genetic disorder.

One suspect was dwarf cretinism, sometimes brought on by a lack of iodine. Another potential culprit was microcephaly, which shrivels not just the brain but its bony envelope. Weighing in with a new approach, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, a pair of scientists in France used high-tech tools to re-examine the layers of the "hobbit" skull.

More precisely, they looked at the remains of Liang Bua 1 (nicknamed LB1), whose cranium is the most intact of nine known specimens.
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Light Saber

Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty - window into the U.S. shadow government

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:52 UTC
Fletcher Prouty
L. Fletcher Prouty
Leroy Fletcher Prouty served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy
Some might know Fletcher Prouty through his involvement with Oliver Stone's JFK. Others may know his book on The Secret Team. Still others might know of his insights into subjects as diverse as the Gary Powers U2 incident, MKULTRA, and the Origins of Oil. Today we explore the life, the experiences and the secrets spilled by Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty.

NOTE: This is a visualization of Episode 229 of The Corbett Report podcast, first released on May 7, 2012.

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