Secret HistoryS


Sherlock

Archaeologists in Croatia discovered sunken 3,500-year-old town


Xinhua News Agency
Tue, 24 Nov 2015 10:03 UTC
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© Slobodna Dalmacija
Croatian archaeologists recently announced they had discovered a 3,500-year-old sunken town and a port in the Adriatic Sea near Zadar, a southern coastal city.

"We found the remains of a large settlement and a port in the sea between the islands of Ricula and Galesnjak in the Pasman Channel last year. After radiocarbon analysis finished this month, we could say that the remains were probably built around 1500 B.C.," Mato Ilkic, head of the archaeological research team at Zadar University, told Xinhua in a telephone interview.

They unearthed various findings during two research explorations in a small part of the settlement, covering a total area of nearly two hectares, Ilkic said.

The most valuable findings were the very rare wood objects from 3,500 years ago, he said.
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Sherlock

"Dongzhi Man" - China's latest ancient human fossil find


Xinhua News Agency
Fri, 20 Nov 2015 18:14 UTC
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© XinhuaThe fossilized skull of Homo erectus discovered at the site of the grotto of Hualong, in the district of Dongzhi, in the Chinese province of Anhui.
Chinese archaeologists have discovered an "uncommonly well-preserved" fossilized skull of Homo erectus in east China, providing more valuable material in the study of the evolution and distribution of early man.

The fossil is the latest discovery from the Hualongdong archaeological site in Dongzhi County, Anhui Province, which the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) has been combing through since summer 2006.

This is proving to be another important site for Homo erectus after findings were made in Zhoukoudian, where Peking Man lived, Lantian in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Anhui's Hexian County, and Nanjing in the eastern Jiangsu Province, said Liu Wu, the IVPP researcher in charge of the excavation.

The skull at the center of this discovery, named "Dongzhi Man", was found along with an assortment of stone implements, other human teeth and bone fragments, as well as more than 6,000 bone fossils belonging to vertebrate animals including stegodon, giant tapir and giant pandas.
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Sherlock

1,700-year-old ring depicts nude cupid, the homewrecking god

Owen Jarus
LiveScience
Mon, 23 Nov 2015 13:43 UTC
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© K. Hinds and Hampshire Cultural TrustA 1,700-year-old gold ring with a stone showing Cupid carrying a torch would've been worn on the finger of a man or woman at a time when the Roman Empire controlled England.
An intricately carved gold ring containing a stone engraved with an image of Cupid — a god associated with erotic love — has been discovered near the village of Tangley in the United Kingdom.

In the engraving, Cupid (also known by his Greek name, "Eros") is shown standing completely nude while holding a torch with one hand. The ring dates back around 1,700 years, to a time when the Roman Empire controlled England. The ring was discovered by an amateur metal detectorist. Researchers who studied it say that it may have been worn by a man or a woman and is engraved with spiral designs that contain bead-shaped spheres.

The image of Cupid is engraved on a stone made of nicolo, a type of onyx that is dark at the base and bluish at the top. The image on the stone "depicts a standing naked adolescent with crossed legs, leaning on a short spiral column; the short wings which sprout from his shoulders identify him as Cupid," Sally Worrell, national finds adviser with the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and John Pearce, senior lecturer in archaeology at King's College London, wrote in an article published recently in the journal Britannia.
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Magnify

Hobbits were a separate species, ancient chompers show

Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience
Wed, 18 Nov 2015 20:45 UTC
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© Professor Peter Brown, University of New EnglandEndocasts of the skulls of a hobbit (left) and a modern human (right). Research by Dean Falk of Florida State University and colleagues has suggested features of the hobbit's skull more closely resembled that of a normal human than a microcephalic.
An ancient, 3-foot-tall (0.9 meters) human whose diminutive stature has earned it the nickname "hobbit" has puzzled evolutionary scientists since its little bones were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. Some have suggested the individual was a Homo sapien with some miniaturizing disorder.

Now, teeth from the hobbit suggest it belonged to a unique species rather than a modern human with a growth disorder. The new research also suggests hobbits may share a direct ancestor with modern humans.

The 18,000-year-old fossil remains of the hobbit were discovered in 2003. Since then, scientists have suggested that the hobbit, which had a brain about the size of a grapefruit, was a unique branch of the human lineage Homo, dubbed Homo floresiensis. However, other researchers have argued the hobbit was really a modern human with microcephaly, a condition that leads to an abnormally small head, a small body and some mental retardation.
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Mystery extinct cavemen were more diverse than Neanderthals

Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience
Mon, 16 Nov 2015 20:56 UTC
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© Bence ViolaA molar from a Denisovan individual, found in a cave in Siberia.
A mysterious extinct branch of the human family tree that once interbred with modern humans was more genetically diverse than Neanderthals, a finding that also suggests many of these early humans called Denisovans existed in what is now southern Siberia, researchers say.

In 2008, scientists unearthed a finger bone and teeth in Denisova cave in Siberia's Altai Mountains that belonged to lost relatives now known as the Denisovans (dee-NEE-soh-vens). Analysis of DNA extracted from a finger bone from a young Denisovan girl suggested they shared a common origin with Neanderthals, but were nearly as genetically distinct from Neanderthals as Neanderthals were from living people.

A deeper understanding of extinct human lineages could shed light on modern human evolution. For instance, analysis of the Denisovan genome showed that Denisovans have contributed on the order of 5 percent of their DNA to the genomes of present-day people in Oceania, and about 0.2 percent to the genomes of Native Americans and mainland Asians. These DNA contributions not only signify interbreeding between the two groups (scientists have yet to definitively call Denisovans a separate species), but also may explain the origin of some traits of living humans.
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Question

Why do humans care for the bodies of the dead?

Julie Beck
The Atlantic
Thu, 12 Nov 2015 21:52 UTC
funeral
© Albert Anker / Wikimedia
The ancient Greek Cynic philosopher Diogenes was extreme in a lot of ways. He deliberately lived on the street, and, in accordance with his teachings that people should not be embarrassed to do private things in public, was said to defecate and masturbate openly in front of others. Plato called him "a Socrates gone mad." Shocking right to the end, he told his friends that when he died, he didn't want to be buried. He wanted them to throw his body over the city wall, where it could be devoured by animals.

"What harm then can the mangling of wild beasts do me if I am without consciousness?" he asked.

What is a dead body but an empty shell?, he's asking. What does it matter what happens to it? These are also the questions that the University of California, Berkeley, history professor Thomas Laqueur asks in his new book The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains.
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Sherlock

Ancient board game discovered in looted China tomb

Owen Jarus
LiveScience
Mon, 16 Nov 2015 14:11 UTC
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© Chinese Cultural RelicsArchaeologists think this 14-face die was used to play a game called "bo" that hasn't been played in 1,500 years.
Pieces from a mysterious board game that hasn't been played for 1,500 years were discovered in a heavily looted 2,300-year-old tomb near Qingzhou City in China.

There, archaeologists found a 14-face die made of animal tooth, 21 rectangular game pieces with numbers painted on them and a broken tile which was once part of a game board. The tile when reconstructed was "decorated with two eyes, which are surrounded by cloud-and-thunder patterns," wrote the archaeologists in a report published recently in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics.

The skeleton of possibly one of the grave robbers was also discovered in a shaft made within the tomb by looters.
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Sherlock

Skeleton of burnt "witch girl" discovered in Italy

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Wed, 18 Nov 2015 18:53 UTC
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© Pontifical Institute of Archaeology
Italian archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a Medieval teenage girl who was burnt and thrown carelessly in a pit, her grave covered with heavy stone slabs.

Her burial shows she was seen as a danger even when dead, according to the archaeologists.

The skeleton was discovered at the complex of San Calocero in Albenga on the Ligurian Riviera, by a team led by scientific director Philippe Pergola, professor of topography of the Orbis Christianus Antiquus at the Pontifical Institute of Archaeology at the Vatican.

At the same location, in September 2014, the team unearthed the remains of another "witch girl," a 13-year-old female who was buried face-down.

Like other deviant burials, in which the dead were buried with a brick in the mouth, nailed or staked to the ground, or even decapitated and dismembered, both the face-down burial and the stone-covered tomb aimed at preventing the dead girls from rising from the grave.

Further analysis determined the "witch girl" who was buried face-down just suffered from scurvy, a disorder caused by an insufficient intake of vitamin C.

Comment: See also: Rare 'prone' burial in Italy attributed to a 'witch girl'

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Info

Thomas Muir: The reemergence of a forgotten father of Scottish democracy

Gerard Carruthers
The Conversation
Fri, 20 Nov 2015 12:18 UTC
Thomas Muir
© WikimediaThomas Muir, hero of 1790s political reform. Wikimedia
He was public enemy number one for his attempts to stand up for injustice. He was the subversive lawyer and political reformer that for many years was in danger of being forgotten. Yet in the 250th year since his birth, Thomas Muir has made quite a comeback. He is now being touted as the father of Scottish democracy, and could yet become an icon to rival the likes of William Wallace and Keir Hardie.

Muir ended up living the kind of boy's-own story that could inspire a Hollywood movie. He was exiled to Botany Bay for 14 years in an outrageously rigged trial in 1793. He had been prosecuted for encouraging people to read Thomas Paine, who so far as the British were concerned helped to spark both the American and French revolutions. Muir had also been instrumental in the meetings of the radicalist Society of the Friends of the People in Edinburgh, and had personally sent messages of fraternal greetings to the United Irishmen on their way to becoming a revolutionary movement.
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Arrow Down

The disgraceful history of genetic racism

Tim Crowe
The Conversation
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 23:56 UTC
Racism
© Global Research
Race in human taxonomy - the science of classifying organisms - has a long, disgraceful history.

Individuals have used race to divide and denigrate certain people while promoting their claims of superiority. Some of these individuals were, and are, respected in their time and their fields. They include philosopher and scientist Robert Boyle and sociologists like Hans Günther. Others who've been guilty include biologists like Ernst Haeckel and historians such as Henri de Boulainvilliers.

What is the history of racially based classifications of humans? And does it have any scientific validity?

Starting with Kant

The eminent philosopher Immanuel Kant was arguably the first "scientific racist". He maintained that dark-skinned Africans were "vain and stupid". He insisted that they were only capable of trifling feelings and were resistant to any form of education other than learning how to be enslaved.
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