A representative of a mysterious treasure hunter has told the German tabloid Bild that he has discovered an underground gold cache near the Russian city of Smolensk, which was placed there as the Soviets retreated during the German onslaught in 1941.

According to his Berlin-based lawyer Mikhail Kantor, the gold-seeker "risked his life using a geo-radar to scan the environs of Smolensk" until he struck upon the cache in shaft near the village of Otnosovo, located 15 to 17 meters underground, where five or six trucks laden with 100 tons of jewelry, precious stones and bullion stand untouched.

Even assuming that the contents are generic gold bars, the market value of such a find at current prices would be over $3.4 billion.

The expert believes claims that at least seven, possibly eight trucks were packed up in a rush in July 1941 - less than a month before Smolensk was captured - from the regional department of the Soviet state bank, and sent towards Moscow. But as they crossed the river Dnieper, they came under fire from German bombers, and one or more of the trucks were destroyed.
Local eyewitnesses saw a "shower of precious coins" erupt from the trucks. Deciding they were unable to safeguard the cargo, Soviet officers burned all the paper money, and hid the precious cargo locally.

This happened some 63 years ago, but as the U.S. government has never stopped lying about it, and it's generally known only outside the United States, I'm going to treat it as news.

Here in our little U.S. bubble we've heard of a couple versions of a film called The Manchurian Candidate. We've heard of the general concept of "brainwashing" and may even associate it with something evil that the Chinese supposedly did to U.S. prisoners during the Korean War. And I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people who've heard of these things have at least a vague sense that they're bullshit.

If you didn't know, I'll break it to you right now: people cannot actually be programmed like the Manchurian candidate, which was a work of fiction. There was never the slightest evidence that China or North Korea had done any such thing. And the CIA spent decades trying to do such a thing, and finally gave up.


I'd also be willing to bet that very few people know what it was that the U.S. government promoted the myth of "brainwashing" to cover up. During the Korean War, the United States bombed virtually all of North Korea and a good bit of the South, killing millions of people. It dropped massive quantities of Napalm. It bombed dams, bridges, villages, houses. This was all-out mass-slaughter. But there was something the U.S. government didn't want known, something deemed unethical in this genocidal madness.

It's only a matter of time before we have a nearly complete genetic picture of the Neolithic in Europe, thanks to molecular archaeology, writes Dr Cristina Valdiosera.

Past human migrations have always been a subject of great interest because they tell us a story of where we come from, and who we are.

Molecular archaeology or archaeogenetics, is a new field that allows you to travel back in time and directly study the DNA of humans or animals in the archaeological record.

This has now opened the possibility to directly track ancient human migrations by analysing the genetic composition of past populations.

Among the subjects that I have been recently working on are the 'Peopling of the Americas' and the 'Neolithisation' of Europe: that is, the origin of agricultural societies. Both involve past human migrations.

The peopling of the Americas is of particular interest because this was the last mass of land on earth to be populated by humans.

But who were these people? Where did they come from? Are all Native Americans direct descendants of one single migration wave that populated the Americas only one time? Or were there several initial migration waves originating from different places?

By using the latest molecular technologies, the field of molecular archaeology has been unravelling some of the stories behind the past human migrations.

In May last year, archaeologists made the exciting announcement that a complete Ice Age skeleton had been found in an underwater cave in Tulum, Mexico. Since then, more than eight well-preserved skeletons, ranging in age from 9,000 to 13,000 years have been retrieved from cenotes in Mexico and now scientists are beginning to unravel the secrets that they hold, remaining hopeful that the bones may eventually reveal how the Americas were first populated.

El Universal reports that three skeletons were found in the Naharon cenote, Los Palmas cenote, and the Temple cenote. Out of the eight sets of human remains, at least one of the individuals is believed to have accidentally fallen in the cenote - a natural pit resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath, while at least two of the skeletons were intentionally deposited. Cenotes were later used by the ancient Maya for sacrificial offerings.

A huge ritual monument which dates from the time of Stonehenge has been discovered hidden under the bank of a nearby stone-age enclosure.

Durrington Walls, a roundish 'super-henge' has long puzzled archaeologists because one side is straight while the rest of the structure is curved.

As early as 1810, historian Richard Colt Hoare suggested that its shape had been left 'much mutilated' by centuries of agriculture.

But now ground penetrating radar has found that the straight edge is actually aligned over a row of 90 massive standing stones which once stood 15ft high, and formed a c-shaped arena which has not been seen for thousands of years.

The stone line, which curves into a c-shape towards one end, is likely to have marked a ritual procession route, and is thought to date from the same time as the sarsen circle at Stonehenge.

Talk of ancient tunnels in the Mexican city of Puebla has long been considered urban legend. But authorities have now confirmed their existence, and say the secret passageways could date back 500 years. The city hopes to turn the tunnels into an attraction.

The underground passages, which measure approximately seven meters high and three meters wide, were discovered during public works in the colonial city.

"In the urban narrative or urban legends there was word of the tunnels in Puebla, but nobody knew where they were, they had never been seen," Sergio Vergara Bermejo, manager of the Cultural Heritage and Historical Center of Puebla, told El Universal.

Recently, due to dry weather, the water level of the Shalmala river in Karnataka receded, revealing the presence of thousands of Shiva Lingas carved throughout the river bed. Because of these uncountable carvings, the place gets the name "Sahasralinga" (thousand Shiva Lingas).

Sahasralinga has become an important pilgrimage place. On the auspicious day of Mahashivaratri thousands of pilgrims visit Sahasralinga to offer their prayers to Lord Shiva. Each Lingam in the river has a matching carving of Nandi (the Bull carrier of Lord Shiva) facing it.

Shiva Lingas have been worshipped by Hindus for thousands of years. It represents divine power and energy. The worship of Shiva Linga was not confined to India only. Carvings of Shiva Lingas can be found throughout the world in nearly every ancient civilization.

Fossils from the last Ice Age, including bones of ancient mammoths and a prehistoric bison, have been found at a Carlsbad construction site where hundreds of new homes are planned.

The fossils, 50,000 to 200,000 years old, were discovered earlier this summer during grading at Carlsbad's Quarry Creek, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Work was halted while paleontologists carefully removed them.

"I said, 'Take your time, this is kind of cool,'" John Suster, the project superintendent for developer Cornerstone Communities of San Diego, told the newspaper in a story Thursday.

Archaeologists have discovered a number of ancient shipwrecks lying in mud at the site of an ancient town called Kedah Tua in Malaysia. An investigation of the wrecks may force historians to rewrite the history of South-East Asia. The ships may predate the ancient city of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, itself more than 1,000 years old, by around 2,000 years.

The wrecks were detected by ground penetrating radar, enabling the archaeologists to reveal the outlines of more than five ships buried between five and 10 meters (16 and 33 feet) underground at the Sungai Batu Archaelogical Site, near Semeling. The site appears to have been one of the oldest civilizations in the region, reports New Strait Times Online.

A 3000-year-old fragment of pottery has solved a mystery behind the movement of an ancient people of South East Asia into the Pacific.

These ancient colonisers - known as Lapita - carried with them agricultural plants derived from mainland New Guinea. However, until now there has been no evidence of an early connection between the Lapita and indigenous New Guineans.

Now, a new analysis of pottery pieces found at a site in the New Guinea Highlands reveals a connection dating back to the time before the Lapita moved into the remote Pacific.

The discovery is important because "it is suggesting on the way to the Pacific, the Austronesian-speaking people who went on to become the ancestors of Polynesians actually went on to mainland New Guinea," says study co-author Dylan Gaffney, from the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Otago.

"Until recently it was thought they bypassed New Guinea and just migrated via outlying islands but [this find] suggests the Austronesian-speaking peoples developed ties with people living in the New Guinea Highlands on their way from South-East Asia to colonise remote Oceania," Gaffney says.

The Lapita people left Southeast Asia and entered the Western Pacific 4000-3000 years ago. About 300 years later they started heading east to become the first people to settle on the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, moving later to Samoa and Tonga.

Evidence of their settlement is found in the remains of intricately patterned pottery used for rituals.

Gaffney says the study, published today in PLOS One, is based on analysis of a number of pottery sherds excavated from Wanelek in the Kaironk River valley, in the New Guinea Highlands in the 1970s.

The research team returned to the excavation site recently and, using carbon dating technology, were able to date the site of the find to around 3000 years ago. Chemical analysis of the clay and temper on the pottery also revealed its manufacturing origin.

Gaffney says three technological factors - manual tempering, red slip, and paddle and anvil technique - found on the samples were indicative of Austronesian manufacture.

Eleven of the 12 pottery fragments analysed were made from materials found in inland New Guinea and then "traded up" into the Highlands. However one piece was manufactured along the northeast coast of New Guinea.