Physical evidence that children were used as soldiers in Britain's mid-17th century civil wars has been discovered by archaeologists.

Investigations in Durham have identified the remains of up to 28 skeletons as Scottish prisoners of war including a dozen teenage soldiers, five of whom were aged 12 to 16.

They were taken prisoner after English parliamentarian forces defeated the pro-Charles II Scottish Presbyterian army at the Battle of Dunbar on 3 September, 1650.

Scientific and other investigations carried out by the Durham University show that they almost certainly died of malnutrition, disease and dysentery.

One 13-15 year old boy who may have been suffering from scurvy had infections in his leg and foot bones. A 14-15 year old appears to have been suffering from malnutrition for several years - and had had severe tooth decay and a leg infection. A 12-16 year old had leg and foot infections - and probably also suffered from rickets.

A new book traces how America discarded civil rights in the name of security during the forced internment of Japanese-American citizens—and how the policy ruined families and lives.

In early 1942, a World War I veteran named Hideo Murata went to see his local sheriff. The two were old friends, and Murata wanted to know if the stories he was hearing were true, that every person of Japanese descent living on the West Coast would be evacuated to an internment camp. Murata came bearing an "Honorary Citizen" certificate awarded for his Great War service. He showed it to his friend. The sheriff told him that the order would apply to citizens and non-citizens alike, and even war veterans. He would be evacuated with the others.

Murata said goodbye to his friend, rented a hotel room by the beach, and shot himself in the head. When his body was found, Murata was still clutching the certificate. It read: "Monterey County presents this testimonial of heartfelt gratitude, of honor and respect for your loyal and splendid service to the country in the Great War. Our flag was assaulted and you gallantly took up its defense."

Archaeologists are searching for the lost tribes of prehistoric Britain - at the bottom of the North Sea.

In a unique and ground-breaking operation, scientists plan to search for evidence of Stone Age human activity on Britain's very own 'Atlantis' - a vast prehistoric land, once located between England and southern Scandinavia, which was engulfed by rising sea levels some 7500 years ago.

The archaeologists hope to find evidence of flint tool manufacture, plant pollen and the DNA of plant and animal species used by the long-lost land's ancient inhabitants. Due to be launched later this month, the multi-million pound project is the largest of its kind ever attempted anywhere in the world and will lead to the development by British scientists of an entire range of new scientific techniques and capabilities.

Past survey work in the southern part of the North Sea has identified some of the vanished territory's original river valleys - and it is two of those now-long-drowned valleys that the scientists will target in their search.

They plan to recover ancient pollen, insects and plant and animal DNA and to use high definition survey techniques to accurately rediscover what the lost Stone Age landscape looked like, what vegetation flourished there and how humans impacted on and used the environment.

The project will reveal, for the very first time, the culture and lifestyle of the dozens of generations of prehistoric Brits who flourished there for 6000 years until it finally disappeared beneath the waves in the mid sixth millennium BC.

This real British Atlantis originally covered some 100,000 square miles of what is now the North Sea (a long-lost territory around the size of modern Britain). However, following the end of the Ice Age, thousands of cubic miles of sub-Arctic ice started to melt and sea levels began to rise worldwide. The major period of ice melt and consequent sea level rise, that specifically affected the southern part of the North Sea region, occurred between 8000 BC and 6000BC.

Scholars believe a copy of the Koran held in England may be even older than the Prophet Muhammad.

Carbon dating of a fragment from a Koran stored at a Birmingham library suggests that the book was produced between 568 and 545 A.D., said scientists at the University of Oxford, but Islamic scholars generally believe Muhammad lived between 570 and 632 A.D.

If the carbon dating is accurate, the Koran was made before the first formal text was assembled on orders from the caliph Uthman in 653 — and it could date from Muhammad's childhood or even before his birth, reported The Times of London.

That's comparable to the discovery of gospel sayings dating from Jesus Christ's infancy, academics say.

Muslim scholars strongly dispute the findings, which contradict most accounts of the prophet's life, but some historians say evidence was mounting that traditional accounts of Islam's origins are unreliable.

"It destabilizes, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged — and that in turn has implications for the historicity of Mohammed and the Companions [his followers]," said Tim Holland, the author of In The Shadow of the Sword.

Other very old Korans suggest that holy verses circulated in written form before Muhammad's death.

Practically every week, a new Western journalist proclaims the beginning of a "new cold war" between Washington and Moscow, referring to US/NATO muscle flexing on Russia's borders and the growing hostility toward Russia in the West, Canadian historian Professor Michael Jabara Carley of the University of Montreal points out, adding that the phenomenon has long history.

"The Cold War, I would remind readers, started in November 1917 when the Bolsheviks took power in Russia... Undiscouraged and terrified of a socialist revolution in Russia, the so-called Entente [Great Britain and France] tossed fat rolls of banknotes to anyone who said he would fight the Soviets. The Entente sent its own forces to the four distant corners of Russia to do the job themselves. This was the 'Allied' intervention which continued until the beginning of 1921 in the west and until 1922 in Eastern Siberia," Professor Carley elaborated.

"The same old gang" — the US, France, and Britain — was behind "Sovietophobia." However, unfortunately for Western elites their soldiers refused to fight a new war against Soviet Russia after the disastrous First World War. The West's intervention in Russia ended ingloriously.

A submerged ancient city, found in Greece by an international team of archeologists, dates back to the 3rd millennium B.C.

Though the ruins were found underwater back in 2014 as a team of archeologists from the University of Geneva was undergoing diving training in Kiladha Bay in the Argolic Gulf, the actual age of the city was undetermined until now, Le Parisien reported.

The group of Swiss and Greek researchers returned to the site in 2015 to explore the remnants of stone buildings of differing shapes, fort walls and paved surfaces which they believe to be streets.

They have determined that the buildings match the type built in the Greek Bronze Age, and the defensive walls and towers are of a "massive nature, unknown in Greece until now," Swiss archeologist Julien Beck, the leader of the research group, told Spero News.

"The chances of finding such walls under water are extremely low," he added. "The full size of the facility is not yet known."

By now the scientists have pulled up about 6,000 of artifacts from the site that adds to the network of Bronze Age coastal settlements in the Argolic Gulf. The researchers hope the discovery will help them to find out more about trade, shipping and day-to-day life of the period.

The recent spat between North and South Korea - sparked after two South Korean soldiers were severely wounded by landmines in the demilitarized zone - has been settled, but the 60 years-long stand-off clearly remains as volatile as ever. My ancestors are from 'North' Korea, but they emigrated to the Far East of Russia when there was no 'North' nor 'South' Korea, only Korea. My grandfather, who fought in the Korean War, was thus Russian though ethnic Korean. He was made Major-General of the DPRK Army towards the end of the war. His family, including my mother, lived in Pyongyang from 1947 until 1958, except for three years from 1951 when they took shelter in the Russian consulate in Manchuria.

My grandmother taught Russian at the Korean Russian Association. She was also an accountant at the Red Cross in Korea. My mother attended school in Pyongyang and at the Russian consulate in Manchuria. My grandfather was made commander of the tank division when its former commander (who was my grandfather's friend) died. In the front line, he fought with the 17th battalion division, and was awarded with a number of medals and orders of merit from the USSR, Korea and Mongolia.

While it was easy then, just as it is today, to ascribe Korea's frozen civil war to differences in ideology and regional ethnic tensions, the giant elephant in the room was - and still is - the enormous American military presence in South Korea. On June 27, 2003, an International War Crimes Tribunal in New York unanimously found the U.S. government and military guilty of 19 counts of war crimes committed against Korea from 1945 until 2001. Judges from 17 different countries heard Korean victims - represented by delegations from South Korea, Japan, Canada, Germany and the US. The US State Department refused visas to a delegation of 11 lawyers bringing evidence from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, or 'north' Korea). Despite the absence of the 'North' Korean delegation, the accumulated evidence was overwhelming.

The Nazi gold train that made headlines last week could contain the legendary Amber Room, presented to Tsar Peter the Great by the King of Prussia, according to British author and journalist Tom Bower. Meanwhile, the Polish have lawyered up, staking a claim to the finds.

The story of the train, lost to the world for 70 years, does seem to be real, according to official Polish claims, which follow reports by two treasure hunters. The authorities have warned foragers to steer clear, claiming there is a possibility the train could be booby-trapped. Not only the fortune seekers, but the Polish authorities as well, have been on the hunt for the legendary treasure for decades.

However, the find's authenticity remains in dispute. Despite wide accusations that last week's claim was a hoax, Piotr Zuchowski, head of national heritage at Poland's Culture Ministry, said he has seen a geo-radar image of what is claimed to be the discovered train. As shown in the picture, it would be more than 100 meters long. The data was presented by the lawyers of the two men who say they found it.

Local tales claim that the train vanished near Ksiaz castle, about two miles south-east of Walbrzych.

But the discovery - which already has everyone excited at the prospect of finding gold, gems and precious metal ores worth an estimated $385 million - could contain an even bigger prize, according to Tom Bower, a prominent British investigative journalist and author of several books, including Nazi Gold: the Full Story of the Fifty-Year Swiss-Nazi Conspiracy to Steal. He is particularly known for a series of investigations into WWII topics, as well as his unauthorized biographies.

Speaking to Sky News, Bower expressed hopes that the room, which was comprised entirely of intricate amber designs, but looted by the Nazis during WWII, could be hiding inside the train. The chamber was decorated with amber panels, complete with gold ornaments and mirrors. A meticulously-restored replica unveiled in 2003 is currently housed in its rightful home - Catherine the Great's palace in Tsarskoye Selo, south of the city of St. Petersburg.

A unique discovery has been made in Georgia that experts believe could change world history.

An unidentified piece of writing found by an archaeological expedition from Georgia's State University at Grakliani Hill, in the eastern Kaspi region, confirmed the existence of the written language on Georgian territory 2,700 years ago.

The archaeologists said the writing had no analogue and it would become "an extremely interesting piece" for foreign scientists and explorers.

The writing was inscribed on the wall of the 7th Century BC temple dedicated to a fertility goddess.

"The discovery is very likely to change Georgian history and will seriously attract international interest," said Georgia's Minister of Culture Mikheil Giorgadze.
He added an outdoor museum would soon be built at the site to allow visitors to observe artifacts and archeological excavations.

Georgia's Minister of Culture says an outdoor museum will be built at the site. Photo by TSU.

Head of the Institute of Archaeology of Georgia's State University, Vakhtang Licheli, said through the "excellent discovery", Georgia was among the elite civilizations that enjoyed their written languages thousands of years ago.

Five years ago, the news broke that premier cuneiform scholar Dr. Irving Finkel, Deputy Keeper of Middle East at the British Museum, had translated a new account of the ancient Babylonian Flood Story on a clay tablet from 1,750 B.C. and found directions for making a round ark. There are multiple versions of the deluge myth in the ancient Near East. One features Ziusudra, King of Sumer, as the Noah figure and is found on a single tablet from the 17th century B.C. excavated in Nippur, Iraq. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of Utnapishtim who was tasked by the god Enki-Ea to build a boat that would save his family, craftsmen, plants and animals from the flood the other gods were sending to destroy humanity. The earliest surviving Gilgamesh tablets date to the 18th century B.C. The Akkadian version is named after its hero, Atra-Hasis, and is found on fragments of tablets also dating back to the 18th century B.C. The Flood Story on the tablet recently translated by Dr. Finkel is the Akkadian Atra-Hasis version.