Flipping through an illustrated manuscript from the 13th century, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Jesus loved a good fart joke. That's because the margins of these handmade devotional books were filled with imagery depicting everything from scatological humor to mythical beasts to sexually explicit satire. Though we may still get a kick out of poop jokes, we aren't used to seeing them visualized in such lurid detail, and certainly not in holy books. But in medieval Europe, before books were mass-produced and reading became a pastime for plebes, these lavish manuscripts were all the rage - if you could afford them. The educated elite hired artisans to craft these exquisitely detailed religious texts surrounded by all manner of illustrated commentary, known today as marginalia.

Kaitlin Manning, an associate at B & L Rootenberg Rare Books and Manuscripts, says part of the reason why modern viewers are so captivated by marginalia is because we expect this era to be so conservative. For example, few Monty Python fans realize that the comedy group's silly animations are direct references to artwork in illuminated manuscripts. (Illuminated simply means decorated with gold or silver foil.) "I think it's such a shock when you have this idea in your head of what medieval society was like," says Manning, "and then you see these bizarre images that make you question your assumptions." The wild mixture of illustrations is a challenge to our contemporary desire to compartmentalize topics like sex, religion, humor, and mythology.

Manning was first drawn to marginalia while studying at the Courtauld Institute in London, where she was able to work with some of the most significant illuminated-manuscript collections in the world, including those at the British Library. "I loved the idea that marginalia was such an overlooked part of the medieval experience," says Manning, "so much that up until 20 or 30 years ago, scholars were completely uninterested and wrote it off as trivial or not meaning anything."

There's a weekly trial on the Internet about who may be stealing culture from whom. Earlier this week, the defendants were Iggy Azalea and white gay men. A while back, it was Macklemore and the Harlem Shakers.

Now, we have come across a story from the Jim Crow era about cultural mimicry between people of color.

In mid-20th century America, the turban was a tool that people of color used for "confounding the color lines," writes Manan Desai, board member of the South Asian American Digital Archive.

At the time, ideas of race in America were quite literally black and white. In some places, if you could pass yourself off as something other than black, you could circumvent some amount of discrimination. People of color - both foreigners and African-Americans - employed this to their advantage. Some did it just to get by in a racist society, some to make a political statement, and others - performers and businessmen - to gain access to fame and money they wouldn't have otherwise had.

A set of mysterious, 5,000-year-old rock carvings could see the light of day again, after being buried 50 years ago to protect them from vandals.

The Cochno Stone in West Dunbartonshire bears what is considered to be the finest example of Bronze Age "cup and ring" carvings in Europe.

The stone, which measures 42ft by 26ft, was discovered by the Rev James Harvey in 1887 on farmland near what is now the Faifley housing estate on the edge of Clydebank.

It is covered in about 90 carved indentations, or "cups", and grooved spirals, along with a ringed cross and a pair of four-toed feet.

Because of the array of markings on it, the Cochno Stone has been recognised as being of national importance and designated as a scheduled monument.

"The Destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees." ~ T.H. White

Let me assure you - I do believe in God. I believe in the Divine, with a big 'D.' I believe in a vastness, which has created this Universe and others, which our human minds can hardly digest. What I don't believe in anymore is science, or religion.

Religion is nothing more than a human construct to try to explain the unexplainable. In the process it becomes political. Oh. So. Political.

Our religions institutions are now (and have been) used by the crumbling powers-that-be to divide us. We separate ourselves not just as fundamentalists, but also as 'believers' in dogma of every flavor.

Then - there's science. Truly a 'religion' in its protectionist fervor, and hell-bent on upholding the discordant, outdated, simply false projections that are supported by institutionalized information parsing. It is upheld with tactics no less pernicious than organized religious institutions.

Questioning is the most important aspect of science, and that is a direct threat to authority, and ironically scientists and the science institutions have become authorities and churches. They have become our priests of the modern era. Whatever the priest with the biology hat says must be true about life. Whatever the priest with the physics hat says must be taught as facts. . . Science is no longer serving the purpose of discovering truth. It has become the main method of control. Governments have always kept people in line by collaborating with certain institutions. It used to be organized religion, where there basically was no difference between state and religion. Now, there is no difference between science and state. Why? Because of where the funding comes from.

This 'scientific' paradigm is not meant to heal humanity, it is meant to keep it sick. It is meant to keep us as consumers - of drugs, of petro-guzzling cars, of toxic products that none of us needs. An old survey from the EPA estimates that 7.6 billion tons of industrial wastes from 60,000 businesses are generated. Most of these wastes are in the form of waste waters (97%), but they fill our air, our soil, and everything from shampoo to crayons.

* Archaeologists have Clovis arrowheads mingled with the bones of two gomphotheres in northwestern Mexico

* Gomphotheres were about the same size as modern elephants

An ancestor of the elephant once believed to have disappeared from North America before humans ever arrived there roamed the continent longer than previously thought - and was hunted by early man.

Archaeologists have discovered artifacts of the prehistoric Clovis culture mingled with the bones of two gomphotheres - an ancient ancestor of the elephant - at an archaeological site in northwestern Mexico.

The discovery suggests that the Clovis - the earliest widespread group of hunter-gatherers to inhabit North America - likely hunted and ate gomphotheres.

In a sensational find for Austrian archaeologists, aerial photographs taken two years ago on the southern outskirts of the Burgenland town of Rechnitz have revealed the existence of circular trenches dating back to the Neolithic Period.

The mysterious millennia-old sites are currently being surveyed by experts who believe they once served both as a giant calendar and a place for rituals. It appears that circa 5,000 BC there was a large circular area in a field on the southern outskirts of Rechnitz, surrounded by wooden poles. It was only after aerial photographs were taken of the district that remnants of an ancient trench system became visible.

Archaeologist Klaus Löcker told the ORF that the concentric circular trenches - some up to four metres deep - will now be made visible using magnetic measuring techniques.

When looking for a meal, prehistoric people in Africa munched on the tuberous roots of weeds such as the purple nutsedge, according to a new study of hardened plaque on samples of ancient teeth.

Researchers examined the dental buildup of 14 people buried at Al Khiday, an archeological site near the Nile River in central Sudan. The skeletons date back to between about 6,700 B.C., when prehistoric people relied on hunting and gathering, to agricultural times, at about the beginning of the first millennium B.C.

The researchers collected samples of the individuals' dental calculus, the hardened grime that forms when plaque accumulates and mineralizes on teeth. Such buildup is fairly common in prehistoric skeletons, the researchers said.

"The oral hygiene activities were not as good as they are today," lead researcher Karen Hardy, a professor of prehistoric archeology at the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain, told Live Science.

An analysis of the chemical compounds and microfossils in the dental calculus point to the purple nutsedge (Cyperus rotundus), Hardy said. In the teeth of each of the skeletons, Harder and her colleagues found starch granules that share a chemical composition with nutsedge. A close look at the granules also revealed how these people likely prepared their food: Those from the earlier time period likely ate the plant raw or lightly heated, which would have helped make the roots easier to peel.

Charama (Chhattisgarh): Chhattisgarh state department of archaeology and culture plans to seek help from Nasa and Isro for research on 10,000-year-old rock paintings depicting aliens and UFOs in Charama region in Kanker district in tribal Bastar region.

According to archaeologist JR Bhagat, these paintings have depicted aliens like those shown in Hollywood and Bollywood flicks. Located about 130km from Raipur, the caves come under village Chandeli and Gotitola.

"The findings suggest that humans in prehistoric times may have seen or imagined beings from other planets which still create curiosity among people and researchers.

Extensive research is needed for further findings. Chhattisgarh presently doesn't have any such expert who could give clarity on the subject," Bhagat told TOI.

Sparkly, gold grills aren't just for Flavor Flav; ancient Celts may have sought out flashy smiles as well. Archaeologists have unearthed a dental implant in a grave in France that dates to the third century B.C.

The implant - an iron pin that may have screwed into the gum to hold a decorative tooth in place - was found in the mouth of a skeleton in a Celtic burial site in La Chêne, France. The tooth was described in the June issue of the journal Antiquity.

Though it's not clear what the false tooth would have been made of, it was likely put in to enhance the owner's smile, said Guillaume Seguin, an archaeologist at Archeosphere in France and co-author of the study.

"In Le Chêne, the replaced tooth is a central maxillary incisor," which is one of the "most visible teeth when you speak or when you smile," Seguin told Live Science in an email. "So there, the intention was probably aesthetic."

A wall painting, dating back over 4,300 years, has been discovered in a tomb located just east of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The painting shows vivid scenes of life, including boats sailing south on the Nile River, a bird hunting trip in a marsh and a man named Perseneb who's shown with his wife and dog.

While Giza is famous for its pyramids, the site also contains fields of tombs that sprawl to the east and west of the Great Pyramid. These tombs were created for private individuals who held varying degrees of rank and power during the Old Kingdom (2649-2150 B.C.), the age when the Giza pyramids were built. [See Images of the Painting and Giza Tomb]

The new painting was discovered in 2012 by a team from the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which has been excavating these tombs since 1996.