Secret HistoryS


Info

Ancient skulls reveal 'mixed' Neanderthal-like lineage

Charles Q. Choi
Live Science
Thu, 19 Jun 2014 13:04 UTC
Hominin skull
© Javier Trueba/Madrid Scientific FilmsA hominin skull (dubbed Skull 17) from the Sima de los Huesos cave site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain.
A key first step in Neanderthal evolution may have been the development of front teeth that could act like a "third hand," researchers now say.

These new findings are based on 17 hominin skulls showing a mix of traits from Neanderthals and more primitive human lineages, dating back some 430,000 years. The specimens likely belonged to a hominin group within the Neanderthal lineage but perhaps not direct Neanderthal ancestors. (Hominins include modern humans and extinct ancestors and close relatives of the human lineage.)

The mix of traits suggests the defining features of the Neanderthal body may have evolved separately in stages instead of evolving together gradually, scientists added.

These findings also reveal that, evolutionarily speaking, "Neanderthals have very deep roots, as deep as 430,000 years," lead study author Juan-Luis Arsuaga, a paleontologist at and director of the Joint Center for Evolution and Human Behavior in Madrid, told Live Science.

"Modern humans, on the contrary, have roots only 200,000 years deep. It seems that modern humans evolved later."
Read More...
USA

American history myths debunked: White settlers did not carve America out of the untamed


Indian Country
Fri, 25 May 2012 20:07 UTC
Image
"Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor" by William Halsall, 1882 at Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts
We've spent the last six days going through Cracked.com's popular post "6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America," breaking each myth down, taking a look at their sources and adding our own. The last myth we're going to dive into is myth number two, "White Settlers Did Not Carve America Out of the Untamed Wilderness," which says the "pilgrims were the first in a parade of brave settlers who pushed civilization westward along the frontier with elbow grease and sheer grizzled-old-man strength."

That's not exactly how it happened though. Most of the information Cracked.com cites comes from 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, a book by Charles Mann, and written records from early colonial times, though they don't give any actual citations for those.
Read More...
Fireball 4

Cyclical plague: Remains of 'End of the World' epidemic found in Ancient Egypt

Owen Jarus
Live Science
Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:14 UTC
Image
© Associazione Culturale per lo Studio dell’Egitto e del Sudan
Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of an epidemic in Egypt so terrible that one ancient writer believed the world was coming to an end.

Working at the Funerary Complex of Harwa and Akhimenru in the west bank of the ancient city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor) in Egypt, the team of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor (MAIL) found bodies covered with a thick layer of lime (historically used as a disinfectant). The researchers also found three kilns where the lime was produced, as well as a giant bonfire containing human remains, where many of the plague victims were incinerated.

Pottery remains found in the kilns allowed researchers to date the grisly operation to the third century A.D., a time when a series of epidemics now dubbed the "Plague of Cyprian" ravaged the Roman Empire, which included Egypt. Saint Cyprian was a bishop of Carthage (a city in Tunisia) who described the plague as signaling the end of the world.

Occurring between roughly A.D. 250-271, the plague "according to some sources killed more than 5,000 people a day in Rome alone," wrote Francesco Tiradritti, director of the MAIL, in the latest issue of Egyptian Archaeology, a magazine published by the Egypt Exploration Society.

Comment: For a much broader perspective, you may read Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection: The Secret History of the World - Book 3 by Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk, also available here.

For more historical background, you may also read Laura Knight-Jadczyk's Comets and the Horns of Moses (The Secret History of the World, volume 2), also available here.

Read More...
Sherlock

Britain's A1 road is 10,000 years old? Evidence uncovered of Mesolithic settlement

April Holloway
AncientOrigins.net
Sun, 15 Jun 2014 20:57 UTC
A team of archaeologists, who were working alongside the A1, the longest road in Britain, were shocked to discover evidence of a Mesolithic settlement which suggests the route may have been in use for 10,000 years, according to a report in The Express. This means the route predates previous estimates that claimed an ancient route in the same location was originally built by the Romans.
Image
The A1 was built nearly a century ago and stretches 410 miles from London to Edinburgh. The earliest documented northern routes are the roads created by the Romans during the period from 43 to 410 AD, which consisted of several itinera recorded in the Antonine Itinerary. A combination of these were used by the Anglo-Saxons as the route from London to York, and together became known as Ermine Street, later known as Old North Road.

Archaeologists were carrying out excavations of a known Roman settlement along the road, ahead of plans to upgrade the junctions from 51 to 56 to motorway status, when they discovered a number of flint tools that date back to between 6,000 and 8,000 BC. They also found a small Mesolithic structure that resembled a type of shelter where they were making the flint tools. The site, near Catterick in North Yorkshire, is believed to have been used by people travelling north and south as an overnight shelter, similar to today's motorway service stations.
Read More...
Boat

New theory challenges claim Columbus' Santa Maria was shipwrecked

Mark Prigg
The Daily Mail, UK
Fri, 13 Jun 2014 11:41 UTC
Image
Christopher Columbus on Santa Maria in 1492, in a paiting by Emanuel Leutze from 1855. Experts now believe they have discovered the wreck of the ship off the coast of Haiti.
The ship that led Christopher Columbus' mission to discover America was run aground and used as accommodation before finally being burnt by natives, it has been claimed.The theory raises new questions about claims that the boat was found off the coast of Haiti by a US explorer earlier this year.

Portuguese-American historian, Manuel Rosa has spent 20 years tracing the ship.He believes the Santa Maria was purposely dragged up onto the beach of Caracol, re-christened Natividad and ordered shot side-to-side by a cannonball on January 2, 1493.

'This cannonball intentionally disabled and marooned the Santa Maria,' claims Rosa.

Comment: Columbus Day? True Legacy: Cruelty and Slavery

Read More...
Black Magic

'Dracula's tomb' discovered in Italy

Esma Çakir
Hurriyet Daily News
Fri, 13 Jun 2014 01:55 UTC
Count Dracula
© Hurriyet Daily NewsCount Vlad Tepes is also known as Vlad the Impaler.
Estonian researchers believe they may have finally discovered the whereabouts of "Dracula's" grave, which is in Italy and not the Romanian Transylvanian Alps as first thought.

The inspiration behind Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic novel Dracula is thought to be Vlad III, the 15th century Prince of Wallachia in Eastern Europe. Known posthumously as Vlad the Impaler, the ruler was known for his brand of cruelty across Europe, which included impaling his enemies.

Vlad's ultimate enemy were the Ottomans. Depictions of his endless cruelty made history books, securing his reputation as one of the biggest villains in Turkey's collective consciousness, as written by Emrah Güler of the Hürriyet Daily News in 2012. Vlad's story was also converted into a ballet last year in Turkey.

Born in 1431, Count Vlad Tepes was part of a noble family who belonged to the Order of the Dragon, a group that was founded as a means of protecting Christianity in Eastern Europe from Ottoman expansion. His father was nicknamed Dracul, meaning "Dragon," so the young Vlad became known as Dracula, or "son of Dragon."
Read More...
Palette

Did da Vinci Create a 3D 'Mona Lisa'?

Jeanna Bryner
livescience.com
Fri, 02 May 2014 04:20 UTC
mona lisa 3d
© Carbon & Hesslinger. Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa entering the next dimension. Perception, 42(8).The famous Mona Lisa painting exhibited in the Louvre museum in Paris (right), and her sister painting the Museo del Prado in Madrid (left).
Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" painting may be part of the oldest 3D artwork, say two visual scientists.

In 2012, scientists discovered that beneath layers of black paint, a seemingly insignificant "knock-off" of the "Mona Lisa" in the Museo del Prado in Madrid was in actuality very close to the original hanging in the Louvre Museum in Paris, revealing the same subject with the same mountain landscape background. That painting may have been painted by Da Vinci or possibly one of his students.

Comment: You can read the whole paper here (pdf) for more

Read More...
Chess

SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: Historical Games of the Global Elite - Interview With Eric Walberg

Sott Editors
Sott.net
Sun, 30 Mar 2014 18:00 UTC
Sott Talk Radio logo
Canadian Eric Walberg is known worldwide as a journalist specializing in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia. A graduate of University of Toronto and Cambridge in economics, he has lived in both the Soviet Union and Russia, and then Uzbekistan as a UN adviser, writer, translator and lecturer.

He is a writer for the foremost Cairo newspaper, Al Ahram and a regular contributor to Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Global Research, Al-Jazeera and Turkish Weekly.

Eric is the author of the excellent Postmodern Imperialism Geopolitics and the Great Games

This week Sott Talk Radio spoke with Eric about the truth behind modern history and the forces that have created the current global Empire under which we all live.

History buffs won't want to miss this one.

Running Time: 02:07:00

Download: MP3

Read More...
Question

Why were trousers invented?

Jessica Hullinger
Mental Floss
Thu, 12 Jun 2014 08:30 UTC
pants
© Thinkstock
These days, pants are our garment of choice. But for years, our ancestors draped themselves in tunics, robes, and gowns, until someone decided they were tired of having the wind up their skirt. So, what prompted the change? When, exactly, did two-legged trousers become a thing?

A recent archaeological discovery gives us a clue. Archaeologists Ulrike Beck and Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin excavated two ancient graves in a cemetery in Xinjiang, China and, among the remains, discovered two pairs of well-preserved woolen pants. Radiocarbon dating puts them at between 3000 and 3300 years old, making them the oldest-known pair of trousers ever discovered. This historical time period corresponds with the rise of "mobile pastoralism" in Central Asia - nomads began moving their herds across the land, and they did so on horseback. Tunics and robes weren't comfortable or conducive to long, bumpy rides - and battles - so these ancient people innovated. They created pants.
Read More...
Boat

Early neolithic farmers arrived in Europe by sea

Catherine Griffin
scienceworldreport.com
Thu, 12 Jun 2014 14:19 UTC
Image
© Modified NASA mapGenetic markers in modern populations indicate the Neolithic migrants who brought farming to Europe traveled from the Levant into Anatolia and then island hopped to Greece via Crete and then to Sicily and north into Southern Europe.
Scientists have long wondered how Neolithic people found their way to Europe. Now, researchers have turned to genetics. With the help of genetic markers, they've uncovered new clues and have found exactly how Neolithic culture first came to Europe.

Between 8,000 and 10,000 BC in the Levant, which is the region in the eastern Mediterranean that encompasses Israel and the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and part of southern Turkey, people began to domesticate wild grains. This allowed our ancient ancestors to abandon their nomadic lifestyles and instead become farmers. This transition from hunting and gathering to farming marked the end of the Paleolithic era and a transition to the Neolithic era.

These farmers, though, didn't stay in the Levant. Instead, they moved to Europe and introduced farming and genes to native Paleolithic people. Yet exactly what routes they used have long remained a mystery-at least until now.
Read More...