Secret HistoryS


Eye 1

Rare documents reveal the tragic stories of those who sought official permission to not fight in the First World War

Cahal Milmo
The Independent
Thu, 23 Jan 2014 09:35 UTC
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Soldiers waving good bye to loved ones as they leave Victoria Station in 1915
One mother begged for her youngest son - the last survivor of five - to be spared the killing fields of France. A father, tortured by the thought of the loss of his three boys, is found to have taken his own life. Thousands more pleaded to be kept away from war on the grounds of belief, hardship and injury.

A little-considered aspect of the First World War was revealed today with the publication by the National Archives in Kew, west London, of documents describing the stories of those who sought official permission not to go and fight.

The records of the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal, one of dozens of bodies set up to adjudicate on applications from conscientious objectors to impoverished fathers for a military service exemption, are one of only two surviving full sets of such documents and have now been put online.

Such was the sensitive nature of the files and their potential to damage social cohesion, the government ordered the destruction of all but two sets of the papers after the war.

Of the 8,791 cases considered in Middlesex, only five per cent came from conscientious objectors, undermining the perception that many who sought not to fight were pacifists. Other reasons presented to the tribunals included illness, employment in a protected industry and likely hardship for family members.

Whatever their case, few were successful. The records show that just 26 applicants received a full exemption and 581 were allowed to remain out of the war subject to conditions.
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Info

This intricately crafted harpoon tip is 35,000 years old!

Robert T. Gonzalez
io9
Wed, 22 Jan 2014 09:02 UTC
Ancient Harpoon_1
© O'Connor et al
A harpoon tip dating to 35,000 years ago has been discovered on Timor, an island 250 miles northeast of Darwin, Australia. The ancient artifact, which was hewn from bone, is notable for its design, the complexity of which suggests humans in the region manufactured sophisticated weaponry earlier than previously believed.

Timor
© Google MapThe location of Timor, an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia.
In the January 15th issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, researchers led by Australian National University archaeologist Sue O'Connor propose that the ancient inhabitants of Timor used harpoons to hunt large fish from boats. The notion that our ancestors were equipped to make meals of ocean animals 35,000 years ago is not, in itself, surprising; in 2011, another team led by O'Connor reported the discovery of a shelter in East Timor harboring the remains of pelagic and other fish species dating to 42,000 years ago - compelling evidence that early modern humans in the region successfully practiced deep-sea fishing.
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Info

Archaeologists discover ancient death chambers used for execution, torture in Bursa, Turkey


Hurriyet Daily News
Sat, 18 Jan 2014 12:54 UTC
Dungeons
© AA photos
Archaeological excavations that have been carried out in the northwestern province of Bursa have discovered 2,300-year-old dungeons used for execution and torturing during the Bithynia Kingdom era.

Archaeologists discovered that the dungeons, which contain a "bloody well," "torture chamber" and "corridors connected to tower," used horrific execution methods.

Uludağ University Faculty of Science and Literature History of Art Department member İbrahim Yılmaz, who was on the excavation team, said within the scope of the project to reveal Bursa city walls, implemented by the Bursa Municipality, the restoration of centuries-old walls were continuing.

Yılmaz said a large part of the 3,400-meter-long walls had been revealed and the locations of "Taht-ı Kale," "Yer Kapı," "Saltanat Kapısı," "Kaplıca Kapı" and "Zindan Kapı," which are around the city walls and provide entrance to the walls, had also been determined.

Restoration in the Zindan Kapı in Alacahırka neighborhood, which is located in the last part of the walls, discovered dungeons, Yılmaz said. "Over these dungeons were houses were people were living. Considering that there were dungeons or dungeon remains might be there, we expropriated these buildings. After the houses were demolished, scientific excavations revealed remains of Bursa dungeons," he said.
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USA

Rwanda and the Scramble for Africa: Turns out the U.S. is 100% responsible for the slaughter of a million Rwandans in 1994

Ed Herman
Z Magazine
Wed, 22 Jan 2014 10:03 UTC
Book Review

Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction

By Robin Philpot. Baraka Books (Montreal, Canada), 273 pp.
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Robin Philpot's important new book Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa is an eye-opener and essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the recent history of Rwanda, ongoing U.S. and Western policy in Africa, and how efficiently the Western propaganda system works.

As in the case of the wars dismantling Yugoslavia, there is a "standard model" of what happened in Rwanda both in 1994 and in the preceding and later years, a model that puts the victorious Tutsi expatriate and Ugandan official Paul Kagame, his Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), and his Western supporters in a favorable light and the government of Rwanda, led by the Hutu Juvenal Habyarimana, in a negative light. Philpot challenges this model in all of its aspects and shows convincingly that, in a virtual miracle of systematic distortion, this version of history stands the truth on its head.

One important feature of the standard model is its portrayal of the West as a regrettably late intervener in the Rwanda struggle, with oft-cited ex-post apologies from Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright during their visits to Rwanda in 1997 and 1998 for U.S. and allied failure to intervene to prevent the massive killings in 1994.

Comment:
In fact, in succeeding years the United States and its allies supported the penetration of the RPF into the political and military structures of Rwanda, essentially pushing a major subversive force into the institutions of a victim of aggression. [...]

...the low-level RPF war was also greatly helped by the West's putting the Rwanda government under siege for its alleged human rights violations...
Does any of that sound familiar?

It's precisely what they're doing to Syria (via Qatar, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey) today, but do we really have to wait 20 years for most on the Left to figure this out?

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Ice Cube

Ancient 'Big Freeze' rapidly wiped out North American and European forests

Charles Q. Choi
Yahoo! News
Tue, 21 Jan 2014 00:00 UTC
Lake Meerfelder Maar
© UnknownLake Meerfelder Maar (Eifel, Western Germany) within the maar crater during misty weather conditions, with coring platform. The village of Meerfeld is seen in the background.
A major cold age that descended on Earth nearly 13,000 years ago is linked with a widely studied and debated mass extinction of large mammals, such as ground sloths, in North America. But the effects of this so-called "Big Freeze" weren't limited to North America: New research shows that forests throughout Europe vanished within two centuries of the onset of this frigid time.

These findings highlight the way the environment can shift drastically over the course of just a few human lifetimes, the researchers said.

The last major cold age on Earth was a 1,100-year-long chill that began more than 12,800 years ago. The period, sometimes nicknamed the "Big Freeze," is technically known as the Younger Dryas. (This era was not a glacial period, often called an ice age, but rather a cold time in the relatively warm spans between glacial periods.)

Comment: There may not have been any such 'delay'. As noted by the study's author, dating methods are unreliable, and they're rendered unreliable because of the same cause of Ice Ages:

Co(s)mic Influences in Nuclear Decay?

Study of lake in Ireland shows last ice age took just months to set in

Last Ice Age took just SIX months to arrive

The Younger Dryas Impact Event and the Cycles of Cosmic Catastrophes - Climate Scientists Awakening

The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis Revisited

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Magnify

Ten enduring mysteries of the Longyou caves

April Holloway
Ancient Origins
Tue, 21 Jan 2014 08:43 UTC
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The scale of the Longyou Grottoes is magnificent and momentous, the design was delicate and scientific, the construction was sophisticated, and the precision is indicative of superior craftsmanship.
Located near the village of Shiyan Beicun in Zhejiang province, China, lies the Longyou caves - an extensive, magnificent and rare ancient underground world considered in China as 'the ninth wonder of the ancient world'. The Longyou grottoes, which are thought to date back at least 2,000 years, represent one of the largest underground excavations of ancient times and are an enduring mystery that have perplexed experts from every discipline that has examined them. Scientists from around the world in the fields of archaeology, architecture, engineering, and geology have absolutely no idea how they were built, by whom, and why.

First discovered in 1992 by a local villager, 36 grottoes have now been discovered covering a massive 30,000 square metres. Carved into solid siltstone, each grotto descends around 30 metres underground and contains stone rooms, bridges, gutters and pools. There are pillars evenly distributed throughout the caves which are supporting the ceiling, and the walls, ceiling and stone columns are uniformly decorated with chisel marks in a series of parallel lines. Only one of the caves has been opened for tourism, chosen because of the stone carvings found inside which depict a horse, fish and bird. The Longyou caves truly are an enigma and here we will explore ten mysteries that are still unexplained despite more than two decades of research.
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Info

Carthaginians sacrificed own children, archaeologists say

Maev Kennedy
The Guardian, UK
Tue, 21 Jan 2014 12:35 UTC
Ancient Cemetary
© Josephine QuinnA tophet outside Carthage, a special part of a cemetery dedicated to the burial of infants, according to Josephine Quinn.
Just as ancient Greek and Roman propagandists insisted, the Carthaginians did kill their own infant children, burying them with sacrificed animals and ritual inscriptions in special cemeteries to give thanks for favours from the gods, according to a new study.

"This is something dismissed as black propaganda because in modern times people just didn't want to believe it," said Josephine Quinn, a lecturer in ancient history at Oxford, who is behind the study, with international colleagues, of one of the most bitterly debated questions in classical archaeology.

"But when you pull together all the evidence - archaeological, epigraphic and literary - it is overwhelming and, we believe, conclusive: they did kill their children, and on the evidence of the inscriptions, not just as an offering for future favours but fulfilling a promise that had already been made.

"This was not a common event, and it must have been among an elite because cremation was very expensive, and so was the ritual of burial. It may even have been seen as a philanthropic act for the good of the whole community."
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Question

Flashback Malta cave and missing children


Malta Star
Sun, 08 Apr 2012 09:42 UTC
Image
© Unknown. Megalithic temple of Hagar Qim still stands above the ground some 20 km to the South of Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni.
Tradition holds that before the British government sealed up several tunnels, one could walk from one end of Malta to the other underground. One of the labyrinths, discovered by excavators, is the Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni, in which excavators discovered the bones of over 33,000 people who had been sacrificed by an ancient pagan neolithic cult.National Geographic, Aug. 1940 issue, told of several school children who had disappeared without a trace in the Hypogeum.

British embassy worker Miss Lois Jessup convinced a guide to allow her to explore a 3-ft. square "burial chamber" next to the floor of the lowest room in the last [3rd] sub-level of the catacombs. He reluctantly agreed and she crawled through the passage until emerging on a cavern ledge overlooking a deep chasm. In total shock she saw a procession of TALL humanoids with white hair covering their bodies walking along another ledge about 50 feet down on the opposite wall of the chasm.

Sensing her they collectively lifted their palms in her direction at which a strong "wind" began to blow through the cavern and something big, "slippery and wet" moved past her before she left in terror to the lower room, where the guide gave her a "knowing" look. Later she returned after the 30 school children and their teacher[s] had disappeared in the same passage that she had explored, only to find a new guide who denied any knowledge of the former guides' employment there.
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Vinyl

Experts to unravel sound effects of Malta's Hypogeum Hal Saflieni

April Holloway
Ancient Origins
Tue, 21 Jan 2014 23:51 UTC
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"In addition to stimulating their more creative sides, it appears that an atmosphere of resonant sound in the frequency of 110 would have been “switching on” an area of the brain that bio-behavioural scientists believe relates to mood, empathy and social behaviour."

An international team of scientists is about to descend on Malta's Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which is believed to be the oldest prehistoric underground temple in the world. The subterranean structure is shrouded in mystery, from the discovery of elongated skulls to stories of paranormal phenomena. But the characteristic that is attracting experts from around the globe is the unique acoustic properties found within the underground chambers of the Hypogeum.

Hal Saflieni Hypogeum is a cultural property of exceptional prehistoric value, dating back approximately 5,000 years and the only known example of a subterranean structure of the Bronze Age. The 'labyrinth', as it is often called, consists of a series of elliptical chambers and alveoli of varying importance across three levels, to which access is gained by different corridors. The principal rooms distinguish themselves by their domed vaulting and by the elaborate structure of false bays inspired by the doorways and windows of contemporary terrestrial constructions.

Although not known for certain, it is believed that the hypogeum was originally used as a sanctuary, possibly for an oracle. It is for this reason that a unique chamber carved out of solid limestone and demonstrating incredible acoustic properties has been called 'the Oracle Chamber'. According to William Arthur Griffiths, who wrote 'Malta and its Recently Discovered Prehistoric Temples', a word spoken in the Oracle room is "magnified a hundredfold and is audible throughout the entire structure. The effect upon the credulous can be imagined when the oracle spoke and the words came thundering forth through the dark and mysterious place with terrifying impressiveness."
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Igloo

What caused a 10-year winter starting in AD 536?

Annalee Newitz
io9
Mon, 20 Jan 2014 11:55 UTC
Winter
© io9
A winter that lasts years isn't just a problem in Game of Thrones. Roughly 1500 years ago, our world was turned upsidown by a winter that witnesses say "never ended." Now there is scientific evidence that there really was a decade of winter.

Scholars writing in Europe and Asia at the time reported that the year 536 and the years following were bitterly cold. They described conditions that reminded them of an eclipse, and claim that the sun remained "small," with ice frosting up crops even in summer. That year and the decade following were also times of great famine, plague and war - possibly connected to the devastating harvests that left many people hungry, angry, and wandering in search of more fertile lands.

Over at New Scientist, Colin Barras has a terrific article about the scientific quest to discover whether these reports have any basis in reality. For years, scientists have studied tree rings and ice cores, looking for clues that could reveal whether the weather change was caused by a supervolcano (which have been known to cool the planet considerably).

Some promising evidence suggests there may have been a supereruption in El Salvador, which could help explain why Maya settlements nearby mysteriously stopped producing written records for a few years. But that wouldn't explain why the planet remained cold for many years. Usually a supervolcano only affects the weather for a year at most.
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