Number three in our weekly series of Great Comets: The Comet of the Black Death, or Comet Negra. Hard to beat this one for dramatic impact.

The Comet of the Black Death is said to have coincided with the great plague, the "Black Death," that killed half the population of Europe from 1346 to 1350. The plague is thought to have originated in Central Asia and, transmitted by fleas on rats, been carried along the Silk Road into Europe.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicted the Black Death this way, in his 1562 painting "The Triumph of Death":
There are other theories, too, about the origin and spread of the Black Death. One says that a comet or fragments of a comet precipitated the Black Death. If you remember that scientists have said that the last Ice Age was caused by an asteroid impact, it's not much of a stretch to imagine that a piece of a comet striking the Earth could have disrupted the atmosphere enough to initiate the famines and plagues that characterized the Black Death:

"In France . . . was seen the terrible Comet called Negra. In December appeared over Avignon a Pillar of Fire. There were many great Earthquakes, Tempests, Thunders and Lightnings, and thousands of People were swallowed up; the Courses of Rivers were stopt; some Chasms of the Earth sent forth Blood. Terrible Showers of Hail, each stone weighing 1 Pound to 8; Abortions in all Countries; in Germany it rained Blood; in France Blood gushed out of the Graves of the Dead, and stained the Rivers crimson; Comets, Meteors, Fire-beams, corruscations in the Air, Mock-suns, the Heavens on Fire . . ."

A 16th century manuscript featuring an image that looks like a kangaroo could prove that Portuguese explorers discovered Australia before the first recorded European landing in 1606

A drawing of a kangaroo on a 16th century Portuguese manuscript could potentially change the world's understanding of Australia's history.

The manuscript, which is thought to date from between 1580 and 1620, appears to show a small kangaroo within the letters of its text. If the image actually is a kangaroo, the drawing suggests that Portuguese explorers may have discovered Australia before the first recorded European landing on the continent by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606.

The document, which contains text or music for a liturgical procession, was recently acquired by the Les Enluminures Galley in New York, which has valued the item at $15,000 (£9,174). It was previously in the possession of a rare book dealer in Portugal.

Laura Light, a researcher at the gallery, told Australia's The Age newspaper that "a kangaroo or wallaby in a manuscript this early is proof that the artist of this manuscript had either been in Australia, or even more interestingly, that travellers' reports and drawings of the interesting animals found in this new world were already available in Portugal."

The text also includes the image of two half-naked men wearing crowns of leaves, which researchers believe may represent Australian aborigines.

Cairo: Archaeologists in Egypt believe they have discovered the remains of a previously unknown pharaoh who reigned more than 3600 years ago.

The skeleton of King Senebkay were uncovered at South Abydos in Sohag province, about 500 kilometres south of Cairo, by a University of Pennsylvania expedition working with the government, the Egyptian antiquities ministry said.

Never before heard of in ancient Egyptian history, King Senebkay's name was found inscribed in hieroglyphics written inside a royal cartouche - an oval with a horizontal line at one end signalling a royal name, the ministry said in a statement.

Romanian archaeologists have made ​​a sensational discovery in Hunedoara County, Romania. They discovered a huge city, the oldest in Transylvania, and even older than the Egyptian pyramids.

It happens often when the romanian archeologists have the chance to recover what existed on the lands where the romanian territory is settled. What they recovered is hidden under layers of soil, but only when the authorities want to build something new there. In this case, it is the oldest town in Transylvania which was built around 4200 B.C., even before the egyptyan pyramids (2630 - 2311 B.C.). The settlement was discovered while road workers were digging to arrange Nadlac - Sibiu highway.

In our first radio show of 2014, we spoke with Robert Kirkconnell, author of American Heart of Darkness, Volume I: The Transformation of the American Republic into a Pathocracy. Robert has his own radio show, has taught high school level education for 14 years and is a decorated combat veteran who served 27 years in the U.S. Air Force.

We discussed his book and ongoing research into the astonishing transformation of the United States from a constitutional republic into a pathocracy - a country ruled by psychopaths. Why and how does a country espousing such benevolent intentions as 'spreading freedom and democracy' wind up committing such atrocious crimes against humanity?

Running Time: 02:00:00

Download: MP3

Many interesting personalities emerged during the last days of Rome's Republic, but one man stood head and shoulders above the rest. In what turned out to be our most popular radio show last year, the following SOTT Talk Radio show we did about Julius Caesar (part 2 on this subject, you can listen to part 1 here) took a deeper look at the life and times of man who was at once politician, statesman, engineer, inventor, astronomer, historian, poet, author and military general.

Caesar emerged at a time of political intrigues, civil war and rebellion. Standing for social justice, inclusive democracy and economic empowerment of the people, he sought to transform the conditions of ordinary people. But he encountered tremendous resistance from the ruling oligarchy, whose efforts to thwart him culminated in his assassination at the height of his power in 44 B.C.

Caesar's legacy is a mixed one. Was he really the tyrannical demagogue portrayed by Cicero and other contemporary historians? Or must his deeds be re-examined in light of the discovery by Francesco Carotta and others that his life and achievements were the model for the story of 'Jesus'?

Running Time: 02:25:00

Download: MP3

The recent storms that battered Ireland's countryside and coastlines unearthed a hidden gem amidst the devastation to properties and landscape.

The storms have exposed evidence of life dating back to the Neolithic period on Connemara's Omey island. Large linear archaeological deposits of up to a meter thick have been exposed on the western and northern shorelines of the tidal island off Claddaghduff.

The Irish Times reports two sets of medieval burial sites, traces of sunken dwellings and parts of a Neolithic bog which had been covered over for millennia by shifting sands, have been revealed.

Scores of skulls excavated in the heart of London have provided the first gruesome evidence of Roman head hunters operating in Britain, gathering up the heads of executed enemies or fallen gladiators from the nearby amphitheatre, and exposing them for years in open pits.

"It is not a pretty picture," Rebecca Redfern, from the centre for human bioarchaeology at the museum of London, said. "At least one of the skulls shows evidence of being chewed at by dogs, so it was still fleshed when it was lying in the open."

"They come from a peculiar area by the Walbrook stream, which was a site for burials and a centre of ritual activity - but also very much in use for more mundane pursuits. We have evidence of lots of shoe making, so you have to think of the cobbler working yards from these open pits, with the dog chewing away - really not nice."

"We believe that some of the heads may be people who were killed in the amphitheatre. Decapitation was a way of finishing off gladiators, but not everyone who died in the Roman amphitheatre was a gladiator, it was where common criminals were executed, or sometimes for entertainment you'd give two of them swords and have them kill one another. Other heads may have been brought back by soldiers from skirmishes, probably on the Hadrian or Antonine walls - again, it would have taken weeks to bring them back, so not a nice process."

The 39 skulls were excavated at London Wall almost within sight of the Museum of London in 1988, and deposited at the museum, but the scientists have only recently applied improved forensic techniques to them. Redfern and her colleague Heather Bonney, from the Earth Sciences Department of the Natural History Museum, publish their results for the first time this week in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Approximately 9,000 years ago in Anatolia, Turkey, an artist drew what could be the world's oldest known map, complete with a volcano erupting in the background. A recent discovery of lava rock from that time serves as evidence that the painting may indeed be an early example of both cartography and vulcanology.

Some archeologists interpreted the painting as a Google Earth-style layout of Çatalhöyük, a Stone Age settlement in modern-day Turkey, with Mount Hasan (Hasan Daği in Turkish) in the background. In the 3 meter-long wall painting, the twin-peaked mountain seems to be erupting. But no evidence for an eruption of Mount Hasan had been found from the right time period.

However, geologists recently found a layer of volcanic pumice on the summit of Mount Hasan that may have come from the eruption depicted in the painting. The chemical signature of the pumice suggested the volcano erupted in 6960 BC (± 640 years), the same time when thousands of humans lived in Çatalhöyük. PLOS ONE published the results of the analysis led by Earth scientists at UCLA.

Portuguese news reported the discovery of a very large under water pyramid first discovered by Diocleciano Silva between the islands of São Miguel and Terceira in the Azores of Portugal. According to claims, the structure is said to be perfectly squared and oriented by the cardinal points. Current estimates obtained using GPS digital technology put the height at 60 meters with a base of 8000 square meters. The Portuguese Hydrographic Institute of the Navy currently has the job of analyzing the data to determine whether or not the structure is man-made.

"The pyramid is perfectly shaped and apparently oriented by the cardinal points," Silva told Diário Insular, the local newspaper.

The pyramid was found in an area of the mid-Atlantic that has been underwater for about 20,000 years. Considering this is around the time of the last ice age where glaciation was melting from its peak 2000 years prior, whatever civilization, human or not, that was around before the ice age, could be responsible for building the pyramid. While the Portuguese Navy still hasn't determined the origins, many might question why this hasn't been first reported on sooner than late 2012. Certainly the NOAA who studies volcanic activity in the area of the pyramid would have discovered the pyramid through sonar imaging and so forth since the area is heavily studied due to volcanic activity. Either the NOAA hasn't yet come across it, they are hiding what they have found, or the pyramid doesn't exist. The last theory does not seem to be likely given the authenticity of the find.