Secret HistoryS


Question

Did a pope and an emperor team up to erase 300 years of history?

Esther Inglis-Arkell
io9
Tue, 28 Oct 2014 20:15 UTC
Erase History_1
© io9
Pope Sylvester II and Holy Roman Emperor Otto III were two powerful men and two ambitious friends. Just how ambitious? There is a (very controversial) theory that between them, they forcibly ushered in a new millennium... 300 years early.

Holy Roman Emperor Otto III was a man with a lot of power and a flair for self-aggrandizement. He had quite a bit to work with; the Holy Roman Empire was a huge amalgamation of what is now Germany, much of eastern Europe, northern Italy, and eastern France, and he was put in charge of it when he was three years old. He was crowned, famously, on Christmas day - the same day the original Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne was crowned. (More on that later.)

Like another famous person whose reign was ushered in on Christmas day, Otto was threatened by a mad king, his uncle, who coveted his power. The young boy emerged unscathed after some military maneuvers, and was returned to his mother, a Byzantine princess. She brought him up with the idea that he would civilize the barbarous kingdom she had married into.
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Question

Were ancient auditory illusions reflected in prehistoric art?


Phys.org
Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:58 UTC
Prehistoric painting
© Credit: S. WallerPrehistoric paintings of hoofed animals in a cave with thunderous reverberations located in Bhimbetka, India.
Some of mankind's earliest and most mysterious artistic achievements - including prehistoric cave paintings, canyon petroglyphs and megalithic structures such as Stonehenge - may have been inspired by the behaviors of sound waves being misinterpreted as "supernatural."

During the 168th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), to be held October 27-31, 2014 at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown Hotel, Steven J. Waller, of Rock Art Acoustics, will describe several ways virtual sound images and absorbers can appear supernatural.

"Ancient mythology explained echoes from the mouths of caves as replies from spirits, so our ancestors may have made cave paintings in response to these echoes and their belief that echo spirits inhabited rocky places such as caves or canyons," explained Waller.

Just as light reflection gives an illusion of seeing yourself duplicated in a mirror, sound waves reflecting off a surface are mathematically identical to sound waves emanating from a virtual sound source behind a reflecting plane such as a large cliff face. "This can result in an auditory illusion of somebody answering you from within the rock," Waller said.
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Map

Anomalous Native American DNA: New tests show Middle East origins?

Tara MacIsaac
Epoch Times
Sun, 26 Oct 2014 01:59 UTC
Image
© Dr. Donald YatesParticipants in Dr. Donald Yates’s Cherokee Native American DNA testing. Top Left: Karen Worstell’s grandmother Odessa Shields Cox is shown with her husband William M. Cox and Worstell’s mother, Ethel, as a baby, ca. 1922. Bottom Left: Karen Worstell. Right: Jan Franz.
The universe is full of mysteries that challenge our current knowledge. In "Beyond Science" Epoch Times collects stories about these strange phenomena to stimulate the imagination and open up previously undreamed of possibilities. Are they true? You decide.

Geneticist Dr. Donald Yates has been studying Cherokee DNA, particularly genetic markers passed on only from a mother to her children, not passed on along paternal lines. Anomalies in Native American DNA are often dismissed as signs of racial admixture after colonization, the anomalies are not attributed to the origins of Native peoples.

Yates chose to focus on the maternal line to make it easier to filter out any colonial-era admixture. It was far more common for male colonists to mate with Native American women than it was for female colonists to mate with Native American men when the Old World first met the New.
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Treasure Chest

Ancient Roman shipwreck discovered near Aeolian Islands

Jason Dearen
phys.org
Mon, 27 Oct 2014 18:53 UTC
ship that sunk during the Punic Wars
© (AP Photo/GUE, Ingemar Lundgren)In this undated photograph provided by Global Underwater Explorers, divers illuminate Greco-Roman artifacts of a ship that sunk during the Punic Wars between 218-201 B.C., in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Aeolian Island of Panarea near Italy. The technical divers, trained in Florida's labyrinth of underwater caves, descended 410 feet to the wreck site to retrieve many of the ancient artifacts.
The divers descended 410 feet (125 meters) into dark Mediterranean waters off Italy, their lights revealing the skeleton of a ship that sank thousands of years ago when Rome was a world power. A sea-crusted anchor rested on a rock. The ship's cargo lay scattered amid piles of terra cotta jars, called amphora.

Highly trained technical divers with a Florida-based group called Global Underwater Explorers - GUE for short - are helping Italian researchers to unlock an ancient shipwreck thought to date to the second Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. Able to descend hundreds of feet (meters) further than most divers, they aide the archaeologists by swimming about the wreck fetching artifacts - as no robotic submersible can.

On this dive, they swam past the large amphora used to carry wine, olive oil and other cargo on Mediterranean trade routes centuries ago - feeling as if they were transported to another time.

"It felt very much like a ghost ship awaiting the boarding of ancient mariners," said Jarrod Jablonski, one of the divers with the Florida exploration group.

Many of these divers honed their deep-water diving abilities in Florida's labyrinths of underwater caves. Now GUE provides the technical divers needed access to cargo and other artifacts from a ship thought to have sailed around 218-210 B.C. - when Rome and Carthage were fighting for naval superiority in the Mediterranean.
artifacts of a ship that sunk during the Punic Wars
© (AP Photo/GUE, Ingemar Lundgren)In this undated photograph provided by Global Underwater Explorers, divers illuminate Greco-Roman artifacts of a ship that sunk during the Punic Wars between 218-201 B.C., in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Aeolian Island of Panarea near Italy. The technical divers, trained in Florida's labyrinth of underwater caves, descended 410 feet to the wreck site to retrieve many of the ancient artifacts.
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Arrow Up

23rd Cannon recovered from Blackbeard's flagship

Jannette Pippin
JDNews
Mon, 27 Oct 2014 17:38 UTC
Image
© JDNews
One cannon was raised and another found as state underwater archaeologists closed out their latest dive at the Queen Anne's Revenge shipwreck site.

Crews were cleaning up Monday after a three-week fall dive expedition that focused on the large pile of artifacts molded together in a cement-like mass of iron and sand at the ship's midsection.

The plan was to bring up two small cannon at the uppermost layer, but that changed somewhat as work to free one of the guns from the mass revealed a new discovery.

"We were only able to bring up one of the two cannons, but we discovered another gun underneath the second one, so it all balanced out," QAR Project Director John "Billy Ray" Morris said.
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Sherlock

Astronomical find: One of the earliest Greek depictions of constellations

Joseph Castro
LiveScience
Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:26 UTC
wine cup
© John BarnesA two-handled wine cup may hold some of the earliest Greek depictions of the constellations. Here, a bull, snake, rabbit/small dog and large dog decorations.
A 2,600-year-old two-handled wine cup currently on display at the Lamia Archaeological Museum in Greece has long been thought to depict a random assortment of animals.

But the piece of ancient pottery, called a skyphos,may actually contain one of the earliest Greek depictions of the constellations, a new analysis shows.

The study researchers suggested that other ancient artistic representations of animals may also portray constellations, and hold clues to what the early Greeks knew about astronomy, said study researcher John Barnes, a classical archaeology doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri.

"If we go back and re-evaluate other animal scenes that might have been originally categorized as hunting scenes or animal friezes, then maybe we can find more [depictions of constellations] and get a greater understanding of how the ancient Greeks viewed the night sky," Barnes told Live Science.
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Eye 1

The Real Dracula: Vlad the Impaler?

Elizabeth Palermo
Live Science
Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:36 UTC
Vlad Tepes
© Credit: Public domainThis portrait of Vlad Tepes, painted in the early 16th century, hangs in the museum at Castle Ambras in Innsbruck, Austria.
Few names have cast more terror into the human heart than Dracula. The legendary vampire, created by author Bram Stoker for his 1897 novel of the same name, has inspired countless horror movies, television shows and other bloodcurdling tales of vampires.

Though Dracula may seem like a singular creation, Stoker in fact drew inspiration from a real-life man with an even more grotesque taste for blood: Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia or - as he is better known - Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Tepes), a name he earned for his favorite way of dispensing with his enemies.

Vlad III was born in 1431 in Transylvania, a mountainous region in modern-day Romania. His father was Vlad II Dracul, ruler of Wallachia, a principality located to the south of Transylvania. Vlad II was granted the surname Dracul ("dragon") after his induction into the Order of the Dragon, a Christian military order supported by the Holy Roman Emperor. [8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]

Situated between Christian Europe and the Muslim lands of the Ottoman Empire, Transylvania and Wallachia were frequently the scene of bloody battles as Ottoman forces pushed westward into Europe, and Christian Crusaders repulsed the invaders or marched eastward toward the Holy Land.

When Vlad II was called to a diplomatic meeting in 1442 with Sultan Murad II, he brought his young sons Vlad III and Radu along. But the meeting was actually a trap: All three were arrested and held hostage. The elder Vlad was released under the condition that he leave his sons behind.
Vlad the Impaler and the Turkish Envoys
© Credit: Public domainThis painting, "Vlad the Impaler and the Turkish Envoys," by Theodor Aman (1831-1891), hangs in the National Museum of Art of Romania.
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Magnify

17th-century vaults unearthed in 13th-century Irish church

Sean O'Riordan
Irish Examiner
Fri, 24 Oct 2014 19:00 UTC
Image
© Sean O’Riordan
Archaeologists working on a church in Cork have discovered three burial vaults dating back to the 1600s, pottery, and coins from that period and a 300-year-old underground central heating system copied from the Romans.

The discoveries have been made at the 1250-built St Mary's Collegiate Church in Youghal - the longest, constantly used church in the country.

Archaeologist Caroline Desmond said they moved onto the site after subsidence was noticed in the aisle. Discoveries show that in the 17th century, Youghal was a far more prosperous town than Cork and had more trade in its port.

Excavations began six weeks ago and they discovered vaults underneath the aisle.

One vault, dated February 1661, contains the remains of John Luther, an alderman of the town and his wife, Elizabeth.
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Magic Wand

Mysterious 4,000 year-old Phaistos Disk finally decoded after a century

TANN
Archeology News Network
Tue, 21 Oct 2014 00:00 UTC
Phaistos Disk
© Yves Brise/FlickrDiscovered in 1907 in the Minoan palace of Phaistos in Crete, the disk has been the subject of many an interpretation attempt. However, the small total body of text - it consists of only 241 signs on both sides, based on 45 individual signs - defies any
decisive conclusion
The decoding of the Phaistos Disk has puzzled specialists for over a century, however new findings describe the disk as "the first Minoan CD-ROM' featuring a prayer to a mother. Gareth Owens, Erasmus coordinator at the Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Crete, speaking at the TEI of Western Macedonia on Monday, said the disk is dedicated to a "mother".

"The most stable word and value is 'mother', and in particular the mother goddess of the Minoan era," said Dr. Owens. He says there is one complex of signs found in three parts of one side of the disk spelling I-QE-KU-RJA, with I-QE meaning "great lady of importance" while a key word appears to be AKKA, or "pregnant mother," according to the researcher.

One side is devoted to a pregnant woman and the other to a woman giving birth. The disk was discovered in 1908 at the palace of Phaistos, in the northeastern part of the Aegean Island of Crete.The round clay object, tentatively dated close to 1700 B.C., displays an unknown language on both sides which is carved in a circular fashion, from outside to the centre.
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Sherlock

Ancient city ruled by Genghis Khan's heirs discovered

Owen Jarus
LiveScience
Fri, 24 Oct 2014 07:56 UTC
Ancient city of Ukek
© Dmitriy KubankinArchaeologists with the Saratov Regional Museum of Local Lore have uncovered part of the ancient city of Ukek, founded by the descendents of Genghis Khan.
Remains of a 750-year-old city, founded by the descendents of Genghis Khan, have been unearthed along the Volga River in Russia.

Among the discoveries are two Christian temples one of which has stone carvings and fine ceramics.

The city's name was Ukek and it was founded just a few decades after Genghis Khan died in 1227. After the great conqueror's death his empire split apart and his grandson Batu Khan, who lived from 1205 to 1255, founded the Golden Horde (also called the Kipchak Khanate).The Golden Horde kingdom stretched from Eastern Europe to Central Asia and controlled many of the Silk Road trade routes that connected China to Medieval Europe.

This city of Ukek was built close to the khan's summer residence along the Volga River, something which helped it become prosperous. The name "Golden Horde" comes from the golden tent from which the khan was said to rule.
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