Secret HistoryS


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How the violin got its shape

Laura Geggel
LiveScience
Wed, 08 Oct 2014 21:40 UTC
Violin
© potowizard / Shutterstock
The elegant shape of the violin evolved over a period of 400 years, largely due to the influence of four prominent families of instrument makers, a new study finds.

Researchers analyzed more than 9,000 violins, violas, cellos and double basses, and found that the shape of violins depended on the makers' family background, country of origin, the time period in which it was constructed, and how precisely the violins imitated the greats, such as the stringed instruments expertly crafted by Antonio Stradivari.

The first violins were made in Italy in the 16th century. Stradivari, one of history's most respected violin makers, lived in Cremona, in northern Italy, from 1644 to 1737. He crafted roughly 1,000 violins, including about 650 that have survived to this day.

In fact, the study found that the shape of modern violins has been disproportionately influenced by the work of Stradivari, said study researcher Daniel Chitwood, a scientist at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis.
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Ancient rhino-relatives were water-loving


Science Daily
Wed, 08 Oct 2014 23:00 UTC
Anthracobunids
© Cooper Lab, NEOMEDPictured here are two jaws from anthracobunids recovered from 48 million year old sediments next to a horse skull. The study found that anthracobunids were an ancient relative of horses, rhinos, and tapirs.
The discovery of new bones from a large land mammal that lived about 48 million years ago has led scientists to identify a new branch of mammals closely related to modern horses, rhinos, and tapirs, according to a study published October 8, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Lisa Noelle Cooper from Northeast Ohio Medical University and colleagues.

This family of large mammals, Anthracobunidae, is only known from India and Pakistan and was commonly considered to be ancestors of modern elephants and sea cows. Geographically, this was a puzzling idea, because elephants and their relatives were groups that were known from Africa, not Asia. These new fossils indicate that anthracobunids are related to the tiny tapirs that are well known from the Pakistani rocks, and that perissodactyls probably originated in Asia.

Researchers also analyzed stable isotopes and bone shape, finding that these animals most likely fed on land and were large and lumbering, but spent a considerable amount of time near water, similar to modern rhinos and tapirs. Dr. Lisa Noelle Cooper added, "Anthracobunids are just one of many lineages of vertebrates that evolved from terrestrial animals, but then left to live in a shallow water habitat and had thick bones. These thick bones probably acted like ballast to counteract body buoyancy. You can see that kind of bone structure in modern hippos, otters, penguins, and cormorants."
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Prehistoric paintings in Indonesia may be oldest cave art ever

Megan Gannon
Live Science
Wed, 08 Oct 2014 12:00 UTC
Prehistoric paintings
© Kinez RizaEuropeans may not have been the first cave artists. Some prehistoric paintings in Indonesia, such as the hand stencils shown here, could be more than 40,000 years old.
Paintings of miniature buffalos, warty pigs and human hands covering the walls and ceilings of caves in Indonesia could be among the oldest examples of cave art in the world, a new study finds.

The paintings - some of which might be more than 40,000 years old - challenge Europe's standing as the birthplace of prehistoric art.

"It was previously thought that Western Europe was the centerpiece of a 'symbolic explosion' in early human artistic activity, such as cave painting and other forms of image making, including figurative art, around 40,000 years ago," said study leader Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist at Australia's Griffith University.

"However, our findings show that cave art was made at opposite ends of the Pleistocene Eurasian world at about the same time, suggesting these practices have deeper origins - perhaps in Africa before our species left this continent and spread across the globe." [See Photos of the Stunning Cave Art from Indonesia]
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Sherlock

A second 1,300 year-old ancient village discovered in Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park

Susanna Kim
Yahoo News
Tue, 07 Oct 2014 20:09 UTC
Image
Archaeologists have uncovered a second ancient village in Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park that is 1,300 years old.

The latest basket-maker village dates between 200 A.D. and 700 A.D., based on the types of pottery found, according to Bill Reitze, the park's archaeologist. It was discovered this summer, following the first discovery last year of similar slab-lined pit-houses.

These are dwelling structures dug into the ground unique to the Southern Colorado Plateau and found throughout the park, but not often in these high concentrations, Reitze said.

Both of the large basket-maker sites are in neighboring, stabilized sand dunes less than a kilometer apart, Reitze said. The discoveries were made as part of an expansion project that has doubled the park's size after Congress passed the Petrified Forest National Park Expansion Act of 2004.
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Map error hastened Napoleon's Waterloo defeat

David Chazan
The Telegraph, UK
Mon, 06 Oct 2014 23:12 UTC
A French documentary claims Napoleon was confused on the battlefield by a mistake in the map he used to plan his strategy.

Battle of Waterloo
© Carle Cernet / BovinetThe Battle of Waterloo
A mistake in the map Napoleon Bonaparte used at Waterloo was a key factor in the 1815 defeat that crushed the French Empire and ended his military and political career.

According to a documentary broadcast on French television Monday, Napoleon was confused about the position of the Duke of Wellington's forces because of a map error of one kilometre (more than half a mile) introduced by the printer.

Consequently, he aimed his artillery at the wrong location and his cannon balls fell woefully short of the British, Prussian and Dutch lines.

The documentary-maker, Franck Ferrand, said: "Napoleon was relying on a false map for his strategy in his last battle. This explains why he mistook the lie of the land and was disoriented on the battlefield. It is certainly one of the factors that led to his defeat, although not the only one."
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Sherlock

Skeleton of possible "Witch Girl" found in Italy

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Mon, 06 Oct 2014 22:00 UTC
Witch Girl
© Stefano Roascio
An archaeological dig in northern Italy has unearthed the remains of a 13-year-old-girl buried facedown -- evidence, archaeologists say, that despite her young age, she was rejected by her community and seen as a danger even when dead.

Dubbed by Italian media as "the witch girl," the skeleton was unearthed at the complex of San Calocero in Albenga on the Ligurian Riviera, by a team of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology at the Vatican.

The site, a burial ground on which a martyr church dedicated to San Calocero was built around the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., was completely abandoned in 1593.

The prone burial, which has yet to be radiocarbon dated, is thought to date from the late antiquity or the early Middle Ages.
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Ancient nanostructures found in Ural mountains are out of place and time

Leonardo Vinti
Epoch Times
Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:02 UTC
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An Oopart (out of place artifact) is a term applied to dozens of prehistoric objects found in various places around the world that, given their level of technology, are completely at odds with their determined age based on physical, chemical, and/or geological evidence. Ooparts often are frustrating to conventional scientists and a delight to adventurous investigators and individuals interested in alternative scientific theories.

In 1991, the appearance of extremely tiny, coil-shaped artifacts found near the banks of Russia's Kozhim, Narada, and Balbanyu rivers brought about a debate that has continued to this day. These mysterious and minuscule structures suggest that there may have been a culture capable of developing nanotechnology 300,000 years ago.

These manufactured coils were initially discovered during geological research associated with the extraction of gold in the Ural mountains. These pieces include coils, spirals, shafts, and other unidentified components.
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A look back at the trial that made rape a war crime

Melissa Jeltsen
The World Post
Tue, 29 Jul 2014 23:53 UTC
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Sara Darehshori and Pierre-Richard Prosper photographed in 1997.
The task was almost unimaginable in its magnitude.

After the Rwandan genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people were slaughtered over a hundred days in 1994, the U.N. created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda with the goal of bringing the organizers of the bloodshed to justice.

The tribunal's inaugural case, led by two young U.S. prosecutors, would set a number of precedents -- but perhaps none more significant than classifying rape as a war crime.

Journalists Michele Mitchell and Nick Louvel have directed a new documentary, "The Uncondemned," that takes a powerful look back at the tribunal and the unique challenges faced by Pierre-Richard Prosper and Sara Darehshori, the lawyers who prosecuted the first genocide trial. They won their case in 1998 and made history as sexual violence was judged part of genocide for the first time.

"When people think about war crimes tribunals today, they have a vision because it's been going on for 20 years. But back then, the last time someone had attempted to do anything like that was Nuremberg," Prosper told HuffPost. "Failure literally was not an option -- too much depended on it. If we lost, what would that mean to the victims and the survivors? Their deaths were not being recognized or valued."


Comment: While we appreciate this public awareness effort, "The Unpunished" would be a more appropriate documentary yet to be made by the Western world:

- Yazidi girl tells of horrific ordeal as sex slave to Western-sponsored ISIL group

- British women run ISIS sex-slave brothels

- Netanyahu presents his 'experts' on Palestine, one of whom advocates rape as a tool of war

- Novorossiyan video testimony: Prisoners tortured in Ukrainian captivity, forced to run through mine fields, branded with swastikas

Psychopathic governments and their supporters don't care about the fact that post-World War II Nuremberg trials condemned rape as a crime against humanity. Governments must be willing to enforce international law and codes of conduct, while also supporting counseling and other services for victims, not the contrary!

For more information, see Global Pathocracy, Authoritarian Followers and the Hope of the World

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2 + 2 = 4

Divus Iulius: Discovery in Spain of 4th century glass plate depicting clean-shaven, short-haired, toga-wearing 'Jesus' baffles historians

Stephen Burgen
The Guardian
Sun, 05 Oct 2014 22:58 UTC
Artefact depicting clean-shaven Christ pre-dates 5th-century arrival of Visigoths thought to have brought Christianity to Iberia
christ glass plate
© FORVM MMXBeardless: An engraving of Jesus believed to be from the 4th Century AD has been discovered, and shows him with short curly hair and no beard, contrary to traditional depictions
The plate, which is on display in the archaeology museum in Linares in Andalusia, is one of the earliest representations of Christ.

The history of Christianity in Spain may have to be rewritten after the discovery of a glass plate depicting Christ that dates to the fourth century AD.

Christian Spain is thought to have begun in the fifth century with the arrival of the recently Christianised Visigoths from central Europe and Byzantium.

"We were afraid to say what we believed at first, because it forces us to rethink the history of Christian Spain," said Marcelo Castro, an archaeologist involved in the project that unearthed the plate from the ruins of the ancient city of Cástulo in southern Spain.

Comment: Well, well, well.

Remember folks, you heard it on SOTT.net first...

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Ancient confession found: 'We invented Jesus Christ'

Was Julius Caesar the REAL "Jesus Christ"?

SOTT Talk Radio: Who was Jesus? Examining the evidence that Christ may in fact have been Caesar!

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Blackbox

Quinhagak residents hopeful hair samples will unlock more mysteries about ancient Alaska Native ancestors

Daysha Eaton, KYUK
KTOO.org
Sun, 05 Oct 2014 04:38 UTC
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© Charles Enoch, KYUK – BethelThe Nunalleq archeological dig near Quinhagak in August, 2014.
The study answers longstanding questions about migrations of the ancient Alaska Native people, on the state's west coast and the local people hope to learn even more about their own ancestors.
"Now our future kids, grandkids, they'll be able to see what our ancestors lived, how they lived, what they used, the tools they made. All the little stories are coming alive."
The project, called Nunalleq, meaning 'old village', is located five miles outside Quinhagak. Dr. Rick Knecht is an ararchaeologist with the University of Aberdeen in Scotland who manages the dig. He says permafrost at the ancient Yup'ik village of Araliq, preserved artifacts up to 700-years-old made of wood and leather that normally would have disintegrated.

Knecht says that most sites in the Lower 48 provide just 'stones and bones', but at the Araliq site they get, "Things like utensils that people used in their daily lives. We get bentwood bowls and scoops. We get ul'us with the handles still on them. We get grass baskets for example, complete grass baskets and woven mats. We're getting things like weapons and kayak parts, masks and artwork, things that you normally just see in museums. And these all date from between about 1400 and 1600 AD."
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