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Stone Age hunters brought home the bacon

Domesticated Pig
© Getty ImagesAbout 6,600 years ago the Ertebølle Mesolithic hunter-gatherers acquired domesticated pigs.
Stone Age hunter-gatherers in Europe may have been trading with settled farmers as long as 7,000 years ago -- acquiring pigs to supplement their hauls of wild boar, scientists said Tuesday.

A study in the journal Nature Communications claims to provide the first evidence of live animal trade between the indigenous, nomadic Ertebolle hunters of northern Europe and more advanced, settled farmers who originally came from the Fertile Crescent -- today's Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

"Hunters and farmers were not only acquainted with each other but even traded live animals," said a statement from Germany's Kiel University, which contributed to the study.

Cult

Was New Age guru Terence McKenna a U.S. government agent?

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This explosive audio clip that was just brought to my attention today by "Scott" reveals, in Terence McKenna's own words, that he was in fact an agent.

The audio clip comes from Dec. 1994 from his lecture at the Esalen Institute, which may be found below in full.

As I wrote on August 28, 2012, in my article: 'How Darwin, Huxley, and the Esalen Institute launched the 2012 and psychedelic revolutions - and began one of the largest mind control operations in history: Some brief notes'. (Here I've added most of the pertinent quotes from Mckenna's True Hallucinations):

Bulb

1,600-year-old goblet shows that the Romans were nanotechnology pioneers

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Researchers have finally found out why the jade-green cup appears red when lit from behind

The colorful secret of a 1,600-year-old Roman chalice at the British Museum is the key to a super­sensitive new technology that might help diagnose human disease or pinpoint biohazards at security checkpoints.

The glass chalice, known as the Lycurgus Cup because it bears a scene involving King Lycurgus of Thrace, appears jade green when lit from the front but blood-red when lit from behind - a property that puzzled scientists for decades after the museum acquired the cup in the 1950s. The mystery wasn't solved until 1990, when researchers in England scrutinized broken fragments under a microscope and discovered that the Roman artisans were nanotechnology pioneers: They'd impregnated the glass with particles of silver and gold, ground down until they were as small as 50 nanometers in diameter, less than one-thousandth the size of a grain of table salt. The exact mixture of the precious metals suggests the Romans knew what they were doing - "an amazing feat," says one of the researchers, archaeologist Ian Freestone of University College London.

The ancient nanotech works something like this: When hit with light, electrons belonging to the metal flecks vibrate in ways that alter the color depending on the observer's position. Gang Logan Liu, an engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has long focused on using nanotechnology to diagnose disease, and his colleagues realized that this effect offered untapped potential. "The Romans knew how to make and use nanoparticles for beautiful art," Liu says. "We wanted to see if this could have scientific applications."

Che Guevara

Julien Lahaut assassination: Belgium Communist leader's murder to finally be investigated after 6 decades of state silence

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Julien Lahaut, who would have been the first President of liberated Belgium until the Nazi-supporting Royals retook the throne.
The story goes that when Prince Baudouin took the oath to succeed his father after years of tumult over the monarchy, Communist leader Julien Lahaut shouted from the crowd: "Long Live the Republic!"

A week later, two men turned up at Lahaut's door in Belgium's coal and steel heartland and shot him four times with a Colt 45 revolver at point blank range. The killers sped away by car into the gathering darkness and were never caught.

If ever a murder had the hallmarks of a political assassination, the August 1950 slaying was it. But, who was behind it? And why? It's a murder mystery swallowed up in the fog of Cold War politics. Now, 62 years later, the Belgian government has approved fresh funds to solve the crime, convinced the moral implications echo down to this day.

The probe is part of a historical reckoning in which Belgium is revisiting several buried crimes, citing a "duty to remember." They include the involvement of authorities in the persecution of Jews during the Nazi era and government links to the assassination of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba in 1961.

Comment: Operation Gladio: State-Sponsored Terror [VIDEO]


Info

Unearthed ancient Roman structure predates invention of mortar

Ancient Monument
© Marcello Mogetta University of Michigan archeologists digging in Italy have unearthed a grand structure unlike anything the Romans were known to be building at the time. Dating back 300 years before the Coliseum, the football-field-sized monument contains two terraces connected by a grand staircase, a massive stone retaining wall and geometrically patterned floors.
Archaeologists digging at a long-buried city in Italy have unearthed a massive stone monument dating back at least 300 years before the Colosseum and 100 years before the invention of mortar. The new discovery indicates that the ancient Romans had developed architectural skills much earlier than previously believed.

The team of 60 researchers, including 35 undergraduates and 15 graduates, from the University of Michigan and Yale University were on hand this summer to work at the site. The excavation of the city is expected to continue through 2014, but with the new discovery under their belt, the archaeologists are hoping the $2 million U-M Museum of Archaeology-funded project will be extended.

The unearthed ancient structure was found at a site known as Gabii, which sits just east of Rome. The monument, a giant "Lego-like" stone block structure, is about half the size of a football field and dates back to between 350 and 250 BC. Nicola Terrenato, a U-M classics professor and lead scientist on the project, believes it could be the earliest public building ever discovered and said this is the largest American dig in Italy in the past half century.

Sherlock

The greatest mystery of the Inca Empire was its strange economy

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Inca Empire was the largest South America had ever known. Rich in foodstuffs, textiles, gold, and coca, the Inca were masters of city building but nevertheless had no money. In fact, they had no marketplaces at all.

Centered in Peru, Inca territory stretched across the Andes' mountain tops and down to the shoreline, incorporating lands from today's Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Peru - all connected by a vast highway system whose complexity rivaled any in the Old World. The Inca Empire may be the only advanced civilization in history to have no class of traders, and no commerce of any kind within its boundaries. How did they do it?
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Many aspects of Incan life remain mysterious, in part because our accounts of Incan life come from the Spanish invaders who effectively wiped them out. Famously, the conquistador Francisco Pizzaro led just a few men in an incredible defeat of the Incan army in Peru in 1532. But the real blow came roughly a decade before that, when European invaders unwittingly unleashed a smallpox epidemic that some epidemiologists believe may have killed as many as 90 percent of the Incan people. Our knowledge of these events, and our understanding of Incan culture of that era, come from just a few observers - mostly Spanish missionaries, and one mestizo priest and Inca historian named Blas Valera, who was born in Peru two decades after the fall of the Inca Empire.

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Feasting and fighting: The long-lost secrets of Beowulf

Beowulf
© The Independent, UK
The dark secrets of the legend of Beowulf, England's oldest work of epic literature, are gradually emerging from under a field in eastern Denmark.

Archaeologists in the country's earliest royal 'capital' - Lejre, 23 miles west of modern Copenhagen - are investigating the joys of elite Dark Age life in and around what was probably the great royal feasting hall at the violent epicentre of the Beowulf story.

The archaeologists - led by Tom Christensen, director of the Lejre investigation - have so far managed not only to find, excavate and date the late 5 or early 6 century building most likely to have been Lejre's first royal hall (described in Beowulf as 'the greatest hall under heaven'), but have also succeeded in reconstructing what was on the menu at the great feasts held there.

Scientific study this year of the bones of literally hundreds of animals found near the hall, shows that they feasted on suckling pig, beef, mutton, goat meat, venison, goose, duck, chicken and fish.

Books

New JD Salinger books coming, according to new biography

Salinger
© Associated Press/Amy SancettaIn this Jan. 28, 2010 file photo, copies of J.D. Salinger's classic novel "The Catcher in the Rye" as well as his volume of short stories called "Nine Stories" are seen at the Orange Public Library in Orange Village, Ohio. Salinger, died Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010, in Cornish, N.H., at the age of 91. At left is a 1951 photo of the author.
The authors of a new J.D. Salinger biography are claiming they have cracked one of publishing's greatest mysteries: What The Catcher in the Rye novelist was working on during the last half century of his life.

Starting between 2015 and 2020, a series of posthumous Salinger releases are planned, according to "Salinger," co-written by David Shields and Shane Salerno and scheduled to be published Sept. 3. The Associated Press obtained an early copy. Salerno's documentary on the author opens Sept. 6. In January, it will air on PBS as an installment of American Masters.

Providing by far the most detailed report of previously unreleased material, the book's authors cite "two independent and separate sources" who they say have "documented and verified" the information.

Cow Skull

Artifacts in northern Quebec, Canada, could be 7,000 years old

quebec archaeology
© Waskaganish Cultural Institute/FacebookArchaeologists believe the stone relics were made using a grinding technique, different than later techniques of chipping.
Archaeologists start dig after finding rare arrowheads on Waskaganish territory

A Quebec archaeological team will begin its work at an extraordinary site this week, as it explores a settlement that could be as old as the invention of the wheel.

The Saunders Goose Pond discovery, which could date back 7,000 years, was found last summer on Waskaganish territory in northern Quebec.

The James Bay community, located near Fort Rupert, is known as the birthplace of the Hudson's Bay Company and has historical significance for the local Cree as a traditional fishing site.

When archaeological crews were digging near the Smokey Hill rapids last summer, they expected to find relics and pottery dating back about 150 years.

Blackbox

Ancient priestess unearthed in Peru; Tomb suggests women ruled mysterious, brutal culture

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© Duaglas Suarez/AFP/Getty ImagesView of one of two skeletons found in a burial chamber of the Moche culture, in the Cao religious compound in northern Peru.
Talk about ancient girl power!

Archaeologists working in Peru have uncovered the skeleton of a woman believed to have been a high priestess of a mysterious culture that existed around 1,200 years ago. The pre-Hispanic remains were found in late July in an impressive burial chamber located in the country's northern Chepan province, according to the Agence France-Presse.

The priestess seems to have been a leader of an ancient culture known as the Moche, or Mochia. Around 2,000 years ago, the Moche dominated the cultural landscape of what is now northern Peru, building large pyramids from mud bricks before disappearing without explanation. The name Moche comes from the site of Moche, an ancient capital city.