Secret HistoryS


Bacon

Meat eating behind humans' spreading over the globe


Lund University
Sat, 21 Apr 2012 16:40 UTC
Carnivory is behind the evolutionary success of humankind. When early humans started to eat meat and eventually hunt, their new, higher-quality diet meant that women could wean their children earlier. Women could then give birth to more children during their reproductive life, which is a possible contribution to the population gradually spreading over the world.

The connection between eating meat and a faster weaning process is shown by a research group from Lund University in Sweden, which compared close to 70 mammalian species and found clear patterns.

Learning to hunt was a decisive step in human evolution. Hunting necessitated communication, planning and the use of tools, all of which demanded a larger brain. At the same time, adding meat to the diet made it possible to develop this larger brain.

"This has been known for a long time. However, no one has previously shown the strong connection between meat eating and the duration of breast-feeding, which is a crucial piece of the puzzle in this context. Eating meat enabled the breast-feeding periods and thereby the time between births, to be shortened. This must have had a crucial impact on human evolution", says Elia Psouni of Lund University.

She is a developmental psychologist and has, together with neurophysiologist Martin Garwicz (also in Lund) and evolutionary geneticist Axel Janke (currently in Frankfurt but previously in Lund) published her findings in the journal PLoS ONE.

Among natural fertility societies, the average duration of breast-feeding is 2 years and 4 months. This is not much in relation to the maximum lifespan of our species, around 120 years. It is even less if compared to our closest relatives: female chimpanzees suckle their young for 4-5 years, whereas the maximum lifespan for chimpanzees is only 60 years.

Comment: Actually, bigger brain and other evolutionary improvements should be enough proof that meat eating is highly beneficial for human beings. Read the following article to learn more.

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Radar

2012 BC: Cornwall and the Sea in the Bronze Age exhibition


http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:01 UTC
Nebra sky disc
© Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt. Photo: Juraj LiptákThe Nebra Sky Disc, the oldest representation of the cosmos

The National Maritime Museum Cornwall will display the 4500-year-old Nebra Sky Disc for the first time in its new exhibition, 2012 BC: Cornwall and the Sea in the Bronze Age.

A single bronze disc decorated with gold symbols that represent the sun, moon, stars and a boat, the Nebra Sky Disc is the world's oldest representation of the cosmos.

It reveals a prehistoric view of the world that before its discovery had never been known to exist, and has single-handedly reformed our understanding of ancient European history.

Amazingly, the disc has local roots: the gold and tin components have been traced back to the Cornish mines of Canon Down.
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Info

Cleopatra and Antony's Children Rediscovered

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:26 UTC
Twins
© Giuseppina CapriottiCleopatra's twin children, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene have been possibly identified in this sandstone sculpture.
Cleopatra's twin babies now have a face. An Italian Egyptologist has rediscovered a sculpture of Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, the offspring of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII, at the Egyptian museum in Cairo.

Discovered in 1918 near the temple of Dendera on the west bank of the Nile, the sandstone statue was acquired by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo but has remained largely overlooked.

The back of the the 33-foot sculpture, catalogued as JE 46278 at the Egyptian museum, features some engraved stars -- likely indicating that the stone was originally part of a ceiling. Overall, the rest of the statue appears to be quite unusual.

"It shows two naked children, one male and one female, of identical size standing within the coils of two snakes. Each figure has an arm over the other's shoulder,‭ ‬while the other hand grasps a serpent," Giuseppina Capriotti, an Egyptologist at the Italy's National Research Council, told Discovery News.

The researcher identified the children as Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, Antony and Cleopatra's twins, following a detailed stylistic and iconographic analysis published by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw.
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Question

Witches and Climate Change

Alan Burke
Salem News
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:05 UTC
Salem Witch Trials
© Public domain / Artist unknownAn engraving depicting a scene from the Salem Witch Trials. The central figure in this 1876 illustration of the courtroom is usually identified as Mary Walcott, 17, one of several girls in Salem with a psychological disorder known as mass hysteria, and whose condition was blamed on witchcraft..
Salem - The Salem witch tragedy of 1692 took less than two years to play out. Yet 300 years later, explanations for how and why it happened are still coming.

One theory recently gaining exposure thanks to bloggers comes from a 2004 college thesis that places the blame on something we think of as a strictly modern phenomenon: climate change.

Proposed in a Harvard thesis, the paper by economist Emily Oster has earned attention due to the modern swirl of controversy surrounding the possibility that human interaction has altered world temperatures.

Currently an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, Oster linked periodic outbreaks of violence against people accused of witchcraft with dramatic temperature drops.

"The most active period of the witchcraft trials (mainly in Europe) coincides with a period of lower-than-average temperature known to climatologists as the 'little ice age,'" Oster wrote. "The colder temperatures increased the frequency of crop failure, and colder seas prevented cod and other fish from migrating as far north, eliminating this vital food source for some northern areas of Europe."

When crops failed, "people would have searched for a scapegoat in the face of deadly changes in weather patterns," she wrote. Thus, desperate people traced their troubles to unpopular neighbors and outcasts allied to the devil.

Oster noted that the persecutions "spread even across the Atlantic Ocean to Salem, Massachusetts."

Moreover, she added, "The coldest segments of this 'little ice age' period were in the 1590s and between 1680 and 1730."

Comment: See: Laura Knight-Jadczyk's Witches, Comets and Planetary Cataclysms for a fuller explanation of the phenomenon.

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Play

Gobekli Tepe: 12,000-year-old unexplained structure in Turkey


You Tube
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:54 UTC
Amazing find (History Chanel docum.) in what is now Turkey, 12,000 year-old circular city. Twice as old as any city in Mesopotamia. The Germans are excavating it.

No stone-cutting tools used.

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Info

Ancient 'Wave of Poseidon' Was Real Tsunami

Andrea Mustain
OurAmazingPlanet
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:01 UTC
Greek Sunset
© Klaus ReicherterThe sun sets over the Greek peninsula of Kassandra, where scientists conducted fieldwork. Mount Olympus looms in the distance.
San Diego - When the ocean rose up and saved a Greek town from a marauding Persian army nearly 1,500 years ago, renowned Greek historian Herodotus chalked it up to an act of the gods.

Yet new evidence suggests his account of divine intervention is firmly rooted in the earthly realm, and was actually a tsunami, according to a researcher who spoke here today (April 19) at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America.

"This is historical stuff, but you have to interpret it in a scientific way," said Klaus Reicherter of Germany's Aachen University, who studied geological evidence of the event.
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Bell

Stonehenge designed for sound? Mysterious Acoustic Properties

Amy Oliver
Daily Mail
Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:00 UTC
Stonehenge
© Simon Wyatt / University of SalfordMystery: The researchers found Stonehenge reacted to acoustic activity in a way that would have been noticeable to the Neolithic man suggesting it was built with acoustics in mind
Stonehenge could have been designed with acoustics in mind like a Greek or Roman theatre, a study has revealed.

A team of researchers from the University of Salford spent four years studying the historic site's acoustic properties in a bid to crack the mystery of why it was built.

While they could not confirm the exact purpose of the stones, the researchers did find the space reacted to acoustic activity in a way that would have been noticeable to the Neolithic man.

Comment: Readers may be interested in these excerpts from the Cassiopaean Experiment regarding Stonehenge:

Oct. 23rd 1994

Q: (L) Who built Stonehenge?
A: Druids.
Q: (L) Who were the Druids?
A: Early Aryan group.
Q: (L) How did they move the stones and set them up?
A: Sound wave focusing; try it yourself; coral castle.
Q: (L) Who taught the Druids to use the sound waves?
A: They knew; handed down.
Q: (L) When was Stonehenge built?
A: 8000 approx. BC
Q: (L) What was Stonehenge built to do or be used for?
A: Energy director.
Q: (L) What was this energy to be directed to do?
A: All things.
Q: (L) Was the energy to be directed outward or inward to the center?
A: Both.

December 8th 1996

(L) Okay, what is it about Stonehenge?
A: Location attracted those spirit types on the proper frequency, who in turn, placed stones in proper location to receive the coded communications in code telepathically, in order not to have to chase around the countryside reading encoded pictographs.
Q: (L) What was the technique used within the circle to receive the information telepathically?
A: Transcendent focused thought wave separation.
Q: (L) OK, so that you're saying that moving in a spiral...
A: The spiral serves to translate message by slowing down the wave and focusing thought wave transference energy. Utilizes /transduces electromagnetic waves, the conduit, by breaking down signal from universal language of intent into language of phonetic profile. This is for multiple user necessity.
Q: (L) Multiple user necessity implies that a number of people must do the spiral. Is that correct?
A: No. Must hear and feel and understand precisely the same thing. The molecular structure of the rock, when properly sculpted sing to you.

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Question

Swedish Stonehenge? Ancient Stone Structure Spurs Debate

Crystal Gammon
LiveScience
Wed, 18 Apr 2012 06:32 UTC
Swedish Stonehenge
© Steffen Hoejager | ShutterstockAn ancient megalithic structure shaped like a ship in Sweden seems to have a similar geometry to Stonehenge, and may have been used as an astronomical calendar, one scientist says.
Ancient Scandinavians dragged 59 boulders to a seaside cliff near what is now the Swedish fishing village of Kåseberga. They carefully arranged the massive stones - each weighing up to 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms) - in the outline of a 220-foot-long (67-meter) ship overlooking the Baltic Sea.

Archaeologists generally agree this megalithic structure, known as Ales Stenar ("Ale's Stones"), was assembled about 1,000 years ago, near the end of the Iron Age, as a burial monument. But a team of researchers now argues it's really 2,500 years old, dating from the Scandinavian Bronze Age, and was built as an astronomical calendar with the same underlying geometry as England's Stonehenge.

"We can now say Stonehenge has a younger sister, but she's so much more beautiful," said Nils-Axel Mörner, a retired geologist from Stockholm University who co-authored the paper on the interpretation, published in March in the International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Other researchers familiar with the site are skeptical. Among other arguments, they cite the results of carbon dating to reject Mörner's interpretation.
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Key

Greek and Byzantine tombs found in Alexandria


http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com.ar
Sun, 15 Apr 2012 04:44 UTC
Greek byzantine ina lexandria
© Ahram OnlineView of the excavated tomb
Egyptian archaeologists have discovered four Greek and Byzantine-era rock tombs in a section of old Alexandria's eastern necropolis in an area neighbouring Al-Ibrahimeya tunnel.

The site was discovered during excavations carried out by the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) and stretches between the areas of Al-Shatbi and Mostafa Kamel.

Excavations uncovered four rock-hewn Greek and Byzantine tombs containing a collection of funerary pots, perfume containers and lamps.

MSA minister Mohamed Ibrahim stated that the aim of the excavations was to inspect the area for archaeological artefacts before declaring it free for residential building.

"It is a very important discovery that adds more detail to the archaeological map of Alexandria," Ibrahim told Ahram Online.

A finely decorated clay container from the second century BC was among the discoveries, he added.
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Eye 2

Dinosaur Eggs Found in Russia's Chechnya


Reuters
Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Yelena FitkulinaA man looks at what is believed to be fossilised dinosaur eggs at a site in Russia's volatile Chechnya region April 14, 2012.
Grozny, Russia - Geologists in Russia's volatile Chechnya region have discovered what they believe to be fossilized dinosaur eggs laid by one of the huge extinct reptiles that roamed the Earth more than 60 million years ago.

"We've found about 40 eggs so far, the exact number has not been established," said Said-Emin Dzhabrailov, a geologist at the Chechen State University.

"There could be many more laying under the ground."

The find was uncovered when a construction crew was blasting through a hillside to build a road near the region's border with former Soviet Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains.

A team of geologists stumbled across the smooth, oval rock-like forms, which range from 25 cm to one meter coincidentally on a recent trip to the area, said Dzhabrailov.
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