In Chapter 1 of this series, I started with the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth existed, proceeded from the assumption that the correct answer is 'no', and introduced the hypothesis that Gaius Julius Caesar was the model used to build the literary character of Jesus. I also gave a quick overview of Caesar's personality and other characteristics, in order to demonstrate just how remarkable he was, and to point out a couple of key correspondences - namely, that he was known for placing heavy emphasis on the virtue of mercy, and for practising a charitable outlook towards the common man. Chapter 2 outlined the numerous correspondences between Caesar's life and the Jesus story, which encompass both specific events, similar names and roles in the dramatis personae, and common themes. I also spent some time in Chapter 2 looking at the details of Caesar's assassination, his funeral, and the cult of Divus Julius that was established after his death, all of which also show striking similarities to the Jesus story. I left off with the question of how, exactly, the imperial cult might have transformed into the Christian church - in other words, how did a mythical Jesus come to be substituted for a historical Julius?

In his book Jesus was Caesar, from which I obtained much of the material in Chapter 2, Francesco Carotta advances two hypotheses. The first is that Julius Caesar was the template for Jesus Christ. One JC gave rise to another JC¹. The second hypothesis, which I found ultimately unconvincing, is that the substitution happened more or less by accident due to an accumulation of copying errors.

Madrid (AFP) - A huge megalithic complex of more than 500 standing stones has been discovered in southern Spain which could be one of the largest in Europe, archaeologists told AFP Thursday.

The stones were discovered on a plot of land in Huelva, a province which flanks the southernmost part of Spain's border with Portugal, near the Guadiana River.

Spanning some 600 hectares (1,500 acres), the land had been earmarked for an avocado planation.

But before granting the permit, the regional authorities requested a survey in light of the site's possible archaeological significance -- and revealed the presence of the stones.

"This is the biggest and most diverse collection of standing stones grouped together in the Iberian peninsula," said Jose Antonio Linares, a researcher at Huelva University and one of the project's three directors.

It is likely that the oldest standing stones at the La Torre-La Janera site were erected during the second half of the sixth or fifth millennium BC, he said.

"It is a major megalithic site in Europe," he said.

At the site, they found a large number of various types of megaliths, including standing stones, dolmens, mounds, coffin-like stone boxes called cists and various enclosures.

"Standing stones were the most common finding, with 526 of them still standing or lying on the ground," said the researchers in an article published in Trabajos de Prehistoria, a prehistoric archaeology journal in the Iberian Peninsula.

The height of the stones was between one and three metres (3-10 feet).

The World Health Organization began working on an anti-fertility vaccine in the 1970s, in response to perceived overpopulation. For 20 years, the WHO's Task Force on Vaccines for Fertility Regulation worked with population control in mind.

In 1993, the WHO finally announced a birth-control vaccine had successfully been created to help with "family planning." The anti-fertility vaccine uses hCG conjugated (chemically bonded) to tetanus toxoid, used in the tetanus vaccine. As a result, a woman will develop antibodies against both tetanus and hCG.

HCG is the first signal that tells the woman's body she's pregnant. In response to this signal, her ovaries then produce progesterone, which maintains the pregnancy to term. By combining hCG with tetanus toxoid, it causes this crucial pregnancy hormone to be attacked and destroyed by the woman's own immune system.

Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, was long suspected by Egyptians of having helped himself to treasures before the vault was officially opened. But while rumours have swirled for generations, proof has been hard to come by.

Now an accusation that Carter handled property "undoubtedly stolen from the tomb" has emerged in a previously unpublished letter sent to him in 1934 by an eminent British scholar within his own excavation team.

It was written by Sir Alan Gardiner, a leading philologist. Carter had enlisted Gardiner to translate hieroglyphs found in the 3,300-year-old tomb, and later gave him a "whm amulet", used for offerings to the dead, assuring him that it had not come from the tomb.

Distinctive and rare rock crystals were moved over long distances by Early Neolithic Brits and were used to mark their burial sites, according to groundbreaking new archaeological research.

Evidence for the use of rock crystal - a rare type of perfectly transparent quartz which forms in large hexagonal gems - has occasionally been found at prehistoric sites in the British Isles, but little investigation has previously been done specifically into how the material was used and its potential significance.

A group of archaeologists from The University of Manchester worked with experts from the University of Cardiff and Herefordshire County Council on a dig at Dorstone Hill in Herefordshire, a mile south of another dig at Arthur's Stone. There, they studied a complex of 6000-year-old timber halls, burial mounds and enclosures from the Early Neolithic period, when farming and agriculture arrived in Britain for the first time.

By now, many will be familiar with Project MKULTRA. For decades, the CIA conducted highly unethical experiments on humans in order to perfect brainwashing, mind control and torture techniques.

Perhaps the program's most notorious aspect was the administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs to targets, particularly LSD. These substances were brought to Langley's attention in 1948 by Richard Kuhn, one of 1,600 Nazi scientists covertly spirited to the U.S. via Operation Paperclip following World War II. When MKULTRA was formally established five years later, some individuals consulted directly on the project.

The unwitting dosing of U.S. citizens with LSD is infamous; among those spiked were CIA operatives themselves. That the Agency exploited mental patients, prisoners, and drug addicts for the purpose - "people who could not fight back," in the words of an unnamed Agency operative - is less well-known.

A study by academics at the University of Ottawa's Culture and Mental Health Disparities Lab sheds significant new light on this underexplored component of MKULTRA and illuminates a hitherto wholly unknown dimension of the program; people of color, overwhelmingly Black Americans, were disproportionately targeted by the CIA in its service.

One of John Pilger's most remarkable documentaries, bringing a little-known story to a wide audience, is Stealing a Nation, about how British governments ruthlessly expelled the population of the Chagos Islands, a crown colony in the Indian Ocean, in the late 1960s and early 70s to make way for an American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island.

The truth about the brutal removal of 1,500 islanders and the official conspiracy to deny the presence of an indigenous population did not emerge for another 20 years. Secret official files were unearthed at the Public Record Office, in London, by lawyers acting for the former inhabitants of the coral archipelago, who wished to return to their homeland. Historian Mark Curtis described the enforced depopulation in Web of Deceit, his 2003 book about Britain's post-war foreign policy. The British media all but ignored it, while the Washington Post called it a 'mass kidnapping'.

The corrosion of the materials will eventually trigger an environmental disaster.

Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported on Tuesday that up to 100,000 tons of chemical weapons of Nazi Germany left after World War II could be resting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea ready to trigger an environmental disaster as they corrode over time.

Gazeta Wyborcza wrote that between 40,000 to 100,000 tons of war-era weaponry lie at the bottom of various parts of the Baltic Sea.

"The exact quantity is difficult to estimate today. It is similarly difficult to precisely define all the dumping sites. After the Potsdam conference, soldiers of the Soviet Union who disarmed ammunition depots in Poland and Germany were responsible for 'neutralising' German chemical weapons."

According to the newspaper, the chemical weapons in question are mainly barrels of mustard gas, aviation bombs, and mines containing chemical warfare agents, mainly mustard and arsenic.

On August 4th, I wrote an article criticising a NATO video that purported to debunk two "myths" about the organisation. The video claimed that "NATO is a defensive alliance" and "NATO does not seek confrontation". I described these claims as "false" on the grounds that NATO has carried out several offensive operations.

Logically, if an organisation has carried out offensive operations, it cannot be "defensive" - at least not wholly defensive, which is what "not seeking confrontation" implies.

Ian Rons has criticised my article. He begins by disputing that the invasion of Afghanistan was an offensive operation, noting that 9/11 was "the only time in NATO's history when the mutual defense clause, Article 5, was invoked".

I find vaccines quite fascinating. To be more accurate, I find the thinking and emotion around vaccines endlessly fascinating... and often quite disturbing. They have become, what we in the UK call 'national treasures.'

A national treasure is someone, such as Dame Judi Dench, or Sir David Attenborough. We laugh at their little jokes, we forgive them any possible weakness, we treat their statements as carrying a great and solemn weight. They have moved to a sainted realm.

If, for example, someone was to say about David Attenborough. 'God, what a terrible bore. Time he was put into a nursing home, and stopped moaning on about Climate Change...' This statement would not, I can guarantee, be met with Universal approval.' Moving on ...

Mithridatism. Most people have never heard of it.

'Mithridatism is the practice of protecting oneself against a poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts. The word is derived from Mithridates VI, the King of Pontus, who so feared being poisoned that he regularly ingested small doses, aiming to develop immunity.'

From my favourite website of all time - Wikipedia. Hey, before you start, it's good for non-contentious subjects.

From mithridatism came the substance Theriac Mithridatium. Also called Galene, or Venetian treacle. These were the universal panaceas, designed to cure all ailments suffered by mankind ... and, of course, womankind. They were complex to prepare:

'The preparation of Galene was simple in that its ingredients were free of fractional measures. Four vipers cut down small were placed in a solution of sal ammoniac, about one gallon, to which were added nine specified herbs and Attic wine, together with five fresh squills also cut down small. The pot was covered with clay and set upon a fire. When the vapour came out of the four small holes left in the clay seal, dark and turgid, the heat had reached the vipers and they were cooked. The pot was left to cool for a night and day. The roasted matter was taken out and pounded until all was reduced to powder. After 10 days the powder was ready for the next stage of manufacture.

At the final stage the prescribed quantities of 55 herbs previously prepared by various processes, along with the prescribed quantity of squill and viper flesh powder (48 drachms), were added to hedychium, long pepper and poppy juice (all at 24 drachms); eight herbs including cinnamon and opobalsam (all at 12 drachms); 18 herbs including myrrh, black and white pepper and turpentine resin (at 6 drachms); 22 others and then Lemnian earth and roasted copper (at 4 drachms each); bitumen and castoreum (the secretion of beaver); 150 drachms of honey and 80 drachms of vetch meal.

The concoction took some 40 days to prepare, after which the process of maturation began. Twelve years was considered by Galen the proper period to keep it before use. Galen records that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius consumed the preparation within 2 months of its being compounded without ill effect.

Mithridatium was similar but contained fewer ingredients and no viper but did contain lizard! The other differences were that the opium content of Andromachus' theriac was higher than that of Mithridatium, which also differed in containing no Lemnian earth, copper or bitumen and 14 fewer herbal ingredients...' ¹

Simple to prepare ... I think I would prefer to make a bacon sandwich, thanks very much.