Humans have been intentionally changing their bodies for many thousands of years, but there's no denying that one of the most fascinating practices is that of skull modification.

Around the world, throughout history, many cultures have artificially and intentionally altered the shapes of their skulls.

Although the practice appears elsewhere in Asia, evidence of individuals deforming their skulls on purpose in Japan is scarce. There's just one place where it may have taken place: the island of Tanegashima, from around the 3rd to 7th centuries CE.

Archaeologists excavating the sanctuary of Tophet, Carthage uncovered a collection of offerings, Tunisia's Ministry of Cultural Affairs announced in a news release. They found five gold coins from the 3rd century BC, tombstones, and several urns with the remains of animals, infants, and premature babies.

Founded by about 2,900 years Phoenicians, Carthage is an extensive archaeological site, located on a hill dominating the Gulf of Tunis and the surrounding plain. Metropolis of Punic civilization in Africa and the capital of the province of Africa in Roman times, Carthage has played a central role in Antiquity as a great commercial empire.

The Sanctuary Tophet in Carthage had a "shrine area" for the sacrificial offerings and a cemetery area where the deceased was then buried.

Source

The Agenda of the Milesian School

In 1997, William Mullen, Professor of Classical Studies at Bard College, gave a conference talk entitled: Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilisation in which he outlined what he saw as the Agenda of the Milesian School.

Topics held in common by the first three pre-Socratic philosophers from Miletos in the Sixth Century B.C.E., Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, and by Xenophanes^[1] from neighbouring Colophon, taken together may be viewed as constituting the agenda of a "Milesian School".

The agenda included a survey of the known kosmos (the orderly arrangement of the inhabited world surrounded by regularly moving heavenly bodies); redefinitions of divinity; and theories of the natural processes, constantly in operation, by which both kosmos and divinity are to be understood. It also included explanations of phenomena most men deemed terrifying: thunder, lightning, earthquakes, eclipses, and periodic destruction of the kosmos itself. It set about to explain these phenomena in terms of the same elemental processes (transformations of water, rarefaction and condensation of air, separating out of fire, air, water and earth, periodic reabsorption of these elements into a state of dynamic equilibrium) as it invoked to explain the orderly arrangement of the earth and the heavenly bodies. In so doing, it implied the baselessness of the traditional Olympian religion which attributed lightning and earthquakes to whims of Zeus and Poseidon and world-destructions to battles of the sky-gods.

The ultimate Milesian agenda may therefore have been to liberate people from paralysing fear of the immediate recurrence of celestial disturbances in the recent past. By insisting that world-destructions occurred only in vast cycles of time (such as a "great year" whose winter solstice was Deluge and summer solstice Conflagration) the Milesian School was schematically distorting memories of recent disturbances, and its activity may be seen as part of a general pattern of oblivion and psychological distancing common to all cultures after the end of the Bronze Age catastrophes. But by insisting that these world-destructions occurred only as the result of unalterable elemental processes, it was also erecting a proto-scientific bulwark against apocalyptic thinking and behavior.^[2]

From the Central and Eastern European Middle Neolithic (first half of the 5th millennium BCE), around 150 so-called circular enclosures are known, circular or elliptical roughly concentric arrangements of ditches and palisades with a diameter between 40 an up to 250 m. Only a few have been comprehensively and systematically examined archaeologically. The function of these large buildings is still discussed intensively. Interpretations such as central places for meetings, cattle enclosures, defensive structures, astronomical observatories or spaces for ritual activities have been proposed.

The recent publication of the research results from the completely excavated circular enclosure of Goseck, Burgenlandkreis, Saxony-Anhalt by Dr. Norma Henkel brings forward new evidence for the interpretation of these still enigmatic constructions. The article is titled "The Middle Neolithic circular ditch complex of Goseck, Burgenlandkreis," from the Publications of the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt — State Museum of Prehistory (German only).

The Goseck Middle Neolithic circular ditch (Stichbandkeramik culture, approx. 4900 to 4600/4550 BCE) was discovered in 1991 by Otto Braasch during aerial archaeological investigations. Between 2002 and 2004 it was completely excavated within a cooperation project between the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt (LDA) and the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU).

In a study published in Nature Water, the archaeological team describe a network of ceramic water pipes and drainage ditches at the Chinese walled site of Pingliangtai dating back 4,000 years to a time known as the Longshan period. The network shows cooperation amongst the community to build and maintain the drainage system, though no evidence of a centralised power or authority.

Dr Yijie Zhuang (UCL Institute of Archaeology), senior and corresponding author on the paper, said: "The discovery of this ceramic water pipe network is remarkable because the people of Pingliangtai were able to build and maintain this advanced water management system with stone age tools and without the organisation of a central power structure. This system would have required a significant level of community-wide planning and coordination, and it was all done communally."

The ceramic water pipes make up a drainage system which is the oldest complete system ever discovered in China. Made by interconnecting individual segments, the water pipes run along roads and walls to divert rainwater and show an advanced level of central planning at the neolithic site.

What's surprising to researchers is that the settlement of Pingliangtai shows little evidence of social hierarchy. Its houses were uniformly small and show no signs of social stratification or significant inequality amongst the population. Excavations at the town's cemetery likewise found no evidence of a social hierarchy in burials, a marked difference from excavations at other nearby towns of the same era.

An ancient pyramid decorated for a 'cult of the horse' was unearthed in Kazakhstan

A large Bronze Age pyramid has been discovered in Kazakhstan, the country's Ministry of Science and Higher Education reports.

The structure — which dates back to the 2^nd millennium BC — is unlike anything that has been found in the Eurasian steppes before — and may have been linked to an ancient horse cult.

"This is a very complex construction," Ulan Umitkaliyev, Head of the Eurasian National University's Archaeology and Ethnology Department, said in a press release. "The steppe pyramid was built with great precision, it is hexagonal.

"There are thirteen meters and eight rows of stones between each face. It is a very sophisticated complex structure with several circles in the middle."

Metal detectorists have discovered a treasure trove of gold coins strewn across an open field in Anglesey, an island in Wales, marking the first time that Iron Age currency has been found in the country.

The 15 well-preserved coins, which were minted sometime between 60 B.C. and 20 B.C., are known as staters and were common currency in ancient Greece. The highly stylized coins were derived from Macedonian gold coins of Philip II, who served as the king of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia, and feature the bust of the Greek god Apollo wearing a wreath on the coins' heads side and a two-horse chariot and rider on the coins' tails side, according to a statement.

They were likely used by the Corieltavi tribe, who inhabited the area during the Iron Age.

Let's not allow ourself to be hypnotized by shiny objects as they pen our children into 15-minute ghettos.
On 20th January 1936, king George V, grandson of Queen Victoria and son of king Edward VII, died peacefully at his residence Sandringham House in Norfolk. George V had been ill with a respiratory infection for a few days and his death was widely expected in Britain. The king was watched over by his personal doctor, Dr. Bertrand Dawson (BD), the First Viscount of Penn, and his Irish nurse, Catherine Black.

George V's son Edward, playboy prince of Wales became king, Edward VIII. Apart from the press generated during the short, scandal-ridden reign of Nazi enthusiast Edward VIII, that was that. New era, new king, modernity, communist threat from the USSR, economic depression and the rise of herr Hitler in Germany were the main news generators of the day. But the story got a massive new twist in 1986, 50 years after the king's death, with the release of Dr. Bertrand Dawson's diaries.

The quiet regicide

As it turned out, George V did not just peacefully die of his illness. He was put to sleep by his doctor who wrote in his diary: "At about 11 o'clock I decided to determine the end and injected 3/4 grain of morphia and shortly afterwards 1 grain of cocaine into the king's distended jugular vein..." DB gave three reasons for his regicide: (1) king deserved to die in a "dignified manner"; (2) His family deserved this over the uncertainty of an anguished and prolonged death, and (3) if the king did not die before midnight, it wouldn't have been in time; his death would have missed The Times headline and would be reported first in "less appropriate evening journals."

The king's "dignified" last words

DB claimed that he made the decision himself, but noted that "the family" wanted him to act "without unnecessarily prolonging the king's life..." Thus, the good doctor magnanimously granted the monarch a dignified death, cheated the "anguished and prolonged" death, and made it all in time for the morning Times, lest some inappropriate publication tarnish the king's name by announcing the news first. How utterly dignified and selfless of the hero doctor.

The king himself was aware. His dignified last words, spoken to nurse Black as she administered the sedative were, "God damn you." The public's expectation of the king's death was the product of the narrative generated by Britain's media and Dr. DB was their source. On the morning of the day when the king died, DB issued a statement to the media that, "The king's life is moving peacefully towards its close." After putting down the king, Dawson then falsified the death certificate, attributing the king's death to his lung disease.

Dawson of Penn killed many men...

But even as the "reputable sources" dutifully contrived the requisite narrative, a small part of the British public - those with the nose to smell a rat weren't buying it. They were the proverbial nutty conspiracy theorists who adopted a rhyme, "Dawson of Penn killed many men; That's why we sing, 'God save the king.' " At that time, nobody could smugly demand "link to source?" but per standard practice, the conspiracists were dismissed with scorn, and neither the king's death nor Dr. Dawson's role were ever investigated. In fact, Dawson's star continued to rise throughout his life. It would take 50 years to prove the nutty conspiracy theorists right.

New paleoclimate evidence shows that around 1.1 million years ago, the southern European climate cooled significantly and caused an extinction of archaic humans on the continent.

Margari et al. discovered the occurrence of previously unknown extreme glacial conditions around 1.1 million years ago in Europe.

Around 1.1 million years ago, the glacial cooling pushed the European climate to levels beyond what archaic humans could tolerate, emptying the continent of human populations.

The oldest known human remains in Europe have previously been recovered from Iberia and suggest that early humans had arrived from southwest Αsia by about 1.4 million years ago.

Before getting onto Homer and Hesiod and then to the philosophers, I'm going to include a couple of interesting individuals, similar to Orpheus, who can't be dated because of the legendary accretions surrounding them. There really isn't much to go on so the short entries on Wikipedia will suffice.

Melampus^[1]

A legendary soothsayer and healer, originally of Pylos, who ruled at Argos. He introduced the worship of Dionysus, according to Herodotus, who asserted that his powers as a seer were derived from the Egyptians^[2] and that he could understand the language of animals. A number of pseudepigraphal works of divination were circulated in Classical and Hellenistic times under the name Melampus. According to Herodotus and Pausanias (vi.17.6), on the authority of Hesiod, his father was Amythaon, whose name implies the "ineffable" or "unspeakably great";^[3] thus Melampus and his heirs were Amythaides of the "House of Amythaon".

In Homer's Odyssey,^[4] a digression concerning the lineage of Theoclymenus, "a prophet, sprung from Melampus' line of seers",^[5] sketches the epic narrative concerning Melampus with such brevity that its details must have been familiar to Homer's audience. With brief hints, a sequence of episodes is alluded to, in which we discern strife in Pylos between Melampus and Neleus, who usurps Melampus's "great high house", forcing him into heroic exile. Melampus spends a year as bondsman in the house of Phylacus, "all for Neleus' daughter Pero". At his extremity, Melampus is visited by "the mad spell a Fury, murderous spirit, cast upon his mind. But the seer worked free of death" and succeeded at last in rustling Phylacus's cattle back to Pylos, where he avenged himself on Neleus and gave Pero in marriage to his brother Bias. But Melampus's own destiny lay in Argos, where he lived and ruled, married and sired a long line, also briefly sketched in Homer's excursus.

A work attributed in antiquity to Hesiod exists (Melampodia) in such fragmentary quotations and chance remarks that its reconstruction, according to Walter Burkert,^[6] is "most uncertain." (Wikipedia)

Again, there isn't much of a factual nature about Orpheus though there is a lot of speculation about Orphism. So, Wikipedia again: