Secret HistoryS


Colosseum

Huge ancient undersea wall dating to 5800 BCE discovered off the French coast

Dario Radley
Archaeology News
Fri, 12 Dec 2025 14:50 UTC
Measurement of the height of a monolith
© SAMM, 2023 / Yves Fouquet et al., International Journal of Nautical Archaeology (2025)Measurement of the height of a monolith; the rod held by the diver is 1 m long.
In waters off the coast of Brittany, archaeologists have identified an impressive set of submerged stone structures that reveal the presence of a remarkably sophisticated coastal society more than 7,000 years ago. The findings, which were made near the Île de Sein in western France, include a massive granite wall and at least a dozen smaller constructions now located several meters beneath the surface.

The largest structure is a wall measuring 120 meters long, which spans a submerged valley. Divers investigating it between 2022 and 2024 discovered stacked blocks of granite, reinforced by more than 60 upright monoliths and slabs nearly two meters high. Other structures, labeled TAF2A, TAF2B, and TAF3, appear to use the same construction methods, while a second group — identified during the dives of 2024 — is characterized by narrower walls composed of smaller stones that were arranged to block natural depressions in the terrain. One of these later discoveries, YAG3C, consists of a 50-meter-long line of closely spaced small monoliths, sometimes set in parallel rows.
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Hourglass

Keeping time in early modern England

Susie Johns
History Today
Fri, 12 Dec 2025 21:49 UTC
The Shepardes Kalender, 1570 time keeping medieval england
© Folger Shakespeare Library/Public domainThe wheel of the occupations of the months and the zodiac, from The Shepardes Kalender, 1570
In 1563 Elizabeth Flynte, a servant from Haselor, Warwickshire, described the extra-marital activities of her mistress to the church court of the Lichfield diocese:
He come in here this night, remained four or five hours, left til some other time about 3 of the clock in the morning. The first night being about Michaelmas last and the second night was about a month or 3 weeks then next following and the third night was about Lenton Fayre last past.
To explain when her mistress' lover had visited the house, Elizabeth combined complementary systems of time reckoning. She clearly knew how to use clock and calendar time but also opted for other familiar markers, such as ecclesiastical and local events. Informal references such as these were considered robust enough for court proceedings - as long as the courts could understand the dates and times they represented.
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Map

18,000 dinosaur tracks discovered along ancient Bolivian coastline — and they set a new record

Sascha Pare
Live Science
Thu, 04 Dec 2025 16:25 UTC
Carreras Pampa in Bolivia
© Raúl EsperanteWith the discovery, Carreras Pampa in Bolivia has become one of the premier dinosaur track sites in the world.
Scientists have discovered a record-breaking number of fossilized dinosaur footprints and swim tracks in a national park in central Bolivia.

The tracksite sits along what was once an ancient coastline, with ripple marks extending alongside the footprints and other imprints in a northwest-southeast direction, according to a new study. Most of the tracks belong to bipedal, three-toed dinosaurs known as theropods that lived at the end of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago), but many bird tracks are also preserved, the scientists noted in the paper, which was published Wednesday (Dec. 3) in the journal PLOS One.

"This is the highest number of dinosaur footprints ever found for a single tracksite thus far," study co-author Jeremy McLarty, a paleontologist and associate professor at the Southwestern Adventist University in Texas, told Live Science in an email. "In addition to preserving the most dinosaur tracks worldwide, it also preserves the highest number of swim trackways in the world."
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Info

Celebrated Rutland mosaic depicts 'long-lost' Troy story connecting Roman Britain to the ancient classical world


University of Leicester
Thu, 04 Dec 2025 16:03 UTC
Plate 3 Mosaic
© ULASPanel 3 of the Ketton Mosaic shows Priam, king of Troy, loading a set of scales with gold vessels, to match the weight of his son, Hector. This version of the story is based on the lost play, Phrygians by Aeschylus. Jen Browning from University of Leicester Archaeological Services was able to reconstruct the burnt section by tracing the ouPanel 3 of the Ketton Mosaic shows Priam, king of Troy, loading a set of scales with gold vessels, to match the weight of his son, Hector. This version of the story is based on the lost play, Phrygians by Aeschylus. Jen Browning from University of Leicester Archaeological Services was able to reconstruct the burnt section by tracing the outline of the tiles.line of the tiles.
The team behind what has been described as 'one of the most significant mosaics discovered in the UK' have revealed that it depicts an alternative 'long-lost' telling of the Trojan War.

New research from the University of Leicester has conclusively determined why the famous Ketton mosaic in Rutland - one of the most remarkable Roman discoveries in Britain for a century - cannot depict scenes from Homer's Iliad as was initially believed. Instead, it draws on an alternative version of the Trojan War story first popularised by the Greek playwright Aeschylus that has since been lost to history.

The mosaic's images combine artistic patterns and designs that had already been circulating for hundreds of years across the ancient Mediterranean, suggesting that craftsmen in Roman Britain were more closely connected to the wider classical world than has been assumed.

The Ketton mosaic was discovered in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown by local resident Jim Irvine, leading to a major excavation by University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS), with funding from Historic England. The mosaic and surrounding villa complex have since been designated a Scheduled Monument in recognition of their exceptional national importance. Historic England and ULAS undertook collaborative excavations at the site in 2021 and 2022 and are working together to publish the results of those investigations.

The mosaic depicts the Greek hero Achilles and the Trojan prince Hector in three dramatic scenes - their duel, the dragging of Hector's body, and its eventual ransom by King Priam, where Hector's body is literally weighed for gold.
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Info

4,000-year-old burial in little-known African kingdom mystifies archaeologists

Kristina Killgrove
Live Science
Tue, 02 Dec 2025 16:49 UTC
Remains of what was likely a funeral feast were discovered in a 4,000-year-old jug in Africa.
Ancient Grave
© Ewa LesnerA view of the grave during the excavation. (The skull is toward the top, with two large ceramic vessels to the right of it.

An isolated burial in Sudan has revealed the first evidence of an unknown funeral ritual that took place nearly 4,000 years ago in a little-known African kingdom, a new study finds.

In the grave, archaeologists discovered a ceramic vessel that contained charred plant and wood remains, animal bones and pieces of insects, all of which the team thinks were the remains of a funeral feast.

"We do not know of a similar case," study co-author Henryk Paner, an archaeologist at the Polish Center of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw, told Live Science in an email, "and this is precisely what makes our discovery mysterious and even unusual, as we do not know the significance of this ritual."
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Palette

6,000-year old West Texas rock art believed to have influenced Mesoamerican cosmology

Jayme Blaschke
Texas State University
Wed, 26 Nov 2025 20:43 UTC
Pecos River rock art mesoamerica
© TXSTA sample of Pecos River rock art
Pecos River rock art dates back 6,000 years and was created in planned single events. The murals use consistent symbols to express complex beliefs that later influenced Mesoamerican cultures.

New research, conducted in part at Texas State University, has dated Pecos River rock art to 6,000 years ago and identified complex metaphysical concepts in the imagery that influenced the belief systems of multiple Mesoamerican cultures.

The research was conducted by a team composed of Karen Steelman, Ph.D., science director at Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center; Carolyn Boyd, Ph.D., Shumla Endowed Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at TXST; and Phil Dering, Ph.D., associated faculty in the Department of Anthropology at TXST. Their findings, "Mapping the chronology of an ancient cosmovision: 4000 years of continuity in Pecos River style mural painting and symbolism," are published in the journal Science Advances.
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Smiley

In 1982, a physics joke gone wrong sparked the invention of the emoticon

Benj Edwards
Ars Technica
Thu, 20 Nov 2025 20:25 UTC
first emoticon carnegie mellon computer scientists
© Benj Edwards / DECThe first emoticon, invented in 1982 by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon for use on their electronic bulletin board
A simple proposal on a 1982 electronic bulletin board helped sarcasm flourish online.

On September 19, 1982, Carnegie Mellon University computer science research assistant professor Scott Fahlman posted a message to the university's bulletin board software that would later come to shape how people communicate online. His proposal: use :-) and :-( as markers to distinguish jokes from serious comments. While Fahlman describes himself as "the inventor... or at least one of the inventors" of what would later be called the smiley face emoticon, the full story reveals something more interesting than a lone genius moment.

The whole episode started three days earlier when computer scientist Neil Swartz posed a physics problem to colleagues on Carnegie Mellon's "bboard," which was an early online message board. The discussion thread had been exploring what happens to objects in a free-falling elevator, and Swartz presented a specific scenario involving a lit candle and a drop of mercury.

That evening, computer scientist Howard Gayle responded with a facetious message titled "WARNING!" He claimed that an elevator had been "contaminated with mercury" and suffered "some slight fire damage" due to a physics experiment. Despite clarifying posts noting the warning was a joke, some people took it seriously.
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Info

Ancient rock art along US-Mexico border persisted for more than 4,000 years

Aristos Georgiou
Live Science
Wed, 26 Nov 2025 23:10 UTC
Researchers have uncovered evidence of an Indigenous artistic tradition that was painted along the U.S.-Mexico border for roughly 175 generations.
Rock Art
© Steelman et al., Sci. Adv. 11, eadx7205Rock art from along the U.S.-Mexico border persisted for more than 4,000 years.
For more than 4,000 years, Indigenous Americans painted rock art depicting their conception of the universe in what is now southwestern Texas and northern Mexico, a new study finds.

Innovative dating techniques revealed that the rock art, known as the Pecos River style tradition, likely first appeared almost 6,000 years ago and persisted until about 1,400 to 1,000 years ago, spanning roughly 175 generations.

Over this period, the style, found in a region known as the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, remained remarkably consistent in the imagery and the techniques used to create the paintings, which appear to follow a strict set of rules, the researchers reported in the study, which was published Wednesday (Nov. 26) in the journal Science Advances. The authors believe the artworks convey the creators' "cosmovision," a culture's overarching worldview and conception of the universe.

"Frankly, we were stunned to discover that the murals remained in production for over 4,000 years and that the rule-bound painting sequence persisted throughout that period as well," study co-author Carolyn Boyd, a professor of anthropology at Texas State University, told Live Science in an email.

She compared the canyonlands to an "ancient library containing hundreds of books authored by 175 generations of painters," adding that "the stories they tell are still being told today."
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Grey Alien

President George HW Bush 'knew' of 1964 alien contact with humans in New Mexico: documentary

Shane Galvin
New York Post
Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:31 UTC
George H.W. Bush
© Getty ImagesThen-former president George H.W. Bush allegedly had knowledge of the a meeting between an alien being and humans at an Air Force base in New Mexico in 1964.
The truth is out there — and late President George H.W. Bush apparently knew it — telling a federal official that an alien made contact with humans at a secretive New Mexico air base in 1964, according to testimony in an explosive new documentary.

Eric Davis, an astrophysicist who was a scientific advisor on the since-disbanded Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, created by Congress in 2007 by late Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), claimed that Bush confirmed to him in a private conversation details of contact between the military and an alien creature at Holloman Air Force Base in Otero County.

Bush told him that three spaceships were seen approaching the base and that an interstellar being emerged from one ship and had a face-to-face encounter with military and CIA officials, Davis said during an interview in "The Age of Disclosure," a documentary by filmmaker Dan Farah that went live on Amazon Prime on Friday.

Comment: More slow drips of UAP and USO disclosure with no real evidence. It will be interesting to see the public reaction and if this documentary will push forward the UFO disclosure movement. But don't hold your breath for any real evidence to be shown by any government.

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Георгиевская ленточка

Origins of Russia's Special Military Operation: A history of the Ukraine conflict


Sputnik
Sun, 23 Nov 2025 21:51 UTC
collage russia war donbass Ukraine
© Sputnik
The political crisis in Ukraine was triggered by the events of Euromaidan. In November 2013, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union, fearing it would disrupt existing ties with Russia. This decision sparked mass protests in Kiev.

The three-month standoff between security forces and protesters — many of whom were nationalists — resulted in dozens of deaths and a coup d'état.

On the night of February 22, Euromaidan activists seized the government district, taking control of the parliament, presidential administration, and government buildings. As a result of the coup, power shifted to the opposition. Legitimate President Viktor Yanukovych was forced to flee to Russia.
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