The aim of science is simple. We aim to create consistent models of reality. If we can model everything perfectly (within the bounds of measurement uncertainty), i.e. explain everything, then there is no practical difference between our models and the truth. Ultimately, then, we seek the truth. Some scientist don't believe this, but this is how I see it. Religion used to be how this was achieved, but religions are not flexible enough to adapt to new information. They are too rigid. The advantage of science is that is infinitely adaptable; it changes to fit whatever the latest and best information is. Or, at least, it should (maybe even science has become too monolithic and politically motivated recently, with too much inertia in certain areas). Moreover, science uses mathematics and probability to find the most likely way forward; which explanation is most likely to be correct? Which brings us to Occam's razor.

Occam's razor is an excellent guide in developing our models. It says that if we have two models that can explain a specific set of observations equally well, the simpler one that requires least data to define it is more likely to be correct. A corollary is that if two models are equally simple, the one that can explain the most is more likely to be correct. Occam's razor is an intuitive guide. Although proofs have been attempted, to my knowledge none are completely satisfactory. It is the key scientific principle that guides me to consider the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis to be almost certainly correct, at least as far as the impact itself is concerned. The secondary effects, such as the Younger Dryas climate shift and associated megafaunal extinctions are more debatable, but still quite likely to be correct, in my view.

It is also how I approach decoding Gobekli Tepe and related symbolism. As a scientist, I am continually seeking connections, making links, simplifying explanations, using Occam's razor. There is considerable evidence now that many ancient cultures were fascinated by the sky, and their astronomical-symbolism was often linked and therefore likely derives from an earlier epoch.

The world was exposed to a disturbing, archaic and bizarre bit of pageantry not seen in over 70 years with the coronation of King Charles III as head of the Global British Commonwealth, head of the Anglican Church, and spokesman for a program dubbed Global Britain that was brought online as the official mandate of the Conservative party in 2021.

From managing a global empire of economic enslavement and having invaded nearly every nation on Earth at one time or another[2], Britain continues to exert vast control over the mining concessions of Africa with over $1 trillion of direct mining interests controlled by British and/or British Commonwealth-based corporations. According to the 2016 report produced by War on Want[3]:

"101 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) — most of them British — have mining operations in 37 sub-Saharan African countries. They collectively control over $1 trillion worth of Africa's most valuable resources. The UK government has used its power and influence to ensure that British mining companies have access to Africa's raw materials. This was the case during the colonial period and is still the case today."

The City

As outlined in my new book The Anglo Venetian Roots of the Deep State, the "square mile" dubbed The City of London (a separate legal entity from London itself) is the nerve center of world finance, with the Bank of England and Commonwealth offshore tax havens directing trillions of dollars of drug money laundering, terrorist financing and other corrupt practices globally. The City's sovereignty beyond all national jurisdiction was enshrined in the oligarchist 'Magna Carta' of 1214 which established the financial hub as a supranational corporation capable of running its own police force and judicial system... which it continues maintain 800 years later.

During the 183 years between 1763 to 1946 which saw the greatest direct influence of British unipolar supremacy over the world, the impoverished nations of the world found themselves more impoverished, less capable of acquiring means of industrial production and more at war with themselves and their neighbors via divide-to-conquer tactics. Since this empire took the form of the Anglo-American "special relationship" after 1945, this trend was only exacerbated.

Although the discovery of North America is synonymous with Christopher Columbus, new research reveals that Viking sailors landed on the shores of North America about 700 years before Columbus.

Archaeologists from the University of Iceland came to this conclusion after analyzing wood recovered from five Norse farmsteads in Greenland, according to a study recently published in the journal Antiquity.

Microscopic analysis of wood suggests that Norse people in Greenland were using timber that came from North America over 700 years ago.

The study focused on the timber used in Norse sites in Greenland between 1000 and 1400. According to the findings, some of the wood came from trees grown outside of Greenland.

As part of the study, 8,552 pieces of wood were examined to determine their origin. Only 26 pieces, or 0.27 percent of the total assemblage, belonged to trees that were definitively imported. These were oak, hemlock, beech, and Jack pine.

"These findings highlight the fact that Norse Greenlanders had the means, knowledge, and appropriate vessels to cross the Davis Strait to the east coast of North America, at least up until the 14th century," archaeologist Lísabet Guðmundsdóttir from the University of Iceland says.

MESOPOTAMIA

Written sources from Mesopotamia suggest that kissing in relation to sex was practiced by the peoples of the ancient Middle East 4,500 years ago. The sources have been analysed by researchers from the University of Copenhagen and University of Oxford in a new article published in the journal Science.
Recent research has hypothesised that the earliest evidence of human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographical location in South Asia 3,500 years ago, from where it may have spread to other regions, simultaneously accelerating the spread of the herpes simplex virus 1.

But according to Dr Troels Pank Arbøll and Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen, who in a new article in the journal Science draw on a range of written sources from the earliest Mesopotamian societies, kissing was already a well-established practice 4,500 years ago in the Middle East. And probably much earlier, moving the earliest documentation for kissing back 1,000 years compared to what was previously acknowledged in the scientific community.

"In ancient Mesopotamia, which is the name for the early human cultures that existed between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in present-day Iraq and Syria, people wrote in cuneiform script on clay tablets. Many thousands of these clay tablets have survived to this day, and they contain clear examples that kissing was considered a part of romantic intimacy in ancient times, just as kissing could be part of friendships and family members' relations," says Dr Troels Pank Arbøll, an expert on the history of medicine in Mesopotamia.

He continues:

"Therefore, kissing should not be regarded as a custom that originated exclusively in any single region and spread from there but rather appears to have been practiced in multiple ancient cultures over several millennia."

Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen adds:

"In fact, research into bonobos and chimpanzees, the closest living relatives to humans, has shown that both species engage in kissing, which may suggest that the practice of kissing is a fundamental behaviour in humans, explaining why it can be found across cultures."

As the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, or 'catastrophe', is marked on Monday at the United Nations, pro-Israel advocates have been pushing an alternative version of historical events that positions Israel as the victim and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as self-inflicted.

This Israeli narrative contends that as soon as David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the Jewish state on 14 May 1948 five major Arab armies invaded historic Palestine to wage - along with the Palestinians - a "war of annihilation" against Israel and "push Jews into the ocean".

The outnumbered Israelis defended themselves and won the war, and in the process, Palestinians fled their homes.

"These are foundational narratives for Israeli Jews and also Diaspora Jews - they are taken as obvious truth," Dr Yair Wallach, historian, and senior lecturer in Israeli studies at SOAS, told The New Arab.

"Pro-Israel advocates have been pushing an alternative version of historical events that positions Israel as the victim and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as self-inflicted.

"They connect 1948 (and Israel) with the Jewish memory of persecution; they provide justification for what Israel did to Palestinians as 'self-defence'; and it informs the understanding that Israel's very existence is always in danger, and it is force and force only that guarantees the security of Israel."

Archaeologists excavating in Iran's Mazandaran region have revealed that Iranian farmers were cultivating rice as far back as 3000 years ago.

Māzandarān is a historic northern Iran region bordering the Caspian Sea on the north. An early Iranian civilization flourished at the beginning of the first millennium BC in Tabarestan (Māzandarān).

Based on the results of an archaeological survey conducted by experts from the Peking University, rice cultivation in the Mazandaran region dates some 3,000 years, ISNA quoted Iranian archaeologist Ebrahim Amirkolai as saying on Thursday.

The study relies on evidence mostly accumulated from excavations conducted on Qale-Kesh, an archaeological site near Amol, the Amirkolai said.

It shows that the history of this grain's cultivation in Mazandaran goes back to the Achaemenid period and even further in time to 3,000 years ago, he explained.

Moreover, the excavations at the site revealed significant data about the Bronze Age and Iron Age, Amirkolai stated.

Around 8,000 years ago, Middle Eastern hunters carved to-scale plans of their 'desert kite' traps onto rocks.
Stars and lines engraved in rocks on the Arabian Peninsula may represent nearby hunting traps, making these carvings the first scale-plan diagrams in human history, according to a new study that reveals humans' sophisticated understanding of space around 8,000 years ago.

Archaeologists first noticed these structures, known as desert kites, about 100 years ago, when aerial photography began taking off with airplanes. Kites are large areas of land bordered by low stone walls, sometimes with pits scattered on the inside near the edges. Found primarily in the Middle East and Central Asia, kites are thought to have functioned like pens or traps for animals. Hunters would herd animals, like gazelle, into the kite through a long, narrow passage, where the game would be unable to escape the walls or the pits, making them easier to kill.

Because of their massive size — averaging close to the square footage of two football fields — kites cannot be seen in their entirety from the ground. But the advent of publicly available, high-resolution satellite images, such as those from Google Earth, has jump-started the study of desert kites in the past decade.

A pair of unknown and "exceptionally rare" portraits by Rembrandt have been discovered in a private collection in the UK.

The intimate paintings of relatives of the Dutch master are now expected to sell for between £5 million and £8 million ($6.25 million-$10 million) at auction.

Signed and dated 1635, the pictures are of an elderly husband and wife who were related to Rembrandt by marriage.

Measuring just under 8 inches high, the paintings depict wealthy plumber Jan Willemsz van der Pluym and his wife Jaapgen Carels, who were from a prominent family in the Dutch city of Leiden.

The remains of two people believed to have been killed by an earthquake that accompanied the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius have been found in the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.

The skeletons, thought to belong to two men in their mid-50s, were found during excavations at the Insula dei Casti Amanti, or Insula of the Chaste Lovers, an area of Pompeii made up of a cluster of homes and a bakery.

The well-preserved remains were found beneath a collapsed wall. Bone fractures indicate that the men probably died as a result of multiple injuries sustained as the building they sought refuge in caved in because of an earthquake that struck during the early stage of the volcanic eruption.

Scientists believe they have discovered the earliest human footprints - tracks left by a family of extinct humans 300,000 years ago.

The perfectly preserved prints of a small family of 'Heidelberg people,' a species of human long since extinct, were uncovered in Germany.

This subspecies of archaic humans, formally known as Homo heidelbergensis, were the first to build homes and hunt large animals but disappeared from the Earth about 28,000 years ago - and experts say it was because of climate change.

The traces were discovered in the Paleolithic site complex of Schöningen in Lower Saxony, along with ancient animal imprints, including the first evidence of elephants in the region.