Secret HistoryS


Crusader

6th Century Anglo-Saxons may have fought in northern Syrian wars, grave goods suggest

Dalya Alberge
The Guardian
Thu, 04 Jul 2024 23:25 UTC
Anglosaksonska palata istok Engleske
Exotic items found at sites such as Sutton Hoo may have been brought to England by returning warriors, rather than via trade.
Sixth-century Anglo-Saxon people may have travelled from Britain to the eastern Mediterranean and northern Syria to fight in wars, researchers have suggested, casting fresh light on their princely burials.

St John Simpson, a senior British Museum curator, and Helen Gittos, an Oxford scholar, have concluded that some of the exotic items excavated at Sutton Hoo, Taplow and Prittlewell, among other sites, originated in the eastern Mediterranean and north Syria and cannot have been conventional trade goods, as others have suggested.

Simpson said that "compelling evidence" suggests the individuals buried at those sites had been involved in Byzantine military campaigns in northern Mesopotamia during the late sixth century, fighting the Sasanians, an ancient Iranian dynasty.

Comment: What's perhaps most incredible is how little we seem to know about the period: For fascinating insight into the truth about Christianity, and its origins, check out Laura Knight-Jadczyk's book From Paul to Mark: PaleoChristianity

As well as the following interviews: In Search of the Miraculous: Holy Grail Symbolism & Early Christian Mystery, with Laura Knight-Jadczyk



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Info

Denisovans survived on Tibetan plateau for 160,000 years


University of Reading
Wed, 03 Jul 2024 18:42 UTC
Entrance to Baishiya Karst Cave.
© Dongju Zhang’s group (Lanzhou University)Entrance to Baishiya Karst Cave.
Bone remains found in a Tibetan cave 3,280 m above sea level indicate an ancient group of humans survived here for many millennia, according to a new study published in Nature.

The Denisovans are an extinct species of ancient human that lived at the same time and in the same places as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Only a handful Denisovan remains have ever been discovered by archaeologists. Little is known about the group, including when they became extinct, but evidence exists to suggest they interbred with both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

A research team led by Lanzhou University, China, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, CAS, China, and involving the University of Reading studied more than 2,500 bones from the Baishiya Karst Cave on the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau, one of the only two places where Denisovans are known to have lived.

Their new analysis, published today (Wednesday, 3 July) in Nature, has identified a new Denisovan fossil and shed light on the species' ability to survive in fluctuating climatic conditions — including the ice age — on the Tibetan plateau from around 200,000 to 40,000 years ago.

Dr Geoff Smith, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Reading, is a co-author of the study. He said: "We were able to identify that Denisovans hunted, butchered and ate a range of animal species. Our study reveals new information about the behaviour and adaptation of Denisovans both to high altitude conditions and shifting climates. We are only just beginning to understand the behaviour of this extraordinary human species."
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USA

Made in America: The ISIS conquest of Mosul


The Cradle.co
Tue, 02 Jul 2024 00:00 UTC
ISIS
© The CradleISIS
The notorious terror group used US-supplied weapons, US-trained fighters, and funding sent from banks in Washington, DC, to conquer Iraq's second-largest city and terrorize its Sunni Muslim inhabitants.

Ten years ago this month, the notorious terror group ISIS improbably conquered Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city. In only two days of fighting, a few hundred ISIS militants captured the city, forcing thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police to flee in chaos and confusion.

The western media attributed the city's fall to the sectarian policies of then-Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, suggesting that local Sunnis welcomed the ISIS invasion. US officials claimed they were surprised by the rapid rise of the terror organization, prompting then-US president Barack Obama to vow to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the group.

However, a close review of events surrounding the fall of Mosul and discussions with residents during The Cradle's recent visit to the city shows the opposite.

The US and its regional allies used ISIS as a proxy to orchestrate the fall of Mosul, thereby terrorizing its Sunni Muslim inhabitants to achieve specific foreign policy goals. Says one Mosul resident speaking with The Cradle:
"There was a plan to let Daesh [ISIS] take Mosul, and the USA was behind it. Everyone here knows this, but no one can say it publicly. It was a war against Sunnis."
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Info

World's oldest artwork discovered in Indonesian cave

Dennis Lawler
Phys Org
Wed, 03 Jul 2024 17:23 UTC
Cave Painting
© Phys OrgThe cave painting of a pig, the oldest narrative artwork made by humans.
It may not look like much — just a flaking image of three people around a big red pig.

But the humble cave painting discovered in Indonesia is the oldest known narrative artwork ever made by human hands, dating back more than 51,000 years, new research said on Wednesday.

"This is the oldest evidence of storytelling," Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist at Australia's Griffith University, told AFP.

Aubert was part of the team that identified the previous record holder in 2019, a hunting scene found in a nearby Indonesian cave then estimated to be nearly 44,000 years old.

The latest discovery, which was dated using a new laser technique, marks "the first time we've passed the 50,000-year barrier," said Aubert, a co-author of a new study in Nature describing the find.

That early humans were able to tell such a "sophisticated" story through art could rewrite our understanding of human cognitive evolution, he added.

"Our discovery suggests that storytelling was a much older part of human history... than previously thought," study co-author archaeologist Adam Brumm told a press conference.
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Info

4,000-year-old rock art in Venezuela may be from a 'previously unknown' culture

Owen Jarus
Live Science
Tue, 02 Jul 2024 09:58 UTC
Archaeologists in Venezuela have discovered 20 previously unknown rock art sites that are thousands of years old.
Venezuela Rock Art
© José Miguel Pérez-GómezAn enhanced view showing some of the rock art found in Venezuela.
An archeological team in Venezuela has discovered 20 rock art sites that date back thousands of years in Canaima National Park, in the southeastern part of the country.

While archaeologists have found similar rock art designs elsewhere in South America, the newfound art "represents a new culture previously unknown," José Miguel Pérez-Gómez, an archaeologist and researcher at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas who is leading the team, told Live Science in an email.

Some of these designs, which researchers call "pictograms," were drawn in red and depict geometric motifs such as lines of dots, rows of X's, star-shaped patterns and straight lines that connect together to form a variety of designs. There are also simple depictions of leaves and stick figure drawings of people. Additionally, some of the images, called petroglyphs, were incised into the rock and also show a variety of geometric motifs.

It's unclear why people created this art. "It is almost impossible to get into the minds of people living so many [thousands of] years ago" Pérez-Gómez said, but "definitely these signs had a ritual meaning." For instance, the different depictions may be related to birth, diseases, the renewal of nature or good hunting. The places where the rock art was created "most probably had a meaning and an importance within the landscape, just as the churches have a meaning for people today," Pérez-Gómez added.
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Better Earth

Secrets of Roman Barbegal water mills revealed in calcium deposits

Kathrin Voigt, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Phys.org
Mon, 01 Jul 2024 19:28 UTC
Barbegal mill
© Robert FabreView of the ruins of the Barbegal mill complex in 2018.
Archaeologists face a major challenge when they intend to acquire information about buildings or facilities of which only ruins remain. This was a particular challenge for the remnants of the Roman water mills in Barbegal in Southern France, dating back to the 2nd century CE.

This unique industrial complex consisted of 16 water wheels placed in parallel rows, eight on the east and eight on the west side, which were operated in a waterfall-like arrangement. Little could at first be deduced about the site from these now scant ruins — except that the wheels were supplied by an aqueduct that brought water from the surrounding hills.

A coin issued during the reign of the Emperor Trajan discovered in a basin above the mill complex as well as the structural characteristics of the site indicate that the mill was in use for about 100 years. However, the type of mill wheels, their function and how they were employed has remained a mystery until now.

Comment: For further fascinating insight into ancient people's use, and knowledge, of water, see:

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Pirates

'It all came from the West': Who is behind the golden age of terrorism in the Middle East?

Elizabeth Blade
RT
Sat, 29 Jun 2024 11:16 UTC
knifehand
Ten years ago, ISIS declared the creation of an Islamic caliphate. Although the terrorists were defeated, the threat lives on.

At its peak, ISIS controlled one third of Syria and about 40 percent of Iraq. Various groups in Africa pledged loyalty to its leader, and cells of the organization carried out attacks in the heart of Europe. Various actors, local, regional and international, exerted efforts to curb the spread of the cancer but today their radical ideas persist.

Sheikh Mohammed al-Tamimi still remembers June of 2014, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then-leader of ISIS, a Sunni terrorist group, announced the establishment of a caliphate stretching from Aleppo in Syria to Diyala in Iraq.

In those days, Al-Tamimi was a commander in the Faylaq al-Wa'ad al-Sadiq forces, a Shiite militia linked to Iran that was originally established to defend Iraq from American and British occupation in 2003 but was later developed into a force fighting to secure Iraq and neighboring Syria from the threat of ISIS.

In 2014, Al-Tamimi participated in many battles, where he and his fighters faced off against the ISIS terrorists.

In June 2014, for example, he undertook his first air descent operation at Speicher Airbase in Salah Al Din province with the aim of saving a group of commanders, officers and fighters who were besieged in the area - a task he and his 250 fighters successfully accomplished. Later that same month, he led an operation to free hundreds of hostages at Tikrit University. His men wouldn't rest until the last ISIS terrorist was eliminated.

Al-Tamimi recalls:
"Those were really sad days. Terrorists were seizing control over large parts of the four Sunni provinces, and quickly advancing thanks to the support of sleeper cells and the backing of the Sunni Muslim community."
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Better Earth

Evidence of 12,000-year-old cultural ritual unearthed in Australia

Laura Baisas
Popular Science
Mon, 01 Jul 2024 18:18 UTC
australia
© David et. al 2024Ritual sticks uncovered in Cloggs Cave date back 10,000 to 12,000 years.
A team in Australia has found archeological evidence for what could be the oldest known culturally transmitted human ritual. Sticks found preserved in fireplaces in a cave southeastern Australia that date back to about to the end of the Last Ice Age, indicate that the ritual intended to cure or hurt has been passed down for roughly 500 generations. The findings are described in a study published July 1 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

Healing or harm

Accounts from colonists to Australia in the 19th century documented a specific GunaiKurnai First Nations ritual. The practice included preparing a shaped stick made of dense and hard Casuarina wood with fat and placing it before a fire until the stick falls.

"These rituals were performed by Mulla-mullung, akin to modern doctors, to heal people, or to place a spell on them," Uncle Russell Mullett, a study co-author, GunaKurnai Elder, and RAP Manager at GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation, tells Popular Science. "Such rituals could be used for healing or for harm, depending on the circumstances of each ceremony."

Comment: Australia is proving to be quite the repository for clues to the happenings in our ancient past.: However, clues of various kinds can be found in the superstitions, rituals, and festivals, of a great many places: And the insights that can be gleaned are fascinating indeed, for more check out SOTT radio's:


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Blue Planet

2,000 years ago, a bridge in Switzerland collapsed on top of Celtic sacrifice victims, new study suggests

Kristina Killgrove
Live Science
Sun, 30 Jun 2024 18:03 UTC
celtic bridge sacrifice
© Archeo26, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe fallen bridge was discovered along the Thielle river in the 1960's.
When a small bridge in western Switzerland collapsed 2,000 years ago, the bodies of 20 people, three cows and two horses became entangled in the wreckage. But whether this event was the result of a catastrophic flood or an elaborate ritual sacrifice has puzzled archaeologists for decades. Now, new research, including an analysis of skeletal trauma and genetics, suggests that the answer may be both.

In the late 1960s, the splintered remains of a wooden bridge across the Thielle River were discovered along with iron and bronze weapons; pottery; and two dozen human and animal skeletons. Most of the recovered human skeletons were those of adult males, in some cases pinned underneath the beams of the bridge, which was initially constructed in 135 B.C. While a flood may have triggered the collapse, resulting in deaths, the other possible interpretation is a Celtic ritual offering of sacrificed humans and animals.

Comment: More on the Celts:

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Info

Over 30 mysterious children's graves uncovered in Norway

Mette Estep
sciencenorway.no
Tue, 25 Jun 2024 17:54 UTC
Archaeologists have discovered 40 circular stone formations during an excavation in southeastern Norway. All have cremated bone remains in the centre, mostly from children.
large burial field in southeastern Norway
© Museum of Cultural HistoryArchaeologists at work in a large burial field in southeastern Norway, where 40 circular stone formations with cremated bone remains, mostly from children, were found placed in the middle.
The burial field is unique in a European context, according to the Museum of Cultural History. It was found during an excavation in Fredrikstad municipality in 2023, and the analysis results of the bone remains are now complete.

The biggest surprise for the archaeologists was that almost all of those buried under the strange circular formations were children, the Museum of Cultural History informs NTB.

The first surprise, however, was discovering the graves, as none of them were visible in the terrain last autumn. But after removing the turf and cleaning, archaeologists discovered over 40 stone formations located 5-10 centimetres beneath the surface. These formations were round or oval, ranging from one to two metres in diameter. Several had clear edge stones and a central flagstone or large stone.

"We thought these must be graves," excavation leader Guro Fossum says. She is an adviser at the Museum of Cultural History.

Further investigations revealed burnt bones, pottery shards, and a possible brooch. All the graves were well preserved.
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