Secret History

Israel never had any intention of honoring either the 1947 Partition Plan or 1967 borders

Thomas Suárez
Middle East Monitor
Thu, 10 Oct 2019 17:32 UTC

Residents of Tel Aviv celebrating the passage of Resolution 181, November 29, 1947

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to annex parts of the occupied West Bank if re-elected in last month's General Election, eliciting outrage from world leaders. However, that "promise" to usurp not just the West Bank, but all of Palestine, is century-old news, an ongoing promise being kept, and no international outrage has ever really mattered in any case.

A well-worn chapter of Israel's creation myth explains its conquests thus: When in November 1947, the United Nations proposed partitioning Palestine into two states (General Assembly Resolution 181), Israel's founders embraced the offer with gratitude, whereas the Palestinians scoffed at it and attacked the fledgling "Jewish state".

The result of this alleged Palestinian intransigence? The "fundamental fact", as the pro-Israel spin-doctors at CAMERA put it, is that had the Palestinians accepted partition, there would have been a Palestinian state since 1948, "and there would not have been a single Palestinian refugee".

This is more than bizarre rationalisation for seven decades of imperialism and ethnic cleansing; it is historical invention. The Zionist movement never had any intention of honouring any agreement that "gave" it less than all of Palestine. Mainstream leaders like the "moderate" Chaim Weizmann and iconic David Ben-Gurion feigned acceptance of partition because it handed them a weapon powerful enough to defeat partition: statehood.

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Hundreds of 8th century Arabian coins found in Poland by man digging for mushrooms

Matt Day
The First News
Wed, 09 Oct 2019 12:00 UTC

© Muzeum w Lęborku/Facebook
Mushroom picking Bartosz Michałowski found the silver coins in a landslip on the banks of the River Słupia near his village of Strzelinko, not far from the northern town of Słupsk.

A mushroom picker foraging in woods beside a river got more than just fungus after he unearthed a "sensational find" of hundreds of rare Arab coins dating back centuries.

Bartosz Michałowski found the coins in a landslip on the banks of the River Słupia near his village of Strzelinko, not far from the northern town of Słupsk.

Experts from a museum in Lębork have examined the treasure and said that all but two of the coins are Arab in origin and date back to the 8th and 9th centuries.

Comment: Dates, heraldry, and purity, are just some of data points that can be derived from ancient coinage, and the insights they provide into the past can be striking:

Neolithic agricultural revolution and the origins of private property

Jenna Marshall
Santa Fe Institute
Thu, 10 Oct 2019 22:02 UTC

Cave painting of cow & horses, Lascaux, France

Humankind first started farming in Mesopotamia about 11,500 years ago. Subsequently, the practices of cultivating crops and raising livestock emerged independently at perhaps a dozen other places around the world, in what archaeologists call the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution. It's one of the most thoroughly-studied episodes in prehistory — but a new paper in the Journal of Political Economy shows that most explanations for it don't agree with the evidence, and offers a new interpretation.

With farming came a vast expansion of the realm over which private property governed access to valued goods, replacing the forager social norms around sharing food upon acquisition. A common explanation is that farming increased labor productivity, which then encouraged the adoption of private property by providing incentives for the long-term investments required in a farming economy.

"But it's not what the data are telling us", says Santa Fe Institute economist Samuel Bowles, a co-author of the paper. "It is very unlikely that the number of calories acquired from a day's work at the advent of farming made it a better option than hunting and gathering and it could well have been quite a bit worse."

Gene analysis reveals Bronze Age slavery

Barry Keily
Cosmos Magazine
Sun, 13 Oct 2019 21:49 UTC

High status families in late Neolithic and Bronze Age Germany kept slaves, genetic analysis reveals.

The finding, reported in the journal Science, provides fresh insight into ancient life in Europe, showing that complex slave-owning societies were well established long before those of classical Greece and Rome.

The research, centred on genome-wide data gathered from 104 individuals buried in Germany's Lech Valley between about 2500 BCE and 1700 BCE, was conducted by researchers led by archaeo-geneticist Alissa Mittnik from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, in Jena, Germany.

The scientists gathered nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from each individual and compared it to genetic databases covering ancient and modern humans. They also looked at how the graves were arranged and examined the relationship between the number and type of artefacts buried in each.

The picture that emerged was of a surprisingly stable and enduring society that depended on the import of fertile women and menial underlings. The Lech Valley hosted a farming community, Mittnik and colleagues concluded, that persisted for about 700 years.

The people of the valley were a mixture of Western Hunter-Gatherers, Anatolian Neolithic farmers and Steppe pastoralists, with the farmers' genetic heritage becoming more dominant as the centuries passed.

The age of the Great Sphinx

Dr. Martin Sweatman
Prehistory Decoded
Sat, 12 Oct 2019 19:00 UTC

Shows that the feline symbol represented the constellation Cancer, not Leo, in the ancient European zodiac, and therefore reveals the true age of the Great Sphinx of Giza.

Vivid gladiator fresco discovered at Pompeii

Ella Ide
Phys.org
Fri, 11 Oct 2019 12:00 UTC

The fresco was uncovered in what experts think was a tavern frequented by gladiators

A vivid fresco depicting an armour-clad gladiator standing victorious as his wounded opponent stumbles gushing blood has been discovered in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, Italy's culture ministry said Friday.

The striking scene in gold, blue and red was uncovered in what experts think was a tavern frequented by gladiators, who fought each other, prisoners and wild animals for the public's entertainment.

"We do not know how this fight ended. Gladiators were killed or shown mercy," Pompeii's director Massimo Osanna said.

A "Murmillo" fighter wearing a plumed, wide-brimmed helmet with visor, holds aloft his large rectangular shield in his left hand, as he grips his short sword in the right.

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The mysterious ancient figure challenging China's history

Alastair Sooke
BBC
Fri, 11 Oct 2019 11:00 UTC

A spectacular jade carving may hold the clue to an early society that predates what many historians believed to be China’s oldest, writes Alastair Sooke.

A grimacing figure wearing an elaborate feathered headdress is riding on the back of a frightening monster. He must be powerful, perhaps even supernatural, because he effortlessly subdues this sharp-clawed beast with bulging eyes. But who, exactly, is he? A shaman? A god? And why is he forcing historians to tear up the conventionally accepted timeline of Chinese history?

Earlier this year, while filming China's Greatest Treasures, a new six-part television documentary series for BBC World News, I encountered this mysterious character incised on a spectacular ancient jade carving that now belongs to the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in the city of Hangzhou. Known as a 'cong' (pronounced 'ts-ong') - essentially, a jade cylinder, squared on the outside, with a circular tube within - this squat column was recovered by archaeologists from a cemetery for elite members of a complex late Neolithic society that flourished at the site of Liangzhu, around 100 miles (160km) southwest of Shanghai, in the 3rd millennium BC. Traditionally, historians have taught that China's earliest recorded dynasty was the Shang, who ruled during the Bronze Age, in the 2nd millennium BC.

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400,000 years ago prehistoric humans ate bone marrow like canned soup

Tel Aviv University
Thu, 10 Oct 2019 09:42 UTC

Tel Aviv University researchers, in collaboration with scholars from Spain, have uncovered evidence of the storage and delayed consumption of animal bone marrow at Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv, the site of many major discoveries from the late Lower Paleolithic period some 400,000 years ago.

The research provides direct evidence that early Paleolithic people saved animal bones for up to nine weeks before feasting on them inside Qesem Cave.

The study was published in the October 9 issue of Science Advances.

"Bone marrow constitutes a significant source of nutrition and as such was long featured in the prehistoric diet," says Professor Ran Barkai. "Until now, evidence has pointed to immediate consumption of marrow following the procurement and removal of soft tissues. In our paper, we present evidence of storage and delayed consumption of bone marrow at Qesem Cave."

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DNA study sheds new light on the people of the Neolithic Battle Axe Culture

Uppsala University
Phys.org
Wed, 09 Oct 2019 12:00 UTC

In an interdisciplinary study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, an international research team has combined archaeological, genetic and stable isotope data to understand the demographic processes associated with the iconic Battle Axe Culture and its introduction in Scandinavia.

In 1953, a significant burial site belonging to the Battle Axe Culture was found when constructing a roundabout in Linköping. 4,500 years ago, a man and a woman were buried together with a child, a dog and a rich set of grave goods including one of the eponymous battle axes. "Today, we call this site 'Bergsgraven'. I have been curious about this particular burial for a long time. The collaboration of archaeologists with geneticists allows us to understand more about these people as individuals as well as where their ancestors came from," says archaeogeneticist Helena Malmström of Uppsala University, lead author of the study.

The Scandinavian Battle Axe Culture appears in the archaeological record about 5,000 years ago and archaeologically it resembles the continental European Corded Ware Culture. "The appearance and development of the culture complex has been debated for a long time, especially whether it was a regional phenomenon or whether it was associated with migratory processes of human groups, and - if the latter - from where," says osteoarchaeologist Jan Storå of Stockholm University, one of the senior authors of the study.

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1,000 lost ancient sites found using lidar on Scottish isle of Arran

Alison Campsie
Scotsman
Wed, 09 Oct 2019 11:36 UTC

© Historic Environment Scotland.
An aerial photo of the Isle of Arran, where new technology has revealed 1,000 previously unknown ancient sites.

A cutting-edge archaeological project using innovative technology has revealed around 1,000 previously unknown archaeological sites on the Isle of Arran.

The project, undertaken by archaeologists at Historic Environment Scotland (HES), used airborne laser scanning, also known as lidar, to document the land surface in 3D.

Prehistoric settlements, medieval farmsteads and a Neolithic cursus monument - an exceptionally rare find on the west coast of Scotland - are among the finds made.

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Quote of the Day

State power has its own limits defined by the fact that it is authority that reaches people from outside. State power cannot oversee and dictate the creative states of the soul and mind, the inner states of love, freedom and goodwill. The state cannot demand from its citizens faith, prayer, love, goodness and conviction. It cannot regulate scientific, religious and artistic creation. It should not intervene in moral, family and daily private life, and only when extremely necessary should it impinge on people's economic initiative and creativity.

- Ivan Ilyin

Ashes to ashes, bones to dust. R.C.

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Secret History

Israel never had any intention of honoring either the 1947 Partition Plan or 1967 borders

Hundreds of 8th century Arabian coins found in Poland by man digging for mushrooms

Neolithic agricultural revolution and the origins of private property

Gene analysis reveals Bronze Age slavery

The age of the Great Sphinx

Vivid gladiator fresco discovered at Pompeii

The mysterious ancient figure challenging China's history

400,000 years ago prehistoric humans ate bone marrow like canned soup

DNA study sheds new light on the people of the Neolithic Battle Axe Culture

1,000 lost ancient sites found using lidar on Scottish isle of Arran

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