Secret History

Bronze Age shipwreck reveals complex trade network and other surprises

Washington University in St. Louis
Source
Wed, 30 Nov 2022 21:43 UTC

Fig. 1. Regional geography and main sites.
1, Hagia Triada; 2, Hattusa; 3, Hisarcık; 4, Mersin; 5, Tarsus; 6, Alalakh; 7, Ugarit; 8, Haifa; 9, Mari; 10, Assur; 11, Deh Hosein; 12, Susa; 13, Ur; 14, Arisman; 15, Tal-e Malyan; 16, Tepe Hissar; 17, Tepe Yahya; 18, Mundigak; 19, Karnab/Sichkonchi; 20, Sapalli; 21, Shortugai. Purple dashed arrows depict documented trade networks ca. 2200 to 1700 BCE. Blue shaded region reflects the corridor connecting the Anatolian and Central Asian/Middle Eastern tin trade (in blue), ca. 1600 to 1000 BCE. Other shaded areas represent key LBA polities. Inset map illustrates the location of ancient tin sources in Europe.

More than 3,000 years before the Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean, another famous ship wrecked in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern shores of Uluburun — in present-day Turkey — carrying tons of rare metal. Since its discovery in 1982, scientists have been studying the contents of the Uluburun shipwreck to gain a better understanding of the people and political organizations that dominated the time period known as the Late

Now, a team of scientists, including Michael Frachetti, professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, have uncovered a surprising finding: small communities of highland pastoralists living in present-day Uzbekistan in Central Asia produced and supplied roughly one-third of the tin found aboard the ship — tin that was en route to markets around the Mediterranean to be made into coveted bronze metal.

The research, published on November 30 in Science Advances, was made possible by advances in geochemical analyses that enabled researchers to determine with high-level certainty that some of the tin originated from a prehistoric mine in Uzbekistan, more than 2,000 miles from Haifa, where the ill-fated ship loaded its cargo.

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Ancient skull uncovered in China could be million-year-old Homo erectus

Dyani Lewis
Nature
Tue, 29 Nov 2022 12:00 UTC

© Pascal Goetgheluck/SPL
A third ancient human skull has been uncovered at a site in China. A 3D reconstruction of the second skull, discovered three decades ago and called Yunxian 2, is pictured.

Fieldwork is under way to excavate a rare, well-preserved specimen in central China.

Researchers are heralding the discovery of an ancient human skull in central China as an important find. As excavation of the remarkably intact fossil continues, archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists anticipate that the skull could give a fuller picture of the diverse family tree of archaic humans living throughout Eurasia in prehistoric times.

The skull was discovered on 18 May at an excavation site 20 kilometres west of Yunyang — formerly known as Yunxian — in central China's Hubei province. It lies 35 metres from where two skulls — dubbed the Yunxian Man skulls — were unearthed in 1989 and 1990¹, and probably belongs to the same species of ancient people, say researchers.

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17,000 years ago one of Europe's most ancient domestic dogs lived in the Basque Country

University of the Basque Country
Phys.org
Mon, 28 Nov 2022 12:00 UTC

© Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103706
A humerus analyzed by the UPV/EHU's Human Evolutionary Biology group belonged to a specimen that lived in the Paleolithic period, 17,000 years ago

The dog is the first species domesticated by humans, although the geographical and temporal origin of wolf domestication remains a matter of debate.

Comment: Some research suggests that dogs may have been domesticated more than once and in different locations.

In an excavation led by Jesus Altuna in the Erralla cave (Zestoa, Gipuzkoa) in 1985 an almost complete humerus was recovered from a canid, a family of carnivores that includes wolves, dogs, foxes and coyotes, among others. At that time it was difficult to identify which species of canid it belonged to.

Now the Human Evolutionary Biology team at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), led by Professor Conchi de la Rúa, has carried out an in-depth study of the bone remains. A morphological, radiometric and genetic analysis has enabled the species to be identified genetically as Canis lupus familiaris (domestic dog).

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Mummies with golden tongues discovered in ancient Egyptian necropolis

Carly Cassella
Science Alert
Mon, 28 Nov 2022 12:00 UTC

Archaeologists have discovered several ancient mummies in Egypt sporting gold chips where their tongues should be.

The auspicious discovery was made at the Quweisna (sometimes spelled Quesna) necropolis in the central Nile Delta. Discovered in 1989, the site is thought to have been occupied during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, which stretched from about 300 BCE to 640 CE.

The golden-tongued mummies were unearthed in a newly discovered extension of the archaeological compound, where numerous other bodies were interred across three different time periods in ancient Egypt.

Some of the unearthed skeletons have their bones glazed in gold, while others have simply been buried near gold-shaped scarabs and lotus flowers.

Research sheds new light on foodways in the first cities

The University of Glasgow
Fri, 18 Nov 2022 18:15 UTC

The world's first urban state societies developed in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, some 5500 years ago.

No other artefact type is more symbolic of this development than the so-called Beveled Rim Bowl (BRB), the first mass produced ceramic bowl.

BRB function and what food(s) these bowls contained has been the subject of debate for over a century.

A paper published today (18 November 2022) in The Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports shows that BRBs contained a variety of foods, but especially meat-based meals, most likely bone marrow flavoured stews or broths.

Chemical compounds and stable isotope signatures of animal fats were discovered in BRBs from the Late Chalcolithic site of Shakhi Kora located in the Upper Diyala/Sirwan River Valley of north-eastern Iraq.*

An international team led by Professor Claudia Glatz of the University of Glasgow has been carrying out excavations at Shakhi Kora since 2019 as part of the Sirwan Regional Project.*

BRBs are mass-produced, thick-walled, conical vessels that appear to spread from southern, lowland sites such as Uruk-Warka across northern Mesopotamia, into the Zagros foothills, and beyond. BRBs are found in their thousands at Late Chalcolithic sites, often associated with monumental structures.

4,300-foot-long tunnel under Egyptian temple discovered in the ancient city of Alexandria

Sarah Kuta
Smithsonian
Wed, 09 Nov 2022 12:00 UTC

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered an underground tunnel at Taposiris Magna, a temple dedicated to Osiris, the god of death.

Kathleen Martinez, an archaeologist with the University of Santo Domingo, located the 6.5-foot-tall, 4,300-foot-long tunnel roughly 43 feet underground at the temple, which is situated west of the ancient city of Alexandria. She also found two Ptolemaic-era alabaster statues and several ceramic vessels and pots, reports Artnet's Sarah Cascone.

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities shared the find in a statement last week and described the tunnel as a "geometric miracle."

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Roman coin reveals long-lost Roman emperor

Heritage Daily
Wed, 23 Nov 2022 21:11 UTC

A ROMAN COIN, PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT TO BE A FORGERY, HAS NOW BEEN AUTHENTICATED AND DEPICTS A LONG-LOST ROMAN EMPEROR.

A study led by the University College London (UCL) was researching a coin housed at The Hunterian collection at the University of Glasgow.

Researchers compared the coin with a handful of genuine coins of the same design, unearthed in 1713 in Transylvania, Romania.

The team found minerals cemented in place by silica on the coin's surface, indicating that it was buried over a long period of time and then exposed to air. The coin also showed a pattern of wear, suggesting that it was in active circulation during the Roman period.

The coin depicts a previously unknown emperor named Sponsian, who may have been a local army officer forced to assume supreme command in the Roman province of Dacia, a territory overlapping with modern-day Romania. Archaeological studies suggest that the region was cut off from the rest of the Roman empire around AD 260, before being evacuated between AD 271 and 275.

Oldest charred food remains reveal earliest evidence of plant cooking by prehistoric humans

Amarachi Orie
Sky News
Wed, 23 Nov 2022 05:11 UTC

The food pieces include a mixture of different seeds, wild pulses, wild mustard, wild nuts and wild grasses - which could have formed meals resembling bread, porridge, or patties.

Scientists have analysed the oldest charred food remains ever found, providing the earliest evidence of plant cooking among Neanderthals.

Ancient hunter-gatherers were thought to have a largely meat-based diet, but researchers have found that prehistoric people had a diverse diet in which plants featured heavily.

Comment: What exactly does 'featured heavily' mean? That they ate a large quantity of them? Or there was a large selection and they featured often? Because having a salad or a piece of bread with a steak doesn't count as 'featuring heavily'.

Researchers used a scanning electron microscope to analyse nine samples of ancient charred food from two sites: Shanidar Cave, a Neanderthal and early modern human dwelling around 500 miles north of Baghdad in Iraq, and Franchthi Cave in Greece.

Comment: It does seem as though at least some of these remnants, with their 'strong flavours', such as mustard seed, could indeed be seasonings, as well as perhaps 'side dishes'. It may also be that, at times, these peoples chose, either through necessity or preference, to also eat some plant foods.

However, note that data derived from Neanderthal and hunter gatherer teeth and bones - as well as other kinds of data, such as evidence of butchery sites - show that meat of various kinds (including aquatic mammal and fish) seems to have constituted the bulk of their meals: Isotopes found in Neanderthal bones suggest they were meat eaters

The researchers found that ratios of nitrogen-15 and nitrogen-14 were similar to those found in modern major meat eaters such as wolves.

The researchers suggest that when the evidence is considered as a whole, it appears very likely that fresh meat was a main constituent of the Neanderthal diet-meat derived from vegetarian animals. A likely candidate is fawns, which would have been relatively easy to spear; their bones have been found at Neanderthal dig sites.

JFK Assassination: 59 years of lies still haven't buried the TRUTH

Kit Knightly
Off-Guardian
Tue, 22 Nov 2022 21:54 UTC

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was not assassinated with three shots from the book depository fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. And almost all of us know it.

In opinion polls going back to November 29th 1963, just a week after the shooting, at least a sixty-percent majority has rejected the official line every single time.

In short, regarding JFK, the "crazy conspiracy theorists" make up two-thirds of the population, and always have done.

This is a good thing. A victory for truth in the face of stark odds, overcoming fifty-nine years of propaganda.

It doesn't matter what you think of JFK the man - whether you believe he was trying to change things, or hail from the Chomsky school of "he was just like Obama" - the simple facts reflect he was killed by state agencies of his own government.

It was a coup.

We don't need to go into the details, it has been endlessly written about, on this site and a million others.

Suffice it to say, nothing about the "official story" has ever made sense. You have to leave rationality behind to believe it.

Much like mask-usage and the "safe and effective" vaccines during the "pandemic", embracing the mainstream story of the "lone gunman" and his "magic bullet" has passed beyond the realm of thoughts and opinions and become a tenet of a modern-day religion.

Blaming Lee Harvey Oswald is now an oath of fealty, a show of faith. A sign you are one of the initiated - the first and most debased commandment in the book of State Orthodoxy.

Question it, and you question everything. Pull on that thread and six decades of carefully crafted narratives unravel in minutes.

This is why - fifty-nine years after the fact - they are still lying about it.

Yuri Knorozov: The maverick scholar who cracked the Maya code

Coilin O'Connor
RFE/RL
Fri, 18 Nov 2022 16:02 UTC

The ancient script of the Maya baffled scholars for centuries.

Widely viewed as one of the greatest civilizations of the western hemisphere, which peaked around A.D. 250-900, the Maya people of Mesoamerica are known to have been great astronomers who also developed sophisticated methods of agriculture and architecture. They built major cities with stone buildings and huge pyramid temples whose vestiges can still be found in one continuous territory that now lies in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.

Despite being studied for generations, there were many gaps in our knowledge of Mayan history that were not filled until the deciphering of the Maya's strange writings, whose mysteries were finally unraveled by a Soviet academic who was born near Kharkiv, 100 years ago this week.

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Secret History

Bronze Age shipwreck reveals complex trade network and other surprises

Ancient skull uncovered in China could be million-year-old Homo erectus

17,000 years ago one of Europe's most ancient domestic dogs lived in the Basque Country

Mummies with golden tongues discovered in ancient Egyptian necropolis

Research sheds new light on foodways in the first cities

4,300-foot-long tunnel under Egyptian temple discovered in the ancient city of Alexandria

Roman coin reveals long-lost Roman emperor

Oldest charred food remains reveal earliest evidence of plant cooking by prehistoric humans

JFK Assassination: 59 years of lies still haven't buried the TRUTH

Yuri Knorozov: The maverick scholar who cracked the Maya code

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