Secret HistoryS


Blue Planet

Erosion of North Sea reveals remnants of 7,000 year old ancient forest believed to be part of Doggerland

Natalia Klimczak
Ancient Origins
Wed, 18 May 2016 00:00 UTC
northumberland ancient forest, doggerland
The North Sea has eroded the shore of a Northumberland beach to reveal the remnants of an ancient forest dating back 7,000 years. Archaeologists believe the preserved tree stumps and felled tree trunks lining the shoreline. Forests would have covered the area once known as 'Doggerland' - an area of land stretching between England and Europe which existed before the North Sea was formed by glacial melt water and geological movements.
Ancient footprints as well as prehistoric tree stumps and logs have become visible along a 200-meter stretch of a coastline at Low Hauxley near Amble, Northumberland, in what is believed to be Doggerland, the Atlantis of Britain.

The Daily Mail reports that the forest existed in the late Mesolithic period. It began to form around 5,300 BC, and it was covered by the ocean three centuries later. The studies proved that at the time, when the ancient forest existed, the sea level was much lower. It was a period when Britain had recently separated from the land of what is currently Denmark. The forest consisted mostly of hazel, alder, and oak trees. Researchers believe the forest was part of Doggerland, an ancient stretch of a land, which connected the UK and Europe.

Doggerland: Stone Age Atlantis of Britain

Located in the North Sea, Doggerland is believed to have once measured approximately 100,000 square miles (258998 square kilometers). However, the end of the Ice Age saw a great rise in the sea level and an increase in storms and flooding in the region, causing Doggerland to gradually shrink.

Comment: See also:

Tsunami created North Sea 'Atlantis' 8,000 years ago
Britain's Atlantis: Scientific study beneath North Sea could revolutionise how we see the past

Read More...
Question

Earth's mysterious prehistoric monuments: Scientists searching for keys


Sputnik
Sun, 15 May 2016 15:24 UTC
Our planet is dotted with baffling monuments of unknown origin and purpose. Scientists have been racking their brains over these riddles for years, but the more answers they come up with, the more new questions arise. Let's explore some of the most inscrutable monuments scattered across the planet.

Stonehenge
© Flickr/ Alex RanaldiStonehenge
Legend has it that Stonehenge was erected by Merlin the wizard. But from the scientific perspective, the monument had emerged long before the life of King Arthur's wise companion. It is still unclear how people transported the monumental blocks from a quarry located hundreds of kilometers away. And what was the purpose of the structure? Was it an observatory (the megaliths form a precise model of the Solar System), a sanctuary (as it was used by druids) or something else?

Comment: In her landmark work, The Secret History of the World and How to Get Out Alive, Laura Kinght-Jadczyk explores many ancient enigmas, from monuments to The Bible, questioning mainstream interpretations and theories and shedding new light in these areas.



Read More...
Eagle

The heart of the beast: The story of Sykes-Picot and Europe's colonial partition of the Middle East


teleSur
Mon, 16 May 2016 17:13 UTC
Sykes-Picot
A century ago, on May 16, 1916, diplomats from Britain and France set about carving up the former Ottoman Empire, drawing boundaries and separating peoples based on Western imperialist interests. Syria and Lebanon were to be the domain of the French, Jordan went to the British, and both took half of Iraq—while setting into motion the events that would lead to the settler-colonial state of Israel in Palestine.

It wasn't until a year later that the agreement drafted by diplomats Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picto was revealed, thanks only to a revolutionary government seizing power in Russia and publishing the text. But the effects were felt immediately and the deal continues to shape the Middle East today.

teleSUR looks back at the Sykes-Picot agreement, 100 years later, and its ramifications then and now for the region and the world.

Forgotten History: The Story of Sykes-Picot


Comment: Here is a photo/letter of Arthur Balfour's infamous 1917 secret letter to Walter Rothschild, 'the 2nd Lord Baron Rothschild':

Arthur Belfour 1917 Declaration to Baron Rothschild
(Wiki)
See also:

Read More...
Info

Pleiades dates ancient Greek poem

Belinda Smith
Cosmos
Mon, 16 May 2016 03:18 UTC
The Pleiades
© Wikimedia CommonsThe Pleiades, an open cluster consisting of approximately 3,000 stars at a distance of 400 light-years (120 parsecs) from Earth in the constellation of Taurus. It is also known as "The Seven Sisters", or the astronomical designations NGC 1432/35 and M45.
Modern software recreated the night sky more than 2,500 years ago to confirm the timing of a famous Greek poem.

A trio of astronomers, led by the University of Texas at Arlington's Manfred Cuntz, took a section from Greek lyric poet Sappho's Midnight Poem and recreated constellations of the time. Based on the rise of a star cluster, the Pleiades, they calculated the poem was set between 25 January and 31 March 2,586 BCE (570 BC).

Sappho was born and died on the Greek island Lesbos. Even though she was a prolific poet - rivalling Homer, according to the researchers - little remains of her work. Only around 200 fragments survive today.

Midnight Poem is one such piece. A section mentions the narrator, all alone, watching the Pleiades setting before midnight:

The moon has set,
and the Pleiades;
it is midnight,
the time is going by,
And I sleep alone.

The Pleiades, a distinctive group of bright stars, and also known as the Seven Sisters, is visible from the northern hemisphere and most of the southern. The cluster featured in many ancient cultures, including Australian Aborigines, Vikings, Mayans and Babylonians.
Read More...
Binoculars

Zionism's roots in nationalism

Jonathan Cook
The View From Nazareth
Mon, 09 May 2016 00:00 UTC
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism
It was an assessment no one expected from the deputy head of the Israeli military. In his Holocaust Day speech last week, Yair Golan compared current trends in Israel with Germany in the early 1930s. In today's Israel, he said, could be recognised "the revolting processes that occurred in Europe ... There is nothing easier than hating the stranger, nothing easier than to stir fears and intimidate."

The furore over Gen Golan's remarks followed a similar outcry in Britain at statements by former London mayor Ken Livingstone. He observed that Hitler had been "supporting Zionism" in 1933 when the Nazis signed a transfer agreement, allowing some German Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

In their different ways both comments refer back to a heated argument among Jews about whether Zionism was a blessing or a blight. Although largely overlooked today, the dispute throws much light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Those differences came to a head in 1917 when the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, a document promising for the first time to realise the Zionist goal of a "national home" for the Jews in Palestine. Only one minister, Edwin Montagu, dissented. Notably, he was the only Jew in the British cabinet. The two facts were not unconnected. In a memo, he warned that his government's policy would be a "rallying ground for anti-Semites in every country".

He was far from alone in that view. Of the 4 million Jews who left Europe between 1880 and 1920, only 100,000 went to Palestine in line with Zionist expectations. As the Israeli novelist A B Yehoshua once noted: "If the Zionist party had run in an election in the early 20th century, it would have received only 6 or 7 per cent of the Jewish people's vote."
Read More...
Info

Bloody Thursday in People's Park: Reagan's deadly war on student protesters


RT
Sun, 15 May 2016 20:02 UTC
US National Guard in Berkley 1969
© Senor Silencio / YouTube
Forty-seven years ago, the US National Guard and armed police violently targeted students and anti-war demonstrators in an unfair fight over a small community park in Berkeley, California.

Later termed the Battle For People's Park, one person was killed and scores injured as police fired shotguns indiscriminately in a bid to disperse demonstrators on the Berkeley campus on 15 May, 1969.

With the blessing of then-California governor Ronald Reagan, armed police and soldiers carrying bayonets tackled protesters, many of them students, in a small park set up on unused University of California property.

Earmarked for a million dollar development, the area was left vacant by the university and transformed by students into a community park.
Read More...
Boat

Stone tools found in Florida sinkhole suggests humans were present in Americas 1,500 years earlier than previously thought

Alan Yuhas
The Guardian
Sat, 14 May 2016 15:42 UTC
mastodon bone sinkhole florida
© Brendan Fenerty/Reuters Neil Puckett, from Texas A&M University, surfaces with a limb bone of a juvenile mastodon at a sinkhole in limestone bedrock site near Tallahassee, Florida.
Knife, bone, and dung cast doubt on Bering Strait theory and indicate humans spread through Americas 1,500 years earlier than thought, researchers say

A stone knife, mastodon bones and fossilized dung found in an underwater sinkhole show that humans lived in north Florida about 14,500 years ago, according to new research that suggests the colonization of the Americas was far more complex than originally believed.

Archaeologists have known of the sinkhole in the Aucilla river, south of Tallahassee, for years. But they recently dived back into the hole to excavate what they call clear evidence that ancient mankind spread throughout the Americas about 1,500 years earlier than previously thought.

Almost 200ft wide and 35ft deep, the sinkhole was "as dark as the inside of a cow, literally no light at all", according to Jessi Halligan, lead diving scientist and a professor at Florida State University at Tallahassee. Halligan dived into the hole 126 times over the course of her research, wearing a head lamp as well as diving gear.

In the hole, the divers found stone tools including an inch-wide, several inch-long stone knife and a "biface" - a stone flaked sharp on both sides. The artifacts were found near mastodon bones; re-examination of a tusk pulled from the hole confirmed that long grooves in the bone were made by people, probably when they removed it from the skull and pulled meat from its base.

"Each tusk this size would have had more than 15lbs of tender, nutritious tissue in its pulp cavity," said Daniel Fisher, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan who was a member of a team that once removed a tusk from a mammoth preserved in Siberian permafrost.

Of the "biface" tool, Halligan told Smithsonian.com: "There is absolutely no way it is not made by people. There is no way that's a natural artifact in any shape or form."
Read More...
Bomb

MOVE bombing: Philadelphia police carried out military-style attack on peaceful activists

Claire Bernish
The Free Thought Project
Fri, 13 May 2016 15:35 UTC
MOVE bombing
AP file photo of MOVE police bombing whose victims included 5 children.
Thirty-one years ago today, one of the most blatant acts of terrorism was carried out on American soil against American citizens by an American police department. Obviously, this is the one terror attack the government won't remind you about — and, in fact, would prefer you forget completely.

On May 13, 1985, a massive operation by the Philadelphia Police culminated in an all-out attack and bombing on the peaceful, radical movement dedicated to black liberation, MOVE. At the end of the day, 11 people — including five children — had been killed, 65 homes destroyed, and the relationship between law enforcement and civilians arguably changed forever.

Comment: See also: The MOVE bombing - An urban tragedy

Read More...
Camcorder

Officials works to protect 200 million-year-old dinosaur tracks in New England town


The Springfield Republican
Thu, 12 May 2016 23:36 UTC
Dinosaur tracks
© Instagram/vanessa_c_h
Officials in a New England town are working to protect more than 100 dinosaur footprints in a park that are nearly 200 million years old.
Read More...
Music

Ancient Ireland, India linked by musical horn tradition


Australian National University
Fri, 13 May 2016 20:51 UTC
Kompu (Horn)
© Stuart HayBillie O Foghlu with Kompu from Southern India.
An archaeologist studying musical horns from iron-age Ireland has found musical traditions, thought to be long dead, are alive and well in south India.

The realisation that modern Indian horns are almost identical to many iron-age European artefacts reveals a rich cultural link between the two regions 2,000 years ago, said PhD student Billy Ó Foghlú, from ANU College of Asia-Pacific.

"Archaeology is usually silent. I was astonished to find what I thought to be dead soundscapes alive and living in Kerala today," Mr Ó Foghlú said.

"The musical traditions of south India, with horns such as the kompu, are a great insight into musical cultures in Europe's prehistory.

"And, because Indian instruments are usually recycled and not laid down as offerings, the artefacts in Europe are also an important insight into the soundscapes of India's past."

The findings help show that Europe and India had a lively cultural exchange with musicians from the different cultures sharing independently developed technology and musical styles.
Read More...