A major cold age that descended on Earth nearly 13,000 years ago is linked with a widely studied and debated mass extinction of large mammals, such as ground sloths, in North America. But the effects of this so-called "Big Freeze" weren't limited to North America: New research shows that forests throughout Europe vanished within two centuries of the onset of this frigid time.

These findings highlight the way the environment can shift drastically over the course of just a few human lifetimes, the researchers said.

The last major cold age on Earth was a 1,100-year-long chill that began more than 12,800 years ago. The period, sometimes nicknamed the "Big Freeze," is technically known as the Younger Dryas. (This era was not a glacial period, often called an ice age, but rather a cold time in the relatively warm spans between glacial periods.)

Located near the village of Shiyan Beicun in Zhejiang province, China, lies the Longyou caves - an extensive, magnificent and rare ancient underground world considered in China as 'the ninth wonder of the ancient world'. The Longyou grottoes, which are thought to date back at least 2,000 years, represent one of the largest underground excavations of ancient times and are an enduring mystery that have perplexed experts from every discipline that has examined them. Scientists from around the world in the fields of archaeology, architecture, engineering, and geology have absolutely no idea how they were built, by whom, and why.

First discovered in 1992 by a local villager, 36 grottoes have now been discovered covering a massive 30,000 square metres. Carved into solid siltstone, each grotto descends around 30 metres underground and contains stone rooms, bridges, gutters and pools. There are pillars evenly distributed throughout the caves which are supporting the ceiling, and the walls, ceiling and stone columns are uniformly decorated with chisel marks in a series of parallel lines. Only one of the caves has been opened for tourism, chosen because of the stone carvings found inside which depict a horse, fish and bird. The Longyou caves truly are an enigma and here we will explore ten mysteries that are still unexplained despite more than two decades of research.

Just as ancient Greek and Roman propagandists insisted, the Carthaginians did kill their own infant children, burying them with sacrificed animals and ritual inscriptions in special cemeteries to give thanks for favours from the gods, according to a new study.

"This is something dismissed as black propaganda because in modern times people just didn't want to believe it," said Josephine Quinn, a lecturer in ancient history at Oxford, who is behind the study, with international colleagues, of one of the most bitterly debated questions in classical archaeology.

"But when you pull together all the evidence - archaeological, epigraphic and literary - it is overwhelming and, we believe, conclusive: they did kill their children, and on the evidence of the inscriptions, not just as an offering for future favours but fulfilling a promise that had already been made.

"This was not a common event, and it must have been among an elite because cremation was very expensive, and so was the ritual of burial. It may even have been seen as a philanthropic act for the good of the whole community."

Tradition holds that before the British government sealed up several tunnels, one could walk from one end of Malta to the other underground. One of the labyrinths, discovered by excavators, is the Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni, in which excavators discovered the bones of over 33,000 people who had been sacrificed by an ancient pagan neolithic cult.National Geographic, Aug. 1940 issue, told of several school children who had disappeared without a trace in the Hypogeum.

British embassy worker Miss Lois Jessup convinced a guide to allow her to explore a 3-ft. square "burial chamber" next to the floor of the lowest room in the last [3rd] sub-level of the catacombs. He reluctantly agreed and she crawled through the passage until emerging on a cavern ledge overlooking a deep chasm. In total shock she saw a procession of TALL humanoids with white hair covering their bodies walking along another ledge about 50 feet down on the opposite wall of the chasm.

Sensing her they collectively lifted their palms in her direction at which a strong "wind" began to blow through the cavern and something big, "slippery and wet" moved past her before she left in terror to the lower room, where the guide gave her a "knowing" look. Later she returned after the 30 school children and their teacher[s] had disappeared in the same passage that she had explored, only to find a new guide who denied any knowledge of the former guides' employment there.

An international team of scientists is about to descend on Malta's Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which is believed to be the oldest prehistoric underground temple in the world. The subterranean structure is shrouded in mystery, from the discovery of elongated skulls to stories of paranormal phenomena. But the characteristic that is attracting experts from around the globe is the unique acoustic properties found within the underground chambers of the Hypogeum.

Hal Saflieni Hypogeum is a cultural property of exceptional prehistoric value, dating back approximately 5,000 years and the only known example of a subterranean structure of the Bronze Age. The 'labyrinth', as it is often called, consists of a series of elliptical chambers and alveoli of varying importance across three levels, to which access is gained by different corridors. The principal rooms distinguish themselves by their domed vaulting and by the elaborate structure of false bays inspired by the doorways and windows of contemporary terrestrial constructions.

Although not known for certain, it is believed that the hypogeum was originally used as a sanctuary, possibly for an oracle. It is for this reason that a unique chamber carved out of solid limestone and demonstrating incredible acoustic properties has been called 'the Oracle Chamber'. According to William Arthur Griffiths, who wrote 'Malta and its Recently Discovered Prehistoric Temples', a word spoken in the Oracle room is "magnified a hundredfold and is audible throughout the entire structure. The effect upon the credulous can be imagined when the oracle spoke and the words came thundering forth through the dark and mysterious place with terrifying impressiveness."

A winter that lasts years isn't just a problem in Game of Thrones. Roughly 1500 years ago, our world was turned upsidown by a winter that witnesses say "never ended." Now there is scientific evidence that there really was a decade of winter.

Scholars writing in Europe and Asia at the time reported that the year 536 and the years following were bitterly cold. They described conditions that reminded them of an eclipse, and claim that the sun remained "small," with ice frosting up crops even in summer. That year and the decade following were also times of great famine, plague and war - possibly connected to the devastating harvests that left many people hungry, angry, and wandering in search of more fertile lands.

Over at New Scientist, Colin Barras has a terrific article about the scientific quest to discover whether these reports have any basis in reality. For years, scientists have studied tree rings and ice cores, looking for clues that could reveal whether the weather change was caused by a supervolcano (which have been known to cool the planet considerably).

Some promising evidence suggests there may have been a supereruption in El Salvador, which could help explain why Maya settlements nearby mysteriously stopped producing written records for a few years. But that wouldn't explain why the planet remained cold for many years. Usually a supervolcano only affects the weather for a year at most.

• New history of Great War also reveals shell shock severely underestimated

• Professor Antoine Prost says up to 10million died in conflict, not 9million

• Governments gave conservative figures and failed to include many missing

One million more soldiers may have died in the First World War than first believed while survivors left with crippling shell-shock were also severely underestimated, leading academics said today.

Antoine Prost, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Paris, says that in the chaos after the Great War governments, including Britain's, produced conservative death figures.

Professor Prost also says errors in casualty lists and the vast number of missing soldiers means ten million probably perished in trench warfare between 1914 and 1918, not nine million as first thought.

According to a new book by prolific conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, the Fuhrer didn't commit suicide but instead escaped Berlin with the help of the U.S. government.
Jerome R. Corsi is a bona fide conspiracy theorist. Since 2004's Unfit for Command, the New York Times best-selling--and widely denounced--takedown of then-presidential candidate John Kerry, Corsi has churned out a constant stream of articles and books pushing unsubstantiated ideas on everything from the origin of oil to the U.S.'s role in 9/11 to Barack Obama's nationality--all the while waving his Harvard PhD. as some kind of evidence that he's not a complete and utter wingnut.

Corsi's latest hypothesis, detailed in his new book Hunting Hitler, is that the German dictator didn't actually kill himself alongside wife Eva Braun in his Berlin bunker as history books would have us believe. According to Corsi, Hitler actually escaped Germany as the Third Reich fell, and he did it with the help of none other than the U.S. government.

Corsi's argument is that there's no real proof Hitler didn't escape. The world has long been willing to accept the idea that Hitler shot himself while Braun took cyanide, but where is the photographic evidence? The world's most notorious genocidal maniac shot himself in a private bunker and no one took pictures? Corsi doesn't buy it.

43 years later there are still some who won't believe mankind's greatest scientific achievement of the last 50 years. I can still remember that magical, awe inspiring remarkable moment in history when Neil Armstrong planted the American flag in the lunar soil on the moon.

James Longuski, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering at Purdue University, dismissed the idea that man didn't land on the moon.

To suppose a conspiracy to fake a moon landing because the United States was technologically incapable of going to the moon, that numerous photos and films have been doctored, that a trip to the moon would have resulted in radiation killing the astronauts and that numerous key members of the Apollo program died under suspicious circumstances considering it would have to be a ten-year conspiracy involving more than 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo project including the 12 men who walked on the Moon, the six who flew with them as Command Module pilots, and another six astronauts who orbited the Moon is absurd in the highest degree.[2]

Hundreds of thousands of people - including astronauts, scientists, engineers, technicians, and skilled laborers - would have had to keep the secret. Longuski argues that it would have been much easier to really land on the Moon than to generate such a huge conspiracy to fake the landings. Penn Jillette made note of this in the "Conspiracy Theories" episode of his contrarian television show, Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, in 2005. He said that keeping that many people from talking about the Hoax would be impossible.

Four hours drive south of Lima Peru one finds the Paracas Peninsula, part of which is an ecological reserve, where one can see wildlife such as sea lions, and a myriad of various sea bird species. The area is amazingly rich in seafood, and abundant fresh water exists just below the surface of the desert sands, suitable for irrigation free agriculture.

Therefore, it would seem to be a very liveable place for humans. Stone tools, of various forms and styles of shaping have been found in the area, and cursory analysis has established dates of as old as 8000 years. The greatest of Peruvian archaeologists, Julio Tello, made studies in this area in 1928 and performed excavations on the north side of the peninsula, in the central area of the large semi-circular bay there. He discovered and excavated a massive and elaborate graveyard, where each tomb contained an entire family, each one ornately wrapped in multiple layers of highly stylized, woven and coloured cotton cloth. He also found the sand filled remains of subterranean houses, which turned out to be numerous; so numerous in fact, that the village stretched out for between 1 and 2 km just above the seashore.

But, the most amazing finds were the skulls, some enormously elongated. The scientific name for this is dolichocephally. Most skulls exhibiting this condition, found in many parts of the world, were clearly the result of the practice of head-binding, the process being known as cranial deformation. And so how was this achieved?