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Donut

Ancient Maya's sacred groves of cacao trees discovered

maya
© Richard TerryResearcher Chris Balzotti climbs an ancient staircase discovered in a sinkhole near Coba, Mexico.
As much as modern society worships chocolate, cacao — the plant chocolate comes from — it was believed to be even more divine to ancient Mayas. The Maya considered cacao beans to be a gift from the gods and even used them as currency because of their value.

As such, cacao bean production was carefully controlled by the Maya leaders of northern Yucatan, with cacao trees only grown in sacred groves. But no modern researcher has ever been able to pinpoint where these ancient sacred groves were located — until now.

Researchers at Brigham Young University, including professor emeritus Richard Terry and graduate students Bryce Brown and Christopher Balzotti, worked closely with archaeologists from the U.S. and Mexico to identify locations the Maya used to provide the perfect blend of humidity, calm and shade required by cacao trees. While the drier climate of the Yucatan peninsula is inhospitable to cacao growth, the team realized the vast array of sinkholes common to the peninsula have microclimates with just the right conditions.

Comment: It brings to mind a reference Graham Hancock makes in his book America Before that in the Amazon rainforest food crops like the Brazil nut and the ice cream bean tree are in such abundance when compared to other species of plant that researchers believe that they must have been intentionally cultivated: Also check out the MindMatters podcast on the book mentioned above: MindMatters: America Before: Comets, Catastrophes, Mounds and Mythology




Pharoah

18,000 inscribed sherds documents life in ancient Egyptian city of Athribis

The temple of Athribis
© IDW OnlineThe temple of Athribis
Egyptologists have recovered more than 18,000 inscribed sherds in ancient Athribis - the remains of vessels and jars that served as writing material some 2,000 years ago. The sherds, known as ostraca, document lists of names, purchases of food and everyday objects, and even writing from a school, including lines written by pupils as a punishment. It is very rare to find such a large volume of ostraca. They were recovered during excavations led by Professor Christian Leitz of the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen in cooperation with Mohamed Abdelbadia and his team from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

In ancient times, ostraca were used in large quantities as writing material, inscribed with ink and a reed or hollow stick (calamus). Such a large quantity of finds has only been made once before in Egypt, in the workers' settlement of Deir el-Medineh, near the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. The ostraca now recovered provide a variety of insights into the everyday life of the ancient settlement of Athribis, nearly 200 kilometers north of Luxor.

Around 80 percent of the pot sherds are inscribed in Demotic, the common administrative script in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, which developed from Hieratic after 600 BC. Among the second most common finds are ostraca with Greek script, but the team also came across inscriptions in Hieratic, hieroglyphic and - more rarely - Coptic and Arabic script.

They also discovered pictorial ostraca - a special category, says Christian Leitz. "These sherds show various figurative representations, including animals such as scorpions and swallows, humans, gods from the nearby temple, even geometric figures."

Star of David

New Anne Frank book sparks scandal in Netherlands: Claims family was betrayed by Jewish collaborator

anne frank house book
The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam
The Dutch publishers of a new book about the betrayal of Anne Frank have delayed a decision about a second print run pending 'answers from the investigative team to questions that have arisen' following the publication earlier this month.

Ambo Anthos said in a letter to its authors that it apologised to everyone who felt offended by the book, which claims a Jewish notary was 85% certain to have handed the Frank's secret address to the Nazis.

The publisher, which bought the Dutch rights to the book four years ago, now says it should have been more critical about the book Who Betrayed Anne Frank? and that it had been caught up in the momentum toward its international unveiling.

The book was launched to a highly orchestrated publicity onslaught, including very strict rules for journalists given an advance copy.

Info

Researchers discover locations of ancient Maya sacred groves of cacao trees

Findings show links among cacao cultivation, religion, power in region.

Researcher Chris Balzotti
© Photo by Richard TerryResearcher Chris Balzotti climbs an ancient staircase discovered in a sinkhole near Coba, Mexico.
For as much as modern society worships chocolate, cacao — the plant chocolate comes from — was believed to be even more divine to ancient Mayas. The Maya considered cacao beans to be a gift from the gods and even used them as currency because of their value.

As such, cacao bean production was carefully controlled by the Maya leaders of northern Yucatan, with cacao trees only grown in sacred groves. But no modern researcher has ever been able to pinpoint where these ancient sacred groves were located — until now.

Researchers at Brigham Young University, including professor emeritus Richard Terry and graduate students Bryce Brown and Christopher Balzotti, worked closely with archaeologists from the U.S. and Mexico to identify locations the Maya used to provide the perfect blend of humidity, calm and shade required by cacao trees. While the drier climate of the Yucatan peninsula is inhospitable to cacao growth, the team realized the vast array of sinkholes common to the peninsula have microclimates with just the right conditions.

As detailed in a study newly published in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, the team conducted soil analyses on 11 of those sinkholes and found that the soil of nine of them contained evidence of theobromine and caffeine — combined biomarkers unique to cacao. Archaeologists also found evidence of ancient ceremonial rituals — such as staircase ramps for processions, stone carvings, altars and offerings like jade and ceramics (including tiny ceramic cacao pods) — in several sinkholes.

Comment: It brings to mind a reference Graham Hancock makes in his book America Before that in the Amazon rainforest food crops like the Brazil nut and the ice cream bean tree are in such abundance when compared to other species of plant that researchers believe that they must have been intentionally cultivated: Also check out the MindMatters podcast on the book mentioned above: MindMatters: America Before: Comets, Catastrophes, Mounds and Mythology




Books

How the English failed at stamping out the Scots language

poster scots language
© Atlas Obscura
Over the past few decades, as efforts to save endangered languages have become governmental policy in the Netherlands (Frisian), Slovakia (Rusyn) and New Zealand (Maori), among many others, Scotland is in an unusual situation. A language known as Scottish Gaelic has become the figurehead for minority languages in Scotland. This is sensible; it is a very old and very distinctive language (it has three distinct r sounds!), and in 2011 the national census determined that fewer than 60,000 people speak it, making it a worthy target for preservation.

But there is another minority language in Scotland, one that is commonly dismissed. It's called Scots, and it's sometimes referred to as a joke, a weirdly spelled and -accented local variety of English. Is it a language or a dialect? "The BBC has a lot of lazy people who don't read the books or keep up with Scottish culture and keep asking me that stupid question," says Billy Kay, a language activist and author of Scots: The Mither Tongue. Kay says these days he simply refuses to even answer whether Scots is a language or a dialect.

What Scots really is is a fascinating centuries-old Germanic language that happens to be one of the most widely spoken minority native languages, by national percentage of speakers, in the world. You may not have heard of it, but the story of Scots is a story of linguistic imperialism done most effectively, a method of stamping out a country's independence, and also, unexpectedly, an optimistic story of survival. Scots has faced every pressure a language can face, and yet it's not only still here — it's growing.

Bizarro Earth

Death, pain and injustice: How British soldiers massacred scores of civilians in the UK - Bloody Sunday

bloody sunday
© Getty Images / William L. RukeyserFILE PHOTO. Thousands march with the Northern Irish Civil Rights Assn. in Newry during a civilian protest organised in response to the shooting of 14 civilians by British paratroopers the week before, 2nd February 1972.
For the first time in 50 years, the crowds gathering in Derry this weekend to remember the events of the day forever known as Bloody Sunday will have some certainty. Certainty that the innocence of the 13 men and boys murdered on January 30, 1972 has been acknowledged, but also certainty that true justice has eluded them.

But that won't stop the families of those killed and wounded by trigger-happy British Parachute Regiment soldiers in half an hour of bloodshed from celebrating what they've achieved in the years since. And it hasn't stopped Enniskillen-born actor Adrian Dunbar, star of the hit TV police drama 'Line of Duty' from accepting an invitation to talk to his fellow Northern Irishmen and women on Sunday as they meet together to remember the past and pray for the future.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:


Star of David

Al Tantura: The memory of colonization

Dor Beach building
© Dr. Avishai Teicher PikwikiA building still standing from Al-Tantura at Dor Beach near Kibbutz Nahsholim
"We don't need their acknowledgment," says Salah Abu Salah, a survivor of the Al-Tantura massacre. "The land will testify one day and tell what happened."

In the early stages of 1948, the village of Al-Tantura was targeted by Israeli militaries; its houses were looted, its Arab Palestinian inhabitants expelled, and others massacred by the Israeli defense forces Alexandroni Brigade. Israel denied the existence of the massacre for years despite the testimonies of its original inhabitants until recently; a 2021 Israeli documentary revealed testimony from several Israeli veterans affirming that a massacre involving more than 200 Palestinian victims had taken place at that time.

The original inhabitants of Tantura were forced to move to different places; most of them had relatives 50 km away in a town called Fureidis (which translates as "Paradise"), and they had no choice but to live with them. While revisiting the story of Tantura, Salah Abu Salah, who was 8 years old at the time, told me how his family and other families had to move to Fureidis seeking shelter.

In recounting his story Abu Salah told me that after the Israeli defense forces took their homes, "They put us all on a bus and took us to a nearby village and left us there." For his luck, Abu Salah's mother had family that lived in Fureidis and they welcomed them to stay with them; other families had nowhere to seek shelter, so they were forced to leave to other areas, and some even fled to Jordan. The mukhtar (the head of the village) of Fureidis was from the Bariyeh family and had no choice but to open the town to Tantura refugees and urge people to shelter them.

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SOTT Focus: MindMatters: The Creativity and Humanity of John Lennon

beatles lennon
Peter Jackson's excellent new documentary Get Back provides an inside view of one of legendary rock band The Beatles' last recording sessions and their final public performance. Inspired by our viewing of the three-part documentary, today on MindMatters we discuss our thoughts about not only the Beatles and the nature of creativity, but also musical giant John Lennon's incredible artistry, the role he chose for himself post-Beatles, and how he chose to make constructive use of his considerable fame and talent to raise political awareness.

Few artists in history are gifted with such creativity and influence so as to make them the enemy of presidents and intelligence agencies, and yet that was exactly what John Lennon was before his life was cut tragically short by so-called 'lone nutter' Mark David Chapman. What Lennon might have done with a full life one can only, sadly, speculate. But we can look back at his all-too-brief life, celebrate his accomplishments, acknowledge his flaws, and recognize the power he had to move millions with his heart and with his message.


Running Time: 01:04:47

Download: MP3 — 89 MB



Better Earth

Ice-age remains near Sea of Galilee show ancient residents thrived as ice melted

ice age galilee
© Steiner et al., 2022, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Early Epipaleolithic sites are marked with red circles, Middle Epipaleolithic with black squares and Late Epipaleolithic with blue triangles.
A new article published today in PLOS ONE by a Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU)'s Institute of Archaeology team and colleagues focused on the remains of a previously submerged fisher-hunter-gatherer camp on the shores of the Sea of Galilee from around 23,000 years ago. Through a close analysis of the abundance, variety and through use of animal remains, the team concluded that these survivors of the latest Ice Age thrived whereas most of their contemporaries, in other parts of the world, were nearly starved, due to the Earth's extremely cold temperatures.


Comment: As Pierre Lescaudron details in Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes, since then, a series of cataclysmic events have shifted our planet's latitude:
The above strongly suggests that before the Younger Dryas, the North geographic pole was located around Hudson Bay, which is about 60° North - that is; 30 degrees in latitude away from the current North pole.

But the peculiar Laurentide ice sheet is not the only evidence we have. The study of fossils provides a very good idea of what kind of plants and animals lived in different locations of the planet right before the Younger Dryas. This research tends to confirm that, at the end of the Pleistocene, the North pole was located in Hudson Bay.

Indeed, before the Younger Dryas, the Arctic Ocean was a temperate ocean (as indicated by the presence of Foramainifera in sea cores), Siberia was a temperate region (as indicated by human remains, entire forests and temperate flora), and Japan was warmer than today (as indicated by flora that grows in temperate climate and by the corals of Okinawa).

The Israeli site, known as Ohalo II, was occupied at the end of the last Ice Age ("Last Glacial Maximum"), between 23,500 and 22,500 years ago. Ohalo II is known for the excellent preservation of its brush huts and botanical remains. The study, led by HU doctoral student Tikvah Steiner, under the supervision of HU Professor Rivka Rabinovich and University of Haifa archaeologist Prof. Dani Nadel who excavated the site, examined the diet and extensive use of animal parts to determine the welfare and lifestyle of these ancient inhabitants.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:



Info

Possible lunisolar calendar systems at Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe

The following manuscript will soon be submitted for peer-review to an academic journal. It is reproduced here with the permission of the journal. Please see the acknowledgments section for proper attribution of ideas.

ABSTRACT

Gobekli Tepe is a remarkable ancient archaeological site in southern Turkey featuring several sub-circular temple-like enclosures adorned with many carved symbols. The oldest radiocarbon date obtained, so far, for the site places one of its enclosures, Enclosure D, at the Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic boundary, circa 9,500 BCE. Earlier work provided an astronomical interpretation for some of its symbolism, focussing on the animal symbols which were interpreted in terms of familiar constellations.

Here, that earlier interpretation is extended by showing how V-symbols on Pillar 43 in Enclosure D, in particular, can be interpreted in terms of a lunisolar calendar system, which would make it the oldest known example of its type. Furthermore, it is shown that a stone 11-pillar pool structure at neighbouring Karahan Tepe can also be interpreted in terms of the same lunisolar calendar system.

Other V-symbols at Gobekli Tepe are also interpreted in astronomical terms. Finally, it is shown how the Urfa Man statue and a carving at Sayburc can be interpreted as time-controlling or creator deities. Symbolic links with later cultures from the Fertile Crescent are explored.
Pillar D
© Image courtesy of Alistair CoombsFigure 1. Left: Plan of Enclosures A to D at Gobekli Tepe. Right: Pillar 43 at Gobekli Tepe, Enclosure D.