Secret HistoryS


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Best of the Web: CIA mind games and Oswald doubles: Was there more than one 'Lee Harvey Oswald'?

John Judge talk from 1988
"We do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look with him, there are fingerprints of intelligence."

~ Republican Senator Richard Schweiker, member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Village Voice, December 15th, 1975)
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Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Zionist mob kingpin and Jacob Rubenstein... but which 'Lee Harvey Oswald' is it?
The first indication that someone might be impersonating Oswald came in a June, 1960 memo from J. Edgar Hoover to the State Department. His letter stated he believed that someone "accessed" Oswald's birth certificate and might be using it to impersonate him.

This date - 1960 - is not a typo.

Yes, the Kennedy assassination took place in 1963 and Oswald and the idea that there might be more than one of him was already on the radar screen of the FBI Director.

This and other gems - some well documented, some not - can be found in Harvey and Lee - How the CIA framed Oswald by John Armstrong.


Video

Best of the Web: Untold History of the United States: The coup against Henry Wallace and what might have been

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Henry Wallace, the man who would have replaced FDR as President when he died during his 4th term, was forced off the presidential ticket by the corporate controllers of the Democratic Party, despite his overwhelming popular support.
Paul Jay of Real News interviews Peter Kuznick (co-author with Oliver Stone of the Untold History of the United States). A Wallace Presidency might have prevented the dropping of nuclear bombs on Japan and prevented the Cold War. But far more than that, it might have completely altered the course of modern U.S. history by leaving the 'Cold War' still-born.


Comment: Top class interview about a top class gentleman. Paul Jay is so right - they would have had no qualms about shooting Wallace dead in broad daylight. This is arguably the most important nexus point in modern US history. JFK tried to reverse what had already been set in motion by the coup against Wallace and the subsequent creation of the bomb, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA and the overall National Security State. If you haven't seen it yet, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick's Untold History of the United States is well worth watching.


Footprints

Neanderthal DNA dating back 50,000 years reveals that some of them were 'highly INBRED'

  • Discovery was made after DNA analysis on a Neanderthal woman's toe bone
  • Her mother and father were closely related and may have been half-siblings
  • Inbreeding may have been result of Neanderthal population being very small
  • Scientists say many people alive today still carry ancient Neanderthal genes
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The toe bone of a Neanderthal woman, recovered from a cave in Siberia. 50,000 year-old DNA extracted from the bone was used to produce the most complete sequence so far of the genome of this group of early humans
Neanderthals liked to be close to their families - very close, a genetic study has shown.

DNA from a Neanderthal woman's 50,000-year-old toe bone shows she was highly inbred.

Scientists discovered that her parents were either half-siblings who shared the same mother, an uncle and niece, an aunt and nephew, or a grandparent and grandchild.

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Ancient iron smelters indicate Huns more than just conquering nomads

 Iron-smelting Furnace
© Ehime UniversityRemnants of an iron-smelting furnace discovered in the remains of Khustyn Bulag in central Mongolia.
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of iron-smelting furnaces used by the ancient Huns, a significant find indicating the conquering nomads were advanced enough to make their own iron and not just pillage it.

"With the discovery, the image of a nomadic nation has been altered significantly because we now believe that the Huns built a complex society with a sophisticated system of a division of labor in production," said Tomotaka Sasada, a senior researcher at Ehime University's Research Center of Ancient East Asian Iron Culture.

Before the discovery by Japanese and Mongolian archaeologists, the Huns, who built a nomadic nation between the third century B.C. and first century in the Mongolian plateau and adjoining regions, were believed to have obtained iron for weapons and other implements by pillaging the territories of the Chinese Qin Dynasty (221 B.C.- 206 B.C.) and Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220).

The joint team of researchers from Ehime University's Research Center of Ancient East Asian Iron Culture and the Institute of Archaeology of the Mongolian Academy of Science have excavated five small iron-smelting furnaces since 2011.

They were uncovered in the remains of Khustyn Bulag in Tov province, located about 120 kilometers east from Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia.

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Before Stonehenge - did this man lord it over Wiltshire's sacred landscape?

Face Reconstruction
© English HeritageForensic face reconstruction expert, Oscar Nilsson, in the process of re-creating the Neolithic man's face - by using silicon to create 'flesh' over an exact replica of the skull taken from a mould of the original.
Archaeologists have just completed the most detailed study ever carried out of the life story of a prehistoric Briton.

What they have discovered sheds remarkable new light on the people who, some 5500 years ago, were building the great ritual monuments of what would become the sacred landscape of Stonehenge.

A leading forensic specialist has also used that prehistoric Briton's skull to produce the most life-like, and arguably the most accurate, reconstruction of a specific individual's face from British prehistory.

The new research gives a rare glimpse into upper class life back in the Neolithic.

Five and a half millennia ago, he was almost certainly a very prominent and powerful individual - and he is about to be thrust into the limelight once again. For his is the prehistoric face that will welcome literally millions of visitors from around the world to English Heritage's new Stonehenge visitor centre after it opens tomorrow, Wednesday. The organisation estimates that around 1.2 million tourists from dozens of countries will 'meet' him as they explore the new visitor centre over the next 12 months.


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Medieval crypt discovered in Sudan with 7 male mummies

Ancient Crypt
© Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology ArchivesThe 900-year-old crypt (entranceway shown) uncovered in Old Dongola in modern-day Sudan contains seven naturally mummified bodies and walls covered with inscriptions written in Greek and Sahidic Coptic.
A 900-year-old medieval crypt, containing seven naturally mummified bodies and walls covered with inscriptions, has been excavated in a monastery at Old Dongola, the capital of a lost medieval kingdom that flourished in the Nile Valley.

Old Dongola is located in modern-day Sudan, and 900 years ago, it was the capital of Makuria, a Christian kingdom that lived in peace with its Islamic neighbor to the north.

One of the mummies in the crypt (scientists aren't certain which one) is believed to be that of Archbishop Georgios, probably the most powerful religious leader in the kingdom. His epitaph was found nearby and says that he died in A.D. 1113 at the age of 82.

Telephone

Smithsonian Collections houses 1,200-year-old Phone

ancient phone
© Travis RathboneFrom the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian
One of the earliest examples of ingenuity in the Western Hemisphere is composed of gourds and twine

As a nomadic cultural historian, my subjects have led me in wildly different directions. I spent every Friday for five years in a dim, dusty reading room in West Orange, New Jersey, formerly a laboratory on the second floor of Thomas Edison's headquarters, deciphering the blunt-penciled scrawls of the celebrated inventor. Two years after my biography of Edison appeared, I found myself laboring up vertiginous stairs at daybreak in Mexico, photographing the faded ocher outlines of winged snakes etched into stone temples at the vast ruins of Teotihuacán. The daunting treks led to a book on Mesoamerican myth, Legends of the Plumed Serpent.

Those two disparate worlds somehow collided unexpectedly on a recent afternoon in the hushed, temperature-controlled precincts of the National Museum of the American Indian storage facility in Suitland, Maryland. There, staffers pushing a rolling cart ushered one of the museum's greatest treasures into the high-ceilinged room. Nestled in an acid-free corrugated cardboard container was the earliest known example of telephone technology in the Western Hemisphere, evoking a lost civilization - and the anonymous ancient techie who dreamed it up.

The gourd-and-twine device, created 1,200 to 1,400 years ago, remains tantalizingly functional - and too fragile to test out. "This is unique," NMAI curator Ramiro Matos, an anthropologist and archaeologist who specializes in the study of the central Andes, tells me. "Only one was ever discovered. It comes from the consciousness of an indigenous society with no written language."

We'll never know the trial and error that went into its creation. The marvel of acoustic engineering - cunningly constructed of two resin-coated gourd receivers, each three-and-one-half inches long; stretched-hide membranes stitched around the bases of the receivers; and cotton-twine cord extending 75 feet when pulled taut - arose out of the Chimu empire at its height. The dazzlingly innovative culture was centered in the Río Moche Valley in northern Peru, wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the western Andes. "The Chimu were a skillful, inventive people," Matos tells me as we don sterile gloves and peer into the hollowed interiors of the gourds. The Chimu, Matos explains, were the first true engineering society in the New World, known as much for their artisanry and metalwork as for the hydraulic canal-irrigation system they introduced, transforming desert into agricultural lands.

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Human hand fossil turns back clock 500,000 years on complex tool use

Fossil Hand
© University of MissouriResearchers have discovered a 1.42-million-year-old hand fossil that possesses the styloid process, a vital anatomical feature that allows the hand to lock into the wrist bones, giving humans the ability to make and use complex tools.
The discovery of a 1.4-million-year-old hand-bone fossil reveals that the modern human ability to make and use complex tools may have originated far earlier than scientists previously thought, researchers say.

A critical trait that distinguishes modern humans from all other species alive today is the ability to make complex tools. It's not just the extraordinarily powerful human brain, but also the human hand, that gives humans this unique ability. In contrast, apes - humans' closest living relatives - lack a powerful and precise enough grip to create and use complex tools effectively.

A key anatomical feature of the modern human hand is the third metacarpal, a bone in the palm that connects the middle finger to the wrist.

"There's a little projection of bone in the third metacarpal known as a "styloid process" that we need for tools," said study lead author Carol Ward, an anatomist and paleoanthropologist at the University of Missouri.

"This tiny bit of bone in the palm of the hand helps the metacarpal lock into the wrist, helping the thumb and fingers apply greater amounts of pressure to the wrist and palm. It's part of a whole complex of features that allows us the dexterity and strength to make and use complex tools."

Until now, this styloid process was found only in modern humans, Neanderthals and other archaic humans. Scientists were unsure when this bone first appeared during the course of human evolution. (The human lineage, the genus Homo, first evolved about 2.5 million years ago in Africa.)

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Explorers hot on the trail of Atahualpa and the Treasure of the Llanganates

Ancient Ruins
© The Telegraph, UKThe vast structure is a wall, sloping at a 60 degree angle, with a flat area at the top where many of the artefacts have been found.
It sounds like a plot from an Indiana Jones film, but explorers claim to have found ruins hidden deep in a dense and dangerous Amazonian jungle that could solve many of South America's mysteries - and lead to one of the world's most sought-after treasures.

The multinational team, including Britons, has located the site in a remote region in central Ecuador which it believes could represent one of the great archaeological discoveries.

They have already unearthed a 260ft tall by 260ft wide structure, made up of hundreds of two-ton stone blocks, and believe there could be more, similar constructions over an area of about a square mile.

Investigations of the site, in the Andes mountain range, are at an early stage and theories as to what it contains vary.

Some of those involved believe it could be the mausoleum of Atahualpa, the last Incan emperor who was captured by the conquering Spaniards, or hold the Treasure of the Llanganates, a vast haul of gold and other riches amassed by his followers to pay for his release.

Better Earth

Swedish study finds that earth was warmer in ancient Roman times and the Middle Ages than today

medieval temp
If you think the Earth is hot now, try wearing plate armor in the Middle Ages.

A Swedish study found that the planet was warmer in ancient Roman times and the Middle Ages than today, challenging the mainstream idea that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are the main drivers of global warming.

The study, by scientist Leif Kullman, analyzed 455 "radiocarbon-dated mega-fossils" in the Scandes mountains and found that tree lines for different species of trees were higher during the Roman and Medieval times than they are today. Not only that, but the temperatures were higher as well.

"Historical tree line positions are viewed in relation to early 21st century equivalents, and indicate that tree line elevations attained during the past century and in association with modern climate warming are highly unusual, but not unique, phenomena from the perspective of the past 4,800 years," Kullman found. "Prior to that, the pine tree line (and summer temperatures) was consistently higher than present, as it was also during the Roman and Medieval periods."

Comment: See also: Tree-rings prove climate was warmer in Roman and Medieval times than it is now - and world has been cooling for 2,000 years