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4th Century Roman amphitheater discovered in Croatia


Croatia Week
Thu, 14 Nov 2013 14:09 UTC
Archaeologists in the Croatian city of Split have found the remains of an ancient amphitheater right in the city centre, believed to be from the beginning of the fourth century...

Amphitheater
© Croatia WeekIllustration.
"According to the latest research findings, which are still in progress, it was discovered that this is not a theater but an amphitheater with an arena in the range of 50 meters. Because of this discovery, we will not stop life in the city, but we will preserve the site and fill it in temporarily until we prepare its presentation.

It's not simple. It is very complex, but also possible, but for that we will need additional funds. In speaking with city officials it has been agreed to access EU funds. We will create a valuable project that will at the very heart of Split and show the monument in all of its exceptional quality, " said the head of the Conservation DepartmentRadoslav Bužančić at a press conference held to announce the discovery.
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Sherlock

Scientists uncover ancient philosophical writings hidden beneath a medieval text


Medievalists.net
Tue, 12 Nov 2013 22:24 UTC
ancient manuscript
A group of scientists and historians have made an incredible discovery relating to some writings made on parchments that were produced in medieval times. Using cutting-edge technology, the researchers found that the parchment had once contained ancient philosophical writings that had later been washed off and over-written. Using multispectral imaging, scientists have been able to recover the original text, shedding new light on the history of philosophical education in the late antiquity.

The uppermost layer of text dates to the thirteenth century and comprises the Prophetic Books of the Greek Old Testament. However, through an amazing stroke of luck, it was discovered that beneath this text there had originally been some writing by the well-known ancient Greek writer, Euripides, and an unknown ancient commentary on Aristotle, which dated back to the fifth century.

Euripides (480 - 406 BC) was one of the great tragedians of classical Athens and is known to have written at least ninety-two plays, although only 18 or 19 have survived in a complete form and his work became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education. Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. However, while Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence, Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, apparently dying in Macedonia.
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Info

Genetics in the Caribbean show marks of Atlantic slave trade

Francie Diep
PopSci
Fri, 15 Nov 2013 12:57 UTC
Beach on Margarita Island, Venezuela
© Enano275/Wikimedia Commons Beach on Margarita Island, Venezuela.
A new study examines how indigenous South Americans, Africans and Europeans all left a little bit of themselves in the Caribbean basin.

The Caribbean's complex history has given the area more than diverse languages and delicious food. The indigenous South Americans, Europeans and Africans that came to live in the area, willingly or unwillingly, left their mark in other ways, too.

We previously learned that one gene for skin color in South Asian people can show how populations moved around the Indian subcontinent. Now, a different team of researchers is reporting on how the movement of populations through the Caribbean basin left behind genetic signatures among the people who live there today.

Just as with India, many of these movements are already known from historical records and archaeological discoveries. Nevertheless, it's cool to see that even people who did not necessarily get to write their own histories still left legacies for geneticists to find.
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MIB

Flashback Best of the Web: JFK's final warning to the American people: If the U.S. ever experiences a coup d'état, it will come from the CIA

Arthur Krock
New York Times
Wed, 02 Oct 1963 04:14 UTC
Image
All smiles for the cameras, but behind the scenes... JFK with CIA Director Allen Dulles. Right, CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell. Both were fired by Kennedy. Cabell's brother was Mayor of Dallas, Texas at the time of the assassination.

Comment: This New York Times op-ed was originally titled 'The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam', and was written by a well-known journalist whom Kennedy relied on to 'speak through' in his efforts to counter the massive propaganda efforts of the corporate media to portray him as a 'communist', 'anti-business', 'anti-American', a 'traitor', ad nauseum.


Washington, Oct. 2 - The Central Intelligence Agency is getting a very bad press in dispatches from Vietnam to American newspapers and in articles originating in Washington. Like the Supreme Court when under fire, the C.I.A. cannot defend itself in public retorts to criticisms of its activities as they occur. But, unlike the the Supreme Court, the C.I.A. has no open record of its activities on which the public can base a judgment of the validity of the criticisms. Also, the agency is precluded from using the indirect defensive tactic which is constantly employed by all other Government units under critical file.

This tactic is to give information to the press, under a seal of confidence, that challenges or refutes the critics. But the C.I.A. cannot father such inspired articles, because to do so would require some disclosure of its activities. And not only does the effectiveness of the agency depend on the secrecy of its operations. Every President since the C.I.A. was created has protected this secrecy from claimants - Congress or the public through the press, for examples - of the right to share any part of it.
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Ambulance

Data visualisation helped solve 19th century cholera spread

Richard Corbridge
The Business Value Exchange
Thu, 03 Oct 2013 00:01 UTC
John Snow and data visualisation
© UnknownJohn Snow
At the Clinical Research Network we are moving towards our own "AppCentre" that will facilitate new and exciting insights from our data. It seems a timely moment to reflect on the beginnings of data visualisation and business intelligence and to remember the famous, first "case study".

In the mid-19th century, the Soho district of London had a serious problem with filth due to the large influx of people and a lack of proper sanitary services: the London sewer system had not reached Soho. The London government decided to dump the waste into the River Thames and this action contaminated the water supply, leading to a cholera outbreak.

On 31 August 1854, a major outbreak of cholera struck Soho. Over the next three days 127 people on or near Broad Street died. In the next week, three quarters of the residents had fled the area. By 10 September, 500 people had died and the mortality rate was 12.8% in some parts of the district.
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Pharoah

Pyramid-age love revealed in vivid color in Egyptian tomb

Owen Jarus
LiveScience
Fri, 15 Nov 2013 08:57 UTC
Egyptian Tomb_1
© Ms. Effy Alexakis, copyright Macquarie University Ancient Cultures Research CentreInside a tomb dating back to the age of the Pyramids in Egypt held this image, an embrace between a priestess and her husband, a singer in the pharaoh's palace. The image has been recorded by researchers in full color.
She was a priestess named Meretites, and he was a singer named Kahai, who performed at the pharaoh's palace. They lived about 4,400 years ago in an age when pyramids were being built in Egypt, and their love is reflected in a highly unusual scene in their tomb - an image that has now been published in all its surviving color.

The tomb at Saqqara - which held this couple, their children and possibly their grandchildren - has now been studied and described by researchers at Macquarie University's Australian Center for Egyptology. Among the scenes depicted is a relief painting showing the couple gazing into each other's eyes, with Meretites placing her right hand over Kahai's right shoulder.

Such a display of affection was extraordinary for Egypt during the Pyramid Age. Only a few examples of a face-to-face embrace survive from the Old Kingdom (2649 B.C. to 2150 B.C.), the time period when the couple lived and pyramid building thrived, said Miral Lashien, a researcher at Macquarie University. "I think that this indicates very special closeness," Lashien told LiveScience in an email.
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Question

Humans do NOT come from Earth - and sunburn, bad backs and pain during labour prove it, expert claims

Sarah Griffiths
The Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 14 Nov 2013 06:11 UTC
  • A U.S. ecologist says conditions such as bad backs and sunburn suggest humans did not evolve alongside other life on Earth
  • In a new book, Dr Ellis Silver says aliens put humans our planet as recently as tens of thousands of years ago
  • He suggests the Earth might be a prison planet, since humans seem to be a naturally violent species and are here until we learn to behave ourselves
Image
In his book, Dr Ellis Silver points to a number of physiological features to make his case for why humans did not evolve alongside other life on Earth
A U.S. ecologist has claimed that humans are not from Earth but were put on the planet by aliens tens of thousands of years ago.

Dr Ellis Silver points to a number of physiological features to make his case for why humans did not evolve alongside other life on Earth, in his new book.

They range from humans suffering from bad backs - which he suggests is because we evolved in a world with lower gravity - to getting too easily sunburned and having difficulty giving birth.

Dr Ellis says that while the planet meets humans' needs for the most part, it does not perhaps serve the species' interests as well as the aliens who dropped us off imagined.

In his book, HUMANS ARE NOT FROM EARTH: A SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION OF THE EVIDENCE, the ecologist writes the human race has defects that mark it of being 'not of this world'.

'Mankind is supposedly the most highly developed species on the planet, yet is surprisingly unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth's environment: harmed by sunlight, a strong dislike for naturally occurring foods, ridiculously high rates of chronic disease, and more,' he told Yahoo.
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Health

Flashback Medical records show JFK was chronically ill and kept barely alive on drugs: How is anyone in this condition capable of 'womanizing'?

Lawrence K. Altman and Todd S. Purdum
The New York Times
Sun, 17 Nov 2002 00:00 UTC
Image
John F. Kennedy (Corbis)
The first thorough examination of President John F. Kennedy's medical records, conducted by an independent presidential historian with a medical consultant, has found that Kennedy suffered from more ailments, was in far greater pain and was taking many more medications than the public knew at the time or biographers have since described.

As president, he was famous for having a bad back, and since his death, biographers have pieced together details of other illnesses, including persistent digestive problems and Addison's disease, a life-threatening lack of adrenal function.

But newly disclosed medical files covering the last eight years of Kennedy's life, including X-rays and prescription records, show that he took painkillers, antianxiety agents, stimulants and sleeping pills, as well as hormones to keep him alive, with extra doses in times of stress.

At times the president took as many as eight medications a day, says the historian, Robert Dallek. A committee of three longtime Kennedy family associates, who for decades refused all requests to look at the records, granted Mr. Dallek's, in part because of his ''tremendous reputation,'' said one of them, Theodore C. Sorensen, who was the president's special counsel.

Comment: Check out Laura Knight-Jadczyk's "JFK Series", which delves into the life of JFK and those who murdered him.

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Cow Skull

Neanderthal camp found in Dutch city Den Bosch


Xinhua
Wed, 13 Nov 2013 07:15 UTC
The remains of a Neanderthal camp was found during the renovation of an underground car park in the Dutch city of Den Bosch, local media reported on Wednesday.

The camp allegedly dates back to between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago and is unique in Dutch archaeological history, archaeologists said.

Archaeologists found a large number of flint tools and animal bone remains from reindeer, giant deer, horses and bison. In addition, a lower jaw of a young mammoth was found.
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Info

Stone-tipped spears predate existence of humans

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Wed, 13 Nov 2013 16:00 UTC
Spear
© TD White
Remains of the world's oldest known stone-tipped throwing spears, described in a new paper, and so ancient that they actually predate the earliest known fossils for our species by 85,000 years.

There are a few possible implications, and both are mind-blowing. The first is that our species could be much older than previously thought, which would forever change the existing human family tree.

The second, and more likely at this point, is that a predecessor species to ours was extremely crafty and clever, making sophisticated tools long before Homo sapiens emerged.
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