Secret History

Looting Leads Archaeologists to Oldest Known Mayan Calendar

Heather Pringle
Science Now
Thu, 10 May 2012 13:10 UTC

© Tyrone Turner; (inset) Illustration by William Saturno and David Stuart/© 2012 National Geographic
Hidden treasure. In a ruined residential compound in the ancient Maya city-state of Xultún in Guatemala, archaeologists found three elaborately painted walls—one with the portrait of a king, others with painted hieroglyphs (inset) that comprise the astronomical notations of Maya skywatchers.

On 21 July 1561, a crowd of indigenous farmers cried out in the town square of Maní, Mexico, as a Franciscan missionary set fire to dozens of fragile Maya books, or codices. Condemned by the missionaries as "the Devil's trickery," these written texts preserved knowledge gleaned from centuries of Maya science and mathematics. Similar acts of destruction followed, obliterating hundreds of other Maya codices. Today, only a handful of readable, precolonial codices survive.

Now a team of American researchers has discovered a small trove of ancient Maya texts in a surprising place. In a paper published online today in Science, William Saturno, an archaeologist at Boston University, and his colleagues, report finding Maya astronomical tables and other texts painted and incised on the walls of a 1200-year-old residential building at the site of Xultún in Guatemala. The newly discovered astronomical tables are at least 500 years older than those preserved in the Maya codices, giving researchers a new glimpse of science at the height of the Maya civilization. "I think we are all astonished by this find," says Stephen Houston, an archaeologist at Brown University who was not part of the team.

Looters have extensively targeted Xultún, which was once a sprawling Maya city-state. But in March 2010, a member of Saturno's team, Boston University student Maxwell Chamberlain, discovered part of a painted wall exposed by the illicit diggers. Subsequent archaeological excavation revealed three intact room walls within a residential compound: the walls bore paintings of human figures - including an elaborately attired Maya king - as well as vertical columns of numbers written in Maya hieroglyphs.

Earliest Evidence of Biblical Cult Discovered

Wynne Parry
LiveScience
Thu, 10 May 2012 05:30 UTC

© Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The excavation of a shrine in the 3,000-year-old city of Khirbet Qeiyafa near Jerusalem.

For the first time, archaeologists have uncovered shrines from the time of the early Biblical kings in the Holy Land, providing the earliest evidence of a cult, they say.

Excavation within the remains of the roughly 3,000-year-old fortified city of Khirbet Qeiyafa, located about 19 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of Jerusalem, have revealed three large rooms used as shrines, along with artifacts, including tools, pottery and objects, such as alters associated with worship.

The three shrines were part of larger building complexes, and the artifacts included five standing stones, two basalt altars, two pottery libation vessels and two portable shrines, one made of pottery, the other of stone. The portable shrines are boxes shaped like temples.

The shrines themselves reflect an architectural style dating back as early as the time of King David (of the biblical David and Goliath story), providing the first physical evidence of a cult in the time of King David, according to an announcement by Yosef Garfinkel, an archaeologist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The research is presented in the book, Footsteps of King David in the Valley of Elah (Yedioth Ahronoth, 2012).

Radiocarbon dating on burnt olive pits found in the ancient city of Khirbet Qeiyafa indicate it existed between 1020 B.C. and 980 B.C., before being violently destroyed.

Comment: Completely ignores the facts that no "King David" ever existed, that there was NO "kingdom of Israel" as presented in the Bible, and that the likelihood is that the god worshiped in this "shrine" was probably not Yahweh.

Ancient Language Discovered on Clay Tablets Found Amid Ruins of 2800 Year Old Middle Eastern Palace

David Keys
The Independent
Wed, 09 May 2012 21:09 UTC

© The Independent
A detail from the 8th century BC Assyrian clay tablet bearing the 45 mystery names written in cuneiform script which have now been deciphered at Cambridge University.

Archaeologists have discovered evidence for a previously unknown ancient language - buried in the ruins of a 2800 year old Middle Eastern palace.

The discovery is important because it may help reveal the ethnic and cultural origins of some of history's first 'barbarians' - mountain tribes which had, in previous millennia, preyed on the world's first great civilizations, the cultures of early Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq.

Evidence of the long-lost language - probably spoken by a hitherto unknown people from the Zagros Mountains of western Iran - was found by a Cambridge University archaeologist as he deciphered an ancient clay writing tablet unearthed by an international archaeological team excavating an Assyrian imperial governors' palace in the ancient city of Tushan, south-east Turkey.

The tablet revealed the names of 60 women - probably prisoners-of-war or victims of an Assyrian forced population transfer program. But when the Cambridge archaeologist - Dr. John MacGinnis - began to examine the names in detail, he realized that 45 of them bore no resemblance to any of the thousands of ancient Middle Eastern names already known to scholars.

Because ancient Middle Eastern names are normally composites, made-up, in full or abbreviated form, of ordinary words in the relevant local lexicon, the unique nature of the tablet's 45 mystery names is seen by scholars as evidence of a previously unknown language.

Hitler Used Cocaine and Had Semen Injections

news.discovery.com
Wed, 09 May 2012 15:12 UTC

Adolf Hitler farted uncontrollably, used cocaine to clear his sinuses, ingested some 28 drugs at a time and received injections of bull testicle extracts to bolster his libido.

The startling revelations come from Hitler's medical records, now up for auction at Alexander Historical Auctions of Stamford, Conn. (The full catalogues can be found here and here.)

Bidding for the documents -- which include 10 X-rays of various views of the dictactor's skull, the results of several EEG tests and sketches of the inside of his nose -- ends Tuesday and Wednesday.

The cache consists of a 47-page account compiled by his six chief physicians, each specializing in different areas of treatment, and a 178-page report dated June 12, 1945, which was compiled by Dr. Erwin Giesing, while he was interned by American forces.

The U.S. military commissioned the medical reports provided by Hitler's personal doctors, Bill Panagopulos, president of Alexander Autographs, told the New York Daily News.

Though there is no official document regarding Hitler's love of cocaine, Giesing wrote that the dictator inhaled powdered cocaine to "clear his sinuses" and "soothe" his throat. Since he had begun to "crave" the drug, his dosage had to be lowered, Giesing wrote.

The documents reveal another unflattering aspect of Hitler's life: der Führer "suffered from uncontrollable flatulence."

Glastonbury Abbey excavations reveal Saxon glass industry

PhysOrg.com
Tue, 08 May 2012 09:22 UTC

New research led by the University of Reading has revealed that finds at Glastonbury Abbey provide the earliest archaeological evidence of glass-making in Britain

Professor Roberta Gilchrist, from the Department of Archaeology, has re-examined the records of excavations that took place at Glastonbury in the 1950s and 1960s.

Glass furnaces recorded in 1955-7 were previously thought to date from before the Norman Conquest. However, radiocarbon dating has now revealed that they date approximately to the 680s, and are likely to be associated with a major rebuilding of the abbey undertaken by King Ine of Wessex. Glass-making at York and Wearmouth is recorded in historical documents in the 670s but Glastonbury provides the earliest and most substantial archaeological evidence for glass-making in Saxon Britain.

The extensive remains of five furnaces have been identified, together with fragments of clay crucibles and glass for window glazing and drinking vessels, mainly of vivid blue-green colour. It is likely that specialist glassworkers came from Gaul (France) to work at Glastonbury. The glass will be analysed chemically to provide further information on the sourcing and processing of materials.

Agriculture Expanded as Farmers Pressed North, Not Because Hunter-gatherers Adopted the Practice

Eryn Brown
The Los Angeles Times
Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00 UTC

Analyzing DNA from four ancient skeletons and comparing it with thousands of genetic samples from living humans, a group of Scandinavian scientists reported that agriculture initially spread through Europe because farmers expanded their territory northward, not because the more primitive foragers already living there adopted it on their own.

The genetic profiles of three Neolithic hunter-gatherers and one farmer who lived in the same region of modern-day Sweden about 5,000 years ago were quite different - a fact that could help resolve a decades-old battle among archaeologists over the origins of European agriculture, said study leader Mattias Jakobsson, a population geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden.

The hunter-gatherers, from the island of Gotland, bore a distinct genetic resemblance to people alive today in Europe's extreme north, said Jakobsson, who reported his findings in Friday's edition of the journal Science. The farmer, excavated from a large stone burial structure in the mainland parish of Gokhem, about 250 miles away, had DNA more like that of modern people in southern Europe.

"People have known for some time that agriculture spread from the Middle East to Eastern Europe and northward and westward," Jakobsson said. "But it's been difficult to determine if people migrated and brought farming with them, or if local hunter-gatherers changed their practices."

The study joins a growing body of work, assembled over the last decade, that aims to settle lingering debates over early human history by examining ancient DNA.

Comment: Comment: For information on the devastation these early farmers have visited on humanity, read:
The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
Lierre Keith on 'The Vegetarian Myth - Food, Justice and Sustainability'

Late Bloomer: 32,000-year-old frozen remains used to grow ancient Arctic flower

Tristin Hopper
National Post
Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:13 UTC

© Svetlana Yashina via The New York Times

An undated handout photo of a narrow-leafed campion that has been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower. Russian biologists say that they have grown a plant that is 32,000 years old from seeds buried in permafrost.

In a discovery that may herald the Jurassic Park-style resurrection of mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers, Russian scientists have grown a plant from the frozen remains of a 32,000-year-old Arctic flower.

The plant is a narrow-leafed campion grown in petri dishes from organic materials pulled from the banks of the Kolyma River in Siberia. Details of the project appear in Tuesday's issue of The Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. It was drafted by a team led by Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Tragically, Mr. Gilichinsky died of a heart attack on Saturday.

The Russian-grown campion is suspected to be the oldest plant ever grown from ancient tissue. If so, it would trounce the previous record held by a date palm grown from a 2,000-year-old seed recovered from Masada, Israel, site of a mass suicide of Jewish rebels in 73 AD.

The Russian-grown campions are extremely similar to their modern-day descendants, although 32,000 years of evolution have given contemporary campions wider, less splayed-out petals.

A long-dead Arctic ground squirrel is credited with unwittingly creating the ancient seed bank.

Adolf Hitler profile suggests 'messiah complex'

BBC
Fri, 04 May 2012 15:13 UTC

Adolf Hitler developed a "messiah complex" during World War II, a newly unveiled report written for wartime British intelligence says.

The report, written in 1942 by Cambridge academic Joseph MacCurdy, said Hitler was turning increasingly to "Jew-phobia" as defeat loomed.

Social scientist Mark Abrams, who worked on the BBC's overseas propaganda analysis unit, commissioned the report.

The report came to light as a result of research into Mr Abrams' work.

"Hitler is caught up in a web of religious delusions," MacCurdy said in the report.

He outlined how Hitler began to focus on the "Jewish poison" as the tide of World War II turned against Germany.

"The Jews are the incarnation of evil, while he is the incarnation of the spirit of good," MacCurdy said.

Columbus May Not Have Been First to America

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Thu, 03 May 2012 12:24 UTC

© Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery
"The Departure of John and Sebastian Cabot from Bristol on their First Voyage of Discovery in 1497," as painted in 1906 by Ernest Board.

An investigation worthy of a Dan Brown novel has shed new light on the voyages of John Cabot,‭ ‬the Italian navigator and explorer, revealing that he may have‭ ‬had‭ ‬knowledge of European expeditions to the‭ "‬New World‭"‬ that predated Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage.

Although commonly credited with "discovering" America, Christopher Columbus would not reach the mainland of the New World until 1498 when he sailed to South America.‭

Farther north, Cabot became the first European since Leif Ericson and the Vikings to land on North American soil when he made three voyages ‬for England's Henry VII between the summers of‭ ‬1496‭ ‬and‭ ‬1498.‭ ‬The second of‭ ‬these expeditions,‭ carried‭ ‬out in‭ ‬1497,‭ ‬resulted in the European discovery of North America -- at Newfoundland‭.

Now a brief entry in a‭ ‬yellowed accounting ledger has revealed an unexpected European dimension‭ ‬to Cabot‭'‬s discovery:‭ ‬In April‭ ‬1496,‭ ‬the Italian-born explorer received financial backing from an Italian bank -- the Bardi banking house in London.

The notation -- found through some serious sleuthing of the works of Alwyn Ruddock, a deceased, secretive historian -- would also suggest that Europeans may have discovered the New World decades before both Cabot and Columbus set sail.

Found in a private Florentine archive,‭ ‬the document records that a‭ payment of‭ ‬50‭ ‬nobles sterling was made to‭ "‬Giovanni Chabotte‭" (John Cabot‭) of Venice so that‭ ‬he could undertake expeditions‭ ‬"to go and find the new land.‭"

"This brief entry opens a whole new chapter in Cabot scholarship.‭ ‬It shows that the Bristol voyages were part of a wider network of Italian-supported exploratory enterprises,"‭ ‬historian Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli,‭ ‬of the University of Florence,‭ ‬told Discovery News.

Dirty Pages Reveal Medieval Reading Habits

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:21 UTC

Dirty pages of centuries-old books have revealed the fears, desires and humanity of medieval Europeans, suggesting that they were as self-interested and afraid of illness as people are today.

Kathryn Rudy, lecturer in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews, analyzed a number of 15th- and early 16th-century European prayer books to reconstruct the reading habits of people who lived in medieval times.

The book turned out to be a kind of forensic analysis of what interested people of the time. She soon realized that the darkness of thumbed pages correlated to the intensity of their use and handling. The dirtiest pages were most likely also the most read, while relatively clean pages were probably neglected.

Using a densitometer, a machine that measures the darkness of a reflecting surface, Rudy was able to interpret how a reader handled a book, which sections were the most popular and which were ignored.

"Although it is often difficult to study the habits, private rituals and emotional states of people, this new technique can let us into the minds of people from the past," Rudy said.

The densitometer spiked at a manuscript dedicated to St. Sebastian, who was often prayed to for protection against the plague.

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Secret History

Looting Leads Archaeologists to Oldest Known Mayan Calendar

Earliest Evidence of Biblical Cult Discovered

Ancient Language Discovered on Clay Tablets Found Amid Ruins of 2800 Year Old Middle Eastern Palace

Hitler Used Cocaine and Had Semen Injections

Glastonbury Abbey excavations reveal Saxon glass industry

Agriculture Expanded as Farmers Pressed North, Not Because Hunter-gatherers Adopted the Practice

Late Bloomer: 32,000-year-old frozen remains used to grow ancient Arctic flower

Adolf Hitler profile suggests 'messiah complex'

Columbus May Not Have Been First to America

Dirty Pages Reveal Medieval Reading Habits

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