In one weekend, the swastika appeared in public places in three U.S. cities — Houston, Chicago and New York. The sight was so offensive, average New Yorkers pulled out hand sanitizer and tissues to wipe the graffiti from the walls of the subway where it had been scrawled.

"Within about two minutes, all the Nazi symbolism was gone," one subway rider who was there said. "Everyone kind of just did their jobs of being decent human beings."

That sentiment was reflected in a tweet from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo:

"This is what New Yorkers do — we turn hate into love. And we won't back down — not now, not ever."

That two-minute incident on a northbound No. 1 train underneath Manhattan is a blip in the swastika's 6,000-year history. The plus-sign symbol with four hooked arms all pointing either clockwise or counterclockwise appeared in Asian, African, North and South American cultures millennia before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis made the clockwise version of it the emblem of their murderous aggression for 25 years.

Yet the Nazis' brief but horrendous association with the swastika managed to divorce the symbol from its original ties to religion and spirituality, at least for Western cultures, though it is still used and revered by Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and others.

How did the swastika travel from prehistorical India to a New York City subway last week? Can it ever be restored to its original place as a sign of fertility, good fortune and hope?

And in a broader sense, how likely is it in this age of globalization and rapid-fire social media that an ancient hooked cross, a sad-faced frog or the name of an Egyptian goddess can be reclaimed from their hate-related associations?

"The swastika is the most complex symbol of any civilization," said Steven Heller, a graphic designer who teaches at New York's School of Visual Arts and is the author of "The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?" "For some, it has a great history that was perverted for only 25 or 30 years. For others, that perversion nullifies it."

Excavations in a cave on the cliffs west of Qumran, near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, prove that Dead Sea scrolls from the Second Temple period were hidden in the cave, and were looted by Bedouins in the middle of the last century. With the discovery of this cave, scholars now suggest that it should be numbered as Cave 12.

The surprising discovery, representing a milestone in Dead Sea Scroll research, was made by Dr. Oren Gutfeld and Ahiad Ovadia from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Archaeology, with the help of Dr. Randall Price and students from Liberty University in Virginia USA.

The excavators are the first in over 60 years to discover a new scroll cave and to properly excavate it.

The excavation was supported by the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria, by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), and is a part of the new "Operation Scroll" launched at the IAA by its Director-General, Mr. Israel Hasson, to undertake systematic surveys and to excavate the caves in the Judean Desert.

Excavation of the cave revealed that at one time it contained Dead Sea scrolls. Numerous storage jars and lids from the Second Temple period were found hidden in niches along the walls of the cave and deep inside a long tunnel at its rear. The jars were all broken and their contents removed, and the discovery towards the end of the excavation of a pair of iron pickaxe heads from the 1950s (stored within the tunnel for later use) proves the cave was looted.

An international team of archaeologists has announced plans to search an area the Bible claims once stored the Ark of the Covenant, as well as a temple to a Hebrew god.

Situated on one of the highest hills in west Jerusalem, Kiriath-Jearim is mentioned in the Bible as a resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, a gold gilded wooden chest from the Book of Exodus which contained tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

In 1905, a farmer discovered remnants of a Byzantine place of worship on the hill. This summer, archaeologists from Tel Aviv University and College de France will climb the mound to search for new information regarding passages from the Hebrew Bible.

Underwater archaeologists made an extremely rare discovery at the world-famous Antikythera shipwreck site in Greece—the 2,000-year-old remains of a young male. And now scientists are hopeful they may be able to carry out the first ever DNA sequencing from an ancient shipwreck victim.

The Antikythera wreck, located off the island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea, is a famous underwater archaeological site thrown into the spotlight in 1900 when researchers discovered an incredible mechanical device, now known as the Antikythera mechanism.
The metallic device consists of at least 30 different types of gears and is so complex that many consider it to be the first human-made analogue computer. After decades of research, scientists were able to determine that it shows the positions of the sun, moon, and planets as they move through the zodiac, predicts solar and lunar eclipses, and even marked key events such as the Pan-Hellenic games.

Along with the discovery of this unique form of ancient technology, archaeologists have found other treasures, including finely carved bronze and marble statues, glassware, jewellery, a bone flute, game pieces, and coins.

Now, according to Nature.com, researchers have made another significant finding with the recovery of a partial skull, two arm bones, several ribs and two femurs from a man in his late teens to early 20s. The skeleton was found buried under around two feet of pottery shards and sand.


He was trapped on board when the ship went down, The Guardian explained. The ship hit rocks, bashed along an undersea cliff and became buried in sediment.

The Frisland Finesse is a few short sentences of duplicitous doublespeak originally concocted by the Divine Right Diviners and merrily endorsed [with a sly chuckle] by the Mainstream Hoax Meisters.

Frisland, also called Frischlant, Friesland, Frislandia, or Fixland, is a phantom island that appeared on virtually all of the maps of the North Atlantic from the 1560s through the 1660s.

Link

According to Zeno, the map and letters date from around the year 1400 and purportedly describe a long voyage made by the Zeno brothers in the 1390s under the direction of a prince named Zichmni.

Map link

The Lady of Elche, also known as Lady of Elx, is a limestone bust of a woman's head found on a private estate at La Alcudia, two kilometers south of Elche, Spain.

The Iberian artifact is believed to have been produced in the 4th century BC, although the craftsmanship suggests strong Hellenistic influences. It is one of the most famous sculptures in the world.

The sculpture was found on 4 August 1897, by a young worker, Manuel Campello Esclapez. However, local keeper of the records Pere Ibarra had a different version of the discovery: he stated that a man named Antonio Maciá, one of the workers clearing the southeast slope of La Alcudia for agricultural purposes, was the one to find the bust.

An international team of anthropologists has uncovered a 38,000-year-old engraved image in a southwestern French rockshelter—a finding that marks some of the earliest known graphic imagery found in Western Eurasia and offers insights into the nature of modern humans during this period.

"The discovery sheds new light on regional patterning of art and ornamentation across Europe at a time when the first modern humans to enter Europe dispersed westward and northward across the continent," explains NYU anthropologist Randall White, who led the excavation in France's Vézère Valley.

The findings, which appear in the journal Quaternary International, center on the early modern humans' Aurignacian culture, which existed from approximately 43,000 to 33,000 years ago.

Recently declassified CIA files reveal that at some point the agency actually attempted to employ extrasensory perception (ESP) to scout out Mars.

Last month the CIA published over 13 million documents which, along with details of more conventional espionage operations, contained the records of the agency's more esoteric pursuits such as investigations into UFO sightings and studies into the use of ESP.

One such document reveals how the CIA, apparently dissatisfied with spying only on the people of Earth in the present, turned its attention to prehistoric Mars, and on May 22, 1984 performed a scrying of the red planet's ancient past with the help of a clairvoyant.

According to the document, the clairvoyant who took part in the experiment was given a sealed envelope containing a 3x5 card with the following information: "The planet Mars. Time of interest approximately 1 million years B.C."
The subject however was prohibited from opening the envelope before the end of the experiment, and the exact geographical coordinates of the areas his CIA handlers chose to survey were given to him verbally.

A Greek archaeologist claimed on May 26 to have discovered the tomb of philosopher Aristotle in the ancient city Stageira in Greece.

The archaeologist, Konstantinos Sismanidis, began excavating the birthplace of Aristotle in northern Greece in the 1990s.

Sismanidis revealed his discovery at the "Aristotle 2400 Years" World Congress, which marks the anniversary of the philosopher's birth.

He says a destroyed structure he discovered may have been the final resting place of the philosopher after his death.

Hundreds of ancient earthworks resembling those at Stonehenge were built in the Amazon rainforest, scientists have discovered after flying drones over the area.

The findings prove for the first time that prehistoric settlers in Brazil cleared large wooded areas to create huge enclosures meaning that the 'pristine' rainforest celebrated by ecologists is actually relatively new.

The ditched enclosures, in Acre state in the western Brazilian Amazon, have been concealed for centuries by trees, but modern deforestation has allowed 450 to emerge from the undergrowth. They were discovered after scientists from the UK and Brazil flew drones over last year.

The earthworks, known by archaeologists as 'geoglyphs' probably date from around the year zero.

The research was carried out by Jennifer Watling, post-doctoral researcher at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, University of São Paulo, when she was studying for a PhD at the University of Exeter.

Although the function of the sites is unknown Dr Watling said they resembled Neolithic causewayed enlosures found at sites such as Stonehenge in Wiltshire, although they appear to be more regular.