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Ancient human skulls show evidence of prevalent inbreeding

Inbreeding
© Erik Trinkaus/WUSTL This is a view of the Xujiayao site (below) and internal and external view of the Xujiayao 11 skull piece with its position indicated on the drawing of a complete skull (above).
Although it is considered completely taboo in most modern societies, an ancient human skull found in northern China suggests inbreeding could have been prevalent among ancient peoples around 100,000 years ago, according to a report in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

The skull - which was found at Xujiayao, a mountainous excavation site several hundred miles from the Mongolian border - contained an enlarged parietal foramen (EPF), or "hole in the skull," typically diagnosed as a rare genetic mutation in modern humans.

Using CT scans and 3-D imaging technology, the team was able to successfully produce a model of the highly fractured and fragmented skull. After the model was created, the team was clearly able to see the results of the congenital condition.

EPF, which appears in one out of every 25,000 modern human births, prevents the closure of the skull bones that typically occur within the first five months of fetal development. Based on the exceptionality of the genetic condition and other fossil evidence found in skulls from the same time period, the researchers theorized the genetic pools were very small in many Pleistocene communities.

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Best-preserved human ancestor didn't have bone disorder

Turkana Boy
© Claire Houck | Wikimedia CommonsTurkana Boy, an ancient human ancestor who died about 1.5 million years ago, probably wasn't suffering from a congenital spine disease, new research suggests
"Turkana Boy," an exquisitely preserved 1.5-million-year-old human ancestor found in Kenya, may not have had dwarfism or scoliosis, new research suggests.

Past studies had suggested that the ancient human ancestor, a Homo erectus, had suffered from a congenital bone disorder that made him unrepresentative of his species.

"Until now, the Turkana Boy was always thought to be pathological," said study co-author Martin Häusler, a physician and physical anthropologist at the University of Zurich. "The spine was somewhat weird, and so he couldn't be used as a comparative model for Homo erectus biology because he was so pathological."

But the new analysis, published in the March issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggests that apart from a herniated disc in his back, Turkana Boy was a fairly healthy person with no genetic bone problems.

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3,300-year-old Egyptian cemetery reveals commoners' plight

Commoners Cemetry
© The Amarna ProjectArchaeologists have unearthed an ancient cemetery at the Egyptian city of Amarna. The cemetery held the commoners, rather than the elites, of the city.
While an Egyptian pharaoh built majestic temples filled with sparkling treasures, the lower classes performed backbreaking work on meager diets, new evidence suggests.

An analysis of more than 150 skeletons from a 3,300-year-old cemetery at the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna reveals fractures, wear and tear from heavy lifting, and rampant malnutrition amongst the city's commoners.

The discovery, detailed in the March issue of the journal Antiquity, could shed light on how the non-elites of ancient Egyptian society lived.

Overnight city

For a brief, 17-year period, the center of Egypt was Amarna, a small city on the banks of the Nile, about 218 miles (350 kilometers) south of Cairo.

The pharaoh Akhenaten relocated his capital city to Amarna to build a pure, uncontaminated cult of worship dedicated to the sun god Aten.

In a few years, temples, court buildings and housing complexes sprung up. At one time, 20,000 to 30,000 court officials, soldiers, builders and servants lived in the city.

But after Akhenaten's death, the next pharaoh, Tutankhamun , promptly rolled up the experiment. The city, which lacked good agricultural land, was soon abandoned.

Because the Egyptians occupied Amarna for such a short time, the city provides archaeologists with an unprecedented insight into what people's lives looked like at a specific moment in history, said study co-author Anna Stevens, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge.

Syringe

When false memories prove true: Dr. Colin Ross MD on CIA mind programming

Dr. Colin Ross MD speaks in 2009 in Los Angeles with Roseanne Barr, Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips about CIA mind control, MK-Ultra and the documented history of Project Blue Bird and Project Artichoke.

There's a myth that these mind control/psychiatric torture programs stopped in the 1970s.

No they did not

They were outed in the 1970s - and the all future work has been classified.


Colosseum

Seven centuries later: Thirteen skeletons of Black Death plague victims unearthed during London Crossrail tunnelling

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© Crossrail/PAPlague victims' skeletons are unearthed during the constructions of the Crossrail train link in London.
Thirteen skeletons, lying in two neat rows 2.4m beneath a road in Farringdon have been unearthed by excavations for London's Crossrail project

For seven centuries they have lain beneath the feet of commuters in one of the busiest parts of central London.

Thirteen skeletons, lying in two neat rows, 2.4m beneath a road in Farringdon, have been unearthed by excavations for London's Crossrail project.

The remains, which were found in a 5.5m-wide shaft at the edge of Charterhouse Square in Farringdon, are thought to be victims of The Black Death.

Builders working on the £15bn Crossrail project uncovered the bodies alongside pottery dating from the mid-14th Century.

Experts believe that the skeletons' arrangement in two neat rows suggests they date from the earlier period of the plague, before it became a pandemic and before bodies were thrown randomly into mass graves.

Comment: To find out more about the real cause of 'the Black Death', the following article and books Comets and the Horns of Moses are must-reads:

New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection

Celestial Intentions: Comets and the Horns of Moses

The Apocalypse: Comets, Asteroids and Cyclical Catastrophes


Cardboard Box

Rail dig may reveal Black Death graves

Black death grave
© AFPConstruction workers building a new railway in London have unearthed 13 skeletons believed to be victims of the Black Death plague 650 yars ago.

Archaeologists said on March 15 they had found a graveyard during excavations for a rail project in London which might hold the remains of some 50,000 people killed by the "Black Death" plague more than 650 years ago.

Thirteen skeletons laid out in two neat rows were discovered 2.5 meters below the road in the Farringdon area of central London by researchers working on the 16 billion pound ($24 billion) Crossrail project.

Magnify

Medieval knight's tomb found beneath parking lot

A medieval headstone and skeleton have been found underneath a parking lot in Scotland, and researchers believe they might belong to a knight.

Archaeologists who were on hand during the construction of a new building in Edinburgh uncovered a carved sandstone slab, decorated with markers of nobility - a Calvary cross and a sword. Nearby, the team found an adult skeleton, which is thought to have once occupied the grave. Scientists plan to analyze the bones and teeth to learn more about this possible knight or nobleman.

"We hope to find out more about the person buried in the tomb once we remove the headstone and get to the remains underneath, but our archaeologists have already dated the gravestone to the thirteenth century," Richard Lewis, a member of the City of Edinburgh Council, said in a statement.

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© Headland Archaeology/ Edinburgh Centre for Carbon InnovationThis carved slab, thought to be the headstone of a medieval knight, was found under a parking lot in Edinburgh.

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Leonardo da Vinci was right all along, new medical scans show

Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings were "startling" in their accuracy, new medical scans have shown, putting him hundreds of years ahead of his peers.
Leonardo_1
© Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013 /© Mark Mobley, West Midlands Surgical Training Centre The bones, muscles and tendons of the hand c.1510-11 and 3D image of a dissected hand.
He has long been praised as one of the finest artists of the Renaissance, working far ahead of his time and producing some of the world's most recognisable works.

But Leonardo da Vinci has finally received the credit he deserves for his "startling" medical accuracy hundreds of years in advance of his peers, as scientists match his anatomical drawings with modern day MRI scans.

The project, which will be unveiled at the Edinburgh International Festival in August, compares the work directly for the very first time, unveiling the minute details recorded by the artist.

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World's oldest murder mystery: Tracking down iceman Otzi's killer

Iceman Murder Mystery_1
© Channel 4Scientists perform autopsy on 5,000-year-old mummy.
The mystery surrounding the violent murder of a Stone Age man in the Swiss Alps 5,000 years ago is to be uncovered by scientists.

The Iceman Murder Mystery documentary examines Otzi, whose body was found preserved in an Alpine glacier in 1991.

For 20 years, researchers have tried to ascertain how Otzi died. X-rays of his body gave little indication of his death so scientists took the decision to defrost his corpse.

The team has nine hours to perform an autopsy on the mummified body, providing them with DNA evidence of his last meal and indications of how he died.

Frog

Neanderthals extinction may have been caused by incapacity to form larger social networks

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Homo neanderthalensis
For ages, anthropologists have puzzled over Neanderthal and human brains, since they were the same size. If each species had comparable brainpower, why did humans dominate?

A comparison of Neanderthal and human brains has revealed it was a matter of allocation: Neanderthal brains focused more on vision and movement, leaving less room for cognition related to social networking.

According to the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, bigger eyed and larger bodied Neanderthals required more brain space devoted to the visual system and basic body functions, leaving less area for what co-author Robin Dunbar called "the smart part."

He explained to Discovery News that this is "the part that is doing the creative thinking."

Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford, and colleagues Eiluned Pearce and Chris Stringer compared the skulls of 32 anatomically modern humans and 13 Neanderthals. The skulls date to 27,000 to 75,000 years ago. The researchers noticed that Neanderthals had significantly larger eye sockets.