A groundbreaking new book from Routledge by noted biblical scholar Russell Gmirkin proposes that the Jewish notion of a cosmic, eternal God of Creation first appeared in Genesis 1 around 270 BCE, drawing on the account of the creation of the kosmos in Plato's Timaeus. This new book builds on earlier research by Gmirkin, who has argued that the five books of Moses were written around 270 BCE at Alexandria, Egypt, utilizing various Greek sources found at the Great Library, including the writings of Plato. In Plato's Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History, Gmirkin argues:

This recently unearthed footage shot during World War II shows the smooth faces of Hitler's boy soldiers and female forces during the final days of Nazi Germany.

The boys of the Volkssturm, or 'People's Storm' - a German civil militia - march in full uniforms towards the front, as members of Bund Deutscher Madel - or League of German Girls - can be seen standing on the side of the road.

Despite that fact that many of them had barely entered puberty before being handed a gun to defend The Fatherland, these boys and young women were later deployed to defend Berlin - where most of them would die.

A cave in southern Spain was used by ancient humans as a canvas for artwork and as a burial place for over 50,000 years, according to a study published June 1, 2022, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by José Ramos-Muñoz of the University of Cadiz, Spain, and colleagues.

Cueva de Ardales, a cave in Málaga, Spain, is famous for containing more than 1,000 paintings and engravings made by prehistoric people, as well as artifacts and human remains. However, the nature of human usage of this cave has not been well-understood. In this study, the authors present the results of the first excavations in this cave, which shed light on the history of human culture in the Iberian Peninsula.

A combination of radiometric dating and analysis of remains and artifacts within the cave provide evidence that the site's first occupants were likely Neanderthals more than 65,000 years ago. Modern humans arrived later, around 35,000 years ago, and used the cave sporadically until as recently as the beginning of the Copper Age. The oldest rock art in the cave consists of abstract signs such as dots, finger tips, and hand-stencils created with red pigment, while later artwork depicts figurative paintings such as animals. Human remains indicate the use of the cave as a burial place in the Holocene, but evidence of domestic activities is extremely poor, suggesting humans were not living in the cave.

The conflict in Ukraine has many frontlines. The world is mostly focusing on the hostilities, but an even more serious conflict is unfolding inside the Ukrainian camp. This standoff between Ukrainians and Russians as two political nations has been developing since 2014, but it entered a new, decisive phase after Russia began its military offensive, three months ago.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, three groups with strong identities have co-existed in Ukraine. A state which first came into being as recently as 1917, and had its current borders set by Joseph Stalin, the Georgian dictator who led the USSR until his death in 1953.

The first one, Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians (or Galicians, named after the historical region of Galicia), mostly live in Ukraine's western and central territories. Their ethnic narrative is very clear, they consider Russians to be their enemy, and their main icon is the World War Two Nazi-collaborator Stepan Bandera.

The Galician motto is something along the lines of "if you disagree with us, there is still time - pack your suitcase and catch the next train to Russia." They are pushing the narrative that Ukraine as a nation doesn't depend on Russia and the Russians. This is supported by their choice of national heroes. Hetman Ivan Mazepa sided with King of Sweden Charles XII during the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden. Symon Petliura was the president of the Ukrainian People's Republic during Ukraine's sovereignty in 1918-1921. The aforementioned Bandera founded and led the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists from the 1920s to the 1950s.

As the Holy Roman Empire descended into religious conflicts, its Habsburg ruler surrounded himself with magicians, astrologers, and scryers.

From the 15th to the 17th centuries, most European rulers dabbled in alchemy and magic. These were not seen, however, as diversions from rulership. They were central to it, for the realms of magic and of hidden truth were thought to hold the solution to how the world might be brought into conformity with the cosmic order.

The content of the occult world, as it was imagined in early modern Europe, is best broached through The Emerald Tablet (Tabula Smaragdina), a cryptic text believed to have been originally carved on a slab of jade that Alexander the Great found in the crypt of the magician Hermes Trismegistus (the Thrice Great). In fact, it was probably first composed in the Syriac language in the eighth century before being translated into Arabic and then into Latin.

The tightening grip of climate change on our planet is revealing secrets buried for millennia.


As waters and ice recede under warming conditions, the traces of people and civilizations long gone from the mortal realm emerge. In recent months, Iraq has been hit particularly hard, battered by extreme drought, with the Mosul reservoir shrinking as water is extracted to keep crops from drying.

Amid this crisis, the ruins of an ancient city, submerged for decades, are once again on dry land. Since the dam was created in the 1980s before the settlement was archaeologically studied and cataloged, its re-emergence represents a rare opportunity for scientists to explore it. The archaeological site has been named Kemune.


The ruins consist of a palace and several other large structures, dating back to the Bronze Age in the region, around 3,400 years ago. Scientists think the ruins might be the ancient city of Zakhiku, a bustling center for the Mittani Empire, which thrived on the banks of the Tigris River between 1550 and 1350 BCE.

The first successfully sequenced human genome from an individual who died in Pompeii, Italy, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE is presented this week in a study published in Scientific Reports. Prior to this, only short stretches of mitochondrial DNA from Pompeiian human and animal remains had been sequenced.

Gabriele Scorrano and colleagues examined the remains of two individuals who were found in the House of the Craftsman in Pompeii and extracted their DNA. The shape, structure, and length of the skeletons indicated that one set of remains belonged to a male who was aged between 35 and 40 years at the time of his death, while the other set of remains belonged to a female aged over 50 years old. Although the authors were able to extract and sequence ancient DNA from both individuals, they were only able to sequence the entire genome from the male's remains due to gaps in the sequences obtained from the female's remains.

Comparisons of the male individual's DNA with DNA obtained from 1,030 other ancient and 471 modern western Eurasian individuals suggested that his DNA shared the most similarities with modern central Italians and other individuals who lived in Italy during the Roman Imperial age. However, analyses of the male individual's mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA also identified groups of genes that are commonly found in those from the island of Sardinia, but not among other individuals who lived in Italy during the Roman Imperial age. This suggests that there may have been high levels of genetic diversity across the Italian Peninsula during this time.

After World War II, the possibility of gaining control over a person's mind became one of the top pursuits for intelligence services. Amid never-ending spy games, the capacity to make someone tell the full truth during an interrogation, or to wipe out a subject's personality and impose another - perhaps, a controlled one - became quite attractive to secret services.

In 1979, former US State Department officer John Marks published a book called 'The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate'', which focused on the CIA's mind-control experiments and is based on agency documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The term 'Manchurian Candidate' emerged from a title of a novel by Richard Condon, first published in 1959, which tells the story of a US soldier brainwashed and turned into an assassin by the Communists. Back then, the fear that America's rivals might use such techniques was not only a fictional fantasy, but a matter of very serious concern.

Centuries of shared history mean that the fate of Kiev will always remain Moscow's core interest

In August 1948, the US National Security Council issued memorandum (NSC 20/1 1948), requested by then Defense Secretary James Forrestal. The document described American objectives with respect to the Soviet Union.

A significant part of the memorandum focused on Ukraine. American analysts were convinced that the territory was an integral part of greater Russia, and it was highly unlikely that Ukrainians could exist as an independent nation. Most importantly, it noted, any support given to separatists would be met with a strong negative reaction by Russians.

Some may be perplexed by the fact that Japan, with 7,000 kilometres separating it from Ukraine, has been acting as if it was a quasi-state within the United States in its relations with Russia over the past several years. What compels a sovereign state to sign all Russophobic lists concocted by the Anglo-Saxons, and join Washington and London in every initiative targeting our country?

The West has a singular way of justifying its accusations. You did this because you have done it before. That's what they say.

But what if we look back?