Israel's undoing will not be an attack from Arab states or international sanctions. Rather, its leaders have created a monster they can no longer tame...

As Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary, the state-building project it cemented into place in 1948 by expelling 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland is showing the first signs of unravelling.

The surprise is that Israel's woes spring not, as generations of its leaders feared, from outside forces - a combined attack from Arab states or pressure from the international community - but from Israel's own internal contradictions.

Israeli leaders created the very problems they all too obviously lack the tools to now solve. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bombardment of Gaza in recent days, killing dozens of Palestinians, should be understood in that light. It is one more indication of Israel's internal crisis.

Once again, the Palestinians are being used in a frantic bid to shore up an increasingly fragile "Jewish" unity.

In Roman Spain, some 2,000 years ago, people may have been perfuming themselves with the musky scent of patchouli, new research hints. The study marks the first time that the composition of a Roman perfume has been identified, offering us a rare whiff of a bygone empire.

The perfume, which has solidified after two millennia inside a carved quartz bottle, was discovered in a funerary urn found in a mausoleum in Seville, Spain. Unearthed in 2019, during an excavation in modern-day Carmona, the mystery ointment has now been chemically described, revealing the inclusion of patchouli, an essential oil common in modern perfumery but never before known in use in ancient Rome.

As well as the essence of patchouli, obtained from Pogostemon cablin, a plant of Indian origin, the cologne was found to have a base of vegetable oil - possibly olive oil - although the researchers cannot be certain about this.

One weekend, I found my younger son at the kitchen table, carefully writing out everything he knew about the Olympian gods for his school homework. His brow was furrowed, and he trained his eyes on the page with a level of concentration that I wish he would pay to his maths homework. So I asked him — casually, I thought — why he was so interested in the ancient Greeks. He beamed up at me with an angelic smile and answered, "Because that's what you study, Mama."

At this point, my heart nearly burst with parental pride. I am a Professor of Classical Archaeology and the ancient Greeks are, quite literally, my bread and butter. But my heart sank when my son added as an afterthought, "and because the Greeks gave us Western Civilization." Buckle up, kid, I thought, you're in for a lecture.

I wanted to tell him that the ancient Greeks did not give us Western Civilization. That there is no golden thread, unfurling unbroken through time from Plato to NATO. That we in the modern West are not the heirs of a unique and elevated cultural tradition, stretching back through Atlantic modernity to Enlightenment and Renaissance Europe, and from there through the darkness of the medieval period and ultimately back to the glories of classical Greece and Rome.

For most of us, it seems normal — even natural — to think of Western history in these terms. Unthinkingly, we assume that the modern West is the custodian of a privileged inheritance, passed down through a kind of cultural genealogy that we usually refer to as "Western Civilization."

It is a version of history that is all around us, set out in popular textbooks, encoded implicitly into children's stories and Hollywood movies, and proclaimed loudly and sometimes even angrily by commentators on both sides of the political spectrum. But it is a version of history that is simply wrong.

Research points to a different version of Western history. I have myself spent two decades of my professional life uncovering how ancient Greeks and Romans were much more diverse than we might think. They were neither predominantly white nor predominantly European, and indeed did not conceive of racial and geographical categories in the same way that we now do. As a result, the monks of western Europe, laboriously copying Latin manuscripts in their dusty scriptoria, were not the only medieval heirs of classical antiquity.

Archaeologists from the University of Göttingen discovered the earliest Iron Age house in Athens in Thorikos ( Greece ) south of Athens. This is an important finding that was unexpected and unique for early Greek history: building structures from this early period, from the 10th to the 9th Century BC, have never been excavated in Attica. The Gerda Henkel Foundation is now funding the continuation of the excavations with around 82,000 euros.

The ancient settlement is located in the area of ancient silver mining, 60 kilometers south of Athens. Here you can see Mycenaean dome tombs and a classic settlement with houses, production facilities, sanctuaries, the theater and burial sites. What is striking is the unprotected location just 20 meters above sea coast - from the sea, so there was apparently no danger at the time. Only in the course of the 8th Century BC the settlement activity shifted to the safe hill plateau, which is over 100 meters high. After geophysical investigations of the southeastern slope, the scientists found a grave from the 5th Century BC.

In 2019, a exposed corner of the wall initially indicated a classic grave building. "However, it turned out that there was no burial there before, but a building from the 10th to the 9th Century BC.", says Prof. Dr. Johannes Bergemann, director of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Göttingen. Last year, the scientists continued to research the expansion of the building, recognizing five to six rooms. In the largest room there were still numerous pebbles in the association, which indicate a cobbled courtyard. An analysis of inorganic and organic characteristics of the rock confirmed the use of around 950 to 825 BC.

Archaeologists discover cave paintings using drones Share Archaeologists from the University of Alicante have discovered cave paintings in Penáguila, Spain.

The team were conducting a drone survey of the Castellet-Barranc del Salt ravine and Port de Penáguila, revealing Neolithic cave paintings from 7,000-years-ago.

The survey is part of a pioneering project, enabling the researchers to study inaccessible mountain shelters by photographing and recording videos of the walls in 18 shallow cavities using small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's).

Two of the shelters contained wall paintings, with the most notable being in the del Salt ravine that contains painted figures of anthropomorphic archers, in addition to depictions of deer and goats, some of which appear wounded with arrows.

"Of all the endangered species, Truth is the most endangered. I am watching it go out."
- Paul Craig Roberts, September 4, 2019

What makes Paul Craig Roberts' writing so powerful, is his ability to cut through false narratives and identify the elite agendas that are shaping events. This is the work of a truth-teller which is the designation that is typically applied to Roberts. The term refers to a person of deep moral convictions who devotes his life to exposing the lies and fabrications of the state and its corrupt allies. This is what Roberts has been doing for more than 40 years, and this is why thousands of people around the world flock to his website every day. They know his posts will be hard-hitting, well-researched and engrossing. More importantly, they know he will make every effort to bring them the unvarnished truth just as he has for more than four decades.

Roberts' latest collection of essays, titled Empire Of Lies, is an assortment of articles that show the remarkable scope and depth of the author's knowledge. Frequent visitors to his website will notice some familiar themes here while other topics may not have been as thoroughly explored. For example, there are many essays on the fragile US economy, the "experimental" Covid-19 vaccine, the war in Ukraine, the stolen presidential election and the January 6 fraud. At the same time, there are a number of other articles that one might not typically associate with Roberts. These include a short but riveting post on 9-11, ominous reflections on the year 2022, the manipulation of the bullion markets, and an astonishing piece titled "Germany did not Start World War 2".

The aim of science is simple. We aim to create consistent models of reality. If we can model everything perfectly (within the bounds of measurement uncertainty), i.e. explain everything, then there is no practical difference between our models and the truth. Ultimately, then, we seek the truth. Some scientist don't believe this, but this is how I see it. Religion used to be how this was achieved, but religions are not flexible enough to adapt to new information. They are too rigid. The advantage of science is that is infinitely adaptable; it changes to fit whatever the latest and best information is. Or, at least, it should (maybe even science has become too monolithic and politically motivated recently, with too much inertia in certain areas). Moreover, science uses mathematics and probability to find the most likely way forward; which explanation is most likely to be correct? Which brings us to Occam's razor.

Occam's razor is an excellent guide in developing our models. It says that if we have two models that can explain a specific set of observations equally well, the simpler one that requires least data to define it is more likely to be correct. A corollary is that if two models are equally simple, the one that can explain the most is more likely to be correct. Occam's razor is an intuitive guide. Although proofs have been attempted, to my knowledge none are completely satisfactory. It is the key scientific principle that guides me to consider the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis to be almost certainly correct, at least as far as the impact itself is concerned. The secondary effects, such as the Younger Dryas climate shift and associated megafaunal extinctions are more debatable, but still quite likely to be correct, in my view.

It is also how I approach decoding Gobekli Tepe and related symbolism. As a scientist, I am continually seeking connections, making links, simplifying explanations, using Occam's razor. There is considerable evidence now that many ancient cultures were fascinated by the sky, and their astronomical-symbolism was often linked and therefore likely derives from an earlier epoch.

The world was exposed to a disturbing, archaic and bizarre bit of pageantry not seen in over 70 years with the coronation of King Charles III as head of the Global British Commonwealth, head of the Anglican Church, and spokesman for a program dubbed Global Britain that was brought online as the official mandate of the Conservative party in 2021.

From managing a global empire of economic enslavement and having invaded nearly every nation on Earth at one time or another[2], Britain continues to exert vast control over the mining concessions of Africa with over $1 trillion of direct mining interests controlled by British and/or British Commonwealth-based corporations. According to the 2016 report produced by War on Want[3]:

"101 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) — most of them British — have mining operations in 37 sub-Saharan African countries. They collectively control over $1 trillion worth of Africa's most valuable resources. The UK government has used its power and influence to ensure that British mining companies have access to Africa's raw materials. This was the case during the colonial period and is still the case today."

The City

As outlined in my new book The Anglo Venetian Roots of the Deep State, the "square mile" dubbed The City of London (a separate legal entity from London itself) is the nerve center of world finance, with the Bank of England and Commonwealth offshore tax havens directing trillions of dollars of drug money laundering, terrorist financing and other corrupt practices globally. The City's sovereignty beyond all national jurisdiction was enshrined in the oligarchist 'Magna Carta' of 1214 which established the financial hub as a supranational corporation capable of running its own police force and judicial system... which it continues maintain 800 years later.

During the 183 years between 1763 to 1946 which saw the greatest direct influence of British unipolar supremacy over the world, the impoverished nations of the world found themselves more impoverished, less capable of acquiring means of industrial production and more at war with themselves and their neighbors via divide-to-conquer tactics. Since this empire took the form of the Anglo-American "special relationship" after 1945, this trend was only exacerbated.

Although the discovery of North America is synonymous with Christopher Columbus, new research reveals that Viking sailors landed on the shores of North America about 700 years before Columbus.

Archaeologists from the University of Iceland came to this conclusion after analyzing wood recovered from five Norse farmsteads in Greenland, according to a study recently published in the journal Antiquity.

Microscopic analysis of wood suggests that Norse people in Greenland were using timber that came from North America over 700 years ago.

The study focused on the timber used in Norse sites in Greenland between 1000 and 1400. According to the findings, some of the wood came from trees grown outside of Greenland.

As part of the study, 8,552 pieces of wood were examined to determine their origin. Only 26 pieces, or 0.27 percent of the total assemblage, belonged to trees that were definitively imported. These were oak, hemlock, beech, and Jack pine.

"These findings highlight the fact that Norse Greenlanders had the means, knowledge, and appropriate vessels to cross the Davis Strait to the east coast of North America, at least up until the 14th century," archaeologist Lísabet Guðmundsdóttir from the University of Iceland says.

MESOPOTAMIA

Written sources from Mesopotamia suggest that kissing in relation to sex was practiced by the peoples of the ancient Middle East 4,500 years ago. The sources have been analysed by researchers from the University of Copenhagen and University of Oxford in a new article published in the journal Science.
Recent research has hypothesised that the earliest evidence of human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographical location in South Asia 3,500 years ago, from where it may have spread to other regions, simultaneously accelerating the spread of the herpes simplex virus 1.

But according to Dr Troels Pank Arbøll and Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen, who in a new article in the journal Science draw on a range of written sources from the earliest Mesopotamian societies, kissing was already a well-established practice 4,500 years ago in the Middle East. And probably much earlier, moving the earliest documentation for kissing back 1,000 years compared to what was previously acknowledged in the scientific community.

"In ancient Mesopotamia, which is the name for the early human cultures that existed between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in present-day Iraq and Syria, people wrote in cuneiform script on clay tablets. Many thousands of these clay tablets have survived to this day, and they contain clear examples that kissing was considered a part of romantic intimacy in ancient times, just as kissing could be part of friendships and family members' relations," says Dr Troels Pank Arbøll, an expert on the history of medicine in Mesopotamia.

He continues:

"Therefore, kissing should not be regarded as a custom that originated exclusively in any single region and spread from there but rather appears to have been practiced in multiple ancient cultures over several millennia."

Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen adds:

"In fact, research into bonobos and chimpanzees, the closest living relatives to humans, has shown that both species engage in kissing, which may suggest that the practice of kissing is a fundamental behaviour in humans, explaining why it can be found across cultures."