Secret HistoryS


Syringe

State-sanctioned LSD experiments in Cold War Bulgaria

Prof. Marina Boyadjieva
© Jordan TodorovProf. Marina Boyadjieva (first row, second right) with colleagues from the Multiprofile Hospital for Active Treatment in Neurology and Psychiatry St. Naum in Sofia, Bulgaria.
LSD is usually associated with the hippie counterculture of the late 1960s. What has not been known until recently is that dozens of experiments involving the psychedelic drug were carried out in Communist Bulgaria, from 1962 to 1968, by the Bulgarian psychiatrist Marina Boyadjieva. Among the human guinea pigs were doctors, artists, miners, truck drivers, and even prisoners and mentally ill patients. These research subjects were involved in some 140 trials.

Years before Timothy Leary's famous 1966 exhortation to "Turn on, tune in, drop out" and the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," LSD experiments were taking place in Bulgaria in the early years of the Cold War, where recreational drugs were completely unknown. Mind you, this was all happening legally and with the state's blessing.

Comment: Further reading:

MI6 payouts over secret LSD tests


Beaker

5,000-year-old Chinese beer recipe had secret ingredient

ancient pot fragment
© Fulai Xing
A stove fragment from the Mijiaya site that was probably used to heat the fermenting grain mash during the beer-brewing process.
Barley might have been the "secret ingredient" in a 5,000-year-old beer recipe that has been reconstructed from residues on prehistoric pots from China, according to new archaeological research.

Scientists conducted tests on ancient pottery jars and funnels found at the Mijiaya archaeological site in China's Shaanxi province. The analyses revealed traces of oxalate — a beer-making byproduct that forms a scale called "beerstone" in brewing equipment — as well as residues from a variety of ancient grains and plants. These grains included broomcorn millets, an Asian wild grain known as "Job's tears," tubers from plant roots, and barley.

Barley is used to make beer because it has high levels of amylase enzymes that promote the conversion of starches into sugars during the fermenting process. It was first cultivated in western Asia and might have been used to make beer in ancient Sumer and Babylonia more than 8,000 years ago, according to historians.

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Light Sabers

Mysterious mass graves hold prisoners of bloody 17th-century battle

exumed skeleton
© North News
Two mass graves holding an estimated 1,700 skeletons were found underground at the southern tip of Durham University's Palace Green Library.
Three years ago, archaeologists at Durham University began excavating a site on campus for a proposed addition to the school's library, but work was unexpectedly halted when the researchers uncovered remnants of two mass graves. The discovery ignited a centuries-old mystery, but now, scientists say clues point back to one of the shortest but bloodiest battles of the English Civil Wars.

The estimated 1,700 skeletons, found underground at the southern tip of Durham University's Palace Green Library, were likely Scottish soldiers who had been taken prisoner after the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, the archaeologists said.

The prisoners were captured by Oliver Cromwell, the controversial English leader who waged a successful military campaign against the Royalists in a 17th-century civil war, toppling the monarchy and culminating in the execution of King Charles I in 1649.

The two mass graves beneath Durham University had been hidden for nearly four centuries.

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Treasure Chest

Auschwitz museum uncovers jewelry secretly hidden in enamel cup

Auschwitz jewelry
© Marcin Inglot/Courtesy of Auschwitz Memorial/Handout via ReutersA box with a gold ring and a necklace wrapped in a piece of canvas found hidden in a mug is pictured at the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum in Oswiecim, Poland May 12, 2016.
Staff at the Auschwitz museum have uncovered jewelry secretly hidden in an enamel mug since the liberation of the wartime Nazi death camp in 1945.

The mug, one of thousands of kitchenware items seized by Nazi guards from those deported to the camp in southern Poland during World War II, was found to have an inside double bottom, under which a gold ring and necklace wrapped in a piece of canvas were hidden.

The objects, believed to have been made in Poland in between 1921 and 1931, were discovered during maintenance of the museum's enameled kitchenware exhibits.

"When I picked up this mug, it turned out that there were hidden objects inside," museum staffer Hanna Kubik said.

"With time, the fake bottom had detached from the cup, so it was clearly visible that inside there was a bundle and you could see a fragment of the chain and a ring".
Auschwitz cup
© Pawel Sawicki/Courtesy of Auschwitz Memorial/Handout via REUTERSA mug where a gold ring was hidden is pictured at the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum in Oswiecim, Poland May 19, 2016.
Between 1940 and 1945, about 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland. Those sent there had belongings taken away upon arrival, many of which are on display today.

Many hid valuables inside, items the museum says are still being discovered years later. However, their owners often remain anonymous because of the lack of traces on the objects to identify them.

The museum, which says it has more than 12,000-enamelled kitchen items -- like cups, pots, bowls, kettles, jugs -- in its memorials collection, said the jewelry would now be stored in "in the form reflecting the manner in which it had been hidden by the owner."

Boat

Divers discover important collection of artifacts from 1,600-year-old shipwreck in Caesarea National Park harbor

marine cargo discovery caesarea israel
© Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.Figurine of the moon goddess Luna (L.) and a bronze lamp decorated with the image of the sun god Sol.
IAA archaeologists diving in the ancient harbor in the Caesarea National Park recovered beautiful artifacts and coins from a 1,600-year-old shipwreck. This is the largest assemblage of marine artifacts to be recovered in the past thirty years.

A fortuitous discovery by two divers in the ancient port of Caesarea in the Caesarea National Park before the Passover holiday led to the exposure of a large, spectacular and beautiful ancient marine cargo of a merchant ship that sank during the Late Roman period 1,600 years ago.

As soon as they emerged from the water divers Ran Feinstein and Ofer Ra'anan of Ra'anana contacted the Israel Antiquities Authority and reported the discovery and removal of several ancient items from the sea.

A joint dive at the site together with IAA archaeologists revealed that an extensive portion of the seabed had been cleared of sand and the remains of a ship were left uncovered on the sea bottom: iron anchors, remains of wooden anchors and items that were used in the construction and running of the sailing vessel. An underwater salvage survey conducted in recent weeks with the assistance of many divers from the Israel Antiquities Authority and volunteers using advanced equipment discovered numerous items that were part of the ship's cargo.

Quenelle - Golden

Slow-motion coup against Jeremy Corbyn: British media goes bonkers over Labour members' "anti-Semitic comments"

livingstone
© Toby Melville / Reuters Former London mayor Ken Livingstone
Former London mayor Ken Livingstone has been suspended from the Labour party after he said Hitler had supported Zionism, during an interview where he defended a colleague accused of anti-semitism.

Livingstone refused to apologize for his comments and said people should not confuse criticizing the Israeli government's policies with being anti-Semitic after being confronted by Labour MP John Mann, who called him a "Nazi apologist" and claimed he was "rewriting history."

The row, which was captured on video, broke out after the veteran politician went on BBC Radio London to defend MP Naz Shah who was accused of anti-Semitism over a series of Facebook posts.


Comment: But 'Gorgeous' George Galloway did...




Info

Secret tunnel found in Teotihuacán may solve the mysteries of an ancient Mexican civilization

The Avenue of the Dead
© eu tirada/Public DomainThe Avenue of the Dead, with the Pyramid of the Sun to the left.
Teotihuacán is mysterious. A city that probably started around 400 B.C., before it was abandoned over 1,000 years later, this central Mexican civilization has long puzzled archaeologists, as Teotihuacanos seemingly left no written records.

Were they ruled by a single, all-powerful king? Or was it a council? What was their religion? What language did they speak? We simply don't know.

But 13 years ago, as Matthew Shaer reports in Smithsonian, an archaeologist who has devoted his entire career to the Teotihuacanos stumbled upon a secret: a tunnel, specifically, that no one knew existed before. It was built under a temple in the city.

Six years later, the archaeologist, Sergio Gómez, began excavating. What he uncovered was a trove of artifacts, from necklaces to knives to bones. And Gomez might find more: there are three chambers still to be excavated.

Clock

Computer reconstructs the Antikythera Mechanism

Antikythera Mechanism
© National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece
This is the largest piece of the Antikythera Mechanism, which is on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece.
The Antikythera Mechanism has been called an "ancient calculator," but there is so much more to it than meets the eye. The shoebox-size device has a complex gearwheel system of 30 intricate bronze gear wheels used to run a system that displayed the date, positions of the sun and moon, lunar phases, a 19-year calendar and a 223-month eclipse prediction dial. This makes it an analog computer of great complexity. No other machine of known existence shows a similarity in advanced engineering for at least another 1,000 years.

The discovery

In 1900, a boatload of sponge divers in the Mediterranean were forced off course by a storm and took shelter nearby the island of Antikythera. The next day, they went diving near the island and discovered a 2,000-year-old Greek shipwreck, according to NOVA.

The ship likely sank between 70 B.C. and 60 B.C. on a voyage from Asia Minor to Rome. The sponge divers salvaged from the ship three flat pieces of corroded bronze that later became known to be the Antikythera Mechanism.

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Blue Planet

Erosion of North Sea reveals remnants of 7,000 year old ancient forest believed to be part of Doggerland

northumberland ancient forest, doggerland
The North Sea has eroded the shore of a Northumberland beach to reveal the remnants of an ancient forest dating back 7,000 years. Archaeologists believe the preserved tree stumps and felled tree trunks lining the shoreline. Forests would have covered the area once known as 'Doggerland' - an area of land stretching between England and Europe which existed before the North Sea was formed by glacial melt water and geological movements.
Ancient footprints as well as prehistoric tree stumps and logs have become visible along a 200-meter stretch of a coastline at Low Hauxley near Amble, Northumberland, in what is believed to be Doggerland, the Atlantis of Britain.

The Daily Mail reports that the forest existed in the late Mesolithic period. It began to form around 5,300 BC, and it was covered by the ocean three centuries later. The studies proved that at the time, when the ancient forest existed, the sea level was much lower. It was a period when Britain had recently separated from the land of what is currently Denmark. The forest consisted mostly of hazel, alder, and oak trees. Researchers believe the forest was part of Doggerland, an ancient stretch of a land, which connected the UK and Europe.

Doggerland: Stone Age Atlantis of Britain

Located in the North Sea, Doggerland is believed to have once measured approximately 100,000 square miles (258998 square kilometers). However, the end of the Ice Age saw a great rise in the sea level and an increase in storms and flooding in the region, causing Doggerland to gradually shrink.

Comment: See also:

Tsunami created North Sea 'Atlantis' 8,000 years ago
Britain's Atlantis: Scientific study beneath North Sea could revolutionise how we see the past


Question

Earth's mysterious prehistoric monuments: Scientists searching for keys

Our planet is dotted with baffling monuments of unknown origin and purpose. Scientists have been racking their brains over these riddles for years, but the more answers they come up with, the more new questions arise. Let's explore some of the most inscrutable monuments scattered across the planet.

Stonehenge
© Flickr/ Alex RanaldiStonehenge
Legend has it that Stonehenge was erected by Merlin the wizard. But from the scientific perspective, the monument had emerged long before the life of King Arthur's wise companion. It is still unclear how people transported the monumental blocks from a quarry located hundreds of kilometers away. And what was the purpose of the structure? Was it an observatory (the megaliths form a precise model of the Solar System), a sanctuary (as it was used by druids) or something else?

Comment: In her landmark work, The Secret History of the World and How to Get Out Alive, Laura Kinght-Jadczyk explores many ancient enigmas, from monuments to The Bible, questioning mainstream interpretations and theories and shedding new light in these areas.