It is often said that the first question a human ever asked was, “Hi, I’m Adam … what’s your name?” Many believe the second-oldest question is, “Which came first … the chicken or the egg?” While the debate on the answer to the first will probably never end, the answer to the second may have been determined by a new study (really!) which resolved the poultry paradox with science.

“Little is known about the early history of the chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), including the timing and circumstances of its introduction into new cultural environments. To evaluate its spatio-temporal spread across Eurasia and north-west Africa, the authors radiocarbon dated 23 chicken bones from presumed early contexts.”

The study, published in the journals Antiquity and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and led by Professor Joris Peters from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, set out to prove or disprove the commonly held idea that wild chickens were domesticated in either China, India or southeast Asia 10,000 years ago, and were brought to Europe more than 7000 years ago. These dates were easily accepted because domesticated chickens are everywhere and seemingly everyone in every culture eats their meat and their eggs – making them the world’s most domesticated animal. That made it easy for the geographically dispersed research team to collect chicken remains from more than 600 sites in 89 countries – not just bones but also records of burial locations and historical data. Carbon dating of the bones fried the previous chicken domestication estimates.

“Of the 23 dated chicken bones, only five were consistent with their reported stratigraphic phasing. The radiocarbon dates associated with the remaining 18 were more recent than their reported dates.”

Not only were they “more recent,” they were much more recent – bones from Greece thought to date to 1250–1100 BCE were determined to be “post-1954.” That put the researhcers on alert and they used modern chicken bone comparisons to change the date on other alleged Bronze Age fossils. Upon completion of the carbon dating, the first confirmed evidence for a close relationship between humans and chickens came from complete skeletons placed alongside Bronze Age human burials in Dasikongcun, China (1320–1046 BCE), and Ban Non Wat, Thailand (800 BCE). You don’t need a calculator to do the math – that’s nearly 7,000 years after the previously accepted date of 10,000 years ago for the first domesticated chickens in China.

What about Europe and Africa?

“Radiocarbon dating also helped establish age of 23 of the earliest-known chickens in western Europe and northwest Africa. The results show that domesticated chickens arrived in Europe only about 2800 years ago and took another 1000 years to reach the colder climates in the continent’s north.”

The study found chickens in Italy by the eighth century BCE and on the Balearic Islands off eastern Spain between the eighth to sixth century BCE – it’s believed they arrived via early Greek, Etruscan and Phoenician maritime trade routes across the Mediterranean. Moving inland, a skeleton from the Czech Republic and data from Bulgaria show their arrival in the sixth to fifth centuries BCE, with the same time period for France and southern Britain. It looks like chickens didn’t appreciate cold weather -- it took almost 1000 years longer for their arrival in Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia and Iceland around 800 CE. It appears chickens arrived on the Horn of Africa (the Somali Peninsula in east Adrica) between the ninth and sixth centuries BCE and spread very slowly – not arriving in the north-west until the first century BCE and possibly as late as the medieval period around 500 CE.

“The expansion of the Roman Empire helped to popularise chickens and eggs as foodstuffs.”

While their domestication in China and southeast Asia is directly attributable to rice farming and the availability of dried rice for feed, the study credits the Romans for spreading the world’s favorite breakfast dish and dinner meat. Which brings us back to the question: which came first – the chicken or the egg? If we’re talking food, the egg wins – the study shows that chickens were used for ceremonial purposes before being eaten, while humans saw how easily animals ate eggs and followed suit by consuming the eggs of wild chickens, ducks, geese, ostriches, quails and many other larger birds.

What answer did Adam get? That’s for another study to solve.

Military bases, with their secretive natures and security clearances, often seeming to operate in the dark beyond the public eye, have always drawn to them tales of conspiracies. It sometimes seems that there is not a single military base that doesn't have at least some dark rumors swirling about it involving strange experiments, UFOs, and aliens. For the most part these just remain lore and more or less urban legends, but they become more interesting when actual people who were supposedly there step forward to talk about the outlandish things they've seen at such places. One such very odd case comes from a witness who claims to have had several surreal encounters with aliens in secret underground facilities beneath two U.S. military bases. 

The report in question was released by the radio station KPFA-FM, in Berkeley, California, during a 4-hour show on UFO phenomena. The station itself is part of the Pacifica Foundation, which was founded in 1947 and is a non-profit organization that owns several non-commercial, largely non-censored, alternative listener-supported radio stations. These stations are known for being rather off the grid and the last bastion for free speech and activism, as well as pioneers of First Amendment rights, so it makes sense that they might be more inclined to open up about their more fringe experiences on such a station. According to UFO researcher Elaine Douglass, in this case, KPFA-FM had acquired tapes of an interview taken in April of 1981 with a man who claimed to be a Vietnam veteran, former Green Beret, military medal-holder, and construction contractor who had done work at military facilities such as Nellis, Scott, Edwards, and Andrews Air Force Bases, and had quite the tale to tell. According to him, he had had two separate encounters with alien beings there, the first being at Edwards Air Force Base, in the Antelope Valley of Southern California.

Edwards Air Force Base is the home of the Air Force Test Center, Air Force Test Pilot School, and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center, and is involved in all manner of research and development of flight technology, as well as testing and evaluating aerospace systems from concept to combat. Many experimental aircraft are tested here, with some historic occasions such Chuck Yeager's flight that broke the sound barrier carried out at the base. According to this witness, it also has an expansive underground network of tunnels and labs that are up to top-secret research involving crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft and aliens. 

On the tape, the witness claims that the underground facilities he had seen during his contract work were “definitely not normal military structures,” and that they featured very thick concrete walls, unorthodox oval door ways with doors that electronically slid open and shut, and arrays of bizarre equipment the likes of which he had never seen. He describes various laboratories and high-security areas he was not allowed to access, the whole place giving off a sinister vibe and feeling very much like a place he didn’t feel welcome in. The size of the facility itself he could not say, but he estimated, judging by the time it took them to get from the top of the elevator to the bottom, that it went at least 30 stories down. It was as he walked the halls with his colleague that they wandered into an area they felt they were perhaps not supposed to be in, and that was when they had their bizarre encounter with an alien. The witness says:

We were walking down a hall, and these doors opened and there was a very particular person or things that caught my eye for an instant. This man was over seven feet tall. I’d say between 8 and 9 to 10 feet, wearing a lab jacket and talking to two human engineers. This man’s arms were almost down to his knees! It threw me into shock. It was definitely not human. He had big slanted eyes. A big head. Fingers were extremely long. Greenish skin. I saw him for just a few seconds. Three-quarters of its face is what I saw and I said, this guy would make a hell of a basketball player! And then the doors closed. Security saw us and told us to get out of there. The next day I walked off the job. After that I said, ain’t nobody pulling the blanket over my head anymore. l know what’s going on now. l know what I saw at Edwards is real. Somebody’s playing games with us.

The witness’s second encounter allegedly happened at the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, located in the Western Mojave Desert region of California, approximately 150 miles north of Los Angeles. The base was originally called the Naval Ordnance Test Station, and is involved in a variety of research, testing and evaluation programs for the U.S. Navy. The sprawling site covers a massive 1,100,000 acres, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island, has 19,600 square miles of restricted and controlled airspace, and according to the witness it also has a vast secret underground facility holding aliens and alien tech. It was as he was doing work there with some colleagues that he purportedly saw aliens for the second time in his life, and he explained of what happened:

They security thought we had left–me and two other guys. But we decided to stay over and finish this job. We walked past a hangar and we could see through a window,” the witness said. One of the guys I was with, Paul, he saw them first. He said, ‘Come here! Hurry up! I want to show you something!‘ And we looked in the window and there are these four little grey guys about 3 feet tall. Right then, security saw us and they told us, ‘We thought you guys left.’ And they escorted us and said, ‘You’re not allowed around this hangar. This hangar is off- limits to everybody. You’ll get yourself shot.‘ And it messed with Paul’s mind so much that every chance he got he snuck over there. He finally got caught and was kicked off the base. About three months later they found him mysteriously dead in Orange County. This kind of put a scare in me. I know why not to mess with something.

The witness insists that his story is true, and apparently throughout the interview seems very sober and sincere. When the segment was originally aired on the KPFA-FM UFO program it generated so much interest that were planning on broadcasting it again, but shortly before they were to do this they allegedly got a message from the KPFA-FM program producer Ralph Steiner, somberly stating, “Do not re-broadcast the tape. Persons whose testimony is on the tape have been threatened and their lives are in danger.” Was the radio station silenced, and if so by who? There is very little to verify any of this, and it could all very well be someone playing a hoax and having a laugh at everyone's expense, but it does certainly add to the already rich lore of secret, ominous military bases and their supposed bizarre dealings with extraterrestrials. 

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Paul Seaburn

One of the more unusual ancient Egyptian pharaohs was Akhenaten – the tenth ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty who reigned for seventeen years during the early to mid-1300s BCE. Akhenaten’s short time on the throne nonetheless had some major and historical accomplishments – he changed his name to Amenhotep IV, was married to Nefertiti, probably fathered Tutankhamun, and abandoned Egypt's traditional polytheism and introduced a monotheistic religion worshiping the god Aten. Oh, and he had an elongated skull that may have been found in 1907. Because Akhenaten’s history was seemingly wiped out after his death – and Egypt’s religion returned to polytheism, some have suggested there may have been something unusual about him that a DNA test on his mummy could possibly prove – that he was an alien.

“Unlike the rest of the pharaohs who ordered artists to sculpt and paint his figure with large shoulders and a narrow waist, he ordered that he be represented as he was. This has allowed Egyptologists to know exactly what his appearance was; bulging belly, narrow body and very long and thin limbs . All crowned with a large and elongated head.”

Does that description sound like an alien?

A recent article in UFO Spain (in Spanish) brings to light the question of why the mummy thought to belong to Akhenaten has not been studied further … especially with the possibility that it might contain alien DNA. While ancient Egyptians may have performed the childhood head-binding that resulted in elongated skulls in adults, historians have never been certain that the large heads of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and many of her children, including Tutankhamun, were due to the painful practice or something else. One sign often attributed to Egyptians having elongated heads are the statues and artwork depicting people wearing large cone-shaped headgear. In 2019, a study revealed a probable cause – two mummies found in graves in Akhetaten had wax cones on their heads that were held in place by the headgear. Why? Either as fertility devices or as part of their outfits as dancers.

What about Akhenaten and Nefertiti -- he was a male, she had plenty of children and both had real elongated heads?

Good question. Many Egyptian scholars believe Akhenaten’s unusual head and body shapes were due to a genetic abnormality. Early diagnoses pointed to Frölich's syndrome, which can cause obesity, delayed sexual development, atrophy of the gonads, and altered secondary sex characteristics. While Akhenaten had a feminine appearance and a big belly, Frölich's syndrome also causes infertility and he had many children. That led to researchers suspecting Marfan syndrome, which can cause a sufferer to be taller than average, have a long, thin face, an elongated skull, overgrown ribs, a large pelvis, enlarged thighs and spindly calves – all descriptions of Akhenaten. In addition, Marfan syndrome has a 50% chance of being passed on  to the next generation. However, while he had an elongated skull, DNA tests on Tutankhamun in 2010 were negative for Marfan syndrome.

Which brings us back to DNA testing Akhenaten’s mummy for Marfan, Frölich … or alien DNA.  UFO Spain offers this speculation:

“Furthermore, Nefertiti and her children also had elongated skulls. This has led to a theory; there may have been extraterrestrial DNA in Egypt, or at least past lineages. This hypothesis gains strength when the history of Egypt is analyzed and it is realized that the only reign that practically mysteriously disappeared from the records was that of Akhenaten. It is not known if he was killed or if he fled, since there is no way to clarify it.”

Bust of Nefertiti

In 1907, Edward R. Ayrton  found a mummy in tomb KV55 in the Valley of the Kings. Genetic tests in 2010 confirmed that the person was both the son of Amenhotep III and the father of Tutankhamun, and the age at the time of his death was consistent with that of Akhenaten. However, the results have been disputed. Why? What if the tests showed alien DNA? Could the Egyptian government – or some other world powers – be covering it up? After all, ancient Egyptians seem to have tried to wipe the existence of Akhenaten out of their own history. Nefertiti, who also had an elongated skull, was believed by some to have been Akhenaten’s sister before becoming his wife and Tut’s mother. A mummy thought to be hers was found but never confirmed and her history has all but disappeared as well. Another coverup?

Would another modern and more extensive DNA test on the mummy believed to be Akhenaten answer the question of its possible alien origin? Maybe. Will it ever happen? Many people have kept Akhenaten’s origin secret for thousands of years. There is obviously a reason why.

A memorable scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the one where Dr. Miles Dyson, a cybernetics expert, the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 (T-800) played by Arnold Schwarzenegger cuts into his arm and removes its skin to show its mechanical insides and convince Dyson it is indeed a Terminator. Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released in 1991 and the movie partly takes place in 2029 – the year the T-800 and T-1000 are sent from. It is now 2022. While we’re a long way from making Terminators (hopefully), tissue engineers at the University of Tokyo have successfully covered a three-jointed, functioning robot finger with lab-grown human skin. Is it too early to call Sarah Connor?

“These findings show the potential of a paradigm shift from traditional robotics to the new scheme of biohybrid robotics that leverage the advantages of both living materials and artificial materials.”

In a new study, published in the journal Matter, Tokyo University researchers explain what most people already knew – humans prefer robots that look like them. While firms like Boston Dynamics have successfully created robots that move like living dogs and humans, they still look like mechanical machines. That’s because the most difficult organ of the human body to replicate is the skin – the feeling, flexible covering that keeps everything inside protected while moving seamlessly with the mechanical parts and healing itself after injuries. It’s the holy grail with nails and the researchers decided that it was time to adopt a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach by ditching the quest for artificial human skin and instead growing the real deal in a way that can be used as a robot package.

“The finger looks slightly ‘sweaty’ straight out of the culture medium. Since the finger is driven by an electric motor, it is also interesting to hear the clicking sounds of the motor in harmony with a finger that looks just like a real one.”

Study co-author Professor Shoji Takeuchi admits what the team created is only a finger … but what a finger it is. To achieve the bond between living cells and robotic metal, the team submerged their well-designed robotic finger in a cylinder filled with a solution of collagen and human dermal fibroblasts, the two main components of the skin’s underlying connective tissues. That was the secret to fitting the skin seamlessly to the finger – the mixture shrank and tightly bonded to the finger bot. This formed the base foundation for the top coating of human epidermal keratinocytes, which make up 90% of the outermost layer of skin and give it its self-healing properties. The end result was a robotic finger with the texture, moisture-retaining properties and protection of human skin.

How realistic was it? (Watch the video.)

According to the press release, the lab grown skin stretched and bent but did not break as it matched the movement of its robotic exoskeleton. For a creepy factor, the skin could be lifted and stretched with a pair of tweezers, then snapped back and repelled water. (Photos here.) And then came the Terminator effect.

IMAGES: KAWAI ET. AL. 

IMAGE: KAWAI ET. AL.

“When wounded, the crafted skin could even self-heal like humans’ with the help of a collagen bandage, which gradually morphed into the skin and withstood repeated joint movements.”

So, we ask again … IS it time to call Sarah Connor? Not quite … but keep her number handy.  Takeuchi admits that, while impressive, the lab grown robotic skin is much weaker than its homegrown counterpart. It also requires assistance to feed it nutrients and remove waste. Finally, it needs fingernails, hair follicles and sweat glands – not just for their cosmetic value, although that’s important for humans to accept humanoid robots, but to replace the artificial feeding, circulation and protection the scientists still had to provide for the skin.

“I feel like I'm gonna throw up.”

“I think living skin is the ultimate solution to give robots the look and touch of living creatures since it is exactly the same material that covers animal bodies.”

Does the thought of human skin covering a robot make you feel like Dr. Mike Dyson in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day“ (the first quote) or Dr. Shoji Takeuchi in his lab at the University of Tokyo?

Either way, the future is no longer in OUR hands.

The UFO subject can, at times, be a strange one. On other occasions it can be sinister. But, what about downright fatal? In other words, mysterious deaths and getting too close to the truth of the UFO phenomenon. That's the theme of today's article. We'll begin with a man named Danny Casolaro. It was the summer of 1991 – specifically August 1 of that year – when the body of a middle-aged man was discovered in a hotel room in the Martinsburg, West Virginia Sheraton Inn. His body was lying in the shower. It was a grim sight for the maid that made the discovery. The man, it seemed, had committed suicide: his wrists were cut deep, something which effectively meant that without anyone to help him, the man was doomed. And, he was. It didn’t take more than a few moments for hotel staff to figure out who, exactly, the man was. He was identified by the person on the front-desk as Danny Casolaro. For around a year and a half leading up to the point of his reported suicide, Casolaro had been looking into a powerful group of people who sound very much like candidates for a New World Order. Casolaro termed this group, “The Octopus.” Appropriately, but unfortunately and tragically, the Octopus soon got its tentacles into Casolaro and dragged him down to an untimely death.

On the Area 51 angle, things got even more controversial. Casolaro was told that a secret group, known as Majestic 12, oversaw at Area 51 the wreckage and alien bodies said to have been found in New Mexico in the summer of 1947 – the legendary Roswell affair, of course. For the record, the Majestic 12 issue has been an integral one to the field of Ufology for decades. For some UFO investigators, Majestic 12 is the real deal. For others, though, it’s nothing but government disinformation designed to confuse the Roswell incident even further. Unfortunately, Casolaro did not live to see the truth of the Octopus unveiled – by himself, he hoped. The matter of his death in August 1991 ensured that. While Casolaro’s death could have been due to suicide – certainly, that’s what it looked like – there were solid and valid reasons to suggest that his death was due to something very different. At the time of his passing, Casolaro was certainly not in a state of woe or depression. It was the exact opposite: he was energized by new leads, and new revelations, in his quest to find the truth of the Octopus, its activities, and its motivations. The mystery remains exactly that: a mystery.

Now, let's jump back to the 1960s and a journalist named Dorothy Kilgallen, who had an interest in the UFO subject. For Kilgallen, it was when she started to dig into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy - at Dallas’ Grassy Knoll - that things began to get dicey for her. She was particularly interested in the connections between JFK’s alleged murderer, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Dallas strip-club-owner, Jack Ruby; a man who knew all the influential, powerful, and murderous characters – including the Mob - who called Dallas their home. When Oswald was shot and killed by Ruby on November 24, 1963, Kilgallen really sat up, suspecting that Oswald had been killed to prevent him from revealing what he knew of the complexities surrounding the president’s death.

Things got even more intriguing when Kilgallen got her hands on an advance copy of the controversy-filled Warren Report that investigated the death of JFK. How she got a hold of that is still a much-debated issue for those who haven’t given up on the matter of who was behind the president’s killing. Kilgallen even managed to secure an interview with Ruby, himself. Kilgallen was no fool: she knew that, by that time, her life was in a fair degree of danger. Kilgallen’s hairdresser, Marc Sinclaire, made no bones about it: “Her life had been threatened.” The threats became more and more. Then, on November 8, 1965, Kilgallen was found stone cold dead. As well as looking deep into the JFK assassination, Kilgallen was also tied to the UFO mystery. There’s little doubt at all Dorothy Kilgallen had an interest in the UFO phenomenon; in 1954, she said, in a press article, that: “Flying Saucers are regarded as of such vital importance that they will be the subject of a special hush-hush meeting of the world military heads next summer.” If such a thing went ahead, it was carefully hidden to the media and the public.

Sadly, Kilgallen died at a young age and under suspicious circumstances. Was it an accidental case of Kilgallen being fatally fueled by too much booze and too many pills? A suicide? Or, a skillful murder made to look like one of the two scenarios above? Just like Marilyn Monroe’s death, the questions – even now, decades later - are many, but the answers are sorely lacking. The mystery remains. As does Kilgallen’s involvement in controversies of the UFO kind. And, talking about Marilyn, what about her link to the UFO phenomenon? Murders made to look like suicides and accidents. Classified government documents fallen into the wrong hands. Stolen diaries; some of them burned and shredded for fear of what, one day, they might reveal. Powerful people with dangerous agendas. Famous faces. The Feds prowling around. Hollywood conspiracies. CIA agents keeping watch. Frightened people with secrets to hide. Wild sex. Drugs. Crazy parties and flowing booze. And, an incredible story of UFOs, aliens, Roswell, Area 51, Flying Saucers, and the death of a beautiful, but tragically scarred, icon. They all appear in the final years of Marilyn's life.

In 1955, one of the most controversial of all the many and varied UFO books published in the fifties was released – and, for the UFO field, to a distinct fanfare. Its title was The Case for the UFO. The author was Morris K. Jessup. His book was a detailed study of the theoretical power-sources for UFOs: what was it that made them fly? How could they perform such incredible, aerial feats, such as coming to a complete stop in the skies, hovering at incredible heights? Jessup believed that the vitally important answers lay in the domain of gravity. Or, as he saw it: anti-gravity. Jessup may well have been onto something, as it wasn’t long at all before the world of officialdom was on Jessup’s back – specifically senior figures in the U.S., Navy. And it was one particularly intriguing office of the Navy that was watching Jessup – a “special weapons” division. Clearly, someone in officialdom was interested in, and perhaps even concerned by, Jessup’s findings and theories. 

In the early evening of April 20, 1959, the lifeless body of Morris Jessup was found in his car, which was parked in the Matheson Hammock Park in Miami, Florida. The car’s engine was still running and a hosepipe, affixed to the exhaust, had been fed through the driver’s side window. Jessup was dead from the effects of carbon-monoxide. Jessup’s body was found by a man named John Goode, who worked at the park. Shocked at the sight before him, Goode quickly called the police, who arrived in no time at all. While it certainly looked as if Jessup had killed himself, not everyone was quite so sure that things were as clear cut as that. The window through which the hose was stuffed with a couple of towels, to prevent air from getting in and carbon-monoxide from getting out. Curiously, Mrs. Jessup - Rubeye – confirmed that the towels were not theirs.

Why, if Jessup took his own life, did he not take towels from the family home? What would have been the point of buying new towels? And, if he did buy such towels, where was the receipt from the store they were purchased from? It certainly wasn’t in the car, or in any of Jessup’s pockets. Equally suspicious is the fact that on the very night before his death, Jessup was in a very upbeat, fired-up mood: he spent more than an hour chatting on the phone with a good friend, Dr. Manson Valentine, expressing his enthusiasm for his latest work and plans for further investigations. Jessup even told Valentine that they should have lunch together the next day, as Jessup had something incredible to reveal. Valentine never got to see what it was that Jessup had uncovered – and he never saw Jessup again, either. Suicide or murder? The jury still can’t make its mind up, decades later.

May 22, 1949 was the date on which the first U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, died. Specifically at 1:50 a.m. As will quickly become apparent, the circumstances surrounding Forrestal’s final hours are swamped in controversy. All that we know with absolute certainty is that in the early hours of the 22nd, Forrestal’s body was found on a third-floor canopy of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Maryland. Did he take a fatal leap out of the window of the 13th floor of the hospital, his mind in turmoil and suicide on his mind? Was it an accident? Or, was Forrestal assassinated? For years, there have been rumors to the effect that Forrestal lost his life to an assassin - and because of what he knew of UFOs. And what he might have been on the verge of revealing what he knew. Ufology: sometimes it just might be deadly. Consider that when you do your next investigation into the subject of aliens and UFOs.