Uruk: the first city on the planet that could hide the secrets of humanity

Uruk was a city that existed south of the valley of the rivers, on the banks of the Euphrates and from that point, its culture spread throughout Mesopotamia to become the first and most important city on the planet . Cradle of majestic and legendary kings like Gilgamesh. A God who was far removed from what we know as “human” and was closer to an extraterrestrial. But before talking about Gilgamesh, we have to mention the origins of one of the most mysterious cities of ancient times.

Origins and discovery of Uruk

It was discovered in 1849 thanks to William Loftus, although the most renowned archaeologists did not arrive at it until the next century; 1912-1913. Julius Jordan together with the East German Society discovered the Ishtar temple during that time, surprising him with its mosaics and adobe bricks.

But what surprised him the most were the ruins of the ancient wall that covered the entire city more than 3,000 years ago. C, which, according to later studies, reached more than 15 meters in height and had a length of more than 9 kilometers. Wall that was built by King Gilgamesh.

In the 1950s, Heinrich Lenzen found some tablets written in the Sumerian dialect and dated around 3,300 BC. C. and who described Uruk as the first urban center that used writing , as a common communication method, from day to day.

All these findings demonstrated, very contrary to what everyone believed at the time, that Uruk became, not only the first urban human settlement, but also the nucleus of society , with a flourishing economic power superior to anyone.

In addition, standing out in the succession of temples crowned in ziggurats and palaces, who came to house for 2,900 BC. C, at least 80,000 people, making it the first city on the planet.

Throughout its history, Uruk also lived through different stages, its foundation as a Neolithic settlement around 5,000 BC. C., becoming a powerful and influential city between 4,000 and 3,000 BC. C, until its disappearance after 700 AD. C.

Even so, the influence of Uruk was so powerful, that there is a period of time that bears his name, making it the most influential metropolis of human societies .

However, it is still unknown how Uruk came to be the epicenter of society and had so much dominance . His economic power was known, the perfect land that existed in the valley of the two rivers, which surely made him grow the best food in the area.

Possibly this attracted more people who joined urbanism, creating businesses with different regions, causing people to not have to fight for their subsistence, giving them the opportunity to dedicate themselves to other tasks, creating all kinds of activities, festivities, art and more. .

But it is also believed within theoretical circles, that he had a “divine” influence, that he did not belong to this planet.

Who gave origin to this city was Enmerkar , a being who has been in the eye of the hurricane since… always. Zecharias Sitchin, one of the greatest scholars of antiquity, even mentions Enmerkar’s dispute with the Lord of Aratta.

A dispute that ended with a great storm that unraveled a terrible drought that invaded Aratta, which Enmerkar wanted to take advantage of to take over his kingdom.

The lord of Aratta, according to history, declared the following: « Inanna , the queen of the lands , has not left her House in Aratta; he has not given Aratta to Erek. Inanna was a Goddess who moved in her “space ship”, and can be seen in representations as if she piloted some kind of ship uneiform tablets that were found in Nineveh, tell stories of giants, strange monsters and, of course, mysterious flying ships.

Of all these, the one that attracts the most attention is Gilgamesh, considerada la epopeya más antigua de la humanidad, incluso más que el Viejo Testamento, quién copió claramente su historia acerca de la creación, cambiando el nombre de Gilgamesh por Noé.

A being of 5,000 years ago who ruled Uruk despotically , and that certain historical texts show him as someone who really existed, but with a fantastic and unknown origin .

Unfortunately, its complete story did not survive the passage of time, but what can be intuited in the rest of the tablets found, show a story of struggle, life and death.

The Sumerians regarded Gilgamesh as “The man for whom all things were known . ” They said it was a hybrid between gods who “came from heaven” and humans. In addition, they mention that it had no defects; when the gods created it, two-thirds God and one-third human made it. Creating a perfect being.

As we have been able to observe, many parts of “our history”, told by archeology and orthodox and traditional history, hide many details from us about our origins. Uruk is a clear example of this, along with his stories about Gods that lead us to think if, really, there was no “influence” beyond what we know.

Uruk, the origins of the first towns in Mesopotamia ...

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13-10-2020 om 01:57 geschreven door peter  

Archeologists have unearthed some very strange things in an ancient Hindu temple called Sra Srang in Cambodia and this is ground breaking because it changes everything we know about ancient statues and temples. 

This looks like just a stone turtle right? But when they when they tapped on this, its shell began cracking on top, and the crack developed into a nice little rectangle. 

PraveenMohan got the footage of how archeologists slowly inserted a sharp blade into the crack, and then started to move the blade all around the crack, and made the crack bigger, and then they opened this stone statue like a container. Inside, is a large rectangular hole, which had a strange gel like substance, almost like wet silica gel. 

PraveenMohan: You can see how archeologists are taking a small sample out of this, and are trying to figure out what it is. What is this gel? And why has this been safely placed into this stone container, and why was it buried in the temple premises? 

Experts confirm that this is at least 1,000 years old, but it could be much older. 

But archeologists have found something even more strange, they found another stone turtle, which was also buried in dirt. And they were able to open that also, it had a triangle shaped lid on its shell. And what they found inside is shocking. They found neatly polished crystal quartz stones. 

And they found hundreds of neatly polished crystal quartz stones buried on site. I mean look, this is the original footage from the excavation site, the crystals fill up 2 plastic bags, and this is how they look after lying in the dirt and marsh for 1000 years, imagine how they would have looked when they were cut back then. 

As soon as these were found, locals started to come in and pray in large numbers, because they felt a strange energy radiating from them. Cambodians are very spiritual people and they performed all sorts of rituals on these artifacts and crystals. 

But is this just spiritual energy radiating from them, or is there science behind all this? I mean why did ancient builders cut hundreds of crystal quartz stones, polish them, and safeguard them? 

Today, we use the same material in semiconductors for transistors, integrated circuits, the first radio communication devices we used were made purely using crystal quartz. Is it possible that the ancient builders were using some type of a radio communication device? 

But inside the turtle container they also found something even more strange. They found thin bronze wires. Archeologists are baffled by this and they just dismiss it by saying these were just threads used for religious purposes. No Hindu or Buddhist ritual ever uses bronze threads, this is unheard of. 

These are bronze wires and ancient builders were using it for some other reason. Bronze is not a metal, it is an alloy made of multiple metals like copper and tin, and ancient builders made them into thin wires. What else could possibly be the use of these bronze wires, other than some type of electric or electronic purpose?

Is it just a coincidence that they found crystal quartz and bronze wires side by side? Look at the crystal radio sets we used some decades ago, these were simple devices made with wires and crystal quartz. I mean the only thing missing is an antenna, and they could make a crystal radio device with these items and start receiving signals. 

The archeologists also found strange very high quality metal objects which show almost no deterioration. In spite of being buried for such a long time, they had no trace of rust or decay. Is it possible that these high quality metal rods with three prongs sticking into the air, were used as antennas used for radio communication in ancient times?

  

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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10-10-2020 om 18:25 geschreven door peter  

The Great Pyramid: New Theory on God Symbolism and the Hidden Chambers

e Great Pyramid: New Theory on God Symbolism and the Hidden Chambers

Architecture is language of form, of three dimensional images reflecting the function of a building and the time it was built. At best it demonstrates the builders’ beliefs regarding life and the world around them. One building never ceases to be an object of discus­sion: Khufu’s pyramid in Egypt.

Many Egyptologists believe the inside was subject to some rather remarkable plan changes. Of the three known chambers: The Subterranean Chamber, The Queen’s Chamber, and the King’s Chamber , the first two are generally believed to have been abandoned during the building period.

However this article suggests that none of the chambers were abandoned and no change of plans were needed. I must emphasize that I am an architect, not an Egyptologist. My knowledge of ancient Egyptian history is limited. But I do think that understand­ing of form also matters.

I couldn’t believe that such a colossal building as the Cheops/Khufu pyra­mid was built in a way that made it subject to plan changes during construction . And suddenly the connection struck! I saw before me a drawing of the pyramid’s chambers and realized that there was a chamber in the ground, one was at the end of a horizontal corridor (in Danish we use a term literally meaning water-level for this) and one had air channels. Could it be as simple as a representation of the four elements?

• The Great Boat of Khufu: The ‘Black Box’ to the Construction of the Pyramids
• Ancient Egyptian Logbook of Inspector Who Helped Construct the Great Pyramid Revealed

The pyramid was built several thousand years prior to the Greek theories of the elements but the major gods of the area at the time of Cheops/Khufu were nature gods : the sun god Ra, the air god Shu, the earth god Geb, among others, and I was back on track…The chambers are all formed exactly as they were intended from the start.

Through the symbolism I deduced from the forms and positions of the known chambers, I believe that it is possible to comprehend the principal ideas of the pyramid’s layout. The chambers fit into a system based on the order of the major gods of the area in the 4th dynasty, around 2500 BC. Furthermore the details of the pyramid reveal that there must be another hitherto unknown chamber higher in the pyramid.

The chambers.

(Niels Bjerre Jørgensen)

The place, the priesthood, the gods

Annu is a city some 30 km (18.64 miles) northeast of the great pyramids at Giza. The Bible called it On and the Greeks Heliopolis - city of the Sun. Annu housed a temple and a priesthood which represented the nation’s most influential religion: sun worship.

In Khufu’s time their beliefs and gods were dominant – so these are relevant to the pyramid’s creation. The first five gods of the Heliopolitan creation myth are nature-gods, born in the following sequence:

ATUM who organized the chaotic waters and cre­ated the world. At some unknown point in time he merged with the sun god Ra into RA-ATUM

SHU God of Air. The first born child of Atum.

TEFNUT Goddess of Mist and Rain. With Shu she gave birth to the next two:

GEB God of Earth.

NUT Goddess of the starry sky and born last of these gods.

The chambers and elements of the gods.

(Niels Bjerre Jørgensen)

Gods and Chambers in the Pyramid

The three known chambers form obvious links to earth, water, and air, (GEB, TEFNUT and SHU) in their loca­tions. GEB’s chamber’s deep in the ground. TEFNUT’s chamber’s at the end of a horizontal, or water level corridor with a sunken floor, and SHU’s chamber has open air shafts .

Examining the architecture closer expands the concept: there must be five chambers in total. The sun god Ra-Atum and Nut, goddess of the starry sky, also had chambers in their honor. Furthermore, it is possible to deduct their approxi­mate locations from the pyramid’s many details.

Did ancient Egyptians have a belief comparable to the Greek theory? The Heliopolitan creation myth operates with gods who were personifications of what resembles the later Greek elements, but the Egyptians had five elements because it included the starry sky in a way resembling the ‘ether’ of the universe, which Plato is credited for inventing.

The creation myth had it (in almost correct order), and the pyramid’s chambers show it. Earth is the heaviest element and thus at the bottom, water upon it, the air above both, and the fire (sun) even higher. Even higher again: the starry sky.

You may object that water wasn’t Tefnut’s element. Her realm was water in the forms of mist and rain. But actually this makes her forms of water more interesting in a vertical ordering of the elements according to weight because rain is water falling from the air and mist is water rising from earth.

Also to be demonstrated in the interior, the Egyp­tians distinguished between the location of the fire element itself - the sun - high above the air, and the effect here on earth below the air in the form of burning, lighting, warming fire.

In the later Amarna period (18th dynasty), reliefs depict how the sun’s rays hand over the ankh sign of life to king Akhenaten and his family. We can even see how cut-off flowers seem to regain life in the sunlight. This form of fire is represented by the Great Gal­lery, which is not a proper chamber, but clearly more than a corridor.

Pharaoh Akhenaten (center) and his family worshiping the Aten, with characteristic rays seen emanating from the solar disk.

( Public Domain )

GEB’s Chamber – EARTH (The Subterranean Chamber)

The Subterranean chamber measures roughly 8 by 16 meters (26.25 by 52.50 ft.), longest in the east-west direction. In the eastern half a square hole, turned 45 degrees, is dug deep into the bedrock and probably once reached ground water. From the southern wall a small square corridor proceeds a little southwards then ends . In the western half a considerable amount of bed­rock is left, giving an unfinished impression.

Many believe that this chamber was originally intended as burial chamber but was abandoned during construction, thus the pile of bedrock. If, however, the chamber follows the order of the elements this is the earth chamber, Geb’s chamber. What better way to demonstrate this than by including bedrock?

Plan of the subterranean chamber.

( Public Domain )

A closer look reveals that this actually would have been the burial chamber, if Khufu was buried here at all. It was customary to bury the body in an under­ground chamber and have an offering chamber above it because it was the earth god Geb who received the body of the deceased. There is even a flat area 2 by 5 meters (6.56 by 16.40 ft.) where it would be possible to assemble a coffin or sarcophagus.

The Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt c. 500 BC (c. 2000 years after Khufu). He wrote that he was told the king lay buried beneath the pyramid on an island in a water-filled chamber, into which the water came through a brick canal - an astonishingly precise description of how the chamber may have looked.

And if you look at the bedrock left in the chamber it’s an ‘island’ onto which the coffin was placed. The ver­tical shaft probably acted as a well to obtain water. A frame of wood, eventually tightened by clay, would re­strain the water from running back. There even is a ledge it could rest on. With the right amount of water it would look as if the water flooded in from the canal in the south­ern wall, as demonstrated in the drawing below.

Some believe that Herodotus referred to the existence of another subterranean chamber and others say he was misin­formed. But as you can see, it is not necessary to search for an­other chamber. You just have to place a wooden frame in the well and hoist some water up.

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Drawing of the subterranean chamber.

(Niels Bjerre Jørgensen)

TEFNUT’s Chamber - WATER (The Queen’s Chamber)

The proper name for the Queen’s chamber would be Tefnut’s chamber. Tefnut’s realm is water as the element between the elements earth and air, which is why her chamber is situated below the air god Shu’s chamber but above the earth god Geb’s chamber.

Danish architect Hubert Paulsen has shown that a hexagon can be inscribed onto the Queen’s cham­ber . When it is, the center of the hexagon will almost exactly be situated in 1/6 of the pyramid’s original altitude of 280 cubits. The hexagon was a known geometric figure to the ancient Egyptians.

In place of a hexagon, it’s also tempting to in­scribe a six-pointed star (something that may not have been known at the time of the pyramid’s construction). This is useful to demonstrate my ideas. The symbol consists of two triangles. One pointing up, and the other pointing down suggesting that magic combines what is above with what is below, like the Tefnut element of water. Maybe they did not use this symbol, but it may also explain the reference to a hexagon in Tefnut’s chamber.

Drawings of the chamber with a hexagon or six-pointed star.

(Niels Bjerre Jørgensen)

A little before you enter the chamber the floor drops suddenly one cubit (one cubit measures 52.36 cm/20.61 inches). This is one of the facts that has led many to assume this is another unfinished chamber. But if the ‘missing’ layer of flooring is added to the drawing it doesn’t fit with the hexagon or the star. If instead 21 cm (8.27 inches) of water is added, it fits completely!

The Queen’s or Tefnut’s chamber with the famous niche.

( The Pyramids of Tutankhamun )

There is a famous mysterious niche in the eastern wall which some say used to hold a statue. Others hoped it concealed an en­trance to a hidden chamber and forced their way through the back wall. Nobody realized that the niche itself is the decoration.

You should look at it as negative space - as if it consists of five boxes on top of each other. This way it tells us there are five elements/gods and five chambers in the pyramid. Almost as a confirmation, the niche is placed so that the side wall of the second “box” aligns with the midline of the chamber, seen from east or west. It is also the pyramid’s midline.

To understand the meaning of the ‘boxes’ it’s necessary to look at the side of the second box, the middle element, which align with the pyra­mids midline.

( Niels Bjerre Jørgensen)

Here in the Queen’s chamber we find another inexplicable construction. The “air shafts” con­tinue high above the chamber and may even have reached the outer surface; but they did not originally open into the chamber. This was done in 1832 by an archaeologist who deduced their existence from the air shafts in the King’s Chamber. The southern shaft, we know now from Gantenbrink’s robot exploration , is blocked high in the pyramid by a stone with remains of copper mounts.

Such copper mounts can hardly have had any other purpose than being for ropes, making the blocking stone a kind of removable cork. If the shafts were permanently closed during the build­ing, they would most likely have used stones with­out copper mounts. I can imagine several reasons for having the shafts the way they were, but none that fits to theories of an abandoned chamber.

The shafts could be used to demonstrate how water penetrates rock. Their grooves are cut on top of the sec­ond layer of stones in the wall and water that was poured down the shafts would probably sieve between the second and third layers and run down the wall to the wa­ter on the floor. Or the Gantenbrink cork may have hindered the shaft from being filled with sand.

SHU’s Chamber – AIR (The King’s Chamber)

In this, the highest position of the known cham­bers, we find open air shafts. It must be SHU’s chamber. In the Book of the Dead , written on the wall of a later king’s pyramid (Pepi II from 6th dynasty), we find:

“O Great Company of the gods who dwell in Annu (Heliopolis), grant that Pepi Nefer-ka- Ra may flourish (literally ‘germinate’), and that his pyramid, his everlasting building, may flourish, even as the name of Temu [ATUM] , the chief of the nine gods, doth flourish.
If the name of Shu, the lord of the upper shrine in Annu, flourisheth, then Pepi shall flourish, and his pyramid, his everlasting building, shall flourish!
If the name of Tefnut, the lady of the lower shrine in Annu, flourisheth, the name of Pepi shall be established, and this his pyramid shall be established to all eternity!
If the name of Seb [GEB] flourisheth at the “homage of the earth”, then the name of Pepi shall flourish, and this his pyramid shall flourish, and this his building shall flourish unto all eternity!
If the name of Nut in the House of Shenth in Annu flourisheth, the name of Pepi shall flourish, and this his pyramid shall flourish, and this his building shall flourish unto all eternity!”

This almost contemporary sequence from the Old Kingdom seems to indicate that in Annu shrines for Shu and Tefnut were placed as ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ shrines. Maybe the sequence actually speaks of the Great pyramid and its chambers.

In a country stretching from Nubia to the Mediterranean Sea, it was a minor deviation to describe Khufu’s pyramid as if it actu­ally lay in Annu, or just outside. As the theory of this article points out, the gods of Annu may also have been so closely connected with the pyramid, being a temple honoring them, that they were practically identified with each other. Mentioning Geb’s chamber as “the homage of the earth” is wonderfully poetic, when you remember the way it was staged.

To enter Shu’s chamber you have to pass through The Grand Gallery and the Ante chamber. First, we concentrate on the so-­called “construction chambers” directly above the chamber. The generally accepted theory of why these strange layers of stones and in-between spaces were made claims they were made to reduce pressure on the chamber’s ceiling.

The King’s chamber with antechamber and “con­struction chambers” above it. From J. & M. Edgar: ‘The Great Pyramid Passages and Chambers.’

(Author provided)

But why not increase the space between the layers, if reducing weight was the issue? This is another “Well we cannot think of a better reason” - theory that should never have been accepted. The Queen’s chamber was built first, has no such weight relieving chambers, but still stands in spite of a much bigger pressure, being lower in the pyramid.

We are so accustomed to building for practical purposes that we often forget to consider other reasons. If we assume a symbolic meaning with these small chambers in honor of Shu they suddenly be­come a logical addition to Shu’s chamber.

• Unraveling the Mystery of the Great Pyramid Air-Shafts
• A Forgotten Sphinx and Faked Cartouche: Changing the Course of Ancient Egyptian History?

There are five cavities, one for each god/ele­ment/chamber in the pyramid. Note that these small chambers are defined by having their ceil­ings made into flat levels. Emphasis on ceiling means linking the chamber in question to the lighter elements, or the gods themselves. Which is why these small chambers quite certainly are symbolic and meant to honor the gods .

The upper cavity has a pointed ceiling seen from east or west. The highest real chamber in the pyramid, belonging to Nut, was probably situated in the pyramid’s peak. Its walls - or its ceiling, if you like - consisted solely of the pyramid’s casing stones, maybe supported by a wooden structure. When an earthquake made the casing stones slide off, Nut’s chamber disappeared.

The three lower cavities have granite sides seen from east or west as well as granite floors and ceilings. So have the three known real chambers. It seems reasonable to connect these three lower cavities to the known chambers. Symbolically the hard granite may represent the physical world - the three elements we live in - earth, water, and air.

This theory of the possible construction method of the Khufu Pyramid is  in the second part of this article here.

• Top Image: The Pyramid of Cheops illuminated by the sun in backlight, with people entering inside to visit it. The area with the great pyramids of Giza, Egypt. Source: Alfredo /Adobe Stock

By Niels Bjerre Jørgensen

{https://www.ancient-origins.net/general}

{

10-10-2020 om 03:14 geschreven door peter  

A new style of rock art has been discovered in Australia by archaeologists. The art depicted the harmonious relationship between humans and animals in ancient times. This style of rock art has been named Maliwawa Figures in reference to the area in which the drawings were located.

These drawings have been referred to as the missing link in Aboriginal art between the realistic drawings of animals from around 12,000 years ago and the stick figure paintings from approximately 4,000 years ago (also called X-Ray art). It is believed that these newly discovered Maliwawa Figures date back between 6,000 and 9,400 years ago.

For the past 12 years, Paul Taçon and his team discovered 570 examples of Maliwawa Figures at 87 different sites within an 80-mile location in Arnhem Land which is an area of vast wilderness in the northern part of Australia that has rugged coastlines, rivers, remote islands, and waterfalls. It is just slightly less than 100,000 square kilometers (just under 39,000 square miles) which means that this incredible wilderness is larger than Hungary, Portugal, and Austria.

Arnhem Land

In an interview with BBC, Taçon, who is the Australian Research Council laureate fellow and Griffith University chair in rock art research as well as an author of the study, described the uniqueness of their discovery, “We came across some curious paintings that are unlike anything we’d seen before.”

The most significant aspect of the art is that it depicts such a great relationship between humans and animals. In fact, of the hundreds of drawings uncovered so far, only one showed a hunting scene. According to their paper, “Animal-human relationships appear to be central to the artists’ message.” “The artists are clearly communicating aspects of their cultural beliefs, with an emphasis on important animals and interactions between humans and other humans or animals.”

Interestingly, the majority of the Maliwawa Figures measure at least two and a half feet in height with some of them being life-size. While they were drawn with red outlines, several of them had some detailed work done inside of the lines which could indicate that more than one artist helped to create the art. The paper read in part, “It is even possible only a couple of artists made most of the paintings.” “We know… that individual rock art artists can produce a remarkable number of paintings in their lifetime.”

One of the animals depicted in the rock art was a dugong.

Some of the animals depicted in the drawings include bilbies which have never been seen before in any known Indigenous rock art. What’s even more interesting is that bilbies weren’t believed to have lived in Arnhem Land. At one point they inhabited about 70% of Australia but not in that specific northern area, although since the rock art depicted the animal, it’s very possible that they did live in Arnhem Land at one point in time.

Another interesting figure was of a dugong which is the oldest-known drawing of the marine mammal. Several pictures of the rock art can be seen here.

Scene of two male Maliwawas with ball headdresses reaching down to a shorter indeterminate human figure with a snake behind the male on the right and behind the left male a female and a macropod, Namunidjbuk.

Photo by Paul Taçon.

Digital tracing of panel of three bilby-like animals, Awunbarna.

Image by Fiona Brady.

Maliwawa dugong above and to the left of a small Maliwawa macropod, Namunidjbuk.

Photo by Paul Taçon.

Large male Maliwawa human figures from an Awunbarna site.

Photo by Paul Taçon.

Large male Maliwawa human figures from an Awunbarna site.

Photo by Paul Taçon.

Maliwawa macropod, Namunidjbuk.

Photo by Paul Taçon.

• Their paper was published in the journal Australian Archaeology and can be read in full here.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

09-10-2020 om 22:21 geschreven door peter  

Amber fossils reveal the true colors of 99-million-year-old insects

Colors can tell many things about the behavior of long-extinct species.

 by Fermin Koop in Environment, News, Science

Researchers have discovered the true colors of a group of fossilized insects, trapped in amber approximately 99 million years ago in Myanmar. The ancient insects include cuckoo wasps, soldier flies, and beetles, all bursting in metallic blue, purple, and green colors.

Nature is very visually rich but fossils rarely retain evidence of an organism’s original color. Nevertheless, paleontologists are now finding ways of teasing out colors from well-preserved fossils, whether they be dinosaurs and flying reptiles or ancient snakes and mammals.

Knowing the color of extinct species is actually very important, as it can tell researchers many things about the behavior of the animals. Colors could have been used to attract mates or warn off predators or even help with temperature regulation, for example. Knowing more about them can also help researchers know more about ecosystems and environments.

For the new study, a research team from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) looked at 35 individual amber samples with fantastically preserved insects trapped inside. The fossils were found in an amber mine in northern Myanmar.

“The amber is mid-Cretaceous, approximately 99 million years old, dating back to the golden age of dinosaurs,” said Cai Chenyan, the lead author, in a press release. “It is essentially resin produced by ancient coniferous trees that grew in a tropical rainforest environment. Animals and plants trapped in the thick resin got preserved, some with life-like fidelity.”

Colors in nature usually fall under three main categories: bioluminescence, pigments, and structural colors. The amber fossils found retained structural colors, which tend to be intense and rather eye-grabbing (including metallic colors) and are produced by microscopic light-scattering structures located on the heads, bodies, and limbs of animals.

The researchers polished the fossils using sandpaper and diatomite powder. Some pieces of amber were polished into very thin slices, making the insects clearly observable and the surrounding amber matrix almost transparent in bright light. The images included in the study were edited to adjust for brightness and contrast.

“The type of color preserved in the amber fossils is called structural color,” said Pan Yanhong, a co-author of the study, in a statement. “The surface nanostructure scatters light of specific wavelengths” which “produces very intense colors,” said Pan, adding that this “mechanism is responsible for many of the colors we know from our everyday lives.”

Diverse structural-colored insects in mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar.

Credit: NIGPAS.

Among all the fossils, the cuckoo wasps were particularly stunning, with their heads, thorax, abdomen, and legs featuring hues of metallic blue-green, yellow-red, violet, and green. The color patterns were a close match to cuckoo wasps alive today, according to the research. Other standouts included blue and purple beetles and metallic dark-green soldier flies.

The researchers used electron microscopy to demonstrate that the amber fossils have a “well-preserved exoskeleton nanostructure that scatters light.”

“Our observations strongly suggest that the color preserved in some amber fossils may be the same as displayed by the insects when alive, some 99 million years ago,” wrote the authors in the study. “This is moreover corroborated by the fact that metallic blue-green coloration is frequently found in extant living cuckoo wasps.”

• The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

05-10-2020 om 23:28 geschreven door peter  

Stone Age Rock Tombs Found Near Göbekli Tepe Provide More Ancient Clues

Göbekli Tepe , in Turkey, is regarded as one of the most important Stone Age archaeological sites in the world. It has changed our view of how civilization developed. Recently, archaeologists working not far from Göbekli Tepe have made further discoveries related to the Stone Age complex.

They have found a large number of Stone Age rock tombs that could help to solve some of the mysteries of this prehistoric complex and the area that surrounds it. The excavation of the Stone Age rock tombs is near to the place where a Stone Age figure known as the Balıklıgöl statue or Urfa man, dating to 9000 BC, was also found.

Experts from the Şanlıurfa Metropolitan Municipality were collaborating with personnel from the Culture and Tourism Ministry, who were investigating the Kizilkoyun Necropolis area, when they discovered the Stone Age rock tombs. They came across the burial site in the Old Town of Şanliurfa, not far from where some stunning mosaics of hunting Amazons were previously unearthed. The rock tombs are believed to have been part of the same cultural area as Göbekli Tepe. 

The Urfa Man Is Much Like The Eye-Idols Found At Göbekli Tepe

The enigmatic Urfa man figure appears to be related to the distinctive T-shaped statues found at Göbekli Tepe , in particular in their ‘”double V-shape neck design”, according to Ancient Origins . The haunting empty staring eyes of the Urfa man have been likened to the so-called eye-idols found at Göbekli Tepe. The Urfa man figure is about 6 feet (1.80 meters) high and was most likely used for ceremonial or religious purposes and was possibly an idol. Hurriyet Daily News states that it has been called by experts the “oldest naturalistic life-sized sculpture of a human.”

The Urfa Man with its empty eyes, which was found not far from the recently discovered Stone Age rock tombs in Turkey.

( Alistair Coombs )

According to Zeynel Abidin Beyazgül, the mayor of the Şanlıurfa Metropolitan Municipality, “a total of 662 shanty houses were demolished in the area and 61 rock tombs unearthed.” The rock tombs come in a variety of sizes and they appear to have been built later than Göbekli Tepe. However, it is believed that these tombs will provide evidence on the prehistoric site and its builders.

One of the so-called eye-idols found at Göbekli Tepe .

(Metropolitan Museum of Art / CC0)

The Stone Age Mysteries of the Incredible Göbekli Tepe Site

Göbekli Tepe is a tell or massive earthen mound in the south-east of Turkey, a 30-minute drive from the city of Şanlıurfa. Göbekli Tepe dates to approximately 10,000 BC and was built and used by Stone Age people. It is home to the world’s oldest megalithic structure , which is comprised of 200 monumental T-shaped standing stones arranged in circular formations. The function of the site is not known but it was probably religious, and many view it as the world’s oldest temple. Göbekli Tepe is providing new evidence for the development of civilization and has already proven that Stone Age societies were much more sophisticated than once thought. In 2018, the site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, but much of it is unexcavated and there are still many mysteries surrounding this incredible site.

The massive Göbekli Tepe earthen mound in the south-east of Turkey, a 30-minute drive from the city of Şanlıurfa, where the Stone Age rock tombs were recently discovered.

(Teomancimit / CC BY-SA 3.0 )

This is what makes the recent finding of the Stone Age rock tombs so exciting.  The Mayor of Şanlıurfa told Yeni Şafak “We believe that the excavations we will carry out in the area where artifacts similar to the discoveries in Göbekli Tepe are going to be very significant.” Any links between the tombs at Kizilkoyun, and the UNESCO Heritage site is important because it could throw new light on Stone Age civilizations. The Mayor is quoted by Turkish Express as saying that “the excavations around the Kızılkoyun Necropolis will contribute to solving the mystery in surrounding Göbekli Tepe .” The Göbekli Tepe burial site is famous for the variety of its burials and funerary art.

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More Discoveries Expected From The Kizilkoyun Necropolis

Investigations at the Kizilkoyun Necropolis area Stone Age rock tombs will continue, and any artifacts found at the site will be interpreted to determine if they are connected to Göbekli Tepe . There is great hope that the digs at the rock tomb site will solve some of the Göbekli Tepe mysteries that are still unsolved.

The mayor is quoted by Hurriyet Daily News as saying that “Şanlıurfa is already preparing for more discoveries, let humanity expect new surprises.” The burial ground is only one of many historic locations in the Turkish city, known as Edessa in ancient times, a strategically important center to several empires in classical antiquity.

• Top image: The Stone Age rock tombs recently found at the Kizilkoyun Necropolis area not far from Göbekli Tepe .           
• Source: AA News Broadcasting System (HAS)

By Ed Whelan

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/general }

05-10-2020 om 23:09 geschreven door peter  

Decapitated and dismembered skeletons reveal lost Iron Age massacre

By Mindy Weisberger - Senior Writer 

Attackers may have timed the attack to coincide with a public gathering.

Sharp force trauma severed this amputated right ulna and radius, which belonged to a teenage girl and was found still wearing five bracelets.

(Image: © Antiquity Publications Ltd/Photo by T. Fernández-Crespo)

A brutal attack on an Iron Age town in northern Spain during the mid-fourth or late third century B.C. left more than a dozen bodies — men, women and children — scattered and smoldering in the streets, as the town burned. 

Injuries inflicted upon the people who died were horrific. One person was decapitated, two had severed arms, and the remains of nearly half of the individuals showed signs of mutilation, archaeologists recently discovered.

New analysis of the victims' bones — the first detailed investigation of their injuries — suggests that they were murdered by a neighboring community during either a calculated power grab or an act of revenge. 

• Related: 25 grisly archaeological discoveries

The site of the massacre was once a bustling, economically thriving town called La Hoya, located in northern Spain's Rioja Alavesa region. It was occupied from the 15th century B.C. to the third century B.C., and at its peak was home to about 1,500 people. Archaeologists uncovered the prehistoric settlement in 1935, and excavated it from 1973 until around 1990, uncovering about 15% of the site, the scientists reported in a study published today (Oct. 1) in the journal Antiquity. 

Though only a fraction of La Hoya was excavated, it was immediately clear that something terrible had happened there. Burned skeletons — at least 13 complete and partial remains — were found lying in the streets and inside buildings. One adult male had been decapitated, though the archaeologists did not find his skull. Damage to his right clavicle and shoulder bone revealed that his attacker struck more than once, according to the study.

Bone injuries of another male victim suggested he had been stabbed repeatedly from behind; a teenage girl suffered an amputated arm, which was found a short distance from her body, still wearing five copper-alloy bracelets, the researchers reported. They found no signs of weapons near the bodies. Nor were there any defensive injuries, and the damage appeared to have been inflicted at close range. All of these clues pointed to a surprise attack.

Scattered craft items, hobbled livestock and vessels filled with recently harvested cereal grain suggest the attackers invaded La Hoya during a market day in the summer or early autumn. By deliberately choosing a time when public spaces would be crowded, the attackers would have ensured a higher number of casualties, according to the study.

Yet despite the display of abundant goods in La Hoya at the time of the attack, the city was unplundered and its riches untouched, hinting that the motivation for the violence was political rather than for economic gain, the scientists said.

A violent legacy

The Roman occupation of Iberia, beginning in 218 B.C., was brutal, and has long been credited with sparking cycles of regional violence and upheaval. Two Roman massacres in Iberian towns — Cerro de la Cruz in 150 B.C. to 130 B.C. and La Almoina in 75 B.C. — are known from archaeological evidence. In Cerro de la Cruz, the Romans enslaved 10,000 people and beheaded 500 of them; in La Almoina, they shackled and executed 14 unarmed men. There, one man was beheaded, another was pierced by a javelin, and several had all of their limbs cut off, according to the study. 

However, the La Hoya carnage predates Roman conquest in northern Spain, so it's possible that political instability and deadly clashes between Iberian rivals were already well underway prior to the arrival of Roman forces, the scientists reported.

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An attack on La Hoya, which was politically and economically important in the region, likely had dramatic repercussions on the balance of local power, "by either creating a power vacuum or by consolidating the position of a rival community," the study authors reported.

Because the bodies were left unburied, the village was probably abandoned after the slaughter. Some who have analyzed the La Hoya site previously suggested that the townfolk may have regrouped and continued to live in La Hoya for centuries after the massacre, according to the study. But the preserved aftermath of the attack and the condition of the remains make that scenario highly unlikely, "given the scale of death and destruction revealed by the excavations," the scientists wrote.

• Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

05-10-2020 om 21:02 geschreven door peter  

It often seems that the history of humanity is mostly just the history of warfare, and that’s especially true with the history of Europe, where entire ages are named for the wars and conflicts that took place in those time periods. No culture dominates both history and warfare like the ancient Romans, so one would believe that means the ancient Romans were the first Europeans to wage full-scale warfare. And one would be right … until now.

“Between the mid fourth and late third centuries BC, the site was subjected to a violent attack, its inhabitants killed and the settlement burned. Here the authors present osteological analyses for a massacre: decapitations, amputations and other sharp-force injuries affecting a wide cross section of the community. They interpret the massacre as an instance of conflict between rival local communities, contributing to a growing picture of the scale and nature of violence in Iron Age Europe.”

In a recent study published in the journal Antiquity, researchers led by Teresa Fernández-Crespo of Oxford University to a fresh look at remains discovered in the 1950s in La Hoya, an Iron Age town in what is now the Basque Country of northern Spain. Located in the Ebro River valley, La Hoya was a major town – the archeologists determined it had protective walls, streets and large buildings erected by the Berones, a Celtic culture. The Berones ruled the area from the 15th century BCE until about 300 BCE when they disappeared. New analysis of 13 remains gave Fernández-Crespo the definitive reason why.

“One adult male shows clear evidence of decapitation: his fourth cervical vertebra is completely bisected by an oblique cut, consistent with a single blow to the neck from left to right, at a downward angle.

“Although no clear defensive wounds have been identified, the most plausible explanation for the trauma observed is that it could have been inflicted during a face-to-face encounter in which the victim tried to confront his attacker.”

A male and a teenage female had their right arms amputated. The position of the female and her arm indicated it had been thrown away (with bracelets still on it) and she crawled to it until she died, either from blood loss or a stab in the back. Two more males had “sharp force injuries potentially inflicted from behind by bladed weapons – some swords and daggers were recovered in a nearby cemetery. (Photos here.) All of the skeletons showed signs the victims had been set on fire and were found unburied, indicating the perpetrators left them dead or dying in the streets.

As gruesome as the violence was, the cause was the real shocker. The archeologists found no evidence of raiding, pillaging or destruction of property in this thriving Iron Age marketplace. That leaves only one other reason for the massacre:

“Given the site’s location in a natural boundary area, the attack may have been a consequence of power struggles and territorial ambitions between neighbouring pre-Roman polities.”

Power and politics – of course. But the key phrase in the study is “pre-Roman.” La Hoya is the only known Iron Age Iberian site whose destruction occurred before the Roman conquest and occupation began in 218 BCE and warfare became the order of the day – Live Science reports that Roman massacres occurred in Cerro de la Cruz in 150 BCE to 130 BCE and La Almoina in 75 BCE.

It appears the massacre of La Hoya was so brutal and complete, the few survivors never came back. Who could have done this? The study concludes that pre-Roman Iberian Age societies waged political battles for power, dominance and destruction long before the rest of Europe became the war-mongering area it remains to this day. The last line of the study sums it up in terms George Orwell would enjoy … and modern humans should remember:

“Certainly, the Romans were not alone in being able to “make a desert and call it peace”.”

Make a desert and call it peace. Seen any of that lately?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

05-10-2020 om 20:02 geschreven door peter  

Was Bolivia-Peru the Sunset Land of the Sumerians?

In an article on the Fuente Magna Bowl , April Holloway highlighted the evidence of  Sumerian writing in South America. The Fuente Magna Bowl and Pokotia monument indicate that Sumerians may have formerly lived in South America.

The possibility that the writing on the Fuente Magna Bowl was used by the Sumerians, and the identification of Sumerian placenames on the Altiplano suggest that Bolivia and Peru may represent the "Tin Land of the West" or the "Sunset Land",  of Sumerian inscriptions.

A figure on the Fuente Magna bowl.

(Courtesy of Bernardo Biados’s research team)

The Fuente Magna Bowl was found to have two types of scripts engraved on the inside.

(Courtesy of Bernardo Biados’s research team)

Kuga-ki

The Sumerians mention a land in the West called Kuga-ki where they mined valuable metals. Dr. A.H. Sayce said that Tin-land in Sumerian was KUGA-KI. Sayce made it clear that Sumerians claimed that they obtained tin from this land.

Prof. A.H. Sayce

The ancient Sumerians were great navigators. Sumerian Ships sailed to Egypt, Northeast Africa, and the Indus Valley in search of metals and goods to support their industry and popular demands for goods by the people. Samuel N. Kramer in The Sumerians , said that Egypt in the Sumerian inscriptions was Magan, and the Indus Valley was called Dilmun.

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King Sargon in 2700 BC mentions that Kuga-Ki was part of  his Empire. Prof. Sayce,  in a paper named  “Geography of Sargon of Akkad”, published in the journal Ancient Egypt ,  translated a document written by a 8th Century B.C.,  Assyrian official . The document stated that Sargon I , Empire included  "the countries from the rising to the setting of the sun, which Sargon the . . . king conquered with his hand," included amongst many other lands "the Land of Gutium," "the land of the Muru (or Amorites)" and (Kuga-Ki) "the Tin-land country which lies beyond the Upper Sea (or Mediterranean)."

Bronze head of a king, most likely Sargon of Akkad.

( Public Domain )

Sayce believed that Kuga-Ki was probably located in Spain. The presence of the Fuente Magna Bowl suggests that Kuga-Ki was in South America instead of Spain. Since Kuga-Ki was west of the Mediterranean it was probably the name for some region in North or South America, because the Americas lie west of the Meditteranean Sea, while Spain lies on the Meditterranean.

A.H Verrill and R. Verrill, in Americas Ancient Civilizations , and J. Bailey in Sailing to Paradise , maintain that the area around Lake Titicaca may have been called Lake Manu by the Sumerians. According to the Verrills and Bailey, traditions claim that Sumerians made many visits to the land west of the Mediterranean, which they called the Kuga-ki. The traditions make it clear that Sumerians sailed to Kuga-ki in their Magur ships. Cuneiform tablets make it clear the Magur ships could carry 18.5 metric tons of precious metals.

Mining Operations

The Sumerians probably first made contact with Kuga-kivia, the Atlantic currents that take you from Africa to Brazil. Prospectors probably reached Brazil, and sailed down the Amazon river until they found large tin deposits in Bolivia-Peru. The major center for mining in Bolivia-Peru is and was Potosi.

Map of the Amazon River

( Source)

Once they established mining operations in Kuga-ki, local people probably began to work in the mining operations and adopted many Sumerian customs, linguistic terms and the social technology of writing, i.e., the Proto-Sumerian script. This means that writing has a long tradition among the people of Bolivia-Peru as Clyde Winters writes in Ancient Scripts in South America .

Kingdom of the Antis

The Andes may have been the Tin land or Kuga-Ki of the Sumerians. The Andes mountains were originally called Antis. This area was formerly called Antisuyo, Kingdom of the Antis. This was also the homeland of the Antis Indians. In the Quechua language spoken by many Indians in the area, antis means copper. Antis was also the name for the native peoples who formerly lived in this part of South America.

Antis is probably of non-Quechua origin. The Chipaya language, another Native American language spoken in the area, is different from Quechua and Aymara. Some researchers claim Chipaya is closely related to the Maya languages which are spoken in Mexico.

This part of Bolivia is famous for the rich minerals found in the area. Many of these metals are found at the Bolivian Altiplano, near Lake Poopo, an inland sea, which was formerly connected to the Pacific Ocean by rivers now dried up.

“Salar de Uyuni is part of the Altiplano of Bolivia in South America. The Altiplano is a high plateau, which was formed during uplift of the Andes mountains. The plateau includes fresh and saltwater lakes as well as salt flats.”

(Dimitry B./ CC BY 2.0 )

The Bolivian Altiplano is the largest plain in the world. It contains two inland seas: Lake Titicaca and Lake Poopo. This area high in the Andes mountains makes it an apt location for Lake Manu or the ‘Cloud Lake’ of the Sumerians, where metals were mined in the Mountains of Sunset, the land situated west of the Mediterranean Sea.

Lake Poopo is fifty miles (80 km) long. The lake was surrounded by mountains on all sides and canals. Satellite pictures indicate that deep canals formerly existed near Lake Poopo. It is a shallow sea a few feet deep. Lake Poopo is a salty sea, sometimes known to dry up.

Kuga-Ki, The western Tin Land of the Sumerians

(Courtesy author)

Lake Titicaca and Lake Poopo are connected by the River Desagua dero. The companion Lake of Poopo, was Lake Uru. The city of Oruro is located near Lake Uru.

Rich Mountain

The metals found near Lake Poopo include copper, tin, gold and silver. Here we find metals being extracted in the cities of Oruro and Corocoro where gold and copper were mined. The names for these cities suggest a Sumer origin. In Sumerian the name for city is uru. The suffixes –oro for the cities around Lake Poopo, is strikingly similar to uru.

It is also interesting to note that a major center in this area for mining is Potosi. Potosi is famous for its tin deposits. At Potosi we find the Potosi mountain which is made of solid tin and was called Mount Catavi.

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The Potosi area was a major center of mining. In the 1550’s, the Spanish began to exploit the silver found at Potosi Hill. The Spanish called Potosi Hill, Cerro Rico or “Rich Mountain”. As a result of the Spanish attempt to fully exploit the riches in this area “a horrific” number of Indians died in the mines. Hugh Thompson in The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland , vividly describes this tragedy.

Thompson says that “the mine consumed the labor-force of Bolivia’s Altiplano. If they didn’t die, they were ground down by the apology for a wage that was paid to them. Within a generation, the population of those parts of the Altiplano used for mine conscription was halved. Within another generation it had halved again. And still Potosi continued to exact its quota”. 

Potosi, the first image in Europe. Pedro Cieza de León, 1553. 

( Public Domain )

In modern history Potosi has been a center for the mining of tin, copper, lead and silver. Located near Tihuanaca, Potosi may have been a center of Sumerian settlement in ancient times like the cities of Oruro and Corocoro. Bailey suggests that Potosi may relate to the Sumerian term Patesi, the Sumerian term for ‘priest king’.

The metals mined on the Altiplano were transported along the Pilcomyo River (or Rio de la Planta today). The Sumerians may have transported metals from Bolivia across the Atlantic to ancient Sumer. A great route for the shipment of tin from Kuga-ki was down the River Plate, eastward across the Atlantic, past the Cape of Good Hope, via the Indian Ocean to enter the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

Symbols

In addition to affinity between the symbols found on the Pokotia monolith, Fuente Magna bowl, and Incan weaving, we also find that these symbols are identical to signs engraved on Moche bricks.  A common feature of Huanca or carved Inca stones are steps cut into the rock.

Clyde Winters in Ancient Scripts in South America: The Sumerians in South America , has shown that the Inca Throne, an immaculately carved set of shallow steps, is similar to Proto-Sumerian signs. Other signs from huacas or carved stones at Rodadero Hill and the White Stone at Chuquipalta relate strikingly to the writing found on the Pokotia and Fuente Magna bowl.

In addition to Sumerian influence on South American writing systems, it is interesting to note that the Pokotia statue and Tiahuanaco monuments share similar headdresses and rib impressions along the chest area. This indicates a relationship between the builders of these monuments.

Pokotia statue, left and Tiahuanaco statue, right.

In the region where Kuga-ki probably existed in South America we have the Aymara language. Aymara terms relate to Sumerian terms. This is not surprising given the decipherment of the Pokotia statue and the Magna Fuente bowl. These documents indicate that the Sumerians had established many aspects of their religion in Bolivia.

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The linguistic evidence supports the view that the Sumerians living in Kuga-ki were miners. The Sumerian term for copper was urudu; this term agrees with the Aymara terms for gold 'ouri' and copper 'anta, yawri'. The similarity between urudu and, yawri and ouri suggest that the Sumerians may have been the first people in the area to exploit the metals found throughout the Titicaca area and Bolivia.

The presence of Sumerian terms in the Aymara language, Sumerian place names, and Sumerian writing on the Fuente Magna bowl and Pokotia statue make it obvious that Sumerian civilization was formerly widespread in South America. This leads me to believe that Bolivia and Peru may have represented Kuga-ki, the ‘Tin Land of the West’ mentioned in the Sumerian inscriptions.

• Top Image: The Andes mountains at Sunset ( CC BY 2.0 )

By Dr Clyde Winters

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

04-10-2020 om 23:57 geschreven door peter  

One of the ways the people of the past left behind a record of their existence and of their lives are the various rock paintings that can be found around the world. These are people who lived before written history, when the best way to jot down a scene of their life was to inscribe it upon the rock, and many of these relics of the forgotten past have been uncovered. Yet, sometimes there are those pieces of rock art that go beyond merely offering a glimpse at another time, and show something truly mysterious, indeed.

Situated within the rugged, mountainous area of the Lombardy region, in the Province of Brescia, Italy, is a secluded valley called Valcamonica. One of the largest valleys of the central Alps, it stretches for 56 miles through rural fields, forests, and quaint medieval villages that have changed very little over hundreds of years and seem as if something from a fairy tale, several of which have been regularly voted as being among the most beautiful villages in Italy. The area is also teeming with flora and fauna, much of it unique to this place, and has been recognized as a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve since 2018. In addition to this, the valley is rich in history, possessing numerous old castles and Roman ruins, and it has several UNESCO World Heritage sites, but Valcamonica is perhaps best known for having the largest, most extensive, and complete collection of prehistoric rock drawings, called petroglyphs, in the world.

Although the rock drawings were long known to locals, who mostly ignored them and referred to them as pitoti, or “scribbles,” they gained academic attention in 1914 when they were found by the alpinist and geographer Gualtiero Laen, after which the drew in more and more interest from scientists and anthropologists around the world. There are over 140,000 formally UNESCO recognized symbols and figures carved into the rock all over the valley, but there could possibly between an estimated 200,000 and 300,000 of them in total, encompassing over 8,000 years of history, dating from at least the 6th to 8th centuries BC in the Mesolithic Age (15,000 to 5,000 BC) up through to the Medieval times (476-1453 AD). They are a unique peek into the time before written history, with many of these carvings capturing in time images depicting the daily life and spirituality of these ancient humans, including animals, plants, and humans engaged in various scenes of everyday life, hunting, magic, religion, war, and navigation, all of them in exceptionally good condition and virtually undamaged by the years and elements, thus making them and the history they depict invaluable to the fields of prehistory, sociology and ethnology.

The expansive carvings have drawn in much curiosity and fascination since their presence became widely known. Notably they were used as Nazi propaganda during World War II, when Germans Franz Altheim and Erika Trautmann began associating the petroglyphs with Nazi ideologies, quickly spreading the idea that they depicted a mysterious ancestral Aryan race and providing their “proof” of their superiority. The carvings were also used for Italian fascist propaganda, and it wasn’t until after the war and in the 1950s that proper scientific research would start on them again. In 1979, the petroglyphs of Valcamonica were recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, becoming Italy’s first such designated site, and the carvings have instilled wonder and speculation right up into the modern day. Yet with such a mysterious place stuck in time, it is perhaps no surprise that there have also been many unsolved mysteries associated with it.

It has not gone unnoticed that there among all of the images of humans, animals, plants, and various geometric shapes are those that stand out as rather different from the rest and not a little out of place. In particular, there are a few petroglyphs that show figures that are drawn in such a way as to make their heads seem too small in proportion to the rest of their bodies, and making it odder is that they seem to be wearing what can only be described as some sort of protective spacesuit. These suited figures also have atop their heads what look very much like helmets that an astronaut would wear, complete with lines radiating outward as if to convey shining light. To make it all even more bizarre, the figures are depicted holding what look like some sort of mysterious tools or weapons like nothing seen in any of the other drawings, and in fact at no other place in the history of these carvings is anything else like it seen. The impression one gets is that these are figures in astronaut suits wielding advanced tools or weapons, but of course there is the conundrum that they are thousands of years old, long before any sort of outfit or electric lighting would be available.

So what do we make of this? Why would this one set of carving hold such anomalous looking figures so long ago? Considering their strange appearance and out-of-place nature, it is perhaps no surprise that the strange petroglyphs have been proposed as being evidence that ancient aliens one visited the area and were then depicted by the awestruck ancient people living here. However, others have proposed that the petroglyphs are merely stylistic artistic representations of some religious idea or even a battle between two men wearing some sort of armor. The images are so old and the people who etched them into that rock are long gone, so it is impossible to say for sure, but the images are certainly odd when compared to the other more mundane figures and scenes portrayed at Valcamonica. What are these images and what do they represent? Are they merely the whims of some long-ago artist, a mundane scene that has simply been misrepresented, or something more? There have been many such mysterious petroglyphs discovered around the world, and whatever the answer is, the ones at Valcamonica remain intriguing at the very least.

All related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

02-10-2020 om 18:34 geschreven door peter  

In 1936, workers at archaeological excavations of monuments belonging to the Parthian civilization (248-226 BC) in the village of Khujut Rabu, near Baghdad, Iraq, stumbled across something unusual down in the ground. They found an ancient, weathered terracotta pot or jar, about 6 inches high, which contained a cylinder made of a rolled copper sheet, within which sat a rod of iron, and the whole of it was topped with plugs or stoppers of bitumen. The innards of the jar had been corroded with perhaps some sort of acidic juice or vinegar, and the whole of it was very odd and out of place amongst the other artifacts of the era that were being dug up. Others were found, twelve in all, and no one could figure out what the anomalous objects were supposed to be or what they were used for. At the time, the strange jars and the inexplicable contents were put on display in the National Museum of Iraq and sort of forgotten about. Little did anyone know that these unassuming little pots would turn out to be a persistent historical mystery.

It would not be until 1938 that anyone would take a really good look at the artifacts, when German archaeologist Wilhelm König was at the museum and saw one sitting there amongst other objects from the site, including some other similar jars. The curious objects drew his attention and he had them studied, deducing that they were from the 3rd century BC and were a form of crude galvanic cells, or basically electric batteries. He deduced that the iron and the copper were mounted in such a way as to insulate them with the bitumen, or asphalt, after which an electrolyte such as vinegar or some other acidic substance had been poured in to produce a voltage difference generated by the metals. He speculated would have been used for electroplating layers of precious metals such as gold onto objects.

Whatever the “batteries” were for, if that is what they were this would all be very interesting indeed, because it would usurp the generally held view that the battery was invented in 1800 by the Count Alassandro Volta, whose name is indeed where we get the word “volt.” If these were indeed batteries, then it would mean that human beings had created this technology thousands of years earlier than previously thought. König would go on to write a paper on this hypothesis in 1940, after which World War II came and the “Baghdad Battery” was forgotten once more. After the war, a Willard F. M. Gray, of the General Electric High Voltage Laboratory in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, did his own experiment with the battery and found that it could produce up to two volts of electricity, or about a fortieth of the power of a triple-A battery and other experiments produced similar results, further strengthening König’s case. In 1980, German scientist Egyptologist Arne Eggebrecht found that the voltage could be increased if several of the batteries were linked together, and demonstrated that the devices could produce enough electricity to gold plate a small statue when a gold cyanide solution was used. In more modern times, in 2005 the Discovery Channel TV show Mythbusters it was shown that ten replicas of the Baghdad Battery linked together could produce five volts of power. The problem with the experiments linking the jars together is that there is no evidence that the original jars ever had any sort of wires or electrical connections for links between them.

Although the idea that the Baghdad Batteries were some sort of batteries was and still is widely accepted by many, it is unknown for what purpose such a device would have been used, as there are no artifacts from the time of anything that would have required such a power source, and while many experiments work on the assumption that the power was used for electroplating, there is no evidence of gold plated items produced in such a way from the era these batteries supposedly belong to. Besides electroplating, it has been speculated that the devices were used for electrotherapy of some kind, for some theatrical or ritual purpose, or even that these were merely vessels for holding papyrus scrolls. Other more fringe ideas are that these were from aliens, or that they were made to power some as yet unknown and mysterious ancient technological device. No one really knows, and sadly we probably never will, as the original batteries vanished during the 2003 Iraq invasion, when the National Museum was looted and thousands of exhibitions were stolen or destroyed.

We are left to wonder what these strange objects were. Who made them and for what purpose? Why have there been no others found? Were they used for powering something, medicinal purposes, or were they simply some bored person’s little science project? Among the many instances of ancient technology that have been found over the years, the Baghdad Batteries have gone on to be continually discussed and talked about, as well as unsolved.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

30-09-2020 om 18:05 geschreven door peter  

See What Happens If Nazca Lines Are To Be Extended Around The Planet

Nazca Lines is a group of pre-Columbian geoglyphs etched in desert sands in southern Peru. There are around 300 different figures, including plants and animals, covering an area of nearly 1,000 square kilometers. The figures are composed of over 10,000 lines and some of which measure 30 meters wide and stretch over 9 kilometers. They are most visible from nearby hilltops or from the air. If extended until they would all intertwine, Nazca Lines would all meet up at the Angkor Wat.

The Angkor Wat is a megalithic site filled to the brim with tons of stone blocks. It stretches out for thousands of miles.

Anthony Horowitz theorized this many times in the past. He talked about it quite a lot in his series of books, known as the Power of the Five.

He states in these books that the Nazca Lines all unite for them to summon up the Old Ones. Watch the video for more interesting information and let us know what you think of this theory.

Check out this amazing book about the top 10 UFO cases in the history.

Get your’s on Amazon: Top 10 UFO Sightings: Best Cases: Aliens are visiting us

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

30-09-2020 om 14:28 geschreven door peter  

Study Reveals Sapiens Copulated the Y Out of Neanderthals

Early human interbreeding  with our “cousins” the  Denisovans and Neanderthals is an established fact but newly sequenced Neanderthal Y-chromosomes tell scientists that modern humans are the product of a complex history of interspecies sex. Neanderthals had lived in  Eurasia for more than 300,000 years, when our modern human ancestors left  Africa in the most recent wave some 60,000–70,000 years ago. When the two groups met in Eurasia around 45,000-years-ago they mated and a whole new kind of human was formed. Recent research confirms early human interbreeding but also provides evidence that makes our earliest encounters with both Neanderthals and Denisovans a much more complicated relationship.

According to the 2010 publication of the Neanderthal  draft genome  sequence, a comparison of the Neanderthal draft  genome with modern human sequences revealed that about “2 percent of the DNA in the genomes of modern-day people with Eurasian ancestry, is Neanderthal in origin,” most notably expressed in the skin, hair and diseases of modern people. While it is known that Neanderthals left their genetic mark in the DNA of modern humans, less was known about the reverse flow of  Homo sapiens’  DNA into Neanderthals when the two species met in Eurasia around 45,000 years ago.

However, a new study on early human interbreeding has shown that those Neanderthals already had  Homo sapiens’  genes on board from “much earlier encounters," and the new research also suggests the  Homo sapiens’  Y-chromosome had “completely replaced the original Neanderthal Y chromosome sometime between 370,000 and 100,000 years ago.”

DNA double helix molecules and chromosomes: the forensic evidence that proves early human interbreeding and when.

(Giovanni Cancemi /  Adobe Stock )

A Re-examination Of Early Human Interbreeding Based On Genes

The X and Y chromosomes are the two sex chromosomes in mammals, including humans, and they determine the biological sex of an individual. Females inherit an  X chromosome  from the father for a XX genotype, while males inherit a Y chromosome from the father for a XY genotype. Only mothers can pass on the X chromosome.

The new  paper by evolutionary geneticists Martin Petr and Janet Kelso, from the  Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology , presents details of their team’s new method of sequencing Y-chromosome DNA, in their quest to understand early human interbreeding. The study results were based on Y-chromosome  DNA sequencing  of “two Denisovans and three Neanderthals samples gathered from sites in France, Russia and Spain dating between 38,000 to 53,000 years ago.” The results confirm early human interbreeding with these two species of  hominins. But the results of the study also indicate that these prehistoric sexual encounters resulted in “a really complicated population history spanning thousands of years and several continents.”

Modern Human DNA Entered The Neanderthal Population Slowly

Archaeologists and anthropologists have discovered several bones, which when gene sequenced, prove that a Neanderthal and a Denisovan had mated. Previous studies of non-sex chromosomes have established that Neanderthals and Denisovans share a branch of the human family tree, which split off sometime between 700,000 and 550,000 years ago.

However, according to this new paper “the Y-chromosomes tell a different story, suggesting our most recent common ancestor lived around 370,000 years ago.” This means that a long time after the three different groups had split up and evolved into different populations, they met up again and mated again. The paper says that “over time, our version of the Y-chromosome genome ended up replacing the Neanderthal version.” Therefore, early human interbreeding first occurred a long time ago, and then, after a very long break, it happened again.

In case you didn’t know already, an “ allele” is one of two or more versions of a known gene mutation identified at the same location on a chromosome. Previous gene studies have mostly all indicated that modern human “alleles” probably entered the Neanderthal gene pool  slowly. How slowly? At a speed, determined by Petr, Kelso, and their colleagues, to be “roughly single-digit percentage of the population,” which according to the scientists isn’t enough to become fixed.

A Neanderthal man holding a Neanderthal's skull perhaps wondering how much of his DNA was from modern humans and Denisovans. Today, we are wondering the same thing!

(Roni /  Adobe Stock )

Unfortunately, Most Ancient Hominin Bones Are Female

This very slow rate of change in the Neanderthal DNA makeup suggested to the researchers that  Homo sapiens’  Y-chromosome alleles may have offered some kind “of fitness advantage,” when compared with the Neanderthal versions.

To prove or disprove this theory, a computer simulation was created in which a Y-chromosome allele from  Homo sapiens  was passed on to one percent of the Neanderthal population. Even at one percent, the model showed that the chances of replacing the older Neanderthal version over a 50,000-year period only “shot up to about 25 percent, suggesting that whatever selective edge  Homo sapiens  alleles offered, it may have been tiny, but that's enough to stick around.”

• Modern Humans Interbred With At Least Five Archaic Human Groups
• Neanderthals Mated with Modern Humans Much Earlier than Previously Thought, Study Finds
• DNA Study Reveals We Have a Mystery Human Ancestor

The exact nature of this genetic “selective advantage,” which was written into  Homo sapiens ' Y-chromosome DNA, is yet unknown because of a distinct lack of Denisovans and Neanderthal genome samples. As fate would have it, the archaeological record is heavily populated by female Neanderthals and female Denisovans but almost void of male remains, and it’s the men that pass on the Y chromosomes. Hopefully, over time, more male Neanderthals and male Denisovans will be found and more gene sequencing can be carried out to solve the selective advantage puzzle. But it is very interesting to know that we modern humans carry a complex DNA mixture that could only come from early human interbreeding with other hominins over a very long period of time.

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

• Top image: Early human interbreeding is well known but a recent research study has shown that modern humans both received and gave DNA to, proving that these hominin cousins met more than once in the long arc of prehistoric time.           
• Source: AlienCat /  Adobe Stock

By Ashley Cowie

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/general }

30-09-2020 om 00:18 geschreven door peter  

The Advanced Atlantean Civilization... Built and Sunk by the Gods

COAST TO COAST AM INSIDER Archived Show - Investigative mythologist William Henry returned to discuss the symbols and lore of Atlantis. “It was the end and beginning of all myths,” he said of the fabled continent. Plato believed the high civilization was started by gods, but when its citizens lost their “divine essence” they were destroyed by intentional cataclysms.

Henry suggested that these gods, might have been the “thought beings of light” written about by Dhyani Ywahoo, in her book Voices of Ancestors, which documents Cherokee Indian creation myth. These light beings were said to come from the Pleiades and were called tla, which Henry related to the word tula, an ancient name for Atlantis.

{  https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

29-09-2020 om 17:56 geschreven door peter  

 ASHLEY COWIE

World’s First Complete Dinosaur Skeleton Has Been Vividly Brought to Life

A team of English scientists have unboxed the first complete dinosaur skeleton ever discovered, and after over 150 years the remains have finally been fully studied and recorded. Previously unknown traits have been discovered, as well as giving it a new home on the evolutionary timeline.

Rise of the First Terrible Lizard

Sir Richard Owen (1804 - 1892) was a controversial English biologist, comparative anatomist, and paleontologist who spent a lifetime interpreting fossils. He eventually assisted Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807 - 1894), the English sculptor and natural historian, in creating the first life-size sculptures depicting dinosaurs. Those sculptures were made for for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London’s Crystal Palace and were seen by over six million people that year.

Owen’s research identified several anatomical similarities between modern reptiles and the skeletons of giant ancient creatures that were being excavated across Victorian England , and it was he who published the first work on Mesozoic land-reptiles, which he named  Dinosauria, from the Greek words “ deinos,” meaning “terrible, powerful or wondrous”, and “ sauros” meaning “lizard”: directly translated to “ Terrible Lizards”.

Bipedal Scelidosaurus illustration from 1896.

(FunkMonk/ CC BY 2.0 )

The Story of the Lost Limb Lizard

According to a report on Science Daily , in 1850 James Harrison, a quarry owner in West England, sent a curious boulder he had found imprinted with fossilized leg bones and a skull to Richard Owen at the British Museum . When Owens completed his study he announced to the world that the fossils encased in this stone represented the very first practically-complete dinosaur skeleton ever discovered. And because of its extremely well-developed hind legs in 1859 Owen named this ancient beast “ Scelidosaurus,” the “limb lizard”.

Replica of a Scelidosaurus skeleton. (FunkMonk/ CC BY SA 2.0 ) The first complete dinosaur skeleton was a Scelidosaurus.

And while in 1861 Owen described this creature as a partially sea-dwelling fish-eater, he failed to make a life-size reconstruction of the creature, and he also neglected any attempt to place the dinosaur into historical context in a timeline with other species. And because in the following decades the fossils of much larger and more newsworthy dinosaurs were discovered, Owen’s “limb lizard” faded into relative obscurity and became all but forgotten in the vaults of London’s Natural History Museum . Until now this is…

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Resurrecting the First Complete Dinosaur Skeleton

Marcel Proust said, “The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes,” and this sentiment applies directly to paleontologist David Norman of Cambridge University’s Department of Earth Sciences . Professor Norman and his team studied Owen's overlooked dinosaur specimen and a new paper they detail how Scelidosaurus had lived around 194-million-years-ago in forested regions that are now submerged beneath the former British Sea . The results of Norman's work, published as four separate studies in the  Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society of London , not only reconstruct what Scelidosaurus looked like in life, but reveal that it was an early ancestor of ankylosaurs, the armour-plated 'tanks' of the Late Cretaceous Period.

The new analysis shows that while Scelidosaurus was a relatively slow-moving creature measuring about 4 meters (13 ft) long, and its entire body was protected inside a thick case of armor, composed of bony spikes, plates and horny scutes. The creature’s teeth and jaw indicated that it was an herbivore that mostly fed on undergrowth. And it was also discovered that the creature probably stood on its hind legs to reach low foliage growing on trees, but its relatively long arms indicated that it had a greatly quadrupedal posture.

Skull of a Scelidosaurus.

( University of Cambridge )

Visualizing a 194-Million-Year-Old Creature

In the most part we humans are a very visually orientated group of creatures who say things like “photographs speak a thousand words,” and the inordinate success of Instagram perhaps speaks loudest about our thirst to be stimulated with graphical representations of reality. It is for this reason perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the new study is the new reconstruction of  Scelidosaurus.

Not only does this new study let us see how this lost dinosaur would have looked when it was grazing in the ancient forests of Europe, but the researchers also completed another major task that Owen had failed to do: they inserted the creature into a new found chronological station of the dinosaur evolutionary time line.

It was after establishing the creature’s 194-million-year-old origins that the team of researchers managed to determine that  Scelidosaurus was not an ancestor of the  Stegosaurian dinosaurs, an idea that has long been suspected in paleontological circles - instead it was an ancestor of the ankylosaurs which emerged around 68–66 million years ago.

David Norman has published the four studies in the latest Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society , listed below.

• Top Image: Reconstruction of a live Scelidosaurus, the first complete dinosaur skeleton ever discovered. Source: John Sibbick

By Ashley Cowie

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

29-09-2020 om 01:01 geschreven door peter  

The Anunnaki And The Origin of Mankind

Niamh Harris

Zecharia Sitchin  was one of the few scholars able to read and interpret ancient Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets. He based his bestselling ‘The 12th Planet’ on texts from the ancient civilizations of the Near East.

His controversial theories on the Anunnaki origins of humanity have been translated into more than 20 languages and featured on radio and television programs around the world

Anunnaki (Sumerian: “those who came down from the heavens”). The Anunnaki correspond to the old Hebrew Anakeim and Elohim and the Egyptian Neter.

Rise Earth reports: According to Sitchin, the Anunnaki came from Nibiru, the mysterious yet unconfirmed tenth planet in our solar system. They landed in the Persian Gulf area some 430,000 years ago and colonized our planet with the intention of mining monoatomic gold, which was scarce on Nibiru yet abundant on Earth.

Their mining operations went without a hitch for 200,000 years until their miners rebelled and the Anunnaki were left without their working force. Documents Sitchin claims to have translated tell of the efforts the Anunnaki undertook in search for new miners, efforts which ultimately led to the rise of Homo sapiens.

After unsuccessful attempts to splice animal and Homo erectus DNA, the Anunnaki chief scientists Enki and Ninhursag incorporated their own genetic material into H. erectus, fathering modern humans. Their success was shadowed by the fact that their new human slaves were sterile clones and as the demand for workforce increased, they genetically engineered mankind in order to be able to reproduce.

This ability led to overpopulation and many humans were banished from the safety of their cities, giving rise to the expulsion from paradise myth that so many cultures still recall.

Thousands of centuries later, the human species had evolved into stability and again caught the attention of the Anunnaki. They wanted to take advantage of the new genetic stock and some of them were chosen as sexual partners. The children resulted from these forbidden unions were called the Nephilim, “the giants of old”. This protocol breach also resulted in wiping out the resulting populace, save for a few chosen individuals who were protected by Enki, who still harbored sympathy for his creation. These events are present as the cultural heritage of many civilizations.

After hundreds of thousands of years of enslaving their creation to serve their obscure interests, the Anunnaki decided to leave Earth. Their influence reached every corner of the world, from Mesopotamia to India to South America.

According to Sitchin, the Anunnaki exodus happened around 6,000 years ago. Before they left, they decided to give humanity one more boost, which can be summed up as the Sumerian civilization, which was inexplicably advanced for its time. Indeed, they made a ‘sudden’ appearance as a mature and highly organized culture. The Anunnaki taught the Sumerians their way of life and established kingship. The king would act as their emissary on Earth and rule the people under their guidance. Their select bloodline was genetically enhanced with Anunnaki genes and they were taught astronomy, mathematics, technology and medicine.

Despite the skepticism with which this theory has been met, Sitchin cites several documents and discoveries in support of his claim.

The Babylonian epic of creation called Enuma Elish represents a history of the forming of our solar system. According to it, the Earth had not yet formed when a wandering planet called Nibiru was caught by our sun’s gravitational pull. It disturbed many of the planets’ moons and tilted Uranus’ orbit. It then collided with Tiamat, a planet that once orbited between Mars and Jupiter.

Earth was born out of this collision and Tiamat’s moon became our own. What was left of Nibiru settled into a 3,600 year elliptical retrograde (it spins opposite to all the other planets) orbit around the sun. Interestingly enough, computer simulations indicate such an event as the origin of our planet. It would certainly explain a lot of inconsistencies in our current theory about the Moon, which seems older than Earth itself.

Sitchin also believes that the existence of out of place artifacts such as the Baghdad Batteries or the Saqqara Bird can be attributed to an ancient yet highly advanced civilization. He also mentions the suppressed discovery of an Anunnaki gold processing plant on Mount Horeb by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1889.

Archaeological digs at the ancient Mesopotamian city of Niniveh uncovered 400 intact clay tablets in the library of Assurbanipal. These tablets contain continuous historical records fully encompassing the activities of the Anunnaki. The records place the location of the Anunnaki genetic laboratories in East Central Africa, which, interestingly enough is in the exact same area as our modern searches have placed ‘mitochondrial Eve’ and in the same time period. Even more interesting is that 100,000 year-old gold mines have been found in the area.

Sitchin believes that our evolution has been sped up beyond a doubt. He and others claim that our radical and anomalous differences should be evidence enough for this theory.

They also say the Anunnaki are not done ruling Earth.

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://newspunch.com/ }

29-09-2020 om 00:24 geschreven door peter  

A Treasure in Ruins: Ancient Mehrgarh Lost to Thieves and Violence

Mehrgarh is an archaeological site situated in the Balochistan, in the southwestern part of Pakistan. In the native Balochi language, ‘mehr’ is said to mean ‘love’, and ‘garh’ means heaven. Thus, the name of the site may be taken to mean ‘the heaven of love’.

Mehrgarh is considered one of the most important Neolithic sites in South Asia, with some of the earliest evidence of agriculture discovered there. Thus, Mehrgarh is sometimes referred to as the earliest farming settlement in South Asia. Additionally, Mehrgarh is a precursor to the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the cradles of civilization . Archaeologists have divided the occupation of Mehrgarh into seven chronological periods, which provides a picture of how the site developed over the millennia.

Passing Traders, Invaders, and Nomadic Tribes

Mehrgarh is located on the Kachi Plain, not far from the Bolan Pass, to the west of the Indus River. The Kachi Plain provides a favorable environment for human settlement due to the presence of water and arable soil, while the Bolan Pass is an important and strategic geographical feature that connects the region to the west.

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A historical sketch from 1842 of Bolan Pass, Balochistan, Pakistan.

( Public Domain )

This pass is the gateway to the Indus Valley from the highlands of Afghanistan, beyond which is the Iranian Plateau and the Fertile Crescent in the Near East. In other words, it was this mountain pass that facilitated movement between the Indus Valley in the east and the other early civilizations in the west. Traders, invaders, and nomadic tribes have traversed this important pass over the millennia.

The Bolan Pass retained its strategic value well into modern times, when the British colonialists used it for their campaigns in Afghanistan. Mehrgarh lies between the modern Pakistani cities of Quetta, Kalat, and Sibi, while Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, the two major urban centers of the Indus Valley Civilization , are located to its southeast and northeast respectively.

Discovering and Excavating Mehrgarh

Unlike Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, the discovery of Mehrgarh occurred at a rather late date. The existence of Mohenjo-Daro was known by archaeologists as early as 1911, although excavations only began in the 1920s. Harappa was already discovered in 1826, with the first excavations taking place in 1920.

Mehrgarh, on the other hand, was only discovered in 1974. It was the French archaeologist, Jean-François Jarrige, who made this discovery. Jarrige was a specialist in South Asian archaeology, and, apart from Mehrgarh, was also responsible for the excavation of sites such as Nausharo (located about 6 km (3.73 miles) from Mehrgarh), Pirak, Sibri, Dauda Damb, Lal Shah, Damboli, and Shah Ghair.

Ruins of Mehrgarh.

(M. Thoury et al./ CC BY 4.0 )

The site of Mehrgarh covers an area of 495 acres (200 hectares, 2 km ²). Jarrige and his team worked continuously there from 1974 to 1986. The excavations at Mehrgarh then stopped for a period of 10 years, before commencing once more in 1997. The archaeologists worked for another four years, and the campaign ended in 2000.

The excavations were carried out jointly by the French Archaeological Mission and the Department of Archaeology of Pakistan. The findings made by Jarrige and his team during their work at Mehrgarh have provided much insight into the lifestyle of the ancient people who lived there.

Mehrgarh’s Extensive Occupation History

Mehrgarh is a classic tell site , a tell being an artificial mound created over time. As the occupants of the site built new structures over the ruins of old ones, the mound gradually increased in height, and, after many generations, forms a tell. A number of these artificial mounds have been excavated at Mehrgarh, and an archaeological sequence has been formed. The sequence has been divided into seven chronological periods – Mehrgarh Period I – VII.

Ruins of Mehrgarh. 

(mhtoori/CC BY SA 4.0 )

The earliest known settlement at Mehrgarh can be found in the site’s northeastern corner, in an area referred to as MR3. In the archaeological sequence, this period is known as Mehrgarh Period I, and has been dated to between 7000 and 5500 BC. During this phase, which corresponds to the Neolithic period, Mehrgarh was a small village that relied on farming and animal husbandry for its survival.

The culture at this point was aceramic, which means that they were not making pottery, which is one of the features distinguishing the Neolithic from preceding ages. Instead, the inhabitants of Mehrgarh were using basket containers lined with bitumen (which made the vessels water-proof). The archaeological evidence also shows that people at that time were using copper ore that was obtained locally, as well as various stone and bone tools.

A 6,000-year-old copper "wheel" amulet from Mehrgarh.

(Abbas dhothar/ CC BY SA 4.0 )

The presence of foreign goods, seashells from distant seashores, and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, suggests that the people of Mehrgarh were already in contact with the outside world.

During the Mehrgarh I Period, the occupants of the site lived in simple mud buildings that had four internal divisions. These houses were free-standing and rectangular in shape, while the mudbricks used for their construction have a long, cigar shape.

The form of these structures is quite similar to those found in 7th millennium BC Mesopotamia, and a connection between the two areas has been proposed. Further evidence supporting the link between Mehrgarh and Mesopotamia include the similarities in crafts, agricultural, and funerary practices.

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7000 BC well in Mehrgarh.

(mhtoori/ CC BY SA 4.0 )

Early Farmers and Dentists

Mehrgarh is also notable for having the earliest archaeological evidence of agriculture in South Asia. The people who lived during the Mehrgarh I Period had access to plant foods such as domesticated and wild six-rowed  barley, domestic einkorn and emmer wheat, and wild Indian jujube ( Zizyphus spp ) and date palms ( Phoenix dactylifera ).

In addition, meat was being consumed at Mehrgarh.  The faunal remains of herded animals, such as sheep, goat, and cattle, as well as those of wild animals, including gazelle, water buffalo, and elephant were found in this archaeological layer. The types of hunted animals suggest that during this period the area of Balochistan was dominated by savannah.

Two other exciting findings were made by archaeologists – the earliest known example of cotton in the Old World and the earliest evidence for the drilling of human teeth in vivo , i.e. in a living person. The former was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in 2002 and the latter was published in Nature in 2006.

An experimental reconstruction of a bow and flint-tipped drill used to bore through molar teeth found at a Neolithic graveyard in Mehrgarh, Pakistan.

( University of Poitiers )

The discovery of the cotton threads was made during the metallurgical study of a copper bead that came from a burial at Mehrgarh. As a result of mineralization, a few cotton threads were preserved, and therefore could be analyzed. With the aid of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and a reflected-light microscope, the researchers were able to study the morphology of the fibers, and concluded that they were from cotton.

As for the discovery of the practice of proto-dentistry in Mehrgarh , the researchers identified a total of 11 drilled permanent crowns in nine individuals. The teeth were studied using light microscopy, SEM, and microtomography, and the results of these analyses showed the presence of conical, cylindrical, or trapezoidal cavities, as well as concentric ridges preserved on some walls.

All these are signs that the teeth had been drilled. In all cases, the researchers observed marginal smoothing of the cavity walls. This led them to the conclusion that the drilling had been done while the individuals were still alive, as they continued to chew with these teeth, hence the marginal smoothing.

Flint drill heads were part of the lithic assemblages of the site, and using experimental archaeology, the researchers found that less than a minute was needed to produce similar holes in human enamel with these tools. The researchers also postulated that the knowledge of drilling may have been first developed by artisans for the production of beads, and was later used to drill human teeth .

Ceramics and Craftworks at Mehrgarh

The next level of occupation is referred to as Mehrgarh Period II, and dates to between 5500 and 4800 BC. By this time, the people of Mehrgarh were producing ceramics . It seems that there was a shift in focus from the area of MR3 to a new one, MR4. During this period, agriculture was firmly established at the site, and the archaeologists found that locally domesticated barley (about 90%) was the main crop, though wheat from the Near East was also available to its inhabitants.

Mehrgarh painted pottery. 3000-2500 BC.

( CC0)

The archaeologists also excavated a number of sun-dried brick buildings. These were large and rectangular and were divided symmetrically into smaller squares or rectangles. The archaeologists were of the opinion that these were not houses like the ones excavated in the Mehrgarh Period I layer, as they did not have doors, and there was a lack of residential remains. Instead, they suggested that these structures were either granaries, or other warehouses that were shared by the entire community.

Other structural remains found at this level indicate that large scale production of craft goods had begun in Mehrgarh. These are standardized rooms surrounded by a large open space where the craftsmen would work. This aspect of life in Neolithic Mehrgarh is also evident in the material culture left behind at the site.

Seated Mother Goddess, 3000–2500 BC. Pakistan (Baluchistan) Mehrgarh style.

( CC0)

The primary product of these craftsmen were beads which are characteristic of the region. This tradition of bead making would last up until the time of the Indus Valley Civilization. During Mehrgarh Period II, craftsmen were making various types of beads. For instance, soft stone beads, such as limestone and steatite, were being made, possibly with stone or copper drills.

For harder types of stone, including agate and jasper, specialized stone drills would have been used. Marine shell ornaments were also being made in Mehrgarh. The beads and shell ornaments show that during the Mehrgarh II Period, there was an increase in the importation of non-local raw materials to the site.

This situation continued into the next period, Mehrgarh Period III, which lasted from around 4800 to 3500 BC, and is considered to be the Early Chalcolithic period. The focus of the settlement, however, shifted once more, this time to the area MR1. Like the preceding period, storage facilities and houses were unearthed by the archaeologists, though these structures were much more elaborate than their Neolithic counterparts. For instance, they had foundations of pebbles embedded in clay, and the buildings’ bricks were made with molds.

Mehrgarh Periods IV – VII lasted from about 3500 to 2500 BC and these levels belong to the Chalcolithic period. The inhabitants of the site shifted to MR1. During these periods, pottery and crafts continued to be manufactured at the site, though it is clear that there were stylistic changes.

Stylistic depictions of the Togau ware found at Mehrgarh shows how the Mehrgarh people moved towards a mass-production model for their pottery ware.

(Arun Reginald/ CC BY SA 4.0 )

Mehrgarh is Abandoned

At the end of the Mehrgarh Period VII, the site was largely abandoned. Around the same time, the Indus Valley Civilization was in its middle stages of development. It has been hypothesized that as a result of climatic changes, the region of Balochistan had become more arid and unsuitable for agriculture. As a consequence, the people of Mehrgarh migrated to the Indus Valley, where environmental conditions were more favorable.

Despite its significance, the site of Mehrgarh is in a sorry state today. While Mehrgarh is currently on UNESCO’s Tentative Heritage List, it has been alleged that the central government has not taken the site seriously. The blame has been placed on the government’s failure to present the site to UNESCO in an effective way.

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Mehrgarh also faces other, more serious, problems. In 2002, the site became an unfortunate victim of a tribal feud between the Raisani and Rind tribes. Rockets fired by both tribes badly damaged the site. Additionally, although the site was under the control of the Raisani, the Rind also had claims over it. Not content with the way things were, the latter decided simply to bulldoze the site.

In addition to local problems, Mehrgarh faces international ones as well. In October 2014, the Italian authorities confiscated antiquities in Rome that were stolen from Mehrgarh. In a 2015 article, it was reported that the objects have not been repatriated yet due to bureaucratic red tape and the lack of interest from Pakistani authorities.

Archaeological Site of Mehrgarh in September 2018.

(mhtoori/ CC BY SA 4.0 )

Although the seizure of the smuggled antiquities in Rome is commendable, it does not address the root of the problem. The illegal trade of antiquities is rampant in Pakistan and is an issue that needs to be addressed if the future of Mehrgarh and other sites is to be guaranteed.

• Top Image: Ruins of Mehrgarh. (M. Thoury et al./ CC BY 4.0 ) Insert: Detail of a female figure made of terracotta from Mehrgarh, circa 3000 BC. (Denis Biette/ CC BY SA 1.0 )

By Wu Mingren

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

28-09-2020 om 00:53 geschreven door peter  

If you are wondering what the “Australian tektite field” is, its formal title is the “Australasian strewn field.” What it demonstrates is that in ancient times certain portions of our world were effectively torched. Meteoritics and Planetary Science said: “Early workers, including such astute observers as Charles Fenner, George Baker, and Edward Gill, who picked up pristine tektites on the arid and ancient surface of Australia, became convinced that this shower of glass had arrived very recently. Ages around 10,000-20,000 years were usually quoted. As some early radiometric age determinations of tektites gave spuriously old ages, these data fueled the notion that the age of the fall was disconnected to the time of formation of tektites.” And what – you may very well ask – are tektites? This is where things get really interesting. Tektites are small, glassy bodies that are near-identical to the equally glassy trinitite that was found at the detonation site of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico in July 1945, just a few weeks before the destruction of the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory state the following on all of this: “Trinitite has also been referred to as atomsite or Alamogordo glass (after a nearby city). Ultimately, it is a glasslike substance that was created from the sand and other materials at the Site during the intense heat of that first atomic test. Relatively recent research (2005) indicates that, upon explosion, the ground was likely pushed down initially, then rebounded, forcing material into the fireball. As indicated in the display, the ground was vaporized before eventually raining down in the form of trinitite droplets. While most trinitite is light green (due to the iron that was present in the sand), other samples contain some of the iron from the tower on which the ‘Gadget’ was detonated, and those look black. Yet other slightly red samples contain copper from the electrical wire used in the experiment.”

Forbes say the following: “It’s often hard to appreciate how quickly energy gets released in something like a nuclear explosion. The shockwave from the initial blast was so powerful it was felt from over 100 miles (160 km) away, with the mushroom cloud reaching 7.5 miles (12 km) in height. The above photo, taken just 16 milliseconds (0.016 seconds) after detonation, shows a blast explosion about 660 feet (200 meters) high, but it’s what happened below, on the ground, that really was surprising. Beneath the explosion location, an enormous crater formed. The landscape was incredibly scarred, and in many place, melted by the nuclear explosion.”

The Smithsonian Magazine provides these words: “No one commented on the glass at the time—its creation was the least of the Gadget’s spectacular effects—but visitors to the site after the war noticed the unusual scattering of glassy mineral that surrounded the shallow bomb crater and began collecting pieces as souvenirs. ‘A lake of green jade,’ Time magazine described it in September 1945. ‘The glass takes strange shapes—lopsided marbles, knobbly sheets a quarter-inch thick, broken, thin-walled bubbles, green, wormlike forms.'”

Perhaps like this?

In 2001, Science Frontiers stated the following: “The extent of the immense Australasian-tektite strewn field implies a hard-to-miss crater about 100 kilometers in diameter. Yet, despite the geological recency of the event and despite much geological surveying, no convincing crater has been discovered…The mystery deepens when one realizes that whatever cataclysm sent the Australian tektites aloft may have been comparable in magnitude to the impact that extinguished the dinosaurs (and other fauna) some 65 million years ago. This much older event has its crater buried below the Yucatan and is further marked by widespread biological extinctions. In contrast, the Australasian-tektite event is not only minus an obvious crater but seems to have had scant effect on the earth’s cargo of sensitive life forms. It was a strangely ‘gentle’ event despite the rocky deluge of tektites. What really happened?”

What, indeed?

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

27-09-2020 om 21:49 geschreven door peter  

Michael Cremo: Forbidden Archaeology - Could Our Records Be Wrong?... (How Old Is Humanity Really?)

COAST TO COAST AM INSIDER Archived Show – Author Michael Cremo returned to the show to discuss both his archaeological research and his thesis that mankind has devolved from a higher state of pure consciousness. Humans are multidimensional and made up of three elements, he said– ordinary matter, subtle mind, and consciousness.

There is evidence that the latter two are real elements from both scientific studies and ancient texts, he said. In fact, he detailed how Nobel Prize winning physicists Pierre and Marie Curie conducted research that clearly showed evidence for mental powers such as psychokinesis.

Like humans, the cosmos itself is a multilevel environment, which in addition to the physical matter dimension, contains subtle energy planes inhabited by angels and astral beings, he shared. Humans devolved from such realms by “covering” themselves in matter, he argued. Further, ancient Sanskrit and other texts indicate that humankind is far older than the traditional scientific community acknowledges.

In his Forbidden Archaeology research, Cremo studied hematite balls with grooves on them, which he said metallurgists can’t explain how they could have formed naturally. They were found in a mine in South Africa in mineral deposits that are over two billion years old, he added. He also discussed a human skeleton discovered in Savona, Italy in a rock formation that dates back four million years. For more, view a page of images that Michael sent us as part of his presentation.

Relaated videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

20-09-2020 om 23:25 geschreven door peter  

Did This Kid With a Metal Detector Change History?

Did This Kid With A Metal Detector Change History?

Ancient bronze artifact was found in Idaho, Did this kid with a metal detector change history? Does anyone out there know of any other out of place artifacts being found in Idaho?

Thanks Nathan Dennis for contacting me about this artifact. Thanks Jerry Lee for sharing your story with us.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

20-09-2020 om 22:54 geschreven door peter