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The Unsung Suffragist Who Fought for Women to Keep Their Maiden Names

Read entire article at Time

(For the source of this, and other interesting historical articles, please visit: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/171471)

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The Story of the Real Pocahontas Disney Didn’t Tell You

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The real Pocahontas was nothing like the Pocahontas depicted in Disney’s 1995 animated classic. There are a multitude of ways that Disney lies about, or at the very least exaggerates, the life of Pocahontas, but they’re not the only culprits when it comes to spreading falsehoods about the Native American princess (who wasn’t actually a princess, by the way). The history of Pocahontas has been riddled with dramatizations, oversimplifications, and outright lies from the very beginning – and all of that dishonesty only adds to the tragedy that is Pocahontas’s true life story.

The truth about Pocahontas is infinitely sadder than the bright and cheery, wind-color-painting version presented in popular culture. Her interactions with English settlers were far less whimsical and musical than Disney would have you believe; it was instead the sort of violent and prejudiced interaction that we’ve come to expect from that era. Pocahontas herself is still an inspiring and important historical figure, but her actual life story is not a feel-good tale about the common threads between people of different backgrounds. Instead, it’s the exact opposite.

Pocahontas Was Kidnapped And Held For Ransom By The English

Pocahontas’s most significant interaction with the English was a lot less Disney-friendly than popular culture would have you believe, and it was far more indicative of the real relationship between colonists and Native Americans. Unhappy with Chief Powhatan, a group of English settlers paid a rival Native Ameriacn group to coerce Pocahontas onto an English ship so that she could be held for ransom. Captain Samuel Argall ordered her capture, and then compensated the Native Americans who helped him with a copper kettle for their troubles.

She Was Born Into Royalty – Kind Of

Pocahontas is known as being one of the main Disney princesses, but that is only partially true historically. Pocahontas was the daughter of Chief Powhatan, the head of a major alliance of Algonquin-speaking groups, which was one of the largest alliances in North America. The area he represented was known as the Tsenacommacah. However, Pocahontas had 26 brothers and sisters to share her status with, so she was far from the only royal child running around Tsenacommacah, even if she was reportedly the chief’s favorite daughter. The chiefdom did not share its power hereditarily, either, so the idea of Pocahontas being royalty is not exactly true.

Pocahontas Was Only One Of Her Names

Pocahontas is the most common name that we know this important historical figure by, but it might actually be the least formal name she held. “Pocahontas” was a mildly pejorative nickname that translated into something along the lines of “spoiled child.” She was also known as Mataoka for most of her childhood and later went by the name of Amonute. Then, after her conversion to Christianity, she became known as Rebecca – a name she would carry until her death.

The John Smith Story Is Likely BS

The tale most commonly told about Pocahontas might not even be a real story at all. Supposedly, Pocahontas saved the English colonist John Smith from execution at the hands of her father, and then the two went on to begin a romantic relationship. Apparently, the love between the two helped the European settlers of Jamestown get along with the Native Americans for a brief period.

But some question whether or not Smith was ever in any real danger, whereas others question whether the meeting ever even happened. John Smith earned the reputation of being a bit of an exaggerator, and there’s no direct evidence that his interaction with Pocahontas or her father ever occurred. Most sources believe that Pocahontas would have been about 11 years old when the meeting was said to have happened, which is far too young for a romance between the two.

Smith Only Linked Himself To Pocahontas After She Became A Minor Celebrity

John Smith didn’t write about his rescue by, or romance with, Pocahontas until more than 15 years after it supposedly happened. What’s more, Smith wrote plenty during and about the time period when his adventures with Pocahontas were said to have occurred, but failed to mention her at all. In fact, when Smith did finally write about her, she had already become a celebrity in England, thanks to her marriage to a different Englishman and her subsequent cross-ocean visit, which makes it pretty likely that Smith just crafted a lie to try to cash in on her fame.

Pocahontas Was Tatted Up And Had A Wicked Fashion Sense

When she hit adulthood at the frighteningly young age of 14, Pocahontas began to turn her eyes toward marriage. During her courting days, she was known to rock a fashionable and alluring one-strapped deerskin dress, which was a real hit with the fellas. She also began to cover her skin in traditional tattoos, making her look like quite the badass. Eventually, Pocahontas would journey to Europe, where she adapted to local fashion with aplomb and sported some pretty bitchin’ hats.

Pocahontas Was Already Married To A Local Warrior

If John Smith and Pocahontas did have any sort of romantic relationship, it is certain that they never joined each other in wedded bliss. Pocahontas did get married on two occasions in her life, including once at the age of 14 or so to a Native American warrior known as Kocoum. Little is known about Kocoum, but he appears to have been some sort of military leader and is referred to by some sources as a “captain.” Others suggest that Kocoum was one of Pocahontas’s father’s bodyguards. The fact that she did not marry a man of high political standing mean that she probably married Kocoum for love, but the marriage apparently did not last.

She Went On A Diplomatic Mission To Avoid War

While held for ransom in Jamestown, Pocahontas became inculcated in European customs, language, and religion. Her forced education made her a convenient diplomat and go-between for the English colonists to use in negotiations with Native Americans. Oddly enough, Pocahontas was sent to her father to defuse the tense situation that had begun with her own kidnapping. Pocahontas won peace by assuring her father that she was happy with the English and would rather stay with them than return home, an act that ultimately prevented more bloodshed between the two groups.

Pocahontas Became A Symbol Of Peace And Religious Conversion

Much of the mythology surrounding the story of Pocahontas can clearly be tied to the fact that she became a symbol of peace to the English. The fact that her conversion to Christianity came while she was a prisoner did not dissuade the Europeans from using her as a textbook example of the power of their religion and its ability to bring peace to diverse groups of people. Her assimilation into English culture became an impetus to insist that all Native American people should be converted to Christianity and “civilized” by whatever means necessary.

Pocahontas Gained Her Real Fame By Marrying An Englishman

Pocahontas did actually gain worldwide fame and historical notoriety because of a romantic relationship with an Englishman, but it was not John Smith. Rather, Pocahontas met a wealthy widower named John Rolfe during her time in captivity, and the two soon married. Rolfe was coming over to Virginia to farm tobacco, but he lost his wife and child on the journey across the ocean. The two were eventually married on April 5, 1614, and their son, Thomas, was born about a year later. The family lived on Rolfe’s tobacco farm for a number of years, and their steady marriage was yet another reason for sustained peace between the colonists and her father’s people. This was the first recorded interracial marriage in North American history.

Pocahontas Went On Tour As A Curiosity In England

After a few years of marriage, John Rolfe and Pocahontas, then known as Rebecca Rolfe, sailed back to England in 1616. The arrival of a Native American “princess” was much hyped, and she was described as the “daughter of the most powerful prince of the Powhatan Empire of Virginia.” She was treated as a curiosity by most, but she was relatively well-treated during a whirlwind tour of England. While there, Pocahontas was the guest of honor at some grand balls, attended plays, and even met the king and queen. She also reportedly ran into John Smith, but didn’t speak to him, giving further evidence that his story is bologna.

Pocahontas Died On Her Way Back To North America

After her whirlwind tour of England in 1616, Rebecca Rolfe was set to return to her home continent in 1617. Sadly, she would not make it back to Virginia, and in fact would not even make it to the ocean. While sailing down the Thames River, Pocahontas fell ill with an unknown sickness, which has been speculated to be pneumonia or dysentery. She and her family were taken ashore at the town of Gravesend, where Pocahontas would die at the age of 21. John Rolfe returned to Virginia alone, having left his also-ailing son back in England, and shortly after his arrival, his father-in-law, Powhatan, also died. The peace that Pocahontas had helped forge then slowly began to unravel.

Her Son, Thomas Rolfe, Became One Of The Wealthiest Men In The New World

Unlike his mother, Thomas Rolfe survived his sickness, and eventually returned to North America, although not for some time. His father, John Rolfe, died in 1622, but Thomas did not return to Virginia until 1635. Although the Powhatan Empire did not consider Thomas for the leadership role vacated by his grandfather, they did grant the son of Pocahontas thousands of acres of land along the James River. Thomas would use this inheritance to become the wealthiest tobacco farmer in the New World, and he also had a daughter, Jane, who ensured that Pocahontas’s bloodline would live on for generations to come.

(For the source of this, and many other interesting historical articles, please visit: https://www.ranker.com/list/facts-about-the-real-pocahontas/stephanroget/)

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It was a sprawling civilization.

By Matt Davis – 

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• Near modern-day St. Louis, Missouri, you can find towering mounds of earth that were once the product of a vast North American culture.
• Cahokia was the largest city built by this Native American civilization.
• Because the ancient people who built Cahokia didn’t have a writing system, little is known of their culture. Archaeological evidence, however, hints at a fascinating society.
  

Mesopotamia had Ur, a wealthy city from 2100 BCE and a towering ziggurat. Egypt had Memphis and Alexandria, with their great pyramids and library, respectively. The Toltecs or Totonacs, who resided in modern-day Mexico, had Teotihuacán, which hosted over 125,000 people in its monolithic architecture.

Ancient cities seem to have sprung up all over the world, each of which must have been magnificent sights in their day. But it seems like a handful of these cities hog all the limelight. Though Teotihuacán may be known, for instance, few are familiar with North America’s other great ancient city, Cahokia.

Mysterious mounds near St. Louis

Monks Mound, the largest remaining mound in Cahokia. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

About 10 miles east of St. Louis, Missouri, 80 mounds of earth dot 2,200 acres of land, the largest of which covers 13.8 acres and rises 100 feet high. These 80 mounds are the remainders of 120 mounds built 1,000 years before Columbus reached North America by a forgotten people called the Mississippians, named after the great river they lived near. All told, the mounds would have required the excavation of about 55 million cubic feet of earth.

The Mississippian civilization is poorly understood; they had no writing system, and by the time Europeans bothered to seriously document their culture, they had been scattered, wiped out by European diseases they had no immunities to.

Instead, much of our understanding of the Mississippians has come from archaeology, and the city of Cahokia represents the greatest trove of archaeological evidence. The city was named after the Cahokia tribe that lived in the area when the French first arrived, though they were not its original inhabitants. In fact, by that time in the 17th century, Cahokia was abandoned.

Though the Mississippians had no writing system, Cahokia was clearly the product of some kind of centralized planning. Its many great mounds are a testament to that, as well as the 50-acre leveled plain of the city named the Grand Plaza; the remains of a copper workshop; a palisade that surrounded its central, ceremonial district; and large henges made of wood.

When Cahokia was at its greatest between 1050 and 1200 CE, it hosted an estimated 40,000 Mississippians, more than the city of London at the time. The bulk of these people flocked to the city between 1050 and 1100, where they built homes, established the Grand Plaza, and built more mounds that raised important buildings over the thousands of other homes in Cahokia.

Life in Cahokia

A statuette recovered from Cahokia depicting a chunkey player. The figure holds a chunkey stone in its hand. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

 

We can glean some other features of Cahokian life from the fragments they left behind. We’ve found carved discs throughout Cahokia that were used in a game called “chunkey” that was played on the large flat field of the Grand Plaza. Participants rolled the chunkey stone across the field and threw spears toward where they thought the stone would come to rest. Huge audiences watched chunkey players, and players often gambled on the outcome.

But life in Cahokia wasn’t entirely fun and games. There is also evidence that the Cahokians engaged in human sacrifice. At one mound in particular, dubbed Mound 72, researchers found the remains of 272 people. In one instance of sacrifice, 39 people were lined up in front of a pit and clubbed one by one, falling into a mass grave. Two dozen different mass graves populate Mound 72, all of which contain the remains of people who had been strangled, clubbed, and even buried alive.

But there’s also a more reverent grave at Mound 72: a man buried on 20,000 beads made from seashells, which were status symbols and luxury items in Mississippian culture. These beads were arranged in the shape of a falcon. The falcon was an important symbol in Mississippian culture, typically associated with great warriors and chunkey players.

The city’s decline

By the time Columbus and other Europeans arrived in America, Cahokia was abandoned and had been since approximately 1300. What drove the Mississippians away from the vast city is unclear. It’s possible there had been some kind of conflict with another people — the palisade that encircled part of the city speaks to that.

Or, it could be that the unique density of Cahokia led to its downfall. Few other places in North America had tens of thousands of humans living in close proximity with one another. It could be that disease wiped out the Cahokians or that the area was overhunted, overfished, and overfarmed. Some evidence also suggests that the area was severely flooded twice: once between 1100 and 1260 and again between 1340 and 1460. Possibly a combination of these factors led the mound-builders to abandon Cahokia.

Today, Cahokia is preserved as a historic site that anyone can visit. However, Cahokia only gained its protective status in the 1960s. Prior to that, it was the site of heavy development — some of its mounds had been leveled for farming, airfields, housing, and highways. Fortunately, much of the site still remains, and it represents one of the few ancient cities left to visit in North America.

Related Articles Around the Web

• America’s Forgotten City ›
• Cahokia – Ancient History Encyclopedia ›
• Cahokia: North America’s First City ›

(For the source of this, and many other interesting articles, please visit: https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/cahokia-ancient-native-american-city/)

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Googling “mysterious ancient discoveries” or “unexplained ancient inventions” leads to dozens of sites listing artifacts supposedly so baffling the only possible answer could be aliens, time travel, the paranormal, the Iluminati, or aliens. Wait – did we already mention aliens? Sorry: they’re a go-to explanation for anything apparently too sophisticated, weird, or “out-of-place” for “humans figured it out, okay?” to be a satisfying explanation.

It’s a disheartening discovery, because once you separate the hoaxes and nonsense from the finds of actual archeological interest, there are still cool mysteries to explore. The list below features mysterious ancient inventions, unexplained ancient discoveries, and some slightly more recent finds still baffling to scientists in the 21st century – but not because they’re a sign of alien tech. Give ancient humanity a little more credit, y’know?

Deadly “Greek Fire” Was a Family Secret

It’s not like anyone is aching for napalm to make a comeback, but scientists and historians are nonetheless very curious about 7th-century “Greek Fire,” a deadly proto-napalm fired from ships that “would cling to flesh and was impossible to extinguish with water.” Sounds like a nightmare!

The Byzantine Empire wielded it with aplomb, but, like Coca-Cola Classic and Bush’s Baked Beans, the recipe for Greek Fire™ was a protected family secret. National Geographic pulled a Mythbusters and took a guess at the ingredients in 2002, using a “bronze pump” and a “mixture of light crude oil and pine resin.” The results? It destroyed a ship “in minutes.” Good guess!

The Recipe for Damascus Steel Remains a Mystery

Returning from the Crusades, a lot of perplexed Europeans started talking about swords wielded by Islamic warriors “that could slice through a floating handkerchief, bend 90 degrees and flex back with no damage.” Fast-forward to the 21st century and the recipe for so-called “Damascus steel” is still a mystery.

The best guess is that the blades consisted of “crucible steel,” which is created by melting iron with plant matter. Still, no one knows the specific type of crucible steel used to yield such a blade. It might as well be a lightsaber.

The Voynich Manuscript May Ultimately Just Be Indecipherable

If you haven’t heard of the Voynich Manuscript, you’re in for a treat. Researchers say the absolutely bonkers, hand-written and hand-drawn manuscript, featuring text in an indecipherable language and hundreds of illustrations including “a myriad of drawings of miniature female nudes, most with swelled abdomens, immersed or wading in fluids and oddly interacting with interconnecting tubes and capsules,” was created by someone sometime during the 15th century in Central Europe. A Polish-American antiquarian bookseller named Wilfrid M. Voynich acquired it in 1912. Other than that, who knows? It’s a total mystery.

If it’s supposed to mean anything or help people understand anything, it has failed miserably. That said, it is one of the few genuine mysteries out there. Do yourself a favor: jump down the Voynich rabbit hole. Just don’t blame Ranker if you lose your mind a little.

The Antikythera Mechanism Is a Mysterious Astrological Calendar

Unlike the Roman dodecahedra, scientists have a pretty good idea what the so-called Antikythera Mechanism is all about. Discovered at the bottom of the sea in 1901, the intricate device was likely constructed around the end of the second century BC.  It “calculated and displayed celestial information, particularly cycles such as the phases of the moon and a luni-solar calendar,” according to research compiled in Nature.

But we still don’t know who built it, who used it, and what they used it for, exactly. It’s also still unclear why it is “technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards,” to quote the Nature abstract, which prompted a zillion “ancient aliens” and “TIME TRAVEL IS REAL!!” blog posts after it was published in 2006.

But history, as Brian Dunning of Skeptoid notes, tells us similar gear-based technology was around two and a half millennia prior, and Occam’s Razor tells us any “siblings” of the Antikythera Mechanism, like most commonplace bronze objects of the period, were likely “recycled” into other objects. It’s still mysterious, just for less sexy reasons than some might think.

Zhang Heng’s Seismoscope Detected Earthquakes (Somehow)

The first earthquake-detecting tool in history was this ornate, golden, dragon-festooned, toad-surrounded vessel from around 132 AD. The picture is of a replica, but you get the idea, right? No? Okay, here’s the idea: when the earth quakes, one of the dragons, each representing principal directions of the compass, would spit out a ball into a toad’s mouth, indicating the direction of the quake.

The instrument was said to have “detected a four-hundred-mile distant earthquake which was not felt at the location of the seismoscope.” Either that, or someone bumped up against it, because to this day, no one actually knows what was really inside the thing. (More dragons, maybe?) Some say it could have been a simple pendulum-based system, but the exact “science” remains a mystery.

It’s Unclear How Vikings Made Their Ulfberht Swords

Speaking of insane swords – the Vikings may have used techniques or materials borrowed from the creators of Damascus steel to make their legendary “Ulfberht” swords. When archeologists discovered the Viking blades, they were shocked because “the technology needed to produce such pure metal would not be invented for another 800 years.”

But in 2014, a 9th-century Viking grave was discovered in Scandanavia with an Islamic inscription meaning “for/to Allah,” linking the two worlds and making the shared knowledge plausible – but that’s just a guess. The true origin of the blades is still unknown.

Scientists Disagree About Why the Iron Pillar of Delhi Won’t Rust

The more-than-1600-year-old “Iron Pillar of Delhi” has scientists divided about its weird resistance to rust. There are two schools of thought: Team Environment says the mild climate of Delhi, India, is ultimately to thank. Right place, right time, essentially. Team Materials says it’s all about the “presence of phosphorus, and absence of sulfur [and] manganese in the iron,” plus the “large mass of the pillar.”

One thing both camps agree on? It’s a total mystery how the rust-resistant iron lumps were “forge-welded to produce the massive six-ton structure.” Regardless, it’s an impressive piece of engineering.

The Phaistos Disk Could Be a Prayer or an Ancient Typewriter

This giant sugar cookie is a head-scratcher, for sure, but there are some interesting theories out there. Discovered in 1908 in Crete, this 6-inch diameter clay disk dates back to around 1700 BC and features 241 “words” created out of 45 individual symbols, arranged in a spiral.

It could be a sort of ancient “sheet music” to a hymn or prayer dedicated to matriarchal deity, or maybe it’s an ancient proto-typewriter? Who knows? It sure looks delicious, though.

Roman Dodecahedra Might Just Be Candlesticks

If you think these little bronze guys would make excellent paperweights or tchotchkes – well, so did the ancient Romans, maybe? We honestly have no idea. They could have been useless objects meant for decoration, a conversation piece for the 2nd-to-4th-century Roman equivalent of coffee tables.

George Hart of Stony Brook University notes dozens of these twelve-sided, 4-to-11 cm. spheroids have been found throughout Europe, yet the Romans made no mention of them. Guesses include candle stands, flower stands, surveying instruments, finger ring-size gauges, and even D&D-style dice. Maybe the ancient Romans were pen-and-paper stylus-and-papyrus RPG enthusiasts?

It’s Unclear What the Giant Balls of Costa Rica Were Used For

Scientists have a pretty good idea how these giant, ancient stone balls found in Costa Rica were formed. From around ca. 200 BC to AD 800, natives used “fracture, pecking, and grinding” techniques to reduce granodiorite, a large igneous stone, into these pleasing spheres. What’s mysterious is why they did it.

Ultimately, it may never be understood, since vandals have moved almost all of them from their original locations, making it impossible to test theories about their use as calendars or navigational tools. Some gullible vandals even blew the balls up, hoping to find gold in them thar balls. (They didn’t.)

(For the source of this, and many other interesting history-related articles, please visit: https://www.ranker.com/list/mysterious-ancient-scientific-discoveries-and-inventions/kellen-perry/)

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Meet Lise Meitner, the physicist who discovered how to split an atom

Her discovery of nuclear fission led the way to nuclear power—and the Cold War

A version of this story originally appeared on The Conversation

  By Timothy J. Jorgensen, Public Health, Radiation Biology, and Cancer Epidemiology – Georgetown University –

 

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Nuclear fission – the physical process by which very large atoms like uranium split into pairs of smaller atoms – is what makes nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants possible. But for many years, physicists believed it energetically impossible for atoms as large as uranium (atomic mass = 235 or 238) to be split into two.

That all changed on Feb. 11, 1939, with a letter to the editor of Nature – a premier international scientific journal – that described exactly how such a thing could occur and even named it fission. In that letter, physicist Lise Meitner, with the assistance of her young nephew Otto Frisch, provided a physical explanation of how nuclear fission could happen.

It was a massive leap forward in nuclear physics, but today Lise Meitner remains obscure and largely forgotten. She was excluded from the victory celebration because she was a Jewish woman. Her story is a sad one.

What happens when you split an atom

Meitner based her fission argument on the “liquid droplet model” of nuclear structure – a model that likened the forces that hold the atomic nucleus together to the surface tension that gives a water droplet its structure.

She noted that the surface tension of an atomic nucleus weakens as the charge of the nucleus increases, and could even approach zero tension if the nuclear charge was very high, as is the case for uranium (charge = 92+). The lack of sufficient nuclear surface tension would then allow the nucleus to split into two fragments when struck by a neutron – a chargeless subatomic particle – with each fragment carrying away very high levels of kinetic energy. Meisner remarked: “The whole ‘fission’ process can thus be described in an essentially classical [physics] way.” Just that simple, right?

Meitner went further to explain how her scientific colleagues had gotten it wrong. When scientists bombarded uranium with neutrons, they believed the uranium nucleus, rather than splitting, captured some neutrons. These captured neutrons were then converted into positively charged protons and thus transformed the uranium into the incrementally larger elements on the periodic table of elements – the so-called “transuranium,” or beyond uranium, elements.

Some people were skeptical that neutron bombardment could produce transuranium elements, including Irene Joliot-Curie – Marie Curie’s daughter – and Meitner. Joliot-Curie had found that one of these new alleged transuranium elements actually behaved chemically just like radium, the element her mother had discovered. Joliot-Curie suggested that it might be just radium (atomic mass = 226) – an element somewhat smaller than uranium – that was coming from the neutron-bombarded uranium.

Meitner had an alternative explanation. She thought that, rather than radium, the element in question might actually be barium – an element with a chemistry very similar to radium. The issue of radium versus barium was very important to Meitner because barium (atomic mass = 139) was a possible fission product according to her split uranium theory, but radium was not – it was too big (atomic mass = 226).

When a neutron bombards a uranium atom, the uranium nucleus splits into two different smaller nuclei.  Stefan-Xp/Wikimedia Commons

Meitner urged her chemist colleague Otto Hahn to try to further purify the uranium bombardment samples and assess whether they were, in fact, made up of radium or its chemical cousin barium. Hahn complied, and he found that Meitner was correct: the element in the sample was indeed barium, not radium. Hahn’s finding suggested that the uranium nucleus had split into pieces – becoming two different elements with smaller nuclei – just as Meitner had suspected.

As a Jewish woman, Meitner was left behind

Meitner should have been the hero of the day, and the physicists and chemists should have jointly published their findings and waited to receive the world’s accolades for their discovery of nuclear fission. But unfortunately, that’s not what happened.

Meitner had two difficulties: She was a Jew living as an exile in Sweden because of the Jewish persecution going on in Nazi Germany, and she was a woman. She might have overcome either one of these obstacles to scientific success, but both proved insurmountable.

Meitner had been working as Hahn’s academic equal when they were on the faculty of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin together. By all accounts they were close colleagues and friends for many years. When the Nazis took over, however, Meitner was forced to leave Germany. She took a position in Stockholm, and continued to work on nuclear issues with Hahn and his junior colleague Fritz Strassmann through regular correspondence. This working relationship, though not ideal, was still highly productive. The barium discovery was the latest fruit of that collaboration.

Yet when it came time to publish, Hahn knew that including a Jewish woman on the paper would cost him his career in Germany. So he published without her, falsely claiming that the discovery was based solely on insights gleaned from his own chemical purification work, and that any physical insight contributed by Meitner played an insignificant role. All this despite the fact he wouldn’t have even thought to isolate barium from his samples had Meitner not directed him to do so.

Hahn had trouble explaining his own findings, though. In his paper, he put forth no plausible mechanism as to how uranium atoms had split into barium atoms. But Meitner had the explanation. So a few weeks later, Meitner wrote her famous fission letter to the editor, ironically explaining the mechanism of “Hahn’s discovery.”

Even that didn’t help her situation. The Nobel Committee awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei” to Hahn alone. Paradoxically, the word “fission” never appeared in Hahn’s original publication, as Meitner had been the first to coin the term in the letter published afterward.

A controversy has raged about the discovery of nuclear fission ever since, with critics claiming it represents one of the worst examples of blatant racism and sexism by the Nobel committee. Unlike another prominent female nuclear physicist whose career preceded her – Marie Curie – Meitner’s contributions to nuclear physics were never recognized by the Nobel committee. She has been totally left out in the cold, and remains unknown to most of the public.

After the war, Meitner remained in Stockholm and became a Swedish citizen. Later in life, she decided to let bygones be bygones. She reconnected with Hahn, and the two octogenarians resumed their friendship. Although the Nobel committee never acknowledged its mistake, the slight to Meitner was partly mitigated in 1966 when the U.S. Department of Energy jointly awarded her, Hahn and Strassmann its prestigious Enrico Fermi Award “for pioneering research in the naturally occurring radioactivities and extensive experimental studies leading to the discovery of fission.” The two-decade late recognition came just in time for Meitner. She and Hahn died within months of each other in 1968; they were both 89 years old.

(For the source of this, and many other important articles, please see: https://massivesci.com/articles/lise-meitner-nuclear-fission-physics-nobel-prize/)

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How Christians co-opted the Winter Solstice

Christmas has many pagan and secular traditions that early Christians incorporated into this new holiday.

Mike Colagrossi –

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Saturnalia (1783) by Antoine Callet, showing his interpretation of what the Saturnalia might have looked like. 

• Christmas was heavily influenced by the Roman festival of Saturnalia.
• The historical Jesus was not born on December 25th as many contemporary Christians believe.
• Many staple Christmas traditions predated the festival and were tied into ancient pagan worship of the sun and related directly to the winter solstice.

In the depths of darkness covering the entire Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice has marked the shortest day of the year. It has always held significance in many culture’s religious festivities and holidays. A great deal of religions have made the celestial moment a holy day. It is the darkest day of the whole year and for the ancients that meant a lot more to them then it does to us today. Sun worshippers and pagans have venerated this natural cycle for millenia.

Christmas as we know it today is a relatively new holiday. Many traditional elements we associate with Christmas pre-date Christianity by many centuries. There is also a lot of debate as to how much corporate and commercial interests have influenced this holiday as well.

Nowadays there’s a lot of hand waving when it comes to the Christian origins of Christmas. Inarguably, however, is the fact that the holiday’s modern iteration has been influenced by many pagan and secular festivities.

Early human celebrations and customs during the Winter Solstice

Photo credit: Ivana Djudic on Unsplash

You’ll find plenty of pagan customs in Christmas that were adopted during the early Christian spread around the Roman Empire. We can look back to both the Romans and the Celts for a whole lot of our modern day Christmas traditions.

Celts began celebrating once the winter solstice arrived and rejoiced that the days were slowly getting longer, which meant that spring and the harvest was around the corner. This was most pronounced in their holiday of Yule. Early Christians, who, at that time, were seen by many as being members of an urban cult, worked hard to try to convert and ban old Pagan customs. But the rural pagan inhabitants of those lands were not convinced. Eventually the church realized they needed to co-opt some of these traditions.

Around this time, the Church came up with the idea that Jesus Christ, their savior, was born on December 25th. In the 4th century CE, Christianity had begun to draw heavily upon the Roman festival of Saturnalia. Christian leaders succeeded in transposing these festivities on to their new made-up holiday.

The first mention of the Nativity feast and other early Christmas traditions appears in a Philocalian calendar dated around 354 CE. It was because of this pagan origin that celebrating Christmas was banned by the Puritans and made illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.

Saturnalia as the ultimate midwinter festival

Romans during the Decadence – Thomas Couture

Saturnalia was an ancient pagan holiday that honored the Roman God Saturn. It took place sometime between December 17th and 24th. It was a week of revelry, decadence and the inversion of social and moral roles.

The festivities consisted of drinking, eating lavishly and giving presents. The first-century poet Gaius Valerius Catullus said that Saturnalia was “the best of times.”

Wealthy Romans paid for the destitute and masters would swap clothes with their slaves. Lucian of Samosata speaking as the god Cronos, boasts about this exuberant time in his poem titled Saturnalia:

During my week the serious is barred: no business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games of dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping… an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water – such are the functions over which I preside.

Saturnalia began as a rural farmer’s festival to mark the end of the planting season and midwinter.

Both psychologically and cosmically, this was a unique time of the year for the ancients. The darkness must have affected them tremendously as without the modern advent of artificial lighting, lessened sunlight would have taken a toll on their mental health. During this time sun and stargazers would have also seen the change in the sun’s position.

All of this led to many religious spectacles and spiritual festivals. After all, they were now only relying on their summer food stores of grains and other crops to get them through the winter until they could, again, plant in the new season.

This led to a number of traditions we still take part in today.

Christmas traditions with other pagan origins

Even before historical record, Pagans would worship the trees in the forest and even bring them into their house and start to decorate them. Mistletoe for example was also a plant revered by the Celts and the Norse.

Celtic Druids believed that mistletoe would protect them against the elements of thunder and lightning. These druids would cut off a piece of mistletoe from the trees and then distribute that amongst their people for protection. It was also considered a symbol of peace and joy. Meeting under the mistletoe would call for enemies to put down their weapons and have a truce.

Ivy on the other hand was the great symbol of Bacchus, the Roman equivalent of Dionysus – God of wine, fertility and ritualistic madness. Ivy is a symbol of eternal life.

Traditional Christmas colors like green and red represent fertility. Burning Yule logs was representative of the returning sun as the days began to get longer again.

Christmas revelers, commercial shoppers and devout religious types can all thank the rich traditions and pagan history stretching back thousands of years this holiday season.

(For the source of this, and other equally interesting articles, please visit: https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/how-christians-co-opted-the-winter-solstice/)

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Ancient Child Bones Are Evidence of a Massive Bird That Ate Neanderthals

Big birds hungry for human flesh have been a problem for thousands of years.

By Sarah Sloat –

In 2012, a video depicting a golden eagle snatching a toddler in Montreal went mega-viral. It proved to be a doctored hoax, but it was a flashback to a time when birds of prey really did hunt humans. According to new, unpublished research, big birds hungry for the taste of human flesh have been a problem for thousands of years. The evidence: the recently discovered hand bones of a Neanderthal child, which were clearly digested by a large bird.

The public information service Science in Poland described the small bone fragments — each no longer than a centimeter — that were found in Cave Cinema, in southwestern Poland. At 115,000 years old, the bones are the oldest human remains ever found in the country.

Study co-author and Jagiellonian University professor Pawel Valde-Nowak, Ph.D., told Science in Poland that “analyses show that this is a result of passing through the digestive system of a large bird.” This theory is supported by the fact that the bones are covered in dozens of holes. The child is believed to have been between five to seven years old at the time of the attack.

A full analysis of the bones will be published later this year in the Journal of Paleolithic Archeology, helping identify what Homo species the child belonged to, but for now the team is pretty sure it was a Neanderthal.

Unfortunately, they can’t run DNA analysis on the bones because they’re in such poor quality. Nevertheless, the scientists are confident that the bones belonged to a Neanderthal because they were found in a particularly deep layer of dirt. Homo neanderthalensis is thought to have lived throughout Europe and Asia from about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago, and archeologists had previously found tools believed to have been used by Neanderthals in this same layer as the child’s bones.

What the scientists don’t know is how this Neanderthal child ended up in the belly of a giant bird. They hypothesize that the bird could have attacked and partially consumed the child or fed upon the child’s corpse. Either is plausible — and not unprecedented.

One of the most famous hominin specimens, the Taung Child, was a three-and-a-half year old Australopithecus africanus whose death remained a mystery for a long time. Its skull, with both human-like and ape-like features, was found in Africa in 1924, but scientists in 2006 discovered puncture marks at the bottom of the skull’s eye sockets clearly made by eagle talons. Further examination of the bones surrounding African crown eagle nests by scientists at Ohio State University revealed that these eagles still kill large monkeys that weigh the same as a human toddler.

And while there are the rare real-life cases of eagles that still pluck up babies and dogs, whether or not a bird could even fly away with a Neanderthal child is a bit of a moot point. In the same Ohio State University study, study lead W. Scott McGraw, Ph.D. pointed out eagles don’t need the strength to lift a primate or a child. Instead, they dismember their prey and take pieces of the carcass back to the nest. That’s bad news for a kid or a monkey, but good news for the scientists digging up their bones later on.

(For the source of this article, and to watch a video, please visit: https://www.inverse.com/article/49767-neanderthal-child-bird-attack/)

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Archaeologists uncover first Dead Sea Scrolls cave in 60 years

  Michael Irving –

The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most important historical texts ever discovered, dating as far back as the third century BCE. These texts were spread across 11 caves, and for decades archeologists have been searching for more. Now, for the first time in 60 years, a new cave has been excavated that “beyond any doubt” once contained more Dead Sea Scrolls. Sadly, looters got there first.

Between 1946 and 1956, hundreds of parchment and papyrus scrolls and scraps were found in the Qumran Caves in the Judaean Desert, Israel, and these ancient texts became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. As some of the oldest surviving documents on Earth, the scrolls contain writings from the Hebrew Scriptures, as well as other texts that weren’t canonized or belong to smaller sects of the time.

The excavation was the result of “Operation Scroll,” an initiative launched by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) that aims to systematically survey the caves in the area, which archaeologists believe are hiding many more significant artifacts.

“This exciting excavation is the closest we’ve come to discovering new Dead Sea Scrolls in 60 years,” says Oren Gutfeld, director of the excavation. “Until now, it was accepted that Dead Sea Scrolls were found only in 11 caves at Qumran, but now there is no doubt that this is the 12th cave. Finding this additional scroll cave means we can no longer be certain that the original locations (Caves 1 through 11) attributed to the Dead Sea Scrolls that reached the market via the Bedouins (nomadic people of the area) are accurate.”

Although no scrolls were found, the cave was littered with other treasures. Shattered storage jars and lids were found in hollows in the cave walls, and other fragments of wrappings, leather bindings, and string from the same period all indicated that it once held these sacred texts. But the most recent items found in the cave tell a clear story of the fate of the scrolls: two iron pickaxe heads, dated to the 1950s, presumably belonged to looters, who cracked open the jars and fled with their valuable contents.

“Although at the end of the day no scroll was found, and instead we ‘only’ found a piece of parchment rolled up in a jug that was being processed for writing, the findings indicate beyond any doubt that the cave contained scrolls that were stolen,” explains Gutfeld. “The findings include the jars in which the scrolls and their covering were hidden, a leather strap for binding the scroll, a cloth that wrapped the scrolls, tendons and pieces of skin connecting fragments, and more.”

Older artifacts, like pottery, flint blades, arrowheads, and a stamp seal decorated with the semi-precious stone carnelian, indicated that the cave was used by early humans as far back as the Copper Age and the Neolithic era.

Following the naming convention for the Qumran Caves, this new cave will be designated Q12. The Q usually comes after the cave’s number, but in this case, it comes before the 12 to indicate that no scrolls were found inside.

Important as this discovery is, it might just be the beginning of bigger things. This excavation was the first to be conducted in the northern section of the Judaean Desert, and with Operation Scroll still underway, new Dead Sea Scrolls may turn up in the near future, providing more insights into the cultural and religious history of the area.

“The important discovery of another scroll cave attests to the fact that a lot of work remains to be done in the Judaean Desert and finds of huge importance are still waiting to be discovered,” says Israel Hasson, Director-General of the IAA. “We are in a race against time as antiquities thieves steal heritage assets worldwide for financial gain. The State of Israel needs to mobilize and allocate the necessary resources in order to launch a historic operation, together with the public, to carry out a systematic excavation of all the caves of the Judean Desert.”

Source: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

(For the balance of this article, including several photos, please visit: https://newatlas.com/dead-sea-scrolls-cave-12/47825/)

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The Legend of Benin’s Fearless Female Warriors

This fierce all-female army was so ruthless that European colonists called them the Amazons after the merciless warriors of Greek mythology.

by Fleur Macdonald –

Actors Chadwick Boseman and Michael B Jordan earned high praise for their roles in the 2018 Marvel film Black Panther. But for me, the real stars were the Dora Milaje, the special forces unit of the fictional Kingdom of Wakanda. Fearsome yet principled, these female bodyguards provided the film’s moral compass.

I was thrilled to find out that the inspiration for these powerful women is rooted in reality, and that the descendants of these women still keep their traditions alive.

The inspiration for the Dora Milaje, the all-female special forces unit in the Marvel film Black Panther, is rooted in reality (Credit: Marvel/Disney).

“She is our King. She is our God. We would die for her,” said Rubinelle, choosing her words carefully. The 24-year-old secretary was talking about her grandmother, who was sitting on a bed in one of the front rooms of a house in Abomey, the former capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey and now a thriving city in southern Benin. The elderly woman’s head was adorned with a crown.

I had been granted an audience with Dahomian royalty: a descendant of Queen Hangbe, who according to local legend is the founder of the Amazons, an elite group of female warriors. As her living embodiment, the elderly woman has inherited her name and her authority. Four Amazons were attending to her, sitting on a woven mat on the floor. The room was relatively grand: there was a table and chairs for visitors and, in the corner, sat an old-fashioned television next to a makeshift drinks cabinet.

After indicating that I should prostrate myself before the queen and take a ceremonial sip of water, Rubinelle and her grandmother told me the story of their ancestors.

Queen Hangbe’s attendants are descendants of the Amazons, a unit of elite female warriors (Credit: Fleur Macdonald).

 

 

The Dahomey Amazons were frontline soldiers in the army of the Kingdom of Dahomey, a West African empire that existed from 1625 to 1894. Its remnants lie in modern-day Benin, which occupies a sliver of the coast between Nigeria and Togo. Whether conquering neighbouring tribes or resisting European forces, the Amazons were known for their fearlessness. In one of the final battles against the French in 1892 before the kingdom became a French colony, it is said only 17 out of 434 Amazons came back alive.

According to legend, Hangbe assumed the throne in the early 18th Century after the sudden death of her twin brother, Akaba. After a short rule, she was forcibly deposed by her power-hungry younger brother, Agaja. The current Queen Hangbe told me that all traces of her ancestor’s reign were erased by Agaja, who believed that only men should hold the throne. In a dusty museum that lies within the walls of the Royal Palaces in Abomey, the monarchs’ elaborate bronze sceptres are displayed in order of their reign. There is no sign of one belonging to Hangbe, and some historians question whether she existed at all.

Yet her legacy lived on through her mighty female soldiers. Oral and written accounts differ over the origins of the women-only corps. Some sources describe the Amazons as elephant hunters who graduated to human prey. The more widely accepted theory is that they served as royal bodyguards to Hangbe and the kings who came after.

The Amazons were known for their fearlessness and strength (Credit: Chris Hellier/Getty Images).

It was King Ghezo, who ruled over Dahomey from 1818 to 1858, who officially integrated the Amazons into the army. This in part was a practical decision, as manpower was increasingly scarce due to the European slave trade.

The recognition of the Amazons as official soldiers of Dahomey strengthened a duality that was already embedded in the society through the kingdom’s religion, which has since developed into Vodun, now one of Benin’s official religions and the basis of voodoo. An integral legend told of Mawu-Lisa, a male and female god who came together to create the universe. In all institutions, political, religious and military, men would have a female equivalent. The king, however, reigned supreme.

Her legacy lived on through her mighty female soldiers

Historical accounts of the Amazons are notoriously unreliable, though several European slave traders, missionaries and colonialists recorded their encounters with the fearless women. In 1861, Italian priest Francesco Borghero described an army exercise where thousands of women scaled 120m-high thorny acacia bushes barefoot without a whimper. In 1889, French colonial administrator Jean Bayol described witnessing one young Amazon approach a captive as part of her training. “[She] walked jauntily up, swung her sword three times with both hands, then calmly cut the last flesh that attached the head to the trunk… She then squeezed the blood off her weapon and swallowed it.”

Europeans who visited the kingdom in the 19th Century called Dahomey’s female fighters Amazons after the ruthless warriors of Greek mythology. Today, historians refer to them as mino, which can be translated as ‘our mothers’ in the local Fon language. However, Leonard Wantchekon, who was born in Benin and is now professor of politics at Princeton University and founder of the African School of Economics in Cotonou, Benin, claims the contemporary term does not accurately reflect the role the warriors played in Dahomey society. “Mino means witch,” he said.

Europeans named the soldiers Amazons after the ruthless warriors of Greek mythology (Credit: The Picture Art Collection/Alamy).

Today, the role of Queen Hangbe and her Amazons is primarily ceremonial, presiding over religious rituals that take place at the temple near her home. When I asked to take photographs of Queen Hangbe, Pierrette, another Amazon, jumped up to unfurl a ceremonial parasol over her mistress in the dark room. Fabric spelling out ‘Reine Hangbe’ (Queen Hangbe) had been sewn into the fabric using the appliqué technique of Dahomey tradition. A dressmaker, Pierrette designs a new umbrella for her queen every year. Loaded with symbolism, these elaborately decorated parasols once showed status in the Dahomey court.

Queen Hangbe’s umbrella was relatively simple, though in the 18th and 19th Centuries, they were often adorned with the bones of vanquished enemies. Parasols also featured images of birds and animals, as well as the round-headed clubs that Amazons used in battle.

These lethal weapons also feature in carvings on the mud walls of the squat palace buildings. Each king would build a new palace next to his predecessor’s, leaving the former as a mausoleum. Though Behanzin, the last king of the Dahomey Empire, burnt the palaces before the French arrived, a section still stands in Abomey, a rusty Unesco sign hanging limply at the entrance. The bas reliefs show how the Amazons used the clubs, as well as muskets and machetes, to inflict death on enemies. In one dusty cabinet, a horse’s tail springs from a human skull – a trophy brought back by an Amazon for her monarch to use as a fancy fly swatter.

The history of the Kingdom of Dahomey is preserved in the Royal Palaces of Abomey in modern-day Benin (Credit: ullstein bild/Getty Images).

There has always been a fascination with the Amazons, but its nature seems to be changing. The Black Panther film is responsible, certainly, but Dr Arthur Vido at the University of Abomey-Calavi, who has introduced a new course on the history of women in West Africa, has another theory. “As the status of women is changing in Africa, people want to know more about their role in the past.”

Much of the interest in the Amazons centres on their mercilessness, though Wantchekon dismisses the glorification of their battle exploits. “That’s just what soldiers did,” he said. Instead, Wantchekon is more interested in what the Amazons achieved as veterans.

Where a profession that’s critical for society is dominated by men, well, why don’t we insert a unit of elite women to work side by side with men? To be equal to men

The village where Wantchekon grew up, to the west of Abomey, used to be the site of the Amazons’ training camp. For many years, his aunt looked after an elderly Amazon who had moved to the village after retiring from the army. Villagers still remember the former soldier as “strong, independent and powerful,” Wantchekon said. She challenged village hierarchies and “could do that without any repercussion from the local chief because she was an Amazon”. Her example, Wantchekon thinks, inspired other women, including his mother, to be ambitious and independent.

For this reason, Wantchekon believes the Amazons are still relevant today. “Where a profession that’s critical for society is dominated by men, well, why don’t we insert a unit of elite women to work side by side with men? To be equal to men.” For Wantchekon, it is not their strength or military prowess that made the Amazons extraordinary, but rather their capacity as role models. Marvel Studios can see the appeal: a spin-off devoted to the Dora Milaje is in the works.

Today, the role of Queen Hangbe and her Amazons is primarily ceremonial (Credit: Fleur Macdonald).

As I took my leave of Queen Hangbe, Rubinelle rose to shake my hand, towering over me and looking me firmly in the eye. Driving away, I saw newly erected statues of Amazons along the road. They stood tall and broad-shouldered, and looked a lot like Rubinelle.

(Source of this article, and for more from BBC Travel, visit: https://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180826-the-legend-of-benins-fearless-female-warriors/)

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A hunger stone made visible by a low water level. (Photo: Norbert Kaiser / Creative Commons).

 

 

 

 

It’s been a long, hot summer. Blazing new heat records were set across the globe; Scandinavia was particularly scorched, the United States endured a sultry July, and most of Europe is suffering from a severe drought. No matter how, or where, you slice it, the weather is terrible.

Indeed, in some parts of central Europe, it’s so dry that grim specters of droughts past are slowly emerging from the rivers, giving warnings to all those who can see them.

Hunger stones

Boulders inscribed with messages like “Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine” (If you see me, weep) are becoming visible as the Elbe’s water line drops; it has reached stunning lows as a result of the current drought. The stones warn of bad harvests, starvation, and high food prices alongside lists of previous droughts going back to 1417.

Another stone in Germany says “If you will again see this stone, so you will weep, so shallow the water was in the year 1417.” A dozen of these rocks are becoming visible all over central Europe, warning those who see them of woe.

What are these?

Hunger stones are rocks marked to show when the water level in a river has gotten low enough to signify disaster is at hand. They are found in historically German-speaking areas of central Europe. The rocks would normally be covered by the river, but during droughts, the water line goes down far enough to reveal the message. A typical rock “expressed that drought had brought a bad harvest, lack of food, high prices and hunger for poor people. Before 1900, the following droughts are commemorated on the stone: 1417, 1616, 1707, 1746, 1790, 1800, 1811, 1830, 1842, 1868, 1892, and 1893.”

So explains Rudolf Brázdil in a 2013 study of droughts in Czech-speaking areas of Europe over the last millennium. The oldest-known rock has markings going back to 1417, though the city of Pirna claims one from 1115 exists somewhere in the Elbe.

How dire are these warnings?

In the centuries since the stones were carved the water level has been considerably lowered by a dam, making the warnings visible under conditions which are not quite as cataclysmic as those which must have occurred when they were created.

The current drought, while not as horrible as others within the last 200 years, is severe enough to affect the soil; the high temperatures are drying it out in ways not seen before. This, according to a study published in Nature, “raises concerns about the consequences of extreme meteorological droughts in combination with soil moisture deficits enhanced by a warmer climate.”

(For the balance of this article, plus a video, visit: https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/spooky-hunger-stones-deliver-grim-warnings-as-extreme-weather-events-plague-europe/)

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Juan Pujol García: The WWII double-agent who invented a fake army

by Matt Davis –

Big Think illustration.

Juan (Joan) Pujol García was instrumental in ensuring the success of the Allied invasion of Europe on D Day and, by extension, the Allied victory in the Second World War. But his actions during the war aren’t widely known. Despite being a little-known figure in history, García is one of the few, if not the only, individuals in the war to receive both an Iron Cross from Hitler and an MBE (a Member of the Order of the British Empire) from King George VI. His lack of fame might seem unjust, but a famous spy is kind of an oxymoron.

Arguably, García would become one of the most important figures in World War II, but prior to the war, he hadn’t amounted to much in his life. Mostly, he was a chicken farmer in Spain. He tried and failed to run a variety of businesses, including managing a cinema. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, he deserted the Republican army to join the Nationalists, only to be imprisoned when he expressed sympathy for the monarchy.

When World War II broke out, he was running a dumpy, one-star hotel in Madrid. He had been a mediocre soldier and had admitted he was ill-suited to warfare; so his motives for approaching the British to offer his services are unclear. The British seemed to think that a military deserter, ex-chicken farmer, and failed businessman would not be of much use in the war and turned him away. However, García was determined to participate in the war, and he would repeat his request to the British on three separate instances, only to be refused each time.

Juan Pujol García in the 7th Light Artillery uniform prior to the Spanish Civil War. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. 

A self-made spy

In what might be one of history’s greatest examples of unearned confidence, García decided that in order to build a resume as a spy, he should gain the trust of the Nazis and feed them misinformation from within. At that time, the Spanish government was sympathetic to but unallied with the Nazi government, and it was easy to make contact with the German army.

He tricked a printer in Portugal into thinking he was a Spanish government official working at the local embassy and obtained a diplomatic visa, which he used to bolster a false identity as a Nazi supporter who regularly traveled to London on diplomatic business. Considering that García spoke no English, this was a particularly bold lie.

The Nazis, however, bought García’s fabrication. They provided him with a crash course in spycraft, gave him £600 (equivalent to around $42,000 US today), and sent him on his way to London to recruit a network of spies. Without any English skills and with a fake passport, García went to Lisbon, Portugal, instead.

García had gotten what he wanted. He had gained the trust of the Nazis and was in contact with them. But now he had to supply them with misinformation. By combining publicly available information from newsreels, magazines, and tourists guides, García fabricated seemingly realistic reports of life in London and British activities, ostensibly fabricated by an entirely fictional spy network he had accumulated in London. These reports weren’t perfect, of course: at one point, he described how Glaswegians would do “anything for a litre of wine,” which is very much not the Scottish beverage of choice.

Despite all of this, his mocked-up reports were widely believed. They were so thoroughly believed that the British, upon intercepting the reports, launched a nationwide manhunt for the spy who had infiltrated their country. At the time, there were supposed to be no Axis spies in Britain, so this was very disconcerting news for the Allies.

Gaining the trust of the Allies

The trick that made the British believe in García’s value as a spy occurred when he invented an entirely fictional British armada in Malta that the Axis responded to in full force. Despite the nonexistence of an armada, the Nazis continued to trust García’s information. With his bona fides established, García was finally able to convince the British of his value in 1942.

Working with British intelligence, García invented 27 fictional sub-agents from whom he attributed the various pieces of intel that he cobbled together into coded, handwritten reports he sent to the Germans and later over the radio.

García’s reports consisted of a mixture of misinformation; true but useless information; and true, high-value information that always arrived too late. For instance, he provided accurate information on Allied forces landing in North Africa in a letter postmarked before the landings but delivered afterwards. The Nazis apologized to García for failing to act on his wonderful intelligence in time.

To account for why he failed to provide key information he would ostensibly have access to, García needed to fabricate a variety of different excuses. When he failed to report on a major movement of the British fleet, García informed his Nazi counterparts that his relevant sub-agent had fallen ill and later died. Bolstered by a fictional obituary in British papers, the Nazis were obliged to provide the fictional man’s fictional widow a very factual pension. To support García’s spy network, the Nazis were paying him $340,000 US (close to $6 million today).

The troops, tanks, and equipment used to overthrow the Nazis in Europe arriving at Normandy after D Day. Without Juan Pujol García’s spycraft, the success of the invasion would have been much less certain. Photo c/o Wikimedia Commons.

Exploiting the Nazis

García’s greatest moment came during Operation Overlord, which began during the invasion at Normandy on D Day. Having built up trust with the Nazis over the course of the war, Operation Overlord represented the opportunity to exploit that trust.

Through a flurry of reports, García convinced the German High Command that an invasion would take place at the Strait of Dover (which Hitler believed to be the case anyhow). In order to maintain his credibility, García told the Nazis to wait for a high-priority message at 3 AM: this was designed to provide the Germans with information on the actual target, Normandy, but just a little too late to prevent the invasion.

In a stroke of luck, the Nazis missed the 3 AM appointment and didn’t respond until later that morning. García chastised his handlers for missing the critical first message, saying “I cannot accept excuses or negligence. Were it not for my ideals, I would abandon the work.”

With this extra layer of credibility, García invented a fictional army—the First U.S. Army Group—led by General Patton himself and consisting of 150,000 men. With a combination of fake radio chatter and—no joke—inflatable tanks, German High Command was convinced of the presence of an army stationed in south Britain. García convinced the Nazis that this was the true invasion and that Normandy was a diversion. Two Nazi armored divisions and 19 infantry divisions were withheld at the Strait of Dover in anticipation of another attack, allowing the invading force from Normandy to establish a stronger position in France. Without these extra troops, the Axis failed to beat back the Allied invasion.

By inventing a fake army and controlling the flow of information to the Nazis, García ranks among one of the most influential figures of the war. His identity as a double agent was not revealed until decades after, which might explain why so little is heard of him. To be safe, he faked his death from malaria in 1949 and moved to Venezuela to run a bookshop.

(Source of this, and other very interesting articles: https://bigthink.com/matt-davis/juan-pujol-garcia-the-wwii-double-agent-who-invented-a-fake-army/)

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2,000-year-old Roman library discovered in Germany

What remains of the Cologne library. (Hi-flyFoto/Roman-Germanic Museum of Cologne)

 

Workers in Cologne, Germany have stumbled upon a 2000-year-old library while preparing a car park site for construction. The find, one of many archeological discoveries in the ancient city, has greatly excited archeologists, bibliophiles, and history buffs alike as it is the oldest known library in Germany.

Archeologists initially thought they had found a public meeting space until they noticed the walls had small niches carved into them that were too small to fit statues inside. “They are very particular to libraries—you can see the same ones in the library at Ephesus,” explained Dr. Dirk Schmitz, an archeologist involved in the excavation.

The library dates back to the second century AD, a golden age for the Roman Empire, and would have been built around the same time as many others, such as the Library of Celsus in Turkey. The construction of libraries was vogue at this time, and massive new buildings were put up to both store documents and glorify the builders. The Library of Celsus, for example, was built to commemorate Senator Tiberius Celsus, who was buried inside.

Tourists pose in front of the restored facade of the Library of Celsus in Izmir, Turkey. Its statues, facade, and size made it much larger than many other libraries of the day. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

The Cologne library is estimated to have held up to 20,000 parchment scrolls, all of which have long turned to dust. This makes it more extensive than many other libraries of the time, but much smaller than the Bibliotheca Ulpia, which needed separate buildings to hold its Greek and Latin collections, or the famous Library of Alexandria, which was built to house all of the knowledge of the ancient world.

What kind of scrolls could you get there?

The content of the scrolls the library held is the subject of pure speculation, but other libraries are known to have held records, histories, poetry, scientific manuscripts, philosophy, and works of Greek and Roman literature.

Since the Romans held Greek culture and thought in high regard, most major libraries would have had separate sections for both languages. Many upper-class Romans had private libraries and enjoyed reading what we now think of as classics, so it is probable that this library had works by Virgil and Homer.

So, could anybody have gone in and checked out a scroll?

Such a library would have been the domain of well-connected elites, so claims T. Keith Dix of the University of Georgia in his article “Public Libraries” in Ancient Rome: Ideology and Reality. While some Roman libraries were open to the general public, many were not, and the books and scrolls would be available only to those the local authorities liked. Records show that being able to take the books out of the library was rare and most people had to read the scrolls in the room where they got them.

In any case, William V. Harris claims in the book Ancient Literacy that no more than 5-10% of the population of the classical world would have been literate, with some scholarly areas seeing rates near 20%. He also tells us that members of the army tended to be more literate than most.

This is taking a strong definition of the word “literacy” though. The presence of graffiti on many Roman buildings shows that members of the lower classes could write, if poorly.

Since what is now Cologne was the heavily fortified capital of the frontier province of Germania Inferior, it is probable that the city had a decent number of literate citizens between its garrisons, administrators, educators, professionals, and priests who could have been patrons of the library.

(For the balance of this article please visit: https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/2000-year-old-roman-library-discovered-in-germany/)

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Was There a Civilization On Earth Before Humans?

A look at the available evidence

By Adam Frank –

It only took five minutes for Gavin Schmidt to out-speculate me.

Schmidt is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (a.k.a. GISS) a world-class climate-science facility. One day last year, I came to GISS with a far-out proposal. In my work as an astrophysicist, I’d begun researching global warming from an “astrobiological perspective.” That meant asking whether any industrial civilization that rises on any planet will, through their own activity, trigger their own version of a climate shift. I was visiting GISS that day hoping to gain some climate science insights and, perhaps, collaborators. That’s how I ended up in Gavin’s office.

Just as I was revving up my pitch, Gavin stopped me in my tracks.“Wait a second,” he said. “How do you know we’re the only time there’s been a civilization on our own planet?”

It took me a few seconds to pick my jaw off the floor. I had certainly come into Gavin’s office prepared for eye rolls at the mention of “exo-civilizations.” But the civilizations he was asking about would have existed many millions of years ago. Sitting there, seeing Earth’s vast evolutionary past telescope before my mind’s eye, I felt a kind of temporal vertigo. “Yeah,” I stammered, “Could we tell if there’d been an industrial civilization that deep in time?”

We never got back to aliens. Instead, that first conversation launched a new study we’ve recently published in the International Journal of Astrobiology. Though neither of us could see it at that moment, Gavin’s penetrating question opened a window not just onto Earth’s past, but also onto our own future.

We’re used to imagining extinct civilizations in terms of the sunken statues and subterranean ruins. These kinds of artifacts of previous societies are fine if you’re only interested in timescales of a few thousands of years. But once you roll the clock back to tens of millions or hundreds of millions of years, things get more complicated.

When it comes to direct evidence of an industrial civilization—things like cities, factories, and roads—the geologic record doesn’t go back past what’s called the Quaternary period 2.6 million years ago. For example, the oldest large-scale stretch of ancient surface lies in the Negev Desert. It’s “just” 1.8 million years old—older surfaces are mostly visible in cross section via something like a cliff face or rock cuts. Go back much farther than the Quaternary and everything has been turned over and crushed to dust.

And, if we’re going back this far, we’re not talking about human civilizations anymore. Homo sapiens didn’t make their appearance on the planet until just 300,000 years or so ago. That means the question shifts to other species, which is why Gavin called the idea the Silurian hypothesis, after an old Dr. Who episode with intelligent reptiles.

So, could researchers find clear evidence that an ancient species built a relatively short-lived industrial civilization long before our own? Perhaps, for example, some early mammal rose briefly to civilization building during the Paleocene epoch about 60 million years ago. There are fossils, of course. But the fraction of life that gets fossilized is always minuscule and varies a lot depending on time and habitat. It would be easy, therefore, to miss an industrial civilization that only lasted 100,000 years—which would be 500 times longer than our industrial civilization has made it so far.

Given that all direct evidence would be long gone after many millions of years, what kinds of evidence might then still exist? The best way to answer this question is to figure out what evidence we’d leave behind if human civilization collapsed at its current stage of development.

(For the balance of this article please see: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-we-earths-only-civilization/557180/)

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Meet Hypatia, the ancient mathematician who helped preserve seminal texts

Her dramatic death often overshadows her epic life, but it shouldn’t

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How Irish Pirate Queen Grace O’Malley Defied Elizabeth I And Conquered A Man’s World

By Daniel Rennie –


Grace O’Malley – YouTube. How pirate queen Grace O’Malley ruled the high seas, bent the English crown to her will, and rose to the top of a world with little place for women.While Mary, Queen of Scots succumbed to Queen Elizabeth I — and the executioner’s axe — Grace O’Malley was another “queen” who defied the English monarch for almost 40 years by plundering English ships and fiercely repelling the forces that tried to take her family’s land.

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A 2,000-Year-Old Mystery Papyrus Reveals Its Secrets

For centuries, no one could read it.

by Sarah Laskow – 

The papyrus before conservation. University of Basel.

At the University of Basel, in Switzerland, the papyrus collection contained a mystery. Most of the papyri had come to the university around 1900, for the classical studies curriculum, but two had been in the university’s possession for much longer, going back to the 16th century.

One of those papyri was unlike any other in the collection, and for generations, the university said, it puzzled researchers. As best they could tell, it had mirror writing on both sides, with the letters going the opposite direction that they should.

“It was considered an odd piece,” says Sabine Huebner, a professor of ancient history at the university. But now the university’s researchers have finally understood what was strange about it.

Turns out, it was many sheets of papyrus glued together.

This was not obvious, for 400 years or so. Recently, though, the Basel Digital Humanities Lab examined the papyrus under infrared and ultraviolet light. UV light isn’t usually used to help decipher papyri, but in this case it revealed that the mystery papyrus had “several layers bonded together with a sort of medieval glue,” Huebner explains.

Once they understood what was wrong, the researchers had a specialist come in to tease apart the layers. When, after all these years, they were able to read the document, they found that it was an unknown medical document—a piece of writing that will add to scholars’ understanding of the past.

Based on its similarities to papyri held in Ravenna, Italy, the papyrus text looks to be the work of Galen, the most well-known physician of the Roman era, or a commentary on his work. The text was probably used for bookbinding back in the Middle Ages, when either this text was more available than it is now or no one thought it was important to save.

(Source of this, and similar articles: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/basel-mystery-papyrus-galen/)

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Ancient human DNA found in dirt, not fossils

By Lisa-Ann Lee –

Several well-preserved Neanderthal remains have been found in the Vindija cave in Croatia (Credit: MPI f. Evolutionary Anthropology/ J. Krause)

 

When life gives you an ancient cave filled with dirt, look for DNA. That’s what paleontologists and those involved in the study of ancient humans will likely be doing in the future following the revelation of a breakthrough technique that enables hominin DNA to be recovered directly from sediments without the need for fossils.

Led by geneticist Viviane Slon as well as molecular biologist Matthias Meyer (both from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology), the team is the first to extract Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA directly from dirt samples collected from archaeological caves in Europe where their existence has been documented. More interestingly, they were also able to recover DNA at sites where no bones were ever found.

All living things leave behind genetic traces of themselves as they go through life, and our ancient ancestors were no different. One of the advantages of using this “eDNA” (environmental DNA) to study ecosystems and the animals living in them is that all it requires is a water or soil sample.

Unsurprisingly, scientists have been applying this technique to prehistoric animals – evolutionary geneticist Eske Willersev made headlines back in 2003 when he became the first scientist to sequence the DNA from species such as woolly mammoths from Siberian permafrost. However this doesn’t make the new findings any less of a feat given how difficult it is to isolate ancient human DNA. For a start, there’s the fact that it exists in minuscule traces from decomposed bodies, blood or feces, which often get lost among the other biological material in the soil. Secondly, there’s the difficulty of distinguishing it from modern human DNA, which inevitably ends up contaminating samples when researchers handle them.

Sure enough, while it wasn’t a problem identifying the DNA of extinct animal species such as the woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros in the sediment samples that they collected, identifying ancient human DNA required a far greater degree of precision.

“From the preliminary results, we suspected that in most of our samples, DNA from other mammals was too abundant to detect small traces of human DNA,” says Slon. “We then switched strategies and started targeting specifically DNA fragments of human origin.”

As documented in their study, they developed a molecular probe based on modern human mitochondrial DNA – which was chosen due to its abundance – to extract similar sequences. The researchers then compared the samples they found to known variants associated with Neanderthals or Denisovans and checked for chemical damage consistent with ancient DNA to make sure that they were looking at the right genetic material.

To prevent modern human DNA from contaminating the sediments, archaeologists working at El Sidrón cave in Spain, one of the sites in the study, also developed a protocol called “clean excavation” that enables researchers to extract both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from teeth and skeletal remains for comparison purposes.

The result: Not only were the researchers able to detect the presence of ancient hominin DNA in the sediment samples from four caves, they were also able to distinguish between species and even deduce when a specific group might have occupied a cave.

“This work represents an enormous scientific breakthrough,” explains paleontologist Antonio Rosas from the Natural Science Museum in Madrid, who was part of the study. “We can now tell which species of hominid occupied a cave and on which particular stratigraphic level, even when no bone or skeletal remains are present.”

A researcher carefully collects mud samples from El Sidrón cave in Spain (Credit: El Sidrón research team)

Case in point: The researchers found that the Denisovans and Neanderthals had occupied the Denisova Cave at different points in time based on the soil layer in which their DNA was found. “The Denisovans appear in the bottommost stratum, that is, in the oldest of the deposits,” says Rosas. “Their DNA in this sediment, without being associated with any skeletal remains, is the oldest proof of their existence right now.”

(For the balance of this article please see: https://newatlas.com/prehistoric-human-dna-el-sidron/49274/)

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Oldest human fossil found outside Africa rewrites migration timeline

  Michael Irving –

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by Scotty Hendricks –
India is a vast land, rich in history, beauty, and great ideas. Here, we want to introduce you to ten great minds in Indian thought. These ten thinkers span thousands of years, include several religions, and more than a few fields of expertise.1.  Parshvanatha (7^th or 8^th century BCE)

The flag of Jainism, each stripe represents a divinity as well as an ethical command. SourceThe first teacher of Jainism to be generally recognized as a historical individual, as he is mentioned not only in Jainist texts but in Buddhist works as well. Parshvanatha was a monk who taught for 70 years, and had a wide group of followers. His followers have four restraints: non-violence, non-theft, non-possession, and non-lying, as opposed to the five ethical commands found in other strains of Jainism. He also supported the idea that monks could wear clothes, in opposition to other schools which advocated strict ascetism. A quick introduction to Jainism can be found here.Souls render service to one another. –  A proverb of Jainism.2.  The Buddha (563 BCE- 483 BCE)

1. 

Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, was born into north Indian nobility and was raised for a life of luxurious rulership and conquest. After discovering that suffering existed in the world outside his palace, he renounced his titles and became a monk; living a life of extreme ascetism in stark contrast to his former royal excess. After years of meditation, he achieved enlightenment and began to preach the four noble truths about the nature of suffering and the way to escape it; by means of the middle way between hedonistic excess and severe asceticism. More information on Buddhism can be found here.

Righteousness, when well-practiced, brings happiness. Truth is the sweetest of flavours. They say the life of one living by wisdom is the best.

 3. Chanakya (4th century BCE)

The Maurya Empire, which Chanakya helped to establish, at its territorial height.

A Philosopher and statesman, Chanakya wrote the Arthashastra, an ancient text on political economy which has been compared favorably to the work of Machiavelli; as it focuses on keeping a ruler in power by means of wise rule and empowerment of the poor and not merely wicked statecraft. As an adviser to the emperor Chandragupta Maurya, he was one of the chief architects of the Maurya Empire, which would come to dominate the subcontinent for 150 years and would be led by the great Ashoka at its apex.

“If a king is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is reckless, they will not only be reckless likewise, but also eat into his works. Besides, a reckless king will easily fall into the hands of his enemies. Hence the king shall ever be wakeful.”

 4. Adi Shankara (8th century)

A theologian who unified several fields of thought in Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, whose ideas on the soul and enlightenment continue to be influential. He wrote several notable commentaries on Hindu holy texts, including the ten principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. His theology often focused on the issue of how Moshka could be achieved in life, and he argued that liberation was possible for a self-realized person. He toured India extensively during his short life, and debated many other philosophers in his travels. An introduction to Hinduism can be found here.

“Knowledge of the Self is the one direct means for liberation.”

5.  Guru Nanak (1469 – 1539)
The founder of Sikhism who is revered as “The First Guru” of the faith. Born near what is now Lahore, Pakistan in 1469; he preached meditation on the one god, the unity of mankind, service to others, honest conduct, and living a simple life. His teachings were recorded at the time, and collected by other gurus to form almost one thousand of the hymns in the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib. For those who would like an introduction to Sikhism, a video introduction is available here.“Make compassion the cotton, contentment the thread, modesty the knot and truth the twist.”(For the balance of this article please visit: https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/10-indian-thinkers-and-why-you-should-know-them/)

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Chocolate being prepared the Mayan way at Ixcacao farm in Belize. (Credit: Shutterstock). 

 

Money is one of the most important concepts in human history. Love it or hate it, we’ve devoted a lot of time to it. While we use paper currencies today, some of the items used as cash throughout history have been a little less recognizable, and some choices are hilarious in hindsight.

On the islands of Palau and Yap, four-ton stone rings called Rai stones are still used for measuring wealth and traditional purposes. In New France during the 18th century, playing cards became legal currency as gold and silver supplies dwindled. Colonial Virginia used tobacco, and British Canada used beaver pelts instead of metal coins.

But perhaps the strangest currency belonged to the Mayan people, who used cacao beans, the basis of chocolate, to pay their taxes and trade with one another.

Wait, cacao beans?

In a paper published in Economic Anthropologyby Joanne Baron of the Bard Early College Network, the argument is made that depictions of cacao beans in Mayan artwork gradually shift from treating it as food with some value in bartering to treating it as money used both to shop and pay taxes.

The Maya, like every other culture, depicted everyday lives in their art. While the earliest artwork didn’t show very many cacao beans, by the 8th century it was depicted on everything. While many of the early images show it being used as food, later images show it being offered as a tribute to the nobility or used in trade.

Nearly 200 pieces of artwork depict cacao beans being used to pay tribute and taxes, which Baron argues made them a functioning currency, as there was little chance the nobility could use that many beans as anything other than money. One cited study suggests that of the 11 million beans paid as taxes per year only two million were consumed. There isn’t much else to do with nine million beans you won’t eat unless you’re using them as cash.

It is possible that the Maya just started to depict cacao beans more often in their art without having made them officially money. However, the later recorded use of cacao beans as currency by the Aztecs supports the idea that the Maya did the same.

Why did they find these beans so valuable?

Mesoamericans have been cultivating cacao since nearly 2000 BCE and the bean originally had value as the basis for a mildly alcoholic drink. Later, a frothy, nonalcoholic drink similar to hot chocolate was developed. This refreshing drink rapidly became more popular than its predecessor and was used in offerings to the Gods. Chocolate was so adored that the cacao plant had its own deity who was regularly worshiped.

An indigenous Mexican pouring chocolate from a standing position, as depicted in the Codex Tudela.

It seems that the value of a cacao bean was always related to its intrinsic value as food, with the beans that were largest, roundest, and best colored having the highest value. However, the 16th-century naturalist Francisco Hernández informs us that while there were four kinds of beans, only the smallest type was used to make hot chocolate. The larger beans were still appraised by their ability to be made into beverages but were only used for exchange.

The Spanish conquerors of México also observed that since the qualities of a good bean were determined by looks the appearance of a bad bean could be altered to fool an absent-minded customer.

(For the balance of this article please visit: https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/a-sweet-economic-system-chocolate-was-money-in-ancient-maya-civilization/)

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10 Times Great Philosophers Revealed Their Personalities

Pythagoras was a cult leader, Socrates loved to dance + 8 other revelations

By Scotty Hendricks – 

Think of how many celebrities you know with personal lives for the world to see. How many of them do you share hobbies with? How many of them have made a humanizing slip-up?

People have been gossiping about celebrity lifestyles since the dawn of fame, but we often focus our attention on the lives of actors, athletes, and attention seekers. Famous academics and philosophers usually get a little more privacy.

This doesn’t mean their lives are any less interesting, however. An entire book, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, was written on the subject in the third century. A new edition reminds us that even eggheads can be just as amusing as rock stars.

Here are some of the most demystifying life stories of 10 famous philosophers. Take some of the details here with a grain of salt though, the book is rather uncritically written, and many details lack sources. Other details are supposedly confirmed by sources long since lost.

This hasn’t stopped other philosophers, Nietzsche and Montaigne among them, from admiring the text and it shouldn’t stop you.

Socrates 

Socrates is held in extremely high esteem as both a great philosopher and academia’s great martyr. In Diogenes’ biography, we are reminded of Socrates the man. He tells us of how Socrates served in the army, was often found socializing downtown, and edited his friends’ plays—including Euripides, one of the big three ancient Greek tragedians.

Perhaps most amusingly, Diogenes tells us that Socrates loved to dance and thought that “such exercise helped to keep the body in good condition.” He also learned how to play the lyre as an old man, just like your crazy uncle during his mid-life crisis, and “he saw no absurdity in learning a new accomplishment.”

In a showing of tremendous wit, when his wife told him he suffered unjustly, he asked her, “Would you have me suffer justly?” He also supposedly told a man that he would regret both getting married and being single, perhaps explaining that last remark.

Aristotle

Aristotle teaching Alexander the Great. Engraving by Charles Laplante (Public domain, via Wikimedia Common)

Plato’s most famous student, Aristotle would go on to touch every branch of human thought that existed at the time. He tutored Alexander the great, wrote an ethical theory that still has a punch, and founded his own academy in Athens.

The most interesting detail that Diogenes tells us about Aristotle is that he had a lisp or stutter. Given that many of Aristotle’s works were given as lectures and recorded later, we must imagine that he either embraced it or worked around it. Diogenes gives us sources for this claim, but his book has long since become the authority on the matter. Accurate or not, Aristotle makes it on to many lists of celebrities with speech impediments.

Thales 

Original Artwork: Engraving by Ambrose Tardieu (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Thales is the first philosopher in the western intellectual tradition and is most famous for his argument that water is the fundamental substance of the universe. He was also a noted mathematician, businessman, and sage.

Diogenes reminds us of his sharp wit. He records that when asked if there was a difference between life and death Thales responded that there was not. When he was then asked, “Why then, do you not die?” Thales retorted “Because it makes no difference.” On another occasion, he was asked which was older, nighttime or daytime. He replied, “Night is older, by one day.”

Plato 

Plato (left) and his student Aristotle (Right) as imagined by Raphael.

Plato’s contribution to western thought is impossible to overstate. Philosopher Alfred Whitehead went so far as to suggest that all of European philosophy was “a series of footnotes to Plato.”

Diogenes tells us a great many things about him. His name, allegedly, was given to him by his wrestling coach on account of his “robust figure”—the name is derived from the Greek word platys, meaning ‘broad’. Plato was skilled enough to participate in the Isthmian Games, which attracted athletes from all over Greece.

Platon was a common name, however, it would be strange for a family so wealthy and noble as Plato’s not to name him for an immediate male relative. Diogenes tells us that Plato’s real name was Aristocles, but this is impossible to confirm. Plato also called himself “Plato” later in his life, making the issue more difficult. In any case, we might know one of the greatest thinkers of all time by his stage name!

(For the balance of this article visit: https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/10-times-great-philosophers-revealed-their-personalities)

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The Voynich manuscript: Will this medieval mystery ever be solved?

By Jane Bracher, for CNN – 

Naked women in pools of green liquid, strange looking plants, and text written in an unknown alphabet; they can all be found on the delicate parchment pages of a mysterious manuscript from the 15th century. And nobody knows what any of it means.

Frayed, browned and in fragile condition, the Voynich manuscript currently resides deep in a basement at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library but digitized copies of it are available for free online.

Examining images from the manuscript.

(For the balance of this article please visit: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/15/health/voynich-manuscript-mystery/index.html)

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Debate stirs over mysterious “void” found inside Egypt’s Great Pyramid

  Rich Haridy

6 pictures

A team of scientists has discovered a mysterious “big void” inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, the largest pyramid in the Giza complex. The void was discovered using a novel scanning technology called cosmic-ray muon radiography, and while the scanning team is suggesting this could be an undiscovered inner structure, some Egyptologists are not convinced.

The scanning project, called ScanPyramids, was launched in late 2015 and set out to scan four specific Egyptian pyramids using a variety of new and innovative scanning technologies. In the case of the Great Pyramid, the team deployed a scanning technique that detects the path of muon particles, an elementary particle that is created when cosmic rays collide with atoms in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

The team developed three separate muon-detection techniques and investigated the path of these particles through the Great Pyramid. The path of muons is straight unless they hit a dense or solid object, and then they can be slightly deflected. By measuring these particle tracks scientists can identify whether they are moving through solid rock or if there are empty spaces.

Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists recently revealed the discovery of a large void above the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid. The discovery was confirmed using all three muon detection processes and it is suspected to be about 30 meters (100 ft) long.

(For balance of this article visit: https://newatlas.com/void-great-pyramid-skepticism/52037/)

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Left: A purported Chinese map from the 15th century showing parts of North and South America. (Public domain) Right: Zheng He, a Chinese explorer. (Alex Santosa/CC BY-SA)

   

The Chinese may have beaten the famous voyage of Columbus by 70 years

By April Holloway, www.ancient-origins.net

November 17, 2017 8:14 pm Last Updated: November 17, 2017 8:14 pm

 

There are a few controversial claims floating around that the Americas were reached by oversea cultures before Columbus made his well-known visit to the “New World” in 1492. For example, Italian physicist and philologist Lucio Russo has presented the argument that the ancient Greeks reached America long before Columbus.

Another intriguing argument suggests the Chinese “discovered” the Americas 70 years prior to the famous voyage.

The suggestion that the Chinese arrival predated Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas is a major argument of the amateur historian Gavin Menzies. In fact, it seems that Menzies has made his career by going against the mainstream view of the past.

 

Three of his more debated books are “1421: The Year China Discovered the World,”a book claiming a Chinese fleet led by Admiral Zheng He reached the Americas in 1421; its sequel “1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance”; and a text that mainstream thinkers regularly mock, “The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History’s Greatest Mystery Revealed.”

A Chinese map from 1418 seems to show parts of North and South America, according to Menzies.

You may wonder about Menzies’s claims. In the text “Who Discovered America: The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas,” Menzies argues a Chinese map from 1418 provides evidence for his argument that the Chinese explored the Americas in 1421.

Specifically, Menzies makes mention to a map charted by Admiral Zheng He which appears to show North American rivers and coasts and something of South America. DNA studies are also used as his evidence for indigenous Americans being related to the waves of Asian settlers he asserts reached the Americas.

Menzies says the map helps explain the Chinese names of some places in Peru.

A Christie’s Auctions’ appraiser has allegedly confirmed the authenticity of the map. Historians are also said to have stated the map was written in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Menzies says that the map’s validity can also be used to explain the Chinese names of several towns and regions in Peru.

Menzies has been repeatedly criticized and mocked by the mainstream academic community.

For example, University of London history professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto has suggested that Menzies’s books are “the historical equivalent of stories about Elvis Presley in (the supermarket) and close encounters with alien hamsters.”

While it’s true Menzies may not be correct in his claims, it is extremely unfortunate that a person courageous enough to make his assertions has been so widely mocked for presenting an idea that dares to go against the mainstream.

Republished with permission. Read the original at Ancient-Origins.net. 

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Visit The Epoch Times Beyond Science page on Facebook to continue exploring the new frontiers of science!

In Beyond Science, The Epoch Times explores research and accounts related to phenomena and theories that challenge our current knowledge. We delve into ideas that stimulate the imagination and open up new possibilities.

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How Spanish, not English, was nearly the world’s language

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The Tacoma Bridge collapse of 1940 in Washington, USA was a calamity of the world’s third longest suspension bridge back then and had a crucial impact on engineering. It caused the governing of the modeling of all the long-span bridges in the future.

Image credits: University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection’s photostream/Flickr , Botaurus-stellaris/Wikimedia

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was an iconic, long-span bridge built in the state of Washington in the USA in the 1930s. It was opened to traffic on t July 1940. Leon Moisseiff planned the building’s design to be far more flexible than the acceptable standard ratios.

On 7 November 1940, strong winds of 40 mph battered the area and the bridge oscillated significantly. The bridge towers were made of strong, structural carbon steel, yet they proved no match for the violent movements which eventually caused the bridge to collapse. Fortunately, there were no fatalities except for a dog. The estimated loss from the mishap was $6.4 million.

(For more on other engineering disasters visit: https://mrbublenews.com/index.php/2018/04/14/the-14-worst-disasters-engineering-history/)

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Boy unearths lost treasure of 10th century Danish king

Published  2018 Apr 17

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Abandoned Train – Pinterest.com – Abandoned Steam Engine Train – Skeleton Coast – Namibia – 622ccc3f121cfb3e345284d4ca685a13 – “Dead End” by Keith Alexander, South African visual artist.

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The Tewa Village in Hopiland

Heady feelings of triumph for the people of the central New Mexico pueblos didn’t last long after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.  Governor Otermín’s attempted return reminded the Puebloans that the Spanish would eventually return, and remembering how they seemed to stand in the path of any conquering army, they decided to relocate.  When the Spanish did return, many more relocated, and after the failed revolt in 1696,many pueblos were abandoned entirely, out of fear of retribution.  Some of these refuges found a home on the Hopi First Mesa [in what is, today, Arizona].

For the full story, see the chapter entitled The Tewa Village in Hopi in the book Forgotten Tales of New Mexico by Ellen Dornan published by The History Press. ArcadiaPublishing.com. ISBN: 978-1609494858. $13.00. 176 pages. 5″x7″.

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