Missing link? African bones predate earliest-known humans by 400,000yrs

Screenshot from vimeo user Arizona State University

RT | Mar 5, 2015

A newly discovered fossil has shaken up science’s view of human evolution and could be the missing link between apes and humans: 400,000 years older than the oldest human bone found, the discovery could entirely rewrite our story.

For decades scientists have been stumped on the gap between humans that walked bent over and those that walked upright. Who was the mysterious ancestor that joined the ape-like Australopithecus with the human-like Homo? We could be looking at an answer. It now appears the timeline for earliest upright humans goes back not to 2.3 – but to 2.8 million years.


Institute of Human Origins Discovery from Arizona State University on Vimeo.

An Ethiopian student at Arizona State University and an accompanying research team discovered the lower jawbone and five teeth in Ethiopia in 2013. Now, for the first time, the findings have been published in two papers simultaneously, while a third supprorted the notion that this could indeed be a unique species, and not a Homo habilis.

The fragments definitely belong to the Homo lineage (of which we are the only remainder), but scientists are puzzled about what the species exactly is. In fact, it could turn out to be a completely new one.

Found 250 miles from Addis Ababa, the fragments are believed to belong to our ancestor from when the current dry land was still wetlands, interspersed with trees providing shade and rivers nourishing them. It was discovered not too far from another famous find – Lucy, the ape-like Austrolapithecus afarensis, known to be the earliest potential ancestor of the human family.

That transition between the two types is the first time in our history we switched from bashing things with rocks to actually using our brains to solve puzzles, although there was another transitional type – the crude and less brainy Paranthropus – thought to have appeared just before the transition to Homo.

Chalachew Seyoum of ASU, screenshot
from video, Arizona State University

"There is a big gap in the fossil record between about 2.5 million and 3 million years ago — there's virtually nothing relating to the ancestors of Homo from that time period, in spite of a lot of people looking," study co-author and one of the leaders of the team, Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada, told Live Science.

Now, for the first time, the 700,000-year hole between Lucy-like and Homo-type humans is beginning to fill up with information.

“This is a little piece of the puzzle that opens the door to new types of questions and field investigations that we can go after to try to find additional evidence to fill in this poorly known time period,” ASU Institute of Human Origins director William H. Kimbel said in the press release.

“It’s an excellent case of a transitional fossil in a critical time period in human evolution,” he added.
The nature of the new find is not without its naysayers: some scientists have posited that the fossil actually belongs to the well-known species of Homo habilis –the earliest known member of the Homo lineage. But careful digital processing has shown that these are not Homo habilis fragments and they in fact belong to a creature that came shortly before it.

It took years for scientists to get to where they are now. The research started in 2002 with painstaking surveying. The scientists were careful not to disturb anything unnecessarily. “So it took us basically 13 years to find this [human ancestor]. It doesn’t mean that the work that we did was wasted up until that time. But when we did find this [jaw], we were pretty excited that after all this time it actually worked out,” assistant professor and co-author Chris Campisano said.

Screenshot from vimeo user Arizona State University

The expectation was that if they were to dig around the area, they would find Lucy’s contemporaries – not what looked like the missing link.

“We first started collecting fossils in the area around where the jaw was eventually found in 2012,” Campisano went on. “When we realized how old the sediments were, we thought we might be able to find more specimens of Lucy’s species and figure out what happened to that lineage. Instead, we were rewarded with a much more exciting discovery.”

“Honestly, it was an exciting moment…I had good experience in field surveying and knew where potential sediments are. I climbed up a little plateau and found this specimen right on the edge of the hill,” said Chalachew Seyoum, the student behind the find.

What we know for sure, according to Professor Kaye Reed of ASU, is that the creature walked on two legs and lived in eastern Africa. Diet and tool use are very important logical next steps to understanding just how clever this ancestor was.

The research continues at ASU for other fossils around the same area to find answers to those questions.

Screenshot from vimeo user Arizona State University

Maya Mural Reveals Ancient 'Photobomb'

A man with the title "junior obsidian" kneels before the king
in a Maya mural researchers uncovered in Guatemala in 2010.
Credit: Illustration by Heather Hurst, copyright 2014

Live Science | Feb 20, 2015 | Laura Geggel

An ancient Maya mural found in the Guatemalan rainforest may depict a group portrait of advisers to the Maya royalty, a new study finds.

Most Maya murals depict life within the royal sphere, but the newfound mural, uncovered in the Guatemalan rainforest in 2010, shows a vibrant scene of intellectuals consulting with the royal governor, who is dressed as the Maya wind god.

Behind him, an attendant, almost hidden behind the king's massive headdress, adds a unique photobomb to the mural, said Bill Saturno, the study's lead researcher and an assistant professor of archaeology at Boston University. [See Photos of the Ancient Maya Mural]

The murals also provide information about a man buried beneath them. During an excavation, the archaeologists found the skeleton of a man dressed like the sages in the mural. It's possible the man once lived in the room, which later became his final resting place, Saturno said.

Archaeologists discovered the approximately 1,250-year-old mural in the ancient city of Xultun, located in the northeastern part of present-day Guatemala. During an archaeological study of Xultun, an undergraduate student inspecting an old looters' trail noticed traces of paint on an ancient wall covered by dirt.

"My assumption was that there would be very little to see," Saturno said. "Not because the Maya didn't paint murals — they did — but they don't preserve well in a tropical environment."

However, the elements had been kind to the building and its treasures. The excavation uncovered a rectangular room covered with murals and a Maya calendar, the oldest known Maya dating system on record.

Mysterious obsidians

The mural is one of only two known murals in the eastern Maya lowlands that have lasted throughout the ages, the researchers said. The Xultun paintings, illustrated in vibrant red, blue, green and black pigments, cover three of the room's four walls. The fourth wall, damaged by looters, contains the door.

Saturno and his colleagues excavated past the point where the looters tunneled, and came face-to-face with "the polychrome face of a king seated with his blue-feathered headdress," Saturno said. A man kneeling before the king, labeled itz'in taaj, or "junior obsidian," faces the king in profile.

ch'ok, or "youth," and another is called sakun taaj, or "senior obsidian."

This illustration shows a view of the northern
and western walls in the Xultun mural chamber.
Credit: Illustration by Heather Hurst, copyright 2014

Behind the junior obsidian, on the west wall, are three men dressed in black and sitting cross-legged. One of the men is labeled

It's unclear what "obsidian" means, the researchers said.

"Are they religious? Are they scholars? Is there a line between those things?" Saturno said. "They seem to be making books and painting tables on the walls."

All three men wear the same headdress with a medallion and feathery plume, a white loincloth and a medallion on their chests.

"You see these three guys dressed identically and lining up on one wall," Saturno said. "That's strange. They're clearly being represented as a unit."

The fact that they're all wearing the same uniform suggests the obsidians shared similar duties, Saturno said. Moreover, the people who filled the obsidian order probably lived in the room for a period of time, as there are dozens of texts painted on the walls. [Maya Murals: Stunning Images of King & Calendar]

Water and tree roots largely damaged the east wall, but the archaeologists still managed to find the painted remains of three individuals.

All the king's men

The mural may depict a consultation between the king and the obsidian, the researchers said. The king is dressed as a version of the wind god, holding a staff with wind symbols on it.

"Maya kings often dress up as deities in performance," Saturno said. "Essentially re-enacting events from the mythic past."

The timing of the performance was important, and the obsidian may have been advising the king about its correct date, he said. To remember meetings such as these, obsidians or artists may have painted the mural, he said.

"The mural establishes a direct relationship between a particular order, or guild, of Xultun artists and scribal-priests and their lord, and it celebrates its members’ achievement in consulting and producing work for their sovereign's reign," the researchers wrote in the study.

The king sports blue, green and orange accessories, whereas the obsidians are painted in reddish and black colors. The pigments from the king's portrait "are not common to that part of the region where it's from," Saturno said. "These are materials that are being traded in."

The painting also shows an attendant behind the king, possibly to hold up his headdress, Saturno said. "It's like a photobomb," he joked. "He's almost like, 'Do you see me here?'"

In contrast, the orange and red colors are made from local pigments, which likely helped differentiate between royal and non-royal subjects in the mural, the researchers said.

The study is "a brilliant gem of scholarship," said David Freidel, a professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved with the study.

"This room celebrates a special group of members of the royal court of Xultun that are called obsidian, [or] taaj," Freidel said. "The obsidian people appear to be present at other sites, but we don't know much about them."

It's remarkable that the intricate mural wasn't painted at the royal residence, said Takeshi Inomata, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, who wasn't involved in the study.

"This comes from the residence of a courtier, a court official," Inomata said. "This tells us about how those political organizations of Maya society were run, and then we can really get to the people who are really doing all of those things."

The study was published in the February issue of the journal Antiquity. The coauthors are Heather Hurst at Skidmore College in New York, Franco Rossi at Boston University and David Stuart at the University of Texas at Austin.

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Discourses on an Alien Sky | Cosmic Catastrophe & Cultural Obsession

Thunderbolts Project | Feb 15, 2015 | David Talbot

In this third of the Discourses series, Dave Talbott offers a few glimpses of the mythic subject matter and the reasoning protocol for drawing reliable conclusions from ancient witnesses.


See the three full documentaries in the Symbols of an Alien Sky series:

Episode 1, Symbols of an Alien Sky documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7EAl...

Episode 2, Symbols of an Alien Sky: The Lightning-Scarred Planet, Mars documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRV1e...

Episode 3, Symbols of an Alien Sky: The Electric Comet documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt...

Ancient Amulet Discovered with Curious Palindrome Inscription

Live Science | Jan 1, 2015 | Owen Jarus

An ancient, two-sided amulet uncovered in Cyprus contains a 59-letter inscription that reads the same backwards as it does forwards.

Archaeologists discovered the amulet, which is roughly 1,500 years old, at the ancient city of Nea Paphos in southwest Cyprus.

The amulet contains a Greek inscription, 59 letters
long, which reads the same backwards as it
does forwards, a feature known as a palindrome.
The three letters at the very bottom, ΕΑΙ, were
squeezed in and are hard to read. The amulet
is about 1.4 inches by 1.6 inches (34.9 millimeters
by 41.2 millimeters) in size. The inscription
translates as “Iahweh is the bearer of the
secret name, the lion of Re secure in his
shrine.” Although the translation doesn’t
read as a palindrome, the original
ancient Greek text does.
Credit: Photo by Marcin Iwan, artifact
from the excavations of Jagiellonian
University in Krakow at Paphos Agora

One side of the amulet has several images, including a bandaged mummy (likely representing the Egyptian god Osiris) lying on a boat and an image of Harpocrates, the god of silence, who is shown sitting on a stool while holding his right hand up to his lips. Strangely, the amulet also displays a mythical dog-headed creature called a cynocephalus, which is shown holding a paw up to its lips, as if mimicking Harpocrates' gesture. [The 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]

On the other side of the amulet is an inscription, written in Greek, that reads the same backwards as it does forwards, making it a palindrome. It reads:

ΙΑΕW

ΒΑΦΡΕΝΕΜ

ΟΥΝΟΘΙΛΑΡΙ

ΚΝΙΦΙΑΕΥΕ

ΑΙΦΙΝΚΙΡΑΛ

ΙΘΟΝΥΟΜΕ

ΝΕΡΦΑΒW

ΕΑΙ

This translates to "Iahweh (a god) is the bearer of the secret name, the lion of Re secure in his shrine."

Researchers have found similar palindromes elsewhere in the ancient world writes Joachim Śliwa, a professor at the Institute of Archaeology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, in an article recently published in the journal Studies in Ancient Art and Civilization.

Śliwa notes that the scribe made two small mistakes when writing this palindrome, in two instances writing a "ρ" instead of "v."

The amulet was discovered in the summer of 2011 by archaeologists with the Paphos Agora Project. Led by Jagiellonian University professor Ewdoksia Papuci-Wladyka, this team is excavating an ancient agora at Nea Paphos, and uncovered this amulet during their work. Agoras served as gathering places in the ancient world.

Amulets like the one found at Nea Paphos were made to protect their owners from danger and harm, Papuci-Wladyka told Live Science in an email.

Christians and pagans

During the 5th and 6th centuries, Cyprus was part of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had split in two during the 4th century, with Cyprus falling under control of the east. When the Western Roman Empire fell during the 5th century, the Eastern Roman Empire continued to flourish and became what is sometimes called the Byzantine Empire.

The amulet has several images. At the bottom,
there is a mummy (likely the Egyptian god Osiris)
wrapped in bandages, lying on a boat. Above
the mummy, there is an image of Harpocrates,
a god of silence, shown sitting on a stool.
Harpocrates’ right hand is raised up to his
lips and there is a scepter in his left hand.
To the right of Harpocrates there is a
dog-headed creature called a cynocephalus
that has a paw beside its lips, mimicking
Harpocrates gesture. There is a snake
between the cynocephalus and Harpocrates,
the snake’s head facing Harpocrates. There
are also depictions of a crocodile,
bird (likely a rooster), half moon and a star.
Credit: Photo by Marcin Iwan, artifact from
the excavations of Jagiellonian University
in Krakow at Paphos Agora

By the 5th century, Christianity was the official religion of the Eastern Roman Empire, and as time went on, traditional polytheistic (also called pagan) practices came under tighter restrictions and bans. Nevertheless, some people continued to practice the old beliefs, worshipping the traditional gods.

This amulet adds to evidence that people practiced traditional, polytheistic beliefs on Cyprus for an extended time, Papuci-Wladyka said. She notes that a structure called the Villa of Theseus has a mosaic with pagan elements that was likely repaired as late as the 7th century A.D.

It "rather seems that Christian and pagan religions coexisted in Paphos in times of [the] amulet being in use," Papuci-Wladyka told Live Science in an email.

Strange iconography

Despite that coexistence, the amulet has several unusual features that suggest its creator didn't fully understand the mythological characters depicted.

"It must be stated that the depiction is fairly unskilled and schematic. It is iconographically based on Egyptian sources, but these sources were not fully understood by the creator of the amulet," Śliwa wrote in the journal article.

For instance, rather than sitting on a stool, Harpocrates should be sitting on a lotus flower, with legs drawn up, Śliwa said. Additionally, the dog-headed cynocephalus should not be mimicking Harpocrates. In "the classic version, the cynocephalus faces Harpocrates with paws raised in adoration," Śliwa wrote."We can find no justification for the cynocephalus's gesture of raising its right paw to its lips in a manner similar to Harpocrates."

Even stranger is the fact that Harpocrates and the cynocephalus have crisscrossing lines on their bodies, which suggest the ancient artist thought these figures should be mummified along with Osiris. While the cynocephalus can be shown with mummy bandages, Harpocrates is not supposed to have them. Mummy bandages have "no justification in the case of Harpocrates," Śliwa wrote.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Quantum Physics and Romanesque Art - Lothar Schäfer, Ph.D.

scienceandnonduality | Dec 26, 2014

Deep Truths Are Eternal. They constantly return and engage the Human Mind. The discovery of Quantum Physics that there is an invisible part of the world, which doesn't consist of things, but of non-material forms, is such a truth. We find it, for example, in the work of the European Romanesque Artists, between 1000 – 1120 CE. the artists at that time believed that the basis of reality is an invisible mystery, and they wanted to reveal that mystery in their art. In this lecture the parallels between the world view of Quantum Physics and that of the Romanesque Artists will be described, which suggest that our mind is connected with a Cosmic Mind, which expresses its principles as thoughts in our mind and as material structures in the external world.

Lothar Schäfer is Distinguished Professor (emeritus) of Physical Chemistry at the University of Arkansas. His research in physical chemistry, electron diffraction, applied quantum chemistry, and computational chemistry led to developing the first real-time gas electron diffraction instrument in which data is recorded online, enabling the first pulsed-beam, timeresolved studies of laser-excited molecules, and to performing the first quantum chemical geometry determinations of peptide molecules, predicting structural trends in proteins a decade before experimental observation. Author of Infinite Potential and In Search of Divine Reality.

Medieval City's Underground Ruins Discovered in England

Archaeologists have uncovered the layout
of a medieval city near Salisbury, England.
Credit: English Heritage

Live Science | Dec 16, 2014 | Kelly Dickerson

Archaeologists have uncovered the network of a medieval city in England that dates back to the late 11th century.

The settlement, which includes a cathedral and a castle, is located at the historic site of Old Sarum, near Salisbury. In its heyday, the city thrived for about 300 years, but eventually declined in the 13th century, with the Roman conquest and the rise of New Sarum, the researchers said. Archaeologists have long known that the medieval city existed in Old Sarum, but this is the first detailed layout of the city ever created.

"Our survey shows where individual buildings are located and from this we can piece together a detailed picture of the urban plan within the city walls," Kristian Strutt, an archaeologist from the University of Southampton who is working on the site, said in a statement.

Strutt and the team discovered a series of huge structures that line the southern edge of the city's outer wall. The archaeologists think the structures are remnants of large defensive buildings that were designed to protect the city.

The team also found evidence of residential homes clustered in the southeastern and southwestern corners, between the outer and inner city walls. Old mineral deposits scattered throughout the site may be remnants of kilns or furnaces. Some evidence suggests the city may have been lived in again for a brief period after the 1300s.

The Old Sarum site belongs to English Heritage, an organization that advises the English government on historical sites. Because English Heritage wants to preserve the site, Strutt and the team of researchers didn't rely on traditional, Indiana Jones-style excavation tools. Instead, the researchers scanned the site using a series of noninvasive, high-tech survey techniques.

Archaeology tools have grown increasingly more sophisticated, and archaeologists are even using 3D-printed drones to explore sites now. For the Old Sarum survey, the team started by using magnetometry, a method that measures patterns in magnetic field strength. Magnetometry can create a map of features lying just below the Earth's surface, since every material has a unique magnetic property that leaves its own distinct signature on a magnet reader. The researchers also used ground-penetrating radar (GPR), which fires Earth-penetrating microwaves at the ground and measures signals that reflect off structures lying below the surface.

The team also used a method called electrical resistivity tomography (ERT). ERT is a noninvasive way to get a picture of structures that might be buried deeper than magnetometers or GPR can detect. The method involves strands of electrodes lowered into deep boreholes. The electrodes can pick up the electrical resistance of currents that pass through materials buried below the surface.

Follow Kelly Dickerson on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Meteorite From Mars Contains Alien Biomass: Scientists

© Flickr/ Jon Taylor

Sputnik News | Dec 3, 2014

A meteorite from Mars, found in the Moroccan desert three years ago, contains organic matter of extraterrestrial origin, scientists say.

MOSCOW, December 3 (Sputnik) — Chinese scientists discovered that a meteorite of Martian origin that hit Earth in Morocco in summer 2011, contains signs of water and organic carbon combinations, which may be evidence of extraterrestrial life dating 700,000 years back in time. 

Meteorite ‘Tissint’ landed in the midst of Moroccan desert of Guelmim-Es Semara on 18 July, 2011, roughly 700,000 years after it was chopped off the Martian surface by an asteroid from outer space. The 8-kg gray-coloured glassy boulder surprised scientists, as in contained traces of water, but it was only recently that the researchers found previously unidentified matter in its carbon composition, biological  and organic in nature.

The researchers assumed the organic matter could still have appeared on the space guest after it landed on Earth. But the recent tests have ultimately proven it is extraterrestrial nature.

"We cannot and do not want to entirely exclude the possibility that organic carbon within Tissint may be of abiotic origin," Professor Yangting Lin of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing wrote, suggesting the organic matter may still be physical, not biological, in origin. However, this is very unlikely.

"It could be possible that the organic carbon originated from impacts of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. However, it is not easy to conceive by which processes chondritic carbon could have been selectively extracted from the impacting carbonaceous chondrites, selectively removed from the soil and later impregnated in the extremely fine rock veins," Lin concludes. The full study was published in the journal ‘Meteoritics & Planetary Science’.

The scientists point out the organic matter is extraterrestrial in origin and has four unusual features. Firstly, the meteorite did not spend a lot of time on Earth outside of the scientists’ control. Secondly, the organic matter was sealed inside the rock, under its glassy surface, created by the high temperatures only possible at atmospheric entry. Thirdly, some of these carbon compositions hardened into diamond, which is also only possible in natural conditions outside of Earth. Fourthly, the carbon-containing matter also bears a lot of deuterium, found in Martian soil.

John L. Casey Interview - The Coming Cold Crisis 2015

On Point Preparedness | Dec 2, 2014

Chronic record cold temperatures, double the normal high magnitude earthquakes, and massive volcanic eruptions. While government sponsored scientists are not making the connection, top scientist John L. Casey has, and will share his perspective on a coming cold era that has repeated itself through history every 200 years.

Laser from a plane discovers Roman goldmines in Spain

© J. Fernández Lozano, et al.
Ancient goldmines in the Eria river valley, with
channels and reservoirs for exploitation. The model
generated with LiDAR data (left) allows these
structures to be located on aerial photos (right).

SOTT | Nov 19, 2014

Hidden under the vegetation and crops of the Eria Valley, in León (Spain), there is a gold mining network created by the Romans two thousand years ago, as well as complex hydraulic works, such as river diversions, to divert water to the mines of the precious metal. Researchers from the University of Salamanca made the discovery from the air with an airborne laser tele-detection system.

 Las Médulas in León is considered to be the largest opencast goldmine of the Roman Empire, but the search for this metal extended many kilometres further south-east to the Erica river valley. Thanks to a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) laser system attached to an aircraft, the ancient mining works of the area and the complex hydraulics system used by the Romans in the 1st century BC to extract gold (including channels, reservoirs and a double river diversion) have been discovered.

"The volume of earth exploited is much greater than previously thought and the works performed are impressive, having achieved actual river captures, which makes this valley extremely important in the context of Roman mining in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula," as Javier Fernández Lozano, geologist at the University of Salamanca and co-author of this study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, tells SINC.

The specialists consider that the systems for the transport and storage of water were copied from those already existing in North Africa, where the Egyptians had been employing them for centuries. Some details of the methodology used appear in texts such as those of the Pliny the Elder, the Roman procurator in charge of overseeing mining in Hispania.

"We have established that the labour that went into extracting the resource until its exhaustion was so intensive that after removing the gold from surface sediments, operations continued until reaching the rocks with the auriferous quartz veins underneath," explains Fernández Lozano.

The researcher stresses that the real discoverer was the LiDAR technology: "Unlike traditional aerial photography, this airborne laser detection system allows the visualisation of archaeological remains under vegetation cover or intensely ploughed areas".

From aircraft or drones

LiDAR comprises a laser sensor which scans the ground from an aircraft or drone with geographical references provided by GPS ground stations. The data obtained is represented by point clouds, which are processed with a piece of software to construct a cartographic model where the forms are identified, such as old reservoirs or channels.

This technology was developed by NASA in the sixties to analyse the retreating sea ice in the Arctic and composition of the oceans. Since then their use has been extended to topography, cadastral mapping, geology and archaeology. According to the authors, the study of Roman mining in the Eria valley is the first piece of 'geo-archaeology' performed with LiDAR in Spain.

"Our intention is to continue working with this technique to learn more about mineral mining in the Roman Empire and clear up any mysteries such as why Rome abandoned such a precious resource as gold from one day to the next," concludes the researcher.

References:

Javier Fernández-Lozano, Gabriel Gutiérrez-Alonso, Miguel Fernández-Morán. "Using airborne LiDAR sensing technology and aerial orthoimages to unravel roman water supply systems and gold works in NW Spain (Eria valley, León)". Journal of Archaeological Science, 12 November 2014 (online).

Source: La Ciencia es Noticia

Climate Perception, Projection and Propaganda

Watts Up With That | Nov 17, 2014 | Dr. Tim Ball

A major reason why Al Gore’s deceptive use of the melting Arctic ice was so effective is because most people have little idea what the real world is like. They have no image of the Arctic Oceans, shape or size, partly because they effectively live in a two-dimensional world. That is not a problem for them or society until someone exploits it. Gore was part of a global political agenda that exploited it. It was an agenda that expanded H L Mencken’s comment about politics to a global scale.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Now, it was less likely people would know it was imaginary.

People have no accurate image of the Arctic Ocean because of how they are born, nature, and educated, nurture. They are primarily a combination of nature/nurture that prioritizes what is necessary for individual survival. In addition, their inabilities are a result of several things, but primarily, a limited ability to grasp and imagine three dimensions. Their daily visual stimuli tell them it is a flat earth. As humans moved to expand their horizons, they were confronted with the challenge of producing two-dimensional maps that attempt to portray a three-dimensional world. I learned about all these limitations when teaching and running labs for students using weather maps, topographic maps, aerial photographs and satellite imagery. It is why two-dimensional weather maps are adequate, but a forecaster needs to be able to visualize the third dimension depicted by isobars.

One of the most difficult ideas to explain to students about weather and climate is the Coriolis Effect. First, there is the challenge of it causing a change, so it appears logical to assume there is a force involved. As a result, people speak incorrectly of a Coriolis Force. Second, is the challenge of understanding a three-dimensional world, when our perceptions are essentially two-dimensional. Nowhere is this more evident than in map projections and people’s perceptions and understanding of the world.

Human adaptation of the third dimension is very much an intellectual, philosophical, and perceptual issue. The “Greek Miracle”, from approximately 700 to 400 BC, is embodied in the Parthenon. It wasn’t just the mathematical proportions, but also accommodation to a world seen by the curvature of the eye. The base of the Parthenon is not level, but raised in the center. If built level then, if viewed from either end, it would appear to dip in the middle.

Read more..

History Secrets: The Prussian Connection to American Schooling (Part 4), by John Taylor Gatto

School Sucks Podcast | Oct 30, 2014

Where did the American school system come from? And what are its true purposes?

These are excerpts from John Taylor Gatto's book, The Underground History of American Education
Chapter Seven: The Prussian Connection,
Section 93: "The Technology of Subjection" and
Section 94: "The German/American Reichsbank"

Get the book: http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/
PDF: http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/i...
Audiobook: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/pr...

The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend With John Taylor Gatto (Documentary)
https://www.tragedyandhope.com/th-fil...

RELATED:  

History Secrets: The Prussian Connection to American Schooling (Part 3), by John Taylor Gatto

Dr. Peter Dale Scott on the American War Machine

Dissident Thinker | Mar 26, 2012

We speak to Dr. Peter Dale Scott on his latest book, "American War Machine."

We discuss the politically correct atmosphere in education, CIA drug trafficking, assassination, deep politics and the drug war in Mexico.

You can find Dr. Scott at: http://peterdalescott.net

‘Icebergs once drifted to Florida’

Watts Up With That | Oct 13, 2014 | Anthony Watts

From the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the department of melted evidence, comes this interesting story about the last ice age.

Icebergs once drifted to Florida, new climate model suggests

The first study to show that when the large ice sheet over North America known as the Laurentide ice sheet began to melt, icebergs calved into the sea around Hudson Bay and would have periodically drifted along the east coast as far south as Miami

AMHERST, Mass. – Using a first-of-its-kind, high-resolution numerical model to describe ocean circulation during the last ice age about 21,000 year ago, oceanographer Alan Condron of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has shown that icebergs and meltwater from the North American ice sheet would have regularly reached South Carolina and even southern Florida. The models are supported by the discovery of iceberg scour marks on the sea floor along the entire continental shelf.

This is a map showing the pathway taken by icebergs from Hudson Bay, Canada, to Florida.
The blue colors (behind the arrows) are an actual snapshot from the authors’ high resolution
model showing how much less salty the water is than normal. The more blue the
color the less salty it is than normal. In this case, blue all the way along the
coast shows that very fresh, cold waters are flowing along the entire east
coast from Hudson Bay to Florida.

Such a view of past meltwater and iceberg movement implies that the mechanisms of abrupt climate change are more complex than previously thought, Condron says. “Our study is the first to show that when the large ice sheet over North America known as the Laurentide ice sheet began to melt, icebergs calved into the sea around Hudson Bay and would have periodically drifted along the east coast of the United States as far south as Miami and the Bahamas in the Caribbean, a distance of more than 3,100 miles, about 5,000 kilometers.”

His work, conducted with Jenna Hill of Coastal Carolina University, is described in the current advance online issue of Nature Geosciences. “Determining how far south of the subpolar gyre icebergs and meltwater penetrated is vital for understanding the sensitivity of North Atlantic Deep Water formation and climate to past changes in high-latitude freshwater runoff,” the authors say.

Hill analyzed high-resolution images of the sea floor from Cape Hatteras to Florida and identified about 400 scour marks on the seabed that were formed by enormous icebergs plowing through mud on the sea floor. These characteristic grooves and pits were formed as icebergs moved into shallower water and their keels bumped and scraped along the ocean floor.

“The depth of the scours tells us that icebergs drifting to southern Florida were at least 1,000 feet, or 300 meters thick,” says Condron. “This is enormous. Such icebergs are only found off the coast of Greenland today.”

To investigate how icebergs might have drifted as far south as Florida, Condron simulated the release of a series of glacial meltwater floods in his high-resolution ocean circulation model at four different levels for two locations, Hudson Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Condron reports, “In order for icebergs to drift to Florida, our glacial ocean circulation model tells us that enormous volumes of meltwater, similar to a catastrophic glacial lake outburst flood, must have been discharging into the ocean from the Laurentide ice sheet, from either Hudson Bay or the Gulf of St. Lawrence.”

Further, during these large meltwater flood events, the surface ocean current off the coast of Florida would have undergone a complete, 180-degree flip in direction, so that the warm, northward flowing Gulf Stream would have been replaced by a cold, southward flowing current, he adds.

As a result, waters off the coast of Florida would have been only a few degrees above freezing. Such events would have led to the sudden appearance of massive icebergs along the east coast of the United States all the way to Florida Keys, Condron points out. These events would have been abrupt and short-lived, probably less than a year, he notes.

“This new research shows that much of the meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet may be redistributed by narrow coastal currents and circulate through subtropical regions prior to reaching the subpolar ocean. It’s a more complicated picture than we believed before,” Condron says. He and Hill say that future research on mechanisms of abrupt climate change should take into account coastal boundary currents in redistributing ice sheet runoff and subpolar fresh water.

History Secrets: The Prussian Connection to American Schooling (Part 3), by John Taylor Gatto

School Sucks Podcast | Oct 4, 2014

Where did the American school system come from? And what are its true purposes?

This is an excerpt from John Taylor Gatto's book, The Underground History of American Education

Chapter Seven: The Prussian Connection,
Section 90: "The Prussian Reform Movement" and
Section 91: "Travels' Reports"

Get the book: http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/
PDF: http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/i...
Audiobook: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/pr...

The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend With John Taylor Gatto (Documentary)
https://www.tragedyandhope.com/th-fil...

Navajo Nation Sacrificed for US Nuclear Obsession

Breaking the Set | Sep 29, 2014

Abby Martin talks about a $500 million settlement between the government and Navajo nation over destruction of tribal land due to uranium mining and how this amount will do nothing to alleviate the pain and suffering caused by this industry.

Massive 5000 Year Old Stone Monument Discovered

Collective Evolution | Sep 26, 2014 | Arjun Walia

Imagine missing something this big for so long. It makes one wonder, what else has archaeology missed? Has all that’s been discovered so far been revealed to the public? What else remains undiscovered? One who has peered into the world of secrecy would be inclined to think, ‘probably not.’ After all, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the United States alone spends trillions of dollars on ‘black budget’ programs that go beyond government, have no oversight from congress and involve projects that the human race knows nothing about. You can read more about that here.

A lunar crescent shaped stone monument has recently been discovered in Israel. It dates back approximately 5000 years, between 3050 B.C. and 2650 B.C., which means it is most likely older than the pyramids of Egypt, and built before the Stonehenge was constructed.

It’s located approximately 8 miles northwest of the Sea of Galilee, and is massive. It measures approximately 14,000 meters, which is about 500,000 cubic feet.

Ido Wachtel, a Doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said:

“The proposed interpretation for the site is that it constituted a prominent landmark in its natural landscape, serving to mark possession and to assert authority and rights over natural resources  by a local rural or pastoral population.” (source)

Again ,the structure is about 150 meters (492 feet) long and 20 m (66 feet) wide at its base. According to Wachtel:

“The estimation of working days invested in the construction [of] the site is between 35,000 days in the lower estimate [and] 50,000 in the higher.” (source)

It’s remarkable how much time was put into constructing various magnificent structures that even to this day, have construction methods that cannot be explained. Theories have ranged from advanced extraterrestrial races to massive amounts of man and brain power.

For example, most Egyptologists estimate between 2.3 and 2.6 million blocks of stone were used to build the great pyramid. What power could have moved these stones? Each stone has been estimated to weigh approximately between 2 and 20 tonnes each. Think about that, that’s 2.5 million blocks of stone that weigh between 2 and 20 tonnes each. How did they cut the blocks with laser like precision and fit them perfectly in place? How did they lift and transport the rocks from their original position? How did they move across the terrain, dessert, water and sand and then lift them on top of each other in order to build the pyramid?

Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries is the fact that the Great Pyramid is positioned exactly at the latitude and longitude lines that contain more land and less sea than any other place on Earth. It’s right in the ‘geographical’ center of the Earth. This fact alone (out of many) suggests that the builders also knew a great deal about the geography of our planet. It’s hard to imagine they could complete all of this without some sort of aerial view. Don’t forget about the Orion mystery. How this knowledge was obtained remains a mystery. Think about it, how is this possible?

You can read more about the many mysteries regarding the great pyramids in Egypt HERE.

Although this monument in Israel is not as complex (low estimates are a team of 200 ancient workers would have needed more than five months to construct the monument) it’s still a task that would be difficult for people who depended on crops for their livelihood.

According to Live Science:

“Other large rock structures have been found not far from the crescent-shaped monument. One structure, called Rujum el-Hiri, isin the Golan Heights (an area to the east of the Sea of Galilee) and has four circles with a cairn at its center. The date of this structure is a matter of debate; recent research by Mike Freikman, an archaeologist with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, suggests it may predate the crescent-shaped structure by several centuries.

Another stone monument, a giant cairn that weighs more than 60,000 tons, was discovered recently beneath the waters of the Sea of Galilee. Its date is unknown, but like the crescent-shaped structure, it is located close to Bet Yerah.”

I found this to be pretty cool:

The moon god Sin (also called Nanna and Suen) may be the key to understanding the monument. A lunar crescent served as his symbol and the name of Bet Yerah suggests that he may have been revered there. This image shows an ancient seal (from another site) mentioning him with the lunar crescent engraved on it.

Our ancient worlds continue to be a mystery, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that they were far more advanced than we were, and that they might have had some help.

Sources:

http://www.livescience.com/47835-massive-5-000-year-old-stone-monument-revealed-in-israel.html

Much of Earth's Water Is Older Than the Sun

Planets form in the presence of abundant interstellar water
inherited as ices from the parent molecular cloud.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech)/ESO/J.
Emerson/VISTA/Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

Live Science | Sep 26, 2014 | Mike Wall

Much of the water on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system likely predates the birth of the sun, a new study reports.

The finding suggests that water is commonly incorporated into newly forming planets throughout the Milky Way galaxy and beyond, researchers said — good news for anyone hoping that Earth isn't the only world to host life.

"The implications of our study are that interstellar water-ice remarkably survived the incredibly violent process of stellar birth to then be incorporated into planetary bodies," study lead author Ilse Cleeves, an astronomy Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, told Space.com via email. [7 Theories on the Origin of Life]

"If our sun's formation was typical, interstellar ices, including water, likely survive and are a common ingredient during the formation of all extrasolar systems," Cleeves added. "This is particularly exciting given the number of confirmed extrasolar planetary systems to date — that they, too, had access to abundant, life-fostering water during their formation."

Astronomers have discovered nearly 2,000 exoplanets so far, and many billions likely lurk undetected in the depths of space. On average, every Milky Way star is thought to host at least one planet.

Water, water everywhere 

Our solar system abounds with water. Oceans of it slosh about not only on Earth's surface but also beneath the icy shells of Jupiter's moon Europa and the Saturn satellite Enceladus. And water ice is found on Earth's moon, on comets, at the Martian poles and even inside shadowed craters on Mercury, the planet closest to the sun.

Artist's concept showing the time sequence
of water ice, starting in the sun's parent
molecular cloud, traveling through the
stages of star formation, and eventually being
incorporated into the planetary system itself.
Credit: Bill Saxton, NSF/AUI/NRAO

Cleeves and her colleagues wanted to know where all this water came from.

"Why is this important? If water in the early solar system was primarily inherited as ice from interstellar space, then it is likely that similar ices, along with the prebiotic organic matter that they contain, are abundant in most or all protoplanetary disks around forming stars," study co-author Conel Alexander, of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

"But if the early solar system's water was largely the result of local chemical processing during the sun's birth, then it is possible that the abundance of water varies considerably in forming planetary systems, which would obviously have implications for the potential for the emergence of life elsewhere," Alexander added.
 
Heavy and 'normal' water 

Not all water is "standard" H2O. Some water molecules contain deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen that contains one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. (Isotopes are different versions of an element whose atoms have the same number of protons, but different numbers of neutrons. The most common hydrogen isotope, known as protium, for example, has one proton but no neutrons.)

Because they have different masses, deuterium and protium behave differently during chemical reactions. Some environments are thus more conducive to the formation of "heavy" water — including super-cold places like interstellar space.

The researchers constructed models that simulated reactions within a protoplanetary disk, in an effort to determine if processes during the early days of the solar system could have generated the concentrations of heavy water observed today in Earth's oceans, cometary material and meteorite samples.

The team reset deuterium levels to zero at the beginning of the simulations, then watched to see if enough deuterium-enriched ice could be produced within 1 million years — a standard lifetime for planet-forming disks.

The answer was no. The results suggest that up to 30 to 50 percent of Earth's ocean water and perhaps 60 to 100 percent of the water on comets originally formed in interstellar space, before the sun was born. (These are the high-end estimates generated by the simulations; the low-end estimates suggest that at least 7 percent of ocean water and at least 14 percent of comet water predates the sun.)

While these findings, published online today (Sept. 25) in the journal Science, will doubtless be of interest to astrobiologists, they also resonated with Cleeves on a personal level, she said.

"A significant fraction of Earth's water is likely incredibly old, so old that it predates the Earth itself," Cleeves said. "For me, uncovering these kinds of direct links between our daily experience and the galaxy at large is fascinating and puts a wonderful perspective on our place in the universe."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Electric Sparks Shape Lunar Surface | Space News

Thunderbolts Project | Sep 25, 2014

According to a recent paper, scientists are now exploring whether so-called “electrical sparking may occur on the moon, altering the lunar soil. The scientists have developed computer models to explore how strong electric fields might accumulate in permanently shadowed regions on the moon, creating electrical sparking that fragments soil grains. Wal Thornhill offers a brief overview of the evidence of vastly greater, high-scale electrical discharge events that shaped the lunar surface.

Source story: http://www.space.com/27009-electric-m...

Previous Space News on electrical scarring on planets and moons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DEvb...

Looking for a fast track to comprehensive education on the Electric Universe? Those most eager to learn are invited to the EU Workshop, November 14-16, 2014 at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown. This event will be led by Wal Thornhill and Dave Talbott, who are preparing full summaries of their life’s work, something that has never been presented publicly. Wal’s talks will be complemented by additional material from electrical theorist Dr. Donald Scott, and Dave’s presentations will be reinforced by Ev Cochrane, author of several essential books on the ancient sky. Seating will be limited. Check out: https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2014...

Hidden cave system of Rouffignac is millions of years old

SOTT | Sep 15, 2014 | Source

© Getty Images/Lonely Planet Source: Getty Images
Rock art in Rouffignac Cave.

The train cart rattles along the track. Leaving the bright sunshine behind, you plunge deep into the dank, subterranean world.

The guide points out scratch marks on the wall - made by bears, who fortunately don't live in the caves anymore. Venturing deeper, you pass some engravings and drawings of a rhino, horses and a procession of mammoths. They are impressive. Not simply childish drawings of animals, but skilled works of art.

Two kilometres in, the train grinds to a halt. You get out and start to walk, hoping the movement will warm up your limbs. You stumble into a hidden gallery, darkness engulfing the group. The guide explains in hushed tones why these caves are so magnificent.

At last, you're allowed to switch on your head-torch. Gazing upwards, you now understand what the guide was on about. Animals of all shapes and sizes adorn the ceiling. Some intricately painted, others simple line drawings. No wonder this is known as the "Great Ceiling".

Welcome to Rouffignac Cave.

© www.leperigordnoir.fr
Painting of a mammoth c. 13,000 years old

Around two to three million years ago, this vast network of caves in Dordogne, France was created when water penetrated along fractures in the bedrock, dissolving the soft limestone. The cave system reaches 10 kilometres underground, through a mind-boggling maze of tunnels and shafts.

Over 250 prehistoric artworks litter the walls of this cave system, which is accessible only aboard the electric train that zips visitors 13,000 years back in time.

In fact, after 100 artworks of the woolly mammoth were initially discovered here, Rouffignac Cave was nicknamed 'Cave of the 100 Mammoths'. Over 150 have now been found, accounting for 70 per cent of all the animals represented in the cave.

© www.artehistoria.jcyl.es
Two figures from a massive mammoth frieze.

But most of the artworks show great skill, with different techniques used to paint the red, ochre and black figures. However, it's where the images are located that is most intriguing.

Most of the paintings and engravings are tucked deep in the interior.

It is still unknown quite why Stone Age humans ventured so far into the cave system, sometimes having to crawl on their fronts, just to create these works of art. While the caves guard this secret, the paintings they protect are truly magnificent.

Much later, during WWII, the caves also protected people, serving as a hide-out for French Resistance fighters.

The caves are hidden in woodland 15km north of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil in the Dordogne's Vézère Valley.

Some of the signs are thought to have been made by children as young as three years old - the "finger flutes" created by dragging three digits down the wall.