Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Article: Shape-Shifting Jesus Described in Ancient Egyptian Text

Posted: March 12, 2013 by phaedrap1 in News, Spirituality
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Mosaic of Last supper of Jesus by Giacomo Raffaelli
 In a newly deciphered 1,200-year-old telling of the Passion story, Jesus has supper with Pontius Pilate before his crucifixion. His supper with the apostles (and subsequent arrest) happen on Tuesday instead of Thursday.
CREDIT: Renata Sedmakova | Shutterstock

A newly deciphered Egyptian text, dating back almost 1,200 years, tells part of the crucifixion story of Jesus with apocryphal plot twists, some of which have never been seen before.

Written in the Coptic language, the ancient text tells of Pontius Pilate, the judge who authorized Jesus’ crucifixion, having dinner with Jesus before his crucifixion and offering to sacrifice his own son in the place of Jesus. It also explains why Judas used a kiss, specifically, to betray Jesus — because Jesus had the ability to change shape, according to the text  — and it puts the day of the arrest of Jesus on Tuesday evening rather than Thursday evening, something that contravenes the Easter timeline.

The discovery of the text doesn’t mean these events happened, but rather that some people living at the time appear to have believed in them, said Roelof van den Broek, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who published the translation in the book “Pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem on the Life and the Passion of Christ“(Brill, 2013).

Copies of the text are found in two manuscripts, one in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City and the other at the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Most of the translation comes from the New York text, because the relevant text in the Pennsylvania manuscript is mostly illegible.

Pontius Pilate has dinner with Jesus

While apocryphal stories about Pilate are known from ancient times, van den Broek wrote in an email to LiveScience that he has never seen this one before, with Pilate offering to sacrifice his own son in the place of Jesus.

ancient text of the Easter story of Jesus.
 A researcher has deciphered a 1,200-year-old Coptic text that tells part of the Passion (the Easter story) with apocryphal plot twists, some of which have never been seen before. Here, a cross decoration from the text, of which there are two copies, the best preserved in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.
CREDIT: Image courtesy The Pierpont Morgan Library

“Without further ado, Pilate prepared a table and he ate with Jesus on the fifth day of the week. And Jesus blessed Pilate and his whole house,” reads part of the text in translation. Pilate later tells Jesus, “well then, behold, the night has come, rise and withdraw, and when the morning comes and they accuse me because of you, I shall give them the only son I have so that they can kill him in your place.

In the text, Jesus comforts him, saying, “Oh Pilate, you have been deemed worthy of a great grace because you have shown a good disposition to me.” Jesus also showed Pilate that he can escape if he chose to. “Pilate, then, looked at Jesus and, behold, he became incorporeal: He did not see him for a long time …” the text read.

Pilate and his wife both have visions that night that show an eagle (representing Jesus) being killed.

In the Coptic and Ethiopian churches, Pilate is regarded as a saint, which explains the sympathetic portrayal in the text, van den Broek writes.

The reason for Judas using a kiss

In the canonical bible the apostle Judas betrays Jesus in exchange for money by using a kiss to identify him leading to Jesus’ arrest. This apocryphal tale explains that the reason Judas used a kiss, specifically, is because Jesus had the ability to change shape.

“Then the Jews said to Judas: How shall we arrest him [Jesus], for he does not have a single shape but his appearance changes. Sometimes he is ruddy, sometimes he is white, sometimes he is red, sometimes he is wheat coloured, sometimes he is pallid like ascetics, sometimes he is a youth, sometimes an old man …” This leads Judas to suggest using a kiss as a means to identify him. If Judas had given the arresters a description of Jesus he could have changed shape. By kissing Jesus Judas tells the people exactly who he is.

This understanding of Judas’ kiss goes way back. “This explanation of Judas’ kiss is first found in Origen [a theologian who lived A.D. 185-254],” van den Broek writes. In his work, Contra Celsum the ancient writerOrigen, stated that “to those who saw him [Jesus] he did not appear alike to all.”

St. Cyril impersonation

The text is written in the name of St. Cyril of Jerusalem who lived during the fourth century. In the story Cyril tells the Easter story as part of a homily (a type of sermon).  A number of texts in ancient times claim to be homilies by St. Cyril and they were probably not given by the saint in real life, van den Broek explained in his book.

ancient text in coptic language
 Here, part of the text from the manuscript holding the newly deciphered Passion story of Jesus. Found in Egypt in 1910 it was purchased, along with other manuscripts, by J.P. Morgan in 1911 and was later donated to the public.
CREDIT: Image courtesy The Pierpont Morgan Library

Near the beginning of the text, Cyril, or the person writing in his name, claims that a book has been found in Jerusalem showing the writings of the apostles on the life and crucifixion of Jesus. “Listen to me, oh my honored children, and let me tell you something of what we found written in the house of Mary …” reads part of the text.

Again, it’s unlikely that such a book was found in real life. Van den Broek said that a claim like this would have been used by the writer “to enhance the credibility of the peculiar views and uncanonical facts he is about to present by ascribing them to an apostolic source,” adding that examples of this plot device can be found “frequently” in Coptic literature.

Arrest on Tuesday

Van den Broek says that he is surprised that the writer of the text moved the date of Jesus’ Last Supper, with the apostles, and arrest to Tuesday. In fact, in this text, Jesus’ actual Last Supper appears to be with Pontius Pilate. In between his arrest and supper with Pilate, he is brought before Caiaphas and Herod.

In the canonical texts, the last supper and arrest of Jesus happens on Thursday evening and present-day Christians mark this event with Maundy Thursday services. It “remains remarkable that Pseudo-Cyril relates the story of Jesus’ arrest on Tuesday evening as if the canonical story about his arrest on Thursday evening (which was commemorated each year in the services of Holy Week) did not exist!” writes van den Broek in the email.

A gift to a monastery … and then to New York

About 1,200 years ago the New York text was in the library of the Monastery of St. Michael in the Egyptian desert near present-day al-Hamuli in the western part of the Faiyum. The text says, in translation, that it was a gift from “archpriest Father Paul,” who, “has provided for this book by his own labors.”

The monastery appears to have ceased operations around the early 10th century, and the text was rediscovered in the spring of 1910. In December 1911, it was purchased, along with other texts, by American financier J.P. Morgan. His collections would later be given to the public and are part of the present-day Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. The manuscript is currently displayed as part of the museum’s exhibition “Treasures from the Vault” running through May 5.

Who believed it?

Van den Broek writes in the email that “in Egypt, the Bible had already become canonized in the fourth/fifth century, but apocryphal stories and books remained popular among the Egyptian Christians, especially among monks.”

Whereas the people of the monastery would have believed the newly translated text, “in particular the more simple monks,” he’s not convinced that the writer of the text believed everything he was writing down, van den Broek said.

“I find it difficult to believe that he really did, but some details, for instance the meal with Jesus, he may have believed to have really happened,” van den Broek writes.  “The people of that time, even if they were well-educated, did not have a critical historical attitude. Miracles were quite possible, and why should an old story not be true?”

Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor

Bizarre Death & Possible Spontaneous Human Combustion Case Investigated In Oklahoma

Posted: March 12, 2013 by phaedrap1 in News, Occult
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MessageToEagle.com – Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) is a well known but unexplained phenomenon when the human body bursts into flames without any external source of flammable ignition.

During the last 300 years, at least 200 cases of SHC have been registered around the world but there could be even more cases unheard of.

This curious phenomenon has been widely debated among scientists for some time now and opinions are still divided.

Earlier in February a suspicious death in Sequoyah County, Oklahoma took place indicating the victim could have died as a result of spontaneous human combustion. Relatives found 65-year-old Donald Vanzandt’s burned body Monday inside a home near Muldrow and according to Sequoyah County sheriff Ron Lockhart it is a bizarre death.

 

Photo of Vanzandt’s home, from CBS-affiliate KFSM, in Fort Smith.

“It’s a bizarre case I’ve never seen before,” Lockhart said. “I mean you’ve got a hole in the kitchen where the fire started and you’ve got a body and the body is so incinerated, the only thing you have left are his hands and feet and a head.”

 

Now, a researcher with ParaScience International has been asked to investigate the case.Autopsy results are not ready yet, but we should not dismiss spontaneous human combustion as cause of death, said Larry Arnold, director of ParaScience International.

“Just because it’s rare doesn’t mean it’s impossible,” he added.

“The nature of his burn injuries are something that has captivated our interest,” Arnold said.

According to investigators, the victim burned for about 10 hours, but the house did not suffer any damage.

“Preternatural human combustibility is the situation where the body becomes consumed almost completely to powder in an environment otherwise devoid of significant heat, flame damage,” Arnold said.

It may however be very difficult to determine whether this is a possible human combustion case, Arnold pointed out. .

“We cannot say that it is,” said Arnold. “We cannot say that it isn’t nor can any investigator because the only way that determination could be made at this point is if there was an eyewitness to the event. There is no eyewitness.”

Arnold hopes to get more information from Vanzandt’s family. “At this point we don’t have an answer,” he said. “All we have are theories and it’s an ongoing mystery.”

Arnold also plans to visit the medical examiner’s office if at all possible on the trip.

For now this case remains open…

MessageToEagle.com

Legendary Viking Sunstones Did Exist!

Posted: March 9, 2013 by phaedrap1 in News, Occult
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MessageToEagle.com – Archaeologists have discovered a special crystal that suggests legendary Viking sunstones did exists in reality.

The crystal uncovered in the 1592 sunken Elizabethan shipwreck near the Channel Islands, between England and France is shown to be an Iceland spar.

The research team headed by scientists at the University of Rennes says the stone was next to a pair of navigation dividers, suggesting it may have been kept with the ship’s other navigational tools.

It is believed that Vikings used so-called sunstones as a compass to find their way in arctic waters.

Researchers suggest that sunstones could have been held up toward the center of the sky, allowing sunlight to hit it and get polarized and broken into an “ordinary” and an “extraordinary” beam.

 

This crystal found at the Alderney shipwreck. Image credit & copyright: Alderney Museum

On a clear not cloudy day, they could have rotated the crystal until the pair of beams lined up. By noting where the sun was when this happened, navigators could make a reference point to use even when the Sun was obscured by clouds or twilight.

If the crystal is held east-west, the double image becomes a single image and thus allows a sailor to locate the Sun.

According to the study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.”such a crystal immersed in sea water play a crucial role by limiting the solubility, strengthening the mechanical properties of the calcite, while the sand abrasion alters the crystal by inducing roughness of its surface.

 

Although both phenomena have reduced the transparency of the Alderney calcite crystal, we demonstrate that Alderney-like crystals could really have been used as an accurate optical sun compass as an aid to ancient navigation, when the Sun was hidden by clouds or below the horizon.To avoid the possibility of large magnetic errors, not understood before 1600, an optical compass could have helped in providing the sailors with an absolute reference.

An Alderney-like crystal permits the observer to follow the azimuth of the Sun, far below the horizon,” the research team writes in the science paper.

It is doubtful archaeologists will ever uncover a complete crystal in a Viking site because Vikings preferred to commit their dead to funeral pyres, cremating them and their grave goods.

One of the reasons why the existences of sunstones have long been disputed is because they are contained in the saga of Saint Olaf, a tale with many magical elements.

However, this latest discovery offers evidence magical Viking sunstones were real.

© MessageToEagle.com

Fossilised giant camel bone found in High Arctic

Posted: March 7, 2013 by phaedrap1 in News
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Ancient beast stood almost three metres tall at the hump, about a third higher than its modern descendant

The High Arctic camel on Ellesmere Island during the Pliocene warm period, about 3.5m years ago

The High Arctic camel on Ellesmere Island during the Pliocene warm period, about 3.5m years ago.
Illustration: Julius T Csotonyi

 

Fossil hunters have unearthed fragments of leg bone belonging to a giant camel that lived in the forests of the High Arctic more than three million years ago.

The ancient beast stood almost three metres tall at the hump, about a third higher than its modern descendant, the single-humped dromedary, or Arabian camel.

Scientists who found the remains said the extinct mammal may have already had the wide, flat feet and fatty hump associated with adaptation to life in the desert, because they could have helped the animal endure its harsh, snow-covered habitat.

Remnants of the oversized ungulate, 30 pieces in all, were recovered from a steep, sandy slope at Fyles Leaf Bed on Ellesmere island, the most northern and mountainous of the Canadian Arctic archipelago.

The sediments around the fossils date to at least 3.4m years old, when the region was much warmer than today and dominated by larch forests. Temperatures hovered a few degrees below zero, and winters plunged the region into six months of darkness.

Extinct camel discovery in High ArcticFossils from previous expeditions have shown that the camel’s ancestors originated in North America 45m years ago, and crossed the Bering Strait into China and Eurasia more than 7m years ago. In 1913, the first giant camel remains were uncovered in Yukon, about 1,200km south of the Fyles Leaf Bed site.

“This is the first evidence of camels in the High Arctic,” said Mike Buckley, a researcher at Manchester University who studied the remains.

The frigid conditions on Ellesmere island preserved connective tissue called collagen in the specimens. When Buckely compared the chemical makeup of the collagen with tissue from the Yukon camels, he found they were closely related, and possibly the same species. They also matched modern dromedaries, but not the twin-humped Bactrian camel. The study appears in the journal, Nature Communications.

“This ancestor of modern camels may already have had some of the adaptations that helped it survive in harsh climates – the hump for fat storage for instance. The large flat feet were ideal for soft ground, so it didn’t sink through sand or snow. The large eyes perhaps helped with poor visibility in the long, dark winters,” said Buckley.

No other mammal remains have been unearthed at Fyles Leaf bed, but at a nearby site, expeditions uncovered fossilised remnants from a beaver, a three-toed horse and a badger, that lived at the same time.

“We now have a new fossil record to better understand camel evolution,” said Natalia Rybczynski, at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ontario. “Perhaps some specialisations seen in modern camels, such as their wide flat feet, large eyes and humps for fat may be adaptations derived from living in a polar environment.”

Ian Sample, Science Correspondent

The Guardian

Temple of ‘Jupiter the Stayer’ found

Posted: March 6, 2013 by phaedrap1 in Monuments, News
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Romulus started cult to god who made Romans unstoppable
Temple of 'Jupiter the Stayer' found

Rome, February 28 – The temple built by Romulus to celebrate the hand of Jupiter giving Roman troops their unstoppable force has been found at the foot of the Palatine Hill, Italian archaeologists say. The ruins of the shrine to Jupiter Stator (Jupiter the Stayer), believed to date to 750 BC, were found by a Rome University team led by Andrea Carandini. “We believe this is the temple that legend says Romulus erected to the king of the gods after the Romans held their ground against the furious Sabines fighting to get their women back after the famous Rape (abduction),” Carandini said in the Archeologia Viva (Living Archaeology) journal. According to myth, Romulus founded Rome in 753 BC and the wifeless first generation of Roman men raided nearby Sabine tribes for their womenfolk, an event that has been illustrated in art down the centuries. Carandini added: “It is also noteworthy that the temple appears to be shoring up the Palatine, as if in defence”. Rome’s great and good including imperial families lived on the Palatine, overlooking the Forum. Long after its legendary institution by Romulus, the cult of Jupiter the Stayer fuelled Roman troops in battle, forging the irresistible military might that conquered most of the ancient known world. In the article in Archeologia Viva, Carandini’s team said they might also have discovered the ruins of the last Palatine house Julius Caesar lived in – the one he left on the Ides of March, 44BC, on his way to death in the Senate.

GazzettaDelSud Online

New Book Suggests Return from Death Possible

Posted: March 2, 2013 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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Dr. Sam Parnia, a critical care doctor and the director of resuscitation research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, has written a new book discussing ways in which people can be resuscitated after they previously would have been considered clinically dead.

Parnia’s book, “Erasing Death: The Science That is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death,” was recently featured on the Today show. “The advances in the last 10 years have shown us that it’s only after a person dies that they turn into a corpse, that their brain cells start to die,’’ Parnia told host Savannah Guthrie.

“Although most people think this takes place in only four or five minutes, we now know that actually brain cells are viable for up to eight hours … We now understand that it’s only after a person has turned into a corpse that their cells are undergoing death, and if we therefore manipulate those processes, we can restart the heart and bring a person back to life.”

LIST: 10 Crazy Things to Do When You’re Dead

Parnia’s suggestion is not new; in fact, as researcher Jan Bondeson notes in his 2001 book “Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear,” “In 1787 the French doctor Francois Thierry published a book in which he stated his conviction that most people did not die until some time after the onset of traditional signs of death.”

To make sure that the “dead” had really irrevocably passed on, Thierry suggested that all major cities in France should have special “waiting mortuaries,” in which the recently deceased would be laid out in rows on floors or tables and carefully watched by monitors who would wander among the corpses looking for signs of anyone coming back to life.

It was only at the point in which the bodies would begin bloating and putrefying (along with the appearance of maggots and flies) that the corpse would finally be considered dead enough and sent for burial. There is no record of the job turnover rate in the waiting mortuary attendant profession, but it was likely high.

NEWS: Neuroscientist Says He Experienced Life After Death

Throughout most of history, medical knowledge of anatomy has been poor and indirect, partly because of fear and taboos against cutting open corpses. Finding the boundary between life and death has concerned humans for millennia; fears of premature burial obsessed many in the Victorian era and in fact some caskets were equipped with tubes and equipment leading to the surface so that bells and flags could be raised to alert groundskeepers in case the “dead” awoke.

Public uncertainty about the line between life and death (and fear of premature burial) was widespread, as Bondeson notes: “By the early nineteenth century, the danger of premature burial had become one of the most-feared perils of everyday life, and a torrent of pamphlets and academic theses were dedicated to this subject by writers all over Europe.

In almost every country, literature on this gruesome topic was readily available, ranging from the solemn medical thesis and the philanthropic call for more waiting mortuaries to pamphlets written by fanatics who claimed that more than 1/10th of humanity was buried alive …”

Compounding the problem, often even the truly dead would not stay buried: in the 1700s and 1800s theft from graveyards was common in London, and grave robbers were making a profit digging up bodies and selling them to anatomists.

Near-Death Experience?

Some have suggested that Dr. Parnia is talking about proof of life after death or near-death experiences, but in fact he is simply stating what many doctors have known for decades: Consciousness does not suddenly stop when the heart stops beating and the line between life and death remains murky, even today.

The question is not, as a poll linked to the Today story asked, “Whether people can be brought back from the brink” of death when their heart stops beating; clearly the answer is yes. The question — at least in near-death experience research — is instead whether people can be brought back (without catastrophic and irreparable brain damage) after clinical brain death, and the answer to that seems to be no.

NEWS: Hell Helps Keep Society Safe

A 2011 article, published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences by neuroscientist Dean Mobbs of the University of Cambridge and Caroline Watt at the University of Edinburgh, found that “near-death experiences are the manifestation of normal brain function gone awry, during a traumatic, and sometimes harmless, event.”

Their research also busts another myth: that people have “returned from the dead” — if by dead you mean clinical brain death. No one has survived true clinical death (which is why the experiences are called “near-death”).  Many people have been revived after their heart stopped for short periods of time — around 20 minutes or more — but anyone revived from brain death would be permanently and irreparably brain damaged and certainly unable to report their experiences.

“The idea of surviving clinical brain death is mythical,” Watt said.

In the plant world, the question of point of death is even more ambiguous: Does a flower die the moment it is cut from the plant, or does it die over the course of several days? A tree cut into pieces it will surely not survive, though a tree uprooted by a storm may live for weeks or months. Obviously at some point the plant becomes too dessicated to be viable, but identifying that exact moment of “death” is difficult or impossible.

Despite modern technology, the point of death in humans and other animals remains elusive.

By Benjamin Radford

Unsolved Ancient Mystery: Why Were These Foreign Shoes Hidden In A Temple?

Posted: March 2, 2013 by phaedrap1 in News
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MessageToEagle.com – Every now and then archaeologists stumble upon artifacts that are in the wrong place at the wrong time, or at least so it seems to us.

When it happens, an archaeological discovery can easily become an ancient detective story.

In order to learn what took place, scientists need to use historical data to travel back in time, and search for clues. It is not always an easy task, as there is still so much we do not know about our ancient past.

Archaeologists are currently scratching their heads trying to solve the mystery of some ancient, shoes that were deliberately hidden in an Egyptian temple.

The two pairs of children’s shoes were among the seven found concealed in a jar placed into a cavity between two mudbrick walls in a temple in Luxor, site of the ancient city of Thebes. Oddly, the shoes were tied together using palm fibre string and placed within a single adult shoe. A third pair that had been worn by an adult was found alongside them.

The shoes were originally discovered by an Italian archaeological team in 2004, but new research offer more clues and scientists hope they can solve the mystery soon.

 

Strange foreign shoes were discovered in an ancient Egyptian temple.

The shoes are extraordinary in many ways. They are ‘relatively expensive’ and have design features that suggest they were produced in Medieval Europe.

So, why were the shoes never retrieved after they were left in the temple just over 2,000 years ago when Egypt was ruled by a dynasty of Greek descent?

They shoes are obviously of foreign origin, as they were concealed at the time when most Egyptians would normally have worn sandals.

 

‘The find is extraordinary as the shoes were in pristine condition and still supple upon discovery,’ wrote Dr Veldmeijer assistant director of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo and an expert in ancient Egyptian footwear in the most recent issue of the Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt.Dr Veldmeijer explained that the shoes were eye-striking at the time.

If you wore such shoes “everybody would look at you”, Dr. Veldmeijer said.

Unfortunately, he added, after they were unearthed the shoes became brittle and ‘extremely fragile’.

Dr. Veldmeijer’s examined the shoes with help of photographs and he concluded that most surprising was that the single shoe discovered with the child’s pairs inside was made with a feature that shoemakers know as a ‘rand’. It is a structural device that was thought to have been first used in Medieval Europe.

 

Who left the shoes in the temple?

Folded leather strips that go between the soles and the upper parts of shoes, rands reinforce the stitching as ‘the upper is very prone to tear apart at the stitch holes’, Dr Veldmeijer explained. The shoes would be practical to wear in muddy conditions. Therefore, to find the device in the dry climate of Egypt is surprising and indicates that the shoes were made somewhere abroad.

According to Dr. Veldmeijer “the shoe was exposed to unequal pressure, which showed that person who wore it ‘walked with a limp, otherwise the wear would have been far more equal’.

 

The shoes date back more than 2,000 years and this picture shows the inside of the jar before the shoes were removed.

 

The wear and tear and subsequent repair showed that the people who wore them valued the shoes as ‘highly prized commodities'”.

Dr. Veldmeijer cannot explain why someone would leave the shoes in the temple without having the intention of getting them back.

One can only speculate what might have happened. Was the shoe owner forced to quickly leave the temple? Was he or she scared to go back and retrieve the shoes? There are number of possibilities.

For the time being, this ancient case remains an unsolved mystery.

© MessageToEagle.com

Archaeologist: Bones found in Turkey are probably those of Cleopatra’s half-sister

Posted: February 27, 2013 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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Long-buried bones and a missing monarch. Add some historical notoriety and modern technology and you have a heck of a captivating, science-driven story.

Just this month, it was announced that bones found under a parking lot in Leicester, England, belonged to King Richard III. DNA evidence, according to the lead archaeologist at the excavation, proved this “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

For Hilke Thur, a Vienna-based archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a similar quest awaits empirical closure. The locale is more exotic – western Turkey – and the evidence is much more difficult to analyze: The bones in question are a bit more than 2,000 years old.

She will cover this and other aspects of her work in a March 1 lecture at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh.

The title: “Who Murdered Cleopatra’s Sister? And Other Tales from Ephesus.”

In a recent interview, Thur discussed…

What took her to Ephesus

“I’m an architect as well as an archaeologist, and Ephesus – a large and important city on the coast of Asia Minor centuries before it became part of the Roman Empire – has long been one of the biggest archaeological sites. It is the main excavation of the Austrian Archaeological Institute.

“I was a student when I started working there in 1975, and have based a great deal of my career around the site. From 1997 to 2005, I was assistant director of the Ephesus excavations.

“An English engineer directed the first archaeological digs there in 1869, but since 1895, only Austrian-led projects have permission to do that, though Turks sometimes have excavations. I’d like to add that it’s quite an international team there, with researchers from all over the world.

“My specialty is interpreting buildings and monuments. The excavations of one monument, The Octagon, began in 1904. In 1926, a grave chamber was found inside The Octagon. The skeleton inside it has been interpreted to be that of a young woman about age 20.”

What thickened the plot

“When I was working with the architecture of The Octagon and the building next to it, it wasn’t known whose skeleton was inside. Then I found some ancient writers telling us that in the year 41 B.C., Arsinoe IV – the half-sister of Cleopatra – was murdered in Ephesus by Cleopatra and her Roman lover, Marc Antony. Because the building is dated by its type and decoration to the second half of the first century B.C., this fits quite well.

“I put the pieces of the puzzle together.”

The eight-sided clues

“In antiquity, ordinary people were not buried within the city. That privilege was only for special people – those with an aristocratic background, or people who did special things for their city. So the body must have belonged to a special person. Also, the skeleton was of a woman.

“Then there is the shape of the building. While The Octagon exists only as ruins today, its pieces have been photographed. The images were digitized and ‘virtually rebuilt’ on a computer. The shape of the building, an imperial grave monument, resembles the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The lighthouse, destroyed centuries ago, was built at Alexandria, on the Egyptian coast, by the Ptolemy dynasty from which Cleopatra and Arsinoe IV were descended.

“The center portion of the lighthouse tower was octagonal, which was quite unusual at the time.”

Forensic evidence

“The site of The Octagon has a grave chamber. It was opened in 1926, but the opening was very small, and no one entered it until later on.

“The skull had been removed for tests; it disappeared in Germany during World War II. But there are photos of the skull, and notes written down by those who examined it.

“In 1985, the back side of the chamber became accessible, and I re-found the skeleton – the bones were in two niches. The body was removed and examined. The bones were found to be those of a woman younger than 20 – 15 or 16, perhaps.

“The revised age was used for arguments against my theory of the body belonging to Arsinoe IV, but those arguments didn’t find anything to disprove my theory.

“This academic questioning is normal. It happens. It’s a kind of jealousy.”

What would prove her theory

“They tried to make a DNA test, but testing didn’t work well because the skeleton had been moved and the bones had been held by a lot of people. It didn’t bring the results we hoped to find.

“I don’t know if there are possibilities to do more of this testing. Forensic material is not my field.

“One of my colleagues on the project told me two years ago there currently is no other method to really determine more. But he thinks there may be new methods developing. There is hope.”

Bordsen: 704-358-5251

Peru archaeologists find ancient temple in El Paraiso

Posted: February 26, 2013 by phaedrap1 in Monuments, News
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El Paraiso site
The temple was discovered in one of the wings of the main pyramid at the ancient site of El Paraiso

Archaeologists in Peru say they have discovered a temple at the ancient site of El Paraiso, near the capital, Lima.

Entry to the rectangular structure, estimated to be up to 5,000 years old, was via a narrow passageway, they say.

At its centre, the archaeologists from Peru’s Ministry of Culture found a hearth which they believe was used to burn ceremonial offerings.

With 10 ruins, El Paraiso is one of the biggest archaeological sites in central Peru.

The archaeologists found the structure, measuring 6.82m by 8.04m (22ft by 26ft), in the right wing of the main pyramid.

‘Interconnected civilisation’

They had been carrying out conservation work on the site on behalf of Peru’s Ministry of Culture when they came across the remains, which had been obscured by sand and rocks.

Archaeologists examine the remains of a hearth at the centre of a temple structure
The walls would have been 2.5m (8ft) high, but only about 70cm remain with the hearth at the centre

They said the temple walls were made of stone and covered in fine yellow clay which also contained some traces of red paint.

The archaeologists said the find suggests that the communities in the Late Pre-ceramic Age (3500 BC to 1800 BC) were more closely connected than had been previously thought.

Peru’s Deputy Minister for Culture Rafael Varon said the the temple was the first structure of its kind to be found on Peru’s central coast.

“It corroborates that the region around Lima was a focus for the civilisations of the Andean territory, further bolstering its religious, economic and political importance since times immemorial,” Mr Varon said.

Archaeologist Marco Guillen, who led the team which made the discovery, said the hearth gave insight into the civilisation which had used the site.

“The main characteristic of their religion was the use of fire, which burnt in the centre,” he told the BBC’s Mattia Cabitza in Lima.

“The smoke allowed the priests to connect with their gods,” Mr Guillen said.

The Paraiso settlement once supported a farming and fishing community numbering hundreds of people.

Our correspondent says thousands of ruins are thought to remain undiscovered, making Peru a treasure-hunting destination for archaeologists and looters alike.

BBC News

Vittorio Missoni’s Disappearance Gives Rise To New Fears Of Bermuda Triangles Worldwide

Posted: February 23, 2013 by phaedrap1 in News
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When ships and planes mysteriously vanish — sometimes without a trace — speculation runs wild.

Many worry about the conventional — pilot error, kidnapping and terrorism come to mind. And there are those who worry about the supernatural.

Acclaimed fashion designer Vittorio Missoni and five others boarded a twin-engine BN-2 Islander aircraft in the Los Roques island chain — pictured below — near Venezuela on Jan. 4. They were headed for Caracas and had only flown about 11 miles when they vanished into thin air.

losroquesislands

After hundreds of people in boats, planes and helicopters searched the area for days, no wreckage or debris of any kind was found, according to ABC News.

The mystery deepened when the only item that turned up was a bag that didn’t even belong to anyone on the Missoni flight. The bag, recovered on the nearby island of Curacao, was placed onto Missoni’s plane while its Italian tourist owner, caught a different flight out of Los Roques.

More recently, according to Vogue News, two bags belonging to Missoni were found on the island of Bonaire in the Netherlands Antilles. A statement released by the Missoni family said that, a month and a half after Missoni’s plane vanished, “the case is not closed.”

Something else added more fuel to speculation that Missoni’s flight may have been deliberately diverted. According to ABC News, Missoni’s son, Ottavio, told an Italian newspaper that a puzzling text message was reportedly sent from the cellphone of Guido Foresti — one of the passengers on the missing plane — to Foresti’s son two days after they disappeared.

The younger Missoni told the newspaper the message said: “Call now. We are reachable.” No follow-up news has been reported about this.

So what happened to Missoni’s plane? Could foul play have been involved, in an area that has seen its share of kidnappings or hijackings by possible drug dealers?

The Guardian reports that unexplained plane crashes and disappearances have allegedly occurred over the last 10 years in the same geographic location between Caracas and the Los Roques chain of 350 islands, cays and islets covering an area of about 40 kilometers.

If any of this sounds even vaguely familiar, it’s probably because this area, dubbed locally as the Los Roques Curse, is not far from the infamous Bermuda Triangle — bordered by Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico — where people, planes and ships have vanished for decades.

Check out these specific Bermuda Triangle cases

Bermuda Triangle Disappearances
NOAA.gov

Stories of missing aircraft, and crewless or vanished ships fill the literature of the mysteries of seafaring and high-flying individuals who lost their lives from unexplained causes.

1918: The U.S.S. Cyclops, a World War I Navy vessel, is refueling ships in the south Atlantic Ocean. After stopping in Barbados, the ship, with more than 300 passengers and crew aboard, vanishes without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle.

1945: During a training exercise, five U.S. Navy planes disappear in the same Bermuda Triangle area. Adding more mystery to the incident, a search aircraft sent to find the lost planes also unexplainably vanishes.

1950: A Northwest Airlines flight — with 55 passengers and three crew members — is en route to Minneapolis from New York City when it apparently simply drops out of sight while passing over what’s known today as the Michigan Triangle.

1955: Nine ships disappear from an area of the Pacific Ocean about 60 miles south of Tokyo. Another ship sent to find them also vanishes. This has been dubbed The Devil’s Sea.

All of the above cases involve ships or planes that mysteriously vanished and the explanations of those incidents may seem as diverse as the number of cases themselves:

  • Unexpected severe weather conditions
  • Pilot or captain error
  • Pirates or kidnappers
  • Methane gas buildups capable of sinking a ship without warning

Of course, disappearances in the infamous Bermuda Triangle and some other areas have come amid fears of UFOs, mysterious vortexes, time portals and sea monsters. To be sure, fear can play on any nervous traveler’s mind, but some disappearances just defy conventional explanations and fall in the murky category of unexplained phenomena.

Numerous smaller ships and planes have disappeared in the decades following the 1940s after often reporting disturbances causing compasses, radios and other instruments to malfunction.

And yet, according to the United States Coast Guard, the Bermuda Triangle is much ado about nothing.

“The Coast Guard does not recognize the existence of the so-called Bermuda Triangle as a geographic area of specific hazard to ships or planes,” the Coast Guard says on its website. “In a review of many aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the years there has been nothing discovered that would indicate that casualties were the result of anything other than physical causes. No extraordinary factors have ever been identified.”

Writing in Skeptoid.com, Brian Dunning says that “transportation losses inside the Bermuda Triangle do not occur at a rate higher than anywhere else, and the number of losses that are unexplained is also not any higher. Statistically speaking, there is no Bermuda Triangle.”

Since the 1990s, more than a dozen cases have been reported “in which small aircraft have either crashed, disappeared or declared emergencies while traveling through the area,” according to The Guardian. “In 2008, 14 people were killed when a plane making the same journey as Missoni’s crashed into the sea. No wreckage was ever found and only one body was recovered.”

Watch this news item comparing different areas of the world where people, planes and ships have vanished

Writing in Discovery News, noted skeptic Benjamin Radford points out that the Caribbean Sea has an enormous amount of boat and plane traffic.

“The only way to get to and from those islands is by boat or plane, and — like cars, boats or anything else — more traffic than average means more accidents and mishaps than average. If anything, it’s surprising there aren’t more crashes,” Radford wrote.

While The Bermuda Triangle is the most famous of areas around the world laying claim to causing people, planes and ships to vanish, there actually hasn’t been such a report from there for almost a decade.

Excerpt from a Learning Channel documentary about the Japanese Devil’s Sea

By Lee Speigel
Huffington Post
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