“Antiquities officials said they believed IS militants had interrogated Mr. Asaad, who was an ‘expert’ on Palmyra‘s history and even spoke the ancient language, attempting to get him to reveal where authorities had hidden the ‘stores of gold’ secreted out of the city.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, also reported the execution, saying Mr al-Assaad had been killed in a ‘public square in Palmyra in front of dozens of people’.
A former Syrian antiquities official, Amr al-Azm, said Asaad was an ‘irreplaceable’ scholar who knew every nook and cranny of Palmyra.
Sickening images have been shared on social media by supporters of the depraved terror group, showing the mulitated remains of Mr Assad chained to a railing, with his severed head – still wearing his glasses – placed on the floor between his feet.
Under their violent interpretation of Islamic law, or Shariah, extremist militants claim ancient artifacts and archeological sites ‘promote idolatry’ and should be obliterated.”
[Well Done Rapid News Network for telling it as it is, and for describing the Islamic State as the “depraved terror group” that they are.
Why can’t counter-terrorist agencies track down their supporters on social media and parachute them into the midst of the fighting so they can get a taste of the horrors first-hand? – Ed.]
“In what is sure to cause controversy, a researcher has claimed that the mysterious and ancient ruts which crisscross the Phrygian Valley of Turkey were caused by an unknown and intelligent race between 12 and 14 million years ago.
Dr. Alexander Koltypin, geologist and a director of the Natural Science Scientific Research Centre at Moscow’s International Independent University of Ecology and Politology has recently completed investigations at the site in Anatolia which is marked with strange ruts, described as’petrified tracking ruts in rocky tuffaceous deposits’ made from compacted volcanic ash’.
The tracks cut across the landscape of the Phrygia Valley, dating back to various historical periods, according to conventional academia.
The earliest roads are thought to have been made during the Hittite Empire (circa 1600 BC – 1178 BC).
Koltypin and colleagues have examined the rocky fields interlaced with deep grooves, and have suggested that it was indeed vehicles which caused the tracks, but not lightweight carts or chariots.
Instead he suggests the ‘unknown antediluvian all-terrain vehicles’ were huge and heavy.
In addition, he dates them back to approximately 14 million years ago, and claims they were driven by an unknown civilization.”
“This report, first broadcast on Science Show number 200 in March 1980, set the world of science on fire.
Professor John Fraser of Canberra described his remarkable discovery of a fossilised beer can near Lake Mungo in western NSW.
It was dated by Jak Kelly at the University of NSW and shown to be at least 60,000 years old, and likely as old as 100,000 years.
It raised the distinct possibility that Australia was the birthplace of modern man, and that it was Homo micturans which gave rise to modern Europeans”
“An international archaeology team working in Manisa’s Gölmarmara lake basin is excited about new findings in the area including a massive castle and Bronze Age settlement.
The latest findings discovered during excavations on Kaymakçi Hill in Manisa’s Gölmarmara Lake basin have aroused excitement in the archaeological world, including one that even overshadow the famous city of Troy.
‘This area is four times larger than the ancient site of Troy in Çanakkale and the largest late Bronze Age settlement that has been found in the Aegean region.
When the work is done, we will take a very significant step toward promoting Manisa to the world’, said Yasar University academic Professor Sinan Ünlüsoy, the deputy head of the Kaymakçi Archaeology Project.”
“A new expedition to the Ukok plateau, some 2,500 metres high in the Altai Mountains close to the modern-day Russian border with Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan, has found evidence that a set of intriguing petroglyphs are far older than previously thought.
Stylistically, the drawings match the Paleolithic era, some 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. If this is true, they will be the oldest in Siberia by several millennia.
The Ukok Plateau is known for its thriving ancient societies highlighted by the elaborate burials of important people – including that of the remarkable tattooed ‘Ukok princess’, pictured here. But she lived far more recently on the plateau, some 2,500 years ago.
Elsewhere in the Altai Mountains, some areas have no petroglyphs at all, while certain places are like alfresco picture galleries left by our ancestors, dating from around 5,000 years ago, also less ancient than the oldest suspected Ukok images, which include pictures of horses and probably bison.”
[In October 1900, Captain Dimitrious Kondos was leading a team of sponge divers near the the island of Antikythera off the coast of Greece. They noticed a shipwreck about 180 feet below the surface and began to investigate. Amongst the artifacts that they brought up was a coral-encrusted piece of metal that later archaeologists found was some sort of gear wheel.
The rest of the artifacts, along with the shape of the boat, suggested a date around 2000 years ago, which made the find one of the most anomalous that had ever been recovered from the Greek seas. It became known as The Antikythera Mechanism.
In 2006 the journal “Nature” published a letter, and another paper about the mechanism was published in 2008, detailing the findings of Prof. Mike G. Edmunds of Cardiff University. Using high-resolution X-ray tomography to study the fragments of the anomalous Antikythera Mechanism, they found that it was in fact a bronze mechanical analog computer that could be used to calculate the astronomical positions and various cycles of the Moon – as seen from the Earth: – Ed]
Part of the Antikythera Mechanism
Antikythera Mechanism Research Project
2000-year-old analog computer recreated
More Antikythera Mechanism Information & Commentary:
“The conventional wisdom says that the devolution of classic Maya civilization occurred because its population grew too large and dense to be supported by primitive neotropical farming methods, resulting in debilitating famines and internecine struggles.
Using research on contemporary Maya farming techniques and important new archaeological research, Ford and Nigh refute this Malthusian explanation of events in ancient Central America and posit a radical alternative theory.
The authors: show that ancient Maya farmers developed ingenious, sustainable woodland techniques to cultivate numerous food plants (including the staple maize) examine both contemporary tropical farming techniques and the archaeological record (particularly regarding climate) to reach their conclusions make the argument that these ancient techniques, still in use today, can support significant populations over long periods of time.”
