Free Republic

An England fan is pursuing his childhood dream as he prepares to fly out for at least five games at the FIFA World Cup finals in Qatar. Paul Anthony, who lives in Dubai, has watched every Three Lions game since he was a boy but this will be his first trip to the game’s biggest stage. The airline worker inherited his passion for football from his dad, Gerry, who joined in celebrations when Sir Alf Ramsey’s side lifted the Jules Rimet trophy at Wembley in 1966. He is aware of negative headlines around the games but believes that the UAE...

Thousands of years ago, a child in Peru was sacrificed as part of an ancient ritual, their head severed at the neck and made into a type of trophy. A new analysis of a single hair plucked from the mummy’s skull reveals that the child consumed a psychoactive cactus prior to execution, as part of the ceremony. The child’s preserved head was one of 22 human remains associated with the ancient Nazca society examined in a new study; all of these individuals lived during the pre-Hispanic era (3500 B.C. to A.D. 476) and were buried near the southern coast of...

Nazi Operated Enigma Machine Retrieved In Baltic Sea Century’s long lost-quintessential mechanical encryption machine-the Enigma code machine was recovered in the cold Baltic Sea in Europe nearly 75 years after its drastic beneficial purpose had been served during the second world war. Having been said that during the ending period of World War II, the machine was abandoned deep into the sea by German to keep it out of reach of the allies. WHAT IS AN ENIGMA CODE? The Enigma code machine. ( image source ) Enigma machines also used a form of substitution encryption. Substitution encryption is a simple...

Human-Sized Maya Mask Found in Mexico The stucco sculpture—dated to between 300 B.C. and 250 A.D.—probably depicts a deity or elite member of society A giant Mayan mask as tall as a person has been revealed at an archaeological site in the Mexican state of Yucatán. The stucco mask of Ucanha being worked on by archaeologists The mask, which depicts the face of an unknown deity or elite person, was sculpted from the building material stucco and dates back to a period in Maya history known as the Late Preclassic (about 300 B.C. — A.D. 250), according to the news...

A New geological study shows that the great sphinx of Giza is 800,000 Years old The Great Sphinx on the Giza plateau in Egypt is one of the most mysterious and enigmatic monuments on the planet’s surface. It is an ancient structure that has baffled investigators since its discovery, and no one has been able to accurately date the Sphinx because there are no written records or reports of it in the past. Now, two Ukrainian researchers have suggested a new controversial theory, claiming that the Great Sphinx of Egypt is about 800,000 years old. A scientifically based revolutionary theory....

A California Couple Found $10 Million In Gold Coins In Their Backyard A California couple who discovered a $10 million cache of hidden gold coins might not be so lucky after all. According to a published article, the coins may have been stolen from the United States Mint in 1900 and are thus government property. This image provided by the Saddle Ridge Hoard discoverers via Kagin’s, Inc., shows one of the six decaying metal canisters filled with 1800s-era U.S. gold coins unearthed in California by two people who want to remain anonymous. According to the San Francisco Chronicle’s website–a search...

Israeli experts uncover Dead Sea Scrolls for first time in 60 years: The significance of the find, explained Around 80 new fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in excavations in the Judean Desert, according to Israeli archaeologists. About 132 and 136 A.D., they were most likely hidden during a Jewish revolt against Rome. Israeli archaeologists reported the discovery of dozens of Dead Sea Scroll fragments bearing a biblical text in a desert cave, thought to have been hidden nearly 1,900 years ago during a Jewish revolt against Rome. According to the Israel Antiquities Authority, the fragments of parchment...

The tremendous melting of the glaciers resulted in some recent archaeological discoveries revealing several well preserved historical objects, and one of these remarkable finds is the discoveries of artifacts from the Viking era on the hills that were once used for transportation purposes dated back to 300 A.D. as per the study. More glacial melt, although a disturbing factor of a much larger global warming effect, has provided ample shreds of evidence and remains of the age-old objects for today’s generation advantageously. Artifacts from ancient time have been uncovered by ice patches which melted off the slopes of a rugged...

At Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a remote desert area in southwestern Arizona bordered by Mexico to the south and a Native American reservation to the east, red-lettered signs warning of’ BLASTING’ began appearing over the past week. Crews have been blasting the hillside while excavators and backhoes are clearing a path for the Trump administration’s towering border wall sections, a pace that environmental groups are concerned that sacred burial sites and ancestral lands are at risk of being irreversibly damaged.

Archaeologists in Florida recently confirmed that they discovered the bones of many young children buried under the last place that one might have thought to look: a wine store. However, there will be no police investigation. The Florida wine shop is in St. Augustine, the oldest city in America. And those bones? And those bones? They’re just about as old as the city is.

After 50 years of submerged at the bottom of a reservoir, a 5,000-year-old monument has reappeared in Spain. The megalithic site has 144 granite blocks, which are stand over six feet tall and are known as ‘Spanish Stonehenge.’ Its similarity to the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Wiltshire is striking, but the Iberian version is made of smaller rocks. In the 1960s, it was thought to be condemned to the history books when a Spanish general ordered the construction of a hydroelectric dam in Peraleda de la Mata, near Cáceres in Extremadura.

In the 1620s, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden ordered the construction of a new warship to protect his citizens. The warship was named Vasa and its construction was hurried as the Swedes waged war in those years with the now-historic bi-confederation entity reigned by one monarch–the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

New research looks set to answer a long-standing question about the status of a mysterious tomb-like structure uncovered in Cork Harbour many years ago. Archaeologists have been split as to whether it was prehistoric or a more recent 19th-century “folly”. However, Connemara-based archaeologist Michael Gibbons now says there is conclusive evidence the Carraig á Mhaistin stone structure at Rostellan on the eastern shore of Cork Harbour is a megalithic dolmen. Mr Gibbons has also discovered a previously unrecognised cairn close to the dolmen which would have been concealed by rising sea levels, and which he is reporting to the National...

A joint study by TAU and the Hebrew University, involving 20 researchers from different countries and disciplines, has accurately dated 21 destruction layers at 17 archaeological sites in Israel by reconstructing the direction and/or intensity of the earth’s magnetic field recorded in burnt remnants. The new data verify the Biblical accounts of the Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian military campaigns against the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Findings indicate, for example, that the army of Hazael, King of Aram-Damascus, was responsible for the destruction of several cities—Tel Rehov, Tel Zayit, and Horvat Tevet, in addition to Gath of the Philistines,...

Archaeologists and volunteers have discovered a stone bearing a mysterious inscription and carved birds that the Picts of Scotland crafted more than a millennium ago. The cross slab, found in a small cemetery last month, dates to between A.D. 500 and 700, and sheds new light on the historic interaction between heritage and faith in the northern U.K. The Picts, or “Painted People,” were so-named by Roman historians because of their supposed war paint and tattoos (“picti,” is the Latin word for “paint”). They lived in northern and eastern Scotland in the early medieval period. Likely descended from Celtic tribes,...

LUMBARDA, Croatia—Archaeologist Mate Parica was examining satellite images of Croatia’s coastline when he spotted something unusual. “I thought: maybe it is natural, maybe not,” said Parica, a professor at the University of Zadar. The image showed a large, shallow area on the seabed jutting out from the eastern shore of the island of Korcula.

Functioning ‘mechanical gears’ discovered in nature for the first time To the best of our knowledge, the mechanical gear (equally sized teeth cut into two rotating surfaces to lock them together as they turn) was invented by Greek mechanics in Alexandria around 300 B.C.E. Functioning ‘mechanical gears’ discovered in nature for the first time Since then, the simple concept has become a foundation of modern technology, allowing a wide range of machinery and vehicles, including automobiles and bicycles. However, As it turns out, a three-millimeter-long hopping insect known as Issus coleopterous beat us to this invention. Malcolm Burrows and Gregory...

Neanderthals could talk, and it wasn’t the “Ooga Booga” you were expecting Homo sapiens have a preconceived notion of our Neanderthal ancestors as being so primitive that the only way they could communicate was by beating their chests and grunting now that we don’t live in caves and beat things with clubs. Neanderthal skull. According to scientists who recently discovered some shocking facts about how Neanderthals communicated, this couldn’t be further from the truth. They most certainly had some sort of a language. The ear structures in Neanderthal skulls showed that they were capable of picking up on the wavelengths...

Scientists Find 500-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Brain The discovery of new evidence supports the previous speculation on 520 million-year-old human-old brain systems, provoking thoughts about the nature of brains, life, and intelligence in the cosmos. Soft, squishy, and delicate; brain and nervous system tissues maybe some of the worst candidates for preservation in the fossil record. In past years the best examples of the ancient brain and nerve structures have come from creatures trapped and preserved in amber that was a couple of hundred million years old. But a few years ago paleontologists claimed to have found evidence of brain structures in...

Humans understood astronomy 40000 years ago, European caves provide proof According to a scientific study, 40,000-year-old cave paintings indicate the use of complex astronomy. According to experts, the ancient paintings that were believed to be symbols of prehistoric animals are actually ancient star maps. Early cave art reveals that people in the last ice age had a detailed knowledge of the night sky. They were hardly different from us today in terms of intellect. Animal symbols represent star constellations in the night sky. A new scientific study revealed that humans had a sophisticated knowledge of stars and constellations more than...