Free Republic

A sixth-century "mini" ice age may have been "the straw that broke the camel's back" that led to the final disintegration of the Western Roman Empire, a new study claims...By studying rocks carried by icebergs from Greenland all the way to Iceland's west coast, a team of researchers has uncovered what they believe is more evidence for the severity of this mini ice age. Their findings, published April 8 in the journal Geology, point to the prolonged cooling being a key factor in the eventual decline of the Western Roman Empire — although not all historians agree...Economic crisis, government corruption,...

Around 2,400 years ago, the great city of Elusa arose in the heart of the Negev Desert, at the crossing point of two great trading routes: the Incense Road and the biblical Way of Shur. Elusa presumably began, as desert cities do, with a village built around an oasis. That particular area is rich in groundwater. At first a village of pagans worshipping Venus, Aphrodite (locally named al-Allat) and the like, the people there would convert to Christianity in the 4th century C.E. We can be confident that this particular set of ruins in the heart of what is now...