Free Republic

More than 50 samples are reported, spanning more than 1000 years of history from the Iron Age to Late Antiquity. Despite cultural diversity, our analysis reveals no major differences between the Picenes and other coeval populations, suggesting a shared genetic history of the Central Italian Iron Age ethnic groups. Nevertheless, a slight genetic differentiation between populations along the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coasts can be observed, possibly due to different population dynamics in the two sides of Italy and/or genetic contacts across the Adriatic Sea. Additionally, we identify several individuals with ancestries deviating from their general population. Lastly, in our Late...

The archway was uncovered during archaeological investigations and is believed to date back to the time when Shakespeare and his company performed there.A remarkable 600-year-old doorway, potentially leading to legendary English playwright William Shakespeare's dressing room, has been uncovered in the UK's oldest working theatre.The archway was discovered at St George's Guildhall in King's Lynn, Norfolk, during archaeological investigations sparked by curiosity about a "weird shape" in a wall.When two noticeboards were taken down, an 18th-century wall was exposed. As bricks from this wall were removed, an even older archway came into view...St George's Guildhall, which hosted its first recorded...

The pendant imitates a Roman coin called a solidus, a type of gold coin introduced by the emperor Constantine in the fourth century A.D. It was discovered in January 2023 near the town of Attleborough in Norfolk, England, and dates to the late fifth to early sixth century. The piece of jewelry copies the imagery and inscriptions found on coins from the time of emperor Honorius, ruler of the Western Roman Empire from A.D. 393 to 423.The obverse shows a bust of Honorius wearing a pearl diadem and a cuirass, or chest armor, while the reverse depicts a draped standing...

The recently discovered shipwreck may have set sail as part of da Gama's final Indian Ocean voyage—a journey which he made a total of four times before his death 500 years ago. Researchers believe it may have been one of around 20 ships part of this excursion: the São Jorge, which was captained by Fernando de Monroy and sank in 1524, making it one of the earliest European shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean. Eight similar Portuguese shipwrecks of similar age have previously been discovered in the area.The discovery of the Portuguese shipwreck was made in Malindi, Kenya, in 2013 by...

George Oliver, a citizen of Calvert County in Maryland was out on the shores of the bay, on the look for fossils as the tide was low and favorable. He spotted a coffin in the water amid the low tide on his scout. The witness then proceeded to contact authorities regarding proper retrieval of the find as he could see the coffin but it was submerged. The sheriff's department was contacted, and they called an archaeological society. Officials examined the contents of the coffin once it was retrieved but were careful not to displace any of them.Reports suggested that Oliver...

The Bigfoot Discovery Museum in the Santa Cruz Mountains will close after 20 years as its owner retires. "It's going to be weird for me. Yeah. I'm so used to this, and I've been doing this for so, so long. To suddenly have it all go away, and everything is going to be strange," said owner Michael Ruggs. The iconic museum, located alongside Highway 9 in Felton, has embodied Santa Cruz's quirkiness for twenty years. As Ruggs retires, the museum will retire alongside him. "Well, anywhere from 30 to 70 people come in the door and, they'll check everything out,...

A researcher says he has deciphered an ancient, heavily damaged inscription carved on a 2,600-year-old monument in Turkey.The monument, which is engraved with images of lions and sphinxes, is known as Arslan Kaya (also spelled Aslan Kaya), which means "lion rock" in Turkish. The inscription spells out the name "Materan," a goddess of the Phrygians, who flourished in what is now Turkey from roughly 1200 to 600 B.C. They knew her "simply as the Mother," Mark Munn, a professor of ancient Greek history and archaeology at Pennsylvania State University who wrote a paper about the inscription, told Live Science in...

Scientists have uncovered the shocking truth about 12 severed hands buried in ancient Egyptian burial pits.They determined that the remains — all right hands — were mostly from men, with possibly one female, and may provide evidence of the grisly 'gold of honor' ritual.The discovery offers physical proof of an ancient practice in which Pharaoh's warriors presented the severed right hands of their enemies in exchange for a prestigious reward: a collar of golden beads.Before the unearthing of these cleanly severed hands, the 'gold of honor' ritual was known only through Egyptian tomb inscriptions and temple reliefs dating back to...

Archaeologists have discovered America's first firearm that was used by explorers searching for the 'Seven Cities of Gold' nearly 500 years ago.The bronze cannon, or wall gun, was part of the Coronado expedition led by Spanish conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who traveled to the New World searching for a fabled city filled with treasures.The 40-pound weapon was designed to fire round projectiles, or buckshot, which would attacked enemies like 'a swarm of hornets.'The team conducted a radiocarbon analysis on the artifact, finding it was fashioned between 1500 and 1520 with metal that indicated it was cast in Mexico due...

An entrance to what may have once been a sanctuary was found by researchers among the cliffs of Athribis in a small Egyptian village near present-day Sohag, roughly 124 miles north of Luxor. Arthribis was once a hub for the worship of the god Min-Re; his wife, lioness goddess Repyt; and their son, the child-god Kolanthes. It spans more than 74 acres and includes a temple complex, a settlement, a necropolis, and ancient quarries. Researchers from Germany’s University of Tübingen, with support from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, identified a pylon or two towers flanking the main entrance...

Deep within the ice sheet of Greenland lies a US military secret that hasn't been seen since the 1960s, but a NASA flyover earlier this year has provided an unprecedented look at the buried Cold War relic. Camp Century, constructed in 1959 by the US Army Corps of Engineers, was built directly into the ice sheet of Greenland, giving it an interior reminiscent of Echo Base on the frozen world of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. At the heart of the facility was the PM-2A portable nuclear reactor, which provided power for the sprawling "city under the ice" that...

Archaeologists have uncovered a unique fragment of a Viking sword near Witmarsum, a village in northern Netherlands. The find, a pommel cap from the 10th century AD, once formed part of a gilded sword hilt. It features intricate patterns in the Mammen style, a decorative art tradition that followed the Jellinge style. The Fryske Akademy explained that the design includes depictions of wild boar heads, which symbolised strength, courage, protection, and combat. Most Read on Euro Weekly News Remarkable Viking discoveries in Sweden Interactions between Frisia, Scandinavia, and the British Isles Dr. Nelleke IJssennagger-van der Pluijm, director of the Fryske...

Abstract===================================== The Armenians are a culturally isolated population who historically inhabited a region in the Near East bounded by the Mediterranean and Black seas and the Caucasus We find that Armenians form a distinctive cluster linking the Near East, Europe, and the Caucasus. We show that Armenian diversity can be explained by several mixtures of Eurasian populations that occurred between ~3000 and ~2000 bce, a period characterized by major population migrations after the domestication of the horse, appearance of chariots, and the rise of advanced civilizations in the Near East. However, genetic signals of population mixture cease after ~1200 bce...

Armenians, a population in Western Asia historically inhabiting the Armenian highlands, were long believed to be descendants of Phrygian settlers from the Balkans. This theory originated largely from the accounts of the Greek historian Herodotus, who observed that Armenians were armed in Phrygian fashion when serving in the Persian army. Linguists further supported this theory, suggesting that the Armenian language shares ties with the Thraco-Phrygian subgroup of Indo-European languages.But the first whole-genome study challenges this long-held belief, revealing no significant genetic link between Armenians and the populations in the Balkan region. The study compares newly generated modern Armenian genomes and...

Italian authorities have recovered precious 3rd century B.C. artefacts from an Etruscan necropolis looted by a couple of bungling tomb raiders in Umbria who stumbled across the haul on their land...The artefacts, including eight urns, two sarcophagi and beauty accessories such as bronze mirrors and a perfume bottle still redolent of its original scent, are worth at least 8 million euros ($8.5 million), Carabinieri art police said.They were found in Citta della Pieve, about 150 kilometres (90 miles) north of Rome.One sarcophagus contained the full skeleton of a woman in her 40s, while the urns were finely decorated with scenes...

This is a long documentary that finally puts this to bed in my mind... I have followed this story for 50 years now and I think he deserves a Pulitzer prize for this video that pretty much shows that the whole story has been allowed to remain a mystery as an FBI coverup, because the truth would be embarrassing. I can't say any more without being a spoiler.D.B. Cooper Deep Family Secrets

You wouldn’t jump out of an airplane wearing a tie. So, naturally, the most famous skyjacker to never be found, the dapper D.B. Cooper, took his tie off on Thanksgiving Eve, 1971, just before dropping out of a Northwest Orient Airlines plane somewhere south of Seattle. Now, 52 years later, Eric Ulis—the amateur sleuth who has made it his mission to solve the enduring D.B. Cooper mystery—thinks the infamous tie yields enough clues to finally reveal the skyjacker’s true identity. “I would not be surprised at all if 2024 was the year we figure out who this guy was,” Ulis...

The parachute that the infamous hijacker DB Cooper used to make his getaway out of a plane with $200,000 may have finally been found. The enigma behind DB Cooper, the man who jumped out of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 with thousands in cash after handing a stewardess a note demanding the ransom, has long stumped the FBI. Nearly a decade later, the FBI has begun unofficially looking back into the case after the children of Richard Floyd McCoy II contacted YouTuber Dan Gryder in 2020 with possible evidence. After Chanté and Richard III 'Rick' McCoy's mother died, they got...

On an island off the east coast of Maryland, a stone spearpoint sticking out of a coastal cliff stuns archaeologists. It asks a big question: Could humans have arrived in America 5,000 years earlier than we thought?The Startling Alternative Theory of How Humans Arrived in America | 2:50Smithsonian Channel | 4.2M subscribers | 64,450 views | April 17, 2018

Tariffs have a long and storied history as both a revenue-raising tool and a way of protecting strategically important industries in our country. For months, economic commentators parroted the Harris campaign’s misleading talking point that tariffs are a "sales tax." Like much of economists’ conventional wisdom, this view is fundamentally incorrect. The reflexive opposition to tariffs represents political ideology and advocacy, not considered economic thought. The truth is that tariffs have a long and storied history as both a revenue-raising tool and a way of protecting strategically important industries in the U.S. President-elect Trump has added a third leg to...