Free Republic

....The legend behind Santa Claus is Saint Nicholas, the fourth-century bishop of Myra. His hat was the bishop’s mitre. Nicholas was born in modern day Turkey to a rather wealthy family. Losing his parents at a young age, Nicholas dedicated both his fortune and his life to the Christian church. Very quickly he was appointed the bishop of Myra, on the southern coast of modern day Turkey.

Imperial College London has found that two networks of genes determine whether people are intelligent or not so bright. Genes which make people intelligent have been discovered and scientists believe they could be manipulated to boost brain power. Researchers have believed for some time that intellect is inherited with studies suggesting that up to 75 per cent of IQ is genetic, and the rest down to environmental factors such as schooling and friendship groups. But until now, nobody has been able to pin-point exactly which genes are responsible for better memory, attention, processing speed or reasoning skills. Now Imperial College...

The legend of William Tell, the Swiss legendary hero who symbolizes the struggle for individual and political freedom, has its origins in medieval Switzerland, in the tax rebellions that launched the Everlasting League and the defeat of an empire. Settled first by the Tene, then the Celts and then the Romans, after the empire fell Switzerland fell under the sway of the Ostrogoths, the Franks and finally Charlemagne's empire and its heirs. In the 11th century, Switzerland was divided by the conflict between the Emperor and the Papacy. The dukes and counts, abbots and bishops benefited the most from this...

The Ancient Egyptian papyrus Cairo 86637 calendar is the oldest preserved historical document of naked eye observations of a variable star, the eclipsing binary Algol -- a manifestation of Horus, a god and a king. This calendar contains lucky or unlucky prognoses for each day of one year. Researchers have performed a statistical analysis of the Cairo Calendar mythological texts. Their analysis revealed that the periods of Algol (2.85 days) and the Moon (29.6 days) strongly regulate the actions of deities in this calendar. "Until now, there were only conjectures that many of the mythological texts of the Cairo Calendar...

The goddess of love, the Minoan Astarte, is the key figure that unlocks the mystery of the Phaistos Disk, according to linguist, archaeologist and coordinator of the program Erasmus of Crete Technological Institute; Gareth Owens. Speaking to the ANA -- MPA news agency, Owens said that after new data found in his research, his theory has changed slightly compared to the position he had expressed about a year ago. The focus is no longer the "pregnant mother", as originally estimated, but a "pregnant goddess" that takes shape in the face of Astarte, the goddess of love. "There is no doubt...

After years of studying a mysterious thigh bone from a cave in China, scientists said on Thursday they believe it represents an ancient species of human that persisted much longer than previously thought. The 14,000-year-old bone was uncovered in 1989 in Maludong, known as the Red Deer Cave. The trove of fossils it was initially found with went unstudied until 2012. The partial femur, though relatively young in age, looks like the bones of far older species like Homo habilis and early Homo erectus that lived more than 1.5 million years ago, said the study in PLOS ONE. "Its young...

A 14,000-year-old thigh bone may upend human history. Unearthed in southwest China, this femur resembles those of an ancient species of humans thought to be long extinct by the Late Pleistocene, scientists say. The scientists compare the leg bone to ancient and modern human femurs in a paper published Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE, arguing that this specimen represents a population of ancient humans that lived surprisingly recently. If they're right, this could dramatically change the way we see human history. Today, our species, Homo sapiens, are the only humans to walk the Earth. But it hasn't always been...

...Northern Italy's Friuli-Venezia Giulia... is located in the Eastern Alps, near Slovenia, and used to be an important regional power. Today, it is a quaint town, and many tourists are attracted to it as a medieval center. Julius Caesar founded Cividale in 50 B.C. The area had already been settled by the Veneti and Celts, but it was after the destruction of Aquileia and Iulium Carnicum that the town became known as Cividale and became the principal town of Friuli. Within Cividale del Friuli is the Celtic Hypogeum -- a subterranean structure created for an unknown purpose. The Celtic Hypogeum...

Researchers, led by Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, claim they have evidence that Roman ships visited North America 'during the first century or earlier.' Their theory centers on the discovery of what they believe to be a Roman sword on Oak Island, off Nova Scotia.

A 14,000-year-old fragment of thigh bone found in a cave in China may represent evidence of the unexpected survival of long-vanished human ancestors. If so, then right into and through the ice age, a creature that was either Homo habilis or Homo erectus survived alongside the Neanderthals, the unknown humans who left behind some DNA in a cave in Siberia, the mysterious so-called hobbit of the island of Flores in Indonesia, and modern Homo sapiens. But by the end of this multicultural ice age 10,000 years ago, only one human species survived. The fossil, a partial femur, had survived unstudied...

The researchers are basing their claims on a number of Roman discoveries in Oak Island... As well as the stone, they found carved stones on Oak Island also 'possess a language from the ancient Levant' according to Pulitzer. Other findings include a Roman legionnaire's whistle found on Oak Island in 1901, a Roman shield 'boss' and a small Roman head sculpture found in Mexico City in 1933. Another clue, in his report, is the presence of an invasive species of plant which was once used by Romans... 'The ceremonial sword came out of that shipwreck,' he told The Boston Standard....

Israeli archaeologists discovered a 1,500-year-old slab of marble with Hebrew inscriptions (pictured) by Kursi near the Sea of Galilee in Israel’s north, reaffirming a Jewish presence at what Christians believe to be the location of Jesus’ “Miracle of the Swine.”

Pokhara, the second largest town of Nepal, has been built on massive debris deposits, which are associated with strong medieval earthquakes. Three quakes, in 1100, 1255 and 1344, with magnitudes of around Mw 8 triggered large-scale collapses, mass wasting and initiated the redistribution of material by catastrophic debris flows on the mountain range. An international team of scientists led by the University of Potsdam has discovered that these flows of gravel, rocks and sand have poured over a distance of more than 60 kilometers from the high mountain peaks of the Annapurna massif downstream. Christoff Andermann from the GFZ German...

Along a lush river delta in what is now northeastern Spain, a herd of dinosaurs munched on ferns and conifers similar to modern-day cypresses 125 million years ago. These creatures stood out from the others in this Cretaceous Period landscape by virtue of the unusual sail-like structure on their backs, and experts today can only hypothesize about its function.

Thousands of stone structures that form geometric patterns in the Middle East are coming into clearer view, with archaeologists finding two wheel-shaped patterns date back some 8,500 years. That makes these "wheels" older than the famous geoglyphs in Peru called Nazca Lines. ... Those are just some of the findings of new research on these Middle East lines, which were first encountered by pilots during World War I. RAF Flight Lt. Percy Maitland published an account of them in 1927 in the journal Antiquity, reporting that the Bedouin called the structures "works of the old men," a name still sometimes...

There is no evidence that a Nazi train rumoured to be carrying gems and gold has been found in Poland, experts say. Researchers presenting findings about the alleged discovery in the Polish town of Walbrzych said there might be a tunnel but no train. However, one of those who claimed to have found the train said he still believed it was there.

Every bird alive today can trace its ancestry to creatures that lived about 95 million years ago on a chunk of land that split off from the supercontinent Gondwana, a new study suggests. The new family tree, compiled using information from fossils and from genetic analyses of modern birds, also reveals that this lineage underwent a major burst of evolution after an asteroid slammed into Earth about 66 million years ago and killed off the rest of their dinosaurian kin. "This is one of the most comprehensive studies that attempts to date when these evolutionary divergences happened," says Luis Chiappe,...

The most valuable piece seized by Finnish Customs, while on its way to a collector in Russia, is a decorative ceramic plaque looted from a Syrian shrine that dates to the 1400s."There a great deal of archeological material in the Middle East related to humankind's early history that in many ways is irreplaceable," Chief Intendant Jouni Kuurne of Finland's National Board of Antiquities told Yle.The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO has been deeply concerned about the destruction of Syrian's world heritage sites and the looting of art treasures for sale to private collectors.The piece from the Syrian...

New research led by the American Museum of Natural History reveals that the evolution of modern birds was greatly shaped by the history of our planet's geography and climate. The DNA-based work, published today in the journal Science Advances, finds that birds arose in what is now South America around 90 million years ago, and radiated extensively around the time of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that killed off the non-avian dinosaurs. The new research suggests that birds in South America survived this event and then started moving to other parts of the world via multiple land bridges while diversifying during...

Monday, 30 September, 2002, 20:30 GMT 21:30 UKTut's life and death unmasked British and NZ experts have reconstructed the faceThis is the face behind the famous golden death mask of King Tutankhamun. He lived in very turbulent times and it does seem likely from what the detectives have found out that he was assassinated Scientists and special effects artists in the UK and in New Zealand employed digital techniques normally reserved for crime investigations to reconstruct what the young pharaoh might have looked like. The fibreglass bust has gone on display at London's Science Museum. It was produced to illustrate...