History

The world’s oldest known picture story is a cave painting almost 6,000 years older than the previous record holder, found about 10km away on the same island in Indonesia, an international team of archaeologists has said.

The painting, believed to be at least 51,200 years old, was found at Leang Karampuang cave on the east Indonesian island of Sulawesi, researchers from Griffith University, Southern Cross University and the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency wrote in the journal Nature.

Samples were collected in 2017, but weren’t dated until earlier this year.

The previous record holder was a lifesize picture of a wild pig believed to be created at least 45,500 years ago in a cave at Leang Tedongnge.

The recently discovered painting is of three therianthropes – or human-animal hybrids – and a wild pig.

This topic arose more than once in the communication of the Archbishop with the Nazis. In 1943, he stood up against the planned genocide of the Athenian Jewish community and was threatened with a shooting. The Primate replied, “The Greek hierarchs are not shot. They are hanged. Please respect this tradition.”

The Archbishop continued to harshly denounce the invaders in his sermons. Once the head of the collaborationist government Georgios Tsolakoglou told him, “Be careful, or the Germans will shoot you.” Again, His Eminence Damaskinos said, “It is the military who are shot. The hierarchs are hanged, and I am ready for it.”

Inhabitants of the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá are well-known for their practice of ritual human sacrifice. The most prevalent notion in the popular imagination is that of young Maya women being flung alive into sink holes as offerings to the gods. Details about the cultural context for these sacrifices remain fuzzy, so scientists conduced genetic analysis on ancient remains of some of the sacrificial victims to learn more. That analysis confirmed the prevalence of male sacrifices, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature, often of related children (ages 6 to 12) from the same household—including two pairs of identical twins.

Chichén Itzá ("at the mouth of the well of the Itzá") is located in Mexico's eastern Yucatán. It was one of the largest of the Maya cities, quite possibly one of the mythical capital cities (Tollans) that are frequently mentioned in Mesoamerican literature. It's known for its incredible monumental architecture, such as the Temple of Kukulcán ("El Castillo"), a step pyramid honoring a feathered serpent deity. Around the spring and fall equinoxes, there is a distinctive light-and-shadow effect that creates the illusion of a serpent slithering down the staircase. There is also a well-known acoustical effect: clap your hands at the base of the staircases and you'll get an echo that sounds eerily like a bird's chirp—perhaps mimicking the quetzal, a brightly colored exotic bird native to the region and prized for its long, resplendent tail feathers.

The Great Ball Court (one of 13 at the site) is essentially a whispering gallery: even though it is 545 feet long and 225 feet wide, a whisper at one end can be heard clearly at the other. The court features slanted benches with sculpted panels depicting aspects of Maya ball games—which were not just athletic events but also religious ones that often involved ritual sacrifices of players by decapitation.

"Evidence of ritual killing is extensive throughout the site of Chichén Itzá and includes both the physical remains of sacrificed individuals as well as representations in monumental art," the authors of the new Nature paper wrote. Decapitation was just one method of sacrifice favored by the Maya over various historical periods. The Maya were equally fond of cutting out the still-beating hearts of victims, accessing the organ either from below the diaphragm or through the sternum. There were also rituals that involved binding victims to a stake and shooting arrows at a white target painted on the heart.

The site features underground rivers with natural sinkholes, called cenotes, providing water to the local inhabitants. One of those is known as the Cenote Sagrado ("Sacred Cenote"), or the Well of Sacrifice, some 200 feet (60 meters) wide and surrounded by sheer cliffs. As its name implies, the Maya would regularly sacrifice valuable objects and the occasional human by tossing them into the sinkhole to appease the Maya rain god, Chaac. (If the 89-foot (27-meter) fall didn't kill them, drowning would.)

I refer to the Reuters mischievous article, “India Hindu group toughens stance on mosque-temple disputes,” published in the Stabroek News, (28/1/2024). The article makes mention of the “razing of the Ayodhya mosque,” as the BBC, New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and Al Jazeera have done, without any reference to the fact, as established by the Archaeological Survey of India and accepted by the Supreme Court of India in its 2019 judgment, that the mosque was built over a huge temple.

The article further goes on to say that, “Hindu groups have for decades said that Muslim Moghul rulers built monuments and places of worship after destroying ancient Hindu structures.” This is not just a claim. The evidence for the Hindu position is evident to the naked eyes in hundreds of cases, especially in northern India where Moghul (Mongol) religious persecution – of Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains – was most intense, a persecution boastfully documented in memoirs of several Moghul rulers themselves. For example, walking around the Gyanvapi Mosque – an interesting Sanskrit name for a mosque – one can see evidence of Hindu architecture. Interesting also to note is that a mere wall separates the famous Kashi Vishwanath Mandir from the mosque.

The razing of indigenous places of worship and other institutions and superimposing on them places of worship belonging to invading and conquering armies is not something peculiar to India. Historical evidence is replete with examples in Europe where the religious landscape is littered with pre-Christian pagan monuments that were either destroyed or converted into Christian churches and cathedrals. The best, living examples of this destruction or as some Christian sources euphemistically say “conversion” can be seen in Rome and Greece.

Wikipedia is not peer-reviewed academic research, but it does make reference to something that is universally and indisputably known when it says, “Eventually the prime sites of the pagan temples were very often occupied for churches, the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, literally “Saint Mary above Minerva” in Rome, Christianised about 750, being simply the most obvious example. The Basilica of Junius Bassus was made a church in the late fifth century.”

The same article tells us that in Greece, “the occupation of pagan sites by Christian monasteries and churches was ubiquitous.”

On the other hand, with the rise of Islam, the first casualty was the Ka’aba itself which was once sacred to Arabian pagans and polytheists. When Jerusalem was captured the Dome of the Rock was built on the Temple Mount on which could be found the Jewish Temple. Later came the Al Aqsa Mosque. However it was in Europe that the systematic conversion of churches into mosques reached a frenzy. Alphabetically, Wikipedia lists Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Cyprus where as late as 1974 following the Turkish invasion “church-to-mosque conversion” reached a peak. In Greece, there are scores of examples of this conversion. Many other European countries suffered the same fate.

Of course, the most recent example of this takeover is the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, formerly Constantinople. Built as a cathedral as early as 537 CE in Constantinople it was converted sometime in the mid-15th century into a mosque and remained so until 1935 when it was made into a museum. In 2020, the Turkish government declared it once again to be a mosque. All Pope Francis could do was to express “regret.” After all, Christianity was guilty of the same iconoclastic sin.

Ancient Egyptians may have tried to treat cancer with surgery, according to a new study that has uncovered the earliest known evidence of a procedure for the disease.

Texts dating back thousands of years describe ancient Egyptians’ advanced knowledge of medicine, including identifying and treating numerous diseases and traumatic injuries, using prostheses and dental fillings.

But it was not believed that they knew how to treat cancer, until now.

Studying ancient skulls, scientists discovered cut marks around cancerous lesions – appearing to provide evidence of experimental treatments or medical explorations of the disease.

Lead author Prof Edgard Camaros from the University of Santiago de Compostela, in Spain, told The National that the team’s research “changes our understanding of the history of medicine”.

“This is the earliest known, at least for the moment, surgical procedure related to a cancerous tumour,” he said.

“Was it a treatment or a postmortem intervention? We cannot tell, but clearly they were trying to deal with it.”

Researchers made the discovery as part of efforts to understand more about the role of cancer in the past and how prevalent it was in ancient societies.

They studied two Egyptian skulls in the University of Cambridge’s Duckworth Collection. One, from between 2687 and 2345BC, belonged to a male aged 30 to 35. The other, from between 663 and 343BC, belonged to a female who was older than 50 years.

The man’s skull showed evidence of a large lesion consistent with excessive tissue destruction, a condition known as neoplasm. There were also 30 or so small and round metastasised lesions scattered across the skull, with cut marks, which appeared to be from surgery.

The Battle of Puebla took place on 5 May 1862, near the city of Puebla during the French intervention in Mexico. The battle ended in a victory for the Mexican Army over the occupying French forces. The French eventually overran the Mexicans in subsequent battles, but the Mexican victory at Puebla against a much better equipped and larger[1] French army provided a significant morale boost to the Mexican army and also helped slow the French army's advance towards Mexico City. There were a total of 10,540 soldiers in the war. 462 French soldiers died in combat. Only 83 Mexican soldiers died in the battle.

Large holes were then bored into the sides of the skulls and placed onto a large wooden pole prior to being placed in the tzompantli - a towering rack of skulls in the front of the temple.

Two columns of decorative mortar skulls were placed either side of the real ones to honour the gods and scare off potential enemies.

Paintings and written descriptions from the early colonial period have long documented the macabre site. One historical report claimed one rack contained more than 130,000 real skulls.

In London during the 1600s, dental infections were listedTrusted Source as the fifth or sixth leading cause of death. Even up until 1908, dental infections still ended in death between 10 to 40 percent of the time.

Due to advances in medicine and dental hygiene, death from a tooth infection is now extremely rare. However, it’s still important to seek prompt care if you suspect that you have an infected tooth.

When left untreated, a tooth infection can spread to other areas of the body, leading to serious, potentially life-threatening complications, including:

sepsis: a severe reaction by the body in response to the infection Ludwig’s angina: a serious bacterial infection that affects the floor of the mouth, underneath the tongue necrotizing fasciitis: a severe infection that leads to soft tissue death in the body mediastinitis: an inflammation of the mediastinum, which is a space located between your lungs endocarditis: an inflammation of your heart’s inner lining, called the endocardium cavernous sinus thrombosis: a dangerous blood clot of the sinuses, just under the brain and behind the eyes osteomyelitis: a bone tissue infection brain abscess: a collection of pus that can form in the brain

This was a strange little story I found in some old notes:

Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague, choreomania, St John's Dance and, historically, St. Vitus' Dance) was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children, who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen, in the Holy Roman Empire, in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; one particularly notable outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518, also in the Holy Roman Empire.

Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not an isolated event, and was well documented in contemporary reports. It was nevertheless poorly understood, and remedies were based on guesswork. Generally, musicians accompanied dancers, to help ward off the mania, but this tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more to join in. There is no consensus among modern-day scholars as to the cause of dancing mania.[1]

The several theories proposed range from religious cults being behind the processions to people dancing to relieve themselves of stress and put the poverty of the period out of their minds. It is, however, thought to be as a mass psychogenic illness in which the occurrence of similar physical symptoms, with no known physical cause, affect a large group of people as a form of social influence.[1]