Tag: lost civilizations

DNA Evidence Proves “First Black Briton” Was Actually A White Girl

In 2021 the establishment media was electrified by a discovery involving the ancient remains of a woman found over a century ago near a village in East Sussex in Britain.  The reason leftist journalists were so hyped?  A supposedly comprehensive study by “experts” in facial reconstruction had determined that the nearly 2000 year old skeleton belonged to a Sub-Saharan African person.

The remains became known as the “Beachy Head Woman” and images of her reconstructed black face began circulating internationally.  This was proof, somehow, that progressives had always been right to support third world immigration.

The new data arrived conveniently in time to support a far-left campaign to defend the ideas of multiculturalism.  Part of this narrative asserts that Caucasian regions of the world have never actually been Caucasian and that western culture doesn’t really exist.  In fact, white Europeans have no claim to any lands anywhere, they have no home, and African/Asian migrants have “always” freely traveled throughout Europe.

The political left was enthralled, taking to social media and reposting the discovery millions of times over to “own the fascists”.  The BBC even paid to have a plaque constructed on the site where the bones were discovered proudly proclaiming that this is where the first Briton of “African origin” had been found.

School lessons were immediately developed in the UK, teaching students about the multicultural history of Britain.  This was scientific confirmation to back up the avalanche of European entertainment content depicting Sub-Saharan Africans as integral to the history of the continent, roaming the lands as tribesman or enjoying the finery of royal court.   

Leftists argue that their version of history justifies the expansion of open mass immigration, because “things have always been this way” and white people today who want to protect their histories and cultures from erasure are merely ignorant of the past.  

The problem is, Beachy Head Woman is not African or black.  Recently confirmed DNA evidence shows she was white with blonde hair and blue eyes.  She was not a migrant, but born in ancient Britain.

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The Earliest Winter Solstice Rituals Go All The Way Back To The Stone Age

It’s barely perceptible, but from the morning after December 21 (or June 21 if you’re below the equator), the Sun starts to hang around for just a little longer each day. For most of us, that means we can start dreaming about the day that our morning commute doesn’t begin in complete darkness, but for Neolithic folk, the winter solstice was far more significant.

Relatively new to this whole sedentary lifestyle thing, prehistoric villagers depended on the annual rebirth of the Sun in order to ensure the continuation of their agricultural cycles. It’s unsurprising, therefore, that the Neolithic period saw the emergence of the earliest structures designed to track the movements of the Sun, Moon and other celestial bodies, with the solstices often the central focus. 

Here’s a look at the oldest and most impressive solstice traditions from around the world.

Newgrange (Ireland)

Built around 3200 BCE, Newgrange is the most famous monument in County Meath’s Brú na Bóinne archaeological complex. Consisting of an earthen mound housing several burial chambers, this so-called passage tomb was constructed in perfect alignment with the winter solstice.

At sunset on the shortest day of the year, the Sun’s rays hit Newgrange at the exact angle needed to illuminate the central chamber and its impressive array of engraved artworks. Recent analyses of these designs have determined that the spiralling figures probably represent the shortening and lengthening of the Sun’s path across the sky as the year swings between the summer and winter solstices, underscoring the tomb’s connection with solar cycles.

It’s worth noting that the same effect has been observed at numerous other passage tombs across the British Isles, indicating that Newgrange was probably part of a wider, interconnected Neolithic tradition focused on the observation of the solstices. One particularly noteworthy example is Maeshowe in Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland, which is also aligned to allow the setting sun to illuminate its central chamber on the winter solstice.

El Castillo, Chichén Itzá (Mexico)

In the Americas, there was no official Neolithic period, and given that humans only reached the continent about 20,000 years ago, it’s understandable that things happened a lot later there than they did in Eurasia. Probably the most impressive winter solstice event can be seen at the famous Maya city of Chichén Itzá, where the central pyramid – known as El Castillo – is eerily lit up by the rising Sun on the shortest day of the year.

By late afternoon, the angle of the Sun’s rays is such that two sides of the pyramid are illuminated while the other two are plunged into darkness, creating a striking visual demonstration of the ancient Maya’s extraordinary astronomical precision.

Built around 550 CE, El Castillo is considerably younger than the likes of Newgrange and Stonehenge, and in fact it’s not even the oldest solstice-aligned structure in the Americas. Woodhenge, for instance, is located at the ancient site of Cahokia in Illinois, and was built around 1,000 years ago. Thought to have served as a type of astronomical observatory, Woodhenge probably held gatherings on the solstices, although the nature of these ceremonies remains the subject of speculation.

Stonehenge (England)

When it comes to solstices, you can’t not mention Stonehenge. Built in multiple stages beginning around 3000 BCE, the famous stone circle is aligned with the summer solstice sunrise to the east and the winter solstice sunset to the west. 

It’s unclear exactly how these events were celebrated during Neolithic times, although the prehistoric residents of the nearby village of Durrington Walls – which housed the workers who built Stonehenge – are known to have slaughtered large numbers of animals around midwinter, all of which hints at massive solstice feasts.

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The moment the earliest known man-made fire was uncovered

A stunning discovery at an archaeological dig in the UK is rewriting the timeline of when humans first made fire.

Researchers have discovered the earliest known instance of human-created fire, which took place in the east of England 400,000 years ago.

The new discovery, in the village of Barnham, pushes the origin of human fire-making back by more than 350,000 years, far earlier than previously thought.

The ability to create fire was the moment that changed everything for humans. It provided warmth at will and enabled our ancestors to cook and eat meat, which made our brains grow. It meant we were no longer a group of animals struggling to survive – it gave us time to think and invent and become the advanced species we are today.

The team say they found baked earth together with the earliest Stone Age lighter – consisting of a flint that was bashed against a rock called pyrite, also known as fool’s gold, to create a spark.

BBC News has been given world exclusive access to the prehistoric site.

Under the treetops of Barnham Forest lies an archaeological treasure, buried a few metres beneath the Earth, that dates back to the furthest depths of human pre-history.

Around the edges of a clearing, tangled green branches frame the scene like a curtain, as if the forest itself were slowly revealing a long-buried chapter of its past. Prof Nick Ashton of the British Museum leads me through the trees and we both step into his astonishing story.

“This is where it happened,” he tells me in a reverent tone.

We walk down onto a dirt floor carved into deep, stepped hollows of raw earth and pale sand.

This was an ancient fireplace at the heart of a prehistoric “town hall”, around which early Stone Age people came together hundreds of thousands of years ago.

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New discovery: The ‘sacred boundary’ surrounding Stonehenge

Some 4,500 years ago, people dug a series of deep, wide pits in the area near Durrington Walls in southern England. They were gemometrically arranged, forming a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) wide circle that enclosed over three square kilometers (1.16 square miles).

Long mistaken for naturally occuring features, the circle of human-made shafts has now come to be understood as a colossal project that lends new dimensions to the Stonehenge landscape.

An invisible ring around Durrington Walls

Durrington Walls is just a stone’s throw from the small English town of Amesbury, and just three kilometers, or about half an hour on foot, from Stonehenge. Each pit or shaft is approximately 10 meters (32.8 feet) wide and 5 meters deep.

Of the 20 pits discovered so far, a new study suggests that at least 15 form a huge, even circle around the henge of Durrington Walls. A henge is a type of prehistoric earthwork consisting of a ring-shaped bank, fortified with an inward ditch, encircling a flat circular area.

They were likely used for ceremonial purposes, to congregate or perform rituals. At the center of Durrington Walls used to be a circular structure of wooden posts, driven deep into the ground and surrounded by a settlement.

The pits were discovered years ago, but the newest research is just now uncovering more details, and providing deeper understanding. Scientists have now been able to date the structure to about 2480 BCE using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL).

The OSL method is a fairly precise way of pinpointing a sediment’s last exposure to light — and by extension, the last time it was covered or buried — by measuring the natural radiation captured in certain minerals like quartz and feldspar. This technique relies heavily on the quality of the sample and has a margin of error of about 5-10%.

The recent study shows that the circular structure did not accidentally form over centuries, but was the result of intentional efforts in a planned, momunental project. The pits were actively used as part of the cultural landscape — and traces of humans, plants and animals indicate deliberate coordination.

A ‘sacred boundary’ mapped with astounding precision

None of the shafts examined can be attributed to natural erosion of the chalky landscape — the pits’ sheer size and number clearly suggest they were dug by humans. They form a near-perfect circle, and are spaced at even intervals. The width and distance of the pits follow a clear pattern.

This means that the humans involved were able to mark distances, count steps or measurements, and work out a coordinated plan — all before they started digging. And so, what at first glance seemed like an assortment of strange holes became a rare testament to the fact that numbers, measurements, and large-scale planning were already part of the daily lives of Neolithic people living in the area.

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“Bronze Age People Didn’t Do That”: English Team Unearths “Unprecedented” Evidence of 4500-Year-Old Ancient Monument

British archaeologists have made a discovery they believe points to an unusual ancient monument that once stood in Northwest England 4,500 years ago.

The unique find, made by avocational archaeologists with the Wigan Archaeological Society, was discovered on a farm in the Greater Manchester area, after aerial photography of the region revealed an unusual, dark circular area in a farmer’s field.

Initial excavations at the discovery site had revealed what the Wigan team believed to be a burial site near Aspull, a village in the greater Wigan area. However, further studies at the site have revealed that there may be more to this ancient English mystery.

“We think it’s been repurposed from an earlier monument,” said Bill Aldridge, a member of the Wigan Archaeological Society, in a statement. Aldridge and others say the unique evidence they have unearthed, which includes a massive, oval-shaped ring ditch encircling the area, points to the existence of “a neolithic henge” that once stood there.

Such structures were unique to the Neolithic period and were not associated with later groups that occupied the area.

“Bronze Age people didn’t do that,” Aldridge recently told the BBC about his team’s discovery.

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Neanderthals’ Disappearance May Not Have Been from Extinction, Controversial New Study Argues

The disappearance of the Neanderthals—our archaic hominin cousins—remains one of the great unresolved riddles of ancient human history. Now, new research puts forward an intriguing theory: they may not have truly gone extinct.

At least not in the conventional sense of extinction, according to a paper published in Scientific Reports that argues the Neanderthals may have instead simply interbred with humans until they were essentially “absorbed” over long periods, as evidenced by new mathematical modeling.

The Mysterious Disappearance of the Neanderthals

“The disappearance of Neanderthals remains a subject of intense debate, with competing hypotheses attributing their demise to demographic decline, environmental change, competition with Homo sapiens, or genetic assimilation,” write authors Andrea Amadei, Giulia Lin, and Simone Fattorini in a new paper.

The team relied on a unique mathematical model that allowed them to show how small waves of ancient modern human immigration into populations of Neanderthals led to recurrent interbreeding. The resulting gene-mixing, they argue, “could have led to almost complete genetic substitution over 10,000–30,000 years.”

Computing Ancient Hominin Extinction

The team’s model, which is based primarily on the theory of neutral species drift, holds that most evolutionary changes within a species are due to the random genetic “drift” of mutational alleles—forms of genes that arise due to mutations—and are essentially neutral.

Employing a computational model on this basis allowed the research team to overstep considerations involving selective advantage or unexpected catastrophes that, throughout Earth’s ancient history, have also helped account for the sudden demise of species.

Instead, the team’s model “shows that sustained gene flow from a demographically larger species could account for Neanderthals’ genetic absorption into modern humans,” while also providing a good match for what archaeological data has yielded.

“This scenario aligns with growing evidence of interbreeding and genetic introgression through recurrent H. sapiens immigration waves,” the researchers write, adding that their findings offer an explanation that aligns with researchers’ past perspectives on the abundance of Neanderthal ancestry observed in modern European and Asian populations.

Lingering Questions

Given the abundance of evidence from genetic analysis in recent years that points to mixing between Neanderthals and modern humans, researchers have increasingly moved toward the idea that this ancient human species’ extinction was something more akin to an absorption, which occurred very gradually over time.

In their new study, Amadei, Lin, and Fattorini concede that while their mathematical models lend support to this theory, there are still a few remaining questions about precisely what circumstances may have led to the decline of the Neanderthals.

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Hidden Inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, a Tantalizing Discovery May Soon “Write a New Chapter in the History of the Pharaohs”

A remarkable discovery within the Great Pyramid of Giza could potentially reshape our understanding of ancient Egypt, one of the country’s most renowned Egyptologists has said.

The claims were made by Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass, who recently hinted at a tantalizing discovery that will come to light sometime in 2026, adding that he expects it will “rewrite history” and offer new insights into the ancient history of Egypt and its rulers.

The 78-year-old Egyptologist made comments during an appearance at the 44th Sharjah International Book Fair, where he described the mysterious discovery as one that will “write a new chapter in the history of the Pharaohs.”

A New Discovery at Giza’s Great Pyramid

Hawass, Egypt’s former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, has conducted work at many of the country’s most renowned archaeological sites in the Western Desert and Nile Delta, among other locations.

During the recent event, Hawass offered additional clues about the forthcoming revelation, stating that “This great discovery is a new 30-meter-long passageway,” which he said had been “detected using advanced equipment,” and appears to lead to a concealed doorway within the Great Pyramid.

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Neanderthals created the world’s oldest cave art

Neanderthals didn’t just survive Europe’s Ice Age landscapes – they ventured into deep caves and made art. What they left isn’t figurative like the later animal scenes of Homo sapiens.

Instead, it is a repertoire of hand stencils, geometric signs, finger-drawn lines, and even built structures. This type of artmaking points to creative intent and symbolic behavior long before our species arrived.

The latest synthesis of discoveries from France and Spain shows that these nonfigurative markings and installations predate modern humans in western Europe by tens of millennia.

The research moves the long-running debate about Neanderthal cognition from speculation to evidence.

Neanderthal art decoded

All confirmed examples so far are nonfigurative – no animals or humans. Instead we see hand stencils made by blowing pigment over a hand, “finger flutings” pressed into soft cave surfaces, linear and geometric motifs, and purposeful arrangements of cave materials.

Neanderthals inhabited western Eurasia from about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago and have often been caricatured as the archetypal “cavemen.”

Questions about their cognitive and behavioral sophistication persist, and whether they produced art sits at the center of that debate.

Despite proof that Neanderthals used pigments and made jewelry, some researchers resisted the idea that they explored deep cave systems to create lasting imagery.

New dating work from researchers at Université de Bordeaux has shifted that view. In three Spanish caves – La Pasiega (Cantabria), Maltravieso (Extremadura), and Ardales (Málaga) – researchers documented linear signs, geometric shapes, hand stencils, and handprints made with pigments.

At La Roche-Cotard in France’s Loire Valley, Neanderthals left suites of lines and shapes in finger flutings (the trails left when fingers move through soft cave mud).

Testing Neanderthal creativity

Deep inside the Bruniquel Cave in southwest France, Neanderthals broke off stalactites into similarly sized sections and assembled them into a large oval structure, then lit fires on top.

It was not a shelter but something stranger – and if you saw it in a contemporary gallery, you might well call it “installation art.”

Now that well-dated examples exist in Spain and France, more finds are likely. The challenge is timekeeping: establishing reliable ages for Paleolithic cave art is technically difficult and often controversial.

Stylistic comparisons and links to excavated artifacts can help, but they only go so far.

Aging art in stone

There are three main ways to anchor ages. First, if black pigment is charcoal, radiocarbon can date when the wood burned.

But many black figures were drawn with mineral pigments (for example, manganese), which can’t be radiocarbon dated, and even genuine charcoal carries a risk. The date reflects when the wood died, not when someone used it.

Second, calcite flowstone (stalactites and stalagmites) that overgrows art is a natural time cap. Uranium–thorium dating can pin down when the calcite formed, giving a minimum age for the pigment or scoring beneath it.

Using this method, researchers dated calcite on top of red motifs in La Pasiega, Maltravieso, and Ardales to older than ~64,000 years.

Even at that youngest bound, the imagery predates the first Homo sapiens in Iberia by at least ~22,000 years, and Middle Paleolithic archaeology – the Neanderthals’ “calling card” – is abundant in all three caves.

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The Rise and Mysterious Fall of Cahokia: Researchers Unearth New Secrets of America’s Greatest ‘Lost’ Ancient Megacity

For centuries, the sprawling earth mounds of Cahokia have stood as silent remnants of a massive, lost American city. Once the largest and most influential urban settlement north of Mexico, this pre-Columbian metropolis near modern-day St. Louis mysteriously flourished, and then vanished, hundreds of years before European colonists arrived. 

Now, a team of researchers has uncovered new clues about Cahokia’s rise and decline, thanks to a single massive wooden monument that once towered over the landscape.

In a study published in PLOS ONE, scientists from the University of Arizona and the University of Illinois used advanced tree-ring dating and isotope analysis to determine that a monumental wooden post known as the “Mitchell Log” was cut around 1124 CE, at the height of Cahokia’s power. 

The analysis also revealed something unexpected and fascinating. The enormous bald cypress tree was not local. It had been transported at least 110 miles (180 kilometers) to the site, likely from southern Illinois or even farther south along the Mississippi River.

This finding reshapes our understanding of Cahokia’s reach and organization. The massive log, originally part of a towering 60-foot (18-meter) ceremonial post, offers a rare and significant timestamp for when the city’s influence stretched across the Midwest and South.

“The date, provenance, and context of the Mitchell Log establish a historical datum for the peak influence of the Cahokia polity,” the researchers write. “[It also] prompts new questions about the long-distance transport of thousands of other such marker posts.”

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Lead poisoning has been a feature of our evolution

Our hominid ancestors faced a Pleistocene world full of dangers—and apparently one of those dangers was lead poisoning.

Lead exposure sounds like a modern problem, at least if you define “modern” the way a paleoanthropologist might: a time that started a few thousand years ago with ancient Roman silver smelting and lead pipes. According to a recent study, however, lead is a much more ancient nemesis, one that predates not just the Romans but the existence of our genus Homo. Paleoanthropologist Renaud Joannes-Boyau of Australia’s Southern Cross University and his colleagues found evidence of exposure to dangerous amounts of lead in the teeth of fossil apes and hominins dating back almost 2 million years. And somewhat controversially, they suggest that the toxic element’s pervasiveness may have helped shape our evolutionary history.

The Romans didn’t invent lead poisoning

Joannes-Boyau and his colleagues took tiny samples of preserved enamel and dentin from the teeth of 51 fossils. In most of those teeth, the paleoanthropologists found evidence that these apes and hominins had been exposed to lead—sometimes in dangerous quantities—fairly often during their early years.

Tooth enamel forms in thin layers, a little like tree rings, during the first six or so years of a person’s life. The teeth in your mouth right now (and of which you are now uncomfortably aware; you’re welcome) are a chemical and physical record of your childhood health—including, perhaps, whether you liked to snack on lead paint chips. Bands of lead-tainted tooth enamel suggest that a person had a lot of lead in their bloodstream during the year that layer of enamel was forming (in this case, “a lot” means an amount measurable in parts per million).

In 71 percent of the hominin teeth that Joannes-Boyau and his colleagues sampled, dark bands of lead in the tooth enamel showed “clear signs of episodic lead exposure” during the crucial early childhood years. Those included teeth from 100,000-year-old members of our own species found in China and 250,000-year-old French Neanderthals. They also included much earlier hominins who lived between 1 and 2 million years ago in South Africa: early members of our genus Homo, along with our relatives Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus. Lead exposure, it turns out, is a very ancient problem.

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