Hobby Lobby Goes to the Black Market for Jesus

Note to Hobby Lobby: Please stick to arts and crafts and leave archaeology to the professionals.

Hobby Lobby purchased thousands of ancient artifacts smuggled out of modern-day Iraq via the United Arab Emirates and Israel in 2010 and 2011, attorneys for the Eastern District of New York announced on Wednesday. As part of a settlement, the American craft-supply mega-chain will pay $3 million and the U.S. government will seize the illicit artifacts. Technically, the defendants in the civil-forfeiture action are the objects themselves, yielding an incredible case name: The United States of America v. Approximately Four Hundred Fifty (450) Ancient Cuneiform Tablets; and Approximately Three Thousand (3,000) Ancient-Clay Bullae.

Under any circumstances, this case would be wild: It involves thousands of ancient artifacts that seem to have been stolen from Iraq, where the pillaging of antiquities has been rampant. The longstanding trade in antiquities of dubious provenance has become an especially sensitive topic in recent years, and a target of increased law-enforcement scrutiny: ISIS has made some untold millions—or billions—by selling ancient goods. While nothing in the case indicates that these objects were associated with any terrorist group, the very nature of smuggled goods means their provenance is muddy.

But the case really matters because of who’s involved. The members of the Green family, which owns the Hobby Lobby chain, are committed evangelical Christians who are probably most famous for their participation in a 2014 Supreme Court case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which helped dismantle certain birth-control-coverage requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The Greens are big collectors of ancient antiquities; they’re also the primary visionaries and contributors behind the Museum of the Bible opening in Washington, D.C., this fall. Steve Green is the chairman of the board. The family’s famous name, now tied to a story of dealer intrigue and black markets, is likely to bring even further scrutiny and attention as they prepare to open their museum.

Graham Hancock on Revising Archaeology

In this recent interview, Graham Hancock discusses findings at sites like Göbekli Tepe and Gunung Padang and how they challenge the prevailing archaeological narrative. He also discusses evidence that meteor debris may have caused a global cataclysm, one that could account for Plato's story of the lost civilization known as Atlantis. It's a good interview and worthwhile overview of his new book Magicians of the Gods.

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In Which Michael Shermer Finds the Time

As I noted here, Rupert Sheldrake challenged professional skeptic Michael Shermer to a debate in 2003. He accepted. And now, a mere twelve years later, that debate will take place.

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, who was caught giving critiques of  Sheldrake's work without reading it, agreed to debate Sheldrake... if only he could find the time.

In March 2003, Dr Sheldrake challenged Shermer to a debate, which he accepted, and several times and venues were suggested, but all were rejected by Shermer. As of 2009, the debate has still not taken place.

Well, better late than never. The dialogue, hosted by TheBestSchools.org, commenced on May Day with opening statements from both thinkers.

Graham Hancock on Ancient Magicians

The sequel to one of my favorite books of all time Fingerprints of the Gods appears to be on track for its publication later this year. As Hancock explains, this lecture is already a little out of date because his research is moving at a pace. It is, however, extremely compelling. The correlations between the ancient catastrophe myths and the archaeological evidence really coming into focus. I highly recommend laying aside some time to hear about these Magicians of the Gods.

Hancock also mentions a very strange Ayahuasca experience. I mentioned this in an earlier post but I hadn't realized that he'd collected all those Facebook posts and placed them here on his site.

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William Henry on Cave Paintings in India

A few years ago, I asked if religion could survive first contact. Answer: It probably already has done, if we include indigenous medicine practices reaching all the way back into prehistory. The recent discovery of alien looking beings depicted in ancient stone art in India has rekindled debate over just what indigenous peoples have been painting on stone walls. According to archaeologist JR Bhagat, these ancient paintings accord with local legends about something that sounds an awful lot alien contact and abduction.

There are several beliefs among locals in these villages. While few worship the paintings, others narrate stories they have heard from ancestors about "rohela people" — the small sized ones — who used to land from sky in a round shaped flying object and take away one or two persons of village who never returned.

Many not human-looking beings and things that look like flying saucers have been discovered in cave paintings and these have given rise to questions about alien contact. But are these beings from other planets or other dimensions or, perhaps, both? Graham Hancock addressed this most recent discovery on his Facebook page the other day:

Aliens from other planets coming here in high-tech space ships? Or visitors from other dimensions? http://bit.ly/1oWXhn4. A few years ago when I asked Amazonian shaman Pablo Amaringo what the flying saucers were that he saw in his Ayahuasca visions, and painted in his extraordinary art (http://bit.ly/1oKnVfW), he told me they were vehicles for entering and leaving the spirit world. When a shaman speaks of the spirit world he's not far from the quantum idea of a parallel universe. I think the UFO and "aliens" mystery documented in rock and cave art all over the world may be MUCH more mysterious and intriguing than many believe. In my opinion these phenomena are real, but precisely WHAT they are remains to be established.

"Gospel of Jesus's Wife" Papyrus Authenticated

The papyrus fragment that touched off a firestorm because it refers to Jesus's wife appears to be authentic. Tests of the papyrus fibers and ink confirm that both are of ancient origin.

For two years, researchers carried out a number of tests, including two radiocarbon tests, microscopic imaging, and micro-Raman spectroscopy, to examine the fragment.

One of the radiocarbon tests indicated that the piece of papyrus must have originated from some time between 659 and 859 CE. Using micro-Raman spectroscopy, researchers confirmed that the ink's carbon character matched with similar samples of other old papyri fragments. The handwriting was examined, and imaging scientists assessed the damage caused to the document to examine if there was a possibility of the document being forged or doctored.

After weighing the evidence, the scholars and scientists agree that the GJW fragment is old and definitely "a product of early Christians, not a modern forger," according to a press release from Harvard Divinity School.

Graham Hancock Talks Consciousness on C2C

This is a long and fruitful interview with Graham Hancock. He discusses the TED censorship fiasco, the follow-up to Fingerprints of the Gods now in development, as well as some in-depth background on his new historical fiction War God about the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The interview with Hancock starts around the 38 minute mark.

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Broken Things

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Some years ago, I found myself living in an area that, let's say, would not have been my first choice. Dog owner. Sometimes you have to take what you can get. It wasn't a bad little place but I was never comfortable there. And I started to have health problems. Allergies that I thought were under control worsened dramatically. I was just uncomfortable. The place, the entire area, simply felt... wrong. One evening, as I was coming off the highway and driving into the neighborhood, I had the distinct sense of moving through a membrane into a much darker, heavier energy, and the thought that came to me unbidden was "Indian burial ground." Suddenly, I was certain of it. I had been living on top of an Indian burial ground and that was why it had always felt so dreary, so dissonant, so corrupted.

Several years later, after I'd long been out of there -- I'd only been able to stand it briefly -- I was doing readings in new age bookshop. One of my clients there, I learned, had lived in the same neighborhood. She had also found it to be an unhappy, uncomfortable time. I mentioned my theory to her -- that I was convinced it was on an Indian burial ground. A few weeks later I received a note from here in the mail. It contained a newspaper clipping. There was some new construction in that area and they'd turned up a number of artifacts that seemed to indicate that they were digging on an Indian burial ground.

Some things you just shouldn't do.

So I was very saddened to hear that it's open season on ancient Mayan pyramids in Belize.

A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday.

The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial center dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.

"It's a feeling of Incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity ... they were using this for road fill," Awe said. "It's like being punched in the stomach, it's just so horrendous."

Indeed.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they can do much to prevent this kind of desecration in Belize. Even though the law technically protects pre-Hispanic ruins like this one, they lack the funding and infrastructure for enforcement. This is not the first time a Belizean ruin has been desecrated and it probably won't be the last. Similar destruction is occurring in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras.

I was reminded recently of the desecration of one of my most beloved sites: Teotihuacan. Many were sickened when Wal-Mart decided to build a store on an outer edge of the ancient complex. For me, it was particularly painful because of my time there -- a time when I experienced a kind of rebirth. Teotihuacan is magical, otherworldly. And Wal-Mart is evil.

In December, the New York Times revealed the massive bribery scheme that allowed Wal-Mart to build on protected land. In a recent blog post, archaeologist Dr. Donna Yates expounded on the damage allowed by Wal-Mart's alleged $24 million "investment."

We archaeologists often find our discipline difficult to explain to outsiders, specifically outsiders with an unyielding eye for unnuanced commercial development. Just because the core of Teotihuacán is massive and visible, doesn’t mean that the archaeology stops at the edge of the temple. Rather it extends, under the ground, in all directions, hidden from view but waiting to be exposed and studied. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it is not there.

. . .

It is this periphery, these outer zones of sites, that are most at risk for destruction from development. It is difficult to convince planning authorities to protect this kind of past simply because people cannot believe what they cannot directly see. Even worse, it is in these areas that the average people lived: the people who built the massive pyramids, not the people who lived in them. The archaeology of real life, of workers, of farmers, of craftspeople, of the everyday is the hardest to preserve. It gets paved over and destroyed.

. . .

I share in the outrage surrounding the allegations of corruption involved in this scandal, however I urge readers to not lose sight of what we may have lost. Luis Gálvez, a leader of the workers’ union of the state National Institute of Anthropology and History, has stated that the Walmart at Teotihuacan is an “offence against Mexico”. I would contend that it is more than that. It is an offence against our shared cultural heritage. Everyone who visits the site, everyone who climbs the Temple of the Sun to look out over the Valley of Mexico and imagine the vast ancient city, painted bright colours and sparkling in the Central American sun will either have to pretend not to see the Walmart or ask themselves why it is there.

Indeed a number of artifacts were turned up by Wal-Mart's construction crew.

They found the remains of a wall dating to approximately 1300 and enough clay pottery to fill several sacks. Then they found an altar, a plaza and nine graves. Once again, construction was temporarily halted so their findings could be cataloged, photographed and analyzed.

The ensuing firestorm resulting from that find was not enough to keep Wal-Mart from greasing the wheels of "progress."

Elsewhere in the complex, Teotihuacan is still slowly revealing its mysteries to more patient archaeologists.

Hundreds of mysterious spheres lie beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, an ancient six-level step pyramid just 30 miles from Mexico City.

The enigmatic spheres were found during an archaeological dig using a camera-equipped robot at one of the most important buildings in the pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan.

Clearly there is much still be discovered through the painstaking process of archaeological examination that doesn't destroy the integrity of such ancient marvels. Yet, I'm not convinced that even archaeologists approach these sites in the right spirit. I have more than once had the experience of walking through museums and encountering angry spirits around items that they don't seem to want displayed.

After having communed with the spirits at Teotihuacan -- spirits who demanded offerings and placed conditions before we could even step onto some of the structures -- I am left heartsick at the lack of respect paid by a retailer already well known for cannibalizing communities. And I can't help thinking there will be a price to pay for helping itself to to this one.

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Viking Sunstone Discovered?

Add another reason to love crystals. Scientists now believe that simple calcite is the Viking Sunstone of legend.

Ancient lore has suggested that the Vikings used special crystals to find their way under less-than-sunny skies. Though none of these so-called "sunstones" have ever been found at Viking archaeological sites, a crystal uncovered in a British shipwreck could help prove they did indeed exist.

The crystal was found amongst the wreckage of the Alderney, an Elizabethan warship that sank near the Channel Islands in 1592. The stone was discovered less than 3 feet from a pair of navigation dividers, suggesting it may have been kept with the ship's other navigational tools, according to the research team headed by scientists at the University of Rennes in France.

. . .

Because of the rhombohedral shape of calcite crystals, "they refract or polarize light in such a way to create a double image," Mike Harrison, coordinator of the Alderney Maritime Trust, told LiveScience. This means that if you were to look at someone's face through a clear chunk of Icelandic spar, you would see two faces. But if the crystal is held in just the right position, the double image becomes a single image and you know the crystal is pointing east-west, Harrison said.

These refractive powers remain even in low light when it's foggy or cloudy or when twilight has come. In a previous study, the researchers proved they could use Icelandic spar to orient themselves within a few degrees of the sun, even after the sun had dipped below the horizon.

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Fingerprints of the Gods: The Sequel?

Graham Hancock has posted some details on a forthcoming sequel to Fingerprints of the Gods. The post on Facebook appears to be open to the public. Fingerprints was the first of Hancock's books I ever read. As I wrote here, it was put into my hands as if by magic and started a love affair with his work that has spanned more than a decade. So I am thrilled at the prospect of a newly updated version.

I thought I’d share two of the developments, one in the field of archaeology, one in the field of geology, that persuaded me some years ago that it was time to begin work on a sequel to “Fingerprints of the Gods”. Please note, however, that what I’m going to outline in this short post is only a very small part of the much wider range of accumulated evidence I’ll present in the sequel – powerful new discoveries and new understandings in many different fields that have come to light slowly, piece by piece during the past two decades. Taken together, I believe these new findings provide overwhelming support for the thesis I put forward nearly twenty years ago in “Fingerprints” of a titanic global cataclysm in the window between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago, around the end of the last Ice Age, that wiped out and destroyed almost all traces of a great global civilisation of prehistoric antiquity. I’m already well ahead with the research and I aim to complete writing of the book by December 2014 and to publish in the autumn of 2015.

Emerging from mainstream science – which has so often ridiculed and dismissed my work – the first piece of evidence that made me realise there was a new story to be told was proof that north America was struck by several pieces of a giant fragmenting comet 12,900 years ago (i.e. 10,900 BC), causing an extinction-level event all around the planet, radically changing global climate and initiating the sudden and hitherto unexplained thousand-year deep-freeze right at the end of the Ice Age that geologists call the Younger Dryas.

The second early clue was the discovery in Turkey of an extraordinary 12,000-year old megalithic site called Gobekli Tepe, which is on the scale of Stonehenge but 7,000 years older than any of the other great stone circles known to history anywhere else in the world. Furthermore the best megalithic work at Gobekli Tepi is the oldest and the site was deliberately buried 10,000 years ago only to be rediscovered, and to have its importance and mysterious nature recognised long after the publication of “Fingerprints of the Gods”.

According to orthodox history, the period of 12,000 years ago (10,000 BC) is the "upper palaeolithic", i.e. before "the neolithic", and our ancestors then are only supposed to have been hunter gatherers, and incapable of large-scale stone-cutting and engineering works. Yet the scale and perfection of the 12,000-year old megaliths at Gobekli Tepe speak of a civilisation that had already accumulated -- by that date -- thousands of years of experience of working with and setting up large blocks of stone weighing in the range of 10 to 20 tons each with one piece thought to weigh 50 tons. The site appears literally out of nowhere but even the most sceptical mainstream archaeologists (who recognise its importance but have kept very quiet about its implications for the stories we tell ourselves about the origin of civilisation) now admit that there must be a very long and so-far unrevealed background to the wonders of Gobekli Tepe. That background upsets all established models of the time-line of history and directly supports the thesis of a great civilisation, lost to history between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago, that I controversially put before the public in 1995 with “Fingerprints of the Gods”.

For a little more background on Gobekli Tepe and a few observations on how it speaks to Hancock's previous work, see here. Also, posted above is a Coast to Coast interview with Hancock in which he discusses lost civilizations and cataclysms that form the underpinnings for Fingerprints.

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An Ancient Mystery Tops an Ancient Mystery in Syria

Wars are real archaeology blockers. Sometimes I think it's by design -- a deliberate attempt at some level of consciousness to keep humanity from its own secrets. The latest distraction from discovery is in Syria. This one involves something they're calling "Syria's Stonehenge" and there is much to recommend it as a site of interest.

Fifty miles north of Damascus is an ancient monastery, which is a fascinating site all on its own. But in 2009, archaeologist Robert Mason of the Royal Ontario Museum discovered remnants of a much older monument nearby.

The monastery itself, also called the Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian, was built in the late 4th or early 5th century, he said, and contains several frescoes from the 11th and 12th century depicting Christian saints and Judgment Day. He told the audience at Harvard that he believes it was originally a Roman watchtower, partially destroyed by an earthquake and rebuilt.

But the desert puzzle is much older.

Bits of tools Mason found nearby suggest the mystery he discovered in the desert is much older than the monastery. It may date to the Neolithic Period or early Bronze Age, 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, the Gazette said.

So, Mason found ancient masonry tools. He also found remnants of stone circles, lines, and some evidence of tombs. If, indeed, this is a prehistoric sacred site, it speaks to that mysterious habit the ancients had of building sacred sites on top of sacred sites, as if the location on the earth itself holds some deeper significance.

But for now, as the military conflagration in Syria grows, we'll just have to take a wait and see attitude.

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Fingerprints of the Neanderthals

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As discussed, a recent discovery attributes what is possibly the world's oldest art not to Homo sapiens but to Neanderthals.With results of the finished study now published in Science, comes a more thorough reassessment of Neanderthals and their place in prehistory.

Several times in the past 10 years scientists have had to rewrite the textbooks on Neanderthals, the latest species of human to go extinct. Once the archetype for primitive, uncivilised behaviour, the species, illuminated through fossil excavations and lately analysis of their genome, has emerged as being not too dissimilar from our own.

Contrary to their dim-witted image Neanderthals have been found to have used tools, to have worn jewellery, and, lastly, to have interbred with our Homo sapiens ancestors to such an extent that 4% of every modern European's genome is traceable to Neanderthal origins.

In my lifetime, Neanderthals have gone from being an early stage in human evolution, to a totally separate species, to a coexisting subspecies that interbred with Homo sapiens. This is what I mean when I say that good science -- and the past itself -- is self-revising. Many of our assumptions about Neanderthals merit reexamination. It is now clear that they were not the stupid distant cousins of proto-humans. They appear to have been at least as intelligent and creative as our direct forebears. And it may well be that even some of the cave art that has been attributed to Paleolithic humans was actually the creation of Neanderthals.

[Joao] Zilhao and his colleagues turned to a different method: uranium-thorium dating. As anyone who has seen a stalactite knows, caves are always undergoing slow change. The same processes that create stalactites and stalagmites leave thin deposits of the mineral calcite over some cave paintings. This calcite contains miniscule amounts of radioactive uranium, which decays to thorium over time.

. . .

Because the calcite came after the paintings, this sets a minimum age for the art. What researchers don't know is how long the initial calcite deposit took, so the paintings could be anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years older than the minimum dates.

The researchers took samples from 11 Spanish caves, including famed spots like Altamira with its painted herds of bison. At Altamira, they found an image of a red horse that dates back at least 22,000 years and a clublike image that is at least 35,600 years old. The club symbol has been painted over with the famous colorful bison herd, which dates to around 18,000 years ago. In other words, Altamira was a popular spot for artists for a very long time. [Images: Altamira & Other Amazing Caves]

At another cave, El Castillo in northern Spain, the researchers found primitive art of mind-boggling age. This cave contained the 40,800-year-old red disk. It also sported a hand stencil, created by an artist spitting red pigment over his or her hand to leave a handprint, that dates back more than 37,300 years.

More exact dating continues to be a problem and there is still much debate about the significance of the findings. But the one thing that is increasingly clear is that Graham Hancock's fictional accounting in of early human and Neanderthal relations in Entangled is being proved by non-fictional research.

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Past and Portents in Graham Hancock's Mexico

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Well, this could explain all the piercing tones I've been getting in my head for the past couple of weeks. (Of course the supermoon hasn't helped this weekend. I mean these pics are pretty but, oh, my head.)

North America's second-tallest volcano recently rumbled to life, putting authorities on edge. Big eruptions of Mexico's massive Popocatepetl volcano are "few and far between," as one geologist says. Yet even without any dramatic fireworks, 17,800-foot (5,425-meter) "Popo" has the power to wreak havoc.

. . .

Popocatepetl lies about 40 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City. The mountain reawakened in December 1994 after five decades of silence. Yet in the nearly 20 years since, the volcano has rarely exhibited the kind of vigorous activity that began the week of April 12.

Minor earthquakes have rocked the mountain, it has spewed out plumes of gas and ash, and multiple explosions have shot glowing rocks from the summit. [ Images of Popocatepetl in action.]

The mountain has the potential to erupt magnificently once every 2,000 or 3,000 years. "It has big eruptions, but they are so few and far between," Sheridan said. "But they have been pretty big. So that is the scary part."

I have a particular affection for the Mexico City area and tend to be sort of dialed in to earth changes there. It is an area rich in history. One of the most transformative experiences of my life involved a trip to Mexico City. And I owe at least a little of that to Graham Hancock. I was reminded of that yesterday morning when I stumbled on this lecture he did some years ago.

Fingerprints of the Gods, which he discusses here in some depth, was the first of Hancock's books I read, and it began a love affair with his writing. But the way I came to read that book was somewhat peculiar.

The book had belonged to a friend of mine. I noticed it on her bookshelf where it looked a little out of place. I borrowed it and had begun to read it when she and I had a huge falling out and I had to the give it back. I had fully intended to get the book for myself but I hadn't yet got 'round to it when, some months later, an opportunity to travel to Mexico City came up. It's a long and complicated story but suffice it to say it wound up with me going there to do a Flower of Life teacher training with Drunvalo Melchizedek.

When it came time for me to make my travel arrangements, it occurred to me that I should probably do at least a little research about the area first. I stopped by the Montclair Book Center to pick up a Fodor's. There, thoroughly misplaced in the travel section, sort of shoved in awkwardly on its side, was Fingerprints of the Gods. I picked it up and started to leaf through it. And there it was. Teotihuacan. Now, geography has never been my long suit and I really hadn't grasped until that moment that the ancient site was spitting distance from Mexico City. I really knew very little about it except that Hancock had included it as a site of some importance in advancing his theory of an ancient, lost civilization. But in the split second it took me to put those few pieces together I resolved that one way or another I was going to get there during my trip.

It occurred to me that Drunvalo might take us there as part of the seminar but I wasn't going to leave that to chance. I built an extra day into my trip so I could go there alone if needs be. As it turns out, he did not take us to Teotihuacan. Although he did take us to Cuicuilco, a round pyramid that isn't nearly as well known, and that was also an amazing experience. But the opportunity to go to Teotihuacan fell into my hands as if by magic. There was a gentleman in the class who was a professional tour guide. He graciously extended an offer to anyone who wanted to go there on the Monday following the seminar which, as luck would have it, was the day I had left open for just that purpose.

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Hancock goes into some detail in this presentation on the relevance of Teotihuacan to his theory of a lost civilization. I had read everything he had to say about Latin America, with its ziggurats and plumed serpents, before I got there. Even so, I was unprepared for the intensity of this "place where men become gods."

I spent that day doing rituals with the small group of travelers and our wonderful guide. We came to realize the entire experience was one long ritual and we were not the one's directing it. Mostly, our job was to listen and do as we were told. Teotihuacan is inhabited by wise spirits of ancient origin. 

The conspiracy of events that put me in Mexico City at that particular time with those particular people is something I could only marvel at. And the process of transformation that was initiated in me at that time is something I'm still sorting out.

One of the things that struck me as I was listening to Hancock explain his research is just how impermanent it all is. I still marvel at the hubris with which so many people disregard doomsday theories. I'm not saying that I think 2012 signals such a doomsday and I think if anything is clear about the Mayan long count calendar, it's that, for all the theories, no one really understands it. It remains a tantalizing mystery. But something is happening and the energy shifts we've been experiencing are fairly amazing. So are the earth changes.

Hancock touches briefly on Charles Hapgood's theory of crustal displacement and the possibility that we may have had previous pole shifts. Whether any of that is tied into the vestiges of a lost civilization and the out of place artifacts Hancock has spent years researching is hard to say. Even harder to say is whether it will happen again. But to pretend that civilization ending cataclysms are silly wives tales is arrogant. The people of Pompeii were apparently enjoying life as usual when they found themselves engulfed by the sudden, massive eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. We certainly know more about volcanoes now than those ancient Romans did but we are no more immune to a grandiosity that convinces us that we know enough.

I was reading the other day about some new theories on the volcano that is Yellowstone. Something many Americans don't realize is that Yellowstone is actually a "supervolcano" and a full scale eruption would be devastating. The new study I was reading up on found that it might not "wipe out half of the United States, covering the rest in 3 feet of ash and pushing the world into hundreds of years of nuclear winter, challenging human civilization to a game of death and survival." So that's... kind of... good news. The bad news? It's much more active than previously believed and even a lesser eruption would be inconceivably disastrous.

My point is simply this. As tempting as it is to think that we know all we need to about the potential for sudden, radical change on this planet, history has shown over and over that we don't. And the clues are there to a prehistory of which we know nothing with any certainty. Embrace the mystery. That's all I'm saying.

A side note: I love Jungian synchronicities. As I write this I notice that the movie Matilda has come on ABC Family. It's one I've watched over and over. But the first time I ever saw it was when I was taking my red-eye flight back from Mexico City, after a full day of tromping up and down those divine temple monuments. On the nearly empty plane, I stretched out over several seats and drifted in and out of sleep, surfacing just long enough to ask myself questions like: Is that little girl making things fly around the room? This movie is about a telekinesis? Maybe I should be paying more attention? Zzzzzzzz...

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Revising Prehistory

A stunning discovery has turned archaeological preconceptions on their heads. The cave paintings at Chauvet are no longer the oldest known art. Paintings found in the Nerja Caves in Andalusia are at least 10,000 years older. More incredible, they were painted not be early humans but by Neanderthals. Graham Hancock's recent work puts some of this into perspective. In Supernatural he explains newer theories that the artwork done by early man is a demonstration of ancient shamanic practices far more profound than the scenes of the hunt long assumed by archaeologists. And in his first foray into fiction, Entangled, he envisions a Neanderthal man far more advanced than is currently believed. Much of this is discussed in this recently posted lecture. That said, this article in the Huffington Post is a great example of the condescending arrogance that we've been subjected to by mainstream archaeologists for years.

What is the oldest painting of, you ask? The pictures appear to be seals; the drawings are not half bad for a caveman!

Yeah. Stupid cavemen.

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Esoterica

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Has King Arthur's round table been found in Scotland?

The King's Knot, a geometrical earthwork in the former royal gardens below Stirling Castle, has been shrouded in mystery for hundreds of years.

Though the Knot as it appears today dates from the 1620s, its flat-topped central mound is thought to be much older.

Writers going back more than six centuries have linked the landmark to the legend of King Arthur.

. . .

"The finds show that the present mound was created on an older site and throws new light on a tradition that King Arthur's Round Table was located in this vicinity."

We may have been a seafarin' people since before we were even human.

A team of researchers that included an N.C. State University geologist found evidence that our ancestors were crossing open water at least 130,000 years ago. That's more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists had previously thought.

Their evidence is based on stone tools from the island of Crete. Because Crete has been an island for eons, any prehistoric people who left tools behind would have had to cross open water to get there.

The tools the team found are so old that they predate the human species, said Thomas Strasser, an archaeologist from Providence College who led the team. Instead of being made by our species, Homo sapiens, the tools were made by our ancestors, Homo erectus.

Will we find the God Particle in time for Christmas?

The hunt for the Higgs particle is well ahead of schedule, say researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Earlier this year they said they would either discover the Higgs or confirm it does not exist by the end of 2012.

Now, because the machine is working so well, an LHC spokesman, Professor Guido Tonelli, has told BBC News that the search could be completed much sooner.

The Higgs Boson is the particle that in the physics "Standard Model" allows other particles to have mass.

Discovery or elimination of the particle is one of the LHC's major objectives; and it could come as early as Christmas 2011.

Edgar Cayce, look out! The sleeping artist is here. A nocturnal painter believes he may be receiving artistic guidance from the spirit world.

Being an artist is so easy, Lee Hadwin can do it in his sleep, but when he is awake, the 37-year-old, who got a D in art at school, cannot paint or draw to save his life.

He discovered his nocturnal talent aged four, when he began to sleepwalk and draw on his mother’s furniture.

. . .

Since then, he has produced almost 200 sleep-pictures, selling them to collectors such as illusionist Derren Brown, with one piece fetching a six-figure sum. He does not know why he can draw only in his sleep but believes it may be spirits communicating from the other side.

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Gardens in spaaaaaaaaace!

Astronauts on the first manned missions to Mars could tend “kitchen gardens” of salad and vegetables onboard spaceships, scientists claim.

Experts say the crops would not only give crews healthy food to eat during the long journey to the red planet, but would also improve the atmosphere onboard by producing oxygen and removing carbon dioxide.

In addition, the plants suggested as suitable by a NASA scientist would require minimal tending and not take up much room on spacecraft.

Bad pizza in spaaaaaaaaace!

Domino's pizza has announced plans to conquer the final frontier by opening the first pizza restaurant on the Moon.

Domino's Japanese arm has proposed a branch on Earth's nearest galactic neighbour is the latest escalation in a pizza publicity war.

Rival chain Pizza Hut set the bar high in 2001 by delivering a pizza to astronauts orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station, but Domino's fought back last year in a series of events to mark the 25th anniversary of its arrival in Japan.

Diamonds are forever.

A newly discovered alien planet that formed from a dead star is a real diamond in the rough.

The super-high pressure of the planet, which orbits a rapidly pulsing neutron star, has likely caused the carbon within it to crystallize into an actual diamond, a new study suggests.

The composition of the planet, which is about five times the size of Earth, is not its only outstanding feature. [Illustration of the diamond alien planet]

The planet's parent star is a special kind of flashing star known as a millisecond pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star formed from a supernova. The entire system, which is only the second of its kind ever discovered, is located about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Serpens (The Snake).

Chimera alert! Spider goats developed for the military.

Researchers genetically engineered goats to produce milk which is packed with the same protein as silk spiders.

Once this is milked out it can be spun out and weaved into a material that is ten times stronger than steel.

The fabric can then be blended with human skin to make what the scientists hope will be tough enough to stop even a bullet.

Dutch researcher Jalila Essaidi said the ‘spidersilk’ project was called ’2.6g 329m/s’ after the weight and the velocity of a .22 calibre long rifle bullet.

An elephant never forgets. And elephants are smarter than we know.

Kandula, a seven year old Asian elephant living in Washington D.C.’s National Zoo, has proven that elephants are as smart as those that spend a lot of time around them have believed. In an experiment carried out by researchers at the zoo, the little elephant figured out all on his own, without resorting to trial and error, how to go get a cube to use as a footstool to help him reach some food that was just out of reach. The research team, led by Preston Foerder of the City University of New York, has published the results of their study on PLoS ONE.

Other animals (besides humans) such as chimpanzees and dolphins have demonstrated in various ways that they are capable of dreaming up solutions to problems in their head and then carrying them out. Called “aha” moments by researchers, such thinking, a form of insight, is one of the hallmarks of higher intelligence. Most people who have ever worked with elephants will attest to the fact that they are indeed intelligent creatures; though no one (at least in the research community) had ever witnessed an elephant using insight to solve a problem. This has perplexed scientists for several years, and has caused them to study the seeming paradox. It appears now that the team working with Kandula has seen it in action, that previous research had been attacking the problem from the wrong angle.

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The Crab Nebula has surprised astronomers by shooting off mysterious flares.

One of the most well-known celestial objects still has some tricks up its sleeve, according to a new discovery of surprising gamma-ray flares coming from the famous Crab Nebula.

The Crab, long-considered such a steady celestial light that it was used to calibrate other sources, has now had three flare-ups where it brightened significantly in the gamma-ray range for a few days, astronomers report.

"Our belief of a stable Crab got smashed completely — now we have to think again," said Marco Tavani, an astronomer at the INAF-IASF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica-Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica) in Rome.

And solar flares could threaten the 2012 Olympics. Of course they could threaten far more than that.

Weather experts told the Commons science and technology committee: 'Extreme space weather events typically occur at the solar maximum, which itself follows a roughly 11-year cycle.

'The next solar maximum is expected around 2012-13 — potentially coinciding with the London Olympic Games.'

It is only the most extreme solar storms that cause chaos, and Olympic organisers do not believe there is a 'significant risk' of major disruption.

NASA has found the first evidence of a rocky planet orbiting a sun outside of our solar system.

NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.

The discovery of this so-called exoplanet is based on more than eight months of data collected by the spacecraft from May 2009 to early January 2010.

"All of Kepler's best capabilities have converged to yield the first solid evidence of a rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler's deputy science team lead at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and primary author of a paper on the discovery accepted by the Astrophysical Journal. "The Kepler team made a commitment in 2010 about finding the telltale signatures of small planets in the data, and it's beginning to pay off."

And an amateur astronomer has discovered four planets from the comfort of his own home.

Peter Jalowiczor, 45, has never owned a telescope but still managed to provide scientists with enough information to establish the existence of four gaseous orbs outside the solar system.

The gas worker from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, has been officially named by the University of California's Lick-Carnegie Planet Search Team as the co-discoverer of planets HD31253b, HD218566b, HD177830c and HD99492c.

. . .

An overwhelmed Mr Jalowiczor said: 'I've always been interested in astronomy and I have two science degrees but to be one of the officially recognised finders of these planets is just... I get lost for words.'

Using just two home computers, he spent night after night analysing thousands of space measurements released by astronomers at the Santa Cruz-based university in 2005.

There may be a galaxy right near our own, invisible because it's almost entirely made up of dark matter.

An entire galaxy may be lurking, unseen, just outside our own, scientists announced Thursday.

The invisibility of "Galaxy X"—as the purported body has been dubbed—may be due less to its apparent status as a dwarf galaxy than to its murky location and its overwhelming amount of dark matter, astronomer Sukanya Chakrabarti speculates.

Detectable only by the effects of its gravitational pull, dark matter is an invisible material that scientists think makes up more than 80 percent of the mass in the universe.

And antimatter is apparently turning up in thunderstorms.

Scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.

Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed inside thunderstorms in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF) associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 TGFs occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected.

"These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams," said Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He presented the findings Monday, during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

Astronomers claim to have found the "missing link" between the big bang and the formation of the universe.

For years scientists have known nothing about the "dark ages" of space – a period between the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago and the creation of the first stars.

But Cambridge University researchers have now captured light emitted from a massive black hole to peer into this unknown portion of the history of the universe.

They discovered remnants of the first stars and evidence of the aftermath of an exploding star, which was 25 times larger than the sun.

Meanwhile, Pope Benedict has proclaimed a link between the big bang and God.

God's mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict said on Thursday.

"The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe," Benedict said on the day Christians mark the Epiphany, the day the Bible says the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by following a star.

"Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God," he said in a sermon to some 10,000 people in St Peter's Basilica on the feast day.

Pope Benedict has also proclaimed that the late Pope John Paul II performed a miracle as the sex abuse enabling former pope wends his way towards beatification.

Pope Benedict XVI has formally approved a miracle attributed to his late predecessor, paving the way to John Paul II's beatification on 1 May.

. . .

The Vatican credits him with the miraculous cure of a nun said to have had Parkinson's Disease.

Church officials believe that the Polish pope, who himself suffered from the condition, interceded for the miraculous cure of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a Frenchwoman in her late forties.

Catholic clergy in Spain are up in arms about a naked limbs -- naked everything, really -- in a sacrilicious calendar.

A Catholic youth group has shocked its religious superiors in Mallorca by producing a calendar that features a nude version of the passion of Christ.

The wrath of the bishop of Mallorca has fallen on the Davallament youth group from the Spanish island's town of Sant Joan after they decided to make the stripped-down version of the Easter week story to raise funds.

The calendar features a semi-naked trio of young men raising the cross on which Jesus will be crucified and a Last Supper whose protagonists wear only crotch-hugging underwear. In other shots the protagonists are entirely naked, covering their genitalia with plumed roman helmets (above).

This other act of remarkable, spiritually guided artistry remains largely overlooked.

It's the sheer size of the structure that first strikes you. Almost 40 metres (131ft) tall, its spires and giant dome tower over the surrounding apartment blocks in this Madrid suburb.

That's not unusual for a Spanish church. But this one is being built by an elderly man, almost single-handedly, out of junk.

Justo Gallego - or Don Justo, as he's known - embarked on his epic endeavour almost half a century ago.

Now 85 years old, he still has a huge amount to do.

Archaeologists have turned up the first evidence of both Stone Age residents on the Isle of Crete and ancient sea travel.

Archaeologists on the island of Crete have discovered what may be evidence of one of the world's first sea voyages by human ancestors, the Greek Culture Ministry said Monday. A ministry statement said experts from Greece and the U.S. have found rough axes and other tools thought to be between 130,000 and 700,000 years old close to shelters on the island's south coast.

Crete has been separated from the mainland for about five million years, so whoever made the tools must have traveled there by sea (a distance of at least 40 miles). That would upset the current view that human ancestors migrated to Europe from Africa by land alone.

"The results of the survey not only provide evidence of sea voyages in the Mediterranean tens of thousands of years earlier than we were aware of so far, but also change our understanding of early hominids' cognitive abilities," the ministry statement said.

The incredible, shrinking brain:

Man's brain has been gradually shrinking over the last 20,000 years, according to a new report.

This decrease in size follows two million years during which the human cranium steadily grew in size, and it's happened all over the world, to both sexes and every race.

'Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimetres to 1,350 cubic centimetres, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball,' Kathleen McAuliffe writes in Discover magazine.

A thirteenth astrological sign has been announced messing up everybody's charts. I've never been gladder that I'm not an astrologer.

The star doctors say Earth is currently in a different spot in relation to the Sun, and its equatorial alignment has changed from 3,000 years ago when the study of astrology began -- back when 12 zodiac signs were assigned to 12 different periods of the year.

Those signs you were born into are different now because the Earth's wobble on its axis has created a one-month bump in the alignment of the stars, according to Kunkle.

"Because of this change of tilt, the Earth is really over here in effect and Sun is in a different constellation than it was 3,000 years ago."

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Food replicators: One aspect of the Star Trek universe that never really appealed to me. Okay, in outer space, I could see the necessity. But here on the ground I prefer my food to come from, well, the ground.

The team at Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Lab (CCSL) are building a 3D food printer, as part of the bigger Fab@home project, which they hope one day will be as commonplace as the microwave oven or blender.

. . .

"Imagine being able to essentially 'grow', 'cook' or prepare foods without the negative industrial impact - everything from fertilizers to saute pans and even packaging," he says.

"The production chain requirements for food would nearly be eliminated."

Local food, could really mean local.

"You can imagine a 3D printer making homemade apple pie without the need for farming the apples, fertilizing, transporting, refrigerating, packaging, fabricating, cooking, serving and the need for all of the materials in these processes like cars, trucks, pans, coolers, etc," he adds.

Nature is always smarter than we think we are and plants are smarter than we know.

They’re underfoot and underappreciated. But the roots of a plant may demonstrate the remarkable wisdom of crowds just as swarms of honeybees or humans can.

Three plant scientists now propose that roots growing this way and that in their dark and dangerous soil world may fit a definition for what’s called swarm intelligence. Each tip in a root system acquires information at least partly independently, says plant cell biologist František Baluška of the University of Bonn in Germany. If that information gets processed in interactions with other roots and the whole tangle then solves what might be considered a cognitive problem in a way that a lone root couldn’t, he says, then that would be swarm intelligence.

James Arthur Ray would like to have still more evidence thrown out; preferably all of it.

Attorneys for a self-help guru facing manslaughter charges stemming from a fatal sweat lodge ceremony want to limit the trial's testimony and evidence to the 2009 event that led to three deaths.

James Arthur Ray's lawyers filed motions this week asking a judge to suppress self-help videos their client made after the October ceremony near Sedona.

They also want to prohibit testimony regarding what Ray, his volunteers or staff said or did following similar ceremonies, any opinions on whether Ray is guilty or innocent, and testimony of emotional distress from the families of the deceased.

Eyes are the windows of the soul; or the soullessness as the case may be.

With its technologically advanced animated characters, the 2004 film The Polar Express was supposed to change moviemaking. Instead, it gave audiences the creeps. Reviewers dissed it as "the night of the living dead." Why didn't the audience perceive the characters as alive? Something, they said, was wrong with the eyes.

Now, a new study shows just how important the eyes really are when we judge whether a face is that of a living person or an inanimate object. And that ability, the researchers say, is key to our survival, enabling us to quickly determine whether the eyes we're looking at have a mind behind them.

"People want to see faces, and we're very adept at seeing faces everywhere: in clouds, a burnt piece of toast, even two dots and a line," says Christine Looser, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at Dartmouth College and the study's lead author. "And it makes sense to be aware of faces," because they might be those of living, dangerous creatures, such as a grizzly bear. "But we also don't want to waste time on faces that aren't alive, that aren't attached to minds."

More evidence that wasps are just incredibly cool.

The study, reported on in the journal Naturwissenschaften, began when scientists observed that unlike other wasps, the Oriental hornet is most active in the middle of the day. Further investigation revealed that UVB radiation affects the hornet's activity level.

It turns out that an Oriental hornet's shell can trap sunlight, while the pigment xanthopterin converts it to energy. This explains why the hornet is most active mid-day.

Could the iPhone save the Cherokee language from becoming extinct?

Nearly two centuries after a blacksmith named Sequoyah converted Cherokee into its own unique written form, the tribe has worked with Apple to develop Cherokee language software for the iPhone, iPod and – soon – the iPad. Computers used by students – including Lauren – at the tribe's language immersion school already allow them to type using Cherokee characters.

The goal, Cherokee Chief Chad Smith said, is to spread the use of the language among tech-savvy children in the digital age. Smith has been known to text students at the school using Cherokee, and teachers do the same, allowing students to continue using the language after school hours.

A new species of ancient human has been discovered.

Earlier this year Svante Pääbo and his colleagues showed that the mitochondrial DNA from the finger bone displayed an unusual sequence suggesting that it came from an unknown ancient hominin form. Now, using techniques the researchers developed to sequence the Neanderthal genome earlier this year, they have sequenced the nuclear genome from the bone.

The researchers found that the individual was female and came from a group of hominins that shared an ancient origin with Neanderthals, but subsequently diverged. They call this group of hominins Denisovans. Unlike Neanderthal, Denisovans did not contribute genes to all present-day Eurasians. However, Denisovans share an elevated number of genetic variants with modern-day Papua New Guinean populations, suggesting that there was interbreeding between Denisovans and the ancestors of Melanesians.

Interesting statue fragments were recently unearthed in Egypt.

Archaeologists have discovered fragments of a statue of a pharaoh and an ancient god during a routine excavation at what was once the largest temple in ancient Egypt, culture minister Farouk Hosni said on Thursday.

According to Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, the fragments -- the legs of King Amenhotep III and a bust of the god Hapi depicted as a baboon -- were uncovered in the ruins of Amenhotep’s mortuary temple on the west bank of Luxor, Upper Egypt.

Physicists cite cosmic bruises as evidence of parallel universes:

Scientists say that they have found evidence that our universe was 'jostled' by other parallel universes in the distant past.

The incredible claim emerged after they studied patterns in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) – the after-effects of the Big Bang.

They say they may have found evidence that four circular patterns found in the CMB are 'cosmic bruises' where our universe has crashed into other universes at least four times.

Quidditch for muggles... See, without the flying broom, I'm afraid the fun would really go out of it for me. I'm so old-fashioned.

Quidditch, the game popularised in the Harry Potter books, is now being played by students around the world. So just how do you turn a magical sport into something that can be played in real life?

As a group of college students gather on a cold Sunday morning outside the White House for their weekly sports practice, it's hard not to smirk.

Watching adults run around the field with household brooms and mops between their legs, wearing makeshift wizards' capes, is quite a sight, after all. But in non-wizarding society (or the muggle world, for those of you in the know), one has to improvise.

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Robert Bauval on King Tut's DNA

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In this Red Ice Radio interview, Robert Bauval weighs in the controversy over Tutankhamun's possible Western European ancestry.

Despite the refusal of the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, to release any DNA results which might indicate the racial ancestry of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, the leaked results reveal that King Tut’s DNA is a 99.6 percent match with Western European Y chromosomes.

The DNA test results were inadvertently revealed on a Discovery Channel TV documentary filmed with Hawass’s permission — but it seems as if the Egyptian failed to spot the giveaway part of the documentary which revealed the test results.

Bauval puts Hawass's recalcitrance in some context explaining the nationalistic attitudes that are very much a part of his make-up. Also discussed, Hawass's bizarre foray into the embarrassing excesses of reality television with the series Chasing Mummies.

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The Secrets of the Queen's Chamber

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Without much fanfare, a fresh attempt to discover the secrets of the Queen's Chamber in the main pyramid at Giza was recently announced.

Leeds University in the UK is teaming with the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt and a team of international engineers to construct the bot, which is also known as the Djedi project after the magician consulted by Egypt's King Khufu as he planned the layout of his pyramid. The structure was built over a 20-year period thought to end around 2560 BC.

The Djedi bot is equipped with a mini ultrasonic device that can tap on walls and listen to the response to help determine the thickness and condition of the stone, and a coring drill that can penetrate the rock (if necessary) while removing the minimum amount of material necessary.

It has a precision compass and inclinometer to measure the orientation of the shafts. Importantly, it's also fitted with lights and a "snake camera" that can see around corners--and hopefully yield new information into the curved air shafts, which were discovered in 1872 by a British engineer named Waynman Dixon.

During a mission in 1992, archaeologists sent another robot, named Upuaut 2, up one of the tunnels and found it blocked by a limestone door with two copper handles. Ten years later, researchers drilled through that door, only to find another one about 8 inches away.

This history of the original attempt to survey the shafts of the Queen's Chamber and the discovery of the door, the existence of which is no longer in question, is one of political intrigue, obfuscation, and abrupt cancellation. Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval report the ins and outs of the bizarre drama, in which they were directly involved, in The Message of the Sphinx.

Perhaps the most exotic researcher ever to have pronounced on the mysteries of the Pyramids was Charles Piazzi Smyth, a nineteenth-century Astronomer Royal of Scotland. Like Edgar Cayce, he believed the Great Pyramid to be somehow linked to Biblical prophecies concerning the ‘Second Coming’ of Christ. And like Edgar Cayce, too, his name turns up most unexpectedly in connection with recent remarkable discoveries at Giza.¹

We will see why, later in this chapter. Meanwhile, as many readers will recall from the international news coverage it received at the time, high hopes were raised in March 1993 of a possible hidden chamber deep within the Great Pyramid. Rudolf Gantenbrink, a Munich-based German engineer, had used a tiny, hi-tech robot camera to explore the long narrow shafts emanating from the northern and southern walls of the Queen’s Chamber and, at the end of the southern shaft (the one targeted on the star Sirius) had discovered a small portcullis door complete with copper handles. Immediately after the find was made, Dr. Zahi Hawass enthused to a German television team ‘in my opinion this is THE discovery in Egypt’ and expressed the hope that ‘records’ on papyrus scrolls to do with the ‘religion’ of the builders and maybe the ‘stars’, might be stashed away behind the tantalizing door.² Similar hopes were also raised inThe Times of London which, in addition, noted a curiouslink with Edgar Cayce and the ‘Hall of Records’:

SECRET PASSAGE POSES PYRAMID MYSTERY: In the 1940s Edgar Cayce, the American clairvoyant, prophesied the discovery, in the last quarter of the 20th century and somewhere near the Sphinx, of a hidden chamber containing the historical records of Atlantis. Whether recent discoveries in the Great Pyramid of Cheops [Khufu] have anything to do with that is far from certain, but the discovery of a small door at the end of a long, hitherto unexplored, 8-inch square shaft has set many speculating about what, if anything, might lie behind it ...’³

As we write these words, more than three years after Rudolf Gantenbrink made his amazing discovery, no further exploration has been permitted inside the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber and the mysterious portcullis door remains unopened. During this period we note that Dr. Zahi Hawass (rather like his friend Mark Lehner over the issue of 10,500BC) has executed a radical volte-face. Gone are the eulogies and the great expectations and he now asserts: ‘I think this is not a door and nothing is behind it ...’⁴

The Independent broke the story in 1993.

Archaeologists have discovered the entrance to a previously unknown chamber within the largest of Egypt's pyramids. Some evidence suggests it might contain the royal treasures of the pharaoh Cheops, for whom the Great Pyramid was built 4,500 years ago. The contents of the chamber are almost certainly intact.

The entrance is at the end of a sloping passageway, 65 metres long but only eight inches (20cm) wide and eight inches high. Egyptologists previously thought the passageway was only eight metres long, and that its construction had been abandoned while the pyramid was being built.

. . .

According to the Belgian Egyptologist Robert Bauval, the passage points directly at the dog star Sirius, held by the ancient Egyptians to be the incarnation of the goddess Isis. Other small passages in the pyramid appear to point to other heavenly bodies - the belt of Orion and the star Alpha Draconis, which at the time was in the area now occupied by the Pole Star.

But soon after, the idea of the door or anything else in the "abandoned" Queen's Chamber became the new narrative and the entire project was scuttled. It would be another ten years before Hawass undertook another mission to study the shaft and the mysterious door, only to find another door behind that.

On September 10th, with Hawass and television viewers watching, the robot sent a camera through a small hole drilled in the block only to encounter another stone blocking the way.

Hawass, head of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, was excited nonetheless.

"We can see another sealed door," he said over the shrieks of his team members and television crew crowded into the chamber. "It looks to me like it is sealing something. It seems that something important is hidden there.

"This is one of the first major discoveries in the Great Pyramid in some 130 years, and now what we need is time for further analysis," he said.

Curiouser and curiouser.

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Bulgarian archaeologists claim discovery of John the Baptist's bones?

An ancient alabaster reliquary, a box for relics, was found embedded in an altar at the ruins of a fifth-century monastery on the tiny Black Sea island of Sveti Ivan. On Sunday, the excavation's leader, Kazimir Popkonstantinov, carefully pried open the miniature casket at a ceremony attended by local government figures and an Eastern Orthodox bishop in the nearby coastal town of Sozopol.

Inside, researchers found parts of a cranium, tooth and arm bone, according to Bulgarian news agency Novinite. Further tests are now being carried out on the remains, and the country's culture minister, Vezhdi Rashidov, declared that people should wait for results before making "emotional statements" about the identity of the bones' original owner.

But Popkonstantinov is convinced that the fragments belong to Jesus' baptizer, largely because a Greek inscription on the 8-inch-long, 4-inch-high and 4-inch-wide reliquary mentions June 24, the date Orthodox and Catholic Christians celebrate John the Baptist's birth.

An international collaboration on what has long been thought to be impossible -- nuclear fusion:

It is one of mankind’s most daring experiments – a quest to produce virtually limitless clean energy that, if successful, would revolutionise life on Earth by harnessing the explosive power of the sun.

The energy problems that already beset our species, and look certain to dominate the future, would be wiped out at a stroke. The pollution of fossil fuels would be a thing of the past. The oil beneath the Gulf of Mexico could remain, safely unmolested.

Such is the appeal of the idea that the greatest powers of the world, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, America and the nations of the European Union, have united to pursue the same stellar objective. Their aim is commercially viable nuclear fusion – deriving energy from crushing together the nuclei in atoms rather than splitting them, as is done currently in nuclear fission reactors.

A universe in every black hole?

Using an adaptation of Einstein's general theory of relativity, Nikodem Poplawski, of Indiana University, Bloomington, analysed the theoretical motion of particles entering a black hole.

He concluded that it was possible for a whole new universe to exist inside every black hole, which could mean that our own universe could be inside a black hole as well.

"Maybe the huge black holes at the centre of the Milky Way and other galaxies are bridges to different universes," he told New Scientist.

"Everything tries to be round." (Black Elk) Even in the paleolithic era.

It is cramped, draughty and unlikely to win any design awards. But, according to archaeologists, this wooden hut is one of the most important buildings ever created in Britain.

The newly discovered circular structure – as shown in our artist’s impression – is the country’s oldest known home.

Built more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge, it provided shelter from the icy winds and storms that battered the nomadic hunters roaming Britain at the end of the last ice age.

And even neanderthal's tried to be cozy.

Anthropologists have unearthed the remains of an apparent Neanderthal cave sleeping chamber, complete with a hearth and nearby grass beds that might have once been covered with animal fur.

Neanderthals inhabited the cozy Late Pleistocene room, located within Esquilleu Cave in Cantabria, Spain, anywhere between 53,000 to 39,000 years ago, according to a Journal of Archaeological Science paper concerning the discovery.

Living the ultimate clean and literally green lifestyle, the Neanderthals appear to have constructed new beds out of grass every so often, using the old bedding material to help fuel the hearth.

Intriguing discovery off the coast of Africa:

The network of criss-cross lines is 620 miles off the coast of north west Africa near the Canary Islands on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

. . .

Last night Atlantis experts said that the unexplained grid is located at one of the possible sites of the legendary island, which was described by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.

According to his account, the city sank beneath the ocean after its residents made a failed effort to conquer Athens around 9000 BC.

"Let your women keep silence in the church: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law." (1 Corinthians 14:34) All of the time? Some of the time?... Yup. Taking every word of the Bible literally is a little problematic.

The Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) has decided to permit women to serve on local church councils but has maintained its rule that they cannot be ordained as bishops.

. . .

"This has nothing to do with women not being smart enough or good enough or qualified enough," said Britt Peavy, senior pastor of West Ward Church of God in Douglas, Ga. "The issue is, did God know what he was talking about? And whether we like it or don't like it ... if our rules, our standard, is biblical text, then we have to be faithful to biblical text even in a contemporary society that sees it as bigoted or old-fashioned."

The debate mirrors a similar fight within the Church of England, where women have been ordained as priests since 1994, but traditionalists have threatened to leave if women are ordained as bishops, which could happen as early as 2014.

A major legal setback for attempts to make the Vatican accountable.

Three men who sought to hold the Vatican liable in an American court for sexual abuses by Roman Catholic priests in a Kentucky diocese are abandoning the case.

Lawyers looked to question Pope Benedict XVI under oath but had to leap the high legal hurdle of the Vatican's sovereign immunity status in the U.S. But plaintiffs filed a motion on Monday asking a federal judge in Louisville to dismiss their claims.

Their attorney, William McMurry, said he was seeking to end the case because of an earlier court ruling that recognized the Vatican's immunity and failure to turn up new plaintiffs to add to the lawsuit who haven't yet been involved in a Catholic clergy abuse case.

And legal technicalities frustrate critics of an Epsicopal diocese.

Advocates for victims of clergy sex abuse have blasted the Episcopal Church for reinstating the bishop of Philadelphia who had been charged with not investigating sex abuse allegations about his brother.

A church appeals court ruled July 28 that Bishop Charles Bennison committed conduct inappropriate for a member of the clergy, but said charges against him had to be dismissed because the statute of limitations had run out.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), which has criticized the Roman Catholic Church for not disciplining bishops, picketed Tuesday (Aug. 10) outside the Philadelphia headquarters of the Diocese of Pennsylvania.

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