A 1500 Year Old Bible Found And No One Is Interested?

Few subjects are as sensitive as religion. This highly controversial ancient Bible is believed to be between 1,500 to 2,000-year-old. It is written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus. If the ancient book is genuine, it would have serious consequences for Christianity and all its followers.

Most of us are familiar with the Bible, whether we have read it or not. It is considered one of the oldest and perhaps most revered books ever compiled or written.

The Bible is basically a compilation of text that religions such as the Christian faith are based on. Over the years though the bible has met with much scrutiny.

There have been many different interpretations of this book. Some actually feel that the book is based on some truths and some fabricated stuff, basically, fables to place the fear of God into people.

However, anyone may actually feel about the Bible and the effect it may have on their own lives there is no denying that this book has stood the test of time. But how much time, and has the stories that are compiled in the Bible been properly interpreted over the years.

In short, have we ever actually seen an ancient Bible compiled of these texts that can prove just what was written? Well, that would depend on again how you may actually interpret the situation.

Turns out there is a very ancient Bible in existence that could date back 1500 years which resides in a museum in Turkey.

Within this book are some historical texts that seem to have been lost along the way, this includes a gospel from Barnabas, who had been known to be the man who was spared when Jesus was crucified.

But according to those who have read this text Jesus rose to Heaven before suffering on the cross and Judas the disciple who betrayed him had been crucified instead. This is just one of the many passages that dispute the one that has become well-known to the public.

So, is this Bible the actual texts were written, and if so what does this do to the broad belief many have? Well, the Vatican has made a request of the Turkish Government to see the ancient Bible study it for themselves.

As for the rest of the public well it can be seen in the museum where it sits in Turkey. To obtain any copy of the pages to study them someone has to pay almost a couple million dollars.

The question though looms with such an old text disputing what has become fact, and the basis for much religion will this text be widely received or kept closed up with only a few reading it? Well, perhaps the way to look at it is as any other bible it should be met with scrutiny, a bible is a book none of us were there thousands of years ago to know what text is true and which aren’t.

New Evidence Of Ancient Child Sacrifice Found From Bronze Age Mesopotamia

About 5,000 years ago, the Mesopotamians buried two 12-year-olds — a boy and a girl — and surrounded their slender bodies with hundreds of bronze spearheads and what appears to be eight human sacrifices, a new study finds.

The eight human sacrifices were positioned just outside the tomb, located at the site of Basur Höyük in southeastern Turkey, the researchers said. The team determined the age of six of the human sacrifices and found that the victims ranged in age from 11 to 20 years old.

These two 12-year-olds, along with the eight human sacrifices, “had been deposited in a single event, and furnished with an unprecedented number of high-status grave goods for the period and the region,” the researchers wrote in the journal Antiquity.

The mysterious tomb was discovered in 2014, said the study’s two researchers, Brenna Hassett, a post-doctoral researcher of archaeology at the Natural History Museum in London; and Haluk Sağlamtimur, an archaeology professor at Ege University in Izmir, Turkey.

The remains of an adult were also found beside the two children, but that body could have come from an earlier burial that got mixed in with the two 12-year-olds, Hassett told Newsweek.

And while the evidence isn’t 100 percent clear, scientists are fairly certain that the eight people were sacrificed.

“While we only have evidence for violent trauma on two of the skeletons, it’s important to remember that violent death doesn’t always leave a mark on the skeleton,” Hassett said. “As a grim example, stab wounds are normally aimed at the soft parts of the body, which do not preserve.”

She added that “from the careful dressing and positioning of the bodies outside the door to the main chamber, it seems all eight would have been retainer sacrifices.” The term ‘retainer sacrifice’ refers to people who were sacrificed so that they can accompany or serve others to the afterlife.

The human sacrifices were buried with textiles, beads and ceramics.

Mysterious sacrifices

The discovery leaves archaeologists with a series of mysteries. Who were the two 12-year-olds who seem to be the focus of the burial? Were they also sacrificed? What’s more, why was human sacrifice carried out at all at this site?

“Unfortunately, preservation wasn’t great inside the chamber, so we don’t have any evidence that the [two 12-year-old] children were sacrificed,” Hassett said. But because the two 12-year-olds received such an elaborate burial, it appears that they must have “held an important biosocial status,” Hassett and Sağlamtimur wrote in the study.

Archaeologists know that human sacrifices also occurred at other sites in Mesopotamia, including a nearby site called Arslantepe that also dates back to roughly 5,000 years ago.

“One thought is that what we are witnessing at Basur Höyük is part of a phenomenon we see in other societies across the globe, where power is being consolidated into a more structured, formal hierarchy; what archaeologists would call ‘early states,'” Hassett said.

“Perhaps [what] we are seeing is a display of power by an increasingly hierarchical society; the power to dispose of great wealth — and even people — might be the same kind of power you need to show to build a state-like society,” Hassett said. “It’s a truly fascinating puzzle that will hopefully tell us more about how human societies form and change.”

In the future, the team plans to do stable isotope analyses (a kind of study that provides information on the birthplace and diet of the deceased individuals) and DNA studies on the skeletons.

Controversial Claim by Geologist: 14 million-year-old vehicle tracks

An ancient civilization drove massive all-terrain vehicles around Earth millions of years ago – and the traces are still visible today – a Russian university scholar claimed.

Dr. Alexander Koltypin a geologist believes that mysterious groove-like markings in the Phrygian Valley of central Turkey were made by an intelligent race between 12 and 14 million years ago.

Geologist  Dr. Alexander Koltypin said: It is supposed to be the old vehicles driven on soft soil on wheels, maybe a wet surface.

‘Because of their weight the ruts were so deep. And later these ruts – and all the surface around – just petrified and secured all the evidence.

‘Such cases are well known to geologists, for example, the footprints of dinosaurs were ‘naturally preserved’ in a similar way.’

Dr. Koltypin, director of the Natural Science Scientific Research Centre at Moscow’s International Independent Ecological-Political University has just returned from a field trip to the site in Anatolia with three colleagues. He described the markings as ‘petrified tracking ruts in rocky tuffaceous [made from compacted volcanic ash] deposits’.

He said: ‘All these rocky fields were covered with the ruts left some millions of years ago….we are not talking about human beings.’

The academic said: ‘We are dealing with some kind of cars or all-terrain vehicles. The pairs of ruts are crossing each other from time to time and some ruts are deeper than the others.’

According to his observations, ‘the view of the ruts leaves no doubt that they are ancient, in some places the surface suffered from weathering, cracks are seen here’. The age of the ruts is between 12 and 14 million years old, he believes.

‘The methodology of specifying the age of volcanic rocks is very well studied and worked out,’ he said.

‘As a geologist, I can certainly tell you that unknown antediluvian [pre-Biblical] all-terrain vehicles drove around Central Turkey some 12-to-14 million years ago.’ He claims archaeologists ‘avoid touching this matter’ because it will ‘ruin all their classic theories’.

He said: ‘I think we are seeing the signs of the civilisation which existed before the classic creation of this world.

‘Maybe the creatures of that pre-civilization were not like modern human beings. ‘

He claimed the ancient ‘car tracks’ are one of a number of clues ‘which prove the existence of ancient civilizations’ but which are often ignored by mainstream scientists. There was no comprehensible system for the tracks but the distance between each pair of tracks ‘is always the same,’ he said.

He added that the distance very much fits that between the wheels of modern cars, but the tracks are too deep for today’s vehicles.

‘The maximum depth of a rut is about three feet (one meter). On the sides of ruts, there can be seen horizontal scratches, it looks like they were left by the ends of the axles used for ancient wheels.

‘We found many ruts with such scratches,’ he said.

Koltypin graduated from the Russian State Geological Prospecting University and completed further studies at the Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

More recently he has written books on popular science mysteries.

Israeli Archaeologists Find Hidden Pattern at ‘World’s Oldest Temple’ Göbekli Tepe

Archeologists believe the neolithic hunter-gathers who built huge monoliths in central Turkey 11,500 years ago had knowledge of geometry and a much more complex society than previously thought, archaeologists say.

Since their discovery in 1990. The mysterious monoliths constructed at Göbekli tepe some 11,500 years ago have been confusing archeologists and challenging preconceptions of prehistoric culture.

Chiefly, how could hunter-gatherers with a supposedly primitive societal structure build such monumental stone circles on this barren hilltop in what is today southeastern Turkey? 

Now, Israeli archaeologists, Gil Haklay and his PhD advisor Avi Gopher, of Tel Aviv University , have published a new study in the  Cambridge Archaeological Journal  providing a set of observations suggesting this prehistoric building project was “much more complex than previously thought”, and that it required planning and resources to a degree thought of as being impossible for those times.

At this world-renowned archaeological site several concentric stone circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that reach almost 6 meters (20 ft) in height with animals and anthropological motifs carved in relief.

But this new study focuses on the arrangement and positioning of the three oldest circular stone enclosures at Göbekli Tepe and the researchers claim that underlying the entire architectural plan of these three structures is “a hidden geometric pattern,” which they describe as being “specifically an equilateral triangle.”

Until these new observations, most archaeologists had assumed that the circles at Göbekli Tepe had been built gradually, over a long time period, possibly by different cultural groups, and that older circles were covered over with the new. Never was it considered that all three enclosures might have been constructed “as a single unit at the same time,” said the researchers.

Researcher Haklay told Haaretz that while the initial discovery of the site was a big surprise for the archaeological world, his new research confirms its construction was even “more complex than we thought.”

The new study focuses on enclosures B, C, and D, which have been dated to slightly older than enclosure A, and Haklay, who was previously an architect, applied a method of interpretation known as “architectural formal analysis” to retrace the ancient builders planning principles and methodologies.

Using an algorithm, Haklay identified the center points of the three irregular stone circles, which fell roughly mid-way between the pair of central pillars in each enclosure.

The eureka moment came when the three central points were found to form a nearly perfect equilateral triangle, so accurate in measure, that the researchers say the “vertices are about 25 centimeters (10 inches) away from forming a perfect triangle with sides measuring 19.25 meters (63 ft) each”.

And for those readers thinking this occurrence might be a coincidence, Haklay told reporters at Haaretz  that the enclosures “all have different sizes and shapes” and he says the odds that the three center points would form an equilateral triangle by chance, “are very low.”

This complex abstract floor design underlying the arrangement of Göbekli Tepe, is presented in the new paper as evidence of a “scaled floor plan,” possibly achieved using reeds of equal length to create a rudimentary blueprint on the ground, Haklay suggests.

The archaeologist also thinks each enclosure subsequently went through a long construction history with multiple modifications, but that in the initial building phase “they started as a single project.”

If the underlying geometric pattern is indeed evidence that the three structures at Göbekli Tepe had been built in one ancient engineering project, the feat was three times larger than previously thought, requiring a similar multiplication of hunter-gatherer builders, resources and effort. Gopher suggests maybe “thousands of workers marked” what he called the birth of a more stratified society, with a level of sophistication equatable with much later sedentary groups of farmers.

In conclusion, while the two researchers are convinced their discovery proves the three stone circles had been built contemporaneously, many readers will at this moment, like me, be struggling with a contrasting proposition. What if the earliest builders erected a stand-alone circle then a later culture built another one, randomly positioned, beside the first with no geometric correlation.

Then the third set of builders, perhaps 2000 years later, decided to build their circle equidistant from the previously unrelated first two circles, resulting in an equilateral triangle by independent, although connected design thinking, or even dare we say, by chance?

The oldest known polychrome mosaic floor dating to the second-millennium bc has been discovered at the Hittite settlement of usakli hoyuk Turkey.

An Italian-Turkish team has unearthed the world’s oldest-known polychrome mosaic floor at Usakli Hoyuk, a Hittite settlement in central Turkey.

The partially preserved mosaic measures 23 feet by 10 feet and once adorned an open courtyard belonging to a building that archaeologists believe was a second-millennium B.C. temple.

The mosaic, which was set into a beaten-earth surface, consists of more than 3,000 multicolored stones arranged in rectangular frames, each with three rows of alternating white, red, and blue-black triangles. Stone pavements served a practical function in Hittite architecture.

The mosaic was unearthed during a planned excavation at Uşaklı Höyük in central Turkey, some 14 miles (19km) north of Yozgat.  

It was “occupied from the end of the 3rd millennium, during the Middle Bronze and Paleo-Hittite phases (18th-16th centuries BC),” according to The Archaeological Project at Uşaklı Höyük. 

Since 2008, the Anatolian Archaeological Project in Central Anatolia has been revealing the ancient town’s long history. They have found fragments of cuneiform tablets indicating that it was once a major Hittite center.  Dr. Anacleto D’Agostini of Pisa University, who took part in the mission, wrote that the site may be the “lost Hittite city of Zippalanda,” according to Haaretz.

Unusual Bronze Age Mosaic

During work on the site, a large building on a terrace, which dated to the Late Bronze Age , was found. This had the characteristics of a building that was constructed during the Hittite period. It was believed to be a temple that was possibly dedicated to the Storm God, a very important deity for the Hittites and other populations. 

Near this possible temple, a courtyard was located, and it was here that archaeologists made the remarkable discovery of a mosaic.  The experts found a paved floor that measured about 20 ft by 9 ft (7m by 3m), which was poorly preserved.

The floor was paved with some 3000 pieces of stone, that appeared to have been roughly shaped and cut. Haaretz quotes D’Agostini as saying that “the mosaic was framed with perpendicularly positioned stones in white, black-blue and white again”. 

Unlike later mosaics, it was not made out of smooth and small stones.  All the stones that were found were cut in irregular shapes and the floor would not have had a smooth finish.

According to Haaretz “one wonders how comfortable it was to walk on and one envisions a lot of twisted ankles.” However, the mosaic was possibly deliberately made to be uneven so that slippery mud would not form on its surface.

A Bronze Age Mosaic for Gods

The stones have been clearly set to produce geometric patterns using divergent colors reports Antiquity. The mosaic is divided into three distinct areas, and each one contains a number of triangles. It is discerned to have been created at the same time as the Hittite temple because it is closely aligned with its eastern wall.

D’Agostino is quoted by Haaretz as saying that the “building and mosaic are characterized by ‘high-status architecture’” and this lends credence to the theory that indeed the unearthed structure was the Temple of the Storm God.

Art of Mosaic Making

The discovery of this Bronze Age mosaic at a Hittite site is astonishing. Flagstone and cobblestone, often painted, have been found at sites associated with this Bronze Age culture.  They have been found in temples and even private rooms. However, no decorative mosaics have been found ever, until this one at Uşaklı Höyük.

“The technique of making mosaic floors using different colored pebbles is well known during the Iron Age ,” according to the report in Antiquity. 

There are many examples of checkerboard mosaic floors from the Iron Age. But until the discovery at Uşaklı Höyük, the earliest known mosaic had been found in southern Anatolia at the 9 th century BC Phrygian Gordion citadel.

World’s Oldest Mosaic

However, the discovery of a Bronze Age mosaic floor at Uşaklı Höyük is considerably older than anything yet found. Moreover, the design of the mosaic was much more complex than anything found from the time. Antiquity reports that the find “provides the first evidence of a polychromatic mosaic floor with clear patterning.”

It is possible that the mosaic may represent an older tradition from Anatolia. Antiquity reports that the pavement “could represent a Late Bronze Age Anatolian forerunner for later polychromatic mosaic floors.”

The discovery may indicate that the art of mosaic making developed much earlier than widely believed and this could provide new clues into its stylistic development.

The find may result in the experts re-writing the history of images made out of polychromatic stones, an art-from that reached its zenith in the Classical Period in the Mediterranean. 

Remains of Ottoman soldiers unearthed after 108 years

The corpses of 30 Ottoman soldiers are discovered in Istanbul’s neighborhood. Rahmi Asal of the Istanbul Archeology Museums Department said the men had served in the Balkan War’s 86th Ottoman Army Battalion.

A mass grave belonging to soldiers who died while serving in the Ottoman Army’s 86th Regiment in what is today an Istanbul suburban district during the Balkan War has been unearthed.

Thirty soldiers ‘ graves were discovered in Çatalca during excavations carried out prior to the “Martyrdom Museum” project proposed by the Istanbul Archeology Museums Directorate.

The names of five of the Ottoman seals on the soldiers who were buried with their clothes were identified.

Museum director Rahmi Asal said dead soldiers were hidden in their belts with spoons and pouches. The remaining items from the soldiers were classified by the museum directorate.

These findings include officer seals with many uniform buttons and belts, belt buckles, one compass, many tobacco layers and cigarette holders, bayonets, many mirrors, and two rings.

Some names were also reached from the seals that came out of five of the soldiers determined to be the officers of the 86th Regiment from their collar numbers.

Mehmet Nuri, Necmettin and Osman Binveli, three of the dead soldiers, are believed to have been officers in their division.

The two killed soldiers buried a little away from others were Daniel and Avedis, non-Muslim Ottoman officers who fought against Bulgarian soldiers.

In the Balkan War in 1912, the Ottoman state entered the war against the revolting states of Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro.

As the invaders advanced to Çatalca, soldiers from all over the country started fighting to stop them. The soldiers who set out from the southern province of Antalya’s Alanya district also walked on the roads for days and joined the troops on the front.

Alaiye (Alanya) Reserved Battalion, consisting of Alanians from the 86th Regiment, repelled the enemy and began to rest by deploying in positions around Dağyenice village.

Bulgarian soldiers infiltrating the positions attacked the Alaiye Battalion and slaughtered 657 Ottoman soldiers overnight. After this painful incident that occurred on the night of November 17, 1912, this hill started to be known as “Alaiye Martyrdom.”

Ruins of a 3000-year-old Armenian castle found in Lake Van – Turkey

The 3,000-year-old remains of an ancient fortification have been discovered at the bottom of Turkey’s largest lake. The underwater excavations were led by Van Yüzüncü Yıl University and the governorship of Turkey’s eastern Bitlis Province.

The castle is said to belong to the Iron Age Armenian civilization also known as the Kingdom of Van, Urartu, Ararat and Armenia. The lake itself is believed to have been formed by a crater caused by a volcanic eruption of Mount Nemrut near the province of Van. The current water level of the reservoir is about 150 meters higher than it was during the Iron Age.

Divers exploring Lake Van discovered the incredibly well-preserved wall of a castle, thought to have been built by the Urartu civilization. Experts had been studying the body of water for a decade before it revealed the fortress lost deep below its surface.