Category Archives: WORLD

19th-Century Industrial Site Uncovered in Southwest England

19th-Century Industrial Site Uncovered in Southwest England

Archaeologists digging up a car park in South Bristol have unearthed the full extent of one of the city’s most ‘secretive’ companies – less than 60 years after it closed down. The team from Wessex Archaeology were given access to the old NCP car park on Dalby Avenue in Bedminster – and discovered, almost entirely intact at ground level, what was left of the site of the Bedminster Smelting Works.

And the below ground discoveries are now helping to shed more light on what was one of South Bristol’s darkest – and dirtiest – chapters, when a highly-polluting chemical work operated for more than 100 years, surrounded by people’s houses.

Just a couple of feet beneath the surface of the car park just off the A38 at Dalby Avenue in Bedminster, the archaeologists found the foundations and ground-level footprint of all the huge smelting work chimneys, furnaces, underground furnaces and stoking cellars, where generations of Bedminster residents worked in often unbearable heat and fumes. The profits from the business meant that, by the third generation of the Capper Pass family-run business, the family was able to buy a huge country estate in Dorset, far away from the fumes, smoke and stench that characterised the smelting works which stood opposite Bedminster’s main tobacco factory at the bottom of Bedminster Parade.

Wessex Archaeology carried out an excavation there between January and March this year, as work began to dig up the car park, clear the site and build huge blocks of student accommodation that will eventually house up to 837 students, as part of the massive Bedminster Green development project. One of the reasons the archaeologists were called in was because little was known about the company and how it was set up – the site was quickly demolished and covered over when it eventually closed in 1963, and the car park, Dalby Avenue and the St Catherine’s Place shopping centre was built over the top of it.

According to Simon Cox, from the Bristol and Bath Heritage Consultancy, who worked on the dig too, what went on in the smelting works was a closely-guarded secret.

“This excavation shows us that there is still a great deal to be learned about our relatively recent industrial heritage from archaeological investigations in advance of urban regeneration projects. Documentary research undertaken by Bristol & Bath Heritage Consultancy in preparation for the planning application uncovered much about the history of Capper Pass, but it was clear that they were very secretive about their processes, many of which were highly experimental and unpredictable in nature,” he said.

“The firm originated in Bedminster in the early 19th century and had premises there until the 1960s when its operations moved to its premises in Melton, Yorkshire. It ultimately became globally important as a world-leading producer of tin from secondary sources, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto Zinc by the late 20th century.

The archaeological excavation of the Bedminster Smelting Works at Dalby Avenue, Bedminster

“The excavation has helped us to better understand the origins and plan form of the 19th and 20th-century works through various phases of redevelopment – information that was largely kept secret and was therefore not available through documentary sources such as historic maps and plans.

“Along with analysis of samples taken of industrial residues, this information should help us to further refine our understanding of the function of the different furnaces, solder pans and pots revealed during the work by Wessex Archaeology, and therefore the evolution of this internationally important Bedminster-based company,” he added.

The archaeologists found most of the excavated remains date from the later 19th and early 20th centuries and comprise the foundations of industrial buildings containing numerous coal-fired metal smelting furnaces with associated underground flues and stoking cellars, and the bases of three huge Lancashire boilers that provided the steam for the steam engines that powered the works.

“This has been a fascinating site to excavate,” said Wessex Archaeology’s fieldwork director Cai Mason. “It’s hard to imagine what a different place Bedminster must have been in the 19th and early 20th centuries – a densely populated area full of heavy industry, noise, and smoke.

The archaeological excavation of the Bedminster Smelting Works at Dalby Avenue, Bedminster

“Capper Pass & Sons was a very innovative and secretive company – this was the best way of preventing your competitors from stealing your ideas – and before we started our excavation, we really had no idea how the smelting works was laid out inside, or how it developed over time.

“One of the things our excavations have shown is that the company seems to have been constantly rebuilding the works. New furnaces were built, then a few years later, they’d be knocked down and replaced with a new – presumably more efficient – design. In the early days of the company it seems to have been very much a case or trial and error – were literally making it up as they went along!” he added.

The 200-year history of smelting in Bedminster

The smelting works was established 182 years ago by a local metal refiner called Capper Pass II, who had learnt his trade from his father, who had been transported to Australia for 14 years for handling stolen metal in 1819.

The junior Capper Pass bought a plot of land in Bedminster’s sprawling slums in 1840 on the new Coronation Street – a street that no longer exists, but was laid out and named after the coronation of William IV and Queen Adelaide in 1832. He built a house for his family and a small smelting work around the back, which was experimental, but not particularly successful.

The archaeological excavation of the Bedminster Smelting Works at Dalby Avenue, Bedminster

Capper Pass II tried extracting gold and silver from Sheffield plate and gilded buttons, then refining lead, copper and zinc from cheap waste products like metal ashes, slags and poor-quality ores – it didn’t exactly work and for more than 20 years the smelting works barely broke even.

But in the 1860s, the company discovered a new and highly profitable thing to manufacture – solder, the multi-purpose metal glue that was used to stick metal objects together, especially the new invention of mass-produced tin cans.

The production of solder took off, and as soon as they made enough money, the by now old Capper Pass moved the family away from the smelting works to a new large house in the new and genteel suburb of Redland, high above the stench of industrial South Bristol.

He died in 1870, but his son Alfred Capper Pass took over and expanded the business massively, moving north and south of the existing site and occupying much of the area between the ancient main road through Bedminster and the parallel railway line.

“Pass was a typical Victorian paternalistic industrialist, who used some of his wealth to help fund the Bristol General Hospital and Bristol University College and gave land for the building of St Michael’s Church on Windmill Hill,” said a Wessex Archaeology spokesperson.

From 1870 until Alfred Capper Pass’s death in 1905, the company employed more and more men in the dirty and unhealthy work in the smelting yards, and gave some money to local good causes, including helping to fund the Bristol General Hospital in Redcliffe and the University College, as well as giving land for the building of St Michael’s Church on Windmill Hill. Most of the money the family kept, however, and they were able to move out of Redland and Bristol altogether, moving to a succession of bigger and bigger homes, ending up with the purchase of a large country estate at Wootton Fitzpaine in Dorset.

The Bedminster Smelting Works, on a map dating from the 1880s

The demand for solder continued to increase into the 20th century, with the new development of electrical goods, circuit boards and cars, and the works needed to expand more – but the site was now surrounded by tightly-packed terrace homes, with space in Bedminster also in demand from the growing tobacco factories and a number of tanneries.

The company found a new site in Melton, near Hill, and from 1937 onwards, production gradually shifted there. The Bedminster Smelting Works closed in 1963 and the site was levelled, and covered with the car park and St Catherine’s Place shopping centre, with a new bypass of East Street – Dalby Avenue and Malago Road – put through the middle of it.

Now the next generation of use for the area – the Bedminster Green regeneration project – will see huge blocks of flats built in the area, including at the car park off Dalby Avenue.

A 193-million-year old nesting ground with more than 100 dinosaur eggs offers evidence they lived in herds

A 193-million-year-old nesting ground with more than 100 dinosaur eggs offers evidence they lived in herds

A 193-million-year-old nesting ground containing more than 100 dinosaurs’ eggs is upending palaeontologists’ understanding of an early dinosaur species.

An artist’s reconstruction of a Mussaurus patagonicus nest.

Research published Thursday describes a collection of eggs and juvenile and adult skeletons from a dinosaur called Mussaurus patagonicus, which were found in Patagonia, Argentina. The dino is an ancestor of long-necked herbivores called sauropods, such as Brachiosaurus.

Most of the chicken-sized eggs were discovered in clusters of eight to 30, suggesting they resided in nests as part of a common breeding ground. Scientists also found Mussaurus skeletons of similar sizes and ages buried together. Combined, these patterns offer evidence that the dinosaurs lived in herds.

“I went to this site aiming to find at least one nice dinosaur skeleton. We ended up with 80 skeletons and more than 100 eggs (some with embryos preserved inside!)” Diego Pol, a researcher with the Egidio Feruglio palaeontology museum in Patagonia and the lead author of the new study, told Insider via email.

He called the site “one of a kind.”

Before this discovery, researchers thought herding behaviour was restricted to dinosaurs that came much later, in the very late Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. That’s because the earliest fossil evidence of sauropod herds only dates back 150 million years. This nesting ground, however, pushes that timeline back more than 40 million years. It’s the earliest known evidence of social groups among dinosaurs, the study authors said.

X-rays offer a peek into fossilized dinosaur eggs

A fossilized Mussaurus egg that’s more than 190 million years old, found in southern Patagonia, Argentina.

Argentine palaeontologists discovered the first Mussaurus skeletons at this Patagonian site in the late 1970s. The dinosaurs they found were no more than 6 inches long. Unaware that they’d uncovered newborns, the researchers named the creature “mouse lizard” because of the skeletons’ tiny size.

Pol decided to reexplore the area starting in 2002, and by 2013, he’d helped find the first adult Mussaurus fossils there. Those bones revealed that full-grown versions of these “mouse lizards” were closer in size to modern-day hippos. They grew to weigh about 1.5 tons, reaching lengths of 26 feet from nose to tail tip. But infants could fit in the palm of a human hand.

A screen shot from a video showing how scientists like Diego Pol used high-energy X-rays to peek inside a Mussaurus egg without destroying it.

Since then, Pol’s team has also uncovered and studied the contents of the nesting ground, which measures just under half a square mile. In 2017, he took 30 of the eggs to a lab in France, and his group then used X-ray technology to peek inside and confirm the species of the embryos without breaking the shells.

By analyzing the sizes and types of bones in the nesting ground, the researchers determined that the animals were buried near counterparts of a similar age. Some clusters had juveniles less than a year old, others consisted of individuals that were slightly older but not yet fully grown, and finally, there were smatterings of adults that had died solo or in pairs.

That type of age segregation, the researchers said, is a key sign of herds: Juveniles hung out with others their age while adults looked for food and protected the community.

“They were resting together and likely died during a drought,” Pol said. “This is compatible with a herd that stays together for many years and within which the animals get close to each other to rest, or to forage, or do other daily activities.”

Another strong indication of herd behaviour is the nesting ground itself: If Mussaurus lived as a community, it would make sense that they’d lay eggs in a common area.

Living in herds may have helped Mussaurus survive

Nest with Mussaurus eggs dated to more than 190 million years ago, found in Patagonia. Diego Pol

To figure out the fossils’ ages, researchers examined minerals in volcanic ash that was scattered around the eggs and skeletons and determined that the fossils were about 193 million years old.

Previously, scientists thought this type of dinosaur lived during the late Triassic period, about 221 million to 205 million years ago. But the new date suggests instead that Mussaurus thrived during the early Jurassic period. That, in turn, is evidence that Mussaurus’ ancestors survived a mass extinction event 200 million years ago.

The key to that survival, the study suggests, may have been their herding behaviour.

“These were social animals and we think this may be an important factor to explain their success,” Pol said.

An artist’s depiction of the nesting ground of a Mussaurus herd of in what is now Argentina. Jorge Gonzalez

Communal living likely helped Mussaurus find enough food, perhaps by making it easier for them to forage over larger areas. Mussaurus of the same size would likely “group together to coordinate their activities,” Pol said, given that larger adults and tinier juveniles moved at different speeds.

He added that given the size difference between newborns and adults, it probably took these dinosaurs many years to reach full size. So young Mussaurus might have been vulnerable to predation.

By staying in herds, adults could better protect their young.

Archaeologists find a skeleton in Alexander the Great-era tomb

Archaeologists find a skeleton in Alexander the Great-era tomb

Archaeologists in Greece have uncovered a skeleton from a tomb dating back to the era of Alexander the Great. The excavation has refuelled rumours about the Greek conqueror, whose final resting place remains a mystery.

Archaeologists find a skeleton in Alexander the Great-era tomb

Greece’s Culture Ministry confirmed on Wednesday that an excavation site in the country’s north had once again produced exciting results, namely, that of a skeleton.

The remains would “be studied by researchers,” the Culture Ministry announced in a statement.

Archaeologists discovered the skeleton under the third chamber

An archaeological team digging roughly 600 kilometres (370 miles) north of Athens near the city of Amphipolis in recent months discovered the bones in the third chamber of the massive tomb.

According to preliminary information, parts of the skeleton were strewn around a rectangular wooden casket, which had been buried under the floor (pictured) of the cavernous room.

The occupant was probably some “outstanding personality, a great general,” head archaeologist Katerina Peristeri said.

Peristeri is to disclose the findings in detail at the end of November.

Nearly intact statues and expansive mosaics have fascinated the team, which is gradually making its way through the mysterious tomb. While the opulence points to a final resting place for an important person, the archaeologists on site still do not know to whom it belonged.

The discovery of a skeleton was “a very important find because it will help us learn the sex of the person buried there, and possibly their approximate age,” University of Thessaloniki archaeology professor Michalis Tiverio, who is not participating in the dig, told the Associated Press news agency.

The tomb houses intricate mosaics including one of the Rape of Persephone

Tomb fuels speculation

The tomb dates back to the time during which Alexander the Great ruled much of the surrounding region. Born in 356 BC, the young king of Macedon launched a successful military campaign through the Middle East, pushing into Asia to modern-day India, as well as into northeastern Africa.

Following his death in 323 at the age of 32, his wife, Roxana, and their son, Alexander, were exiled to Amphipolis. They, along with his mother, brother and sister-in-law were later murdered there.

Alexander the Great’s final resting place is believed to be in Alexandria, Egypt.

However, the findings of the current excavation in northern Greece have re-fuelled speculation that perhaps he had been buried closer to his home after all.

“Astonishing” 500-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Brains Prompt a Rethink of the Evolution of Insects and Spiders

“Astonishing” 500-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Brains Prompt a Rethink of the Evolution of Insects and Spiders

What had spiny claws protruding from its mouth, sported a body shaped like a toilet brush and looked as though it slithered off the cover of a sci-fi novel? An ocean predator from the Cambrian period is known as Stanleycaris hirpex. Newfound fossils of the bizarre creature are exceptionally complete, preserving the brain, the nervous system and a third eye. 

Royal Ontario Museum/Illustration by Sabrina Cappelli

Researchers at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto recently announced the discovery of fossils belonging to that strange animal as part of an “astonishing” treasure trove of fossils dating to 506 million years ago, according to a statement. 

Palaeontologists found these ancient treasures in the Burgess Shale, a formation in British Columbia’s Canadian Rockies that is known for its abundant and well-preserved fossilized animal remains, and among the half-a-billion-year-old fossils were numerous specimens of the marine predator S. hirpex.

“What makes this find so remarkable is that we have dozens of specimens showing the remains of the brain and other elements of the nervous system, and they’re incredibly well preserved and show really fine details,” said Joseph Moysiuk, lead author of a study describing the fossils and a University of Toronto doctoral candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology. 

“Before this, there had only been a few other finds of fossilized brains, particularly from the Cambrian period, but this is still something that is quite rare, and it’s only something that’s been observed in the last 10 years or so,” Moysiuk told Live Science.

“Most of the species where we’ve seen fossilized brains, there are only one or two specimens available.”

Despite being small — measuring less than 8 inches (20 centimetres) in length — S. hirpex was likely an imposing sight to its even smaller prey.

“It had this really ferocious apparatus of spiny claws and round mouth that made it look absolutely fierce,” Moysiuk said. “It also had long, rake-like spines to comb the seafloor to hunt for any buried organisms, side flaps to help it glide through the water and trident-shaped spines that project toward each other from the opposite appendage that we think it used as a jaw to crush its prey.”

“Astonishing” 500-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Brains Prompt a Rethink of the Evolution of Insects and Spiders
A pair of fossil specimens of Stanleycaris hirpex, specimen ROMIP 65674.1-2.

The fossils show that the brain of S. hirpex was divided into two segments: the protocerebrum, which is connected to its eyes, and the deutocerebrum, which is linked to the frontal claws. This brain structure differs from the three-lobe structure of modern arthropods that are distant relatives of S. hirpex, such as insects. The brains of these modern relatives, in contrast, comprise a protocerebrum, a deutocerebrum and a tritocerebrum, which connects the brain to an insect’s labrum, or upper lip, among other body parts. 

“The preservation of the brains in these animals gives us direct insight into the evolution of the nervous system from the perspective of the fossil record,” Moysiuk said. 

Radiodonta, an extinct offshoot of the arthropod evolutionary tree that includes Stanleycaris, “is an important group to know, since it offers us a better understanding of the evolution of modern arthropods.” Moysiuk said.  

Another interesting aspect of S. hirpex was its oversize median third eye, a characteristic observed for the first time in a radiodont. While the study authors are uncertain about how the ancient arthropod used this eye, it may have helped the animal track its prey, Moysiuk suggested. 

“Finding the third eye was quite a shock to us because we were starting to think we understood radiodonts and what they looked like pretty well,” he said. “For the first time, we were able to recognize this gigantic median eye in addition to the pair of stock eyes that we already knew about in radiodonts.” 

Though some modern arthropods, like dragonflies and wasps, also have median eyes, they are usually more sensitive than the other two eyes and yet don’t focus as well. “We can only speculate, but we think that this third eye helped with orienting an animal, and it’s especially important for a predator like Stanleycaris that has to move around rapidly and precisely in the environment,” Moysiuk said.

Three of the S. hirpex fossils that were excavated during the dig are now on permanent display at the Royal Ontario Museum in its Willner Madge Gallery, Dawn of Life. 

The findings were published July 8 in the journal Current Biology.

8,200-year-old burials in Russia contain pendants crafted from human bone

8,200-year-old burials in Russia contain pendants crafted from human bone

Nearly a century ago, archaeologists excavating an 8,200-year-old graveyard in northwestern Russia took note of a number of bone and animal-tooth pendants buried with the Stone Age people entombed there. But when researchers recently began to re-analyze the bone pendants to determine which species of animal each came from, they were in for a shock. 

8,200-year-old burials in Russia contain pendants crafted from human bone
An illustration depicting the burial of an adult male on the island of Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov in Russia.

Some of the pendants weren’t made from the animal bone at all. They were human.

“When we got the results, I was first thinking that there must be some mistake here,” said Kristiina Mannermaa, an archaeologist at the University of Helsinki in Finland, who led the research. 

But it was no mistake, Mannermaa told Live Science. Mixed in with ornaments made of bear, elk and beaver teeth were grooved fragments of human bone, including at least two pendants made from the same human femur, or thighbone. 

A surprising discovery

These bits of bone were found at a site called Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov, a cemetery with 177 burials from around 6200 B.C. in the Karelia region of Russia. The people here were hunter-fisher-gatherers, Mannermaa said, with a diet centred primarily around fish.

While some were buried unadorned, others were found with many teeth and bone ornaments, some of which seem to have been sewed onto the hems of long-decayed cloaks or coats or used as noisemakers in rattles. 

As part of a large project seeking to understand how these Stone Age people interacted with animals, Mannermaa and her team had some of these ornaments analyzed with a method that looks at molecular differences in the bone collagen between species. 

Of 37 pendants crafted from fragments of bone from 6 different graves, 12 turned out to be human, the analysis showed. (Another two returned results indicating that they, too, might be human, but the findings were uncertain.) These dozen pendants came from three different graves: two holding single adult men and one of an adult man buried with a child. There may be other human bone pendants in the graveyard, Mannermaa said, but those artefacts are still being analyzed. 

These two pendants are crafted from the same human femur.

Using human bones

Interestingly, the bones didn’t seem to be treated differently than other materials by the people who turned them into decorations. They were carved rather quickly, Mannermaa said, with simple grooves notched into their ends where a cord could be wrapped. They were also similar in size and shape to the animal teeth that were found nearby, perhaps indicating that they were used as a replacement for animal teeth that had been lost from the hem of a garment, Mannermaa and her team reported in the June issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports(opens in new tab). Wear patterns on the ornaments suggest they were worn by their owners before being buried with them.

“It gives an impression that when a human or animal died, they didn’t see so much difference in the body and the parts,” Mannermaa said. 

This apparent interchangeability doesn’t mean that people viewed human bone as meaningless, said Amy Gray Jones, a senior lecturer in archaeology at the University of Chester in the U.K. who was not involved in the study.

Animal bone pendants and tools from Stone Age Europe are often treated with care and disposed of in particular ways after being used, Gray Jones told Live Science. Unlike today, when an animal bone is largely unvalued in Western culture, ancient Europeans may have infused both animal and human bone with great symbolism. 

“It means not necessarily that the human bone and the pendant is just another material, but that perhaps it also has an importance or a meaning like the animal bone,” Gray Jones said. 

The archaeological record is thin, however. This is the first such use of human bone from northeastern Europe, Mannermaa said, though human tooth pendants(opens in new tab) from about 6000 B.C. have been found at a site called Vedbaek Henriksholm Bøgebakken in Denmark. In 2020, a couple of human-bone arrowheads were discovered in the Netherlands. There are also a few other scattered examples of carved human bones from around Stone Age Europe, including an arm bone from Serbia with notches cut in it

“We’re probably only getting a partial glimpse into what human bone was used for,” Gray Jones said.

The method of analyzing collagen molecules used in the current study is relatively new, and it’s likely that more already-discovered bone fragments would be identified as human if they were tested, she said. 

Mannermaa and her team are now studying the animal bone pendants found at Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov to confirm that they were, indeed, worked in similar ways to the human bone. It would be interesting, she said, to try to extract DNA from the pendants to see if the people the bone came from were related to the people who were buried with the pendants. But those studies require the destruction of large amounts of bone, she said, so it’s not likely that researchers will pursue that research at this time. 

300-Million-Year-Old Screw Embedded Into Rock Discovered In China

300-Million-Year-Old Screw Embedded Into Rock Discovered In China

The Lanzhou screw is another mysterious object discovered in recent years that seems to challenge mainstream archaeology and history. It was discovered in 2002 and has since generated a great amount of attention among collectors and researchers.

The most mysterious part of this object is that, within the piece of rock, a metal screw was discovered. The mysterious pear-shaped stone is about 6×8 cm and weighs around 466 grams.

But it is not a common rock and the metal-shaped screw just adds to the mystery of the rock that according to researchers is around 300 million years old. As a matter of fact, the mysterious black rock has geologists scratching their heads.

300-Million-Year-Old Screw Embedded Into Rock Discovered In China
  1. According to reports from Chinese News agencies, a mysterious object discovered in 2002 could be evidence of prehistorical civilizations.
  2. The Lanzhou screw is believed to be similar to the one found in Russia in the 90s.
  3. These objects challenge mainstream archaeology and history
  4. Researchers from numerous Chinese laboratories have studied the item

Tests have failed to show the exact composition of the mysterious rock, researchers include geologists and physicists from the National Land Resources Bureau of Gansu Province, Colored Metal Survey Bureau of Gansu Province, the Institute of Geology and Minerals

Research of China Academy, Lanzhou Branch, and the School of Resources and Environment of Lanzhou College, are unsure of the origin of the artefact and point out that at this time, all theories are possible.

According to Lanzhou Morning News; After a discussion about the possibility of being man-made and the possible reasons for its formation, scientists unanimously labelled the stone as one of the most valuable in China and in the world of collection, research and Archeological studies.”

Numerous theories have been proposed that try to explain the origin of the mysterious rock and the embedded 6 cm cone-shaped metal bar which bears clear screw threads.

While most researchers firmly believe this artefact to be the remains of a prehistoric civilization, other researchers suggest that, given the mysterious composition of certain elements of the rock, there is a possibility that both the rock and mysterious metal screw could have originated on another planet.

After numerous studies, Chinese scientists concluded that the artefact had not been made by contemporary hands or by current technology levels, the most accepted hypothesis is that it is a product of a prehistoric civilization.

Despite various opinions, researchers have not been able to confirm if the screw was forged from a metallic material or from some other material.

Researchers from the Institute of Geology and Minerals Research of China Academy suggest that the mysterious body of the Lanzhou screw was made before the rock that contains it solidified, a process that is believed to have taken place 300 million years before the present era.

It is most likely that there is something missing in the distant history of mankind. History and archaeology clearly do not reflect the entire picture of our past and objects like the Lanzhou screw are proof of it.

According to researchers, 300 million years ago, the supercontinent Pangea formed. It is during that time that the Lanzhou screw was believed to have been created, curiously, the Lanzhou screw has a similar history to the screw discovered in Russia in the 90’s.

The Russian screw, also embedded into rock, was found by chance as researchers were performing analysis after the fall of a meteorite in the Kaluga region when they came across a mysterious object that resembled a modern-day screw.

Tests performed on the mysterious rock from Russia demonstrated that there are several screws embedded into the structure. Curiously, the age of the Russian screw is believed to be an exact match to the one found in China.

Discoveries like this are anything but uncommon as this object belongs to a list of other out-of-place artefacts that have been discovered in the last tweet years.

All of these discoveries point toward the possibility that our history and origins have been completely wrong. It is quite likely that millions of years ago, the Earth was completely different home to a species much different to ours today. Objects like the ones found in China and Russia point toward the possibility that advanced civilizations might have existed millions of years ago on our planet.

Mainstream Archaeology and history will continue to deny these findings since they are capable of rewriting history and our origins as we know it.

Do you think it’s possible that artefacts like the ones found in Russia and China are the remains of prehistorical advanced civilizations?

Changing the way we look at our past and history might help us understand what the true meaning of these artefacts is.

100,000-Year-Old Astronomical Map Discovered At Visoko

100,000-Year-Old Astronomical Map Discovered At Visoko

I met Semir Osmanagich, three years ago, in Pescara (Italy) during a conference on Ancient Civilizations and we had several intriguing conversations that were the seeds of my study on the enigmatic stone found in the valley of Visoko, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In my opinion, Semir is working very hard to prove the existence of the pyramidal complex in Bosnia and I agree with him when he stated that “Almost everything they teach us about ancient history is wrong: the origin of men, civilizations and pyramids”.

History must be rewritten.

After two years of investigations, I may say that the mysterious symbols carved on the enigmatic stone, found near the Ravne Tunnels in Visoko, represent a possible astronomical map.

Experts believe the symbols are the core of an ancient writing system carved by an unknown civilization that lived in the valley of Visoko. The stone was an enigma for many years, but I have now found the key in which to deciphering the mysterious symbols. The special signs carved on the stone are not ancient writings, or protorunic, as some researchers assumed, but clear evidence of a stellar configuration of the sky above Visoko in a very ancient time.

To prove my hypothesis, I studied the symbols by using a methodology based on a description of each sign, considering the correct meaning and proposing the exact correlation with constellations. The stone has a very intriguing half-sphere shape and it is not a coincidence. The choice has been made taking into consideration the message the creators wanted to convey.

Their goal was to reproduce the sky above Visoko, at a very special time, fixing the position of the constellations with respect to their latitude. That is why the stone has a half-spherical shape because it is a portrayal of the sky.

Now take a look at the details:

The stone is divided into four quadrants by two intersecting lines. I stress the importance of the two lines. The point of origin is in the lower part of the stone, as they wanted to reproduce the celestial sphere as follows: the vertical line is the Celestial Meridian, while the horizontal line is the Celestial Horizon.

The analysis of the symbols gives the opportunity to note the existence of lines whose functions are very important. In the following image, the lines are astronomical measuring devices. In the left quadrant, for instance, the red line – starting from the horizontal line (celestial horizon) –  may have  two meanings:

  • To indicate the equinox or solstice dawn:
  • To indicate the Ecliptic Meridian. In this last case, the red line is the most important symbol carved on the map. It gives the possibility to establish when, along the year, the sky was observed. In fact, the Ecliptic Meridian forms an astronomical imaginary angle of about 45° only at the dawn of the Autumnal Equinox, and its inclination fixes the precise time of the astronomical configuration.

In the right quadrant, the yellow line is also interesting because it is a kind of Sextant, indicating the declination of the Orion Constellation.

Specifically, two points – A and B – are the limits of its declination along the precessional cycle.  This is a very important device, because it is possible to establish the correct measurement of the degrees, obtaining  the right position of Orion along its declination and the time when the stone was engraved.

Now, take a look at the symbols reproducing the celestial constellations. I marked with a special color each symbol reproducing a constellation: red, white, yellow, violet, black, and blue:

  • On the left side, there is the Canis Major constellation (red) and the white lines are the representation of Monoceros constellation in conjunction;
  • On the Celestial Meridian there is the Orion Constellation and just on its right (in yellow) the Arch of Orion;

In the following image, in the right corner, I stress a particular representation of the Arch of Orion description from an astronomical map.

To the right of the Arch of Orion, I  noted a very weathered symbol that I have marked with a black line (see above).

I worked very hard to represent this symbol correctly. Using the astronomical configuration, I noted that this symbol represents the Taurus Constellation, a very important symbolic meaning in the ancient culture, strictly linked to Orion Mythology and to the Great Mother Ancient Culture.

The Cetus constellation (blue line) is also represented, just only the upper part. Cetus is a very large constellation and a great part of it lies under the Celestial Horizon. Lastly, on the left, lies the Pisces Constellation (red).

On the stone, the lower part of it is represented (visible from Visoko, as point of observation). Its lower part is similar to a triangle as represented in the stone and in the astronomical reproduction (image on the right corner).

The left quadrant contains a very intriguing archetype language. In the most ancient civilizations, the ‘E’ symbolizing the concept of Life. So, the correlation Sun-Life is very distinctive.

We have three E’s in different positions. It seems to be a representation of the Sun crossing the ecliptic… It is possible that the third E indicates the precise moment of the alignment, fixed at about 60° on the ecliptic.  The two circles in gray refer to the stars, planets or Moon…  In this last case, we noted that the «circle-Moon» is rising with the Sun, hypothesizing a possible Solar Eclipse.

A solar eclipse has a period of about 180’ and the three Suns may indicate the phases of the Eclipse (60’ x 3).

The question is: when was this stone was engraved? and what Era is it associated with?  Using the Starry Night Pro software, I noted the engraved astronomical configuration never appeared in the sky of Visoko in the last 100,000 years.

This means that:

  • The astronomical map engraving is much older than 100,000 years;
  • The Terrestrial Axis had another inclination, so the coordinates are out of order; or
  • Visoko was not the correct point of observation;

The following image is an astronomical configuration belonging to 82,250 BC, when the constellations represented on the stone were fixed in the sky above Visoko.

But, the correlation is not precise. I believe the exact correlation is older than 100,000 years.

The Crimean Pyramids — Built Before Dinosaurs Roamed The Earth?

The Crimean Pyramids — Built Before Dinosaurs Roamed The Earth?

Ukrainian researchers have come across one of the most important discoveries in recent years as they accidentally discovered a set of megalithic constructions and pyramids in the peninsula of Crimea, well-known in ancient history for archaeological and historical treasures from different cultures and ancient civilizations ranging from the Greeks and Romans to the Genoese and Ottoman Turks.

Crimea is an autonomous republic of Ukraine, it is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea.

The series of formations was discovered for the first time in 1999 by Vitalij Gokh who worked for the Soviet military for over thirty years.

After his long career in the Soviet military, Gokh decided to become a researcher which led him to the discovery of the Pyramids. 

Gokh claimed that just like there were submerged towns in the region, there were buried pyramids and other megalithic structures in the Crimean peninsula.

Gokh was a former engineer thus he had very good knowledge with magnetic resonance instruments. Gokh even built a device to search for subterranean deposits of water since the area of Sevastopol had very poor water supplies.

According to Gokh’s website, the devices, invented by Vitaly A. Gokh (Method of geoholography and geo hydro diagnostics) enable the detection of elements of the Mendeleev Periodic Table; oil and gas deposits, mechanisms and devices of various kinds, material objects both in the Earth and in the areas of remote Space.

The devices use analogs or models in order to record structural fields or the snapshots of the planets, stars, constellations, and areas of Space, executed by means of satellites or telescopes.

Thanks to these instruments, Gokh was able to discover several limestone blocks which had regular dimensions, ca. 2.5 by 1.5 meters and Goks and his team “assumed” these were of artificial origin.

Interestingly, the instrument invented by Gokh also revealed that from the top of one of the structures, three beams of energy emanated, at frequencies 900×109 Hz, 700×109 Hz and 500×109 Hz.

Around the pyramid, a field of 10×109 Hz was found. Gokh and his team state that the surrounding layers of one of the structures reveal that the “underground pyramid” was originally above the surface in “open-air” but due to flooding, the whole area sank together with the structures.

According to ICTV and the Crimean News agency; Ukrainian scientist Vitalij Gokh discovered an underground unknown object, which proved to be a giant pyramid of 45 meters in height and a length of about 72 meters. Goh said that the pyramid was built during the time of the dinosaurs.

“Crimean pyramid” has a truncated top, like a Mayan pyramid, but its appearance is more like an Egyptian. It is hollow inside, and a mummy of an unknown creature is buried under the foundation.

So far the information regarding the veracity and existence of the pyramids has not been proven nor accepted by archaeologists.

In an interview with ICTV, researcher Vitaliy Gokh stated that he doesn’t know who built the megalithic structures in the Crimean peninsula, but the pyramids could prove to be the oldest structures on the planet to date.

So far around 7 pyramids have been registered forming a straight line which travelled from Sarych to Baia Kamyshovaia, and which runs northwest-southeast, one of these “pyramids” is located underwater in the vicinity of the city of Foros.

In total, Gokh believes that there are around 39 pyramidal structures and monolithic buildings in the entire Crimean peninsula.