Category Archives: WORLD

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Aztec altar with human ashes uncovered in Mexico City

Aztec altar with human ashes uncovered in Mexico City

Sometime after Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in modern-day Mexico City in 1521, an indigenous household that survived the bloody Spanish invasion arranged an altar including incense and a pot with human ashes.

Aztec altar with human ashes uncovered in Mexico City
The altar was found underneath a modern home near Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City

The remains of that elaborate display have been unearthed by archaeologists near what is today Garibaldi Plaza, famed for its revelry and mariachi music, Mexico’s culture ministry said on Tuesday.

In the wake of the fall of Tenochtitlan, likely within the years of 1521 and 1610, the offering from the family of the Mexica people was made “to bear witness to the ending of a cycle of their lives and of their civilization,” the culture ministry said in a statement.

The interior patio where rituals took place is about four meters (13 feet) below ground level, according to a team of archaeologists who spent three months analyzing the site.

They found various layers of what had been home over the centuries, the statement said, along with 13 incense burners, five bowls, a cup, a plate and a pot with cremated skeletal remains.

The incense burners found at the altar would have been used during rituals
The pot containing human ashes was one of the items found at the altar

The finding coincides with the 500-year anniversary of the Spanish conquest, which Mexico’s government commemorated by building a towering replica of the Templo Mayor, the Aztec civilization’s most sacred site, in downtown Mexico City.

A number of ancient discoveries in the Mexico City area in recent years, including some in the capital’s bustling downtown, have shone light on the Aztec civilization. They include the remains of a ceremonial ball court, a sacrificial wolf adorned with gold and a tower of human skulls.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had previously sought an apology from Spain and the Vatican for human rights abuses committed during the conquest of what is modern-day Mexico.

AFRICA, WORLD

Enigmatic footprints, once thought to belong to a bear, linked to the unknown human ancestor

Enigmatic footprints, once thought to belong to a bear, linked to unknown human ancestor

Ancient footprints reveal a mysterious relative of humans who may have lived at the same time and in the same area as the famous human ancestor “Lucy” in Tanzania. Strangely, these enigmatic tracks possess an unusual cross-stepping gait where one leg is crossed over the other during walking, a new study finds.

The oldest solid evidence of upright walking among hominins — the group that includes humans, our ancestors and our closest evolutionary relatives — are tracks discovered at Laetoli in northern Tanzania in 1978. The footprints date back about 3.66 million years, and previous research suggested they were made by Australopithecus afarensis, the species that ranks among the leading candidates for direct ancestors of the human lineage and includes the famed 3.2 million-year-old “Lucy.”

Other footprints discovered at the nearby “site A” in 1976 proved more enigmatic. One possibility was that these unusually shaped tracks — five consecutive footprints — were left by an unknown hominin. Another was that they were made by a bear walking on its hind legs.

These strange “Laetoli A” tracks were never fully excavated. To solve the mystery of the origins of these tracks, scientists have now fully examined these footprints and compared them with tracks from humans, bears and chimpanzees.

One of the first major hurdles as the scientists began this research “was our difficulties trying to track down original casts of the Laetoli A prints from their initial discovery,” study lead author Ellison McNutt, a biological anthropologist at the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine at Ohio University, told Live Science. “We were unable to locate any original casts and were concerned that exposure to the sun and decades of seasonal rains may have destroyed the original fossil prints.”

Luckily, when the researchers went back to Laetoli to re-excavate the prints, they found “the rains had actually washed nearby sediment over the original footprints, which protected them and allowed them to remain beautifully preserved,” McNutt said. 

Here, a topographic map of the footprints found at Laetoli Site A in Tanzania.

The scientists went on to clean, measure, photograph and 3D-scan the footprints. “Looking at the fully excavated ‘A’ prints, we knew immediately that these were really intriguing and potentially different from the other two bipedal trackways at Laetoli,” McNutt said.

Next, McNutt and her colleagues teamed up with Ben and Phoebe Kilham, who run the Kilham Bear Center, a rescue and rehabilitation center for black bears in Lyme, New Hampshire. They identified four semi-wild juvenile black bears at the centre that have feet similar in size to that of the Laetoli A tracks.

The researchers used maple syrup or applesauce to lure the bears to stand up and walk on their two hind legs across a trackway filled with mud to capture their footprints. They found the gait seen with the Laetoli A tracks bore a closer resemblance to those of hominins than those of bears.

“As bears walk, they take very wide steps, wobbling back and forth,” study senior author Jeremy DeSilva, a paleoanthropologist at Dartmouth University, said in a statement. “They are unable to walk with a gait similar to that of the site A footprints, as their hip musculature and knee shape does not permit that kind of motion and balance.

Enigmatic footprints, once thought to belong to a bear, linked to unknown human ancestor
This image shows a Laetoli A3 footprint (on left) and a cast of the Laetoli G1 footprint (on right).

In addition, the prints suggest feet more like those of hominins than bears. Bear toes and feet are fan-like and they have tapering heels, while the Laetoli A prints, like those of hominins, are squared off with a prominent big toe and a wide heel.

The researchers also collected more than 50 hours of video of wild black bears. The bears walked on their hind legs less than 1% of the total observed time, making it unlikely that a bear made the footprints at Laetoli A, especially given that no footprints were found of this individual walking on four legs. Moreover, the scientists noted that although thousands of animal fossils have been found at Laetoli, none are from bears.

Ellison McNutt, a study author, collects data from a juvenile female black bear (left.) A footprint from one of the juvenile male black bears, right.

However, the Laetoli A tracks are unlike those of any other known hominin. The footprints are unusually wide and short, and the feet that made them may have possessed a big toe capable of thumb-like grasping, similar to the big toe of apes.

All in all, McNutt and her colleagues concluded the Laetoli A prints were made by an as-yet-unidentified hominin, and not by A. Afarensis. 

“Our work suggests that the Laetoli A prints are one of the oldest unequivocal pieces of evidence in the hominin fossil record of multiple hominin species coexisting in the same area at the same exact time,” McNutt said. “It is not inconceivable that the individual who made the A trackway could have looked across the landscape and seen A. afarensis individuals.”

Curiously, this hominin walked with an unusual cross-stepping gait — each foot crossed over the body’s midline to touch down in front of the other foot.

“The ability of this individual to demonstrate cross-stepping is actually one of the additional lines of evidence that Laetoli A was made by a hominin,” McNutt said. Primates that primarily walk on all fours, such as chimps, “lack the necessary anatomical adaptations in their hips and knees to allow them to maintain their balance while placing one foot across the midline past the other.” 

Although humans typically do not cross-step, “it does happen occasionally,” McNutt said. “It can be used as a strategy to help walk across uneven or slippery surfaces.” 

Still, the cross-stepping may not have resulted from a hominin attempting to keep its balance. “Other potential options include that this particular individual hominin walked in a peculiar manner,” McNutt said. “It is also possible that this unknown hominin species was adapted to walk in this way. We’ll be able to answer these questions more clearly as more footprints are discovered.”

In the future, the researchers aim to continue excavations at Laetoli around site A. “Additional prints from this individual or others made by the same species may give us further insight into how they moved across the landscape and what species they belonged to,” McNutt said. The scientists detailed their findings in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Nature.

WORLD

Neanderthal Known as “Old Man of La Chapelle” Re-Examined

Neanderthal Known as “Old Man of La Chapelle” Re-Examined

Neanderthal Known as “Old Man of La Chapelle” Re-Examined
The skull of a Neanderthal man known as the “Old Man of La Chapelle.” Unearthed in 1908, it was the first relatively complete Neanderthal skeleton to be found.

Scientists studying ancient disease have uncovered one of the earliest examples of spillover — when a disease jumps from an animal to a human — and it happened to a Neanderthal man who likely got sick butchering or cooking raw meat.

Researchers were reexamining the fossilized bones of a Neanderthal who was found in a cave near the French village of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in 1908. The “Old Man of La Chapelle,” as he became known, was the first relatively complete Neanderthal skeleton to be unearthed and is one of the best studied.

More than a century after his discovery, his bones are still yielding new information about the lives of Neanderthals, the heavily built Stone Age hominins that lived in Europe and parts of Asia before disappearing about 40,000 years ago.

The man, thought to be in his late 50s or 60s when he died about 50,000 years ago, had advanced osteoarthritis in his spinal column and hip joint, a study from 2019 had confirmed.

However, during that reanalysis, Dr. Martin Haeusler — a specialist in internal medicine and head of the University of Zurich’s Evolutionary Morphology and Adaptation Group at the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine — realized that not all the changes in the bones could be explained by the wear and tear of osteoarthritis.

“Rather, we found that some of these pathological changes must be due to inflammatory processes,” he said.

“A comparison of the entire pattern of the pathological changes found in the La Chapelle-aux-Saints skeleton with many different diseases led us then to the diagnosis of brucellosis.”

The study with those findings was published in the journal Scientific Reports last month.

Zoonotic disease

Brucellosis is a disease that’s still widespread today. Humans generally acquire the disease through direct contact with infected animals, by eating or drinking contaminated animal products, or by inhaling airborne agents, according to the World Health Organization.

Most cases are caused by unpasteurized milk or cheese from infected goats or sheep.

It’s also one of the most common zoonotic diseases — illnesses that are transmitted from animals to humans. They include viruses like HIV and the coronavirus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic.

Brucella has a wide range of symptoms, including fever, muscular pain and night sweats, Haeusler said. It can last from a few weeks to many months or even years. Long-term problems resulting from the disease are variable but can include arthritis pain, back pain, inflammation of the testes — which can lead to infertility — and inflammation of the heart valves known as endocarditis, which Haeusler said was the most common cause of death from the disease.

The paper said the case was “the earliest secure evidence of this zoonotic disease in hominin evolution.”

The disease has also been found in Bronze Age Homo sapiens skeletons, which date back to around 5,000 years ago.

Diet

Brucellosis is found in many wild animals today, and Haeusler said that the Neanderthal man likely caught the disease from butchering or cooking an animal that had been hunted as prey. Possible sources include wild sheep, goats, wild cattle, bison, reindeer, hares and marmots — all of which were components of the Neanderthal diet.

However, the paper said that the two large animals Neanderthals hunted, mammoths and woolly rhinoceros, were unlikely to be the disease reservoir — at least based on the animals’ living relatives, in which brucellosis has been largely undetected.

Given the man lived to what must have been a very old age for the period, Haeusler suspected that the Neanderthal may have had a milder version of the disease.

The “Old Man of Chapelle” played a significant role in misconceptions about Neanderthals being primitive Stone Age brutes, according to the Smithsonian. More recent research suggests that they were just as smart as we are.

Early reconstruction of the skeleton depicted the man with a slouching posture, bent knees and the head jutted forward. It was only later that scientists realized the skeleton had a deforming kind of osteoarthritis and perhaps was not a typical Neanderthal.

Haeusler said the study he published in 2019 showed that, even with the wear and tear from degenerative osteoarthritis, the “Old Man of Chapelle” would have walked upright. The man also had lost most of his teeth and may have had to have been fed by other members of his group.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

3600 Year Old Pits Full Of Giant Hands Discovered In Egypt Archaeologists Discovered

3600 Year Old Pits Full Of Giant Hands Discovered In Egypt Archaeologists Discovered

An astonishing discovery occurred in the fall of 2011 when a team of archaeologists working in the palace of ancient Avaris, Egypt, found the remains of 16 human hands in four graves in the compound.

Two of the pits, located in front of the throne room, contain one hand each. And the other two holes, located outside the palace, have the remaining 14.

The team of archaeologists who made the discovery determined that all the bones date to about 3,600 years ago, indicating that they all came from the same ceremony.

3600 Year Old Pits Full Of Giant Hands Discovered In Egypt Archaeologists Discovered

All the hands appear to be abnormally long or even more significant than usual. They were classified into four different graves within what scientists believe was the actual Hyksos complex.

The Austrian archaeologist, Manfred Bietak, in charge of the excavation of the ancient city of Avaris, explained to the Egyptian Archeology newspaper that the hands seem to support the stories found in the writings and art of ancient Egypt, this being the first physical evidence of that the soldiers cut off the right hands of their enemies to receive a reward of gold in return.

Besides cutting off the enemy’s hand being a symbolic means of removing the enemy’s force, the meaning of this ceremony would also be supernatural as this was done in a sacred place and temple as part of a ritual.

So far, there is no evidence to show what kind of people these hands belonged to. Whether the hands belong to Hyksos or Egyptians cannot yet be determined.

When Bietak was asked to explain why he believed this ritual might have been performed, he said: “You deprive him of his power forever. Our finding is the first and only physical evidence. Each moat represents a different ceremony.”

The two pits, each containing a hand, were placed directly in front of a throne room. This section of Egypt was once controlled by an occupying force that most historians believe were initially Canaanites, so there may be a connection to the invasion.

The other hands, which may have been buried at the same time or a later date, are found on the outer grounds of the palace.

These sacrifices are not surprising in an area that faced a foreign invasion.

Egyptians often called on their gods to punish invading armies with plagues, famine, or general misfortune. It is possible that these sacrifices were part of a curse against the invading armies.

Much more needs to be investigated, but many signs point to this being some ritual for a god or gods. It is not known to whom these hands belonged. But the fact that the hands were abnormally large indicates that these people were specially selected, which is more characteristic of a sacrifice than killing an invading army.

Two hands were buried separately may indicate that these offerings were intended to be incredibly satisfying to the gods. In addition, it could enter the theory of the Hyperborean civilization, where some ancient writings comment that this civilization was vast, that they came from Lemuria where the waters of the Indian Sea submerged that continent.

This find could reveal the true story of a civilization of enormous dimensions. The discovery of these giant hands could shed light on ancient previously discussed stories, which were only fables or inventions of conspiracy theorists.

ANTARCTICA, WORLD

Interesting Claim: “Antarctica Is The Place Where Fallen Angels Are Still Alive But Locked In”

Interesting Claim: “Antarctica Is The Place Where Fallen Angels Are Still Alive But Locked In”

A recent movie was made and published by an Israeli news reporting channel.

The movie is titled “Fallen Angels are locked in Antarctica and Are Still Alive” and according to them, it is an unbiased view of the conspiracy theory.

Most theorists around the globe were pretty sceptical about it, as most news reporting channels don’t wish to delve too deep into these theories, but luckily, the movie was actually quite well made, to say the least.

You can tell that the creators put a lot of time and thought into it, especially the commentator Steven Ben-Nun who speaks of his own experience studying the apocryphal script The Book of Enoch.

The Book of Enoch showcases the story of how Enoch became the intermediary between the Fallen Angels and the Angels of Justice.

The two races were fighting one another because the Fallen Angels wished to procreate with human females and after doing so they created the Nephilim, also known as the Giants.

The Giants dethroned the Fallen Angels and, in this movie, they claim that the Fallen Angels’ base Mount Hermon was then taken over by the Giants.

According to the film, the Fallen Angels are now locked somewhere in Antarctica and we need to find out where they are so we can release them or at the very least study them.

AFRICA, KENYA, WORLD

Fossilized monkey teeth help fill six million year gap in the evolution

Fossilized monkey teeth help fill six million year gap in evolution

Researchers have used fossilized teeth found near Lake Turkana in northwest Kenya to identify a new monkey species — a discovery that helps fill a 6-million-year gap in primate evolution.

UNLV geoscientist Terry Spell and former master’s student Dawn Reynoso were part of the international research team that discovered the species that lived 22 million years ago.

Understanding the evolution of Old World monkeys is important because, along with the great apes and humans, they belong to the anthropoid group of primates — primates that resemble humans.

UNLV geoscientist, student among international research team behind the discovery of ancient monkey species that lived in Africa 22 million years ago

According to Spell, the monkey fossil discovery grew out of a more extensive study of a section of sedimentary rocks in Kenya that contain a large number of different types of fossils, including several hundred mammals and reptile jaws, limbs, and teeth.

Previous studies had documented the early evolution of Old World monkeys using fossils dated at 19 million and 25 million years old, leaving a 6-million-year gap in the earliest record.

However, the new fossil was determined to be 22 million years in age. Isotopic ages on the rocks were obtained in the Nevada Isotope Geochronology Laboratory on the UNLV campus.

“This adds to our understanding of the earliest evolutionary history of Old World monkeys, including changes in their diet with time to include more leaves,” Spell said.

“Monkeys originated at a time in the past when Africa and Arabia were together as an island continent. Plate tectonic motions pushed this landmass into the Eurasian landmass 20 to 24 million years ago, and an exchange of animals and plants occurred.

It is unclear if competition with newly introduced species or changing climate conditions drove changes in diet.”

Scientists named the newly discovered monkey species Alophia (“without lophs”) due to the lack of molar crests on its teeth — a phenomenon that sets them apart from geologically younger monkey fossils.

Fossilized monkey teeth help fill six million year gap in evolution
A fossil jaw of the newly discovered ancient Old World monkey named Alophia.

Old World monkeys are the most successful living superfamily of nonhuman primates with a geographic distribution that is surpassed only by humans. 

The group occupies a wide spectrum of land to tree habitats and have a diverse range of diets. They evolved to develop a signature dental feature — having two molar crests — which to this day allows them to process a wide range of food types found in the varying environments of Africa and Asia.

Others involved in the research were scientists from nine U.S. universities and a foreign national museum.

AFRICA, SOUTH AFRICA, WORLD

200,000-Year-Old Bedding Found in South Africa May Be World’s Oldest

200,000-Year-Old Bedding Found in South Africa May Be World’s Oldest

Archaeologists studying the interior of a cliffside cave in South Africa have found what may be the world’s oldest bedding, reports Cathleen O’Grady for Science magazine.

200,000-Year-Old Bedding Found in South Africa May Be World’s Oldest
Archaeologists discovered these fossilized fragments of grass deep inside South Africa’s Border Cave.

Dated to more than 200,000 years ago, the grass bedding—discovered in the Lebombo Mountains’ Border Cave—was placed atop layers of ash, perhaps to keep crawling insects like ticks at bay.

The findings, published in the journal Science, push the earliest record of human-constructed bedding back by at least 100,000 years. Previously, notes George Dvorsky for Gizmodo, the oldest known specimen was 77,000-year-old grass bedding found in Sibudu, South Africa.

Humans inhabited the Border Cave, so named because it sits near the border of South Africa and eSwatini (formerly known as Swaziland), sporadically between 227,000 and 1,000 years ago. More recently, the site has yielded an array of significant archaeological finds related to these early residents.

Lead author Lyn Wadley, an archaeologist at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, tells Gizmodo that excavations at the cave revealed “ephemeral fossilized grass.” She says the layer of grass was probably at least a foot thick and “would have been as comfortable as any camp bed or haystack.”

Wadley and her colleagues used scanning electron microscopes and infrared spectroscopy to identify fossilized plant materials. In addition to broad-leafed grasses, the team found traces of burned camphor bush, which is still used by people in rural East Africa as an aerial insect repellent, reports Ashley Strickland for CNN.

The Border Cave rock shelter in the Lebombo Mountains of South Africa

Because the ash is thought to have come from the same grass used in the bedding, the researchers suggest that Border Cave’s occupants periodically burned and replaced their mats with fresh plant matter. Per the paper, the ash repelled crawling insects by blocking “their breathing and biting apparatus and eventually [leaving] them dehydrated.”

Wadley says the findings are indicative of considerable sophistication on the part of early humans.

“Through the use of ash and medicinal plants to repel insects, we realize that they had some pharmacological knowledge,” she explains.

“Furthermore, they could extend their stay at favoured campsites by planning ahead and cleaning them through burning fusty beds. They therefore had some basic knowledge of health care through practising hygiene.”

Mixed in with the bedding, the team found ocher particles and flakes of stone possibly chipped off during toolmaking. The slivers of rock may indicate that the soft bedding was used as a seat for daily chores, while the red pigment may have rubbed off of individuals’ skin or other Stone Age canvases.

The researchers can’t be absolutely certain that ancient humans slept on the grass bedding. But Javier Baena Preysler, an archaeologist at the Autonomous University of Madrid who was not involved in the study, tells Science that this is the “most plausible interpretation.”

To estimate the proposed bedding’s age, Wadley and her team conducted radiocarbon testing on a pair of teeth discovered in the same strata of the cave’s sediments.

Speaking with Science, Dani Nadel, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa who was not involved in the research, deems this methodology “a bit shaky.” He points out that relying on just two teeth rather than analysis of the actual plant remnants could have yielded inaccurate dates.

Since the final layer of plant bedding was left unburned, the archaeologists suggest that the humans who had once lined the Border Cave’s floor with soft, green grass eventually abandoned the site.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

Pyramids Discovered In Russia Twice As Old As Egyptian Could Rewrite Human History

Pyramids Discovered In Russia Twice As Old As Egyptian Could Rewrite Human History

The discovery of the world’s earliest pyramids on the Kola Peninsula may confirm the existence of an ancient civilisation on Russian territory. The civilization likely predates the Egyptian civilization for a long time.

Archaeological excavations of the Kola Peninsula’s pyramids, which are believed to be at least two times older than Egyptian pyramids, have been resumed last year. It is still not known by whom or how they were built.

The mystery of the pyramids of Kola Peninsula

Pyramids Discovered In Russia Twice As Old As Egyptian Could Rewrite Human History

The Kola Peninsula is a peninsula located in the Murmansk area of Russia’s European portion. The Barents and White Seas flow across it. The area is around 100,000 square kilometres. The north has tundra vegetation, whereas the south has forest tundra and taiga. The peninsula’s climate is somewhat chilly all the year.

The extraordinary discovery of the world’s oldest pyramids on the Kola Peninsula indicates the existence of the legendary Hyperborea. The Kola Peninsula has recently become a fascinating place for scientific researchers and enthusiasts.

Many of the scientists who made a scientific expedition to this enigmatic place believe that the Kola peninsula may be the ancestral home to Earth’s most ancient civilization. Scientists’ discoveries of step pyramids and massive stone slabs that were precisely cut 9000-40000 years ago provide compelling evidence for this incredible idea.

Were the Hyperboreans responsible for the Kola Pyramids?

Archaeologists have studied intriguing pyramid structures on the Kola peninsula, which have the potential to rewrite our history. The pyramids have been built with precision and are thought to be at least 9,000 years old, which could be even older than Göbekli Tepe, the world’s oldest temple.

The earliest known investigation of the Kola pyramids took place in the early 1920s when Russian scholar Alexander Vasilyevich Barchenko (1881–1938) arrived with a scientific team to explore the enigmatic, undiscovered ancient monuments in Russia’s unexplored part. However, Barchenko was not a mainstream scientist, and to date, his beliefs are controversial, as well as intriguing at the same time.

Barchenko became persuaded that the Kola pyramids were built by the lost civilisation of Hyperborea, a mythological island according to the ancient Greeks. Hecataeus of Miletus (550 BC-476 BC), the earliest recorded Greek historian, believed the Hyperborean holy site located “on an island in the ocean…beyond the country of the Celts.”

According to Diodorus Siculus (90 BC-30 BC), a Greek historian, God Apollo visited the unknown country of Hyperborea on his swan drawn chariot on a regular basis.

“Opposite to the coast of Celtic Gaul there is an island in the sea, not smaller than Sicily, situated to the north—which is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, who are so named because they live beyond the North Wind,” Diodorus said. “This island has a pleasant climate, fertile soil, and is abundant in everything, producing twice a year.”

According to the Diodorus’ statement in Historic Library, Greek goddess Leto, the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, the sister of Asteria, and the mother of Apollo and Artemis, was born in Hyperborea, and as a result, the locals worship Apollo more than any other God. They are, in a sense, his priests, because they constantly praise him and lavish him with awards.

“There is a lovely Apollo grove on this island, as well as a spectacular circular temple decorated with many dedicated offerings. There is also a city dedicated to the same God, the majority of whose residents are harpers who constantly play their harps at the temple and sing songs to the God praising his deeds. The Hyperboreans speak a unique dialect and have a strong connection to the Greeks, particularly the Athenians and the Delians…”

It is also said that the moon appears very close to the earth in this island, that certain eminences of a terrestrial form can be clearly seen in it, that Apollo visits the island once every nineteen years, during which period the stars complete their revolutions, and that for this reason, the Greeks distinguish the cycle of nineteen years by the name of “the great year.”

Hyperborea has never been discovered, but that, according to many theorists, doesn’t imply it didn’t exist. Hyperborea’s submerged ancient remains may yet be unearthed. Could the abandoned Kola Pyramids in Russia’s North be the remnants of a long-lost, sophisticated ancient civilization about which we know almost nothing?

According to Barchenko’s view, people came from the northern areas around 12,000 years ago. A massive flood drove Aryan tribes residing there to flee the area during the so-called Golden Age, which occurred around 10,000-12,000 years ago. The Aryan tribes left the Kola Peninsula and travelled to the south.

After studying Masonic literature, the late Russian scientist gradually came to believe that the Hyperboreans were a highly sophisticated society capable of atomic energy, levitation, and flight. He also believed that Sami shamans living on the Kola Peninsula were the keepers of Hyperborea’s old wisdom.

Bashenko was a keen student of religious and mystical matters, and while his hypotheses were never proven, they are nevertheless of considerable interest to scholars of alternative ancient history. On April 25, 1938, Bashenko was killed in Moscow as part of the Great Purge.

Inside the Kola Pyramids, there are unknown voids and chambers

Later in 2007, a Russian expedition team attempted to investigate the Kola Pyramids. Among these experts were Pulkovo Observatory press secretary Sergey Smirnov, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, Valery Chudinov, Professor of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and Dmitry Subetto, Professor, doctor of geological and geographical sciences.

The voyage was more arduous and risky than the researchers had anticipated. The Kola Pyramids are in a secluded area, and the inhabitants, the Lapps, we’re hesitant to show them the route.

According to one of the team members, Russian experts viewed the pyramids from a helicopter, but owing to extensive foliage, not all buildings were visible from the air.

Their chopper nearly crashed, but they made it to the old site and studied these strange buildings. The Kola pyramids, according to Russian geologists, are two 50-meter-high structures linked by a bridge and aligned to the cardinal points.

“We carried a unique device, the most sophisticated geophysical equipment – the Oko georadar – on the expedition,” one of the researchers explained.

Like an x-ray, the instrument “shines through” the interior space of any item. The geologists reached an unambiguous conclusion: the heights are anthropogenic in origin; hence, they are not natural hills, but man-made pyramids ― the product of human hands. Inside the pyramids, there are gaps and undiscovered rooms.

The Russian pyramids’ function, purpose and who constructed them are still unclear. They might have been utilised as an astronomical observatory in ancient times or might be used as sacred ground. For now, what is known about the Kola Pyramids is that they are far older than the Egyptian pyramids, and their presence adds another intriguing segment to human history. In the end, the enigma of the Russian Pyramids in the Kola Peninsula has remained unexplained to this day.