The treasure, more than 100 gold pieces and weighing approximately 400 grams (nearly one pound), is estimated at a worth of more than $100,000 – Credit: Israel National News

The coins were found hidden in a partly broken pottery vessel at the Appollonia National Park, where archaeologists say the former Crusader town of Apollonia-Arsuf once thrived. The dig is being carried out under the joint auspices of Tel Aviv University and the Nature and Parks Authority.

Included among the items found were 108 gold coins, including 93 that weighed four grams each, and 15 that weighed 1 gram each. The gold was not new and clearly was part of someone’s family treasure or business investment. The coins were minted in Egypt approximately 250 years prior to their burial under the floor tiles of the 13th century CE fortress that has been under excavation for more than 30 years.

Called The Burnt Room’ Crusaders shot ballista stones & arrows at the Mameluke soldiers (1291), as they did from other rooms that faced the bridgehead and the ‘dry moat’ – Credit: Phillip Pasmanick

A large cache of arrowheads – hundreds, in fact – and other weaponry, including stones used in catapults, also was found. Archaeologists said the find indicated a fierce battle had taken place at the time the Mameluks seized the area from the Crusaders.

TAU Professor Oren Tal pointed out that the manner in which the treasure was hidden indicated its owner’s intention of returning to reclaim it. “I think the stash was deliberately buried in a partly broken vessel, which was filled with sand and buried under the floor tiles so if anyone were to discover it, he would simply believe it to be a broken pot, and ignore it.”

Appollonia National Park director Haggai Yoynana added that if one were to add the treasure to the findings of the weaponry, “it tells the story of a prolonged siege and a harsh battle.”

According to the website of the Biblical Archaeological Society, the clash has been identified as the Battle of Arsuf, between Saladin and Richard the Lionheart.

The Crusader fortress had been uncovered at the site some time ago, along with remains of a port city dating back to the time of the Phoenicians. Archaeologists have also found the remains of a Roman villa, a well-preserved market street from the Early Islamic period and a massive gate complex.

Source: Israel National News [July 08, 2012]

Everybody knows the story of Columbus, right? He was an Italian explorer from Genoa who set sail in 1492 to enrich the Spanish monarchs with gold and spices from the orient. Not quite.

For too long, scholars have ignored Columbus’s grand passion: the quest to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims.

Christopher Columbus bids farewell to his son Diego at Palos, Spain, before embarking on his first voyage on August 3, 1492

During Columbus’s lifetime, Jews became the target of fanatical religious persecution. On March 31, 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella proclaimed that all Jews were to be expelled from Spain. The edict especially targeted the 800,000 Jews who had never converted, and gave them four months to pack up and get out.

The Jews who were forced to renounce Judaism and embrace Catholicism were known as “Conversos,” or converts. There were also those who feigned conversion, practicing Catholicism outwardly while covertly practicing Judaism, the so-called “Marranos,” or swine.

Tens of thousands of Marranos were tortured by the Spanish Inquisition. They were pressured to offer names of friends and family members, who were ultimately paraded in front of crowds, tied to stakes and burned alive. Their land and personal possessions were then divvied up by the church and crown.

Recently, a number of Spanish scholars, such as Jose Erugo, Celso Garcia de la Riega, Otero Sanchez and Nicholas Dias Perez, have concluded that Columbus was a Marrano, whose survival depended upon the suppression of all evidence of his Jewish background in face of the brutal, systematic ethnic cleansing.

Columbus, who was known in Spain as Cristóbal Colón and didn’t speak Italian, signed his last will and testament on May 19, 1506, and made five curious — and revealing — provisions.

Two of his wishes — tithe one-tenth of his income to the poor and provide an anonymous dowry for poor girls — are part of Jewish customs. He also decreed to give money to a Jew who lived at the entrance of the Lisbon Jewish Quarter.

On those documents, Columbus used a triangular signature of dots and letters that resembled inscriptions found on gravestones of Jewish cemeteries in Spain. He ordered his heirs to use the signature in perpetuity.

According to British historian Cecil Roth’s “The History of the Marranos,” the anagram was a cryptic substitute for the Kaddish, a prayer recited in the synagogue by mourners after the death of a close relative. Thus, Columbus’s subterfuge allowed his sons to say Kaddish for their crypto-Jewish father when he died. Finally, Columbus left money to support the crusade he hoped his successors would take up to liberate the Holy Land.

Estelle Irizarry, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, has analyzed the language and syntax of hundreds of handwritten letters, diaries and documents of Columbus and concluded that the explorer’s primary written and spoken language was Castilian Spanish. Irizarry explains that 15th-century Castilian Spanish was the “Yiddish” of Spanish Jewry, known as “Ladino.” At the top left-hand corner of all but one of the 13 letters written by Columbus to his son Diego contained the handwritten Hebrew letters bet-hei, meaning b’ezrat Hashem (with God’s help). Observant Jews have for centuries customarily added this blessing to their letters. No letters to outsiders bear this mark, and the one letter to Diego in which this was omitted was one meant for King Ferdinand.

In Simon Weisenthal’s book, “Sails of Hope,” he argues that Columbus’s voyage was motivated by a desire to find a safe haven for the Jews in light of their expulsion from Spain. Likewise, Carol Delaney, a cultural anthropologist at Stanford University, concludes that Columbus was a deeply religious man whose purpose was to sail to Asia to obtain gold in order to finance a crusade to take back Jerusalem and rebuild the Jews’ holy Temple.

In Columbus’s day, Jews widely believed that Jerusalem had to be liberated and the Temple rebuilt for the Messiah to return.

Scholars point to the date on which Columbus set sail as further evidence of his true motives. He was originally going to sail on August 2, 1492, a day that happened to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av, marking the destruction of the First and Second Holy Temples of Jerusalem. Columbus postponed this original sail date by one day to avoid embarking on the holiday, which would have been considered by Jews to be an unlucky day to set sail. (Coincidentally or significantly, the day he set forth was the very day that Jews were, by law, given the choice of converting, leaving Spain, or being killed.)

Columbus’s voyage was not, as is commonly believed, funded by the deep pockets of Queen Isabella, but rather by two Jewish Conversos and another prominent Jew. Louis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez advanced an interest free loan of 17,000 ducats from their own pockets to help pay for the voyage, as did Don Isaac Abrabanel, rabbi and Jewish statesman.

Indeed, the first two letters Columbus sent back from his journey were not to Ferdinand and Isabella, but to Santangel and Sanchez, thanking them for their support and telling them what he had found.

The evidence seem to bear out a far more complicated picture of the man for whom our nation now celebrates a national holiday and has named its capital.

As we witness bloodshed the world over in the name of religious freedom, it is valuable to take another look at the man who sailed the seas in search of such freedoms — landing in a place that would eventually come to hold such an ideal at its very core.

Author: Charles Garcia | Source: CNN [May 20, 2012]

Former solicitor John Morris, 62, has named Welsh-born Lizzie Williams as the Whitechapel monster – and claims she killed her victims because she could not have children.

Lizzie was wife of royal physician Sir John Williams, himself seen as a prime suspect by many other crime experts.

Jack Ripper

The men sifted through thousands of medical and legal documents to draw-up a compelling case for branding Lizzie the killer.

But John, speaking from his current home in Wicklow, Ireland, said their theory has not proved popular among Ripper experts

He told the Birmingham Mail: “The case for a woman murderer is overwhelming. But unfortunately it does not sit well in some quarters where such a theory flies in the face of long-held beliefs.

“There’s absolutely no doubt that the Ripper was a woman. But because everyone believes that the murderer was a man, all the evidence that points to a woman has always been ignored.”

The Ripper struck five times during a blood-soaked ten weeks in 1888.

The victims – Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly – were all East End prostitutes. Three had their wombs removed, which John believes is significant.

He says Welshwoman Lizzie, born on February 7, 1850, was unable to have children and, in an unhinged state, took terrible revenge on those who could.

Coroner Wynne Baxter said at Annie Chapman’s inquest: “The conclusion that the desire was to possess the missing (body) part seems overwhelming.”

John also points to the facts:

n None of the women was sexually assaulted;

n Personal items were laid out at the feet of Chapman in, according to newspaper reports, ‘a typically feminine manner’;

n Three small buttons from a woman’s boot were found in blood near Catherine Eddowes;

n Remnants of women’s clothing – a cape, skirt and hat – were found in the ashes of Mary Kelly’s fireplace. Mary had never been seen wearing them,

John believes there’s a reason Mary Kelly was targeted – and why the killing spree ended with her death. Lizzie’s husband, Sir John, who ran abortion clinics in Whitechapel, was having an affair with her.

The author added: “There are numerous clues scattered throughout the crimes which, taken individually, may mean little, but when grouped together a strong case for a woman murderer begins to emerge.”

Soon after the grisly deaths, Lizzie suffered a nervous breakdown. She died of cancer in 1912, having never been quizzed by police over the murders.

Author: Mike Lockley | Source:birminghammail [May 8, 2012]

The report, written in 1942 by Cambridge academic Joseph MacCurdy, said Hitler was turning increasingly to “Jew-phobia” as defeat loomed.

Social scientist Mark Abrams, who worked on the BBC’s overseas propaganda analysis unit, commissioned the report.

The report came to light as a result of research into Mr Abrams’ work.

“Hitler is caught up in a web of religious delusions,” MacCurdy said in the report.

He outlined how Hitler began to focus on the “Jewish poison” as the tide of World War II turned against Germany.

“The Jews are the incarnation of evil, while he is the incarnation of the spirit of good,” MacCurdy said.

“He is a god by whose sacrifice victory over evil may be achieved. He does not say this in so many words, but such a system of ideas would rationalise what he does say that is otherwise obscure.”

Cambridge historian Scott Anthony came across the report while researching MacCurdy’s work.

“MacCurdy recognised that, faced with external failure, the Nazi leader was focusing on a perceived “enemy within” instead – namely, the Jews,” Mr Anthony said.

“Given that we now know that the ‘final solution’ was commencing, this makes for poignant reading.”

Source: bbc.co.uk [May 7, 2012]

The remains of the Lost Colony, it turns out, could sit under an Arnold Palmer-designed golf course in Bertie County.

Researchers at the British Museum in London, acting at the request of a group of historians and archaeologists in North Carolina, have found a symbol hidden on an ancient map that could show where members of the English colony established on Roanoke Island in 1587 moved.

Representatives of the First Colony Foundation and scholars at the British Museum who appeared via video webcast announced the discovery Thursday in a news conference at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library.

The elaborate “Virginea Pars” map was created by members of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke Colony expeditions of 1584-1590, the first attempt to establish an English Colony in the New World.

The map, which is unusually accurate for its time, shows the coastal area from the Chesapeake Bay to Cape Lookout, and pinpoints the locations of several native American villages.

Brent Lane, an adjunct professor of Heritage Education at the University of North Carolina Kenan Institute and a scholar with the First Colony Foundation, was studying a map made by the leader of the 1587 colony expedition, John White, when he became intrigued with two patches of paper pasted over small parts of it.

One of the patches was in an area that the settlers had explored, and where some historians had theorized was a likely spot for them to have moved.

The patching technique was normal for the time. When artists wanted to make alterations, they would paste on a patch and draw or paint over it. Still, Lane asked British Museum officials whether they had ever tried to determine what was under the patches.

They hadn’t.

When they put the map on a simple light table, which shined through the paper, they saw something startling. Under one patch was a large symbol that appeared show the location of a fort.

The site appears to be at or near what is now the Scotch Hall Preserve, a golf course and residential community just across the Albemarle Sound from Edenton.

Raleigh planned a capital, the “Cittie of Raleigh,” and Lane said that the symbol may show both the planned location of that and the most likely place for the colonists to have moved.

Lost Colony Foundation members said Thursday that they were planning new scholarly and archaeological research to explore the new clue about the Bertie site. Early efforts to match pottery recovered from the area to the correct period have already produced some positive results, researchers said.

Author: Jay Price, Source: chicagotribune (May 7th, 2012)

400-year-old witchcraft trial resumes in Germany

The fact that Henot’s name has a chance of exoneration is due largely to the efforts of Hartmut Hegeler, an evangelical pastor and religious education teacher, who has championed the woman’s cause in Cologne.

“We were taking about the witch trials in class and my students asked me if whether the judgment against Henot had ever been cancelled, and the answer was ‘no’,” said Mr Hegeler.

“Katharina had her own reputation in high esteem; she would want to have it cleared.”

Between 1500 and 1782 at least 25,000 Germans, mostly women but also some men and children, were executed for witchcraft. Many were made scapegoats for natural disasters or faced accusations because of personal vendettas or just because they failed to fit in with the people around them.

In one of the most infamous cases, a three-month burst of bloodletting in the small town of Oberkirchen in 1630 claimed the lives of 58, including those of two children, as accusations of witchcraft spread like wildfire.

Now across Germany towns and villages are beginning to rehabilitate the names of the executed in an attempt to bring a belated form of justice.

Author: Matthew Day | Source: telegraph [February 14, 2012]

18th century engraving shows the different tribes that inhabited South America. Getty Images

The coordinator of the Central Amazônia project, who works in the Museu de Arqueologia e Antropologia da USP (Archaeologic and Anthropologic Museum, São Paulo University), Eduardo Neves, belives that around 5,5 million of persons lived in certain areas of the pre colombian Amazon where there were a great variation of languages and political organizations in their many villages.

The researcher of the Anthropology Department of at the University of Florida, Michael Heckenberger, studying areas of the Alto Xingu (Upper Xingu) made an estimated that 50,000 indigenous lived in an area of ​​20 square kilometers. He says: This consists of a larger population that we find in many countries of Europe today.

According the studies, the villages of the Alto Xingu was 10 or 15 times majors than that exist actually in the region. They were organized a central and circular square surrounded by tabas (huts). These huts were builded in a perfect ring along the periphery of the square, were surrounded by ditches to 2 km in length. Heckenberger still says that in the Alto Xingu, where today there is a village, there were 12.

Professor at University of Florida, Colombian researcher Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo, adds that in other regions of the Amazon, the settings were different, with linears villages, in front of the rivers. Regarding the organization, the communities were not exactly as tribes. They were more like societies in its infancy. Archaeological evidence indicates a state of expansion.

Handling of soil

One of the proofs of the existence of these bigger villages and their development on the first steps of a civilization process is the black soil. Oyuela explains: For many years it was thought that the black soil was the result of natural phenomena such as volcanic ash. The resistance to the idea that the black earth was resulted by human work came from a theory that the Amazon was largely an inhospitable place to the development of complex societies with large villages.

But the new discoveries have shown that there was the use of organic matter and coal burned at high temperatures to improve the quality of the Amazonian soil. The plantations were made in small amounts of land – spaces that were opened in the middle by large tracts of forests. Oyuela found black soil in the Alto Amazon (Upper Amazon), in 2005, near the city of Iquitos. The region, called Quistococha was a large village which occupied up to 20 hectares dated around the years 900 AD.

In regions such as the high river Madeira is found black soil dated from four thousand years. In the middle Amazon River were found pottery and evidence of agricultural occupations with over two thousand years and traces of nomadic culture of eight thousand years ago.

Author: Lygia Cabus| Source: brazilweirdnews[January 24, 2012]

Despite the importance of the site, it is very poorly conserved and lacks basic safety measures.

There are guards during the day, but at night, the National and Local Police are in charge of its safety, although the Junta de Andalucia Culture Council is responsible for the site.

It is unclear what the intruders may have taken, but sources close to the investigation claim there are several holes in the area.

The plunderers normally hope to find any metal objects, such as coins, jewellery and arrowheads, which can all be found with detectors and sold on the black market.

Author: Costa del Sol | Source: EuroWeekly [January 10, 2012]

He transported these beautiful statues – a valuable part of ancient Greece’s cultural heritage – to England, where they were sold to the British government and put on display in the British Museum.

The British government defends its claim to the marble statues by saying that Elgin had a ‘permit’ from the occupying Ottoman forces at the time.

But the question still remains. Why does England still have the Parthenon Marbles? They clearly don’t belong in England. To make a parallel, if parts of Stonehenge (provided that any Greek would think Stonehenge pretty enough to lay claim to) were dismantled, transported by ship to Greece and put on display in an Athens museum, what would British authorities do? Protest? Sue? Of course they would.

A great deal of Athen’s history and mythology is represented in the Parthenon Marbles, and in the opinion of this reporter, it is time the British government bit the bullet and gave back what rightfully belongs to Greece.

If they did this, there would be an incredibly strong bond forged between Britain and Greece, a sense of a wrong righted and a new beginning in relations between the two countries.

It would show respect to other countries’ cultural heritages, it would be a magnanimous gesture and would restore part of Greece’s rich history to the Greeks.

It’s time to bring back the Parthenon Marbles to where they belong. They did not belong to Elgin or any other individual, they belong to Greece and its people, who would willingly share them with the world if they were returned to their rightful home. Very much the way they share the Olympic flame which will this year light up the 2012 Olympics in London.

Author: Sarah Fenwick | Source: Cyprus News Report [January 07, 2012]

Egyptian Luxor certainly has not lost its appeal even in the context of last year’s political upheavals. In fact, tourists are slowly finding their way back there and while many visitors travel to the coastal areas, ancient history lovers long to explore Luxor.

For thousands of years, this place has been directly linked to many powerful dynasties as well as to Egyptian gods. It once possessed a very deep spiritual and religious importance and today, the government attempts to awake the ancient spirits once more. For five years, a project has been under way to restore the once grand Avenue of Sphinxes. In March 2012, it shall conclude and the avenue will be introduced to the world once again.

Luxor was once the city of Thebes as well as the city of the god Amon-Ra. In the 15th century B.C. Queen Hatshepsut built six chapels there, dedicated to the god, that became part of the avenue, which was 2.7 km long and featured hundreds of sphinxes.

Her aim was to stress the religious status of the city. In the 4th century B.C., Pharaoh Nectanebo I had the avenue reconstructed and rebuilt. For centuries, parts of the avenue have been visible, yet the majority of the stretch has been destroyed or covered in sand.

The opening will be a proper treat for history and culture enthusiasts; a 150-meter-long stretch has been restored and hopefully, the tourists will be keen to come and enjoy the spectacular avenue first hand. Egypt is still recovering from last year’s political events and the fall of President Mubarak, however, New Year comes with positive news and hopefully, local cultural initiatives will count.

Source: Tourism Review [January 08, 2012]