Ancient World Review

Merry Yule, Saturnalia & (Maybe) Mithra's Birthday

Today is "Christmas," whatever that means. The word comes from the Middle English Christemasse, which is turn comes from the Old English Christes-messe or "Christ's Mass," but it's unclear what the word "mass" actually means here. These days it usually refers to the Eucharist (Holy Communion) and the Catholic mass, but it may have had a different meaning when the first Christmas was celebrated in Rome in 336 AD:

"The English noun mass is derived from Middle Latin missa. The Latin word was adopted in Old English as mæsse (via a Vulgar Latin form messa), and was sometimes glossed as sendnes (i.e. 'a sending, dismission'). The Latin term missa itself was in use by the 6th century. It is most likely derived from the concluding formula Ite, missa est ('Go; the dismissal is made'); missa here is a Late Latin substantive corresponding to classical missio." (Wikipedia)

If this is correct, the word "Christmas" means something more like "Christ's Dismissal" or "Christ's Sending," which may refer to the dismissal or "sending out into the world" of the congregation after the service. Various other explanations have been proposed, but the original meaning of "Christmas" -- like the origin of Christianity itself -- is still kind of hazy.

One thing that isn't hazy is why we celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 (Gregorian Calendar) even though nobody has the slightest idea when Jesus was born. The date was first adopted by the Western Christian Church, sometime during the first half of the fourth century, because the early church needed to compete with  important pagan festivals like the celebration of the winter solstice.

Christmas is a classic example of how the early church Christianized the pagan West by taking over its traditions.

"The Christian ecclesiastical calendar contains many remnants of pre-Christian festivals. Christmas includes elements of the Roman feast of the Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithra. The Chronography of 354 AD contains early evidence of the celebration on December 25 of a Christian liturgical feast of the birth of Jesus. This was in Rome, while in Eastern Christianity the birth of Jesus was already celebrated in connection with the Epiphany on January 6." Source: Wikipedia.

Christmas traditions have deep roots in the ancient pagan world. Take the Christmas tree, for instance. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "The use of evergreen trees, wreaths, and garlands to symbolize eternal life was a custom of the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews. Tree worship was common among the pagan Europeans and survived their conversion to Christianity in the Scandinavian customs of decorating the house and barn with evergreens at the New Year to scare away the Devil and of setting up a tree for the birds during Christmastime. It survived further in the custom, also observed in Germany, of placing a Yule (1) tree at an entrance or inside the house during the midwinter holidays."

(1) "Yule or Yuletide ('Yule time' or 'Yule season') is a festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples. Scholars have connected the original celebrations of Yule to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin, and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht [Old English 'Night of the Mothers']. ." (Wikipedia)

"Later departing from its pagan roots, Yule underwent Christianised reformulation, resulting in the term Christmastide. Many present-day Christmas customs and traditions such as the Yule log, Yule goat [see next video], Yule boar, Yule singing, and others stem from pagan Yule traditions."

 Also see The Symbols of Yule.

In Rome, the period of the winter solstice brought the seven days of the Saturnalia. "Saturn’s great festival, the Saturnalia, became the most popular of Roman festivals, and its influence is still felt in the celebration of Christmas and the Western world’s New Year." (Encyclopedia Britannica).

"The Saturnalia was the most popular holiday of the Roman year,"  according to the University of Chicago. Catullus describes it as 'the best of days' ... and Seneca complains that the 'whole mob has let itself go in pleasures" ... Pliny the Younger writes that he retired to his room while the rest of the household celebrated ... It was an occasion for celebration, visits to friends, and the presentation of gifts, particularly wax candles ... perhaps to signify the returning light after the solstice, and sigillaria [figurines given as traditional presents]."

Everything in Rome came to a stop during the Saturnalia, a festival of licentiousness and role reversals, among other things. According to History Extra, "We say that during Christmas today the whole world shuts down – the same thing happened during the Saturnalia. There were sometimes plots to overthrow the government, because people were distracted – the famous conspirator Cataline had planned to murder the Senate and set the city on fire during the holiday, but his plan was uncovered and stopped by Cicero in 63 BC."

Some Christians see the Saturnalia (and, by extension, Christmas itself) as satanic, which isn't too surprising since Christianity demonized all of the old pagan gods while simultaneously hijacking many of their traditions for their own purposes. In one case, that of Mithra (Mithras) -- the early church's main competitor -- the Christians may have appropriated a pagan god so completely that some have argued that Christ is Mithra in another form.

The identification of Mithra's birthday with Christmas is sketchy. While many sources claim that the god was born on Dec. 25, other sources say that this isn't true and the story seems to be a much later invention. According to Wikipedia, for instance, "It is often stated that Mithras was thought to have been born on December 25. But Beck states that this is not the case. In fact he calls this assertion 'that hoariest of 'facts'. He continues: 'In truth, the only evidence for it is the celebration of the birthday of Invictus on that date in the Calendar of Philocalus. Invictus is of course Sol Invictus, Aurelian's sun god. It does not follow that a different, earlier, and unofficial sun god, Sol Invictus Mithras, was necessarily or even probably, born on that day too.'" 

Mithra was said to have been born from a rock (in one version of the story) According to The Mysteries of Mithra, by Franz Cumont (p 131), "the tradition ran that the 'Generative Rock,' of which a standing image was worshiped in the temples, had given birth to Mithra on the banks of a river, under the shade of a sacred tree, and that shepherds alone, ensconced in a neighboring mountain, had witnessed the miracle of his entrance into the world." Like the story of Jesus's birth, the presence of shepherds in the fields suggests that Mithra was born in the spring or summer, not in the dead of winter. Whatever the case, however, the Jesus/Mithra connection is persistent in popular culture:

Related: Sol Invictus and Christmas

One interesting fact about Mithraism is that it appeared in the Roman Empire around the same time that Christianity appeared and seems to have dropped out of sight around the same time that Nicene Christianity became the official state religion of Rome:

"The Roman deity Mithras appears in the historical record in the late 1st century A.D., and disappears from it in the late 4th century A.D.," according to The Tertullian Project. It's tempting to see this as circumstantial evidence that Christianity evolved out of Mithraism, but the truth is that all forms of pagan religion began to fade out after the church consolidated its power in the 4th century. Besides, very little is actually known about the teachings of Mithraism, an "organization of cells," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), whose beliefs have to be reconstructed mostly from inscriptions.

None of this really matters, though. Mithras probably wasn't born on Dec. 25, but then neither was Jesus so what difference does it make? The connections between Christmas, ancient Yuletide celebrations and the Roman Saturnalia are clear, so if you're a pagan you might as well go ahead and celebrate Mithra's birthday today as well. Of course, this assumes that you see Christmas as a religious holiday in the first place. A lot of people don't:

"Most Americans celebrate Christmas, but its importance to people as a religious event continues to wane, according to a new survey by Pew Research." (News & Observer, 2017). Note: this article is now hidden behind a paywall.

"The poll found that while 90 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, only 55 percent regard it as a religious holiday. Further, the survey found, a decreasing majority of Americans believe in the main elements of the Christmas story as told in the Bible: that Jesus was born of a virgin mother; that three magi came to visit, bearing gifts; that an angel announced the baby’s birth; and that the infant was cradled in a manger."

Christmas has become secularized and increasingly commercial, to say the least. The holiday has degenerated into a month-long orgy of rabid consumerism and mass insanity, a typical example of the decline of the modern world. (Next video from 2018)

I have mixed feelings about Christmas. I'm an atheist, I don't believe that Jesus existed and I think that Christianity was a disaster for the Roman Empire and the West in general, but I'm not one of those rabid anti-Christians who protest manger displays and fly into shrieking tantrums every time someone says "Merry Christmas." And while it's obvious that the early (Western) church made Dec. 25 Jesus's birthday in order to hijack a pagan festival, I'm not especially bothered by that fact. I don't get all offended about it and start foaming at the mouth.

I can't stand what Christmas has become, but the holiday is a Western tradition so even though I'm a complete heretic I support the open celebration of the holiday because the West and all of its values and institutions and traditions are under attack by politically-correct vermin. I'd rather see a return to our true pagan roots (something I don't think is possible, by the way), but given the choice between Christianity and, say, Islam or Cultural Marxism or, God forbid, modern neopaganism, I'll take Christianity any day even though I don't believe a word of it.

So Merry Christmas and if saying that offends somebody I couldn't care less.

Jesus Cult Conspiracy Theories (Updated)

The obscure origins of the Christian religion make it a natural subject for "hidden history" conspiracy theories. Dozens, if not hundreds of books have been written over the years, arguing, among other things, that Jesus was a magic mushroom, a solar deity, an Essene or a guerilla fighter sanitized to make him more palatable to the Romans. Some authors claim that Jesus was actually the deified Julius Caesar or that the gospels were propaganda written by the Flavian emperors to help pacify a rebellious province. Whatever the argument, the scarcity of original sources and the ambiguous nature of the evidence leave a lot of room for entertaining speculation.

Very little is known about the original Jesus cult during the first few centuries of its existence. No one really knows when the "official" canonical gospels were written, but the general consensus is that they appeared sometime after the middle to late first century, at least thirty or forty years after Jesus's death. Matthew and Luke are thought to have been written from an earlier account commonly referred to as the "Q document," which as far as I know has never been discovered. Its existence is assumed based on similarities in the manuscripts.

As for Jesus himself, the only independent documentary evidence (from the first few centuries AD) that he even existed consists of  a handful of references in Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and a few others. Most of these references, however, are about the Christians as a group, so they don't really support the existence of a historical Jesus. As far as I can tell, the only direct references to Jesus are found in Jewish Antiquities by Josephus and the Annals of Tacitus, but their authenticity has been challenged and Tacitus refers to a Christus (or Chrestus in some translations) rather than a Jesus. They could be insertions made by later Christian writers -- when it comes to ancient sources, you can't take anything for granted. Classical writers weren't very reliable to begin with and the church wasn't above forging references, gospels, apocalypses, epistles and martyr stories in order to market their new religion. For an interesting and extremely detailed description of the "Christian Forgery Mill," see "Forgery In Christianity: A Documented Record Of The Foundations Of The Christian Religion," by Joseph Wheless. Highly recommended.

Video from 2015. I can also recommend Ehrman's book Forged. Very interesting stuff.

Christian origins get even more complicated when you consider all the parallels that exist between Christian doctrine and various Near Eastern fertility cults, Zoroastrianism, astrology, Roman and Egyptian mystery religions and Jewish ascetic, messianic and apocalyptic groups in existence at the time. These parallels aren't very surprising because all of these different movements appeared in the same general landscape, but they provide fertile ground for alternate histories.

Almost everything we know about the rise of Christianity comes from texts and there are a lot of missing sources and "secret doctrines" so popular with conspiracy theorists. Besides the books in the "official" New Testament, there's a huge body of apocryphal literature which reflects the existence of dozens of "heretical" groups like the Gnostics which were gradually suppressed, often by violent means, as the Roman Catholic Church consolidated its control and standardized Christian dogma. More recent discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls fill in some of the historical context, but the general picture is still hazy and confused. "Suppressed gospels" and alternate histories have inspired books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the inspiration for the bestselling Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

The rest of this 2010 interview can be found here.

If Jesus was a real person, he lived during an extremely turbulent period of history.  Rome conquered Judea in the first century BC, allying itself with the Maccabees and later using the Herodians as client kings. The Jews revolted in 66 AD and Jerusalem was eventually destroyed around 70 AD by the future emperor Titus, son of Vespasian. Titus took over the suppression of the Jewish revolt, a bloody conflict documented by Josephus in his classic history "The Jewish War," after Vespasian returned to Rome to stake his claim to the throne during the Year Of The Four Emperors in 69 AD.

It was a chaotic time of civil wars and bloody revolutions. The Jewish population in Jerusalem was either massacred, enslaved or scattered around the world (the Diaspora) and the temple was destroyed. The Jews (some of them, anyway) were in almost constant rebellion against the Romans and their puppet rulers in Judea during Jesus' lifetime and the desert was crawling with self-proclaimed messiahs. The idea that a religion like Christianity, preaching peace, forgiveness and universal brotherhood, would appear in this context is surprising, to say the least. "Render unto Caesar" could be seen as treason and collaboration to a population living under a brutal occupation. The Jews were waiting for a military messiah, a descendant of King David who would lead them out of bondage, not some hippy claiming to be the Son of God, which they would have considered blasphemy.

This secular background has inspired a series of books arguing that the real Jesus was actually a military messiah, a guerrilla fighting the Roman occupation. I read several of these books years ago, but I can't remember their titles. The best summation of the argument can probably be found in two chapters written by the anthropologist Marvin Harris in his book "Cows, Pigs, Wars And Witches". Both chapters ("Messiahs" and "The Secret Of The Prince Of Peace") fill in the historical context and argue that Jesus was a revolutionary transformed into a peaceful messiah by later writers in order to protect their underground resistance movement from the Romans. This is plausible enough as far as it goes, but the theory discounts the actual message of the gospels. If there's a hidden message in the New Testament, there's also a surface message which can't simply be dismissed as a kind of cover story designed to conceal an ancient conspiracy.

Speaking of conspiracies, Joseph Atwill's book "Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy To Invent Jesus" argues that Christianity was actually the invention of the Flavian Emperors -- Vespasian, Titus and Domitian -- the same Romans who crushed the Jewish rebellion. Faced with the problem of Jewish resistance in the province and elsewhere, the Flavian court (which included the turncoat Josephus) invented the story of a "peaceful messiah" as a form of counter-propaganda to the more militant religious doctrines causing so much trouble in Judea. According to Atwill, the gospels also include a coded message which reveals that the figure of Jesus in the New Testament is actually Titus -- a kind of Roman inside joke. This hidden message can supposedly be unraveled by reading the gospels together with Josephus' account of the war and deciphering the parallels. Atwill's book makes an interesting read and I particularly like his idea that the gospels were a form of early propaganda designed to pacify a rebellious population. Unfortunately, his argument depends on the numerous parallels which are supposed to exist between the gospels and Josephus and these are obscure, to say the least.

"Jesus Was Caesar" by Franceso Carotta also uses parallels to make its argument that Jesus Christ is actually "the historical manifestation of Divus Julius," i.e., the Divine Julius Caesar. The basic idea is that the Christian religion is a modified version of the cult of the Divine Caesar and that the gospels are a mythologized biography of Caesar from the time of the Roman Civil War to his assassination. In other words, the gospels are seen once again as a kind of code which can only be interpreted by reading them in conjunction with other books. Caesar was made an Imperial God after his death, but his cult disappeared around the time that Christianity emerged. "On the one hand, an actual historical figure missing his cult, on the other, a cult missing its actual historical figure: intriguing mirror images." Intriguing, yes, but is it actually true? Who knows? Like Atwill's book, whether you accept it or not depends on how strong these "mirror images" actually are.

"The Sacred Mushroom And The Cross" by John Allegro takes a different approach. This is a fascinating, scholarly and difficult book. Allegro believes that Christianity originated in a very ancient Near Eastern fertility cult centered around the use of the hallucinogenic mushroom amanita muscaria. If I understand Allegro's argument correctly (and I'm not sure I do), Christianity evolved as a kind of "false front" to protect the truth about the cult and its practices from the Romans, and its sacred texts are supposed to be full of references to the magic mushroom. Once again, Christianity is seen as a code to be deciphered, an esoteric, multi-layered conspiracy. This is an excellent book, but Allegro bases his theory almost entirely on linguistic arguments, "deciphering the names of gods, mythological characters...and plant names..." by tracing them back to their Sumerian roots, and the average reader will have a hard time verifying or even following his arguments. Still, if there's nothing to this, how do you explain the mushrooms in Christian iconography? For example, a fresco in the Chapel of Plaincouralt, France, shows Adam and Eve standing next to what definitely appears to be a giant mushroom. That's kind of peculiar, to say the least.

Hidden Christian history covers a huge amount of territory. I've only summarized three books, but there are literally hundreds of them available and I've only scratched the surface. For example, "The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold" by Acharya S argues that Christianity was "created by members of various secret societies, mystery schools and religions in order to unify the Roman Empire under one state religion." Her book "Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled" explores the use of solar symbolism in world religions, arguing that Jesus is actually a sun deity. Whether you buy any of these various theories is irrelevant. The whole period is so interesting that they're worth reading just for their wealth of background information.

Trying to separate truth from fiction in these theories is an almost impossible task unless you want to spend the rest of your life tracking down sources and doing your own research. The problem comes when you step back and look at all the books that are out there -- all the different theories. One book, taken by itself, can be very convincing, but when you take them all together, it's obvious that they contradict each other in hundreds of different ways and the net effect is literary white noise -- a flood of information, speculation, questionable evidence and mutually exclusive conclusions. In this sense, the hidden history of Christianity is like the JFK assassination: an intractable mystery. The record's too sketchy and complex to come to any solid conclusions, but it doesn't really matter. Most people, as usual, will end up believing exactly what they want to believe and what they were raised to believe.

The most basic question about Jesus is whether he actually existed. Most of these theories about "who he really was" simply melt away if he's just another mythical character like all the other gods of the ancient world.

Was Jesus A Magician And Necromancer?

"Ancient art throughout the catacombs of Rome, painted on the walls and carved into stone coffins, shows Jesus as he multiplies loaves of bread, heals the sick and brings the dead back to life. These images are unified by one surprising element: In each of them, Jesus appears to brandish a wand. That led scholars to wonder: Did ancient Christians see Jesus as a magician?" Source: Live Science (2020).

"Despite these evocative images, most evidence suggests early Christians didn't see Jesus as a magician. Magic was considered a purely human pursuit that could not raise the dead [this is nonsense -- see below], whereas Jesus' supernatural acts were always seen by believers as miracles performed through a powerful God. What's more, the 'wand' carried by Jesus was in fact not a wand —magicians of the day never carried wands anyway, experts told Live Science."

The Live Science article makes the claim that "magic was considered a purely human pursuit that could not raise the dead," but this just isn't true. The extremely ancient magical practice of necromancy, aka "Death Magic," was used to communicate with the dead, "either by summoning their spirits as apparitions, visions or raising them bodily – for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events, discover hidden knowledge, to bring someone back from the dead, or to use the dead as a weapon." (Wikipedia)

Necromancers were practicing their dark arts a long time before Jesus is said to have lived:

"Necromancy was prevalent throughout Western antiquity with records of its practice in ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Greece and Rome. In his Geographica, Strabo refers to νεκρομαντία (nekromantia), or 'diviners by the dead', as the foremost practitioners of divination among the people of Persia, and it is believed to have also been widespread among the peoples of Chaldea (particularly the Sabians, or 'star-worshipers'), Etruria and Babylonia. The Babylonian necromancers were called manzazuu or sha'etemmu, and the spirits they raised were called etemmu." (Wikipedia)

The earliest account of necromancy occurs in The Odyssey, thought to have been composed during the 7th or 8th centuries BC, so raising the dead wasn't exactly new when Jesus supposedly brought Lazarus back to life.

No matter what else you may think about him, Jesus was a magician (a true magician, not a stage entertainer who performs tricks of illusion and sleight of hand). This is obvious from the stories in the New Testament. Jesus exercised "an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source." That's the second sense of the word "magic" as defined by Merriam-Webster. He could also be said to have cast spells when he did things like curse the fig tree and drive out demons. And he had "supernatural power over natural forces" when he walked on water, calmed the storm, turned water into wine, etc. The fact that he was supposedly channeling the spirit of God when he performed these miracles is irrelevant since all magic is based on the invocation of higher powers or outside forces of some kind.

Jesus also used supernatural means (in his case prayer or "faith") to raise the dead. That makes him a necromancer by definition. He didn't use magic circles or skulls or any of the other paraphernalia commonly associated with black magic, but he still performed acts widely condemned back then (and today):

"When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one who maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or who useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. [Emphasis added] For all who do these things are an abomination unto the LORD, and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee (KJV)." -- The Book of Deuteronomy (18:9–12).

Christians believe that it's possible to raise the dead. Obviously. They believe that Jesus raised Lazarus and came back from the dead himself. The belief in magic of all kinds was widespread in the ancient world -- just as it is today -- but most Christians thought (and still think, I believe) that the spirits invoked by necromancers are actually demons.

Personally, I never believed that it's possible to raise the dead until I read H.P. Lovecraft's non-fiction accounts of the research conducted by medical student Herbert West in the early 1900s and the especially frightening case of Charles Dexter Ward which occurred in Providence, Rhode Island in 1928. Like all of Lovecraft's work, these stories were passed off as fiction, but some of us know better.

Gobekli Tepe Built Along A "Grand Geometric Plan?" (2020)

Video from May, 2020.

"Hunter-gatherers might have built the world's oldest known temple on a precise geometric plan, according to new findings." Source: Live Science (May, 2020).

"The Neolithic site, known as Göbekli Tepe, is perched atop a limestone mountain ridge in southeastern Turkey. The site's T-shaped pillars, which are carved with mystic drawings of animals, abstract symbols and human hands [next video], are arranged in giant circles and ovals  — each structure is made up of two large central pillars surrounded by smaller inward-facing pillars."

In this study, researchers used a computer to analyze the layout of the site:

"They found that the two centermost pillars aligned exactly with the midpoint of the circular structures. What's more, when they drew an imaginary line connecting the centerpoints of three of the structures, they found that it made a nearly perfect equilateral triangle, or one with three equal-length sides.

"This suggests that these three structures were planned together in advance and built according to a 'geometric design,' [one researcher] said. Archaeologists believe that the hunter-gatherers must have excavated and moved the limestone rocks from a stone quarry nearby."

Video from 2011.

Comment: Gobekli Tepe is a very strange place. It dates back to the early Neolithic, before (or just at the beginning) of the rise of agriculture, the domestication of animals and presumably the first settled communities. The dating seems to be well established, but beyond that "all statements about the site must be considered preliminary, as less than 5% of the site has been excavated..." (Wikipedia) One way or another, the megalith isn't the kind of place you'd expect to find from that time period and it's still a mystery how it was constructed:

"The construction of Göbekli Tepe implies organization of an advanced order not hitherto associated with Paleolithic, PPNA, or PPNB societies ... Archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the heavy pillars from local quarries and move them 100–500 meters (330–1,640 ft) to the site. The pillars weigh 10–20 metric tons ... with one still in the quarry weighing 50 tons."

It's hard to understand how primitive hunter-gatherers could have built a massive megalithic temple like this (if it was a temple). If that's what happened, it implies that the hunter-gatherer bands in the area were either much larger than commonly believed [1] or that several of them joined together for this particular project, something that would be pretty remarkable considering their generally nomadic lifestyle.

[1] "Hunter-gatherer groups tended to range in size from an extended family to a larger band of no more than about 100 people." (National Geographic)

Small nomadic groups following a subsistence lifestyle would presumably have been spread out over a large area. You'd think they wouldn't have had that much contact with each other, but if they came together to construct Gobekli Tepe that means that they must have had enough contact to visualize and join together in a common purpose requiring a huge amount of time and labor. On the other hand, if one particular group of hunter-gatherers was large enough to build the temple (if it is a temple) on their own, does it make sense to call them "hunter-gatherers" anymore? Whatever the case, it's hard to understand how they could have acquired the knowledge of stonework and heavy transportation techniques that would have been required to quarry, move, raise and carve these gigantic stones, not to mention the knowledge required to design the site in the first place.

The improbability of all this has naturally led to speculation that Gobekli Tepe was built by some lost civilization.

Normally I don't believe in the existence of lost, highly advanced (for the time) ancient civilizations, but Gobekli Tepe is so strange that it makes me wonder if something like what Graham Hancock is talking about in the above video might have actually happened.

Whatever the case, the existence of Gobekli Tepe proves without a doubt that something is wrong somewhere. Either the dating of the site is incorrect or the people who built it were a lot more advanced than we think, in which case our current picture of the early Neolithic, at least in this part of the world, is inaccurate. This one site could revolutionize our whole understanding of human development:

"Göbekli Tepe is regarded by some as an archaeological discovery of great importance since it could profoundly change the understanding of a crucial stage in the development of human society. Ian Hodder of Stanford University said, 'Göbekli Tepe changes everything'. If indeed the site was built by hunter-gatherers as some researchers believe then it would mean that the ability to erect monumental complexes was within the capacities of these sorts of groups, which would overturn previous assumptions. Some researchers believe that the construction of Göbekli Tepe may have contributed to the later development of urban civilization, or, as excavator Klaus Schmidt put it, 'First came the temple, then the city.'"

The Knap Of Howar

"The Knap of Howar on the island of Papa Westray in Orkney, is a Neolithic farmstead which may be the oldest preserved stone house in northern Europe. Radiocarbon dating shows that it was occupied from 3700 BC to 2800 BC, earlier than the similar houses in the settlement at Skara Brae on the Orkney Mainland." (Wikipedia)

Video from 2018. Good views of the house. Audio improves a little bit when she gets out of the wind.

There are some interesting stories about this island. For example, "According to tradition, in the 8th century AD, the Pictish King Nechtan attempted to seduce a young woman from the island named Triduana, who in response gouged her own eyes out. She later became abbess of a nunnery at Restalrig, now part of Edinburgh, and was in due course canonised as St Tredwell. A chapel was consecrated to her on Papa Westray and became a place of pilgrimage for people with eye complaints." (Wikipedia)

Comment: King Nechtan must have been less than handsome if his attentions made Triduana, supposedly a consecrated virgin, gouge her eyes out.

Papa Westray also features what is billed as the "world's shortest flight" to the nearby island of Westray.

The Knap of Howar can be seen briefly starting at 0.13.

X-Ray Analysis Reveals "Highly Decorated" Viking Sword

"Archaeologists in Scotland have revealed the ornate hilt of a Viking sword after scanning it with X-rays. The sword is highly corroded and covered in dirt, but the new images show the weapon in a new light and reveal its striking design." Source: Live Science.

"The sword is part of a hoard of Viking treasures unearthed in 2015 at a burial site on Papa Westray, one of the Orkney Islands located north of mainland Scotland. Archaeologists found the sword laid atop human remains. The burial also contained a buckle, arrows and a shield boss — the metal, central part of a shield. The site likely dates back to the first-generation Norwegian settlers, who came to the Orkney Islands during the 10th century, according to Historic Environment Scotland."

Next video (2014) shows a Viking site on the island of Westray, which is around 2 km away from Papa Westray.

Were The Builders Of Gobekli Tepe Astronomers?

"THE world’s oldest temple, Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey, may have been built to worship the dog star, Sirius." Source: New Scientist (2013).

"Göbekli Tepe put a dent in the idea of the Neolithic revolution, which said that the invention of agriculture spurred humans to build settlements and develop civilisation, art and religion. There is no evidence of agriculture near the temple, hinting that religion came first in this instance."

Thought to have been built between 9500 and 9000 BC, Gobekli Tepe is one of the most enigmatic sites from the prehistoric world. It could have been an ancient observatory or a temple -- a center for a cult of the dead, perhaps -- but the truth is that no one really knows. It could have had some other purpose entirely:

"The assumption that the site was strictly cultic in purpose and not inhabited has been challenged as well by the suggestion that the structures served as large communal houses, 'similar in some ways to the large plank houses of the Northwest Coast of North America with their impressive house posts and totem poles.'" (Smithsonian Magazine (2008))

Apparently, there isn't any evidence that people lived at the site, either: 

"...archaeologists have their theories — evidence, perhaps, of the irresistible human urge to explain the unexplainable. The surprising lack of evidence that people lived right there, researchers say, argues against its use as a settlement or even a place where, for instance, clan leaders gathered." (Smithsonian)

The theory that the positioning of some of Gobekli Tepe's pillars had astronomical significance seems plausible, but that still wouldn't explain the overall purpose of the site. The biggest mystery, though, is how this incredible site was built during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic when the inhabitants of the area (according to the conventional wisdom) were still hunter-gatherers just starting to make the transition to settled agriculture. 

Lack Of Windblown Dust From Asia May Have Doomed Easter Island Society

This 2015 NASA Goddard video demonstrates how windblown dust from the Sahara Desert travels as far as the Amazon in South America. Presumably, dust from Asia travels in the same way, perhaps in an easterly direction -- I'm not sure.

"Historians and archaeologists debate what led to the decline of Polynesian society on Rapa Nui. Although one popular narrative holds that the creation of the famous Easter Island statues depleted resources and led to environmental collapse, more recent research indicates that collapse began when Europeans brought disease and conflict. Whatever the case, Polynesians on Rapa Nui never reached the levels of agricultural productivity seen on an archipelago settled around the same time: Hawai‘i." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"According to new research, small size and isolation might have set up Rapa Nui for failure from the beginning. Researchers knew that by the time Polynesians arrived, Rapa Nui’s soils were probably already less fertile than those on Hawai‘i. Now, analysis of soil samples has shown that an important fertilizer — dust blown over from Asia — doesn’t even reach the isolated island (now a part of Chile, more than 3,500 kilometers away on the South American mainland). This finding could help researchers better understand the environmental challenges faced by ancient Polynesians."

Note: According to this research, Easter Island was doomed from the start because of a lack of nutrients in the soil:

Researchers "determined that by the time humans arrived on Rapa Nui, heavy rains had already leached many nutrients from the soil. The new soil analysis shows that Rapa Nui also lacks traces of mica, quartz, and rare earth minerals that don’t naturally occur in volcanic rock. Hawaiian soils contain these minerals thanks to continental dust blown in from Asia."

French Morons Approve Plans To "Disneyify" Notre Dame Cathedral

"French authorities have approved a proposal to revamp the interior of Notre-Dame Cathedral despite opposition from 100 cultural figures and criticisms saying the changes would 'Disneyify' the historic landmark." Source: Art Net News.

"The French National Heritage and Architecture Commission offered a favorable opinion to the proposal following a meeting on Thursday, December 9, giving the plan a green light to proceed.

"The proposals submitted by the diocese of Paris, which is responsible for the cathedral, would install contemporary artworks and mood lighting to give the 850-year-old gothic structure a new look when it is scheduled to reopen in 2024, just in time for the Paris Olympics."

Comment: This isn't just an abomination; it makes no sense. For instance, why does a Gothic cathedral with its fantastic open spaces, stained-glass windows and vaulted ceilings need "mood lighting?" Weren't these buildings designed to use natural light? And if the morons behind this renovation are determined to put up new pieces of art, wouldn't it be more appropriate to select, I don't know, something traditional with religious themes instead of "modern art" atrocities by painters like Anselm Kiefer and Louise Bourgeois, two of the "artists" being considered? Keifer produces dark, ugly Pollock-style paint splatters and sculptures that look like carbonized pieces of junk, and Bourgeois made giant spider sculptures and a lot of weird, sadomasochistic stuff that can only be described as psychotic.

The trendy, pretentious jackasses in the diocese of Paris apparently think that they need to include modern artists in order to make the cathedral "more accessible to contemporary audiences." They want to "appear modern" and so on, but they're basically turning Notre Dame into a kind of theme park which "completely distorts the decor and the liturgical space" of this beautiful old cathedral, according to critics. And why does the cathedral need a "new look" at all? What was wrong with the old look? Wasn't that it's main attraction in this first place? And what kind of religion has to update its message and image in order to appeal to the masses and keep up with the changing trends of the secular world? This is, after all, a church, right? Or is it? If the cathedral is primarily a tourist attraction these days, maybe they could install a McDonald's in the main sanctuary. That would make it "more accessible to modern audiences."

The OneZoom Tree Of Life Explorer

"OneZoom is a one-stop site for exploring all life on Earth, its evolutionary history, and how much of it is threatened with extinction." Source: Science Daily.

"The OneZoom explorer -- available at onezoom.org -- maps the connections between 2.2 million living species, the closest thing yet to a single view of all species known to science. The interactive tree of life allows users to zoom in to any species and explore its relationships with others, in a seamless visualisation on a single web page. The explorer also includes images of over 85,000 species, plus, where known, their vulnerability to extinction."