The 2006 article quoted in this video can be found here.
"The Tsodilo Hills are a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS), consisting of rock art, rock shelters, depressions, and caves in southern Africa. It gained its WHS listing in 2001 because of its unique religious and spiritual significance to local peoples, as well as its unique record of human settlement over many millennia. UNESCO estimates there are over 4500 rock paintings at the site." (Wikipedia)
Some of the petroglyphs can be seen starting at app. 1:27.
"People have used the Tsodilo Hills for painting and ritual for thousands of years. UNESCO estimates that the hills contain 500 individual sites representing thousands of years of human habitation. The hills' rock art has been linked to the local hunter gatherers. It is believed that ancestors of the San created some of the paintings at Tsodilo, and were also the ones to inhabit the caves and rock shelters. There is evidence that Bantu peoples were responsible for some of the artworks at the hills. Some of the paintings have been dated to be as early as 24,000 years before present."
"'The gruesome mummy of Unknown Man E, also known as the ‘Screaming Mummy’, has long puzzled scholars,' renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass told Al-Ahram Weekly, adding that this particular mummy is surrounded in mystery. Although he was re-buried in the royal mummy cache of Deir Al-Bahari, he was not wrapped in the usual fine linen bandages like the rest of the mummies. Instead, he was wrapped in sheepskin, which was considered impure by the ancient Egyptians. His hands and feet were tied with leather thongs. He was not even mummified, but was merely left to dry in natron and then had some resin poured into his open mouth." Source: Archaeology News Network (2018).
Note: There has been speculation that this is the mummy of a 20th Dynasty Egyptian prince known as Pentawar who was "involved in the so-called 'harem conspiracy', a plot to kill his father [Ramesses III] and place Pentawer on the throne," according to Wikipedia. "He either killed himself or was executed following the assassination attempt."
It's possible, I guess, that this man wasn't actually screaming at the time of his death. The drying out process may have caused his mouth to open.
"All the royal mummies found in the 19th and 20th centuries have long since been opened for study. With one exception: Egyptologists have never been bold enough to open the mummy of Pharaoh Amenhotep I. Not because of any mythical curse, but because it is perfectly wrapped, beautifully decorated with flower garlands, and with face and neck covered by an exquisite lifelike facemask inset with colorful stones. But now for the first time, scientists from Egypt have used three-dimensional CT (computed tomography) scanning to 'digitally unwrap' this royal mummy and study its contents." Source: Phys.org.
"Archaeologists have discovered the remains of three ancient Egyptian inhabitants — a man, woman and child — outfitted with tongues of gold foil, a treasure likely intended to help them speak with gods in the afterlife, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities." (Live Science)
"The burials were found in two neighboring tombs. One of the tombs, which had been plundered by grave robbers, held the remains of the woman and a 3-year-old child, and it had a limestone sarcophagus with a lid shaped like a woman, according to Ahram Online. But the man's grave, from the 26th dynasty (664 B.C. to 525 B.C.), also known as the Saite period, was untouched.
"'This is very important, because it's rare to find a tomb that is totally sealed,' Esther Pons Mellado, co-director of the archaeological mission of Oxyrhynchus, told The National, a newspaper that covers the Middle East."
"This stolen or looted mummy hand, dating to the eighth century B.C., was brought into the United States from Egypt. It was falsely declared as being a 'science fiction movie prop.' The hand was returned to Egypt, along with other artifacts, in November 2016." Source: Live Science (2017). This article includes pictures and details about several of the looted artifacts mentioned in the video.
These artifacts were recovered as part of the US Immigration & Customs Enforcement's Operation Mummy's Curse that targeted "an international criminal network that illegally smuggled and imported more than 7,000 cultural items from around the world".
"The oldest unequivocal evidence of upright walking in the human lineage are footprints discovered at Laetoli, Tanzania in 1978, by paleontologist Mary Leakey and her team. The bipedal trackways date to 3.7 million years ago. Another set of mysterious footprints was partially excavated at nearby Site A in 1976 but dismissed as possibly being made by a bear. A recent re-excavation of the Site A footprints at Laetoli and a detailed comparative analysis reveal that the footprints were made by an early human -- a bipedal hominin." Source: Science Daily.
"The Kingdom of Mapungubwe (or Maphungubgwe) (c. 1075–c. 1220) was a medieval state in South Africa located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, south of Great Zimbabwe. The name is derived from either TjiKalanga and Tshivenda. The name might mean 'Hill of Jackals'. The kingdom was the first stage in a development that would culminate in the creation of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe in the 13th century, and with gold trading links to Rhapta and Kilwa Kisiwani on the African east coast. The Kingdom of Mapungubwe lasted about 80 years, and at its height the capital's population was about 5000 people." (Wikipedia) Note: I'm not sure which capital this refers to.
Mapungubwe hill. Around 24 human skeletons were discovered here and later reburied. Video from 2010.
The central area of Mapungubwe covered around 30,000 hectares (around 74,000 acres), according to the UNESCO World Heritage List. That's something like 109 square miles, I believe, and the kingdom had a much larger buffer zone, so its territory was fairly large for that period. Over the course of its history, Mapungubwe had three capitals -- "Schroda; Leopard’s Kopje; and the final one located around Mapungubwe hill - and their satellite settlements and lands around the confluence of the Limpopo and the Shashe rivers whose fertility supported a large population within the kingdom."
The kingdom's location allowed it grow rich from trade with the outside world:
"Mapungubwe's position at the crossing of the north/south and east/west routes in southern Africa also enabled it to control trade, through the East African ports to India and China, and throughout southern Africa. From its hinterland it harvested gold and ivory - commodities in scarce supply elsewhere – and this brought it great wealth as displayed through imports such as Chinese porcelain and Persian glass beads." (UNESCO)
"The Festival of Drunkenness is a religiously significant celebration that was held annually (said to be biannually in some places) by the ancient Egyptians. The background story for the celebration of this festival can be found in a text known as The Book of the Heavenly Cow [next video]. In this text, there is an ancient Egyptian myth involving the destruction of mankind. According to the myth, human beings were saved from extinction thanks, in part, to alcohol." Source: Ancient Origins (2016).
From what I've read, the Festival of Drunkenness wasn't just a big celebration with some harmless social drinking; it was about getting completely plastered and passing out to commemorate how booze saved humanity from the bloodthirsty warrior goddess, Sekhmet:
"According to the story, Ra had become weary of people's endless cruelty and nonsense and so sent Sekhmet to destroy them. She took to her task with enthusiasm, tearing people apart and drinking their blood. Ra is satisfied with the destruction until the other gods point out to him that, if he wanted to teach people a lesson, he should stop the destruction before no one was left to learn from it. Ra then orders the goddess of beer, Tenenet, to dye a large quantity of the brew red and has it delivered to Dendera, right in Sekhmet's path of destruction. She finds it and, thinking it is blood, drinks it all, falls asleep, and wakes up as the gentle and beneficent Hathor." (Ancient History Encyclopedia)
In other words, all it took to transform the homicidal blood-slurping Sekhmet (often represented as a lion) into Hathor, the goddess of "music, dance, joy, love, sexuality and maternal care" (often represented as a cow) was to get Sekhmet drunk. I also like the bit about how Ra had to be reminded that there was no point in killing everybody if his goal was to teach people a lesson. This is a great story, much more human than the legend of Yahweh exterminating his own creations (humans as well as animals) in a flood.
Note: According to the Ancient Architects video at the top of this post, the Festival of Drunkenness "could potentially explain the original pre-dynastic origins of the Great Sphinx - as a bloodthirsty statue of an Egyptian lion goddess."
Ancient Egypt is normally seen as kind of austere and grim, but the Egyptians had all sorts of feasts and banquets and they liked their beer:
"Considering the value the ancient Egyptians placed on enjoying life, it is no surprise that they are known as the first civilization to perfect the art of brewing beer. The Egyptians were so well known as brewers, in fact, that their fame eclipsed the actual inventors of the process, the Sumerians, even in ancient times." Source: Ancient History Encylopedia.
The Festival of Drunkenness goes way back:
"Originally, it was thought these rituals took place later in Egyptian history when they were ruled by the Greeks and Romans. However, recent discoveries from the excavations of the Temple of Mut complex in Luxor show they took place much earlier - around 1470 BCE. ... the Festival of Drunkenness was celebrated by people at least once a year, sometimes twice, in homes, temples and makeshift desert shrines. It was different than many other temple ceremonies as the priests or pharaoh would act on behalf of the people. In this ritual, everyone participated together -- the elites and the peasants. The scene is described in a hymn to Sakhnet as young women with flowing garlands in their hair serving alcohol to everyone They all drink to the point of passing out, then are awoken to the beating of drums and the priests carried out a likeness of the goddess Hathor and they present their petitions to her. It wasn’t just drinking going on either. Graffiti was found discussing 'traveling the marshes', which is a euphemism for having sex. These festivals took place at the beginning of the Nile floods in mid-August, which hearkened to the fertility and renewal of the land by the floods." Source: Naked History (2017).
How can you not like a civilization where everyone took part in a festival like this at least once a year? Drunken orgies have been popular throughout history, of course, but they've gradually lost their religious context. Next video describes William Hogarth's moralistic series of paintings, A Rake's Progress (1733-35). I like to think that the Festival of Drunkenness in ancient Egypt involved scenes like these all over the country.
Senegambia, also known as the Western Region in some sources, is an area in west Africa located between the Senegal River in the north and the Gambia River in the south. Early humans are thought to have first appeared in the region around 350,000 years ago.
The Senegambian stone circles are located in the Thies Region in western Senegal, the home of the ancient Serer people. According to Wikipedia, "Numerous tumuli, burial mounds, some of which have been excavated, revealed materials that date between the 3rd century BC and the 16th century AD."
Video from 2009.
Senegambia doesn't just have a small, isolated collection of megaliths:
"The site consists of four large groups of stone circles that represent an extraordinary concentration of over 1,000 monuments in a band 100 km wide along some 350 km of the River Gambia. The four groups ... cover 93 stone circles and numerous tumuli, burial mounds, some of which have been excavated to reveal material that suggest dates between 3rd century BC and 16th century AD. Together the stone circles of laterite pillars and their associated burial mounds present a vast sacred landscape created over more than 1,500 years. It reflects a prosperous, highly organized and lasting society." Source: UNESCO.
Comment: Stone circles and other megaliths have been discovered all around the world from England to Brazil to Japan, Africa and the Middle East. This suggests that there was once a global culture of prehistoric megalith builders, a theory known as the Megalithic Civilization Hypothesis.
The Megalithic Civilization Hypothesis is usually dismissed as pseudoscience. That could be true -- in fact, it probably is -- but when it comes to these stone circles it's hard to believe that their similar design all around the world is just a coincidence. Maybe there's something universal about the concept of standing stone rings, some mental archetype that would recur naturally in so many different cultures separated by so much time and distance. Who knows? It's also possible that ancient astronomers around the world independently invented the stone circle as a method for observing the procession of the stars and planets. That seems more likely, but in the absence of written records we'll probably never know the truth. This whole subject truly qualifies as hidden history.
"Deep within South Africa's Rising Star cave system [next video], in a dark passageway barely 6 inches (15 centimeters) wide, scientists have discovered the fragmented skull of a Homo naledi child they're calling 'Leti.' How the little skull ended up in such a remote part of the cave is a mystery, though the discoverers suspect it could be evidence of an intentional burial." Source: Live Science.
Video from 2017.
"'Leti,' short for 'Letimela,' or 'Lost One' in the Setswana language of South Africa, probably lived between 335,000 and 241,000 years ago, based on the ages of other remains found in the enigmatic cave. Fossil fragments belonging to about 24 Homo naledi individuals have been found in the cave system since 2013, when the first fossils from this human ancestor were discovered in what's now known as the Dinaledi Chamber."
Video from 2015.
"The presence of so many individuals from a single species in the cave is mysterious. The only way in is a 39-foot (12 meters) vertical fracture known as 'The Chute,' and geologists and spelunkers have so far found no evidence of alternative entrances into the passageways. Leti's small skull was found scattered in pieces on a limestone shelf about 2.6 feet (80 cm) above the cave floor. The spot sits in 'a spiderweb of cramped passages,' Maropeng Ramalepa, a member of the exploration team, said in a statement."