Ancient World Review

Minoans & Mycenaeans Were Indo-Europeans (2017)

"The origins of the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean cultures have puzzled archaeologists for more than a century. We have assembled genome-wide data from 19 ancient individuals, including Minoans from Crete, Mycenaeans from mainland Greece, and their eastern neighbours from southwestern Anatolia. Here we show that Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically similar, having at least three-quarters of their ancestry from the first Neolithic farmers of western Anatolia and the Aegean, and most of the remainder from ancient populations related to those of the Caucasus and Iran." Source: Nature (2017).

"The Minoan civilization flourished in the middle Bronze Age on the Mediterranean island of Crete from ca. 2000 BCE until ca. 1500 BCE and, with their unique art and architecture, the Minoans made a significant contribution to the development of Western European civilization as it is known today." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.

"The Mycenaeans [Bronze Age, 15th - 13th cent. BC]  were influenced by the earlier Minoan civilization which had spread from its origins at Knossos, Crete to include the wider Aegean. Architecture, art and religious practices were assimilated and adapted to better express the perhaps more militaristic and austere Mycenaean culture." (Ancient History Encyclopedia)

This new genetic study confirms that the Minoans and Mycenaeans were Indo-Europeans. Back in 2017 another DNA study showed that the ancient Egyptians were also Indo-European. All of these fantastic civilizations evolved from populations of Neolithic farmers who spread out of Anatolia and the regions around the Black Sea and settled along the coast of the Mediterranean. In other words, they spread west out of Eurasia, not north out of sub-Saharan Africa as the Afrocentrists claim.

Note: The next video (Feb. 2017) doesn't show the spread of the Indo-Europeans into Egypt, probably because this discovery is so recent.

The ancestors of the Minoans, Mycenaeans, and Egyptians were a race of people who lived in Eurasia and spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE) , "the ancestor of the Indo-European languages according to linguistic reconstruction." (Wikipedia) The widely accepted Kurgan Hypothesis  "puts the PIE homeland in the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 4000 BC," while an alternate theory, "the Anatolian hypothesis, [puts it] in Anatolia around 8000 BC," according to Wikipedia.

Modern humans are thought to have evolved in Africa a couple hundred thousand years ago. The Proto-Indo-Europeans date back to around 4000 - 8000 BC, depending on which theory you accept, while the Minoans and Mycenaeans flourished during the 2nd - 3rd millenniums BC. That's pretty recent by evolutionary standards, but the picture that's emerging here suggests that modern humans or at least one type of modern human may have first evolved somewhere in Asia rather than Africa. This is the Out of Asia theory, which has now been merged with the multiregional hypothesis of human origins.

Personally, I won't be surprised if the multiregional hypothesis turns out to be true.

Forgotten Tribe Doesn't Know How To Make Fire?

Video from 2016.

"The Sentinelese, also known as the Sentineli and the North Sentinel Islanders, are an indigenous people who inhabit North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal in India and are considered one of the world's last uncontacted peoples." Source: Wikipedia.

"... The Sentinelese are hunter-gatherers. They likely use bows and arrows to hunt terrestrial wildlife and more rudimentary methods to catch local seafood, such as mud crabs and molluscan shells. Some of their practices have not evolved beyond those of the Stone Age; they are not known to engage in agriculture. It is unclear whether they have any knowledge of making fire though investigations have shown they use fire [started by lightning strikes, etc]."

Despite their description as an "uncontacted people," the Sentinelese have been contacted, in one way or another, eleven times since their fires were first observed by an East India Company ship which passed the island in 1771. In 2018, for example, an American missionary traveled illegally to the island in a stupid attempt to convert the savages, who ended up killing him.

It's hard to believe that the Sentinelese don't know how to make fire. According to Survival International, "[t]hey are thought to be directly descended from the first human populations to emerge from Africa, and have probably lived in the Andaman Islands for up to 55,000 years." If they have really been around for that long and never learned how to make fire they must be in an state of near-total mental stasis or arrested development.

Did Jesus Die In Japan?

The biography of Jesus is so sketchy that it leaves a lot of room for speculation about where he spent his missing years. For instance, according to one theory he not only studied in Japan before he began his ministry, but actually died there as an old man decades after his supposed crucifixion.

"Most Christians believe that Jesus was born and died in the Middle East. However, there is a small group of people in Japan who believe a completely different story." Source: Ancient Origins.

"Some Japanese researchers think that Jesus’ history is different from what is generally believed.  This alternative version of Christ’s story was forgotten until 1935, when Kiyomaro Takeuchi (Takenouchi) reportedly discovered an ancient document in Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan. The text of the manuscript presented a shocking tale. It says that Jesus was buried in Herai Village in the Aomori district in Japan."

According to this theory, Jesus wasn't actually crucified. When he was in his twenties, he traveled to Japan, studied there for 12 years or so, then returned to the Middle East and started preaching as described in the New Testament. When he was sentenced to be crucified, however, his brother took his place on the cross, something that the Roman and Jewish authorities didn't notice for some reason. Maybe Jesus and his brother were twins; I'm not really sure. At any rate, Jesus then went back to Japan and eventually died there -- for real this time -- at the age of 106.

This story seems unlikely on the face of it, but I guess it's no more unbelievable than the idea that Jesus could control the weather, walk on water, heal the sick, turn water into wine, drive out demons, raise the dead or come back from the dead himself. If the story's true, though, it would mean that Jesus must've spent years on the road, crossing entire continents back in a time when travel was not only slow, but extremely hazardous.

The people who believe that Jesus went to Japan never seem to consider what that would involve. If Jesus traveled to Japan to study, came back to Israel, then returned to Japan after his "crucifixion," he would've had to cross (and recross) a huge amount of territory. According to DistanceFromTo, the air-travel distance from Israel to Japan is 5,656 miles. Using that as a minimum, this means that Jesus must've covered at least 16,968 miles in all his travels between east and west.

Was such an incredible journey even possible back then? As it turns out, it was -- at least in theory.

According to The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, "[l]ong-distance trade played a major role in the cultural, religious, and artistic exchanges that took place between the major centers of civilization in Europe and Asia during antiquity. Some of these trade routes had been in use for centuries, but by the beginning of the first century A.D., merchants, diplomats, and travelers could (in theory) cross the ancient world from Britain and Spain in the west to China and Japan in the east."

Technically, a journey like this would've been possible in the first century when Jesus supposedly lived. He could have traveled by land or sea, or maybe both, following the silk, spice and incense routes. This would've been a grueling, dangerous and time-consuming journey, to say the least, and according to the theory that Jesus died in Japan, he would've had to have made the trip three times,  something that seems almost as miraculous as the rest of the New Testament stories combined.

Genetic Study Of Ancient Skeletons Sheds Light On Prehistoric Settlement Of Southeast Asia

Hoabinhian chopper of Xóm Trại cave, Hoa Binh, Vietnam. Video from 2016.

"Current evidence suggests that Southeast Asia was occupied by Hoabinhian hunter-gatherers until about 4000 years ago, but the human occupation history thereafter with farming economies remains unsettled. By sequencing 26 ancient human genomes (25 Southeast Asians, 1 Japanese Jomon), the history is shown to be more complex than previously thought; both Hoabinhian hunter-gatherers and East Asian farmers contributed to current Southeast Asian diversity. The results help resolve one of the long-standing controversies in Southeast Asian prehistory." Source: Science Daily (2018).

The Con Moong Cave In Vietnam

Terrible audio. Closed captions help a little. Story here (2016)..

"[The] Con Moong archaeological site is really a key for the understanding of Vietnamese and South East Asian prehistory. It has been confirmed that the continuation of art techniques to make cobble tools with representatives from Sơn Vi culture to Hòa Bình culture, and then Bắc Sơn culture. Con Moong Cave may show the evolution of human beings from the end of the old stone age, transiting through the middle stone age, to the beginning of the new stone age; from hunting and gathering, to plantation and breeding, the occupants of the site transitioned from a primitive stage to an age of civilization." Source: Wikipedia.

A Vietnamese-only video with better shots of the cave can be found here.

Mysterious Earthen Mounds Discovered In Ancient Cambodian Cities (2016)

"Using airborne laser-scanning equipment, archaeologists have discovered vast fields of dome-shaped earthen mounds, arranged into gridded patterns, in 1,000-year-old Cambodian cities." Source: Live Science (2016).

"The scientists are puzzled as to what these vast 'dome fields' (as archaeologists sometimes call them) would have been used for around 1,000 years ago, calling them 'the most enigmatic features' from this archaeological landscape."

Notes: "The finding is part of a huge project in which archaeologists with the Cambodian Archaeological Lidar Initiative (CALI) are targeting areas located near large temple complexes (such as Angkor Wat) ..." Geoglyphs and "buried towers" have also been discovered near some of the cities, many of which "were part of the Khmer Empire, which, at its height in the 12th and 13th centuries A.D., 'stretched across much of mainland Southeast Asia, with a network of highways connecting far-flung settlements to the Angkorian heartland in [what is now] Cambodia ...'"

Angkor itself was gigantic: "a megacity supporting at least 0.1% of the global population during 1010-1220," according to Wikipedia.

Old Footage Of Cambodia From A 1937 Expedition Journey

Note: "When Angkor was named a World Heritage site in 1992 it was also added to the List of World Heritage in Danger; the incomparable site was threatened by pillaging, plagued by illegal excavations, and even dotted with land mines. In 1993 UNESCO launched a major campaign to restore and safeguard Angkor. Thanks to a textbook case of international cooperation Angkor rebounded so dramatically that it was removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2004." Source: National Geographic.

Oldest Human Remains In Japan Unearthed (2017)

Jan. 2017. Closed captions helpful.

"A human skeleton thought to be the oldest in Japan has been found in a collapsed cave in Okinawa, a local museum said Friday, adding that it appears to be around 27,000 years old." Source: Japan Times (2017).

"The nearly complete skeleton, dating from the Old Stone Age, appears to have been intentionally placed in the cave, providing the first evidence of a funerary rite dating from that period, according to the Okinawa Prefecture Archeological Center."

Note: "The skeleton was discovered in Shirahosaonetabaru cave on Ishigaki Island during research at the site from 2010 to 2016."

The earliest human occupation of the Japanese archipelago dates back to around 30,000 years ago. Ishigaki Island itself is spectacularly beautiful and must have been a natural paradise back then.

Ancient Japanese Pottery Includes ~500 Maize Weevils

"Researchers have discovered an ancient Japanese pottery vessel from the late Jomon period (4500-3300 BP) with an estimated 500 maize weevils incorporated into its design. The vessel was discovered in February 2016 from ruins in Hokkaido, Japan. This extremely rare discovery provides clues on the cultivation and distribution of chestnuts, food in the Jomon era, and the spirituality of ancient Japanese people. " Source: Science Daily (Deb. 2018).

The Ishibutai Kofun Tomb In Japan

Note: "Ishibutai Kofun is the largest rectangular tomb in Japan. This tomb, which is famous for its form created by piling up huge stones, is about 55m from east to west and about 52 m from north to south. It takes us back to Asuka Period (592-710 AD). According to the widely-accepted theory, the tomb was built in the 6th century for Soga no Umako, who was the most powerful person in the region." Source: Japan: The Official Guide.

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This is another incredible monolithic structure. The ceiling stone, for instance, weighs around 140 tons and once again no one has any idea how it was moved into position.