"Marijuana users have had many occasions to wonder where their much-beloved — yet much maligned — cannabis plant came from. They need wonder no more: New genetic research reveals that the pot plant has its roots in what is now northwest China, where local strains are most like the original strain of cannabis cultivated more than 12,000 years ago." Source: Live Science.
"The study — the largest ever of the whole genomes of cannabis plants, adding a further 82 genomes to the 28 that had already been sequenced — shows that cannabis was probably first domesticated in early Neolithic times in the region of modern China near its borders with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and from there spread as different varieties around the world."
"Socotra Archipelago, in the northwest Indian Ocean near the Gulf of Aden, is 250 km long and comprises four islands and two rocky islets which appear as a prolongation of the Horn of Africa. The site is of universal importance because of its biodiversity with rich and distinct flora and fauna..." Source: UNESCO.
Socotra was called Dioskouridou ('of the Dioscurides') or Dioscorida in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a first century AD shipping manual. According to the author of the Periplus, "Dioscorida ... is very large but desert and marshy, having rivers in it and crocodiles and many snakes and great lizards, of which the flesh is eaten and the fat melted and used instead of olive oil." Source: Fordham University Internet History Sourcebooks (paragraph 30).
Note: I'm not sure about this, but I think the Erythraean Sea is the old name for the Red Sea and at least part (?) of the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean. A map of the Erythraean Sea drawn in 169 BC by the Greek historian and geographer Agatharchides of Cnidus, can be found here. Socotra (lower right at the bottom of the map) was ideally located to be a jumping-off point for voyages to India.
Socotra has been called "the world's strangest place" with good reason. The plants on Socotra are truly bizarre, as can be seen in these pictures. The island's spectacular and alien landscape looks like something out of a science-fiction movie.
The ancient history of Socotra is obscure, but its inhabitants traded spices and the sap of their Dragon's Blood trees to Egypt and Rome. Its location near the mouth of the Red Sea made it an important stopover for cargo ships involved in the thriving maritime trade with the far east.
"The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all tapped the treasures of Socotra’s natural world: aromatic resins such as frankincense, medicinal aloe extract, and the dark red sap of the dragon’s blood tree, used for healing and as an artist’s color. Adventurers came to harvest the island’s wealth, despite stories that it was guarded by giant snakes living in its caves. The Queen of Sheba, Alexander the Great, and Marco Polo were among those who coveted Socotra’s riches." Source: National Geographic.
"The value of incense and dragon’s blood peaked during the time of the Roman Empire. Afterward, the island served mostly as a way station for traders, passing centuries in relative cultural isolation. Socotra’s residents lived generation after generation as their ancestors had: the mountain Bedouin minding their goats, the coastal residents fishing, and everyone harvesting dates. Island history was passed down through poetry, recited in the Socotri language."
According to Socotra Eco-Tours, Aristotle, Alexander the Great's tutor, selected a group of colonists to settle on Socotra. The idea was to harvest its myrhh, valued for its medicinal properties, and turn the island into a base for Alexander's invasion of India. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (1st cent BC) mentions Socotra as a major source of myrhh, labdanum (a kind of resin) and various aromatic plants. The island was an important way station where "[s]ailors and tradesmen not only bought precious resins and medical herbs...which they later on sold at markets in the Roman empire or the Indian kingdoms, but also gained strength and supplies necessary for their long journeys to the African coast, Madagascar or to Persia." Inscriptions in various languages have been found inside Hoq cave on the island. (See video below)
Considering the island's strategic location and valuable resources, I imagine it was fought over repeatedly by various empires in the ancient world. Most of this history, unfortunately, has been lost forever.
Note: "In 1834, the East India Company, in the expectation that the Mahra sultan of Qishn and Socotra, who resided at Qishn on the mainland [southern coast of modern Yemen], would accept an offer to sell the island, stationed a garrison on Socotra. Faced with the unexpected firm refusal of the sultan to sell, however, as well as the lack of good anchorages for a coaling station to be used by the new steamship line being put into service on the Suez-Bombay route, the British left in 1835." (Wikipedia)
"The Turkish government has just announced a major archaeological discovery that could have a serious impact on the study of Neolithic Era culture in the region. On June 27, Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Ersoy told reporters gathered in the southeastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa that several new sites had been found in the vicinity of Göbeklitepe, the world’s oldest prehistoric stone monument site. Also written as Gobekli Tepe, the site name translates into 'belly hill' in Turkish." Source: Ancient Origins.
Note: The Turkish government might be hyping this discovery, but it could turn out to be a major find:
"...Engaging in what may or may not have been hyperbole, Ersoy said that people may soon be describing the monuments found in the Sanliurfa region as 'the pyramids of southeast Turkey.'"
"The Hittites studied the night sky with the same interest as any other ancient civilization. As previously reported on Ancient Pages, scientists suggested a secret, ancient lunar calendar is hidden at a Hittite sanctuary in Turkey." Source: Ancient Pages.
"Experts examined several intricate carvings in Hattusha, the old capital of the Hittites, and announced these ancient people had astronomical knowledge ahead of their time."
"A strange water animal from the time of the mammoths has been brought back to life after being buried in Siberia’s permafrost for 24,000 years. Scientists say the tiny creature, dug out of the subsurface soil in a state of 'suspended animation,' has even reproduced." Source: Study Finds.
"Known as an Arctic rotifer, it measures less than a millimeter in length or 1/25th of an inch. Despite its microscopic size, it has a complex body that includes a gut and a brain. The breakthrough offers hope of resurrecting prehistoric beasts such as the woolly mammoth, the sabre-toothed cat, and even humans. Discovering the mechanism that protects the cells and organs from disintegration may hold the key to prolonging life."
Alternate history researcher Graham Hancock discusses the Denisovans and their supposedly advanced technology. Video from 2019.
"In a landmark study, scientists from Australia, Germany and Russia have used ancient DNA recovered from sediment samples from Denisova Cave in Siberia to reveal a detailed occupational history of this unique site by three distinct groups of ancient humans and a variety of animals over the past 300,000 years." Source: Phys.org.
"In the foothills of Russia's Altai Mountains, Denisova Cave is famous as the site where fossil remains of an enigmatic group of archaic humans dubbed the Denisovans were first discovered. It is the only site in the world known to have also been inhabited by their close evolutionary relatives—the Neanderthals—and by early modern humans.
"...In this new study, an interdisciplinary team of scientists assembled by Professor Michael Shunkov from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography (Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), including geochronologists from the University of Wollongong (UOW), reveals the sequence of human occupation of the cave — as well as other cave-dwelling animals, including bears, hyaenas and wolves — from the genetic analysis of more than 700 sediment samples."
"Newspapers regularly carry stories of terrifying shark attacks, but in a paper published today, Oxford-led researchers reveal their discovery of a 3,000-year-old victim -- attacked by a shark in the Seto Inland Sea of the Japanese archipelago." Source: Science Daily.
"... The grim discovery of the victim was made by Oxford researchers, J. Alyssa White and Professor Rick Schulting, while investigating evidence for violent trauma on the skeletal remains of prehistoric hunter-gatherers at Kyoto University. They came upon No 24, from the previously excavated site of Tsukumo, an adult male riddled with traumatic injuries."
"The team concluded that the individual died more than 3,000 years ago, between 1370 to 1010 BC. The distribution of wounds strongly suggest the victim was alive at the time of attack; his left hand was sheared off, possibly a defence wound.
"Individual No 24's body had been recovered soon after the attack and buried with his people at the cemetery. Excavation records showed he was also missing his right leg and his left leg was placed on top of his body in an inverted position."
"A near-perfectly preserved ancient human fossil known as the Harbin cranium sits in the Geoscience Museum in Hebei GEO University [in China]. The largest of Homo skulls, scientists now say this skull represents a newly discovered human species named Homo longi or 'Dragon Man.' Their findings suggest that the Homo longi lineage may be our closest relatives -- and may reshape our understanding of human evolution." Source: Science Daily.
"The cranium was reportedly discovered in the 1930s in Harbin City of the Heilongjiang province of China. The massive skull could hold a brain comparable in size to modern humans' but had larger, almost square eye sockets, thick brow ridges, a wide mouth, and oversized teeth." According to one Chinese researcher, the skull "presents a mosaic combination of primitive and derived characters setting itself apart from all the other previously-named Homo species."
The skull's history is kind of convoluted. First discovered in the 1930s, according to the NY Post, it "was then hidden for about 85 years to protect it from the Japanese army," only to be re-discovered at the bottom of a well in 2018. I'm not sure how it ended up in the well.
Despite all the publicity surrounding this find, there's a chance that "Dragon Man" may not be a new species at all. According to Wikipedia, the fossil is "broadly anatomically similar to other Middle Pleistocene Chinese specimens, and potentially represents the enigmatic Denisovans, though this is unconfirmed."
"In the Ancient Near East, temple women, of whom one class was called qadištu, probably served as sacred prostitutes. Sometimes dedicated by their fathers to the deity, they had special statutes, and provisions were made for them by law (Code of Hammurapi). Customs connected with them are likely to underlie Herodotus' lurid and misleading statement that in Babylon every woman was to serve once as a sacred prostitute before getting married, thus sacrificing her virginity to the goddess Mylitta (Ishtar) ... In Israel the sacred prostitutes were condemned for their connection with idolatry. Deuteronomy 23:18–19 forbids Israelites, men and women alike, to become sacred prostitutes, and states that their wages must not be used for paying vows." Source: Jewish Virtual Library.
Astarte is the Greek name of the very ancient Mesopotamian goddess, Ishtar. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), Ishtar was the "goddess of love and war, variously described as [the] daughter of Sin (moon god) or of Anu (sky god) with various attributes according to different city traditions." All of Ishtar's temples, according to the OCD, were probably "centers for cult prostitution of various kinds."
Some modern scholars believe that sacred prostitution, as an institution, never actually existed, but it seems like it must have occurred in one form or another or it wouldn't have been mentioned in all the various sources. If it did exist, however, it probably wasn't as widespread as previously believed. Herodotus' account, for instance, must be an exaggeration. It's hard to believe that every woman in Babylon had to serve once as a temple prostitute before getting married. If that was true, then the temples would have been swarming with them.
According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), "sacred prostitution is a strictly modern, not ancient, term and misleading in that it transfers to the institution, or rather a variety of institutions, an adjective [sacred] which in ancient sources denotes only the status of the personnel involved (sometimes also their earnings, which likewise became sacred on dedication.)." I've read this two or three times now and I'm still not sure what it means. If a prostitute is considered sacred and her earnings are dedicated to a god, then isn't she a "sacred prostitute" by definition? The term may be modern, but how is it misleading?
Sacred prostitution is apparently still practiced in parts of India.
Hypothetical reconstruction of a Stone Age apron made of reindeer skin with elk's teeth rattles.
"In the Stone Age, some 8,000 years ago, people danced often and in a psychedelic way. This is a conclusion drawn from elk teeth discovered in the Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov burial site in the Republic of Karelia, Russia, whose wear marks and location in the graves indicate that the objects were used as rattlers." Source: Science Daily.
"'Ornaments composed of elk teeth suspended from or sown on to clothing emit a loud rattling noise when moving,' says auditory archaeologist and Academy of Finland Research Fellow Riitta Rainio from the University of Helsinki. 'Wearing such rattlers while dancing makes it easier to immerse yourself in the soundscape, eventually letting the sound and rhythm take control of your movements. It is as if the dancer is led in the dance by someone.'"
Note: Researchers actually danced for several hours wearing "elk's tooth ornaments" and then compared the micro-wear on the teeth to the wear on the teeth recovered from the Yuzhniv Oleniv Ostrov site. I'm not sure if the apron shown in the video above is related to this experiment, and it's unclear how the researchers could determine that the people using these rattles danced "in a psychedelic way." The Science Daily writer may have added that touch. Anyway, it appears that the researchers let their imaginations get away from them at a certain point:
According to one archaeology professor, "Elk tooth rattlers are fascinating, since they transport modern people to a soundscape that is thousands of years old and to its emotional rhythms that guide the body. You can close your eyes, listen to the sound of the rattlers and drift on the soundwaves to a lakeside campfire in the world of Stone Age hunter-gatherers."