"Archaeologists have found in an ancient Pompeii bedroom a fresco depicting a sensual scene of a goddess and swan." Source: NewsMax.
"Pompeii archaeological park director Massimo Osanna told Italian news agency ANSA on Monday that the figure of goddess Leda being impregnated by a swan representing Roman god Jupiter is a fairly common theme in Pompeii home decoration."
Comment: Being a pervert, I got curious about how a swan would mate with a human female. From what I can tell, it would occur in more or less the normal way, but it would be wetter and probably more frantic with lots of splashing and flapping of wings, and the woman, if impregnated, would end up laying eggs just like in the myth about Leda. How "sensual" the whole process would be is another question.
Swans are apparently one of the few birds to have a penis. They're not as well-hung as some ducks, however. For instance, "[t]he Argentine Blue-bill or Argentine Lake Duck (Oxyura vittata) can have 42.5 cm (17 inches) long penises, at an average body length of 20 cm (8 inches)!" (Softpedia News) That's insane. According to Mental Floss, "Argentine lake ducks practice forced copulation and the females are often observed trying to get away. Possibly the long penis evolved to make reaching a female easier. Or conversely, the long penis could be the reason the females try to escape."
I'm not sure what the average size of a swan's penis is, but if you're looking for more information about duck sex, and I know you are, check out the 2007 Science article, Twisted Duck Love.
"So far, the archaeologists excavating the caves have yet to find the remains of any biblical-era manuscripts. However, both caves, now called 53b and 53c, are near caves that held the already-discovered Dead Sea Scrolls, and the team is not done investigating the sites."
Qumran Cave One, 2012. Most of the amateur videos of Qumran you can find on YouTube seem to have been taken by Christians touring the so-called Holy Land.
Note: If more manuscripts are discovered, the odds are that they won't have anything to do with the Bible. According to Wikipedia, "[t]he majority of the texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls are non-biblical in nature and were thought to be insignificant for understanding the composition or canonization of the Biblical books, but a different consensus has emerged which sees many of these works as being collected by the Essene community instead of being composed by them. Scholars now recognize that some of these works were composed earlier than the Essene period, when some of the Biblical books were still being written or redacted into their final form."
Comment: I thought it had been established that the Essenes wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, but apparently that's still a matter of contention. According to Wikipedia, "[t]here has been much debate about the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The dominant theory remains that the scrolls were the product of a sect of Jews living at nearby Qumran called the Essenes, but this theory has come to be challenged by several modern scholars."
"The Museum of the Bible, which opened in Washington, D.C., last year, had been under scrutiny for publishing and displaying the texts despite their murky origins [1]. The museum sent five of its alleged Dead Sea Scroll fragments to Germany's Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin for an investigation that included X-ray scanning and ink analysis."
[1] How many ancient documents don't have "murky origins"?
"The museum announced today [Oct. 22, 2018] that those five fragments 'show characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin'; in other words, they are not 2,000-year-old texts, but instead more-recent forgeries. The scroll fragments will no longer be displayed, the museum said."
Comment: A lot of people are using this to attack the Museum of the Bible in particular and Christianity in general, but I think the museum should be commended for having the scrolls tested and then removing them when they turned out to be likely forgeries. They probably should have tested them more thoroughly in advance, though -- that's easy to say in hindsight -- and it appears that some of their other displays may not have been completely authenticated.
According to one Canadian researcher, seven of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments are modern forgeries and "conclusions on the status of the remaining fragments are still forthcoming." I don't know how accurate that is, but authenticating ancient artifacts and documents is a major problem for museums everywhere and it looks like the Museum of the Bible fell for a scam. It would be interesting to know how many other museums are displaying objects of doubtful authenticity; the answer to that question would probably be surprising.
The museum got into trouble last year when it was "ordered to pay a $3 million forfeiture and to hand over thousands of artifacts after illegally importing cuneiform tablets, clay stamp seals and other ancient Mesopotamian items from Iraq." This kind of thing happens all the time, though, and the Museum of the Bible is hardly the first museum that has run into problems like this. The traffic in looted artifacts is gigantic and the distinction between a "looted" object and one which has been unearthed by an "official" archaeological expedition is sometimes pretty hazy.
Authenticating ancient documents is more of an art than a science. There's a lot of money to be made in looted and forged artifacts, but there have to be easier ways to make a living than by forging Dead Sea Scrolls. That's got to be a tricky business. You'd have to use the same type of ink that would have been used during the period in question, papyrus or parchment aged somehow to make it look suitably old, and the text itself would have to be authentic enough to fool a presumed expert. Some of these forgeries must be works of art in their own right.
The following scene is from The Ninth Gate, 1999. It doesn't have anything to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it includes a discussion of the problems involved in forging ancient documents, in this case a medieval book which supposedly can be used to raise the Devil.
"Human ancestors first set foot on the interior of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau around 30,000-40,000 years ago, according to new research by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). This new finding moves back the earliest data of habitation in the interior by 20,000 years or more." Source: Archaeology News Network.
This is an extremely harsh environment. Also known as High Asia, the plateau is called The Roof of the World because it has an average elevation of around 14,000 feet [1] and I can only imagine what it must have been like to try to survive there 20,000 years ago:
"...The high altitude, atmospheric hypoxia, cold year-round temperatures and low rainfall of the plateau creates an extremely challenging environment for human habitation. Archaeological evidence indicates [the plateau] was one of the last habitats colonized by Homo sapiens. Today, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is the third least-populous spot on the planet."
Note: I'm guessing that this recent news is one result of the archaeological work show in the first video above, but I could be wrong about that.
[1]Mt. Whitney in California, the highest peak in the contiguous United States, is a little over 14,000 feet high.
"It is a place unlike any other and is, arguably, one of the greatest art galleries anywhere in the world. Yet you won't find masterpieces in the traditional sense here, with no Rembrandts, Monets, or Da Vinci’s anywhere in sight." Source: Siberian Times (2014).
"Instead, this is the Russian Altai mountain range, where art exists in its most natural sense, carved into the rocks by ancient civilizations 5,000 years ago.
"Located in Siberia, at its borders with China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, it is home to literally thousands of petroglyphs and drawings that continue to fascinate archaeologists today. Experts have been studying the area for more than a century, with each expedition deep into the heart of the valleys and gorges uncovering more fingerprints of the past."
Imagine what it must have taken to survive in this wilderness back in 11,000 - 6,000 BC when the earliest rock art in the area was created.
"The so-called rock art [sic] is one of the terms for the oldest known artistic representations, the oldest of which date back from the Upper Paleolithic (40,000 BC) and were drawn on rocky walls and ceilings of shelters or caves. According to scientists, the secret for understanding the leap taken by humans towards language might have started within those small spaces." Source: Archaeology News Network.
Notes: "Seven megalithic temples are found on the islands of Malta and Gozo, each the result of an individual development. The two temples of Ggantija on the island of Gozo are notable for their gigantic Bronze Age structures. On the island of Malta, the temples of Hagar Qin, Mnajdra and Tarxien are unique architectural masterpieces, given the limited resources available to their builders. The Ta'Hagrat and Skorba complexes show how the tradition of temple-building was handed down in Malta." Source: UNESCO World Heritage List.
According to Ancient Origins (2013), "The temples date from 5,500 to 2,500 BC, making them older than Stonehenge and older than the Pyramids of Egypt (according to current perspectives). The dating of the site was done using radio carbon testing of pottery and bones found around those temples in Malta [and] until further evidence is found that will put Stonehenge or the Pyramids far into the timeline, the temples of Malta remain the oldest known temples still standing."
Comment: The temples of Malta are the oldest temples in the world, not the oldest megalithic structures. I'm not sure where the dating question stands today, but most of the sources I've seen list Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, another spectacular Neolithic site, as the oldest stone structure in the world, and there are several other megalithic structures that appear to be far older than the temples of Malta. Gobekli Tepe has been described as a "sanctuary," however, and the other structures are things like passage graves and houses.
The temples of Malta appear to be the oldest megalithic structures clearly identifiable as temple complexes. They constitute direct evidence that the prehistoric cultures of Europe were a lot more advanced than commonly believed.
Note: "Little is known about the people who built these megalithic temples [4000-2500 BC?]. The original inhabitants of the Maltese Islands probably crossed over by sea from Sicily, which lies 58 miles to the north, sometime before 5000 BC. The temple builders were farmers who grew cereals and raised domestic livestock. They worshiped a mother goddess whose type is known from early statuettes found scattered around the Mediterranean. Similar statues are also found on Malta, several being of uniquely large size. We know from physical evidence that worship in the Malta temples included animal sacrifice; beyond this, little is known about the rites and rituals that took place there." Source: Art and Archaeology.
"A necropolis with more than 12,000 almost untouched burials from the Archaic and Classical periods, many of which are rich in grave goods, was discovered between 2008 and 2011, during work on the expansion of the railway line at the site of the ancient Greek city of Himera, the remains of which lie within the borders of the modern Sicilian comune of Termini Imerese." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"Many of these burials are associated with an infamous page in the history of the ancient city, located on the strategic border between Hellenic Sicily and the area controlled by the Phoenicians: a vicious battle fought between the Greeks and Carthaginians in 480 BC."
"The Battle of Himera (480 BC), supposedly fought on the same day as the more famous Battle of Salamis, or at the same time as the Battle of Thermopylae, saw the Greek forces of Gelon, King of Syracuse, and Theron, tyrant of Agrigentum, defeat the Carthaginian force of Hamilcar the Magonid, ending a Carthaginian bid to restore the deposed tyrant of Himera ... Scholars ... agree that the battle led to the crippling of Carthage's power in Sicily for many decades. It was one of the most important battles of the Sicilian Wars." Source: Wikipedia.
Note: The battle of Himera was one of the first major events in a struggle for power in the region that lasted for hundreds of years. Sicily is located about midway between the coast of northern Africa and the boot of Italy (see map). This made the island a central conflict zone between the forces of Carthage, Greece and later Rome.
Around two centuries after the Battle of Himera, the Punic Wars began and much of the action in the beginning took place on Sicily. By that time, Carthage had grown into an empire dominating the Mediterranean and was threatening to invade Italy itself. The land and sea battles that took place between Carthage and the emerging Roman Republic were later described by the Greek historian Polybius in his Histories, available in an excellent Penguin edition titled The Rise Of The Roman Empire.
"The Punic Wars were a series of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage from 264 BC to 146 BC. At the time, they were some of the largest wars that had ever taken place." (Wikipedia) The story of the back-and-forth struggle between the two major powers is complex and exotic and full of wild scenes of fleets destroyed by storms, land battles fought with elephants, sieges, calamitous reversals of fortune, spectacular exploits like Hannibal's crossing of the Alps, and major battles like Cannae. Carthage came very close to defeating Rome, something that would have changed the future course of history completely.