Free Republic

One of the world's oldest landfills was recently uncovered in Jerusalem. Situated on the eastern slopes of Jerusalem's Southeastern Hill (the "City of David" or present day "Silwan"), the landfill dates to the Early Roman period (first century B.C.E.-first century C.E.). Through a systematic excavation of this landfill, Tel Aviv University archaeologist Yuval Gadot and his team have been able to shed light on Jerusalem during a particularly tumultuous chapter of its history -- when Rome ruled, the Temple stood, and Jesus preached... The nature of the massive amount of garbage concentrated at this site suggests the presence of an...

Of the estimated 900 documents that comprise the Dead Sea Scrolls, two remain unpublished -- until now. Scholars Eshbal Ratson and Jonathan Ben-Dov of the Department of Bible Studies at the University of Haifa recently published one of the last two... the scholars diligently pieced together 62 Dead Sea Scroll fragments, on which there was writing in code. Ratson and Ben-Dov deciphered the code on the reconstructed scroll, called Scroll 4Q324d, and revealed that the scroll describes a 364-day calendar used by the Qumran community that lived in the Judean Desert. This Qumran calendar gives us insight into how the...

The Iron Age Israelites weren't known for their artistic tradition -- so much so that, according to the Bible, King Solomon had to outsource to the Phoenicians wood-cutting in the construction of the Jerusalem Temple and bronze-working for his other buildings (1 Kings 5:6-9; 1 Kings 7:13-14). But the discovery of an Iron Age basalt workshop at Tel Hazor in northern Israel reveals that the Israelites actually cultivated a basalt-carving craft, which they seem to have inherited from the Canaanites of the preceding Bronze Age... In 2010, the archaeologists at Tel Hazor discovered a basalt workshop dating to the ninth...

On a riverbank in Texas, a master of disguise waited patiently with his accomplice, hoping that his target, an infamous horse thief, would show himself on the trail. After four days, the hunch paid off, when the bandit unwittingly walked towards the man who haunted the outlaws of the Old West. Springing from the bushes, the cowboy confronted his frightened mark with a warrant. As the desperado reached for his weapon as a last ditch effort, the lawman shot him down before his gun could leave his side. Though the quick-draw tale may sound like an adventure of the Lone...

Years after the former rodeo roper turned country singer lost his voice, LarryCallies stumbled into his past. Records from plantation days revealed connections between his slave ancestors and a white east Texas minister who had kids with slaves, uncovering hidden history became his passion.Larry Callies owns history with a collection of boots, buckles, stirrups, photos and more on display at the Black Cowboy Museum in Rosenberg. “I just don’t like to lose my heritage,” he said. “I don’t like to lose things that we used to have. I brought a lot of stuff from me just picking stuff up.” Years...

Visitors to a small log cabin in Kentucky are right to ask: Is it true that Abraham Lincoln slept here? On the eve of Lincoln's 209th birthday tomorrow, Brook Silva-Braga has the answer... "What we're trying to do is authenticate when this cabin was made by using the tree rings in the logs," he replied. Some say our 16th president, born in these hills in 1809, spent some of his childhood in this cabin at Knob Creek. But did he?... So no, Abraham Lincoln did not sleep here in the Knob Creek cabin … or in the "symbolic cabin" at...

It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of the people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies. ~ Lincoln February 12 is the anniversary of the birth of the 16th - and arguably the greatest - president of these United States, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Born in Kentucky and raised in Illinois, Lincoln was largely self-educated and became a country lawyer in 1836, having been elected to the state legislature two years earlier. He had one term in the U.S. Congress (1847-1849) but failed (against Stephen A. Douglas)...

The glamorous face of Queen Nefertiti, who could have been the mother of King Tutankhamun, has been brought to life using the latest 3D imaging technology. It took 500 hours to recreate the bust and the jewellery was even handcrafted by designers from Dior. However, the colour of the 3,400-year-old queen's skin has raised controversy with people claiming she would not have been so fair in real life.

Francis “Jeep” Sanza, a beer truck driver and milkman who got his work experience driving for Gen. George S. Patton during World War II, died Tuesday at his Victorian home in downtown Napa. He was 99. Sanza died in his sleep, said his son Nick Sanza. A framed picture of his former boss Patton was hanging in the dining room until his last day. From the preparations for D-Day, in May 1944, right up through the landing at Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge and the final push into Germany, Sanza was at the wheel of an open air Willys-Overland...

To the west of the Temple of Zeus was a modest fifth-century B.C. facility where the Olympian athletes bathed... A 5-foot-deep swimming pool, measuring 79 feet by 52 feet, lay adjacent to the baths; this pool also dates to the fifth century B.C. In the third century B.C. a palaestra was added... a large open-air courtyard enclosed on all four sides by a colonnade, which was surrounded by rooms. The Greek word "palaestra" means "the place of wrestling," so wrestling and other events were probably practiced in the courtyard. In the second century B.C. a large gymnasium was constructed to...

Dinosaur and Mammal Tracks Found Together February 1, 2018 | David F. Coppedge In what is being called the mother lode of Cretaceous tracks, mammals, dinosaurs and pterosaurs left their prints in a table-sized rock. Of all places: at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, a property representing the cutting edge of human technology, dinosaurs left their mark. Ray Stanford was dropping off his wife at work when he noticed an unusual rock outcrop. As an amateur paleontologist, he looked and saw a dinosaur track, so he began digging. Soon he had an 8′ x 3′ slab of rock that...

Fascinating pictures of America's famous WW2 Black Sheep Squadron whose efforts helped win the war in the Pacific have been released in vibrant color. The series shows the squadron's commanding officer, Colonel Gregory 'Pappy' Boyington who received the Medal of Honour and the Navy Cross, briefing his men on strategy and tactics before the 17 October 1943 attack on Kahili airdrome at Bougainville island, Papua New Guinea. In this raid 'Pappy' and 24 fighters circled the field where 60 enemy aircraft were based to goad them into sending a large force. In the ensuing air battle, 20 enemy aircraft were...

(GUATEMALA CITY) — Researchers using a high-tech aerial mapping technique have found tens of thousands of previously undetected Mayan houses, buildings, defense works and pyramids in the dense jungle of Guatemala’s Peten region, suggesting that millions more people lived there than previously thought. The discoveries, which included industrial-sized agricultural fields and irrigation canals, were announced Thursday by an alliance of U.S., European and Guatemalan archaeologists working with Guatemala’s Mayan Heritage and Nature Foundation. The study estimates that roughly 10 million people may have....

The first modern Britons, who lived about 10,000 years ago, had “dark to black” skin, a groundbreaking DNA analysis of Britain’s oldest complete skeleton has revealed. The fossil, known as Cheddar Man, was unearthed more than a century ago in Gough’s Cave in Somerset. Intense speculation has built up around Cheddar Man’s origins and appearance because he lived shortly after the first settlers crossed from continental Europe to Britain at the end of the last ice age. People of white British ancestry alive today are descendants of this population. It was initially assumed that Cheddar Man had pale skin and...

In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization—in effect a second Russian revolution—which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because...

MANSOURA, Egypt (AP) — A skeleton has been unearthed in Egypt’s Western Desert, whose ancient sands have long helped preserve remains, but unlike most finds this one isn’t a mummy — it’s a dinosaur. Researchers from Mansoura University in the country’s Nile Delta discovered the new species of long-necked herbivore, which is around the size of a city bus, and it could be just the tip of the sand dune for other desert dinosaur discoveries. “As in any ecosystem, if we went to the jungle we’ll find a lion and a giraffe. So we found the giraffe, where’s the lion?”...

Researchers think Plutarch’s De Facie tells the tale of Greek sailors making the treacherous transatlantic crossing. They dug into the science to show how it could have happened. The story of the European settlement of North America usually features a few main characters: red-headed Norsemen who sailed across an icy sea to set up temporary outposts, Spanish conquistadors, white-collared English separatists, French trappers, and Dutch colonists. Now a team of Greek scholars proposes another—and much earlier—wave of European migration: the Hellenistic Greeks, in triremes powered by sail and oar in the first century CE, nearly a millennium before the Vikings.These...

Archaeologist Mary Shepperson, who previously dug with the Amarna Project, reported in The Guardian this week on the discovery of "the simple desert graves of the ordinary Egyptians who lived and worked in Akhenaten's city and never got to leave." "They paint a picture of poverty, hard work, poor diet, ill-health, frequent injury and relatively early death," ... "As we started to get the first skeletons out of the ground it was immediately clear that the burials were even simpler than at the South Tombs Cemetery, with almost no grave goods provided for the dead and only rough matting used...

Over a month ago his left lung collapsed completely, and about a week ago his kidneys failed. His heart rate is now slowing down as well. Dad made it very clear to us from the beginning, upon receiving his diagnosis, that he did not want to live a life on life support. Although it's truly impossible to know for sure what recovery could look like, it is very clear that he would not have the quality of life he would want, nor the quality of life we would want for him. It was because of the virtually limitless support and...

In today’s Russia it is not fashionable to delve too deeply into Gulag history, and 60-year-old Panikarov’s collection is one of just two museums devoted entirely to the Gulag in the whole country. Indeed, even Panikarov himself has a somewhat surprising view: “We should not have one-sided evaluations... “It was fashionable to say bad things about the USSR. Now it is again fashionable to insult Russia. We have sanctions against us. The west looks for negative things.” Panikarov’s views on the Gulag are part of a larger trend. With the Soviet victory in the second world war elevated to a...