Scientists at the Max Born Institute have developed a new soft X-ray instrument that can reveal dynamics of magnetic domains on nanometer length and picosecond time scales. By bringing capabilities once exclusive to X-ray free-electron lasers into the laboratory, the work paves the way for routine investigations of ultrafast processes of emergent textures in magnetic materials and beyond.
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Electrons can be elusive, but Cornell researchers using a new computational method can now account for where they go—or don’t go—in certain layered materials.
“I am proud of the accomplishments we achieved together, and I thank the residents of this city for their trust and partnership,” Smith said in a statement
Tales of lost legendary cities, forgotten civilizations and incalculable riches left behind by a people long gone, are the perfect ingredients for explorers to set out and venture out into the unknown. Since there have been accounts of written history, there have been accounts of lost cities and civilizations. Thousands of years ago, in the work of Plato for example, we find writings that speak of mythical lands (Atlantis), once inhabited by advanced ancient civilizations that could even predate written history as we know it. But Plato wasn’t the only one who wrote about lost civilizations and lost cities. The same can be found in the Mahabharata and other ancient texts written by the ancient Hindu thousands of years ago. Take Dvārakā for example. An ancient city said to have been built by a God and mentioned in some of the most sacred and ancient texts on Earth: Mahabharata, the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, the Harivamsha as well as the Skanda Purana, and the Vishnu Purana.  Until recently, the very existence of the ancient city of Dvārakā was a matter of legends and myths. However, as we have learned from history, myths and legends are divided by a thin line from reality. However, as we have learned, the cities ruins have been discovered 30 meters underwater, on what was once an island located on the western coast of India. Another great example is the ancient city of Heraklion, discovered just off the coast of Egypt. The city of Heracleion—not to be confused with the city of Heraklion which is the largest city and the administrative capital of the island of Crete—is another ancient city shrouded in myth. Thought to be a mythical city for hundreds of years, Heracleion was swallowed by the Mediterranean Sea, buried by sand and mud for a period of over 1,2000 years. Lost (Legendary) Cities of America When speaking about lost and legendary cities, we can’t avoid speaking about Cibola and its legendary seven cities of gold. Cíbol is a legendary city full of riches, which during the colonial era was supposed to have been located somewhere in northern New Spain, in what is now northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. The medieval legend of the Seven Cities originates with the invasion of the Moors to the Iberian Peninsula, where according to the story seven bishops left from there and then settled in land located to the west, crossing the sea, where each would have erected their own city. The re-discovery of the American Continent and the rumors about the existence of large cities in the north of the continent led Fra Marcos de Niza to affirm, without any further foundation, that the legendary Seven Cities were hidden there, which eventually resulted in an intense search for the cities in the following years. But what I just wrote above is a brief, quick, description of the alleged seven cities of gold. However, the story behind the seven cities is greater then you’ve ever imagined. In fact, the origins of the so-called seven cities of Gold can be traced back to the year 713. Original legend describes Cibola as being one of the seven ancient cities of gold founded by seven bishops who supposedly fled from the Iberian peninsula when it fell into the hands of the Arabs. In what many consider the original version of the story, the bishops were Portuguese who had escaped the city of Oporto and eventually settled on a distant island or land located somewhere to the west. This land was not accessible by foot, but could only be found by crossing the sea. The legend expanded later on. Eventually, the Spanish began popularizing another version of the legend, where the seven bishops were not Portuguese, but original Spanish bishops from the city of Mérida, who escaped in the year 713. Nine years after these bishops supposedly escaped the Iberian peninsula, the process known as the reconquest would start, concluding in 1492, when the Catholic kings managed to expulse the Moors out of Granada, thus recovering total control over the Iberian Peninsula. Curiously, the same year Christopher Columbus stumbles across America. In 1507, thanks to the Universalis Cosmographia, edited by Martin Waldseemüller, America is finally acknowledged and identified as a new continent, separated from Asia. Soon after, the discovery and conquest of the powerful Aztec Empire by Hernán Cortés demonstrates the existence of rich and advanced civilizations in the New World, which arouses the ambition of many Spanish conquerors. What followed after the discovery of America wasn’t good for the natives. Soon after, Hernan Cortes would dominate the new world conquering the mighty Aztec Empire, and at the same time, revealing to the Old Continent that there were very powerful and extremely wealthy civilizations in the ‘New World.’ These stories, of unknown and wealthy civilizations in America, would soon wake the interest of explorers and conquerors who were eager to set foot on the American Continent, looking for infinite riches. After the fall of the Mexica, more and more rumors began to circulate about the existence of rich and mighty empires to the north of the continent.  These stories were also fueled by the ancient Aztecs who had claimed that the gold used in their monuments came from the north, not to mention that their homeland, the mythical island of Aztlán (“place of whiteness” or “place of the herons”) was also located somewhere to the north. These historical facts lead to the fusion of the medieval legend of the Seven Cities of Gold, with the history of the new world, when four castaways of the unsuccessful expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez to Florida (1528) began spreading a rumor in Mexico about the alleged existence of massive cities located north. A man who had survived the shipwreck was a man called Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who went on to write a book called La relación y comentarios (“The Account and Commentaries”), which in later editions was retitled Naufragios (“Shipwrecks”). You can read the book here. The book was a narration of the long journey they survived from Florida to the coast of Sinaloa, eventually crossing the entire continent. Another of the survivors of this expedition was a slave named Esteban, popularly known as Estebanico. Estebanico is always mentioned when we read about Cibola and the Seven Cities of Gold. Eventually, as tales of massive ancient cities filled with gold became more popular in Spain, and in the New continent among the Spanis, the viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, decided to verify the veracity of the stories and legends and organized an expedition led by the Franciscan friar Marcos de Niza to search for said lost treasures. Estebanico was once again part of the story. He would go on serving as a guide and on several occasions, he traveled ahead of the expeditionaries in order to inform the friar about everything that lay ahead of them. In one occasion, he confirmed that he had heard rumors about great and powerful cities in a place called Vacapa. Stories such as these fueled, even more, the expeditionaries who were hungry for gold. Eventually, without having found the cities of gold, Estebanico was killed by the Native Americans in Háwikuha, New Mexico, which caused the expedition to come to a halt. However, Fray Marcos de Niza was convinced that those prosperous cities and empires really existed and that they could not be anything else other than the fabulous Seven Cities that would have been established initially by those alleged Bishops who had fled from the Iberian peninsula after the invasion of the Moors. This is how a fused and refreshed version, or better said American legend of the Seven Cities of Cíbola was born. Marcos de Niza eventually returned to Mexico City saying that despite the death of Estebanico, he had continued his journey. He said that ultimately, he had witnessed with his own eyes, a city fat greater than the city of Tenochtitlan. There, in this majestic city, the natives were adorned with all sorts of riches: they used silver and fold dishes, decorating their houses and temples with never-before-seen pearls, emeralds, and jewels. The story narrated by de Niza arrived to Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza who wasted no time and promptly organized a prominent military expedition to search for the city de Niza had seen, and take possession of those rich lands. In command of this new expedition was a personal friend of the Viceroy, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who was guided by Marcos de Niza. The expedition would soon come to an end, as the story was too good to be true.  On April 22, 1540, Coronado left the town of Culiacán leading a small group of expeditionaries. Eventually, Coronado crossed the current state of Sonora in Mexico and entering the state of Arizona and saw that the stories of de Niza were untrue. Coronado and his expedition had traveled and searched, but never found the incalculable wealth of which the friar had spoken of. Coronado expeditions finished when he and his epeditionaries arrived at Hawikuh Pueblo, referred to by the chroniclers as Cevola, Tzibola, or Cibola. Upon arriving there, he discovered that de Niza’s stories were lies and that there were no treasures whatsoever there, as the friar had described previously. Coronado also discovered that, contrary to the friar’s stories, the sea was not within view from that region, but was instead many days’ journey away. Disappointed, Coronado occupied the region by force and built a forward base that would be used for future explorations. The stories about the seven cities of gold were soon forgotten, and time washed away the gold fever that had taken over many Spanish explorers, conquistadores, friars, and kings… Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed yet another article about a fascinating ancient legend. Stay tuned for more. Copyright Ancient Code. Unless otherwise stated by Ancient Code, no Content published on www.ancient-code.com, www.ancient-code.es may be copied, distributed, published, rewritten or used in any way, in whole or in part, without prior written agreement from Ancient Code. That includes this article as well. YouTube Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/bNr_JKAmJ-w?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1 Thanks to a number of different, surprising archeological discoveries, it has become a popular theory that incredible, advanced ancient civilizations may have inhabited South America thousands of years ago, leaving behind a legacy of mind-bending cyclopean structures and monuments that defy logic. From incredible lost cities, uncharted territories, tales, and myths that speak of giants and Gods coming down from the heaven, to explorers who have vanished from sight while searching for long lost civilizations, South America has it all. But among all the secrets that hide deep within the heart of South America, we turn towards cyclopean masonry that points towards the existence of a number of ancient civilizations that were far more advanced than what we are willing to accept. To understand the incredible secrets, mysteries, and beauties this continent hides, we look towards former US President Theodore Roosevelt and the Roosevelt–Rondon Scientific Expedition which traveled into the heart of Brazil. In the Book Through the Brazilian Wilderness, the former US president tells of an incredible account. While shooting the rapids of a formidable river in the Matto Grosso, the former president’s attention was drawn to a most unusual sight: “By these rapids, at the fall, Cherrie found some strange carvings on a bare mass of rock. They were evidently made by men a long time ago. As far as it is known, the Indians thereabouts make no such figures now…They consisted, upon the upper flat part of the rock, of four multiple circles with a dot in the middle, very accurately made and about a foot and a half in diameter; and below them, on the side of the rock, four multiple M’s or inverted W’s. What these curious symbols represented, or who made them, we could not, of course, form the slightest idea. It may be that in a remote past some Indian tribes of advanced culture had penetrated to the lovely river, just as we had now come to it…Colonel Rondon stated that such figures as these are not found anywhere else in the Matto Grosso, and therefore it was all stranger to find them in this one place on the unknown river, never before visited by white men, which we were descending…” Island of Marajó—Home to an advanced ancient culture Without a single reason of a doubt, the ancient Marajoara culture from Brazil deserves to be mentioned as one of the most amazing civilizations to ever develop in what is now Brazil. The Island of Marajo was home to the advanced pre-Columbian civilization of Marajoara, which inhabited major parts of the island from around 400 BC to around 1600 AD. The importance of the culture was reaffirmed by archaeologists who have been busy exploring the home of the Marajoara since the nineteenth century. At its peak, it is estimated that this pre-Colombian society had a population of around 100,000 people. The Marajoara culture was also one of the civilizations that reached a notoriously high level of social complexity. Their complexity was expressed in their technically elaborate ceramic production, characterized by a great diversity of forms and shapes. Archaeological excavations have revealed countless artifacts crafted by the Marajoara. Some were found in funerary complexes while others were probably used in diverse rituals. The Marajoara iconography was strongly centered on the human figure and the representation of tropical forest animals with symbolic meanings. Their cultures iconography composes an intricate visual communication system that uses symmetries, paired elements, rhythmic repetitions and binary oppositions to reaffirm, transmit and perpetuate a vision of the world. Without a doubt, we can conclude that the Marajoara were skilled potters, they dedicated their history to the creation of strange and highly ornamented ceramics that surprisingly, are still being made today by a small number of artisans. Interestingly, a number of scholars have compared the pottery produced by the Marajoara to the pottery of the Andean region, suggesting a possible relationship between them. Huge underground chambers, connected by tunnels, constitute additional evidence of the dexterity of the ancient Marajoara. Marcel Homet—evidence of Advanced Civilizations? Marcel Homet was a French—Algerian researcher who published countless books on anthropology, ancient history, and ethnology. One of his most famous books titled ‘Sons of the Sun’ details his work in South America and the discoveries he made connecting the new continent to the old world. Among his discoveries, during his fieldwork in South America, Homet uncovered a number of carved inscriptions, petroglyphs and countless native legends and traditions which pointed to the possible existence of an extremely well-organized, advanced civilization or civilizations that may have existed in the distant past, hidden deep in the Amazonian rainforest. Homet’s work eventually took him to the MacuxiI tribe, who speak of the existence of a glorious ancient city, adorned with gold, massive walls, and rooftops, that belonged to a Sun worshiping ancient civilization. The MacuxiI tribe also introduced Homet to another city, hidden deep in the unexplored Pakaraima mountains. There, according to MacuxiI elders, lay the remnants of a massive boulder covered with strange petroglyphs that point the way towards another ruined city. The MacuxiI further explained that if anyone were to travel down that path, continuing for another two days walk, you’d reach a massive wall in the mountains marked by an arch that lead towards an incredible city located beneath the surface. Pedra do Inga—An ancient cosmic map? More evidence of advanced ancient civilizations in Brazil was uncovered in the 1600’s when explorer Feliciano Coelho was traveling near modern-day Joao Pessoa, where he uncovered a massive stone, carved in bas-relief: The Inga Stone. Written on its surface were countless strange symbols and characters that were unlike any other writing system on the continent. The most famous symbols on the Inga Stone are those representing the constellation of Orion, and the Milky Way Galaxy. Experts refer to the Inga Stone as “an exceptional archeoastronomy monument, like no other in the world.” The Inga Stone features hundreds of strange symbols and “Stars” that stretch over a rock measuring 245 meters in length, 3 meters in height. Several figures are carved in low relief in this set and there are entries whose meanings are unknown. The age of the inscriptions is unknown, but geologists estimate that the rock formation dates back at least 6,000 years. Deforestation of the Amazon, and how it revealed traces of a long-lost culture Recent studies have revealed more evidence that a large ancient civilization called the Amazon their home thousands of years ago. According to an archaeological survey, southern parts of the Amazon rainforest are covered by a massive network of ancient settlements and ceremonial centers which existed long before the arrival of Columbus. Researchers have shown how complex societies—of around one million inhabitants—existed in the Amazon as early as 1250AD. “Our research shows we need to re-evaluate the history of the Amazon,” said researchers who were left awestruck by the find. The distribution of the potential sites suggests an interconnected, advanced series of fortified villages spanning over 1,100 miles that flourished between 1200 and 1500 A.D. Manuscript 512—Evidence of a long-lost civilization in the Amazon? An ancient document titled Manuscript 512 perhaps offers further evidence of the existence of long-lost civilizations in the Amazon. The document, now housed at the Brazilian National Library in Rio de Janeiro mentions a group of explorers which allegedly stumbled upon a ruined ancient city in eastern Brazil, around 1753. This ‘magnificent stone city’ was unlike any other city they’ve ever seen, with architecture early reminiscent of that of Ancient Greece and mysterious writings not native to the region. The enigmatic text of the manuscript is completed with curious details, such as documenting the discovery of a bag of gold coins bearing the silhouette of an archer and a crown, or the reproduction of hieroglyphs copied from various corners of the city, which some say bare an uncanny similarity with Greek and Phoenician letters. Landsat 2 and the Pyramids of South America One of the most bizarre discoveries perhaps occurred after the Landsat Satellite photographed what seem to be pyramidal structures in the Amazon in 1975. The idea that the Amazon was inhabited only by primitive cultures is an understatement to our civilization. I quote Theodore Roosevelt in his book “Ultimate Collection: Memoirs, History Books, Biographies, Essays, Speeches &Executive Orders: America and the World War, The Ancient … Wilderness, History as Literature…”: “Before white man arrived in South America, there already existed therein various semi-civilizations, some rude, others fairly advanced, which rose, flourished, and persisted through immemorial ages, and then vanished. The vicissitudes in the history of humanity during its stay on this southern continent have been as strange, varied, and inexplicable as paleontology shows to have been the case, on the same continent, in the history of the higher forms of animal life during the age of mammals…” Do the images snapped by the Landsat satellite indicate traces of yet another lost city in the Amazon? The area where the alleged pyramidal structures were spotted is in an area on the Peruvian-Brazilian border, more precisely to the southeast of Peru, 13° S latitude, 71° 30″ W longitude. Itá Letra, an undecipherable writing in South America If we move further south, away from Brazil and towards Uruguay we will come across another megalithic mystery: Itá Letra. Located deep within the depths of the Ybytyruzú mountain range, in Paraguay, stands the imposing enigma of Itá Letra (‘Piedra con Letra’), a place that is home to a set of indescribable petroglyphs, which for a long time were presumed to have been Viking in nature. The enigmatic set of petroglyphs date back to around 5,000 BC and feature numerous symbols. However, the most prominent of them all are the engravings which are believed to depict ‘Star Maps’ or Constellations. The enigmatic set of inscriptions were studied by a team of archaeologists from the Museo de Altamira (Spain) in 2010. The researchers concluded that the figures were elaborated by natives of the area, between the years 5,000 and 2,500 BC, thus discarding Scandinavian Vikings as possible authors. The oldest of the Itá Letra symbols are believed to date back to around 5,000 BC. and are located in the most hidden caves. The symbols represent constellations, footprints of felines or birds, female sexual organs, among other objects that the inhabitants of that time perceived and reproduced in their caves. A Pyramid-building Civilizations that predates the ancient Egyptians Despite the fact that everyone immediately identified Egypt with Pyramids, the truth is that there exists an ancient civilization in South America so advanced, that it built monuments and pyramids before the Egyptians. Caral is believed to be one of the first sophisticated ancient civilizations that developed in South America. They developed advanced methods in agronomy, medicine, engineering and architecture over 5000 years ago. “As for pharmacology, we found that Caral inhabitants used willow —containing the *active chemical ingredient of aspirin*— to relieve pain such as headaches.” Website andina.com.pe writes: “Another highlight was the civil engineering, which continues to amaze since scientists applied the seismic resistance technology to the over-5000-year-old constructions.” Chan-Chan: The largest Pre-Colombian city of South America The Andean Chimu state was an ancient civilization that established in modern-day Peru around 850 AD. This ancient city covers staggering twenty square kilometers with a dense urban center of six square kilometers. It was the imperial capital called home for over fifty thousand people. Archeologists have discovered pyramidal temples, cemeteries, gardens, reservoirs, and symmetrically arranged rooms in the center of the city that consisted of several walled citadels. The Chimu empire was well known for their extremely well-planned cities, having large, flat-topped buildings for the nobility and incredibly well-decorated adobe pyramids that served as temples. Puma Punku, Ollantaytambo, Sacsayhuaman—A megalithic mystery I could probably continue writing about these three above-mentioned sites for hours. But I’ve already done so in the past. All three sites are beyond a reason of a doubt, the best evidence that in the distant past, extremely advanced civilizations existed in South America. All three ancient sites, Ollantaytambo, Sacsayhuaman and Puma Punku offer evidence of supermassive stones and intricately shaped blocks which have been placed into position so that not a single sheet of paper fits in-between the blocks. Even more interesting is the fact that many of the stones found at Ollantaytambo and Sacsayhuaman seem almost as if they were melted and then shaped into a specific form. Sacsayhuaman, for example, features incredible zic-zac lines on the quarries where the ancients extracted their stones from. No one has been able to explain what type of tool could have created these evenly spaced lines at Sacsayhuaman. Puma Punku, on the other hand, offers us the so-called ‘H blocks’ which are a giant mystery on their own. No one knows for sure how they were shaped nor what they were used for. A perhaps even greater mystery is transportation. Just how did the builders of Puma Punku, Ollantaytambo, and Sacsayhuaman transport massive blocks of stone, without the use of technologies such as the wheel? Human activity in the Americas around 130,000 years ago? All of this doesn’t come as a surprise perhaps if we read through the latest archaeological discoveries that have been made in the American Continent. Published in the Journal Nature is a discovery that has sent shockwaves in the archaeological community. The arrival of the first humans in America has for provoked for years an intricate scientific debate among experts. After finding evidence of the use of stone tools and fossil remains of a mastodon at an archaeological site in California, experts claim that some of our human relatives had already migrated to the New World approximately 130,000 years ago. “I realize that 130,000 years is a really old date and makes our site the oldest archaeological site in the Americas,” says study leader Tom Deméré, the paleontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum, whose team describes their analysis today in Nature. “Of course, extraordinary claims like this require extraordinary evidence, and we feel like the Cerutti mastodon site presents this evidence.” And while the above-mentioned find was made in North America, it drives us to ask questions which we’ve avoided for decades. If there were people in North America some 130,000 years ago, isn’t it possible that similar hominids existed to the south? In Central and South America? Let me know what you think and post your comments below. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading this article, as much as I enjoyed writing it. *Clyclopean: denoting a type of ancient masonry made with massive irregular blocks. Featured Image Credit: Jungle Ruins by Julian-Faylona. Image posted with permission. Copyright Ancient Code. Unless otherwise stated by Ancient Code, no Content published on www.ancient-code.com, www.ancient-code.es may be copied, distributed, published, rewritten or used in any way, in whole or in part, without prior written agreement from Ancient Code. That includes this article as well. When you think about the oldest settlements and cities on Earth, a few of us are aware of the fact that some of these cities date back to times before history was even written. Depending on the definition of a city, we can discuss a number of ancient settlements that could rightfully compete for the title of the oldest city on Earth. If we take a look what textbooks have to say, a city is usually defined as being a large populated urban center of commerce and administration, ruled by a system of laws, while regulated with means of sanitation. And while this may be a really basic definition of a city, other factors such as population, number of buildings, level of government, the presence of walls and fortification, and the density of buildings/population. In ancient times, a city was mostly described as an urban center of dense population, featuring a specific pattern of buildings. Professor M. E. Smith of Arizona State University writes in The Sage Encyclopedia of Urban Studies: The demographic definition, based on the concepts of Louis Wirth, identifies cities as large, dense settlements with social heterogeneity”. Based on the above definitions, I’ve gathered a list of 11 of the oldest cities erected on Earth. Damascus is arguably the oldest of them all Damascus is now the capital of the Syrian Arab Republic and is considered the countries largest city. Damascus has an extensive history and according to scholars, the early stages of the city date back to around 10,000 BC. The ancient city of Damascus was recognized as a significant cultural, commercial and administrative center for thousands of years. Jericho, nearly as old as Damascus  According to reports, archaeologists have successfully excavated the ruins of as many as twenty successive settlements in Jericho, dating back more than 11,000 years. The city is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth, and the first people settled there as early as 9,000 BC. Eridu—the oldest city on Earth, according to the Sumerian King List?
We start off with Eridu, located in modern-day Iraq. This city was long considered the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia and is still today argued as being the oldest city in the world. Experts argue that Eridu could mean either mighty place of guidance place. It is mentioned in the Sumerian King List: “In Eridu, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28800 years. Alalngar ruled for 36000 years. 2 kings; they ruled for 64800 years. Then Eridu fell and the kingship was taken to Bad-tibira.” The ancient city of Eridu was considered the birthplace of humanity. According to the Sumerian King List Eridu was the first city in the World. The opening line reads, “[nam]-lugal an-ta èd-dè-a-ba When kingship from heaven was lowered, In Sumerian mythology, Eridu was said to be one of the five cities built before the Deluge occurred. The city is believed to have been founded in 5400 BC. Varanasi India—an ancient city founded by a God India is the birthplace of many incredible things. Rightfully, India holds one of the most incredible histories in the world. According to Hindu Legend, the ancient city of Varanasi is at least 5,000 years old and is considered one of the first cities to appear on Earth. Despite legends suggesting the city dates back more than 5,000 years, evidence of habitation goes back around 3,000 years. According to Hindu mythology, Varanasi was founded by the god Shiva. Byblos—From where the English word ‘Bible’ is derived from Byblos is considered by many authors cradle of many civilizations. This ancient city is considered the oldest of Phoenicia and is believed to have been continuously inhabited for at least 5,000 years, although signs of occupation date back even longer. The English word Bible is derived from Byblos, as the city was an important port where papyrus was exported from. The city was founded as Gebal by the Phoenicians, and its current name was given to the city by the Greeks. Uruk—the Legendary City of Gilgamesh  Uruk rightfully competes in the list as one of the oldest cities on Earth. Founded by the king Enmerkar, the Sumerian King List mentions a king of Eanna before him, the epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta relates that Enmerkar constructed the House of Heaven for the goddess Inanna in the Eanna District of Uruk. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh builds the city wall around Uruk and is king of the city. Archeologists have discovered multiple cities of Uruk built atop each other in chronological order.
Aleppo—currently the second largest city in Syria The ancient City of Aleppo is a treasure-trove of history. The city has barely been excavated by experts since the modern city occupies its ancient city. According to reports, the ancient city of Aleppo was inhabited since around 5,000 BC, as excavations in Tallet Alsauda have shown. The ancient city was of great importance and evidence of that is that fact that Aleppo appears in historical records much earlier than Damascus. The first record of Aleppo comes from the third millennium BC, in the Ebla tablets when Aleppo was referred to as Ha-lam. Alexander the Great took over the city in 333 BC. Arbil—an ancient city a few have heard of Locally called Hawler by the Kurdish people, the ancient city of Arbil is the modern-day capital of Iraqi Kurdistan and is one of the largest cities in modern-day Iraq. According to archaeological evidence, human settlement at Arbil (aka Erbil) can be traced back to around 5,000 BC, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements of the world. Erbil was an integral part of Assyria from around 2050 BC, becoming a relatively important city during the Old Assyrian Empire. Athens—the birthplace of Western civilization The ancient city of Athens is considered as being not only the birthplace of western civilization but the homeplace of philosophy and critical thinking. The city of Athens has been continuously inhabited for around 7,000 years while the oldest human occupation in the surrounding area dates back between the 11th and 7th millennium BC. Argos—home of the Pheidonian measures According to experts, the ancient city of Argos was inhabited continuously since at least 5,000 BC. In Greek Mythology, Argos was the son of Zeus. The city is famous for the introduction of measures that set the standards for an accepted system. The city has been cycling between village and city status for 7,000 years. According to scholars, the recorded history of the city begins in the latter 1st millennium BC. Interestingly, Argos is considered to be the origins of the ancient Macedonian royal Greek house of the Argead dynasty, whose most celebrated members were Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great. Crocodilopolis—yeah that’s a name and it is most likely the oldest city in ancient Egypt Crocodilopolis or if you wish Shedet, or more commonly Faiyum was founded around 4,000 BC. The ancient city was homeplace of the worship of the Crocodile God Sobek. The ancient city was established on the Nile river, located southwest of Memphis. Grand Island police broke a window and pulled the man from a smoke-filled vehicle moments before it was fully engulfed in flames
Firearms found in Baltimore FD trainee’s car after police respond to threats made against classmatesPolice say a Baltimore City Fire Academy trainee threatened to “stack bodies” before classmates alerted instructors, leading officers to seize multiple firearms from his vehicle
There are a number of ancient cities—considered myths by most authors—that some believe existed before written history, in different places on Earth. The Lost City of Z, just like Atlantis is one such mysterious place. The most famous person to ever search for this lost city was a man called Percy Harrison Fawcett a renowned explorer who tried discovering the long-lost city thought to remain hidden somewhere in the Amazon jungle. According to myths and legends, the lost City of Z would have been erected in very ancient times by the descendants of Atlantis. It is believed that the Atlanteans who survived the destruction of their home and escaped to a number of different regions on Earth, and some of them ended up in the Amazon, where they eventually settled down. Fawcett made eight expeditions, disappearing in the last in strange circumstances. Did he find the lost city of Z in the Amazonian jungle? Could the Lost City of Z be connected to El Dorado and Atlantis? And what exactly happened to Fawcett in his last expedition? No one seems to have answers for these questions. But where to stories about massive cities made of gold, inhabited by powerful beings come from? We can say that part of the stories come from the old continent. In other words, when the Europeans explorers began arriving at the Americas, the myths and legends of supernatural creatures and pseudo-human tribes slowly gave way to stories of massive ancient cities hidden in the heart of the jungle. But what exactly is the reason? Some authors would argue that thanks to the abundance of indigenous communities that the Europeans faced and their exuberant religious rites fed the European fantasies which quickly spread. Thinking of a great civilization whose wealth one cannot imagine was quickly acknowledged as a common idea. An idea that would later—acoridng to many authors—become known as the legend of El Dorado and that, moreover, satisfied the delirious hunger for gold of the first, and several of the following, visitors to the continent. The Lost City of Z and Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett was a British explorer who named the Lost City of Z in 1912 after finding an ancient document titled Manuscript 512, kept in the National Library of Brazil. It is believed that his conviction was fed in part due to the rediscovery of the lost city of Machu Picchu in 1911.  The document—Manuscript 512—is believed to have been authored by Portuguese Bandeirantes, João da Silva Guimarães, who allegedly discovered the ruins of a mighty ancient city, containing arches, statues, and temples covered in hieroglyphs, deep in the Amazonian Jungle in 1753. While Guimarães described the city in great detail, he failed to give off its location. The enigmatic manuscript is completed with curious details, such as documenting the discovery of a bag of gold coins bearing the silhouette of an archer and a crown, or the reproduction of hieroglyphs copied from various corners of the city, which some say bare an uncanny similarity with Greek and Phoenician letters. In some way, Fawcett was obsessed with lost cities. Throughout his travels, Fawcett had heard rumors of a secret ancient underground city located ‘somewhere’ in the jungles of Chile, which, according to tales, legends, and reports, was made of streets paved with silver and roofs of gold. Fawcett wrote about the Lost City of Z in a letter to his son in 1912:
The mystery behind Fawcett’s disappearance So, what happened to one of the most famous explorers in history? In 1921, the first expedition to find the Lost City of Z was assembled by Fawcett. His search for Z culminated with his disappearance and the appearance of many myths and tales surrounding his faith. His last expedition was set in March in April of 1925, this time financed by newspapers and societies such as the Royal Geographic Society and the Rockefellers. Fawcett was certain that his expedition would culminate with the discovery of the mythical city. In May of 1925, the expeditions had reached the edge of uncharted territory, exploring an area that no foreigner had ever dared crossing. Fawcett’s beliefs were greatly influenced on what the Indians had told him about alleged Lost Cities spread across the Amazon jungle. Even his penultimate letter – nine days before he mysteriously vanished, mentions one such tale. Correspondence from Colonel Fawcett dated May 20th, 1925
The team traveled into territory that no one had ever seen. They faced many dangers, but they wouldn’t give up. Eventually, they reached an area called ‘Dead Horse Camp’ when Fawcett sent back dispatches for another five months, finally stopping after the fifth. In this dispatch, he would send a letter to his wife saying (dated 29th May 1925):
Those were the final words of Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett. Two years passed and nothing was heard from Fawcett nor his team. This resulted in many expeditions being launched in order to find them. Mysteriously, each expedition suffered the same fate as Fawcett’s. Fawcett’s disappearance resulted in a total of 13 expeditions being mounted in which more than a hundred people lost their lives, attempting to find not only Fawcett but the Legendary Lost City of Z as well. No one knows what exactly happened to Fawcett, his expedition and to more than one hundred people that set out to search for him. Numerous theories were proposed eventually. Some say Fawcett and his team were killed by an Amazonian tribe, while otters suggest they may have starved, drowned, or suffered a disease. There are some who also say that they may have been robbed and killed by bandits in the region. Featured Image Credit: Leon Tukker. Posted with permission. What can mapped drainage systems on Mars teach scientists about the red planet’s watery past? This is what a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences hopes to address as a team of scientists from the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) conducted a first-time mapping study involving Martian river basins. This study has the potential to not only gain insight into ancient Mars and how much water existed there long ago, but also develop new methods for mapping ancient river basins on Mars and potentially other worlds.
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Our planet is filled with incredible stories, myths, and legends about incredible civilizations and cultures that inhabited Earth tens of thousands of years ago, before written history. Among all these fascinating legends, including Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, and Shambala among others, there is one especially suggestive for which the ancient Greek historians were interested. It was the so-called land of Hyperborea, which was said to rival the mythical Atlantis. A place in which, according to the myths, the gods who descended from heaven lived, a place of incredible prosperity, technology, and history. This mythical land is said to have been like no other. Hyperboreans were said to have been immortal, in addition to being described as Gods. Hyperborea was said to have been a theocracy ruled by three priests of the god Apollo.  Furthermore, the god Apollo drove his flying vehicle to this region every nineteen years to rejuvenate. It is also said that Medusa was banished to those lands. Various fragments about Pythagoras claimed that he came from the Hyperboreans. Located far to the north, somewhere near the icy regions of the North Pole, the legends speak of an ancient and almost forgotten civilization. Mythical in character, it is said that the Hyperborean civilization flourished in the northernmost region of planet Earth at a time when the area was suitable for human life and development. Certain esoteric systems and spiritual traditions speak of Hyperborea as the terrestrial and celestial principle of civilization. In other words, the home of the ancient people. The original human. Some authors have even proposed several theories suggesting that Hyperborea was the original Garden of Eden, the exact place where the earthly planes and celestial planes meet. The land was described in a number of legends as being the perfect place on Earth, hence its connection to the Garden of Eden. Hyperborea is said to have been a land where the Sun shone twenty-four hours a day. Greek Mythology and the Hyperboreans It is in Greek Mythology where we find a lot of details about this mythical land. According to Greek literature, Hyperborea was a place inhabited by a race of Giants who were described as living in a place ‘beyond the north wind’. The Ancient Greek believed that Boreas, the God of the North Wind inhabited Thrace, and therefore Hyperborea was commonly referred to as a place located far to the north of Thrace. As the Greek described Hyperborea as a place where the Sun shone twenty-four hours a day, modern authors have suggested they may have described a location within the North Circle of our planet.  However, some authors argue that Hyperborea had no actual location. According to Pindar, a Greek poet:
Pindar also described the otherworldly perfection of the Hyperboreans:
But it is Greek historian Herodotus who describes this incredible place with detail in his book Histories (Book IV, Chapters 32–36). Herodotus reported three initial references that apparently mentioned the Hyperboreans, including Hesiod and Homer, the latter purportedly having written about Hyperborea in his lost work Epigoni. Herodotus also recorded that the 7th-century BC poet Aristeas wrote of the ancient Hyperboreans in a poem (now regrettably lost) called Arimaspea which speaks about a journey to the Issedones, who are thought to have lived in the Kazakh Steppe. Beyond these lived the one-eyed Arimaspians, further on the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond these the Hyperboreans. Herodotus thought that Hyperborea prevailed somewhere in Northeast Asia. So, if Hyperboreans did exist, where was it located then? Different sources indicate different locations. Some authors argue that the ancient Hyperboreans were located somewhere beyond the snowy Riphean Mountains–a mountain range mentioned by various authors of classical antiquity but whose locations remains a profound mystery. (The Montes Riphaeus mountain range on Earth’s Moon is named in honor of the Riphean Mountains.) If we take a look at the work of Pausanias: “The land of the Hyperboreans, men living beyond the home of Boreas.” According to Homer, Boreas was in Trace, so Hyperborea was in his opinion north of Thrace, in Dacia. But, as the Riphean Mountain’s location was a heavily discussed topic in ancient time, it was a difficult task to agree on the location of both the mountains and the land where the Hyperboreans lived. According to Hecataeus of Miletus, an early Greek historian, and geographer, the Riphean Mountains were located near the Black Sea. Pindar, however, was convinced that the Ripehean Mountains and Borea was located near the Danube, while Heraclides Ponticus and Antimachus, in contrast, identified the Riphean Mountains with the Alps. They were also convinced that the Hyperboreans were a Celtic tribe who lived beyond the Riphean Mountains. Hyperborea was also identified as Britain by Hecataeus of Abdera in the 4th century BC. In a fragment by Diodorus Siculus we read: “In the regions beyond the land of the Celts there lies in the ocean an island no smaller than Sicily. This island, the account continues, is situated in the north and is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, who are called by that name because their home is beyond the point whence the north wind (Boreas) blows; and the island is both fertile and productive of every crop, and has an unusually temperate climate…” Plutarch, on the other hand, wrote in the first century AD that the Hyperboreans were most likely the Gauls, who attacked and sacked Rome in the Fourth century BC. Legends speak of mighty ancient civilizations To the ancient Greek and Romans, Thule and Hyperborea were one of several terrae incognitae, regions that have not been mapped or documented. In these uncharted lands, Pliny, Pindar, and Herodotus among others believe that people lived incredible longevous lifespans, surpassing the age of one thousand years. According to a number of ancient authors, the sun supposedly rose and set only once a year, meaning that if such civilization existed, it was most likely located above or on the arctic circle.  The Hyperboreans were allegedly once on the verge of war against a race of soldiers which many authors suggest may have been the Atlanteans. However, the war never happened as the soldiers realized the inhabitants of Hyperborea were far too strong. This account was preserved by Aelian–a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric. Some beleive the account by Aelian was a work of satire or comedy Featured Image Credit: Julian Faylona. Posted with permission. |
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