15 New Discoveries In Africa That TERRIFIES Scientists!

Africa is a continent that’s proven to be one of the most interesting places on Earth. It’s filled with vast lands where untold wonders lie hidden, waiting to be discovered.

And well, Africa has once again proven its status as a hotbed of biological diversity, scientists have just discovered 15 extraordinary animal species, and they’ve shocked the world of science.

These newfound creatures, hidden away in the continent's remote corners, have shattered our expectations and rewritten the rules of zoology. Join us as we dig deeper into what these species are, and how they’ve been hiding in plain sight, this whole time.

Euphrates River Has Finally Dried Up and Something TERRIFYING Is Happening!

Euphrates River has finally dried up and something terrifying is happening. The once mighty Euphrates River a symbol of life and civilization has suddenly vanished leaving behind the barren wasteland drought in a river that has both scientific and Biblical significance indicates that something terrible is on the way. You will remain on the edge of your seat throughout this video as we discuss the Euphrates and its drought from both scientific and cultural perspectives. Let's begin the Euphrates River one of the longest rivers in Western Asia spans over 2,800 kilometers and is considered a critical geographical feature in the region originating from the mountains of Eastern Turkey. The river flows through Syria and Iraq eventually meeting with the Tigris River and Southern Iraq to form the shat al-arab and empties itself into the Persian Gulf.

15 Amazing Forts and Fortresses

For thousands of years, armies have built fortresses to defend important areas from attack. And while many have become more or less obsolete in the face of modern weaponry, many of history’s most amazing forts still stand to this day. Join us for today's video, as we count down the top 15 most amazing fortresses in the world!

Scientists recreate the face of a victim of one of Europe's most savage battles in 1361

A medieval warrior whose face was split open in one of Europe's most savage battles has been brought back to life in a stunning recreation, 660 years after his gruesome death.

Experts reconstructed the fighter's visage after his skull was recovered from a mass grave outside Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland.

It was there in 1361 that a Danish force of some 2,500 men, many of them experienced mercenaries, perpetrated a massacre.

They faced a rural militia of roughly 2,000 poorly-armed peasants – at least a third of whom were minors or the elderly, excavations suggest.

In the slaughter that followed, the defenders suffered some 1,800 dead.

Among them was the warrior, whose mouth was smashed by an axe, with additional wounds above his left eye and on the left cheek bone probably caused by a pole weapon.

Now Brazilian graphics expert Cicero Moraes has brought his features to life by importing his skull into a digital interface.

He said: 'Once the skull was ready, a series of soft tissue thickness markers were spread across the skull.

'These markers, roughly speaking, indicate the skin boundaries in some regions of the face.

'To complement the data, we imported a CT scan of a living donor and deformed the bones and soft tissue from the CT scan to match the face being approximated.

'With the basic face defined, we finalised the approximation and generated the most scientific image, in shades of gray, with eyes closed and without hair.'

The skull itself yields an incomplete set of data, so some aspects – like the size of the nose, mouth and eyes – are projections based on statistical data.

Meanwhile, matters like hair and skin tone are subjective.

But the end result is an approximation of what the warrior would have looked like at his time of death.

Whether it was blow from axe that proved fatal remains unknown.

Mr Moraes said: 'It is difficult to estimate this with the skull alone.

'But surely such an injury would not be an easy thing to treat, considering the year and the reality at the time it was inflicted.'

For Mr Moraes, the images bring home the reality of war.

'These images are quite impactful,' he said.

'Today we have several conflicts happening in the world and we usually observe the scenes from afar, having no idea what happens to the combatants.

'Imagine how it is for those who receive such violence.'

After the battle, the citizens of Visby – the island's capital – surrendered to avoid further bloodshed. The victorious King Valdemar IV was paid a heavy ransom and claimed the island as part of his kingdom.

Both Sweden and Denmark continued to claim the island until the Second Treaty of Brömsebro was signed in 1645, following Denmark's defeat in the Torstenson War.

Five mass graves were ultimately found outside Visby's walls, with the first archaeological excavations in 1905 revealing many of the dead were buried in their armour.

Mr Moraes completed his reconstruction using a three-dimensional model of the skull shared by the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm.

He published his study in the 3D computer graphics journal OrtogOnLineMag.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ar...

12 Most Mysterious Places Scientists Don't Believe

Mysterious places have always been a source of intrigue and wonder for mankind. From the depths of the oceans to the heights of the mountains, there are places that have been shrouded in mystery for centuries. Scientists have studied and explored these areas, but many remain unexplained and are filled with intrigue and speculation. Here are twelve of the most mysterious places around the world that scientists still can’t explain.

Scientists Discovered How Neanderthals Conquered the Ice Age

In this video, we're going to take a look at how early Neanderthals conquered the ice age. We'll explore their adaptations and how they were able to navigate in an environment that was so hostile.

Neanderthals are a fascinating group of humans, and this video will give you a deep insight into their history and how they managed to conquer the ice age. We'll see how their intelligent and adaptive behaviour helped them succeed in an environment that was so difficult to survive in.

Over 300,000 years ago, mysterious early Neanderthals, sporting bearskin clothing and the latest high-tech weaponry, conquered northern Europe in style. Indeed, the use of bearskin was likely the key adaptation of early humans to the climate in the north. It was an ancient blitzkrieg, and these early humans left their mark on the archaeological record.

Neanderthals were a human species that lived across Eurasia starting over 400,000 years ago — long before us — until they went extinct around 40,000 years ago. But their legacy lives on; Neanderthal genes can be found in every modern human population due to interbreeding.

What are the Jinn?

In this video we explore the king of mythical creatures in the middle east - the Jinn. What are some of the misconceptions about these creatures, and what different kinds are there out there? Watch the video to find out!

Archaeologists Make Extraordinary Discovery After Diving Into a Flooded Tomb in Sudan

Pearce Paul Creasman and his team were the first people to go into the tomb for 100 years and, in that time, it has become harder to access because of the rising water level.

Mr Creasman told BBC Newsday that this was the first time underwater archaeology had been carried out in Sudan, the location of the ancient royal burial site of Nuri.

He found pottery figurines and gold leaf.

"The gold offerings were still sitting there - these small glass-type statues had been leafed in gold. And while the water destroyed the glass underneath, the little gold flake was still there," he told Newsday.

He believes these offerings were for Nastasen, a minor pharaoh who ruled the Kush kingdom from 335 BC to 315 BC.

This gold leaf would have been taken by thieves if it weren't for the rising water level making the tomb inaccessible to most, underwater archaeologist Kristin Romey writes in the National Geographic.

Mr Creasman told the BBC that the team "dug as far as we could" down a 65-step stairway which led to the tomb entry but "we got about 40 stairs down until we hit the water table and knew we wouldn't be able to go any further without putting our heads under".

Normal scuba tanks "would have been too cumbersome", he said, so instead they used a hose that pumped oxygen from the surface on the dive in January.

He described what he found as "remarkable":

"There are three chambers, with these beautiful arched ceilings, about the size of a small bus, you go in one chamber into the next, it's pitch black, you know you're in a tomb if your flash lights aren't on. And it starts revealing the secrets that are held within."

The tomb is part of the ancient site of Nuri which is spread across more than 170 acres in northern Sudan.

These pyramids mark the burials of Kushite royals who are sometimes referred to as "black pharaohs". The Kush kingdom lasted for many hundreds of years and, in the 8th Century BC, it conquered Egypt which it ruled for almost a century.

One difference between the pyramids in Sudan and the much more famous pyramids in Egypt is that the kings were buried below them, instead of inside.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-4886...

Oldest Human DNA Found in the UK Reveals Origins of Early Britons

Human remains from Kendrick’s Cave, from which DNA was recently extracted.

Researchers investigating ancient remains found in England and Wales have determined that they contain some of the oldest human DNA ever obtained in the United Kingdom. The DNA indicates Britain was occupied by two unrelated groups, which the scientists believe migrated to the island at the end of the last ice age.

“Finding the two ancestries so close in time in Britain, only a millennium or so apart, is adding to the emerging picture of [Paleolithic] Europe, which is one of a changing and dynamic population,” said Mateja Hajdinjak, a geneticist specializing in ancient DNA at the Francis Crick Institute, in a University College London release. The research is published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The team looked at DNA from the remains of two individuals, found in caves in England and Wales. The English remains date to about 15,000 years ago, while the Welsh remains date to about 13,500 years ago. The older remains were found in Gough’s Cave, Somerset, and the more recent remains were found in Wales’ Kendrick’s Cave.

When these people were alive, Britain was attached to continental Europe by a now-submerged land bridge called Doggerland. As the climate warmed and glaciers thawed, the sea level rose, cutting off the island.

Both remains are from the late Pleistocene, the epoch characterized by Neanderthals and wooly mammoths and ended with the conclusion of the most recent ice age about 12,000 years ago.

Sequencing the DNA and comparing it to previously analyzed DNA from West Eurasia and North Africa revealed the individuals’ histories. The ancestors of the Gough’s Cave individual arrived from northwestern Europe in a migration about 16,000 years ago, while the Kendrick’s Cave individual appeared to have descended from a western hunter-gatherer group that arrived in Britain about 14,000 years ago, with origins in the near East.

An ancient facial fragment from Gough’s Cave in Somerset.

Besides sequencing the DNA of two people, the researchers also conducted chemical analyses of other bones and teeth found at the sites. Those who lived near Kendrick’s Cave likely ate marine and freshwater foods, while those in Gough’s Cave survived on terrestrial mammals like aurochs and red deer.

Gough’s Cave is also where the remains of Cheddar Man were found. Cheddar Man was a lactose-intolerant person who died in his mid-20s about 10,000 years ago, whose remains were discovered in 1903.

“We knew from our previous work, including the study of Cheddar Man, that western hunter-gatherers were in Britain by around 10,500 years [before present], but we didn’t know when they first arrived in Britain, and whether this was the only population that was present,” said study co-author Selina Brace, a paleobiologist at Britain’s Natural History Museum, in the same release.

The groups in the two caves also had different cultural practices. Decorated animal bones—and no bones with signs of consumption—indicated that the cave in Wales was used primarily for burial, rather than occupation. Meanwhile, chewed bones and skulls fashioned into cups in Gough’s Cave indicate that its inhabitants were ritualistic cannibals.

There’s still plenty to decipher about when people arrived in Britain and how those ancient populations interacted, but the new research clues us in on the origins of two early groups.

Source: https://gizmodo.com/oldest-human-dna-found...

What Punishment Was Like in the Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire ruled for nearly a thousand years and today at Nutty History we are looking for what punishments Byzantine Emperors employed to keep things in check.

In 395 AD, the mighty Roman Empire split like a cellular organism into two. The Western Roman Empire ruled from Rome and the Byzantine Empire ruled from Byzantium also known as Constantinople or as we know it today, Istanbul. The idea behind the split was to help the realms prosper and defend themselves more efficiently. It was believed that having two equal emperors would lessen the number of power struggles that had been taking place within the Roman Empire for decades.

However, that didn’t change much and neither changed the bizarre and evil punishments that were used as a deterrent against uprisings and revolutions. But laws could only be as strong as the people implicating them. Some rulers turned out too weak and some ruled with an iron fist, pardoning no one.

What It Was Like to Be a Roman Slave

Slave labor was a huge aspect of Roman life and the Republic depended heavily on free work from human beings who had no rights, no possessions, and were left at the whims of their masters to be worked to death, starved, tortured, and sometimes even killed for the sake of enjoyment.

Sure, you may have seen Russell Crowe play one in a movie, but chances are you have no idea just how brutal it really was.

Today we’re exploring what it was really like to be a Roman slave.

The myth of Zeus' test

Dig into the myth of Baucis and Philemon, a couple who unknowingly showed the gods hospitality after their neighbors refused.

It was dark when two mysterious, shrouded figures appeared in a hillside village. The strangers knocked on every door in town, asking for food and shelter. But, again and again, they were turned away. Soon, there was just one door left: that of a small, thatched shack. Would the owners help the visitors — or spurn them? Iseult Gillespie shares the myth of Baucis and Philemon.

The Strangest Places In The World You Won't Believe Exist

Our planet is full of strange, unique and sometimes odd places, some natural and some man-made.

Some of them are fascinating and some are just utterly bizarre, in this video we will give you some of the most mind boggling places we could find.

Why Half of Colosseum Is Missing

Some places around the world have become must-sees for millions of tourists, but we rarely know what secrets they are hiding. The Roman Colosseum used to be nearly twice as large as it is today! Its architectural glory started to dim down in 217 when a fire struck the upper parapets and much of the building's interiors. The downfall continued with an earthquake, and a big part of the Colosseum's outer ring was damaged. What else happened to the Colosseum and other famous monuments of architecture worldwide? Let's find out!

The Alfred Jewel: Dazzling Anglo-Saxon Treasυre Found In A Field In The Soυth Of England

No other artefact surviving from the Anglo-Saxon era embodies so many rich resonances as the Alfred Jewel. It is a matchless piece of goldsmith's work by a master-craftsman operating under the patronage of the West Saxon court. The Jewel represents the pinnacle of Anglo-Saxon technological achievement, while the name of the monarch which it proclaims places it among the most precious of royal relics.

The Jewel came to light in 1693, ploughed up in a field at North Petherton, Somerset. Even its find-spot contributes to its interest, since North Petherton is only a few miles from Athelney Abbey, the stronghold in the marshes from which Alfred launched his counter-attack on elements of the Great Army of the Danes. This attack ultimately led to his crucial victory at Edington in 878. The Ashmolean's registers record its presentation in 1718 to the Museum, where it has formed one of the principal treasures of the collection ever since.

Over the years the Jewel has been the cause of as much speculation as admiration. Precisely what might have been its purpose was a source of much uncertainty: early theories suggested that it might have been the centrepiece of a royal headdress - literally a crown jewel - but the setting seemed inappropriate for that purpose. An alternative, that it was a pendant to be worn round the neck, seemed equally unhappy since it would have condemned the figure on the Jewel to have hung permanently upside-down. More recently opinion has moved towards its being an aestel or pointer, used to follow the text in a gospel book in much the same way that the Yad continues to be used in the Jewish synagogue for reading the Torah. The dragonesque head at the base of the Jewel holds in its mouth a cylindrical socket, within which the actual pointer - perhaps made of ivory - would have been held in place by a rivet (still in situ).

Similarly curious is the teardrop-shaped form of the piece. Current opinion suggests that the Jewel was formed around a pre-existing slab of rock-crystal, possibly a re-used Roman piece.

The figure represented in delicate colours in cloisonné enamel, on a plaque protected by the rock-crystal, is also enigmatic. Originally it was interpreted as St Cuthbert, the best-known English saint of the pre-Alfredian period, but it is now thought to represent the sense of sight: a contemporary silver brooch in the British Museum, engraved with figures representing all five senses, shows sight as a man holding two prominent plant-stems or flowers, exactly as on the Alfred Jewel. Such an allusion would be entirely appropriate for an instrument dedicated to the practice of reading.

And finally the inscription: AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN - 'Alfred ordered me to be made'. No one has ever doubted that the sponsor of the piece was King Alfred the Great. He died in 899 after turning the tide of battle against the Scandinavian warriors who threatened the continuing existence of Anglo-Saxon control over much of England. The West Saxon flavour of the prose is entirely in sympathy with such an interpretation. Alfred's achievements were as much cultural as military, and amongst his most effective measures was his commissioning of translations of religious texts into the vernacular. With each of the copies of one of these texts - the Pastoral Care of Pope Gregory the Great, written c.890 - which he dispatched to monasteries throughout England, he is said to have sent also a precious aestel so that it might be read with all due solemnity.

Although less impressive than the Alfred Jewel, the Minster Lovell Jewel, dating from the late ninth-century, shares many of its characteristics: the use of granulation as decoration appears on the surfaces of both pieces, while the fine enamelling technique (which is also a feature common to both) is extremely rare elsewhere at this time. The likelihood is that both pieces were made in the same workshop. The socket at the base of the Minster Lovell Jewel, which retains a rivet like that on the Alfred Jewel, also suggests that they performed the same function as a pointer.

Both jewels are on display in the ‘England 400-1600’ gallery on the second floor.

Replicas of the Alfred Jewel were made around 1901, in celebration of the millenary of King Alfred's death. Some were made by Payne's of Oxford and others by Elliot Stocks of London, but no records survive for either of these companies from this period. A few replicas were later made by the Ashmolean's conservation department.