The Most Powerful Man on Earth

Envision a world where one man's whisper could silence the clamour of civilizations, where his decree could shift the course of rivers and reshape the contours of nations. This was the world under the iron fist of Ashurbanipal, the last formidable king of Assyria. With an empire stretching from Egypt to Persia, he was a force unrivalled, a tempest that swept across continents, bending the ancient world to his indomitable will. This is a tale of true power, of a man who did not merely exist in history, but authored it. Brace yourself to delve into the epoch of Ashurbanipal, arguably the most powerful man the Earth has ever known.

Forbidden Discoveries Documentary 2018 Impossible Ruins, Out of Place Artifacts & Ancient Tech

You are about to discover secrets from our past that you never thought were possible. This is indeed some of the most amazing information you will ever see! Out of place artifacts that should not exist, relics that historians cannot believe, discoveries that look modern but are in fact many thousands of years old and archaeological finds that traditional science says this can’t be true!

Napoleonic Wars 1809 - 14: Downfall

This video covers the period from 1809 to the Emperor's abdication in 1814. Along the way we encounter the horrors of the French occupation of Spain and Portugal, Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia, and the great struggle for German in 1813. The video concludes with arguably Napoleon's finest campaign - his doomed defence of Paris in 1814. Enjoy!

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...