Nicolas Cage...an Immortal?
The owner of the admittedly eerie photograph is an antiques dealer from Bristol, Tennessee, by the name of Jack Mord — which, in and of itself, sounds a bit creepy, like an old Mad Magazine spoof of Jack Lord that would come out around Halloween time. Regardless of his appellation, Mord claimed that he stumbled across the strange picture in back of an old photo album that was allegedly: “filled with an unusual number of Civil War death portraits.” Continue reading at Is Nicolas Cage Really a Vampire?
**********
Dig reveals human skulls mounted on stakes
Several human skulls found mounted on wooden stakes have been uncovered from a Stone Age lake bed in central Sweden in what is believed to be the first discovery of its kind anywhere in the world.
“We found two skulls that still had wooden stakes sticking out of them through a whole at the base of the skull,” archeologist Fredrik Hallgren, head of excavation with the Stiftelsen Kulturmiljövård Mälardalen (‘Cultural Preservation Society of Mälardalen’) told The Local.
The skulls and other artifacts, including bones of wild animals, were recovered at the Kanaljorden excavation site in the town of Motala in central Sweden.
According to results from carbon-14 dating techniques, the skulls and other items are estimated to be about 8,000-years-old.
“As far as we know, this discovery is unique in the world. Nothing has been found like this that is so old,” said Hallgren.
The mounted skulls were found with the stakes inserted the full length from the base to the top of the skull.
In another case a temporal bone of one individual identified as a female was found placed inside the skull of another woman.
Altogether Hallgren and his colleagues have identified skulls or skull fragments from 11 individuals, including both men and women and ranging in age from infants to middle-age.
The bones were found in what was a shallow lake during the early Stone Age which appears to have served as a ceremonial burial site.
“Clearly this lake was some sort of holy place for the people who lived here at the time,” said Hallgren.
Archaeologists are exploring two theories to explain why the human skulls were mounted on wooden stakes before being placed in the lake bed
“One thought is that it was part of some sort of secondary burial ritual where the skulls were removed from dead bodies that had initially been placed elsewhere,” said Hallgren.
“After the soft tissue had rotted away, the skulls were removed and placed on the stakes before being placed in the shallow lake.”
Another theory is that the mounted skulls are trophies brought back from battles with other settlers in the area.
“It may have been a way to prove one's success on the battlefield,” Hallgren explained.
Further analysis is currently underway to determine if the bones are remains of locals or people with a distant geographic origin. Using DNA and other laboratory techniques, archaeologists will also try to find out if the remains found at the site belong to a single family group or persons unrelated to one another.
Hallgren said that, as far as he knew, the discovery of human skulls mounted on stakes from this period of history was unprecedented.
“There are other examples of human heads being mounted on stakes, but most of the finds are from the colonial period,” he said.
The Kanaljorden settlement excavation site has been ongoing since 2009 and is located about 500 metres from Motala’s central train station. The site dates from a part of the Stone Age known as the Mesolithic period, at which time the area around Motala was deemed an almost perfect place to live.
There was no agriculture in the area, however, with settlers instead surviving by fishing, hunting, and gathering. - thelocal
**********
Holy Cows!
New figures show seventeen cases of attacks on people in the first half of this year – more than the total number of bites since 2004.
Animal rights groups blamed a sharp increase in the number of people bitten by cows and buffaloes in the capital New Delhi on a surge in building projects which have blocked their traditional grazing routes and left the creatures bewildered and panicked.
Campaigners said many of the cows and buffaloes wandering Delhi's roads are owned and neglected by illegal dairies who are concerned only about their milk production.
Vasanti Kumar, of Stray Relief and Animal Welfare (STRAW) said the situation had been created by the failure of local officials to keep cattle off the streets, and by a reverential public which feeds them.
"They are a cause for concern and cause many accidents, not just hurting humans but themselves. Many people feed the cows and other stray animals in public places as they are considered to be sacred. This has to stop," she said.
Uma Menon of the charity Friendicoes said the increase in traffic in the city had made the cows more aggressive. "Bovines are programmed with a map to reach back to their homes but with the fast-changing city landscape, they get strayed and panic," she said.
"Animals hear much higher frequency sounds than humans, there is too much noise produced by traffic. This can be a cause of animals turning violent in public places, although their instinctive behavior is not to hurt." - telegraph
**********
UFO sightings in U.S. soared this summer...to more than DOUBLE national average
UFO sightings in the U.S. have more than doubled this summer, according to new research.
The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) - an organisation that tracks reports of unidentified flying objects - said some states doubled their numbers in the last six weeks.
According to MUFON, 1,013 sightings were reported in August, up from an average of about 500 per month nationwide.
MUFON international director Clifford Clift told Life's Little Mysteries: 'It's pretty exciting.
Mr Clift said the 'UFO flap', which occurs when a cluster of sightings happen in a short period of time, could be due to a psychological phenomenon called 'priming', in which people believe they see what they are told to look for, whether it exists or not.
A shift in focus in popular culture could have led to an increase in sightings, he said - with more books, movies and television shows focusing on the mystery of the UFO and alien invasion.
'It's likely that the media and (alien-themed) movies that are coming out, like Apollo 18 and Paul, are piquing people's interest in UFOs,' Mr Clift told Little Mysteries.
People are also more likely to go outdoors in the summer months, increasing the chance for sightings.
Numbers could also be inflated due to duplication in sightings.
Mr Clift also said MUFON has received reports of objects reported as UFOs, which the organisation has determined to be other objects, such as airplanes, shooting stars, satellites and weather balloons.
The organisation, he said, is still investigating data on UFO sighting reports from recent weeks. - dailymail
**********
Billy Meier and the CIA
Whether you love or loathe Billy Meier his activities have been the subject of intensive monitoring by intelligence authorities including the CIA. Officialdom at a secret level take the man very seriously indeed. The extraordinary surveillance of the Swiss UFO contactee has been outlined in detail by the late American investigator, Wendelle Stevens, who spent eight years involved in an in-depth investigation of Meier and his followers at their farm near Hinterschmidruti. Stevens gives a detailed picture of the contact that he and fellow investigators Lee and Brit Elders were pressured into having with a range of intelligence agencies during their visits to Switzerland in the late 1970s and 1980s. These pre-briefings and debriefings, which took place mainly in London, could stretch for days and were dominated by discussions with a senior CIA officer who maintained a secure, sealed off section of a London hotel. The interviews were sometimes marked by anomalous phenomena that Stevens could only ascribe to the intervention of Meier’s alleged Pleiadian visitors – in other words, while the CIA was monitoring Meier, the ET visitors appeared to be monitoring the CIA with technology that left no doubt about who was on top. The ET pranks included dematerializations of documents and shenanigans with a secure CIA telephone line. This cooperation by Stevens and the Elders with a range of interested government agents was frankly admitted by Stevens in anecdotes scattered through several of the six volumes of his investigation reports and contact notes of Meier. This huge output of investigative material totalling nearly 3,000 pages was published by Stevens between 1982 and 1996 and reflects the former US Air Force Lt Colonel’s conviction that the Meier contacts, though bizarre and eccentric by conventional standards, were authentic. KENS NOTE: Billy Meier is an icon in the UFO community. His incredible story of aliens and other worlds are still being investigated by today's top Ufologist. GOOGLE " Billy Meier " and decide for yourself. - Thanks to Ray Young and UFO Digest. - Ken Pfeifer - World UFO Photos
