Top 10 Weekly Articles

The best Ancient Origins articles for this week. Enjoy! [logo4fixed] View this email [in your browser]( [Top10Banner] [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [image?cs_ema...]( Toxicity at Gateway to Hell Explains ‘Miracle’ in Ancient City of Hierapolis [img3]( “Hell is empty and all the devils are here,” said William Shakespeare, and now, new scientific findings tells us how the devils got here! And it was through a “gateway to the underworld” located in the ancient Greco-Roman city of Hierapolis, in modern-day Turkey. Two millennia ago, visitors to “Pluto's Gate” sent small birds or other animals into this mysterious dark cavern to “test the toxic air” and high priests “hallucinating on the fumes” stood on the steps to the “opening to hell” and would sometimes lead... [Read more...]( Ancient Sex Curse Revealed: May Your Penis Hurt When You Make Love! [img3]( Curse tablets in the ancient world are like Facebook posts today—they were everywhere, created by almost everyone, and can still be found in the strangest of places. They could be broadly vague or incredibly specific; they could be politically, economically, or emotionally driven. They could be simple requests for vengeance or complex strategies for pain and suffering. Curse tablets were the slam-books of ancient Greece and Rome. One such instance of a... [Read more...]( Ancient X-Rated Book of Perversion Goes Up For Sale. Any Bidders? [secret-text]( A perverted "sex manual" featuring shocking magical and mythical X-rated content will be sold at a UK auction next month. The first edition of this sordid book entitled Aristotle's Masterpiece Completed In Two Parts, The First Containing the Secrets of Generation, was published in London in 1684. “It was as good as banned from distribution until the 1960s,” Jim Spencer, a valuer at Hansons Auctioneers in Derbyshire, told reporters at the BBC. This weathered old book, somewhat ironically bound in leather, offers questionable advice on “reproduction and fertility” and is estimated to fetch £80-£120 ($110-$170) under the hammer on 27 March... [Read more...]( Five Surprising Things DNA has Revealed About our Ancestors [img3]( Researchers recently used DNA from the 10,000-year-old “Cheddar Man”, one of Britain’s oldest skeletons, to unveil what the first inhabitants of what now is Britain actually looked like. But this isn’t the first time DNA from old skeletons has provided intriguing findings about our ancestors. Rapid advances in genetic sequencing over the past few decades have opened up a whole new window into the past. Archaeologists have known for some time that modern humans... [Read more...]( [banner_0]( The Pagan Attis and Christian Jesus: A Spurious Connection? [img3]( Recently, it has been popular to suggest in some circles that Christianity was influenced, or even derived from, the ancient Roman mystery religions – religions often known to have orgiastic rituals and connection to a personal god. One pagan figure that is popular among proponents of this idea is Attis, a Phrygian god associated with vegetation and consort of the goddess Cybele. Attis is claimed to have been born of a virgin, crucified on a tree and rose again from the dead in a similar... [Read more...]( Lost Codes Discovered in Terrorist’s Treasure Tunnel [alchemical]( Hidden deep beneath the ancient Iraq city of Nineveh, archeologists assessing the destruction of Isis treasure hunters have uncovered 2,700-year-old inscriptions describing the rule of an ancient Assyrian king “helping in our understanding of the world’s first empire” reported The Telegraph. The Nebi Yunus shrine on top of a hill in eastern Mosul is one of two mounds that form part of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh. Believed by Muslims to be the tomb of Yunus in the Koran and venerated by Christians as the tomb of the Profit Jonah, a Live Science article reported that sometime during the Isis (or Daesh) occupation of Nineveh, between June 2014 and January 2017 the shrine was blown up by “Isis looters looking for archeological treasures from the Assyrian kings.”... [Read more...]( Thumbs Down for American Man Who Damaged $4.5 million Artifact [img3]( A 24-year-old American man was arrested by the FBI for breaking off and then stealing part of a $4.5 million Terracotta Warrior, according to a report in TheJournal.ie. On the 21st December 2017, Michael Rohana had been at an "ugly sweater party" at the Franklin Institute in Pennsylvania where 10 of the famous Chinese Terracotta Warriors were on display. Using his "cellphone’s flashlight” he entered the terracotta warrior exhibition room and according to the arrest affidavit... [Read more...]( [banner]( Does the Negev’s Ancient Rock-Art Help Turn the Bible Exodus Story into Fact? [img3]( A chain of holy mountains with “god’s name” painted in ancient rock-art has led a scholar to claim he has finally identified the long sought after “lost region" inhabited by the proto-Israelies after the Exodus from Egypt. The Bible details the lives of the Hebrew people and although their destiny after Egypt is hotly debated, their origins are equally mysterious. However, if the recent observations of author Yehuda Rotblum, as presented in his new book Rock Art in Israel , are right, then we all have to accept that... [Read more...]( 13,500-year-old Artwork Saved from the Abyss of the Continental Shelf [infant-dna]( Snared in a fishing net at the bottom of the North Sea, on the edge of the continental shelf, the “oldest Dutch work of art” has been found, according to an article published in Cambridge Antiquity magazine last week. The 13,500 year-old carved bison bone, which has a distinctive zigzag pattern along its length, was carved by a “Late Ice Age hunter gatherer” who once foraged the bountiful landscapes which later became the North Sea. This discovery highlights ”the importance of continental shelves as archaeological archives,” according to scientists in the Cambridge report. Curator of prehistory at the Leiden museum, Luc Amkreutz, who wrote the paper, told reporters at Dutch News , “What the carvings mean is unclear. Some have interpreted the zigzags as symbols of movement, rhythm, water or a need for symmetry.”... [Read more...]( [FindUs_small...]( [FindUs_small...]( [FindUs_small...]( [FindUs_small...]( [FindUs_small...]( [FindUs_small...]( [FindUs_small...]( [FindUs_small...]( You Might Like [image?cs_ema...]( [image?cs_ema...]( [image?cs_ema...]( [image?cs_ema...]( [image?cs_ema...]( [image?cs_ema...]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( You have received this email because you have subscribed to [Ancient-Origins.net](. Copyright © 2017 [Stella Novus Limited]( - [Ancient Origins]( Stella Novus Limited - Ancient Origins. 61 Saint Assam's Park, Raheny, Dublin 5, D05 W3C8, Ireland. 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