Group items tagged

Only 11 miles from Manhattan, Hart Island has been the final resting place for New York’s unclaimed and poor for over a century.

It is the largest mass grave in the United States. At least 1,000 bodies are buried on the island a year, and more than 1 million can be found in the plots of its potter’s field, known as City Cemetery.

Its earliest iteration was as a training ground for soldiers during the Civil War. Purchased by the city in 1868, the land in the Long Island Sound has been home to a boys reformatory, asylum, prison, rehab center and even a Nike missile silo

Search for Nefertiti's burial site given green light

Despite relentless looters, the boy king's final resting place continues to be one of Egypt's most prolific discoveries. Uncovered by Howard Carter in 1922, it remains the most intact tomb ever unearthed. And has been a treasure trove for archaeologists, where close to 2,000 objects were recovered.

The academic also surmised that recycled equipment found in the burial chamber predates Tutankhamun's accession.

researchers discovered the remnants of dozens of individuals buried under and around the stone ring

14 more women (and nine men) were excavated by researchers

"The archaeology now shows that as far as the burials go, women were as prominent there as men. This contrasts with the earlier burial mounds, where men seem to be more prominent,"

A researcher at a Swedish university says that Viking burial clothes bear the word “Allah”

Inspecting the woman’s silk burial clothes, Larsson noticed small geometric designs. She compared them to similar designs on a silk band found in a 10th-century Viking grave, this one in Birka, Sweden. It was then that she came to the conclusion that the designs were actually Arabic characters—and that they spelled out the name of God in mirror-image.

tendency of white supremacists to appropriate the symbols of Vikings, whom they claim constituted a pure-bred white race; in Charlottesville, for example, neo-Nazis were seen toting banners with Viking runes. The idea that Vikings were influenced by Muslims would likely be anathema to them. “The Vikings are every white supremacist’s favorite white guy.”

The history and archaeology of Mongolia, most famously the sites associated with the largest land empire in the history of the world under Ghengis Khan, are of global importance.

Climate change and looting may seem to be unrelated issues. But deteriorating climate and environmental conditions result in decreased grazing potential and loss of profits for the region’s many nomadic herders.

For Mongolians, these remains are the lasting reminders of their ancient past and a physical tie to their priceless cultural heritage.

This week marked 14 years since retired FBI Special Agent Bob Levinson vanished almost without a trace on Iran's Kish Island, and one year since his family finally accepted U.S. assessments that he died in captivity -- but they still haven't been able to adequately say goodbye to the beloved husband, father and grandfather.

As a result, the whereabouts of his remains are as much a mystery as the timing and circumstances of his death, which was assessed by the U.S. intelligence community in large part because of the duration of his disappearance, his diabetes, his age -- he would have turned 73 on Wednesday -- and because the only video released by his unknown captors came early in his ordeal.

None of the American hostages in Syria or Iraq were ever recovered after they were killed in ISIS captivity in 2014-2015, including American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and humanitarian aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.

In ancient Mesopotamia 4,500 years ago, long before horses arrived in the region, another spirited member of the equine family, the kunga, took a starring role in pulling four-wheeled wagons into battle.

Archaeologists had suspected that these animals — depicted in art, their sales recorded in cuneiform writing, their bodies sometimes laid to rest in rich burial sites — were the result of some kind of crossbreeding. But proof was lacking.

studies of ancient DNA showed the kunga was a cross between a female donkey (Equus Africanus asinus) and a male Syrian wild ass (Equus hemionus hemippus).

A long history of mercantile trade along the eastern shores of Africa left its mark on the DNA of ancient Swahili people.

A new analysis of centuries-old bones and teeth collected from six burial sites across coastal Kenya and Tanzania has found that, around 1,000 years ago, local African women began having children with Persian traders — and that the descendants of these unions gained power and status in the highest levels of pre-colonial Swahili society.

long-told origin stories, passed down through generations of Swahili families, may be more truthful than many outsiders have presumed.

Downed WWII bomber found in Pacific 72 years later

As World War II raged in 1944, an American bomber took off on a mission with three crew members on board.

For 72 years, the TBM-1C Avenger lay on the ocean floor and with it, the remains of the crew.

In A.D. 410, Roman authority in Britain collapsed and Romano-British society disappeared from history under the invading tides of Angles and Saxons from northern Europe. Historians have been debating ever since whether the Romano-British were wiped out or survived by adopting their conquerors’ language and culture

A fine-scale genetic analysis of the British population has now provided the answer. The invaders and the existing population lived side by side and eventually intermarried extensively. The people of south and central England are now genetically well mixed, with Saxon genes accounting for only about 20 percent of the mix

The British Isles were wiped clean of people by the glaciers that descended toward the end of the last ice age, and were repopulated some 10,000 years ago by people who trekked over the broad land bridge that then joined eastern England to Europe north of the Rhine. The researchers say they can identify the genetic signature of this early migration, which survives most strongly in people from the western extremity of Wales.

"Don't bury me." 6-year-old Fareed Shawky cries as doctors treat his many shrapnel wounds.

six months of war in his country, Yemen, had taught him the bitter realities of conflict.

"I was trying to calm him down and at the same time my tears are falling, but I did not want him to feel it," al-Thamry Shawky says, "I told him, 'Don't be afraid, my son. You will get better.'"

Spain’s decision will cause reflection well beyond its borders too. For it is a reminder, if one is needed, of the never-ending importance – and sensitivity – of historical memory in the continuing evolution of every modern nation state, including Britain.

there is no getting away from the facts concerning Franco. The war he launched against a democratically elected government in 1936 was intended, as a fellow general said, to eliminate “without scruple or hesitation those who do not think as we do”. The civil war killed some 200,000 combatants, with at least a further 200,000 murdered extra-judicially or after sham trials. At least 20,000 Republicans were killed after the war ended, while many others died in prisons and in slave labour.

this decision is not just about bringing justice to the families of those who suffered under and because of Franco, important though that it is. It is about asserting the vibrancy of a more pluralist Spain in a more pluralist Europe. It is about the present, not the past.

At the end of World War II, huge swaths of Europe and Asia had been reduced to ruins. Borders were redrawn and homecomings, expulsions, and burials were under way. But the massive efforts to rebuild had just begun. When the war began in the late 1930s, the world's population was approximately 2 billion. In less than a decade, the war between the Axis the Allied powers had resulted in 80 million deaths -- killing off about 4 percent of the whole world.

Allied forces now became occupiers, taking control of Germany, Japan, and much of the territory they had formerly ruled. Efforts were made to permanently dismantle the war-making abilities of those nations, as factories were destroyed and former leadership was removed or prosecuted.

War crimes trials took place in Europe and Asia, leading to many executions and prison sentences. Millions of Germans and Japanese were forcibly expelled from territories they called home. Allied occupations and United Nations decisions led to many long-lasting problems in the future, including the tensions that created East and West Germany, and divergent plans on the Korean Peninsula that led to the creation of North and South Korea and -- the Korean War in 1950.

Although they arose from very different sources, the Indian caste system and the feudal Japanese class system have many features in common. Yet the two social systems are dissimilar in important ways, as well. Are they more alike, or more different?

Both the Indian caste system and the Japanese feudal class system have four main categories of people, with others falling below the system entirely.

Brahmins, or Hindu priests; Kshatriyas, the kings and warriors; Vaisyas, or farmers, traders and skilled artisans; and Shudras, tenant farmers and servants.

James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell and third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, fades out of history after their confrontation with the Scottish rebels at Carberry Hill.

So long as she was alive, whether at liberty or in close custody, she was a political force of great danger to Elizabeth

The Catholics supported Mary; the Protestants were mostly against her.

In the capital of Colombia, Bogotá, the mayor is warning residents to brace for “the worst two weeks of our lives.”

“I have tried to be optimistic,” he also wrote in a recent essay. “I want to think that the worst is over. But that turns out, I believe, to be counter-evident.”

Even Venezuela, where the authoritarian government is notorious for hiding health statistics and any suggestion of disarray, says that coronavirus deaths are up 86 percent since January.

"There's a shortage of coronavirus tests. Nobody's getting tested! So the government's numbers for our district are totally wrong," he told NPR on a crackly phone line from his village. "If you're able to get tested, results come after five days."

This village's ordeal is not atypical. Across India, there are shortages of testing kits, hospital beds, medical oxygen and antiviral drugs as a severe second wave of the pandemic crushes the health infrastructure. The country has been breaking world records daily for new cases. On Friday, India's Health Ministry confirmed 386,453 infections – more than any country on any day since the pandemic began.

Part of the reason for the huge numbers is India's size: a population of nearly 1.4 billion. The rate of known coronavirus infections per capita is still less than the United States endured at its peak.

the infamous Tower of London has also been home to many ordinary people since it was built in 1066.

But the recent discovery of the remains of a woman and a girl have managed to shed even more light on what life was like in the fortress during the late Medieval and early Tudor period. The Tower of London is a famous landmark located in the center of London and is most renowned for housing the U.K. crown jewels as well as being the final resting place of three executed English queens, including two of King Henry VIII’s six wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. It’s the burial site for many of the people condemned as ‘traitors’ to the crown and beheaded on nearby Tower Hill.

For centuries the Tower was the most important military fortress in the United Kingdom, but over its almost 1000-year history, plenty of ordinary people lived there too. “During the late medieval and early Tudor period the Tower would have been a thriving mini village,” said the Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity that look after a number of royal landmarks around London, in a press statement. “It would have served as not only a royal residence, but it operated daily functions as the Office of Ordnance and Royal Mint with its own chapels and pubs, with hundreds of people working and living amongst its walls.”

It has been six months since José Barajas was snatched from his home near the US border, for reasons that remain obscure.

Jesse, the eldest of seven siblings, said US-based relatives had implored José to join them north of the border as the cartels tightened their grip on a region notorious for the smuggling of drugs and people.

We told him how big a monster is organised crime. It is a huge monster that nobody knows where it is hiding

In summer 1793, a malignant visitation spread over the nation’s capital, carrying off young and old, poor and prosperous in agonizing ways.People collapsed in the streets untended and died horrible deaths at home, their skin turning yellow, their vomit dark with blood.

Families were wiped out. Handshaking stopped. Citizens avoided one another and covered their faces with cloth.Half the residents fled the city, including President George Washington. Schools were closed. Some roads outside town were guarded to keep refugees away.This was Philadelphia, the U.S. capital from 1790 to 1800. Wagons arriving from the city were burned as a precaution. Letters and newspapers from Philadelphia were handled with tongs.

During the worst of it, a hundred people were buried a day. Historian J.H. Powell’s classic 1949 account is entitled “Bring Out Your Dead,” after the calls of the roving burial teams.What was destroying them, scientists say, was the first virus found to cause human disease.