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Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

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The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn: fresco by Giorgio Vasari and Cristofano Gherardi. (1560) Sala di Cosimo I, Palazzo Vecchio (Public Domain)

The Highest Altar: Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece

In the Greek Peloponnese, high atop the summit on Arcadia’s Mount Lykaion (Wolf Mountain) lies an altar at one of the oldest and most revered of all primordial sanctuaries. Towering at nearly 5,000...
Heimdallr brings forth the gifts of the gods to the humans by Nils Asplund (1907) (Vogler/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Ancient Germanic Mythos: Hitler the Archetypal Wotan and Savior

Regressus ad Uterum refers to the spontaneous regression to a time or a situation when a person or an entire nation felt like a child in the womb of their mother; safe and with the unhindered...
Travel geography navigation concept background. (fotoatelie/ Adobe Stock)

Where X Marks The Spot: Rare Ancient Treasures, Codes and Cryptic Clues

Treasure legends sometimes have a kernel of truth, but are then exaggerated, embellished and transformed, told over and over again until the facts fade and leave only fantastical tales, but look hard...
Cotzumalguapa: Evidence of Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Contact

Cotzumalguapa: Evidence of Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Contact

Thousands of years ago, an unknown culture carved and raised hundreds of stone stelas and sculptures on the Pacific coast of southern Guatemala. Together, they provide some of the strongest evidence...
Egyptians with domesticated cattle and corn circa 1422-1411 BC ( Public Domain )

Agriculture First Versus Göbekli Tepe: Prehistory Revisited

Discovering the origin of civilisation is the holy grail of anthropology and archaeology. Essentially, this means understanding how man transformed from un-civilised Palaeolithic hunter gatherers to...
Çatalhöyük after the first excavations. (Omar hoftun/ CC BY-SA 3.0)

Turkey’s Catalhöyük: A Victim of Climate Change

These days, the dusty, sunbaked ruins of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey do not receive a lot of attention, except from tourists and archaeologists, but around 9,000 to 7,000 years ago it was a busy,...
Samson and Delilah by Domenico Fiazella (1650) Louvre (Public Domain)

Hair-Raising Status of Ancient Gods and Men

Human hair has always played an important role in culture and in society. For men and women alike, styling one's hair seems to be an innate human desire to emphasize their beauty and power. Thus,...
From the royal tombs of Ur, the Standard of Ur mosaic, made of lapis lazuli and shell, shows peacetime. (Public Domain)

Changing History: The Ferris Wheel of Lost Civilizations

Although history textbooks often present information as if it is set in stone and firmly established, recent research into ancient civilization reveals one embarrassing fact that continuously seems...
This fresco is commonly known as The Tarot Players. It is from the Casa Borromeo, in Milan, and was probably painted in the 1440s. (Public Domain)

The Literary Panorama of the Tarot Cards: Historical Reality and Myths

Although the Tarot is the most widely used ‘book of images’ in the world for the purpose of fortune-telling , many people are oblivious to its origins. A popular belief exists that the Tarot...
Tahitian warrior dugouts, by Giulio Ferrario. (1827) (Public Domain)

Pre-Historic Island Hopping ‘Hobbits’ in the South Pacific

Although New Zealand and the Philippines are separated by more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km), the stories of how people first migrated to them, and how those stories were treated by scholars, show...
Tomb of the augurs. Tarquinia, Italia. (circa 530 BC) (Public Domain)

The Augurs of Rome: Birds Predicting The Will Of The Gods

Cycles of nature were at the core of the ancient practice of divination to decipher the will of the gods. Many different methods of divination were practiced in antiquity, such as dream...
The system of Nadi Shastra start from the thumb fingerprint. Right thumb for the man and left for woman. Then the Brahmins find 108 points to correlate with the palm leaf scripts for the destiny reading. (Image: Courtesy: Enrico Baccarini)

Nadi Shastra: Ancient Leaves of Destiny

A fascinating and incredible mystery is linked to ancient India, a journey into the remote past of a land that still has to reveal to the whole of humanity many of its 'stories' and its wonders. The...
A detailed drawing of a Viking age sword from the early ninth century found at Sæbø in the west of Norway. Bergen Museum. (Public Domain)

Swords of Fate: The Ancient Blades That Forged History

For thousands of years humans have found good reason to stab, chop, slice and dice each other up, and the choice weapon which has endured the tests of time is the sword. Historically, kings, emperors...
Universe Explosion (Gerd Altmann/CC0)

From Pigeon Poop to the Origin of the Universe

The term, ‘Big Bang’ was coined by the English astronomer and cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle in 1949. But when he first employed it, during a BBC radio broadcast on astronomy, it was meant to be derisive...
Captain Kidd in New York Harbor by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863 – 1930) (Public Domain)

Pirates of the Northern Seas and Scotland’s Oceanic Criminals

Pirates, maybe even more than mermaids and sea serpents, are the most fascinating and misunderstood entities of maritime history and while it is known today that mermaids were seals and giant...
The Wind by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1746) Pallazo Labia (Public Domain)

Beware the Fate of the Fairy Winds

In many folk tales from around the world there are accounts of a midwife who is taken by fairies to help with a birth. Apart from the overall otherworldly nature of these tales, the mode of transport...
Sumerian Artifact with the Tree of Life. (swisshippo  / Adobe Stock)

In Rome, I Saw Written On Top Of A Door

In Rome "I saw written on top of a door." ( Inferno , III, v. 11, Dante) In Rome, hidden a corner of Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, one will find the last remnant of the Academia dell’ Arcadia , an...
Colorful hot air balloons flying over Red valley in Cappadocia, Anatolia, Turkey (Svetlana Nikolaeva/ Adobe Stock)

Who Built This City? Underground Derinkuyu, and the Rock Churches of Göreme

Could the underground cities in Cappadocia, Turkey date back to 12,800 years ago? In 1963, so the story goes, a man living in Cappadocia excavated some large stones from his basement while renovating...
King Arthur statue at Tingagel (Deriv/ CC0)

Real World Locations, Where Myth Meets Reality

Mythology presented in books, arts, cartoons and movies have subliminally forged impressions of mythical castles, magical mountains and enchanted forests in people’s minds, but many of the places...
Return to the Convent by Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala (1868) Carmen Thyssen Museum (Public Domain)

Mockery of the Crucifixion: The Sacred Donkey and the Cross

In 1857 in a cell of the ruins of Imperial Palace on the Palantine Hill in Rome, a curious graffiti representing a crucified man ( corpus humanum... suffigitur in cruce ) but with the head and ears...
The Capture of Atahualpa. Juan B. Lepiani,  (1864-1932)(Public Domain)

God’s Devils: The Men Who Conquered South America

From the moment Christopher Columbus found land previously unknown to Europe in 1492, thousands of men came to the New World seeking their fortunes and for two centuries they explored and conquered...
Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners by Alexandre Cabanel (1887) (Public Domain)

Poison Paranoia: Mythical Antidotes of Ancient Alchemists

Of all the ways to murder someone poisoning must be the most underhanded and downright evil way to proceed. The whole art of poisoning, as it is often referred too, was developed as a stealth way to...
Phaèdra by Alexandre Cabanel (1818) Musee Fabre. (Public Domain)

Fields of Mourning, Where Grieving Love-Sick Women Retire

Hidden deep within the bowels of the earth and ruled by the god Hades and his wife Persephone, the ancient Greek Underworld was the kingdom of the dead, the sunless, cold and shadowy place where the...
Sts Savinus and Cyprian are tortured (circa 1100) Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe (Public Domain)

Horrific Prolonged Capital Punishments in Ancient Times

All are familiar with the burning of witches and criminals – who often died by asphyxia or cardiac arrest before their flesh was consumed by the flames - but since antiquity the cruel ingenuity of...

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