M.J. Rose

Oh, what lurks below…

“Human remains and gravestones periodically turn up around New York, and some estimate there are thousands of dead beneath the city. Bryant Park was similarly used as a potter’s field in the 19th century.”

Two centuries-old tombs unearthed beneath historic New York City park

(The Guardian)
The tombs, which city archaeologists knew existed but were unsure exactly where, were discovered during a water main dig and are about two centuries old

“City workers have discovered two burial vaults underneath Washington Square Park in New York City, uncovering the remains of at least a dozen people interred around two centuries ago.

Contractors for the city department of design and construction (DDC) uncovered the first vault on Tuesday, during excavations to replace a century-old water main on the east side of the park, in the heart of bustling Greenwich Village. The workers called an archaeologist contracted by the city, who opened a way into the chamber only 3.5ft beneath the sidewalk.

Inside they found an arched brick chamber with skulls, femurs and other bones littered on the dirt floor.

The first vault was actually a rediscovery: power company ConEdison first uncovered the vault in 1965, finding 25 skeletons inside. Before this week’s excavation archaeologists knew the tomb existed, but were not sure where thanks to the company’s poor record-keeping….”

For the rest, click here.

As our waters recede due to drought, strange and beautiful things emerge – as if from a time machine.

Colonial church emerges from receding reservoir in Mexico
SF Gate/Associated Press

“MEXICO CITY — Leonel Mendoza fishes every day in a reservoir surrounded by forest and mountains in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas. But in recent days, he also has been ferrying curious passengers out to see the remains of a colonial-era church that has emerged from the receding waters.

A drought this year has hit the watershed of the Grijalva river, dropping the water level in the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir by 82 feet.

It is the second time a drop in the reservoir has revealed the church since it was flooded when the dam was completed in 1966. In 2002, the water was so low visitors could walk inside the church.

“The people celebrated. They came to eat, to hang out, to do business. I sold them fried fish. They did processions around the church,” Mendoza said.

The church in the Quechula locality was built by a group of monks headed by Friar Bartolome de la Casas, who arrived in the region inhabited by the Zoque people in the mid-16th century…”

For the rest, and a video too, click here.

An incredible new discovery! What else is hidden on our planet that we have yet to see? How old are these earthworks? Who made them and why? Were they used for solar observation? Were they meant to be seen from space?

So many questions…

Author Graham Hancock insists that these ancient sites indicate that the earth was inhabited by an ancient, advanced, and globetrotting civilization (his new book goes in-depth on this subject.)

One of the enormous earthwork configurations photographed from space is known as the Ushtogaysky Square, named after the nearest village in Kazakhstan. Credit DigitalGlobe, via NASA

NASA Adds to Evidence of Mysterious Ancient Earthworks
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL (NYTimes)

High in the skies over Kazakhstan, space-age technology has revealed an ancient mystery on the ground.

Satellite pictures of a remote and treeless northern steppe reveal colossal earthworks — geometric figures of squares, crosses, lines and rings the size of several football fields, recognizable only from the air and the oldest estimated at 8,000 years old.

The largest, near a Neolithic settlement, is a giant square of 101 raised mounds, its opposite corners connected by a diagonal cross, covering more terrain than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Another is a kind of three-limbed swastika, its arms ending in zigzags bent counterclockwise.

Described last year at an archaeology conference in Istanbul as unique and previously unstudied, the earthworks, in the Turgai region of northern Kazakhstan, number at least 260 — mounds, trenches and ramparts — arrayed in five basic shapes….”

Click here for the rest, and more photos.