Thuggee Cult Of India

Group of Thugs, 1863, photographer unknown. Image via: Harappa
They were evil incarnate in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – which was briefly banned in India for alleged racism. Their name is the root of the modern English word ‘thug’. And a few centuries ago these bad boys were responsible for the mass murder of tens of thousands of travelers. Here’s a look behind the myth at India’s mystery-shrouded Thuggee cult: bands of roving stranglers who robbed and killed many folks making their way unwittingly across the sub-continent.
History is quick to point out what nasty pieces of work these Thuggee types were; they’re even in the Guinness Book of Records, with over two million kills attributed to their deadly hands. There have been stacks of Western attempts to make sense of the phenomenon: pirates of the plains, brigands of Bengal – but buccaneer and bandit likenesses like these don’t do justice to the singularly sinister way in which the original Thugs went about their business.

Xian Pot of Soup: 2,400 Year Old Pot of Soup Found in China

A Xian pot of soup from 2,400 years ago was found in a tomb.  The 2,400 year old bronze vessel was found near the capital of Xian.  Archaeologists also believe they found a container of wine.
"It's the first discovery of bone soup in Chinese archaeological history," the Global Times quoted Liu Daiyun of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology as saying.
"The discovery will play an important role in studying the eating habits and culture of the Warring States Period (475-221 BC)."
The tomb was being excavated to make way for an airport extension, the report said.
Scientists were expected to conduct further tests to confirm the liquid was indeed soup and to identify the ingredients.
The tomb could have held the body of either a member of the land-owning class or a low-ranking military officer, archaeologists said.
The terracotta army figures were found near Xiang in 1974 at the burial site of Qin Shihuang, China's first emperor.
The find was made when Liu took the lid off a round, three-legged bronze cauldron. To his amazement it was half-full of liquid. He said: “When I opened the lid, I was really shocked."


Read more: http://www.thirdage.com/news/xian-pot-soup-2400-year-old-pot-soup-found-china_12-13-2010#ixzz183Yc5EYZ

Lost Tapes: Mongolian Death Worm

Hidden Code Found in Mona Lisa

Leonardo Da Vinci's most famous work of art, the Mona Lisa, has been pored over by everyone from tourists to art historians, from amateurs to experts, for many years. Yet no one saw what Luigi Borgia, a member of the National Committee for Cultural Heritage in Italy, found in an old dusty book on the painting - a sequence of numbers and letters hidden within those famously enigmatic eyes. Does anyone else feel another Da Vinci Code sequel coming? In one eye, the historians found LV (likely for the painter's initials) and in the other, they're still determining whether the figures are C and E, B and S, the number 72, or L2.
According to the Telegraph, Borgia said

the 50 year old volume describes how the Mona Lisa's eyes are full of various signs and symbols and he added: "We are only at the start of this investigation and we hope to be able to dig deeper into this mystery and reveal further details as soon as possible. It's remarkable that no-one has noticed these symbols before and from the preliminary investigations we have carried out we are confident they are not a mistake and were put there by the artist.

Da Vinci's masterpiece has long been thought to be a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a very successful silk and fabric merchant in Florence, but with these letters and possible numbers (that don't seem to add up to LG), that long held belief may be called into question. The discovery of the figures, while enticing and thrilling to speculate on, have yet to reveal... what exactly they reveal - they could be obsolete and meaningless or they could unlock the secret to the real identity of the Mona Lisa. The painting is such an iconic work for a number of reasons, not least of which is how much mystery has always surrounded it. Dan Brown clearly chose his subject matter well.
(Image: Getty Images. Mona Lisa C.1503-5 Leonardo da Vinci(1452-1519 Italian) Oil On Wood Panel,Musee du Louvre, Paris, France)

CYBERWAR: After 12 days of WikiLeaks cables, the world looks on US with new eyes

Reaction across the globe to the leaked US embassy cables has ranged from anger and bitterness to extreme indifference

South America
Brazil
President Lula says he is to register his protest at Assange's arrest on his blog. "This chap was only publishing something he read," he said. "And if he read it, it is because somebody wrote it. The guilty one is not the publisher, it is the person who wrote [these things]. Blame the person who wrote this nonsense because there would be no scandal if they hadn't." Many leaks relate to the security situation in Rio de Janeiro. A 2009 cable warned that pre-Olympic attempts to expel drug traffickers from some of the city's most violent favelas could resemble "the battles in Fallujah more than a conventional urban police operation".

Tomb Raider: Jesus buried in Srinagar?

INDIA - That Jesus survived crucifixion, travelled to Kashmir, eventually died there and is buried in Srinagar is an urban legend which has found many takers over the years. Every season hundreds of tourists visit the Rozabal shrine of Sufi saint Yuz Asaf in downtown Srinagar, believed by many to be the final resting place of Christ. But there's a new twist to the tale — the medieval shrine was recently closed down after an enthusiastic 'believer' , New York-based writer Suzanne Olsson, allegedly tried to exhume it.

The shrine itself, at the edge of a winding alley in the backstreets of old Srinagar, first came into the limelight when a local journalist, Aziz Kashmiri, argued in his 1973 book, Christ in Kashmir, that Jesus survived crucifixion some 2,000 years ago, migrated to Kashmir and was buried in Srinagar. The modest stone building with traditional multi-tiered roof slipped into oblivion but came into focus again in 2002 when Olsson arrived in Srinagar, claiming to be Christ's '59th descendant' and seeking DNA testing of the shrine's remains.

Burma's Dictators and the Fear of Purgatory

 There is no place in the world where politicians are as superstitious as they are in Burma and its Asian neighbors. They use the services of astrologists, monks and miracle-healers. Nevertheless, religious groups have repeatedly contributed to the collapse of despots and the tyrant dictators don't flinch at the idea of killing monks.

At some point in the summer of 2005, the head of Burma's junta, Than Shwe, called in his chief astrologer. The general had followed the advice of the fortune teller a few months previously and built a new capital in the highlands. He had been told this was the only way to hold onto power. Now the general wanted to know what would be the best date to make the move.

Occult Artifacts: Egyptian Book of the Dead, at British Museum

By Alastair Smart 
Nodjmet wasn't a lady to cross lightly. As wife of the High Priest of Amun, she was among the most powerful women in 11th-century BC Egypt. With the New Kingdom collapsing, this was a critically unstable time, and in a chilling letter now kept in Berlin, Nodjmet is implicated in the murder of two seditious policemen. 'Have them killed, placed in baskets and thrown into the river at night,' it reads.

As luck would have it, Nodjmet also features in the British Museum's new exhibition, Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. Produced on papyrus rolls and interred with the mummified corpse, the Book of the Dead was a kind of manual to the afterlife: a set of spells and prayers (in text form with accompanying illustrations) designed to guide the deceased through the dangers of the underworld to paradise.