The Embarrassing Realism of "Obscure" Emperors

Oops ... reality has a nasty habit of surfacing in the most appalling ways and on the awkwardest of moments!

Here's another golden embarrassment for Ummah revisionism ... what now with the meme that historically no one has any business in the Middle East but the Dar-al-Islam? Oh, wait ... it must be a Zionist plant!

CNN: "Israeli archaeologists find rare gold coins"

Some Israeli archaeologists are having a particularly happy Hanukkah, thanks in part to a British volunteer who took time off from her job to work on a dig.

The Israel Antiquities Authority reported a thrilling find Sunday -- the discovery of 264 ancient gold coins in Jerusalem National Park.

The coins were minted during the early 7th century. (...)

The 1,400-year-old coins were found in the Giv'ati car park in the City of David in the walls around Jerusalem National Park, a site that has yielded other finds, including a well-preserved gold earring with pearls and precious stones.

They were in a collapsed building that dates back to the 7th century, the end of the Byzantine period. The coins bear a likeness of Heraclius, who was the Byzantine emperor from 610 to 641. (...)

The authority said that while different coins had been minted during this emperor's reign, the coins found at the site represent "one well-known type."

In that style, the emperor is clad with military garb and is holding a cross in his right hand. On the other side is the sign of the cross.

Authorities said the excavation of the building where the hoard was discovered is in its early stages. They are attempting to learn about the building and its owner and the circumstances of its destruction. (...) >>>

Family Ties: the Stone-Age Roots of the Nuclear Family

A recurring theme in Politeia and the old "Lighthouse" (before it became exclusively 'arty') are the so-called dialectics. Read all about it in the dossier - an explanatory introduction is at the bottom.

What we mean, are the Hegelian dialectic, which grew out of the Kantian dialectic, which led to the Marxist dialectic, and now morphed into the Postmodern dialectic.

Don't be fooled by nonsense about women's lib, gay rights and same sex marriage: these are all ruses to take out one of the main pillars of 'the power structure', romantic love and marriage.

Remember that upsurge in Swedish films and books around the sixties, portraying marriage and family life as sheer and sure hell ...? That was no coincidence! (Here's a Dutch book of some notoriety, but every Western country probably has its own version. Sartre's existentialism did away with all human company in general: "hell, are the others.")

Romantic love - according to Ayn Rand - is a bourgeois, selfish, social construct that becomes fashionable in societies with a strong middle class. That being the case, all the more reason to shatter that important pillar.

Among the nobility and the peasantry marriage has always been an institution for the formalization of family ties and the regulation of inheritances. It was of course sanctioned by a church ceremony, preferably held before the bride's bun was showing - just for good measure so as to ensure the groom's party wouldn't be left holding a barren bag... eh, hag.

But here's news: A Stone Age burial in central Germany has yielded the earliest evidence of people living together as a family within a tribal social structure ...

MSNBC: "The Flintsteins? Germans find Stone Age family - 4,600-year-old grave yields genetic evidence of family life (and death)" (includes video material)

(...) The 4,600-year-old grave contained the remains of a man, woman and two youngsters, and DNA analysis shows they were a mother, father and their children. (...)

"By establishing the genetic links between the two adults and two children buried together in one grave, we have established the presence of the classic nuclear family in a prehistoric context in Central Europe — to our knowledge the oldest authentic molecular genetic evidence so far," lead author Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide, Australia, said in a statement.

The researchers studied four multiple burials at Eulau, Saxony-Anhalt, all dated to the same time and containing adults and children carefully buried facing each other. (...) >>>

Perhaps tribal people 4,600 years ago, knew what we have been taught to forget for political reasons: that single mum families are the surest road to poverty and dependence - dependence on the state, all for our own good, of course. No wonder it was sold in Europe, first as morally acceptable, then as a value and even a right.

- Filed on Articles in "The Dialectics" -

Helen of the Dung-Hill: a puzzle contest

Read the following article carefully. Spot the crap (all of it) and win this month's Golden Ari. Send in your findings before 5th June.
The Guardian/The Observer: "DNA explodes Greek myth about women," by Robin McKie, science editor - Hat Tip: Phantis

British researchers have unearthed evidence that proves Helen was much more than a chattel.

Women in Ancient Greece were major power brokers in their own right, researchers have discovered, and often played key roles in running affairs of state. Until now it was thought they were treated little better than servants.

The discovery is part of an investigation by Manchester researchers into the founders of Mycenae, Europe's first great city-state and capital of King Agamemnon's domains.

'It was thought that in those days women were rated as little more than chattels in Ancient Greece,' said Professor Terry Brown, of the faculty of life sciences at Manchester University. 'Our work now suggests that notion is wrong.'

- Caption: Helen of Troy, by Frederick Sandys -

Mycenae is one of the most important and evocative archaeological sites in Europe. According to legend, Agamemnon led his armies from Mycenae to Troy to bring back Helen - the wife of his ally, Menelaus - who had run off with the Trojan prince Paris.

The citadel was first excavated in the 1870s by Heinrich Schliemann, who uncovered tombs containing crumbling bones draped with jewels and gold face masks. 'I have discovered the graves of Agamemnon, Eurymedon, and their companions, all slain at a banquet by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthos,' he told the King of Greece.

In fact, the graves have since been dated and shown to be too old for those of Agamemnon. Nevertheless, Mycenae has since proved to be a treasure trove of archaeological riches. Most recently, these have involved scientists using a range of new techniques, including facial reconstruction work carried out by Manchester researchers John Prag and Richard Neave. They recreated the faces of seven individuals whose skeletons had been excavated at a circle of graves inside the citadel.

The images provided scientists with a family picture album for the rulers of Europe's first great city-state. However, genetics experts have now taken this work a stage further by attempting to extract DNA from 22 of the 35 bodies found in the grave circle. 'The facial reconstructions were carried out 10 years ago, but it is only now that scientists have developed sensitive enough techniques to get DNA from skeletons as old as these,' said Brown. 'In each case we had to deal with a single cell's worth of DNA.'

The genetic material isolated by the scientists is known as mitochondrial DNA, which humans inherit exclusively from their mothers. However, of the 22 skeletons that were tested, only four produced enough DNA for full analysis. Nevertheless, findings from these provided a shock for the team from Manchester.

While two of the males had DNA that indicated they were unrelated, the genetic material extracted from the remaining pair, a man and a woman, revealed they were brother and sister. They had been thought to have been man and wife.

'To be precise our DNA evidence suggests the pair were closely related, possibly siblings or possibly cousins. However, the facial reconstruction work of Prag and Neave also shows they were very similar in appearance which indicates they were brother and sister,' said Brown.

The critical point, he said, was that the woman was thought to have been buried in a richly endowed grave because she was the wife of a powerful man. That was in keeping with previous ideas about Ancient Greece - that women had little power and could only exert influence through their husbands.

'But this discovery shows both the man and the woman were of equal status and had equal power,' he said. 'Women in Ancient Greece held positions of power by right of birth, it now appears.

'The problem has been that up until recently our interpretation of life in Ancient Greece has been the work of a previous generations of archaeologists, then a male-oriented profession and who interpreted their findings in a male-oriented way. That is changing now and women in Ancient Greece are being seen in a new light.' >>>

And while we are at it, we might as well distill the irrational hogwash from this piece of postmodern 'science' reporting as well. Take the weekend too. Good for another Golden Ari.

Yahoo!News: "Key to All Optical Illusions Discovered" and "Cool Optical Illusions"

Hail, details of Caesar!

EURSOC: "Bust Of Caesar Fished Out Of Rhône"

France's cultural minister has announced an "archaeologist's dream" - a marble bust of Julius Caesar, sculpted in the Roman's lifetime, has been found in Arles, several metres below the surface of the Rhône river.

It is thought to be the oldest portrayal of Caesar yet found, and as it dates from a period when realism was prized by sculptors and their clients, it may give the closest portrayal yet of the great man.

Caesar himself is said to have founded Arles in 46 BC; the bust is believed "undoubtedly" to date from this time. It shows Caesar aged, with visible wrinkles, though his hairline is rather more flattering, as contemporary reports claim that he was bald. Caesar was assassinated just two years after - French archaeologists believe that the bust may have been dumped in the river after news emerged of his death.

The same excavation also found a later 1.75m marble statue of Neptune and two Hellenic Greek satyrs.

Fragments of mosaics and columns were also fished from the river, in what the French ministry is calling a revelation of the richness of Arles' culture and history. (...) >>>