It was back in the 1930s when an American teenager discovered an abandoned mine tunnel in Mexico’s Copper Canyon region.  Inside it she found a human skeleton and, clutching onto its arm, was the hand bone of another skeleton buried mostly under the earth. It was described as being small and misshapen. The teenager returned to the site the following day only to find that a flash flood had washed most of the bones away. Nevertheless, the upper section of the skull of the buried skeleton, along with a small piece of the upper jaw bone remained.  The significance of the skull remained unrealised for nearly 70 years.  

In 1999, the highly unusual skull, which has been dated at 900 years old, was handed to author and researcher Lloyd Pye to investigate after health professionals failed to identify a condition that could explain its appearance. The skull became known as the "Starchild Skull," and between 1999 and 2013, Lloyd enlisted the help of numerous experts and independent medical and scientific institutions across three countries (USA, Canada, and the United Kingdom) to conduct extensive research and testing.

One of the major contributors to the research project was Dr Ted Robinson, who had a background in medicine and plastic surgery and specialised knowledge of cranial surgery and cranial anatomy.  Dr Robinson studied the skull for a period of two years and involved specialists in the disciplines of radiology, ophthalmic surgery, oral surgery, craniofacial surgery, neurology and paediatric neurosurgery. The report Dr Robinson prepared was astounding.

Firstly, Dr Robinson’s expertise in cranial deformities enabled him to rule out all the human deformities he knew of that could account for the skull’s appearance, nor were any of the other specialists able to find any deformity, illness or cultural practice that could account for the misshapen head.

Secondly, Dr Robinson reported that the bone of the skull is much thinner, lighter, and stronger than regular human bone, it contains unusual reinforcing fibres, the brain is 30% larger than a normal human of its size, the frontal sinuses are absent, the eye sockets are shallow, and the entire skull has over 10 standard deviations from the human norm, a highly unusual statistic.

Robinson wrote: "One can only reasonably conclude from these statistical studies that the Starchild skull is distinctly different from human."

Nevertheless, the medical reports and investigations were not enough to convince mainstream scientists that this skull was definitely not human.  Instead, they explained away the abnormalities with the claim that ‘nature can do anything’.

The scientists running the Starchild Project knew that the only definitive way of proving that the skull was not human was through DNA testing. So they waited nearly a decade while the technology for recovering and sequencing "ancient" DNA, such as the 900-year-old Starchild's, could be perfected.

In 2010, the Project secured access to a highly sophisticated ancient DNA lab capable of recovering non-human DNA. Preliminary DNA testing found that a significant percentage of the DNA in the skull appears to not be human, a finding that, if verified, would indicate the skull belongs to a new species.

In 2012, a geneticist was able to secure a fragment of gene from the 5% of human nuclear DNA that code for proteins and which is a highly functional ‘master gene’, one of the most vitally important genes in the body of any species on Earth. It is known as the FOXP2 gene.  An analysis was carried out on this gene, the full report of which can be read here, and the results were again startling.

The FOXP2 gene in normal humans is 2,594 base pairs long and contains no variations. In mammals and other "higher" species, any single flaw in FOXP2, any isolated mutation or variation, can cause a severe negative impact in some of the most important aspects of development and will normally lead to death. While a tiny amount of survivable mutations are possible in FOXP2, every one that occurs presents debilitating or life-threatening consequences, so up to this point in time none have been passed on to the general population of humans. This means in the vast, vast majority of humans, the FOXP2 master gene is absolutely identical.  

The fragment of gene that was recovered from the skull and analysed is 211 base pairs long (out of 2,594 base pairs).  Now comes the incredible result of the analysis.  While all normal humans have the exact same base pairs, the Starchild’s gene contained a total of 56 variations within the fragment!

To understand the significance, in a rhesus monkey only 2 of its 211 base pairs would contain variation from humans. If it were a mouse, it would be 20. If a dog, 27.

To put this in perspective, let's imagine that when alive, the Starchild was indeed some unknown humanoid. No matter how different from humans it might have been, to be in the humanoid family its FOXP2 gene would have to be in the range of 1 or 2 or at most 3 base pair variations from a normal human. To go past 5 or 10 would put it into another class of species. To have 56 is to put it in another realm, another dimension entirely. It is utterly unique.

These amazing findings are the result of only a partial analysis of the DNA.  This year the Starchild Project was registered as a company in order to raise the necessary funds to undertake a complete DNA test, which will determine once and for all the true nature of this most unusual species.

By April Holloway

Related Links

www.starchildproject.com

There is one thing that ancient Greeks, Renaissance artists, a 17^th century astronomer and 21^st century architects all have in common – they all used the Golden Mean, otherwise known as the Golden Ratio, Divine Proportion, or Golden Section.  Precisely, this is the number 1.61803399, represented by the Greek letter Phi, and considered truly unique in its mathematical properties, its prevalence throughout nature, and its ability to achieve a perfect aesthetic composition.

According to astrophysicist Mario Livio:

Some of the greatest mathematical minds of all ages, from Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, through the medieval Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa and the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, to present-day scientific figures such as Oxford physicist Roger Penrose, have spent endless hours over this simple ratio and its properties. But the fascination with the Golden Ratio is not confined just to mathematicians. Biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have pondered and debated the basis of its ubiquity and appeal. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the Golden Ratio has inspired thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics.

In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. When the Golden Mean is conceptualised in two dimensions it is typically presented as a regular spiral that is defined by a series of squares and arcs, each forming “Golden Rectangles”.

This symbolic potential arises because of the way the mean’s spiral shape resembles growth patterns observed in nature and its proportions are reminiscent of those in human bodies. Thus, these simple spirals and rectangles, which served to suggest the presence of a universal order underlying the world, were thereby dubbed “golden” or “divine”.

The Golden Ratio in History

The golden ratio has fascinated Western intellectuals of diverse interests for at least 2,400 years. The earliest known monuments believed to have been built according to this alluring number are the statues of the Parthenon in Greece, dating back between 490 and 430 BC.  However, there are many who have argued that it goes back much further than this and that the Egyptians were well versed in the properties of this unique number.

According to some historians, the Egyptians thought that the golden ratio was sacred.  Therefore, it was very important in their religion.  They used the golden ratio when building temples and places for the dead.  In addition, the Egyptians found the golden ratio to be pleasing to the eye.  They used it in their system of writing and in the arrangement of their temples.  The Egyptians were aware that they were using the golden ratio, but they called it the "sacred ratio."

The first recorded definition of the golden ratio dates back to the period when Greek mathematician, Euclid (c. 325–c. 265 BC), described what he called the "extreme and mean ratio". However, the ratio’s unique properties became popularised in the 15^th century when aesthetics were a vital component of Renaissance art and geometry served both practical and symbolic purposes.  As the famous mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer, Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630) wrote:

Geometry has two great treasures: one is the Theorem of Pythagoras, and the other the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio; the first we may compare to a measure of gold, the second we may name a precious jewel.

The Golden Ratio in Architecture

Many artists and architects have proportioned their work to approximate the golden ratio, with the belief that the outcome will be more aesthetically pleasing.  Using any of these ratios, an architect can design a door handle that has a complementary relationship to its door, which in turn has a similar relationship to its enclosing wall, and so on.  But more than this, the golden ratio has been used for the façade of great buildings from the Parthenon to the Great Mosque of Kairouan and all the way through to modern landmarks such as the Sydney Opera House and the National Gallery in London.

The Golden Ratio in Nature

Perhaps what is most surprising about the Golden Ratio is that it can be seen as a naturally occurring phenomenon in nature.   The golden ratio is expressed in the arrangement of branches along the stems of plants and the veins in leaves.   It can be seen in the skeletons of animals and humans and the branching of their veins and nerves.  It can even be seen in the proportions of chemical compounds and the geometry of crystals. Essentially, it is all around us and within us and for this reason, German psychologist Adolf Zeising (1810 – 1876) labelled it a ‘universal law’:

in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form.

As a result of the unique properties of this golden proportion, many view the ratio as sacred or divine and as a door to a deeper understanding of beauty and spirituality in life, unveiling a hidden harmony or connectedness in so much of what we see.

By April Holloway

Related Links

The Golden Ratio: An overview of its properties, appearances and applications

The Golden Section in Ancient Egypt

Related Videos

It is accepted by mainstream archaeology that civilization started in Iraq, in ancient Mesopotamia with the great civilisation of Sumeria. However, there is an archaeological discovery at the Al Ubaid archaeological site, where many pre-Sumerian 7,000-year-old artefacts were found, depicting humanoid figures with lizard characteristics.

The Ubaidian culture is a prehistoric culture in Mesopotamia that dates between 4000 and 5500 BC. As with the Sumerians, the origins of the Ubaidian people is unknown. They lived in large village settlements in mud-brick houses and they had developed architecture, agriculture and farmed the land using irrigation. The domestic architecture included large T-shaped houses, open courtyards, paved streets, as well as food processing equipment. Some of these villages began to develop into towns, temples began to appear, as well as monumental buildings such as in Eridu, Ur and Uruk, the major sites of the Sumerian Civilization.  According to the Sumerian texts, Ur was believed to be the first city.

The main site where the unusual artefacts were discovered is called Tell Al’Ubaid – although figurines were also found in Ur and Eridu. The Al’Ubaid site is a small mound of about half a kilometre in diametre and two meters above ground. The site was first excavated by Harry Reginald Hal in 1919. Male and female figurines were found in different postures and in most of the figurines, they appear to be wearing a helmet and have some kind of padding on the shoulders. Other figurines were found to hold a staff or sceptre, possibly as a symbol of justice and ruling. Each figurine has a different pose but the strangest of all is that some female figurines hold babies suckling milk, with the child also represented as a lizard-type creature.

The figurines are presented with long heads, almond shaped eyes, long tapered faces and a lizard-type nose. What exactly they represent is completely unknown. According to archaeologists, their postures, such as a female figure breast-feeding, does not suggest that they were ritualistic objects. So what did these lizard figures represent?

Whatever they were, they appear to have been important to the ancient Ubaidian people. We know that the Serpent was a major symbol used in many societies to represent a number of gods, for example, the Sumerian god Enki, and the snake was used later on as the symbol for the brotherhood of the Snake, as William Bramley discusses. Is there a link between the symbol of the snake and the representations of lizards?  For now, these questions remain unanswered.

By John Black

Related Links

The Ubaid Period

Ancient Lizard Figurines

The Chalcolithic Period Mesopotamia

In 1538 AD a tapestry was created in the city of Bruges in Belgium, known as the Summer’s Triumph. It depicts the victorious ascension of a ruler to power. However, there is something far more interesting depicted in the tapestry, which would be easy to miss unless you were looking closely - multiple objects in the sky, which have the classical UFO shape that is popularised in the media.

The city of Bruges is the capital and the largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium in the northwest of the country. The origins of the city go back to the pre-roman Era and it has been the target of many invasions because of its strategic location.

If you look at the top of the tapestry, especially towards the left-hand side, it is possible to see a number of ‘hat shaped’ flying objects in black – that are not related to any religious depictions that are frequently seen in the sky in other medieval artworks.

Some historians have suggested that these objects represent the significance of this ruler coming to power and that he had the support of the ‘divine’.  But since when are flying disc shaped objects considered as a symbol of divine intervention? And if they are, why?  If the people in that era associated flying saucers with divinity, it means they were seeing such objects in the sky and linking them to a ‘godly’ phenomena. Of course on the other hand there are those who have claimed that these unusual hat-shaped objects are simple strangely-shaped dark clouds…

The Summer's Triumph tapestry is said to be held at the Bavarian National Museum in Munich in Germany.  However, curiously it does not appear on their website or their list of items. We are awaiting a response from the museum.

By John Black

Related Links

UFO Ancient Artwork

UFO in historical Art

10 Mysterious Artifacts

The Roman Catholic Church is training up a new army of exorcists to meet the growing demand for experts to rid people of evil spirits.  The Church claims that the “unprecedented rise” in requests for exorcism comes from more people dabbling in the ‘dark arts’ with the help of information found on the internet.

Time travelling and time machines have been a topic of science fiction and countless movies for many decades. In fact, it appears that the possibility to travel in time, either into the future or into the past, has appealed to the imagination of mankind for centuries.  While many may think it is absurd to believe that we could travel back or forwards in time, some of the world’s most brilliant scientists have investigated whether it could one day be made a reality.

Located near the village of Shiyan Beicun in Zhejiang province, China, lies the Longyou caves - an extensive, magnificent and rare ancient underground world considered in China as ‘the ninth wonder of the ancient world’.  The Longyou grottoes, which are thought to date back at least 2,000 years, represent one of the largest underground excavations of ancient times and are an enduring mystery that have perplexed experts from every discipline that has examined them.  Scientists from around the world in the fields of archaeology, architecture, engineering, and geology have absolutely no idea how they were built, by whom, and why.

Santa Fe is the oldest capital city in New Mexico, US. But it is not just the age of the city that makes it a popular destination. In the centre of the city stands an architectural landmark, a former Roman Catholic Church, which is known as the Loretto chapel. The church was built in the 1870s and it has a French gothic style, but unlike other chapels where you admire the paintings, statues, stained glass and masonry skills, this chapel is famous for its helix spiral staircase, otherwise called the “Miraculous Stair”.

According to legend, which has since been made into a movie called “The Staircase” (1998), the nuns of the Loretto Chapel that were there when it was been built realized at some point that they had to find a way to build a staircase to connect the choir loft to the ground floor. They didn’t want the staircase to be big because it would take up too much space, so they went to the local carpenters but no one could provide a feasible solution.

There was a sign from the sun, the like of which had never been seen and reported before. The sun became dark and its darkness lasted for 18 months.  Each day, it shone for about four hours, and still this light was only a feeble shadow.  Everyone declared that the sun would never recover its full light again.
Historiae Ecclesiasticae

Between the years 535 and 536, a series of major global climatic events that took place that could easily be described as a global cataclysm with catastrophic consequences. The above abstract is from the sixth century historian and church leader, John of Ephesus, in his historical work, Church Histories (‘Historiae Ecclesiasticae’).

John of Ephesus is not the only one that mentions this event. Procopius lived between 500 and 565 AD and he was a late antiquities scholar and one of the main historians of the 6^th century. He also refers to the strange behaviour of the sun and believed that it was a bad sign and the beginning of other events.

It was in March last year when reports flooded the headlines about a newly deciphered Egyptian text, dating back almost 1,200 years, which controversially described Jesus as having the ability to change shape. But just as quickly as the story made its way through major news sites around the world, it disappeared and has hardly been mentioned since. Why has the study and research surrounding this text faded into oblivion? Why has there been virtually no scholarly debate on the subject?

Written in the Coptic language, the ancient text written in the name of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, a distinguished theologian who lived during the fourth century, tells part of the crucifixion story of Jesus with apocryphal plot twists, some of which have never been seen before.  They have been revealed thanks to a translation carried out by Roelof Van den Broek of Ultrecht University in the Netherlands, and published in the book ‘Pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem On the Life and the Passion of Christ: A Coptic Apocryphon’.

An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Although its definition encompasses any unexplained aerial phenomena, in popular culture, the term has generally become synonymous with an extra-terrestrial spacecraft.

UFO sightings have been reported throughout recorded history and in various parts of the world, raising questions about life on other planets and whether extra-terrestrials have visited Earth. They have become a major subject of interest, and the inspiration behind numerous films and books, however, sadly they are also the focus of intense ridicule.  For decades there has been a move, deliberate or not, to diminish the importance of UFOs and create a public belief that UFOs are a hoax.  However, unexplained aerial observations have been reported throughout history, from prehistoric times until the present day.

It is a rare object that stimulates the curiosity of archaeologists, ancient astronaut theorists, and creationists all at the same time, but the Ica stones have done just that.   The Ica stones refer to the momentous collection of more than 15,000 engraved stones which curiously depict clear and detailed dinosaurs, complex medical surgery, and forms of advanced technology such as telescopes. Most believe the stones are nothing more than an elaborate hoax, while others maintain that they are evidence that an ancient race of humans who possessed advanced technology coexisted with dinosaurs.

The stones, which vary in size from pebbles to boulders, are composed of grey andesite with a granite semi-crystalline matrix. It is a hard stone that is difficult to carve, but the images are scratched through the oxidised surfaces. The images carved onto the surface also vary in complexity from simple pictures engraved on one side of the stone to designs of complex scenes.  Some of the designs appear to be in styles which can be recognised as belonging to the Paracas, Nazca, Tiwanaku or Inca cultures, while others are in a style never seen before.

Amid the once-tranquil village of Sanxingdui, in a quiet part of Sichuan province in China, a remarkable discovery took place which immediately attracted international attention and has since rewritten the history of Chinese civilisation. Two giant sacrificial pits were unearthed containing thousands of gold, bronze, jade, ivory and pottery artefacts that were so unusual and unlike anything ever found in China before, that archaeologists realised they had just opened the door to an ancient culture dating back between 3,000 and 5,000 years.

In the spring of 1929, a farmer was digging a well when he discovered a large stash of jade relics. This was the first clue that eventually led to the discovery of a mysterious ancient kingdom. Generations of Chinese archaeologists searched the area without success until 1986, when workers accidentally found the pits containing thousands of artefacts that had been broken, burned, and then carefully buried.

La Zona Del Silencio, or the Zone of Silence, is a patch of desert near the Bolson de Mapimi in Mexico, in a place known as the Trino Vertex. 

The first incident here occurred in the 1930’s when a pilot by the name of Francisco Sarabia was flying over the area and claimed his instruments went wild and his radio stopped working. Later, in the 1970’s, attention was drawn to the area when a faulty American missile was fired from the White Sands Missile Base in New Mexico and crashed—or perhaps was pulled—into the region. The Mexican government allowed U.S. Air Force officials to investigate the crash at the site, which is when the cause became apparent. It was discovered that no signals of any sort are able to penetrate the area—including radio and satellite signals—due to local magnetic fields that create a dark zone, thus attributing to the popular name of the site.

Four hours drive south of Lima Peru one finds the Paracas Peninsula, part of which is an ecological reserve, where one can see wildlife such as sea lions, and a myriad of various sea bird species. The area is amazingly rich in seafood, and abundant fresh water exists just below the surface of the desert sands, suitable for irrigation free agriculture.

Therefore, it would seem to be a very liveable place for humans.  Stone tools, of various forms and styles of shaping have been found in the area, and cursory analysis has established dates of as old as 8000 years. The greatest of Peruvian archaeologists, Julio Tello, made studies in this area in 1928 and performed excavations on the north side of the peninsula, in the central area of the large semi-circular bay there. He discovered and excavated a massive and elaborate graveyard, where each tomb contained an entire family, each one ornately wrapped in multiple layers of highly stylized, woven and coloured cotton cloth. He also found the sand filled remains of subterranean houses, which turned out to be numerous; so numerous in fact, that the village stretched out for between 1 and 2 km just above the seashore.

In 1912, a Polish-American book dealer named Wilfrid M. Voynich went to Rome on an acquisitions trip. There he happened upon a trunk that contained a rare manuscript now known as the Voynich manuscript. Since its appearance, this document—which is now under lock and key at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript library at Yale—has been studied extensively and has stumped even the most successful cryptographers and code breakers. You must be asking yourself why the intrigue? The answer is simple: the book is almost entirely illegible.

There are many theories about the origins and functions of Stonehenge. Only through exploring the significance of the electromagnetic universe do we begin to understand the implications of this great stone megalith. Revelations have appeared via another great mystery, crop circles but in a formation so obtuse it was largely bypassed.

In 2009 at Manton, Wiltshire, UK, a stand alone pattern appeared. A peculiar stark design, it attracted little in the way of analysis going largely unexplored.

However it is a major key to much crop circle imagery and meaning; that Earth life is affected and effected through cosmic electromagnetic fields.

Few know of the Ahnenerbe organization, a secret society that was created by Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Wirth and Richard Walter Darre—but the names may sound familiar. Herman Wirth was a Dutch historian obsessed with Atlantis, while Walter Darre was the creator of the Nazi ‘Blood and Soil’ ideology, as well as the head of the Race and Settlement Office. As for Himmler, he later became known for his appointment as the leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel).

It was in April 1561 when all residents of Nuremberg, Germany, came out of their houses to investigate mysterious lights and loud sounds. They watched the sky, panicked, witnessing some kind of battle—and all of this in daylight.

The event lasted for about one hour. Artist Hans Glaser documented this strange event for the German Nuremberg Gazette. Describing the event, he refers to crosses, tubes, wheels, multi-coloured objects and globes over the city. Hundreds of them. Objects would disappear in smoke, some even crashing into the ground. The smoke was visible for miles.

Some would dismiss all of this to the appearance of meteors or comets, even other natural events, but the uniqueness of the Nuremberg incident eliminates such interpretations.

On August 15^th, 1977, astronomer Jerry Ehman working on the SETI project in Ohio, detected for the first and last time (at least officially) a 72 second signal coming from outer space. That was a monumental time in history and the event got the attention of everyone.

SETI (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) was established by the late 1970 at the Ames Research Center of NASA and the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The goal was to examine stars trying to detect intelligent signals from space. However it was 2 decades later that NASA stopped being involved in the project.