Scientia Press

Among the deepest mysteries of ancient Egypt is the Great Sphinx of Giza.  Researchers, both professional and amateur, have painstakingly investigated its every aspect.1  Yet key puzzles remain, above all the question of why this colossal structure, the ancient world’s largest monument, was built in the first place.

It’s not that serious researchers and free-ranging speculators have not proposed explanations.  But every theory put forward falls well short of true persuasiveness or stumbles over inconvenient facts.  Here are three anomalies a correct theory should explain.

August 4, 1962.  Celebrity actress Marilyn Monroe died in her bedroom in Los Angeles (or in the guest house near her house, from which she was carried back to her bedroom).1

Sometimes a storyteller misses the real meaning of the story.

By all accounts, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the most dangerous episode of the Cold War.  The United States and the Soviet Union came frighteningly close to launching nuclear attacks at each other.  Only fear, luck, and occasionally inspired negotiating moved them onto the path of resolving the crisis−via a humiliating Soviet withdrawal in the face of U.S. nuclear superiority.

Historians have identified many motives for the initial Soviet decision to place missiles in Cuba. 

Karahunj (Zorats Karer) is an ancient site in southern Armenia that contains more than 230 large stones, some 37 still standing, arranged in a fashion that has suggested to many observers that it was used for archaeoastronomy.  But defining how it was used has remained elusive.  Complicating the situation, Karahunj is located near a complex of ancient graves; we do not know who built it; it is difficult to ascertain exactly when the stones were set up; and some 85 of them have holes drilled through them that researchers have suggested might be used for sighting celestial objects, but other researchers think this unlikely because they would have been too imprecise.1

Nonetheless, there is a rather simple explanation of the stones of Karahunj.  But to grasp it, one must become aware of the compelling new evidence for and reinterpretation of

New evidence and interpretation at the intersection of planetary science and religion can help us better understand the history of the Ancient Near East and of the origins of Islam.

A Revised Venus Theory corrects Immanuel Velikovsky’s original theory that the planet Venus first entered the inner solar system as a comet with a bifurcated tail around 1500 BC (new evidence indicates around 2525 BC).  Now we have a much better explanation of the origin of Venus (rather than fissioning off of Jupiter, it was pulled from the outer solar system by Jupiter’s gravity and, via tidal heating, became a comet with a long tail).  Venus interacted with the Earth on a 52-year cycle during the Late Bronze Age, causing catastrophes worldwide.  And we now have a framework theory of the terrestrial planets into which these phenomena neatly fit and for which there is telling evidence.  For Comet Venus, there is also newly interpreted, compelling iconographic and linguistic evidence.  The names of both Athena (A Fena, the Phoenician) and Poseidon (Bos eidon, the Bull of Heaven), for instance, referred to the double-tailed Venus.

So with new-found confidence that the Ancients and Velikovsky were right about Venus, we can ask how can we use this to decipher aspects of the culture of the Ancient Near East and of the background of Islam.

Decades of meticulous investigation have revealed many features of the 1st Century BC Antikythera Mechanism, a portable planetarium that demonstrated the motion of celestial objects.  But we must question researchers’ conclusion that the Mechanism incorrectly represented the orbit of Mars, in particular, by roughly 30 degrees during retrograde motion1.

This discrepancy seems anomalous in a sophisticated device that otherwise exhibited a much smaller range of error.  So maybe there is some other explanation.

Many Germans have earnestly sought to overcome the Nazi past by publicizing its depredations, by acknowledging wrongdoing, by seeking restitution of stolen property,  and by maintaining a respectful, responsive stance toward Jews in general and Israel in particular.  Still, such is the burden of the Holocaust that another approach may also prove attractive to certain Germans.  It involves Yiddish.

While Yiddish contains elements of Hebrew and Slavic languages, it is mainly an old dialect of German.  A German speaker can understand most of it, and in fact Yiddish forms part of the study of German linguistics and literature, correctly understood.  This means that a simple initiative could help bring Germans and Jews closer.

The civilizations of Mesoamerica abounded in mysteries.  What caused their fixation on Venus?  What led them to develop their intricate, highly precise calendars?  What can explain the little pecked-cross circles embedded in the landscape?  Why were these peoples so keenly bent on human sacrifice?  What were the Aztecs referring to when they said that this was the age of the Fifth Sun?

We have a skeleton key that can unlock these old secrets.

Acting in a coherent fashion, the red blood cells play a more important role in life processes than is commonly known.

The red blood cells’ unique, remarkable role in oxygen and carbon dioxide transport sharply distinguishes them from the body’s other cells.  So do their anaerobic energy metabolism, peculiar biconcave shape, 120-day life cycle (with 2,000,000 new RBCs formed every second), iron content, and extremely high hemoglobin content (roughly 270 million hemoglobin molecules are packed into each one of 25 trillion RBCs). While their counterparts in many vertebrates and invertebrates retain the nuclei and organelles that mammalian RBCs eject in the course of maturation, the erythrocyte group in general exhibits certain “prokaryotoid” characteristics,

The Internal Armed Conflict in Colombia since 1948

                          by Stephen J. Dillon

El Bogotazo and La Violencia 

On April 9, 1948, Jorge Eliecer Gaitán was assassinated in Bogotá, Colombia, and nothing would ever be the same. Gaitán was the leader of the Liberal Party, nicknamed “The People’s Leader” for his social-populist stance, and had been highly influential for nearly twenty years, having successfully mobilized public opinion against the United Fruit Company in 1929, while representing the interests of the oppressed workers of the Banana Zone. He had meetings scheduled for that afternoon with Fidel Castro, then a student activist, and Rómulo Betancourt, former president of Venezuela, but when he went out for lunch, he was killed by Juan Roa Sierra, a young shoeshiner with delusions of grandeur. The circumstances of his assassination remain ambiguous, but a conspiracy is suspected.

Every nation has divisive issues.  While most are perennials, over time new issues gain salience as others fade.  At times of rising political and social tensions, such as the US since 1990, divisive issues multiply and take on a sharper edge.

If we wish to cope with these issues or even resolve some of them, it is useful to have a shared understanding of what they are