Photo: watercolour painted by John White
John White, explorer and artist - British Museum, London
Village of the Secotan in North Carolina. Watercolour painted by John White, 1585.

Photo: Clay pot of North Carolina Algonquins used for boiling.
John White, explorer and artist - British Museum, London
Clay pot of North Carolina Algonquins used for boiling.

Photo: Equipment for curing fish used by the North Carolina Algonquins.
John White, explorer and artist - British Museum, London
Equipment for curing fish used by the North Carolina Algonquins.

Photo: Man of the Secotan Indians in North Carolina. Watercolour painted by John White in 1585.
John White, explorer and artist - British Museum, London
Man of the Secotan Indians in North Carolina. Watercolor painted by John White in 1585.

A sweeping account of America's oldest unsolved mystery, the people racing to unearth its answer, and what the Lost Colony reveals about America today 
In 1587, 115 men, women, and children arrived at Roanoke Island on the coast of North Carolina to establish the first English settlement in the New World. But when the new colony's leader returned to Roanoke from a resupply mission, his settlers had vanished, leaving behind only a single clue - a "secret token" etched into a tree.
What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke? That question has consumed historians, archeologists, and amateur sleuths for 400 years. In The Secret Token, Andrew Lawler sets out on a quest to determine the fate of the settlers, finding fresh leads as he encounters a host of characters obsessed with resolving the enigma. In the course of his journey, Lawler examines how the Lost Colony came to haunt our national consciousness.
Incisive and absorbing, The Secret Token offers a new understanding not just of the Lost Colony and its fate, but of how its absence continues to define - and divide - America.

Interview begins at 3:15
Today’s author interview on YouTube is with Andrew Lawler, author of The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke A sweeping account of America’s oldest unsolved mystery, the people racing to unearth its answer, and the sobering truths–about race, gender, and immigration–exposed by the Lost Colony of Roanoke In 1587, 115 men, women, and children arrived at Roanoke Island on the coast of North Carolina.

Chartered by Queen Elizabeth I, their colony was to establish England’s first foothold in the New World. But when the colony’s leader, John White, returned to Roanoke from a resupply mission, his settlers were nowhere to be found. They left behind only a single clue–a “secret token” carved into a tree. Neither White nor any other European laid eyes on the colonists again. What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke?

For four hundred years, that question has consumed historians and amateur sleuths, leading only to dead ends and hoaxes. But after a chance encounter with a British archaeologist, journalist Andrew Lawler discovered that solid answers to the mystery were within reach. He set out to unravel the enigma of the lost settlers, accompanying competing researchers, each hoping to be the first to solve its riddle. In the course of his journey, Lawler encounters a host of characters obsessed with the colonists and their fate, and he determines why the Lost Colony continues to haunt our national consciousness.

​Thrilling and absorbing, The Secret Token offers a new understanding not just of the first English settlement in the New World but of how its disappearance continues to define–and divide–America. Andrew Lawler is the author of two books, The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke and Why Did the Chicken Cross the World: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization.

As a journalist, he has written more than a thousand newspaper and magazine articles from more than two dozen countries. His byline has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and many others. He is contributing writer for Science and contributing editor for Archaeology. Andrew’s work has appeared several times in The Best of Science and Nature Writing.

The Malham Cave in Mount Sodom, Israel, has been named the world's longest by researchers. The team who surveyed the cave system to the south of the Dead Sea believe it runs for more than 10 kilometers (6 miles), and say this estimate is likely conservative.

Professor Amos Frumkin, of the Hebrew University Cave Research Center, said the team at the institution have been exploring the site for decades, but advanced mapping technology enabled them to recently complete their survey.

​"It turns out that the Malham Cave is more than 10 kilometers long, which makes it the longest cave in the world," Frumkin said. The team believes the cave is around 7,000 years old, The Times of Israel reported.

Malham Cave has therefore taken the title of world's longest salt cave from the Namakdan Cave in Iran, which stretches 6,850 meters (4 miles), the researchers told Reuters. That was named the longest by a team of Iranian and Czech researchers in 2006, according to the Associated Press.

The dry landscape near the warren-like structure preserved the salt, and enabled an extraordinarily lengthy cave to form. It is unusual for a salt cave to reach more than a kilometer (half a mile) as the substance melts away in water. The team believe water from seasonal floods streamed through at least 19 openings in the mountain above, over millions of years, leaving behind deposits of salt, according to the Associated Press.

Amos Frumkin, a geologist and cave expert at Hebrew University explained to the Associated Press: "The salt layers are squeezed out from the sub-surface, where they are deposited a few kilometers underground, and while being squeezed out they form a mountain, which is rising still today, at a rate of about one centimeter per year."

Boaz Langford from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Caves Research Center said: "This cave is definitely longer than our current estimate. While we don't have final figures yet, we can only fantasize about them. We definitely know that our current estimate will change."

Over time, the cave will get even longer, the researchers told Reuters.

The cave is near the the Lot's Wife pillar, which takes its name from the Bible story. The woman, who is not named in the Bible, is said to have transformed into salt after she turned back to look at the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
​
Langford and Bulgarian spelunker Antoniya Vlaykov from the European Speleological Federation led a team of international volunteer cave explorers to survey the site. - Newsweek

https://www.geek.com/news/worlds-longest-salt-cave-discovered-in-israel-1780471/

https://biblewalks.com/sites/SodomCaves.html#LotsWife

https://www.amazon.com/1493-Uncovering-World-Columbus-Created/dp/B005GIH22A/ref=tmmaudswatch0?encoding=UTF8&qid=1556496661&sr=1-1

More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans. The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees, dandelions, and African grasses; bacteria, fungi, and viruses; rats of every description - all of them rushed like eager tourists into lands that had never seen their like before, changing lives and landscapes across the planet. 

Eight decades after Columbus, a Spaniard named Legazpi succeeded where Columbus had failed. He sailed west to establish continual trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. In Manila, a city Legazpi founded, silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically.
​
As Charles C. Mann shows, the Columbian Exchange underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City - where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted - the center of the world. In such encounters, he uncovers the germ of today's fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture...

@CharlesCMann

Gold coins of Roman Emperor Theodosius II, who ruled between CE 402 and 450, are not necessarily rare, but when one of these coins is found in what is today Israel, that is another story.
On July 3 Fox News and other news agencies reported the find of a gold solidus in the Galilee region by a group of Israeli students. Further details of the context in which the coin was found were not available at the time this article was being written.

According to Israel Antiquities Authority numismatist Dr. Gabriela Bijovsky, “The gold coin is a solidus minted by the emperor Theodosius II in Constantinople around 420-423 CE. Similar coins are known from the Eastern Byzantine empire, but this is the first of its type discovered in Israel.”

In her description of the coin, Bijovsky said, “One side depicts the image of the emperor and the other shows the image of the goddess Victory holding the staff of the cross.”
Images of the coin indicate it is a Sear 21155 solidus, described in David Sear’s Roman Coins and Their Values as: “Victory standing left holding [a] long jeweled cross, [with] mintmark CON OB in exergue.” The book indicates the coin was struck between CE 420 and 422.

According to Sear’s description of the coin, “The consular bust on [the] obverse records Theodosius ninth or tenth consulship. This is the first appearance of the reverse type that was to become standard on the eastern coinage down to the reign of Anastasius I. It has been suggested that its introduction was connected with campaigns against the Persians and the erection of a large jeweled cross on the reputed site of the crucifixion [of Jesus Christ].”

Dr. Yair Amitzur, IAA is the chief archaeologist of the Sanhedrin Trail. According to Amitzur, “The emperor Theodosius II abolished the post of the ‘Nasi,’ the head of the Sanhedrin Council, and decreed that the Jews’ financial contributions to the Sanhedrin be transferred to the Imperial Treasury.”

Amitzur continued, “The Sanhedrin trail initiated by the IAA tells the story of the Jewish leadership in Galilee at the time of the Mishna and the Talmud in the Roman and Byzantine periods. It is symbolic that the gold coin discovered adjacent to the Sanhedrin trail reflects the period of dramatic events when the Sanhedrin ceased to function in Galilee, and the center of Jewish life transferred from Galilee to Babylon.”

The Mishna of which Amitzur spoke is the first major written collection of Jewish oral traditions and the first major work of rabbinic literature. In the early third century the Mishna was redacted by Judah the Prince during a time when, according to the Talmud, there was concern the oral traditions of the Pharisees from the period of the Second Temple (536 BCE-CE70) might be forgotten. The Mishna consists of six orders or Sedarim, each segmented into between 7 and 12 tractates, these being further subdivided into chapters and paragraphs.

While it is difficult to determine the exact value a gold solidus might represent in Galilee circa CE 422 it is known that at the time of Constantine I “the Great” (CE 306-337) the solidus was struck at a rate of 172 to the Roman pound of pure gold. A pound of Roman gold was about 326.6 grams. This comes out to about 4.5 grams of gold per solidus. The purity of the solidus remained constant theoretically into the Byzantine period following the fall of the Western Empire in CE 476. During the period of the Byzantine Empire, the solidus would be known as the nomismata.

Theodosius II was only about nine months old when he was made co-emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire with his father Arcadius. In 408 at age seven he became sole emperor with the death of his father. Despite his long reign, the real power behind the throne was Pulcheria, Theodosius’s sister. Pulcheria took command of the Eastern Empire at age 15. This was the period when Attila the Hun and the Persian Sasanids challenged the empire. Attila was bought off with large amounts of gold. The Theodosian Walls were built around Constantinople and the Codex Theodosiansus written during the reign of this emperor
​
According to Sear, “Gold solidi were produced in prodigious quantities, doubtless in connection with the buying off of the barbarian tribes…” - numismaticnews.net

Who was Theodocius II?

​By Viajes_de_colon.svg: Phirosiberiaderivative work: Phirosiberia (talk) - Viajes_de_colon.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8849049

In 1492, a Spanish-based transatlantic maritime expedition led by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus encountered the Americas, continents which were completely unknown in Europe, Asia and Africa and were outside the Old World political and economic system. The four voyages of Columbus began the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

For a long time it was generally believed that Columbus and his crew had been the first Europeans to make landfall in the Americas. In fact they were not the first explorers from Europe to reach the Americas, having been preceded by the Viking expedition led by Leif Erikson in the 11th century;[1][2] however, Columbus's voyages were the ones that led to ongoing European contact with the Americas, inaugurating a period of exploration, conquest, and colonization whose effects and consequences persist to the present.

Columbus was an Italian-born navigator sailing for the Crown of Castile (Spain) in search of a westward route to Asia, to access the sources of spices and other oriental goods. This failed when he encountered the New World between Europe and Asia. Columbus made a total of four voyages to the Americas between 1492 and 1502, setting the stage for the European exploration and colonization of the Americas, ultimately leading to the Columbian Exchange.

At the time of the Columbus voyages, the Americas were inhabited by the Indigenous Americans, the descendants of Paleo-Indians who crossed Beringia from Asia to North America beginning around 20,000 years ago.[3] Columbus's voyages led to the widespread knowledge that a continent existed west of Europe and east of Asia. This breakthrough in geographical science led to the exploration and colonization of the New World by Spain and other European sea powers, and is sometimes cited as the start of the modern era.[4]
​
Spain, Portugal, and other European kingdoms sent expeditions and established colonies throughout the New World, converted the native inhabitants to Christianity, and built large trade networks across the Atlantic, which introduced new plants, animals, and food crops to both continents. The search for a westward route to Asia continued in 1513 when Vasco Nuñez de Balboa crossed the narrow Isthmus of Panama to become the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean from the shores of the New World. The search was completed in 1521, when the Castilian (Spanish) Magellan expedition sailed across the Pacific and reached Southeast Asia, retourning to Europe after sailing further West and achieving the first circumnavigation of the world.

​Continue reading at Wikipedia