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Ancient War Revealed in Discovery of Incan Fortresses

Incan fortresses built some 500 years ago have been discovered along an extinct volcano in northern Ecuador, revealing evidence of a war fought by the Inca just before the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Andes.

“We’re seeing evidence for a pre-Columbian frontier, or borderline, that we think existed between Inca fortresses and Ecuadorian people’s fortresses,” project director Samuel Connell, of Foothill College in California, told LiveScience.

The team has identified what they think are 20 fortresses built by the Inca and two forts that were built by a people from Ecuador known as the Cayambe. The volcano is called Pambamarca.

Landmark Hitler letter on Jews unveiled in New York

A letter by Adolf Hitler – said to be the earliest expression of his ideas on anti-Semitism – has been shown publicly for the first time in New York.

The four-page typed letter, written in 1919, calls for the “uncompromising removal” of Jews from society.

It was acquired by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, where it is due to go on display. The statement by the then 30-year-old soldier is regarded as a key historical document from the period. Correspondents say it is seen as significant because it demonstrates how early the future Nazi leader was forming his views.

After 90 Years, a Dictionary of an Ancient World

Ninety years in the making, the 21-volume dictionary of the language of ancient Mesopotamia and its Babylonian and Assyrian dialects, unspoken for 2,000 years but preserved on clay tablets and in stone inscriptions deciphered over the last two centuries, has finally been completed by scholars at the University of Chicago.

This was the language that Sargon the Great, king of Akkad in the 24th century B.C., spoke to command what is reputed to be the world’s first empire, and that Hammurabi used around 1700 B.C. to proclaim the first known code of laws. It was the vocabulary of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first masterpiece of world literature. Nebuchadnezzar II presumably called on these words to soothe his wife, homesick for her native land, with the promise of cultivating the wondrous Hanging Gardens of Babylon.