Ispectrum magazine #03

ISPECTRUM
Issue 03/September-October 2013

MAGAZINE

WORLD ARCHAEOLOGICAL
TREASURES
INTERVIEW WITH

DR. EBEN ALEXANDER
Amoebas to protect
us from the flu

COGNITIVE
DISSONANCE

CONTENTS
Features

11

17

03
Interview with
dr. Eben alexander
THE SKEPTIC NEUROSURGEON
WHO WENT TO HEAVEN AND
COME BACK
06 NDEs in the Laboratory
08‘Proof of Heaven’
09 Who is Dr. Eben Alexander
11
Amoebas to protect us
from the flu
12 Protection from bird flu
possible
13 Amoebas work much faster
than chickens
15 No antibiotics, mercury or formaldehyde contained in this vaccine
17
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
19 Festinger & Carlsmith research
23 How active is cognitive dissonance in our everyday experiences?
26
Alan Turing: A Brilliant
Unknown
30 The Turing Machine
32 The Breaking of the ENIGMA
Code
34 Apple’s Logo

3

26

37
1

37
TREASURES
50 Lost Archaeology

editorial
The third issue of Ispectrum Magazine
arrives full of interesting content, starting with an interview with neurosurgeon
Dr. Eben Alexander, who after years of
being a skeptic of NDEs (Near Death
Experiences) changed his mind due to
meningitis that kept him in a coma for
seven days. Do you want to know what
he has to tell the readers of ISPECTRUM
MAGAZINE? I am sure you do.
Don’t miss the special article by Markus
Markus Köller who brings us, directly
from a German laboratory, interesting
research about amoebas that protect
us from flu. No antibiotics, mercury or
formaldehyde contained in this vaccine.
Feel curious? We do!
Our psychology section, with Rob
Hutchinson, is about cognitive dissonance. What happens to our private
opinions if we are forced to do or think
something that contradicts the way we
think? We want to know. How about
you?
We have the telecommunications
enginer Manolo Barea, who revitalizes
for us the figure of Alan Turing, one of
the fathers of computer science.Do you
know what apples have to do with Alan
Turing, and what Alan Turing has to do
with the Apple Computer Company?
Finally, this issue comes with an
extraordinary journey through the most
amazing of the world’s archaeological
treasures. John Sims, a former field
archaeologist from Wales, unveils for
us some things about our ancestors
through what they left behind.
Enjoy reading, leave us your comments
and share with us your ideas.

2

Mado Martinez
Editorial Director

Ispectrum
magazine

Editorial Director
Mado Martinez,
madomartinez@ispectrummagazine.com
Art Director
Rayna Petrova
raynapetrova@ispectrummagazine.com
Copy Editing and Proofreading
Matt Loveday
mattloveday@ispectrummagazine.com
John Sims
johnsims@ispectrummagazine.com
Daniel Hallam
Contributing Writers
Rob Hutchinson
Markus Köller
Manuel Barea
John Sims
Images
Cover Photo : ©DEBORAH FEINGOLD,
commons.wikimeadia.org,
public domain photos,
morguefile.com
www.ispectrummagazine.com
admin@ispectrummagazine.com
+44 7517864 167 / +44 7938707 164 (UK)

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INTERVIEW WITH
DR. EBEN ALEXANDER
THE SKEPTIC NEUROSURGEON
WHO WENT TO HEAVEN AND
CAME BACK
by
Mado Martinez
website
www.madomartinez.com

F

ferent man. Now he truly thinks, he truly
knows that there is life beyond death.

rom a skeptic to a believer. What
makes an atheist neurosurgeon who
didn’t believe in Near-Death Experiences
(NDEs), change his mind to the point of
affirming that Heaven is real?
For many years, Dr. Eben Alexander
thought that everything finished when you
die. Near-Death Experiences? What were
they? Surely a result of a lack of oxygen
in the brain but nothing else, and he was
so sure about it that he even manifested
it. But today Dr. Eben Alexander is a dif-

3

What happened? Well, it’s easy. Dr.
Alexander almost died. His brain was
attacked by a bacteria that kept him in a
coma for seven days and turned off his
synapses. While his physical body was in
the bed of a hospital surrounded by his
family, this neurosurgeon was in another
place; a Heaven where he learnt important
lessons…
Do you want to know which ones?

M.M. You are a famous neurosurgeon that in the past, didn’t believe in
NDEs. You even wrote papers against any remote possibility of life after
death. What was your theory in this period of your past?

E.A.
As a surgeon, I was
used to believing in what
I could see, feel, and
measure. At the time,
NDEs and consciousness independent of the
brain seemed like wishful thinking to me, and
I never really looked for

proof of what happens
after death. But after
my experience, when
I started really looking
for scientific papers—
not necessarily papers
that had made it into the
news, but papers and
research with rigorous
4

science behind them—I
found a wealth of information that revealed a
firm grounding in science and belief in NDEs
are not mutually exclusive.

M.M. So today you defend NDEs as real experiences, more real than the
reality in which we live. Can you affirm that consciousness exists?

E.A.
Consciousness might
be defined as awareness of things outside
oneself. So while philosophers have been
debating more precise
definitions for millennia, and the finer points
are quite complicated,
the core of the thing is
easy; if you’re reading
this, if you’re aware of
this newspaper, you’re
conscious.

The tougher question,
and one that I have
learned a lot about
since my experience, is
whether consciousness
is essentially mechanical—that is, arising solely from physical processes in the brain—or
holistic, in that it transcends the brain. As
a neurosurgeon, I was
used to a one-to-one
correlation between the

physical brain and how
the mind appeared to
work. For example, if
I had a patient with a
tumor that affected a
part of the brain associated with language,
he would have trouble communicating. But
I’ve since learned that
it’s a lot more complicated than that.

M.M. Do you affirm it from the personal point of view or from a scientific
point of view?

Е.A.
While the science
has been emerging
throughout the last
few decades, I refused
to seriously consider
it until my own personal experience. Since

then, I have learned a
lot, and based on my
experience, a wealth
of anecdotal evidence,
and emerging research
in medicine and
physics, I have come
5

to accept the hypothesis that consciousness
exists beyond the physical brain.

M.M.

Is it possible to experiment with NDEs in a laboratory?

Е.A.
Absolutely. However,
as a doctor, I hold the
Hippocratic oath—do no
harm—in the highest
regard. Doctors and scientists cannot in good
conscience
perform
experiments that could
harm their patients.
Our lives are infinite-

ly precious, and while
research in this area
interests me, the health
and well being of other
people far outweighs
anything we might learn
using that method. I’m
in contact with teams of
researchers all over the
world doing some very

exciting research in this
area, and all of them
have found creative
ways to learn about
consciousness—from
neuroscience to theoretical physics—without
risking patients health
in any way.

M.M. Can Science explain everything, or does it need to open up to other
disciplines of knowledge to explain the
mysteries of life, physics and the universe?

Е.A.
Ultimately, science is
the study of the observable universe. I think
science can explain
everything—if we can
find ways to observe
a broader range of the
universe.

tally ill were assumed
to be possessed. Now
we have the right
vocabulary and conceptual
framework
to talk about viruses
and bacteria, and the
right tools, like microscopes, to observe
Just a few hundred years and measure them.
theory and proven fact
ago, illness seemed like But the differences
a curse, and the men- between “magic” and aren’t always clear
6

until much later. And
while we’ve learned a
lot, we’re nowhere near
100%. Witch hunts
continue even today
in countries like Papua
New Guinea, where a
woman was burned
alive in 2013. It would

be incredibly arrogant
of us to assume that we
have discovered every
way to see the world
and every tool to measure it. Scientists are at
their best when they are
open to all possibilities,
and arrive at a study

without assumptions or
preconceptions.
from neuroscience to
theoretical physics—
without risking patients
health in any way.

M.M. When a person says that she/he has had an NDE, a scientist doesn’t
believe her/him. When people like Louis Hay, Gregg Braden, etc, say that
they have cured themselves from a cancer with positive thinking, what do
you - a doctor - have to say?

Е.A.
As a doctor, I’ve seen
people recover who
every medical test
indicated should have
died. And I’ve seen
people deteriorate who
should have responded
to treatment. We just
don’t know everything
about how the human
body heals itself.

py and radiation therapy, works better than
anything else. But it
doesn’t work in every
case, and there’s often
no clear reason why it
works for one person
and doesn’t for another.
I would never advise a
patient to forgo chemo
in favor of meditation
or other mental efforts,
but I don’t dismiss the
Some studies show
that show people in a We know that modern power of positive thinkcoma do better when treatment for cancer, ing.
they hear positive talk including chemotheraat their bedside from
doctors
and
loved
ones—even people who
“shouldn’t” be able to
hear or process audio.
Clearly, we still have a
lot to learn about how
the brain works, and
how we interact with
our environment when
the brain is severely
injured.

7

M.M. During your experience you met other beings, and you knew about
other worlds, other universes, other existences. Do these experiences
prove that “aliens” exist?

Е.A.
I believe that there are
more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamt of in most peoples’ philosophies. We
know now that there

are other planets capable of sustaining life.
Statistically speaking,
it seems likely that at
least some of those that
can, do. Humanity is a

miraculous thing, but
I am not so egotistical
or naive as to think we
have a monopoly on
consciousness.

M.M. In “Proof of Heaven” we find the testimonial of a person that is a neurosurgeon; but it is not a scientific book. Are you only interested in ‘spreading the word’ or have you thought about conducting scientific research in
order to publish papers and books for the scientific community?

Е.A.
how what I learned can
change their lives for
the better. While I don’t
feel a calling to do laboratory work with NDEs,
I do continue to follow
current research about
consciousness
and
NDEs, and support the
researchers doing that
work. There is some
Right now, I’m focused really exciting research
on continuing to share out there right now, and
my story and help- I feel very blessed to be
ing people understand here at a time when we
I wanted Proof of
Heaven to be accessible to people without a medical background. While there are
lots of studies about
near-death experiences, research jargon can
be daunting for many
people.

8

are constantly learning
new things about who
we are, where we are,
where we’re going, and
what it all means.

WHO IS DR.
ALEXANDER?
Eben Alexander
is an American neurosurgeon and the
author of the best-selling Proof of Heaven:
A
Neurosurgeon’s
Journey
into
the
Afterlife, in which he
describes his 2008
near death experience and asserts that
Science will determine
that Heaven really does
exist.
If you want to know
more about him, check
out
www.lifebeyondeath.net

PROOF OF HEAVEN: THE
EXCERPTS
any words, she spoke
to me. The message
went through me like
a wind, and I instantly
understood that it was
true. I knew so in the
same way that I knew
that the world around us
was real […] The message had three parts,
[A girl] Without using and if I had to transA beautiful, incredible
dream world… Except it
wasn’t a dream. Though
I didn’t know where I
was or even what I was,
I was absolutely sure of
one thing: this place I’d
suddenly found myself
in was completely real.

9

not one universe but
many –in fact, more
than I could conceivebut that love lay at the
center of them all. Evil
was present in all the
other universes as well,
but only in the tiniest trace amounts. Evil
Through the Orb, Om was necessary because
told me that there is without it free will was
late them into earthly
language, I’d say they
ran something like this:
“You are loved and
cherished, dearly, forever. You have nothing
to fear. There is nothing
you can do wrong”.

10

impossible, and without free will could be
no growth –no forward
movement, no chance
for us to become what
God longed for us to be.

Amoebas to protect us
from the flu
Innovative flu vaccine takes
first hurdle at Regulatory Agency

by
Markus Köller
website

www.medien-loge.de

M

ünster, July 29, 2013. We may
still know from biology class
that amoebas (or scientifically called
Tetrahymena) are microscopic sandal
shaped single cell organisms and can
be found in any lake or water puddle.
They will now help to produce the flu
vaccine named Ciflu, the production
of which is twice as fast as and safer
than current technology. Risks and
supply shortages for vaccines against
seasonal or pandemic flu will most
11

likely become a thing of the past.
The vaccine was developed by Cilian
AG, a biotech company based in
Münster, Germany, and is currently
in advanced testing phase. The
German Paul Ehrlich Institute, more
precisely the Federal Institute for
Vaccines and Biomedical Products
has now granted permission for
next steps in the vaccine’s development.

By rendering scientific advice, the Paul Ehrlich
Institute helped the amoeba based vaccine to take
its first big official hurdle in the first attempt. Since
animal tests of Ciflu were positive and, in fact,
superior in efficacy to the standard vaccine, the
regulatory agency has authorized additional in vivo
testing: A first official signal for the large potential
of this new product.

Protection from bird
flu possible
What is it, in fact, that makes
Tetrahymena so much better than
other vaccine production?

“I have been following research at
Cilian AG very closely for years now“,
explains Professor Tiedtke who is cell
biologist and biotechnologist at the
University of Münster in Germany.
“Tetrahymena cells offer a lot of
advantages. As eukaryotes, they possess similar features to human cells
– meaning that compounds can be
produced naturally the same way
(as in the human body) and are
therefore harmless for us humans
and animals. In addition, such vaccine production would by far be a lot
faster than conventional methods. It
is very flexible – and one day it could
protect us from the bird flu.”
12

Speed in the production of vaccines is often the decisive factor: the German Federal Ministry of
Health recommends that individuals should get vaccination against
influenza, commonly referred to as
flu, every year between the months
of September and November. This
is particularly relevant in children
and the elderly. However, what happens if shortages occur in conjunction with the manufacturing and
supply of vaccine, as was the case
last year in Bavaria and Northern
Germany? The time window for
production is extremely narrow.
Because of constant mutation, the
WHO determines the relevant virus
types each February for the upcoming flu season. Through conventional production in Germany, the standard vaccine is produced in chicken
embryos in a very tedious process.
The chicken embryos get infected
with the live virus which multiplies
in their bodies. This process alone
takes more than 2 months.
Recombinant vaccine Ciflu, meaning
produced through biotechnology,
could offer relief in the near term.
13

Current vaccine production in
chicken eggs

“Our process is a lot more efficient and cleaner” says Dr. Marcus
Hartmann, Chief Scientific Officer of
Cilian AG. “In comparison with the
current standard vaccine we could
produce large quantities almost
twice as fast. This applies for seasonal flu but also for a pandemic
which tend to spread in the general
population very quickly.”

Another advantage:
More safety
The outer membrane of the flu virus
consists in most part of a protein,
called hemagglutinin. Hartmann and

(Sources: Bild links: CDC / Laura R. Zambuto. Bild rechts: www.cilian.de)

Amoebas work much
faster than chickens

Dr. Marcus Hartmann of Cilian AG demonstrating how much
safer his process is
(Sources: Bild links: CDC / Laura R. Zambuto. Bild rechts: www.cilian.de)

his team can program Tetrahymena
DNA in a complex high-tech process
so that they will only produce the
protein. Through vaccination with
hemagglutinin, a person produces
antibodies that recognize the flu
virus and remember the structure
of the protein long term. This helps
to identify the virus a lot quicker
and then effectively fight it.
Besides production speed, manufacturing of hemagglutinin offers
another advantage: Conventional
vaccines may contain immobilized
viruses or virus like particles. Ciflu
on the other hand features only the
protein. Growing viruses in chicken
eggs or in some other production
systems always carries a risk of
contamination since they involve
14

the handling of pathogens or particles thereof. ”Such risk can only be
lowered through expensive additional safeguards”, explains Hartmann,
while standing in plain attire in the
lab. “Unprotected as I stand in our
vaccine production is not possible
in conventional production, there
they have to wear protective safety
suits. Here, however, I can reach
into the vessel with my bare hands
and nothing would really happen to
me”.

No antibiotics, mercury or formaldehyde
contained in this vaccine

certain that the side
effects will be a lot
less. The next tests will
certainly provide the
scientific evidence”.

“The decision rendered
by the Paul Ehrlich
Institute resembles the
experts’ great interest in this production
process”, according to

The scientific advice
from the Federal Agency
confirms that if the
amoeba masters the
upcoming tests, tests
in human subjects will
be next. A collaboration partner for clinical
trials has already been
found.

Professor Tiedtke, who
has researched and
studied the unique features of Tetrahymena
for decades. “I believe
that Dr. Hartmann
found a potentially very
good, fast and safe
alternative to produce
effective vaccines.”

(Sources: www.cilian.de)

On top of this, the
vaccine from amoeba
does not contain any
controversial ingredients such as mercury,
antibiotics or formaldehyde. Standard vaccines currently contain
small amounts of these
ingredients, remnants
from the purification
process. Such ingredients have caused
resentment in parts of
the population towards
vaccination. Only 10%
to 15% of Germans
will get immunization
against seasonal flu
partly because they fear
side effects and allergic
reactions to intolerable
vaccine components.
“In this regard Ciflu is
cleaner”, according to
Hartmann. “Since we
only produce a harmless protein, we are

15

The vaccine from amoeba does not contain
any controversial ingredients such as mercury,
antibiotics or formaldehyde

“We are pleased at having received the support
from the Paul Ehrlich
Institute. If all upcoming tests will be as positive as the ones to date,
the vaccine will certainly change a few things

a bit like the iPhone
changed the way we
use wireless communication”
according
to Christian Scheiner,
Cilian’s CEO. “We are
confident that within
the medium term we

16

can get to the market with Ciflu and have
prepared strategically
to insure production on
a large scale with our
partners.”

Cognitive dissonance is the area of social psychology which involves the
way we deal with two contradicting thoughts, and how we deal with this
contradiction.

17

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

by
rob hutchinson
website


W

hat happens to our private
opinion if we are forced to
do or think something that contradicts the way we think? Quite surprisingly evidence suggests that we
change our private opinion so that
it corresponds more with the opinion we are forced to deliver. For
example, if we are told to improvise a speech supporting a point
of view that we disagree with, this
creates contradicting thoughts in
our head. To resolve this contradiction, we shift our opinion so
18

that we actually agree with the
content of the speech, in essence
convincing ourselves to change our
mind and bringing the conflicting
thoughts to an end. This also works
the other way round, in that if we
want to resolve the conflict but err
more towards our own opinion we
will rationalize or disregard information, filtering it so that it agrees
with our present opinion.

sense, but cognitive dissonance
is not that easy to predict. His
results actually showed that a
large reward caused a smaller
subsequent change in opinion in
participants than a lesser reward.

Cognitive dissonance is not that easy
to predict

The example above is very simple
and clear cut, but there are many
facets that influence cognitive dissonance. In truth, the concept is
as complicated as the execution
is cunning. When cognitive dissonance was first being investigated Kelman (1953) postulated that
if the contrary information being
presented to the participant was
supplemented by a reward, then
the greater the value of the reward
the more the participants opinion should shift towards the new
information. Logically this makes
19

It was a few years later when
Festinger (1957) and then Festinger
& Carlsmith (1959) made real
inroads into research on cognitive
dissonance theory. They focused
more on researching into how a
person’s opinion changed if they
were presented with information
contrary to their opinion and had to
reproduce that information in some
format. Most of you reading this
may be able to look back at times
you have rationalized information
to fit your opinion, but it’s much

harder to recognize a time when
your opinion shifted to align with
contradictory information. Arguably
this is the most interesting aspect
of cognitive dissonance theory and
also the aspect Festinger started to
investigate in detail in 1957.

dissonance is a very devious mechanism, as it operates on a subconscious level and any contributing
factors, such as a generous reward,
push it into the conscious mind and
negates it’s effect.

Expanding on Kelman’s 1953
research, Festinger postulated that
the effect of cognitive dissonance
would be maximized if the reward
offered or the punishment threatened was barely enough to prompt

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)
put this theory to the test, aiming to discover that if the larger
the reward offered the smaller the
subsequent private opinion change
would be. This experiment, with
many cunning deceptions, would

the person their private opinion
with the opinion presented. The
more obvious or greater the reward
or punishment was, the less an
effect it had. If this were to be true
it would demonstrate that cognitive

go on to become one of the cornerstones of cognitive dissonance
theory. Students at Stanford, as
in most psychology departments
at universities, were required to
spend a certain number of hours
20

hours, so the university administration were using this as a good
opportunity to interview the subjects in the spare time after the
experiment. Then, the experiment
began, with subjects first having
to move spools around a tray for
half an hour and then, for the next
half hour, putting pegs in a board.
Obviously, doing such boring tasks
for an hour would give the subjects
a negative view of the experiment,
which is exactly what Festinger and
Carlsmith were counting on. After
all, who enjoys putting pegs in a
board for half an hour?

as participants in experiments run
by fellow students and professors at the university. At the start
of the term it was additionally
explained to these students that to
monitor the experiments that were
being conducted interviews would
be held with some students and
they would be asked for their honest opinion of the experiment. One
particular study, called ‘Measures
of Performance’, lasted two hours
and 71 male students signed up
for it. This is where Festinger and
Carlsmith’s deceptions began. The
subjects were told that the experiment lasted just over an hour, but
they had to schedule it for two

At this point subjects were informed
that there would be two groups in
this experiment and they are in
Group A. Group B will do exactly
the same thing, but before they
start a student who is running the
experiment will tell subjects how
interesting and entertaining the
experiment is. That is the group
they are really interested in, and
the experiment the subject just did
is the control group. The subject
then waits for the interviewer from
21

cash and all the subject had to do
was tell the other student arriving
that the experiment was interesting. The Subjects agreed, and duly
informed the arriving student that
the experiment was indeed interesting. Surprisingly, this arriving
student (an actress), then told the
subject that her friend had done the
experiment, found it really boring,
and encouraged her to get out of
doing it. To this, some subjects put
the university to arrive and ask
about the experiment he just did.
However, whilst he is waiting, the
experimenter pops his head in at
reception and rather embarrassed,
informs the subject that the student who is running the experiment for Group B has not turned
up, so would he mind doing it for
them? It would only take a few
minutes and they will pay him a $1.
Another set of students having just
done exactly the same procedure
and, receiving the same explanation about the student not turning
up, are offered $20. Remember,
it’s 1959 so even a $1 is useful
22

removed for various other reasons. This left a pool of sixty to be
analyzed, twenty from each group
(a control group who never were
asked to talk to the arriving student but were still interviewed,
the $1 group and the
$20 group).

forward a more persuasive argument, that the experiment really
was interesting and that her friend
was wrong.

Having done this, the interviewer
from the university arrived
and asked subjects a
few questions to
check up on how
The results
experiments
showed
were being
that, on
conducted
With their experiment
average,
in the uniFestinger and Carlsmith
subjects
v e r s i t y.
laid the foundations of
in
the
Subjects
cognitive dissonance
$1 group
were asked
theory.
respondfour quesed positions, one
tively to the
of which was
question of
in regards to
if they thought
how interesting
the experiment
the tasks they had
was interesting and
to do were. Festinger
enjoyable. The $20 dollar
and Carlsmith were very
group however, showed very little
careful, and used the interview as
difference in relation to the control
an opportunity to weed out any
group in their reports of how enjoysubjects who were suspicious at
able they found the experiment.
having to inform the girl that the
To sum up, when subjects were
experiment was interesting. The
induced via a small reward to say
data of five subjects was removed
something that conflicted with their
after they indicated they were susprivate opinion, this private opinion
picious as to the real nature of the
changed to correspond more closeexperiment, and additionally the
ly with what the subject had been
data from six more subjects was
23

told to say. The larger the reward
offered the smaller the effect was.
We can conclude from this that cognitive dissonance works best when
the reward offered is the minimum
necessary to cause the change in
behaviour. With their experiment
Festinger and Carlsmith laid the
foundations of cognitive dissonance
theory.

So just how active is cognitive dissonance in our everyday experiences? The answer is, alarmingly,
very active. Let’s look at some situations that maybe you have found
yourself in, and after applying the
cognitive dissonance theory, can
you honestly say that you haven’t
duped yourself into changing your
own opinion? Let’s say you really
want to enjoy a very exclusive gym,
or any other type of membership
club. You have high expectations,
but being a high end club you
have to do many arduous things
to gain membership, such as produce evidence of your income, go
to a couple of interviews and really
prove that you are worth being
allowed to join. All that effort and
eventually you are allowed to join..
24

only to discover that the club, is in
fact, rather dull and boring, hardly
worth all the time and effort you
put in. However, this creates two
contradictory thoughts, your opinion that the club is a waste of time,
and the opinion presented to you
that the club, with all its prerequisites to join, must be amazing. So,
we shift our opinion to be more in
line with that of the opinion presented, in effect changing our mind
to really believe that the club is a
great place to be. The harder it is
to join the club, the more you value
your membership, no matter how
average the club is.

Another example is how people
rationalize their behaviour even
though society, or others, may deem
it as morally or legally wrong. If a
person steals from their employer
they may rationalize it by thinking that ‘everybody else does it so
why shouldn’t I?’ Or, that we feel
aggrieved at the pay we receive,
25

so we take a little more on the
side, feeling that we deserve more
money so its not wrong at all.
We may recognize that stealing is
wrong but we twist the information
to justify our opinion and end the
contradiction that we are experiencing.

Cognitive dissonance is a robust
theory, with much evidence to support it’s basic principles and more
complicated aspects. It is one of
the most important yet little known
and understudied areas of psychology, especially since it is so common in our everyday lives and subconsciously acts to align our opinions, whether we want to change
them or not.

26

Alan Turing: A Brilliant
Unknown

by
Manuel Barea

most important aspects of
his life, his work and clarify
if possible the legend of the
Apple logo.

When our Director Mado
Martínez posted on social networking site Facebook of feeling addicted to the iPhone,
I told her of the hypothesis
that the Apple logo was a
tribute to the British mathematician, Alan Turing. She
was very surprised by the
exciting story that accompanies his life and invited me to
collaborate in this edition of
Ispectrum Magazine. In this
article, I will try to get the

We have all studied in our
childhood how Isaac Newton
discovered the law of universal gravitation, stoked by
an apple falling down from
a tree. However, history has
overlooked a second apple
that changed the world of science…
27

A Brief Review of his Biography

T

Alan Turing
(1912-1954)

he name Alan Turing is
probably not familiar to
most people who read this text, but
there are good reasons to consider
him one of the most influential and
interesting characters of the 20th
century. Alan Mathison Turing was
born on the 23rd of June 1912, in
Paddington, London. Turing spent
the first thirteen years of his life
traveling between England and
India, where his Father was a colonial civil servant. Upon a return to
the United Kingdom, he became a
student at the boarding school of
Sherborne, where he met his first
love; Christopher Morcom - a classmate who died of tuberculosis in
1930, a few weeks before graduating.

to its simplicity. Turing graduated with honors in Mathematics
from Cambridge, and thereafter
worked in the then-emerging field
of Quantum Mechanics. In April
1936 he published a famous article that introduced the concept of
algorithm, and defined a calculating machine of infinite capacity known as the Turing Machine,
which operated on the basis of a
series of logical instructions. It is
considered, therefore, to be the
forerunner of modern computing
and computing theory. He moved
to the United States’ University of
Princeton, where he worked with
the logician Alonzo Church and
received a PhD. in Mathematics.
However in 1938 he returned to
England to engage in a study of the
very foundations of mathematics.
This led to him working secretly for

He subsequently studied at King’s
College (University of Cambridge)
where he met Von Neumann whose invention; The Von Neumann
machine - is still in use today in
studies of concept designs and
the architecture of computers, due
28

the British Cryptanalysis Department
– a Government school dedicated to
encoding and encryption.
During the Second World War he
was offered the opportunity to apply
his theories; as a commander of a
division of the British Intelligence.
He continued work on both the processes and the machines that were to
be known as bombe, which allowed
for the deciphering of encrypted
Nazi codes and machines. Among
these was of course the Nazi Enigma
machine which contained messages
from the 3rd Reich, and provided
information that gained the allies a
valuable tactical advantage.

tions to other branches of applied
mathematics; such as Biology.

After the war he developed one of
the first electronic computers: The
Automatic Computing Engine (ACE),
in the National Laboratory of Physics
in the United Kingdom. Shortly thereafter he worked on the Manchester
Mark I, recognized as one of the first
real computers.
In these subsequent years Turing’s
work with computers deepened
greatly, and he established the theoretical template that would define
whether a computer had the capability to think like a Human – a forerunner to what is now referred to
as Artificial Intelligence. The ‘Turing
Test’ also made significant contribu-

Turing’s career was emphatically
cut-short however when, in 1952,
he went to the Police to report a burglary that had taken place at his own
home – perpetrated by his own lover
and an accomplice. It was then that
his homosexuality emerged, and
he was prosecuted and sentenced
for ‘grave impropriety’ and ‘sexual
perversion’. He was told he could
choose between jail and chemical
castration. Turing chose the second
option, which resulted in significant
physical and emotional consequences. For a year they injected him with
estrogen to “reduce libido” – a process which worked – and dramati-

29

Recently published research that
has used Turing’s theory as a template, has offered information into
the correlation of a Leopard’s spots
or the stripes of a Tiger. An almost
mathematical sequence that shows
how the parameters - such as the
darker markings - are used for ‘producing’ different substances wheras
the ochre or opposing colour(s)
inhibit or ‘control’ what produces
these substances. It sounds like a
random process but it is not.

cally altered the hormones in
his body which left him with
growths similar to a women’s
breasts. His public image had
been completely ruined. He
had been publicly humiliated
by the State, and his
own body left the
marks of his
shame.

An Apple with a missing bitten
piece, could be a kind oftribute
to Alan Mathison Turing.

On the 8th
of
June
1954, his
assistant
found him
dead in his
bed. At his
side, on the
bedside table,
was an apple with
one bite taken from it. He
was
two weeks shy of his 42nd birthday
when he died. It was established
that he had been poisoned by cyanide - allegedly injected into the
apple. Officially, the death of Alan
Turing was considered a suicide, and
some argue that this - given the way
he died – was his attempt at recreating his favorite tale: Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs. But his death
also suggests that it is not possible
to rule out murder; as Turing, due to
his homosexuality, would have been
30

considered by British Intelligence as
a potential risk to national security.
Although the company Apple
has never confirmed the theory; it has pointed out that
their logo: an Apple with a
missing bitten piece, could
be a kind of tribute to Alan
Mathison Turing.

In 2009, as a result of
a public mobilization,
Prime Minister Gordon
Brown apologized on
behalf of the British
Government for the
harassment suffered
by Turing. However,
in 2012, the British
Parliament refused to
pardon the scientist,
claiming that homosexuality – at the time the
events occurred – was
considered a criminal
offence.

Turing machine

The Turing Machine is
one of the most beautiful and intriguing
intellectual discoveries of the 20th century. A simple and useful abstract model of
computation (and digital computers) that
is general enough to
embody any computer
program. It forms the
foundation of theoreti-

cal computer science.
Because of its simple
description and behavior, it is amenable to
mathematical analysis.
This analysis has led to
a deeper understanding of digital computers and computation;
including the revelation
that there are some
computational problems that cannot be
solved on computers at
31

all, no matter how fast
the processor, or how
much memory is available.
Turing sought to
describe
the
most
primitive model of a
mechanical device that
had the same basic
capabilities as a human.
The machine consists
of the following components:

Turing machine tape
The tape head of
the Turing machine
scans the tape one cell
at a time. We refer to
the cell being scanned
as the active cell and
the symbol it contains
as the input symbol. At
each time step, the tape
head reads the input
symbol, and leaves it
either unchanged or
overwrites it with a new
symbol. At the end of
each time step, the tape
head moves one position to the left or right.
We highlight the active
cell in light yellow. In
the example below, the
A is replaced with an
The
ticker-tape X and the tape head
stores the input, the moves one cell to the
intermediate results, left.
and the output. The
tape is one arbitrarily
machine
long strip, divided into Turing
cells. Each cell stores tape head
one of a finite alphabet of symbols. In the
example below, we use The control unit
a 4 character alphabet is the analog version
consisting of: 0, 1, A, of the CPU in modern
day microprocessors. It
X, and #.
consists of a state tran32

sition diagram, which is
a finite table of instructions that specifies
exactly what action the
machine takes at each
step. Each state represents one of the possible configurations of the
machine. Depending
on its current state
and input symbol, the
Turing machine overwrites the input symbol
with a new symbol and
moves to a new state.
Each transition connects one state, say ‘s’,
to another state, say
‘t’, and is labeled with
two symbols, say ‘A’
and ‘X’: this means that
if the Turing machine
is in state ‘s’ and the
input symbol is ‘A’, then
it overwrite the ‘A’ with
an ‘X’ and transitions to
state ‘t’. Each state is
labeled with one of five
designations: L (left), R
(right), Y (yes), N (no),
or H (halt). Upon entering a state, the Turing
machine either moves
its tape head or halts
according to the state’s
designation.

Some online simulators of Turing’s
machine can be found at:
http://morphett.info/turing/turing.
html
http://db.ing.puc.cl/turingmachine/
http://math.hws.edu/TMCM/java/
xTuringMachine/

The Breaking of the
ENIGMA Code

ways. In addition to the permutations
of these rotors, the electrical connections on the back of the machine
could be changed manually giving
rise to more than 150 million million million possible configurations.
To increase the security even more,
the orientation of the three rotors
changed continuously, so much so
that each and every entry could
contain a different coding spectrum,
even though the characters entered
on the keyboard were the same. For
example:
Typing ‘DODO’ might generate the
message ‘FGTB’: The ‘D’ and ‘O’ are
Enigma machine

The Enigma machine consisted of
a keyboard connected to a unit of
encoding. The encoding unit contained three separate rotors whose
positions determined how they would
be coded by each letter on the keyboard. What made the Enigma Code
so difficult to break was the enormous number of ways in which the
machine could be configured. First,
the three rotors of the machine could
be chosen from a group of five, and
could be changed and exchanged
to deceive potential code breakers.
Second, each rotor could be located
in one of twenty different ways. This
means that the machine could be
configured in more than a million
33

ple, and get the code book with the
daily settings for the next month.
The alternative method - which was
The Enigma machines were deliv- adopted during the greater part of
ered to the Army, the Navy and the the war - was to transmit the day’s
German Air Force, and operated even configurations as a preamble to
in the railways and other depart- the daily messages themselves, but
ments of the government. As was coded according to the configurathe case with all the code systems tions of the previous day.
that were used during this period
When the war started the British
of time, a weakness of the Enigma
was that the receiver had to know School of Codification was domithe configuration set by the issuer. nated by linguists and scholars of
To preserve the security of Enigma, classical languages. But the Ministry
settings had to be altered every day. of Foreign Affairs soon realized that
One of the ways that the issuers had their theoreticians of numbers had
to change the configurations with a higher probability of finding the
frequency and keep the receivers key to break the German codes
i n f o r m e d and, to begin the operation, nine
was
the of the most brilliant British theop u b l i c a - rists of numbers were gathered at
tion of the the new headquarters of a school
daily con- in Bletchley Park; a Victorian manfigurations sion in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire.
in a book One of them of course was Turing
of
secret who had to abandon his hypotheticodes. The cal machines with tape and infirisk of this nite unlimited processing time; to
m e t h o d face a practical problem with finite
was
that resources and a very real time limit.
the British
In fact, the Enigma had to be brocould capture
a ken afresh over and over again.
G e r m a n The brilliant pre-war work by Polish
submarine, mathematicians, which enabled the
for exam- reading of Enigma messages on the
sent twice, but are encoded differently each time.

34

simplest key-systems –
given to
Britain and
France in 1939 –, was
certainly crucial, but it
was not sufficient for
the continuation and
extension of Enigma
code breaking over the
next six years. New
ideas were essential.
In 1939-40, Alan Turing
and another Cambridge
mathematician:
Gordon Welchman, further developed a new
machine; the British
Bombe.
The
basic
property of the Bombe
was that it could break
any Enigma-encrypted
message,
provided
that the hardware of
the Enigma was known
and that a plain-text
‘crib’ of about 20 letters could be guessed
accurately. A simulator
of the Bombe can be
found at the following
web address:

Apple’s Logo
I know of several theories on the origin and
creation of the desired
‘apple with bite’ logo,
so I’m going to collect the most interesting I’ve found, without
forgetting that Apple
has had different logos
throughout its history.

The first logo was
designed by Ronald
Wayne in 1976, shortly after the founding
of the company.
Wayne is a perfect stranger
in the style
of the ‘fifth
B e a t l e ’,
w
h
o
invited
Jobs and
Wozniak to
participate
h t t p : / / w w w. l y s a t o r. in Apple.
liu.se/~koma/turingbombe/bombe.html
Wayne’s logo
was of an elaborate design to the
35

old-fashioned point of
view.
It depicts Newton
reading under an apple
tree, surrounded by
the name of Apple
Computer Co. and the
text:
‘Newton…
A
Mind
Forever
Voyaging
Through Strange Seas
of Thought … alone’.

Source:http://commons.wikimedia.org/ Photo-Matt Yohe

Apart from the artistic value, Wayne’s logo
was a disaster, technically speaking. The
apple of ‘Apple’ was
barely visible, and even
the name of ‘Apple
Computer’ was hard
to read. Hence it was
discarded quickly and
the group decided that
they needed something
more professional.
Jobs commissioned the
Regis McKenna Agency
to take care of the image
of Apple, and there
worked Rob Janoff,
one of the designers
who has created some
of the most recognizable corporate identities of world industry,
such as IBM; Intel;
FedEx; Volkswagen and
CNBC.
After receiving the order, Janoff
went to a grocery store
and bought all kinds
of apples for inspiration. He cut each of the
apples in different ways
and, after a long meditation; he submitted
to Jobs a monochrome

Steve Jobs holding a MacBook Air
(at MacWorld Conference & Expo 2008Moscone Center - San Francisco, CA)

design that represented
an apple with a bite at
one side. Jobs thought
the work was good, but
he requested Janoff
make it more colorful
to ‘humanize the company’.
And so were
added the famous six
bands of colors. This
is the official history of
one of the most famous
logos of all time, but
36

a great number of
legends still circulate
around it – despite continuous rebuttals from
Jobs, Apple, Janoff and
McKenna…
There are those who
say that the apple is a
tribute to Alan Turing,
to his life, his work,
how he died and the
fact that he was gay.

Some think that the
rainbow of colors was
a reference to the flag
of the gay community, but this theory has
also been denied by its
designer, who states
that it simply symbolized the evolution from
monochrome to color
computers.
More recently others have found Aureos
numbers and Fibonacci
sequences in their proportions, although a
more detailed analysis
- and a comparison with
other logos – allows
one to see that through
certain sequences you
can achieve any value
and bring it closer to
look like what in reality
it is not.
After the return of
Steve Jobs to Apple
in the middle of the
90s, the company had
suffered many changes and one of them
was again in its logo.

The rainbow design
had become a little outdated and the
experts realized that
the shape of the Apple

more difficult to answer.
It may be possible that
Jobs simply liked to eat
them – particularly the
McIntosh variety!

Why an apple? This remains
more difficult to answer.

But regardless, whether the roots of the logo
are simple or indeed
an urban legend, it
remains that it could
be a subliminal tribute
to one of the greatest
Despite the numerous minds of the last centheories, some posed tury.
questions do have simple answers, such as
the choice taken for the
apple to have a missing
bite was just to portray
a sense of scale; or to
show that it is an apple
as opposed to a cherry. But, ultimately, the
question remains: Why
an apple? This remains
logo is more recognizable. They began to
use variants in black
and white or shades of
gray to replace the colored spectrum.

37

by
John Sims
website


TREASURES

F

There are of course all the usual names,
pyramids, Stonehenge, Avebury, Machu
Pichu, Nazca, Angkor Wat, Wall of China,
Forbidden City, Pompeii et al. Those are
so well known that you can hardly turn on
the telly without at least one of them being
in a documentary, so I won’t be listing any
of them.

irst let’s clear up that I’m not writing about treasure as in gold doubloons
or buried loot. Archaeological treasures
are discoveries that advance our knowledge. The searching for treasure is treasure-hunting, not archaeology. Treasurehunters tend to destroy the archaeology
to get at the gold. That doesn’t mean that
there’s nothing on my list that has a value
in monetary terms.lessons…

38

Carnac, in France

Carnac stones
been there since Neolithic times and
were taken from the local rock. By
comparison, Stonehenge originally
had 60. The Carnac stones, when
viewed from the air, seem to be laid
out in geometric shapes, fuelling the
ancient alien theorists to claim they
must have been put there by aliens
to navigate by. I fail to see why aliens
need stones to navigate, they got all
It’s my goal to highlight the less well the way to Earth without them.
known but more interesting sites of
the world, not only in the UK. First In monetary terms therefore, apart
among them being the stones at from their value if cut up to make
Carnac, France, not only because blocks to build with, they are of no
they’re amazing but because they’re value, but what they tell us about
being slowly destroyed, with the Neolithic France is huge. With these
stones being removed to make way enormous stone features, Avebury
for roads and even buildings. What also has many stones, it always
are the French thinking to let this makes me wonder how they, the
people who erected them, ever found
happen?
These stones, all 3000 of them, have the time or got organised enough to
Also I don’t propose to list these
in any numerical order. That would
suggest that one is more important
than another, and I feel that they
are all of equal importance, albeit
for many different reasons. By all
means place them in any order you
wish.

39

Antikythera
mechanism

When it comes to it being a treasure, I shall quote Professor Michael
Edmunds of Cardiff University who
led a 2006 study of the mechanism:

do it. Life back then was a struggle
just to survive, without lugging massive rocks about.
I love the Carnac myth that the reason the stones are in such straight
lines is because they’re a Roman
legion turned to stone by Merlin. If
only archaeologists could prove it.
Source: Centre des monuments
nationaux.
Next must feature the world’s first
computer. No, not the Apple, the
Antikythera Mechanism. Made to calculate astronomical positions. It has
been dated to the early first century
BCE (BC for Christians, political correctness gone mad). Technological
artifacts approaching its complexity and workmanship didn’t appear
again until the 14th century when
mechanical astronomical clocks
began to be built in Western Europe.
40

“This device is extraordinary, the
only thing of its kind. The design is
beautiful, the astronomy is exactly
right. The way the mechanics are
designed makes your jaw drop...in
terms of historic and scarcity value,
I have to regard this mechanism as
being more valuable than the Mona
Lisa”.

The mechanism was
in
a
wooden
box
and is approximately 340×180x90mm in
size, having 30 bronze
gears (although some
others could have been
lost). The mechanism’s
remains were found as
82 separate fragments
of which only seven
contain any gears or
significant inscriptions.
So, an object that was
made 13 centuries
ahead of its time. Now
that’s what I call a treasure.
Source: BBC News, May
10 2012.

Göbekli Tepe

and weighs up to 20
tons. They are fitted
into sockets carved out
of the bedrock. We’d
find it hard to do that
today with cranes and
The carving is in aston- modern tools.
ishing detail, not least
considering they were The site had in recent
done with primitive years been used for
tools, but what’s caused farming, and indeed
a problem with the dates some of the archaeis that it was made ology had been disa couple of thousand turbed by them while
years before there was clearing the area, but
agriculture
in the area,
and archaeologists have
always
said
that agriculture
came
before monument building. Now they
have to think
again and it
may have a
huge impact
on the way we
think
about
the evolution
of civilization.
Way
older
than
Stonehenge or Carnac
and it has turned
archaeological thinking
on its head.

Gobekli Tepe in Turkey.
This one is quite new
(discovered in 1994) so
some of you may not
have heard of it. It’s a
group of rings of stone
Each of the
pillars carved with animals, dating to the the stones is about
6 metres high
10th millennium BC.
41

Treasure of Villena.Spain

it was one such farmer
who first realised the
stones weren’t just random. However, it is the
German archaeologist
Klaus Schmidt who is
credited with realising
what the stones were
in 1994 and excavated
them.
Source: Smithsonian.
com.
A brief sidestep into
the less serious side of
archaeology. In 2005
a metal detectorist in
East Riding (UK) found
a Roman copper alloy
coin die for a denarius of Marcus Aurelius,
Roman Emperor in the

first century AD, which
had been used to make
counterfeit coins. Not a
world treasure, but for
the owner it probably
was worth a small fortune. Who said archaeology isn’t fun?
Source: wikipedia.

Treasure
Villena

of

We now go to Spain for
some proper treasure.
Tesoro de Villena (the
Treasure of Villena).
Probably the best hoard
42

of gold found from
the European Bronze
Age. Almost 10 kilos
in weight and made up
of gold, silver, iron and
amber. Some are 23.5
carat gold. That’s pretty rich stuff. It’s the
most important find of
prehistoric gold in the
Iberian Peninsular.
The iron objects are
the oldest found in the
Iberian Peninsular
and are highly interesting in that they
are from a time when
iron was considered to
be a precious metal, it
being still the Bronze
Age and all.

Sveshtari tomb
We can thank the archaeologist
José María Soler for digging them
up in 1963. The collection is now
on display (in a locked, armoured
showcase) in Villena’s Archaeological
Museum while copies are shown in To Bulgaria. Not the vampire skeleton, the Thracian treasure from
exhibitions around the world.
the world famous Sveshtari tomb.
That collection makes it to this list Important enough that the Louvre
because it’s one of the few examples are trying to get their hands on
of treasure in monetary terms being it. The items found are awesome.
simultaneously an important archae- Aside from their obvious monetary
ological find in that it’s an example value, the workmanship is perfect.
of the relative value of iron in the Someone very skilled spent a very
Bronze Age and a step towards the long time making these items, and
that may be because of their contransition to the Iron Age.
Source: El Tesoro de Villena, José nection to some seriously important
world figures.
María Soler.

Thracian gold treasure from the village of Sveshtari ,BULGARIA

43

It’s thought that the items are part
of a ritual burial, probably connected
to possibly a huge burial ground,
probably related to the funeral of the
Gath ruler Kotela, one of the fathersin-law of Philip II of Macedon. Like
I said, some important people, so
only the best workmanship. Told
you they’re well connected, didn’t I?
You’ll notice that we archaeologists
say ‘maybe’ and ‘probably’ a lot.
That’s so that we can’t be proved
wrong.
They are from the late 4th to early
3rd century BC. The find is unique.
In charge of this most exciting dig
is the prominent Bulgarian Thracian
expert Professor Diana Gergova from
the National Archaeological Institute,
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, who
discovered the items when excavating the Omurtag mount.
The importance of this find is that
it’s only a small part of a much bigger archaeological site that has still
to be excavated. There’s no telling
what else we’ll be able to learn about
the 3rd century BC from this site,
possibly showing the connection of
the Gath influence on the western
tribes like the Celts.
Source: novinite.com (Sofia News
Agency)
44

Winchester
Hoard

To Britain. The Winchester Hoard.
I include this one because it was
described as the most important
discovery of Iron Age gold objects
from Britain since 1950 and because
there’s a mystery element about it.
It’s from the time of Julius Caesar.
As gold hoards go it’s not vast,
some 1160 grams of very pure gold.
It includes two sets of jewellery, two
torcs, one smaller than the other,
probably for a woman, two brooches
and two gold bracelets. The torcs
however weren’t made in the usual
way for an Iron Age torc from Britain,
Ireland or France.
This find is also quite new, discovered in 2000 by a metal detectorist
named Kevan Halls who fortunately
reported his find so that the site
could be investigated and recorded.
What’s interesting, for a hoard, is
that the items weren’t found in a
grave or even a settlement, rather
they were found simply buried at
the top of a hill. Probably covered by

trees at the time, sug- the Romans didn’t get
gesting that they were them.
hidden for safekeeping.
What makes these
Rather sad, really, isn’t items interesting in an
it? Imagine you have archaeological sense
this couple, probably a is that they are from
local king and queen, a time of transition in
who probably had some Britain from the Iron
wealth, as even back Age to the Roman perithen gold was only for od, and these items
the wealthy, and the showed some of the
Romans came so they mixed influences of the
carefully hid their trea- time.
sures because they’d Source: British Museum.
heard that the Romans
Another pause for a
were big on robbing gold
from those they subju- lighter moment. The
Nose.
gated. Then for what- Beddingham
ever reason – prob- Found in 2009 by a
ably they were killed metal detectorist in
– they were unable to East Sussex. Dated
retrieve them. At least to between around
45

15-1700 AD, so ancient
treasure it ain’t. It’s
made of bronze, rather
interestingly.
Thought by the finder
to be maybe a Roman
nose protector worn by
soldiers under a helmet,
but after a somewhat
tortuous route between
various experts it was
declared to be a postmedieaval
prosthetic nose that probably
belonged to a gentleman of means who
may have lost his original hooter to syphilis,
which was rather common at the time among
the middle classes.

Photo by Portable Antiquities Scheme from London, England (The Winchester Hoard Uploaded
Victuallers) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Winchester Hoard,UK

That the item wasn’t
found in a grave but on
a sunken path makes
me wonder just how it
got there. Not something that you’d drop
without noticing, surely?
It’s somewhat important however, in terms
of
archaeology.
To
quote Stephanie Smith
of the PAS (Portable
Antiques Scheme) “This
was a very exciting find
because while it doesn’t
have huge monetary
value, it is such a rare,
interesting and bizarre
object that tells a funny
story about life during
that period. Dallying
with prostitutes became
a socially accepted
aspect of a gentleman’s
life, but unfortunately disfigurement from
syphilis, for which there
was then no cure, was
one of the side-effects
and a metal prosthetic
was deemed a better
alternative to a large
hole in one’s face.
Although it has a dark-

ROSETTA STONE
er and green tinge
now, then it would
have looked rathWithout it we’d still be
er more fleshy and
been much more sub- scratching our heads
hieroglyphics.
tle when worn. We get over
so used to seeing old The French found it in
coins, but something as 1799 and it was libunusual as a false nose erated from them by
keeps us excited about the British in 1801. It
currently lives in the
the job.”
British Museum, just to
I love her style and annoy the French. It’s
enthusiasm. By the often blamed for beginway, the good news ning Egyptology but it’s
is that the finder will just a bit of stone. We
be allowed to keep his can blame the treasurehunters for Egyptology.
treasure.
Source. The Telegraph.
We can’t do a list of
great
archaeological treasures without
including
Egypt, surely?
OK, they have
the pyramids,
the mummies
and the sphinx.
So well known
that they don’t
need covering
yet again here.
Moving on,
we have the
Rosetta Stone.
46

Terracotta
Army

The Terracotta Army of Qin Shi
Huang. My favourite. Qin Shi Huang
was the first Emperor of China who
had the army buried with him in about
210 BC. The object being for them
to be his
bodyguard
in the afterlife, apparently.

They were originally painted and
held weapons but the paint faded
and many of the weapons were
either looted or rotted away over
time. Many of the figures are still
not excavated. Some weapons were
found and were still sharp. The
swords were covered with chromium
oxide which has kept them in perfect
condition even after 2000 years of
being buried.
Source: Smithsonian.com.

He must
have been
a worrier, there are reckoned to be
over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots
with 520 horses and 150 cavalry
horses. Then there were the nonmilitary figures, including musicians.
They are of course all life size.
It’s widely reputed that each figure
has a different face. This isn’t entirely
accurate. In fact some eight moulds
were used, then bits of clay were
added to them to make them a bit
different. They were also manufactured in pieces and later assembled
on a sort of production line style.
47

A terracotta soldier with his horse,CHINA

Olduvai handaxe, Lower Palaeolithic, about
1.2 million years old,

Olduvai Gorge
The
Leakeys
proved that it
was. Sharpened
stone tools are
sort of hard
to argue with
when it comes
to archaeology.

Probably the most important discovery of all, Olduvai Gorge was
instrumental in our understanding of
early human evolution. It’s a palaeoanthropological site. Not only really
That these
old but really hard to spell. The site
tools were made
was the home of Homo habilis about
from material
1.9 million years ago, then at 1.8
that came from
home to Paranthropus boisei, and
Homo erectus 1.2 million years ago, some nine miles away is thought
to prove an increase in the abilso it’s a bit lived in.
ity to think ahead and plan things.
If you want to see it, head down However, there is some doubt that
to the Great Rift Valley in Eastern they were in fact the makers of the
Africa. Hard to miss, it’s also the tools. It all gets very complicated.
Source: Listverse (Jamie Frater)
biggest site in this list, it’s huge.
Significantly this site shows the
development of hominins and the use
and production of stone tools, hunting etc. as shown by gnaw marks
leading on to cut marks on animal
bones. The fact that such bones and
evidence of tool making in localised
areas indicate that they were starting to become more communal.
Where this site becomes most important is that until the Leakeys (Mary
and Louis) found such early tools,
it was doubted by many that Africa
really was where humans started.
48

Australophithecus boisei

L’Anse aux
Meadows
It was later abandoned
by the Vikings. It is howAnd to America. ever now recognised as
L’Anse aux Meadows. the oldest settlement
Included because rath- of Europeans in North
er than holding any- America.
thing of much value, it The excavated remains
corrects history. It’s a of peat turf buildings
Viking settlement found with wooden frames are
at the tip of the Great
Northern Peninsula,
Newfoundland, in North
America and excavated from the ‘60s to
the ‘70s, that dates
back to the 11th century. That’s some four
hundred years before
Columbus stumbled
across America.
49

similar to those in Norse
Greenland and Iceland.
Also found were a
workshop, a forge and
a furnace, along with
iron items like nails and
buckles typical of Viking
manufacture.

Red Lady
Paviland

Of
Goat’s Hole cave, Paviland

33,000 years old. It
is therefore the oldest ceremonial burial
of a human anywhere
in Western Europe.
Awesome!
Along with the bones
were also discovered
a mammoth’s skull and
several
ornamental
items. The mammoth’s
skull was later lost.
Just how do you lose a
mammoth’s skull? It’s
not like it could drop
behind the sofa cushions, it’s the size of a
small car.

The Red Lady Of
Paviland. Actually a misnomer as the remains
are of a young man,
but that doesn’t prevent
the discovery, in my
opinion, being the most
important find in Wales,
and unless Atlantis is
found here it’s probably
always going to be so.
As some idea of how
It’s a fairly complete
Upper Paleolithic-era long ago this young man
human male skeleton lived, while the cave he
was found in is now on
dyed in red ochre.
the coast, at the time
He was discovered in it was some 70 miles
1823 by Rev. William inland and overlooked
Buckland in a cave on a plain.
the Gower Peninsular Source:
Archaeology
in South Wales. It British
Stephen
was later radio carbon (CBA)
dated and found to be Aldhouse-Green.
50

Sardinian stone
warriors

If you thought the
Terracotta Army was
old and cool, check out
the Sardinian stone
warriors. They were
carved from solid stone.
They were discovered
smashed but are now
being reassembled by
experts. Astonishingly

they are life size and come with
weapons and shields. They are 500
years older than the terracotta warriors.
It took 8 years to repair 25 of the
33 warriors. They were smashed to
bits by invading Carthaginians. It’s
not unusual for invaders to destroy
anything they think is a symbol of
power, religion or rank from those
they defeat. They were exceptionally thorough though, the diggers
found some 5000 bits. That’s a hell
of a jigsaw puzzle.

At that time only two of the warriors
were repaired, with the rest being
stored at a museum locally. Finally
work began by conservators in ‘04
to fix the rest.
They will be on display at Sardinia’s
Cagliari Museum. That’s in Central
Sardinia, if you’re planning to go
there.
Source: The Independent, Feb 17
2012.

Lost Archaeology

A couple of example of archaeology that has been destroyed due to
building before excavation.
First, Istanbul, Turkey. Workers bulldozed ancient ruins at Ïnönü Stadium
to make way for a new football stadium. Lost treasures include a vaultFragments were found in the 70s ed ceiling. The site was supposed to
but the site wasn’t properly exca- have been recorded but the buildvated until the early 80s by the ers got in first and destroyed the
Italian archaeologist Carlo Troncheti. lot. Such action is of course illegal
51

but the fines are much less than the
money lost by delaying the building.

ed by archaeologists.

Archaeologist Marco Guillén Hugo,
Archaeologists from the Istanbul who led research and excavation
Archaeology Museum report that at the site, said it was not the first
archaeological features, including time the firms had tried to take over
the vaulted ceiling, were illegally the land. “They say they are the
destroyed when the old Ïnönü Stadium owners, even though this land is
was demolished. Construction work- untouchable. The damaged caused
ers had been instructed to stop if was irreparable”.
any artifacts were found. A new sta- Source: The Huffington Post.
dium will be built in the area.
Source: Archaeology (Arch. Institute Can you see a pattern yet?
of America).
In 2007, construction workers in
Lima. A 5000-year-old pyramid was Nanjing, China, uncovered 10 intribulldozed by builders. The ancient cately embroidered family tombs
temple in the El Paraiso archae- dating back to the third century.
ological complex in central Peru They then bulldozed it all to make
was demolished. Fortunately it had way for an IKEA shop.
already been excavated and record52

There are of course,
even in china, laws to
prevent this sort of
thing from happening
but they get in the way
of profits and, again,
the fines are meaninglessly small compared
to the money to be
made by pressing on
with the building. Yeah,
like the Chinese need
to bring in foreigners to
make cheap furniture.
Source: Radio Australia,
July ‘07.

The past is full of stories of the
incompetent destroying archaeology

list of sites of interest

I should point out that
anyone finding historical items in the ground
ought to check out the
guidelines on a Council
For British Archaeology
website at
http://new.archaeologyuk.org/best-practice
It goes on and on. It’s for what to do.
nothing new, the past
is full of stories of the
incompetent destroyDigging up finds and
ing archaeology, from selling them or putting
the pyramid-robbers to
the destruction of all
the cities above Troy,
removed unrecorded in
order to get at the treasure. The chronology of
the lost layers gone forever. Sad, isn’t it?
As a former field
archaeologist, I feel that
before launching into a
53

in your private collection should be illegal but
strangely isn’t. The loss
to our national knowledge is huge. Metal
detectors are excellent
when used correctly
and these days many
site directors work with
detectorists. That way
the finds can be recorded.

“Newton…A mind forever voyaging through strange seas of
thought…alone” - William Wordsworth ( The Prelude )

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