The Dead Sea Scrolls have been shrouded in mystery since their discovery, with the biggest being the identity of their authors. Close behind is the identity of who placed them in the Qumran Caves in the Judaean Desert near Ein Feshkha on the northern shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank. A scroll researcher reveals in a new paper that he believes a passage in a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts discovered in Cairo in the 19th century may explain the purpose of the nearby area known as Qumran, why archeologists have not found any private dwellings there, and ultimately how the scrolls got there and why they were kept in these particular caves.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have long been associated with the Essenes, a mystic Jewish sect that lived in a number of towns from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE. Some scholars believe the Essenes inhabited the settlement at Qumran and they wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls and stored them in the local caves. In his preprint paper, “The Covenant Renewal Ceremony as the Main Function of Qumran,” Daniel Vainstub of the Department of Bible, Archaeology and Ancient Near East at Ben-Gurion University, lays out the reason why he disagrees that Qumran was an Essenes settlement.

“Unlike any other group or philosophy in ancient Judaism, the yaḥad sect obliged all members of the sect to leave their places of residence all over the country and gather in the sect’s central site to participate in a special annual ceremony of renewal of the covenant between God and each of the members.”

Vainstub says this annual celebration was called the “passing of the covenant” and modeled after one described in Deuteronomy. However, Vainstub also found a description in a collection of some 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments found in Cairo, thus giving them the name Cairo Geniza. One in particular, the Damascus Document, includes instructions about the celebration that say: “And all [the inhabitants] of the camps shall assemble in the third month and curse anyone who deviates either to the right [or to the left from the] Torah.” That means the gathering took place in a specific time – the month of Sivan, when the festival of Shavuot falls – and that people from different places or camps were called to convene in one site. Vainstub concludes from this that Qumran was the site and may have been built for this specific purpose – which explains why there are no residences there. Those gathering either slept in caves or outside.

Qumran contains remains of a mikvaot (Jewish ritual bath), assembly hall and pantry where thousands of vessels were stored, and a southern esplanade that could handle many hundreds of people arriving annually from camps and towns. That leads to Vainstaub’s second revelation, which he explains in The Jerusalem Post.

“My theory is also consistent with the fact that the scrolls did not necessarily originate from Qumran, but rather were brought to the caves from all over the country and were left in the caves over the decades.”

Vainstaub maintains the scrolls were stored there for years specifically to be used for the annual celebration, growing in numbers as the celebration grew with people from other towns. That would explain the different styles and ages of the scrolls and fragments. Put that all together and Vainstaub concludes the location was inevitable for the Dead Sea Scrolls.

“The site of Qumran, with its facilities, caves and surfaces, accords with the evidence for the annual gathering that emerges from the scrolls. No other known site is suitable for such a purpose.”

Will this help solve the mystery of the authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Only time will tell.

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Among all of the evidence presented for UFOs and aliens over the years, perhaps the most mysterious and compelling are those we never got to see. There are numerous cases of supposed lost photos or footage, lost witnesses, even lost alien bodies, all of which leave us lingering in a limbo of speculation and wonder. A curious case of this comes from 1973, when a hot shot Hollywood producer and his businessman investor happened across a tale of a supposedly amazing piece of footage of a UFO and alien contect, which has been lost and buried to perhaps never be seen again.

In 1973, a Los Angeles filmmaker, producer, and composer by the name of Robert Emenegger made his way out to Norton Air Force Base, in in San Bernardino County, California, along with a well-connected business man and partner by the name of Alan Sandler. Although an Air Force Base seems like a rather odd place for these two to be going, they had a very good reason, in that Emenegger was trying to put together a documentary on Air Force advanced research projects and technology, and had been invited there by the commander-in-chief of the Special Investigations Division and the head of the intelligence department, Paul Schartl in order to have a sit-down. It would soon get very weird indeed.

Robert Emenegger

The men allegedly spent some time discussing various research projects being carried out by the Air Force at the base and beyond, but things got really interesting when the topic of UFOs came up. The two officials then began weaving a very odd tale of a UFO that had allegedly landed at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, in 1964. This craft had apparently come down to land at the base at 6 a.m., and not only that, but aliens had actually gotten off of the ship and talked with the top ranking commanders. In addition, the whole encounter had allegedly been filmed, and both of the officials at this meeting had seen the footage for themselves. Schartl would say of what was seen in the 16mm film footage:

Three flying objects in the shape of a disk arrived, one of which landed, and the other two flew away. On the landed UFO, a door opened, from which three creatures appeared. They were human-size. They had an odd, gray complexion and a pronounced nose. They wore tight fitting jump suits and thin headdresses that appeared to be communication devices, and in their hands they held a ‘translator.’ Their eyes had vertical slits like a cat’s, the nose was clearly defined, and their mouths were thin and slit like, with no chins. A Holloman base commander and other Air Force officers went out to meet them.

Schartl would also claim that they would continue meetings for several days, storing the spaceship in a hangar in the meantime, and that during the alien meeting the entities had eerily mentioned that they were monitoring an unfamiliar alien race that they did not know about. When Emenegger pushed for more information on what the aliens and commander had talked about, the officials clammed up and would only offer vague allusions to sharing technology and knowledge, and they also said that the aliens were “doctors, professional types.” It was all incredibly intriguing, so at this point Emenegger had already decided to do his documentary on UFOs and this amazing account. Much to his surprise, the Air Force officials even agreed to allow him to use 3,200 feet of the mysterious footage, and they even personally brought him to the site where the landing had allegedly happened, as well as the hangar where the UFO was kept and the buildings where the meetings with the aliens had supposedly been conducted.

It was all seemingly too good to be true, even though they were given the ominous caveat that the film should be made to look like a hypothetical scenario and that they were to in no way claim that any of it was actually real. Nevertheless, when Emenegger and Sandler left, they did so in high spirits, amazed that they would soon be able to see this mysterious footage for themselves. When days turned into weeks and weeks into months with no further word, Emenegger decided to go to Wright-Patterson AFB and talk to one of his military contacts, a Col. George Weinbrenner. When asked about what had happened to the footage, Weinbrenner allegedly began ranting about Soviet technology and the MIG 25, seemingly completely off-topic, and it was very odd, yet as he continued his tirade he apparently produced a signed a copy of J. Allen Hynek’s book The UFO Experience from a bookshelf and showed it to Emenegger with a nod. Emenegger would later explain that to him the odd monologue was just a cover to throw off anyone listening in through bugs in the room, and that the book was a silent confirmation that the footage did exist. However, he would never get to see it, it never arrived, and no one knows what ever became of it or even whether it exists or not.

Even without the promised film, Emenegger would release his documentary in 1974, called UFO’s Past, Present & Future, which would then become a book of the same name. In the end there are a lot of problems with this story. The first one is that we only have Emenegger’s word to go on. The primary source for this entire tale is three pages in his book, and that’s it. There is no corroboration, no way to verify any of it, you simply have to take his word for it. Another problem is the question of why would two high-ranking Air Force officials not only spill the beans on the whole thing to this Hollywood filmmaker, but also promise to release the film and then show him around the base where it all happened? In an area where secrecy and shadowy cover-ups are the order of the day, why were they so candid with these guys? Does that make any sense? In the end the footage has never been revealed — we don’t know if any of it was real or not, but if it was real I sure would like to see it.

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The Russian space agency Roscosmos has been talking about building its own space station and moving out of the ISS, but it doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to do so. Perhaps it’s time for NASA to put some pressure on them … or possibly even send an eviction notice. Why? Well, after a pesky leak in the ISS in 2018 turned out to be a botched patch job on a docked Soyuz capsule, a leak in 2020 turned out to be a hole in the Zvezda service module (are you detecting a pattern here?), and the recently docked Nauka module accidently fired its jet thrusters and spun the entire ISS around, Russian cosmonauts have yet ANOTHER problem – this time they found cracks in the Zarya module. Good luck getting your security deposit back, Roscosmos!

“Superficial fissures have been found in some places on the Zarya module. This is bad and suggests that the fissures will begin to spread over time.”

Zarya launched atop a Russian Proton rocket

Vladimir Solovyov, chief engineer of rocket and space corporation Energia, delivered the bad news to the RIA news agency, which was picked up by Reuters. The Zarya module, known to the astronauts as the Functional Cargo Block is probably overdue for an overhaul – it was the first component launched for the International Space Station back in 1998. However, its history – and who is ultimately responsible for it – is complicated. Zarya, Russian for “sunrise” or “dawn,” was built in in Moscow by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center under a subcontract to The Boeing Company for NASA. Zarya was launched in November 1998 on a Russian Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and was attached in December 1998 to the Unity module which connects the Russian and U.S. segments. The Zarya module had been originally designed for Russia Mir space station with a lifespan of 15 years, so the warrantee has obviously expired. As Reuters explains:

“The space official (Solovyov) has said previously that much of the International Space Station’s equipment is starting to age and has warned there could be an “avalanche” of broken equipment after 2025.”

Solovyov also stated that he didn’t know if the cracks were leaking any oxygen. Based on past history plus the age of the module, that would be a safe bet. Despite that, The Russian space agency, Roscosmos has said it will remain part of the ISS until 2024 and is open to staying longer. Meanwhile, the Chinese space agency is building a brand new space station and developing plans for an ultra-large kilometers-long mega-spacecraft that would be would be 10 times the length of the International Space Station and a little over three times the length of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise.

Zarya docking with Unity

These recent problems point out the obvious – the International Space Station is not aging gracefully and could become a dangerous place to live and work. Perhaps it’s time for NASA to move out too. But then what? Turn the business of space station operation over to private space companies? Ask Congress for funding to build a new one? Enter a new spirit of cooperation like it had with Russia in 1998 and join forces with China, the ESA and other space-faring nations to pool talent and resources so that humanity – not just nations – venture into space and benefit from it?

A leak is never a good thing in space. Maybe this one in the Zarya module will change that.

There are plenty of reports of UFOs up in the sky above our heads, and they can take many shapes and sizes, often inspiring debate, wonder, and awe. Yet even more amazing than such cases are those times when these enigmatic objects drop down from their place in the clouds to descend to earth and land, often entailing alien beings and a whole new list of high strangeness. UFO landing cases also go way back in time, and here we will look at some of the weirder ones from the 1960s.

On April 24, 1964, a farmer by the name of Gary Wilcox was doing his daily chores out on his rural 300-acre farm in Newark Valley, New York, on what was up until then a usual, uneventful day. At around 10 a.m., something very weird lying on the ground by the edge of the woods nearby caught his attention and he drove his tractor in that direction for a better look. Whatever it was looked somewhat oblong in shape, and about 20 feet long and 4 feet high, but most strangely of all was that it seemed to not be lying on the ground, but hovering just very slightly over it. Throwing all caution out the window, Wilcox apparently bravely approached it to find that it was smooth and metallic, and he even touched it and kicked at it, noticing there were no vibrations emanating from the mysterious device. This was when things would get bizarre.

According to Wilcox, two diminutive 4-foot-tall humanoids in white metallic overalls suddenly appeared from underneath the object, holding trays filled with what the farmer would say were “alfalfa, roots, soil, leaves and brush.” The beings spoke to him and told him not to be afraid, and Wilcox would describe their voices as singularly strange and beyond description. They then began interviewing him about the tractor, what he had been doing out in the field, and many other aspects of farming, especially about how fertilizer worked, allegedly talking to him for a full two hours before they made preparations to head out. Wilcox apparently asked them if he could go with them, but they informed him that he would not be able to survive on their world. They asked him for a bag of fertilizer but he had none on him at the time, so they merely nodded, climbed upon their craft, and shot up into the sky. That afternoon, he would leave a bag of fertilizer at the same spot and it would disappear by the following morning. What in the world was going on here? Why would they want fertilizer? Was this just the ramblings of a derailed mind or is there something more to it?

In 1965 we have a case from East Fort Myers, Florida, where on March 14 of that year a man named James Flynn was out hunting in the Everglades with his hunting dogs. That evening his dogs ran off into the wilderness in hot pursuit of something, perhaps a deer, and he shortly after heard a sound like a booming gunshot. Thinking that something had happened to his dogs, he went out to investigate and came across a large mysterious object like an upside-down cone, an estimated 200 feet in the air above some cypress trees in the near distance, which was slowly moving away. It then returned to hover over the wilderness before shooting away and then returning once again. It then seemed to drop down beyond the trees. Flynn crept closer and observed the craft through his binoculars, describing it as sitting upon the ground and being around 25 feet high and 50 feet in diameter, with four levels of windows along its side emanating a yellow glow. The bottom of the craft had a reddish light along it, which illuminated the ground below, but he couldn’t discern more than this because he suddenly blacked out and lost consciousness.

Flynn woke up on the muddy ground sometime later, experiencing blurry vision and unable to move. As he regained the function of his limbs and the vision came back to his eyes, he realized that it was now late afternoon and he had no recollection of what had happened during his lost time. When he got home and had his eyes checked, his vision was far worse than it had been before, and his right eye seemed to have no retina. Flynn also complained that he had numbness throughout his limbs but there could be found no physical cause for these symptoms. Out of curiosity, Flynn would return to the site of his encounter with some others to find that there was a burned circle in the earth measuring around 72 feet in diameter, and there were several cypress trees that had been scorched by a high heat. Although Flynn would believe that this must have been some sort of secret military experimental aircraft, it has never really been solved.

In July of 1965 a very weird series of events went down in the quaint region of Valensole, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France. It all started near the small village of Valensole, and on July 1, 1965, a farmer by the name of Maurice Masse was taking a cigarette break before starting his morning chores. As he puffed out wisps of smoke into the air, something caught his attention through the haze of cigarette smoke, and he could see some sort of strange object descend from the sky to land in a field of lavender flowers not too far away. At this point he did not take it to be a UFO, thinking it instead to be a helicopter, but when he extinguished his smoke and took a look out across the field, his eyes met with an oval shaped object perched up on four leg-like apparatuses. Stranger still was that there appeared to be two humanoid figures standing in front of it.

The figures were described as standing approximately 4 feet high, and dressed in tight gray-green clothes, seemingly not human. Their heads were oversized and bald, holding within them large, almond shaped eyes and small, pointed chins, and they seemed to be making some sort of low grumbling noise. As the farmer stood there mouth agape in awe, one of these curious figures allegedly turned to him and raised into the air a device of some kind, which looked cylindrical and “pencil-like” in nature. Before Masse could even really register what was going on he says that the device projected some sort of beam that caused him to lose all control of his limbs and go crumpling to the ground in a heap. He would claim that as he lay there in a daze the figures boarded their craft and then flew off at great speed. It would later be found that the ground had a deep indentation in it and a hardened area like concrete. It would also be found that Masse was honest, very sincere, and was considered to be telling the truth.

Moving along to 1966 there is a case from the children of Westall High School, in Melbourne, Australia. On this day the students were going about their daily business and out playing in the school yard. There was nothing at all that marked this as anything other than an ordinary day, until something very strange appeared in the sky above them. Coming in from the distance was a greyish saucer-shaped craft with a slight purple hue, also described as “a round humped object with a flat base,” which then came in low over the high school’s south-west corner to disappear behind a nearby stand of trees, beyond which was a paddock and an overgrown field and wilderness area called the Grange. After a few moments it then popped up over the trees again and moved off into the distance, with some witnesses later claiming that it was then pursued by what appeared to be several military aircraft, and the entire bizarre scene played out in front of over 300 students and teachers.

As more witnesses came forward, a clearer picture began to emerge about what happened. It would be discovered that some witnesses had actually seen more than one of the objects, and that it seemed as if the military craft had been chasing any trying to engage them, although there could be found no records of any aircraft scheduled to be in the area, either commercial or military. It was also found that the UFO had left a mark in the ground, which appeared as a circle of yellowed grass with a “swirly pattern,” and that some witnesses had seen official looking men in blue uniforms inspecting this mark. One of the most interesting pieces of the puzzle uncovered was during an interview with one of the witnesses at the time, a science teacher from the Westall school by the name of Andrew Greenwood. In a recorded interview with UFO researcher Dr. James E. McDonald, Greenwood would divulge a good amount of information on what was seen that day.

McDonald would describe what Greenwood had told him:

Greenwood told me the UFO was first brought to his attention by a hysterical child who ran into his classroom and told him there’s a flying saucer outside,” McDonald says on the recording. He thought this child had become deranged or something so he didn’t take any notice, but when the child insisted that this object was in the sky he decided to go out and have a look for himself.   He called it the most amazing flying he had ever seen in his life. The planes were doing everything possible to approach the object and he said how they all avoided a collision he will never know. Every time they got too close to the object it would slowly accelerate, then rapidly accelerate and then move away from them and stop. Then they would take off after it again and the same thing would happen.

Greenwood would explain that the whole spectacle had lasted around 20 minutes, and that shortly after the headmaster had warned the faculty and students not to talk about what they had seen with anyone, even going so far as to threaten to fire or expel anyone who did. Some even spoke of some sort of military-looking figures lurking about. According to him, this was enough to get many of the witnesses to shut up about it all, and is one of the main reasons the whole story just sort of fell off the media’s radar, only really being unearthed years later. Yet, even now decades later, the witnesses have stuck to their stories and insist on what they saw, leaving us to try and figure out what it could have been. To this day one can still see an information board at the school commemorating the event, although it seems to be just as obscure a case as ever. What did these people see that day and why exactly were they so reluctant to talk about it? Did the military have some hand in trying to cover this up? There are not many answers, and it remains a very curious mass UFO sighting that has been sort of mostly forgotten.

A particularly harrowing case comes from 1966, in Roaring River, Missouri, where a landing UFO seems to have caused quite a lot of damage. On November 22, 1966, two hunters were out looking for deer in the wilderness of the area when they saw a strange object descend from the sky right onto their camp. They ran to see what was going on, and as they did, they could see smoke billowing up from the location. Upon reaching the camp, they saw that their tent and all of their equipment was either burned to a crisp, on fire, or still smoldering, with the aluminum cots in the tent having actually been warped and melted. Rather strangely, nothing else around the camp had been affected, the trees still in pristine condition. They then heard a low humming noise and saw the object rise up over the trees and shoot off out of sight. The witnesses would later claim that the object had intentionally wrecked their camp, although why this should be is something we will never know.

Such cases are certainly intriguing and spectacular, taking the UFO phenomenon down from the skies to plop it right down in front of our faces, often to completely bizarre results. What truth do any of these cases have and just what did these people see? Were these misidentified mundane phenomena, figments of the imagination, or something else? Whatever the case may be, reports of landing UFOs rank high among the most bizarre accounts of UFOs there are, and there are no solid answers.

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For most of 2017 and 2018, the hot news out of Nazca, Peru, was not about the Nazca lines but some strange three-fingered mummies discovered in nearby caves. The group studying the mummies eventually became know as the Alien Project for obvious reasons – three fingers, three toes, a female carrying what appeared to eggs, DNA tests that showed they were not human nor any known mammal, bones similar to birds, and more. The Peruvian government and the World Congress on Mummies rightly got involved, to protect the dignity of the remains of past Peruvians, whatever they might be. After all of the research, hours-long video conferences with pictures, X-rays and experts to interpret them … the three-fingered mummies suddenly dropped off the face of the Earth or whatever planet they came from. Fortunately, UFO researcher Giorgio Piacenza has been staying on top of the three-fingered mummies (figuratively, of course) and finally has an update on their status. Drum roll, please.

“Hello everyone I’m Enrico, I am Italian and live in Ica in Peru in the city where the Tridattili Mummies of Nazca are kept. The bodies that have been found to date are divided into two completely distinct breeds, a high 160 with hybrid characteristics very similar to homo sapiens and a high only 60 cm with unique features never encountered before. Since these beings have been delivered to the University of Ica I have personally been in contact with the professors who are studying them and we have managed to donate with the Association of Italians in Peru of which I am a part (PeruItalia.com) the first 500 Dollars to help research. I was able on several occasions to see the bodies and even touch them while interviewing the study staff.”

Enrico Cantori is a mummy researcher in Ica, Peru, and he posted the above update on PeruItalia.com and on the Facebook page “Extraterrestrial mummies of Nazca” after appearing on a YouTube video interview with anthropologist Dr. Zuñiga Aviles, professor of the San Luis Gonzaga University of Ica and one of the researchers of the mummies “in situ”, and researcher Yosef de Salou to discuss the latest status of the mummies. It is also posted on Giorgio Piacenza’s Facebook page, and both have excellent photos of the mummies. His summary on Facebook is more detailed. (Rough Google translation)

“Breaking revelations! We have a first confirm even from the studious of why the Nazca aliene mummies were biological alive and complete. 60 cm small mummies were full and functional live with organs, possess internal structures and items. They were like us living and feeling.

The implant found in the pet of one of the small mummies cannot be any antical artifact created for aleation by the Paracas people in the modern ′′ homemade ′′ understanding ′′ cold transmutation “. É infacts composed by two supposed lamines that they create internal cells similar to the batteries odierns.

The perforation of a egg found into one of these beings (oviparies and submittilian nature) with an odontric instrument reveals that the internal has a non-omegena density compatible with the density of a mummified egg.

We also talked about a specular specular rotrovement or the strange 15 cm humanoid being found in the near desert of chile tacama. A sun dry and not mummified being studied confirming that even being a completely alive and functional being.”

According to Cantori, the researchers have confirmed that all of these beings were once alive. They actually inserted a needle into one of the alleged eggs in one female and it managed to penetrate it, allowing them to extract material – what it might be was not discussed. A barbell-shaped implant was found in the chest of that female did not appear to belong to the ancient Paracas people of Peru, but in another post Cantori says it was “consistent with the pre-Columbian era and is made up of 85% copper.” He also points out that the tomographs show “how the bones are evenly and harmoniously covered by the skin, joints and ligaments” – making it hard to believe some theories that the mummies were assembled by ancient hoaxers.
Finally, they determined that a strange sun-dried body only 15 cm (6 inches) long was also once alive.

“The Peruvian state that before decreted that nazca’s mummies were fake now declared them national patrimony with the intention to the University of Ica that is studying them.”

Cantori also reveals that the Peruvian government is now interested in the three-fingered mummies – a change from their long-time stance that they were fake, protecting them only because they were national antiquities. What does the government think they are now? We’ll have to wait for an answer on that one.

Does this bring us any closer to determining what the three-fingered mummies of Nazca are? Perhaps a little. The new photographs show much more detail than previous ones, and the skeletons definitely look like they came from some strange thin, long-armed, big-headed, three-fingered beings. The ‘eggs’ would imply reptilian rather than mammalian, but the results of the needle biopsy were not revealed. Unfortunately, there appears to be no supporting evidence for these beings being aliens – no wall paintings of landings, no spaceship parts, no uniforms, no Nazca lines showing their arrival.

Ah, the Nazca lines. Some theories suggest they are messages to aliens or maps and directions to be seen when they fly over. Could these be those aliens?

On the other hand, none of the new information definitively proves this is a hoax. While the government or the researchers could be covering that up to keep the interest alive, this is an awful lot of effort to maintain a ruse.

Either way, the three-fingered mummies of Nazca remain an interesting story. Welcome back!

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