₦airaland Forum

immhotep:
So you have a lot of faith in these researchers

I have friends who do such digs, some are professional archaeologists and some are volunteers helping them clean and sort the artifacts. These people camp out in the middle of nowhere dig sites and sleep rough, eat awful camp food for weeks, they do rough physical work a day everyday and they are supervised by a tenured professor, and media too if it's an important discovery.

These people also go through strict ethics education, stealing ancient artifacts is a big crime in many countries and punished heavily if caught.

These people study for years and do all that tough work digging under the hot sun, spend many years with this, do you think they would throw away their career and international prestige they have earned by publishing research papers, all what they worked so hard to build for grave robbery? Is it worth the risk rotting in prison?
They find mostly broken pottery and ancient gsrbage dumps anyway, it is a labor of lovr and only ideologist people work in that field. They might spend years digging before they find anything remotely precious.

You did a fine job explaining it bro

Abdulnur:
Its called radioactive dating. All element/molecules have half life (t½) which is a period of time where half of that element/molecule decays off, releasing radiation. The radiation is captured and measurements are made to identify when they were originally released, thus estimating the appx age of the object being studied, in this case, human skeleton (which is rich in calcium, potassium, carbon etc).
If the DNA could be extracted (I doubt it could be, the life span of DNA molecule is 521yrs), analysis could be made to establish the persons race, ancestry (religion too??), traces of diseases etc.



The 2nd one, age of the earth, I'll love to say something on it too but God I'm getting lazier by the days.

immhotep:
You can be sure that they have stolen any gold and precious stones found in that ancient grave.

The guys are grave robbers, basically.

These were broke hunter-gatherers who never developed agriculture, it's doubtful they had any precious stones or gold.

That's a whole team of scientists working there with government funding, they won't rob graves, if anything precious is found it's put in museums. Grave robbing was 19th century, all the hoards of gold coins and jewelry I saw at various museums around the world have been found by archaeologists like these.

NigerArea:
ONE THING I DON'T REALLY UNDERSTAND ABOUT SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS IS HOW THEY FOUND OUT THE AGE OF THINGS THEY DISCOVER,

HOW DID THEY KNOW THAT THE SKELETON IS UP TO 6000 YEARS AND NOT 300 YEARS, HOW DO THEY GET THE AGE?!
HOW DID THEY KNOW THE EARTH IS 4.5BILLION+ YEARS?

I LOVE SCIENCE WITH ALL MY HEART

Google radiocarbon dating.

Chai! They have better teeth than I do!
Buhari why?

Jamestown123:
Let's continue

Nice photos of Abuja!
It looks beautiful.

nextstep:
We're not trying to make it attractive to foreigners. IF we Nigerians visit our tourist centers, instead of spending that money to go to Cuba, Spain, London, we would have achieved a major breakthrough in mindset that will also pour over to other things we do. I don't want our country to be one where foreigners come as tourists and the locals don't get to enjoy tourism.

We are all awakening to the beauty that is in Nigeria and I'm seeing a lot more interest that before. There is a growing number of stunning resorts and destinations being built, and it makes me very proud!

Nigerians go to Rwanda, Kenya and South Africa for tourism also.

Trajan's Forum became a busy center of social activities, culture, arts and justice. Many trials were conducted here, quite often by the emperor himself in times of peace.

Here is a computer simulation showing what it used to look like.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUqYx70ZWcM

Here is the forum view from the terraces of Trajan's market.

The road dividing the forums of the caesars is Mussolini's doing.

Once the Dacia conquest was complete, after starting a whole building campaign, Trajan returned to Rome in 106 AD.
Dacia was rich in gold mines, so this conquest meant great wealth flowing in. Trajan held a grand victory parade on the avenues of Rome, parading the carriages full of war booty, arms and armor captured from the enemy, prisoners of war in chains, treasures of Decebalus and all that good stuff.

There was so much, so much loot to be had. The emperor, being of incredibly virtuous character, spent all that gold not to build palaces and villas for himself, but magnificent public buildings for the citizens. He had some of the greatest works of engineering and architecture ever in the history of Rome built by Apollodorus of Damascus (another foreigner from a remote province who became the imperial chief architect by skills and genius.)

Trajan built a majestic forum, complete with a grand building which housed administrative offices, a hall for public meetings, a basilica, the ever so magnificent Trajan's Column flanked by two beautiful libraries, one housing scrolls in Latin and the other in Greek. The forum was damaged by earthquakes and the emperors centuries later took away reliefs and other decorations to adorn their own victory arches.

This forum was the greatest of all time, and influenced the later emperors centuries after. Even the forum Tauri in Constantinople -built 4 centuries after Trajan- is modelled after Trajan's forum.

The forum is in ruins today, but you can see how grand it used to be once. Even in ruins it speaks of glory.
Here are some photos I took when I visited Trajan's forum.

The last photo is a scale model of the grand forum building in the museum. Its entrance is depicted on the coins minted to celebrate the forum's opening. There was a colossal statue of Trajan riding a stallion in the middle of the Forum, which was also printed on the coins and mentioned in chronicles.

But before that I gotta share one bit of little known historical info: There was an African division fighting in the Dacian wars. Trajan's favorite general was a North African called Lusius Quietus, who rose to such rank by military genius merits, and he brought his African soldiers all the way to the Balkans to fight in the Roman army. He accompanied the emperor conquering a good part of the world later on.

Here is the relief depicting the Numidian cavalrymen with dreadlocks.
Roman empire was multicultural, they didn't have the concepts of racism and discrimination the world has today, anyone could rise anywhere so long they had the merit.

Trajan assigned Quietus as the governor of Judea, where the general put down Jewish revolts and got a mention in Talmudic sources for that.

Here is the Wikipedia page on Lusius Quietus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusius_Quietus


cc; lalasticlala , KOPT33 , Stallion93 , RealMillennial , immhotep , GiantParrot , BlackPantherxXx

This relief above is from Trajan's column, one of the most majestic works of art made by the hands of men.
I will get to that soon. I promise the upcoming photos of mine will make much better sense with the history tales accompanying them.

Trajan was able to get his legions to cross the river in a rapid manner, thanks to the awesome bridge, he ripped through Dacia like a ferocious storm, taking Decebalus's fortresses one by one. In the menawhile, holed up in his great castle at Sarmizegetusa regia, the capital of Dacia, Decebalus realized he was in serious trouble and fled. But he got cornered by the Roman cavalry, and when he saw he couldn't flee anymore he took his own life rather than being taken prisoner by the Romans. A Roman cavalryman called Tiberius Claudius Maximus beheaded Decebalus and brought his head to the emperor.

We know his name, cause Romans wrote EVERYHTING down. This man got rich with his cut of the war booty and built a marble grave for himself while still alive, and wrote his deeds on it. All what happened during the wars is also carved in relief in great detail, I'll come to all that later.

Trajan levelled Dacia, they didn't have much in the way of urban settlements since they were not a civilized and developed nation. They didn't even have a written language or any skills of carving statues. Trajan built up new cities there and moved the capital 40 km away, which was called Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa (here is the Wikipedia link of it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulpia_Traiana_Sarmizegetusa)
He had lots of public facilities built there, ruins of the city are open to visits in modern day Romania.

The emperor settled some of the war veterans there, to establish the colony and Romanize Dacia, rebuilt the country with Roman infrastructure, amphitheaters, roads, temples, forums. This is why Romania, an Eastern European country surrounded by Slavic nations, speaks a Latin language.

Now we are coming to the good part -and photos taken by yours truly.

Decebalus, the Dacian king started stirring trouble again, setting the neighboring barbarian tribes agianst the Roman settlements around Danube frontier. He built more fortifications and siege engines, armed his people and formed alliances with the other tribes, including the Sarmatians.
Reports of this reached Trajan and he gathered the legions to march on Dacia once more in 105 AD.

Romans clashed with the Dacians again and suffered casualties. Decebalus knew he would never be able to beat Trajan in open battle, so he resorted to dirty plots and sent two assassins to murder the emperor. Trajan, being humble and down-to-earth in absurd levels, never hid behind guards and made himself available to anyone who wanted an audience. He was also famous for eating the same fare and dirnking the same watered down wine as his soldiers, sleeping rough in the army camp and not having any luxuries like an emperor would.
But the plot unravelled, the assassins drew suspicions and got caught.

Decebalus tricked one of Trajan's generals into a meeting to relay peace terms to the emperor, but he captured the man and took him prisoner. This general was called Longinus, and he was helped by a freedman who was also a captive of Decebalus. The freedman gave him poison, and Longinus gave him a message to take to the emperor in secret. Once the freedman escaped, he drank the poison and died.

When Decebalus got the news, he sent a missive to Trajan demanding the freedman back, in exchange of the body of Longinus. Trajan neither sent him back nor surrendered the freedman, deeming his safety more important for the dignity of the empire than the burial of Longinus.
That was one hell of a reply, a slap in the face.


This time Trajan got hell-bent on winning a decisive victory and putting an end to the Dacia trouble once and for all.

He had his genius master architect Apollodorus of Damascus build a magnificent arched bridge on the furious, savage waters of Danube.
This was the greatest bridge the Roman empire had ever built in history, and its like would not be seen again for centuries.
This is what ancient Roman chronicler Cassius Dio has to say about this wonder of engineering:

"Brilliant, indeed, as are his other achievements, yet this surpasses them. For it has twenty piers of squared stone one hundred and fifty feet in height above the foundations and sixty in width, and these, standing at a distance of one hundred and seventy feet from one another, are connected by arches. How, then, could one fail to be astonished at the expenditure made upon them, or at the way in which each of them was placed in a river so deep, in water so full of eddies, and on a bottom so muddy?

Yet the very fact that river in its descent is here contracted from a great flood to such a narrow channel, after which it again expands into a greater flood, makes it all the more violent and deep, and this feature must be considered in estimating the difficulty of constructing the bridge. This, too, then, is one of the achievements that show the magnitude of Trajan's designs, though the bridge is of no use to us; for merely the piers are standing, affording no means of crossing, as if they had been erected for the sole purpose of demonstrating that there is nothing which human ingenuity cannot accomplish."

The bridge was dismantled by Trajan's successor after his death and only few ruins remain today. We know what the bridge looked like cause they carved it on the reliefs and minted coins to commemorate it. Coins in good shape showing Trajan's bridge where you can see the details go for a king's ransom in the ancient coin market.

Now I am going to post a picture that is not one of my own. Here is the relief showing the legendary bridge, emperor pouring libation on the altar and the architect of the bridge, Apollodorus of Damascus, bearded shirtless guy standing on the left of the altar. I am particularly fond of the scenes showing pagan ceremonies.

Note the depiction of the furious waters of Danube.

I will continue the story below and add my own shots. I will continue with other views, including breathtaking bird's eye views which I have endured so much pain to get to, after I finish the tale of Trajan.


cc; PAGAN9JA

Zoharariel:
That means you & I have the same "paganese" blood running in our veins.

What more? Let us unite in body, soul & spirit and begin to flood the Earth with "RH negative paganese" broods.

I already have a wonderful pagan spouse

hakmah:
Interesting!

Read you went to Rome. Hmmmm! To check how it is done in Rome? And I read you left your country. Is it the reason too? Because that is a religious country with more christians.

Read your thread on Finnish witches and magic rituals. Are these your believe?

Also I found some terrifying dark magic curses in Roman history.I'll share them too

I believe in thr spirite of the elements, nature spirits.
What the finns did was fascinating stuff but not my thing. I follow the shamanistic ways.

prechbills1:
Black ladies and laziness are synonymous.
I don't really understand because a lady has two hands and two legs same as a man.
if the man can work to make money why can't a lady work to make money?
or is the hole barring them from making money?
Even the ones that are working don't want to spend their money. They want to save their salaries and beg for money to foot house rents.

passes out..
the more I keep reading posts like this the more my hatred for black ladies grow..

Weren't you brought to this world by a black lady sha?
Don't forget where you came from! There are many hard working hustling ladies in Naija, go find one of them na.

Trajan was one of the five good Roman emperors, and the greatest of them, along with the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Trajan was born in Hispania, outside of Italy, and was the first emperor that was from a foreign territory. He distinguished himself as a highly skilled commander in the Germania frontiers, and was on duty there when he was declared caesar.

His predecessor, Nerva (also one of the five good emperors) was very old and sickly, even though he had living relatives, he decided to adopt Trajan as heir, for he valued ability and merit above bloodlines and place of birth. Nerva passed away shortly after declaring Trajan as his heir.
Trajan was 42 when he became the emperor of Rome on 98 AD. He stayed in the Rhine frontier for a whole year afterwards, putting the things in order and arranging the troops before returning Rome.

When he finally came to Rome, he didn't enter with great pomp on a majestic stallion, but on foot, in a simple and humble manner, embracing the common people. That act won the hearts of the citizens and created a positive image that would last for millenia. He became famous for his humble character during his reign, he didn't want to be seen as a supreme overlord, but a father figure dedicated to serve the citizens of Rome.

He also gained the trust of Senate by promising not to execute or dishonor any senators. That was a brilliant strategy, since it always brought great trouble to be at odds with the Senate or make them feel threatened.

Not long after coming to power, Dacian king Decebalus started trouble at the Roman borders, raiding the border settlements of Rome and stirring all kinds of mischief. He had cheated Domitian, Nerva's predecessor, taking protection money from him with false promises, to protect the broders of Rome, but he hired engineers, fortified hills and built war machinery with that money. Trajan received the reports of trouble and decided to march on Dacia in 101 AD. Roman army was slowed by the ferocious river Danube, which was quite hard to cross. They tied ships together to build a makeshift bridge, which is not the best way of crossing such a great river. Imagine moving horses through that! (We know this, cause they left solid records, in the form of awesome relief carvings. I will show them in good time!)

So the Romans, even though they gave Decebalus a good beating, suffered great losses themselves. Many were wounded, and Trajan withdrew to avoid more casualties. The wounded were so many, the field doctors ran out of bandages in short order. At this point, according to the great Roman historian Cassius Dio, Trajan cut up his own clothes to make bandages.

He set off to go back, but Decebalus attacked the rearguard of the Romans, which was a dumb move, Trajan turned around and beat the living crap out of the Dacian army. He terrified Decebalus into submission in the end, and the Dacian king threw down his arms and kneeled before the emperor, promising to take down all the fortifications and war machines, deliver the engineers to Rome, be a friend to the friends and an enemy to the enemies of Rome, all that jazz. Of course he was not sincere and doing this to buy time, just like he did to Domitian.

Trajan returned Rome as a victor on in 102 AD and the Senate gave him the title Dacicus, which means the conqueror of Dacia. He already had the Germanicus title for fighting at the frontiers of Germania. He was the first Roman emperor to gain the title Dacicus. (Many others had Germanicus, they cheapened the title so much, at some point even the emperors who went to Germania for sightseeing called themselves Germanicus. LMAO )

Here are two of the reliefs depicting a war scene from the Dacian wars I took at the Trajan's forum & market museum.
Dacians are the bearded guys wearing leggings and capes. Romans are clean shaven and wear the classic Roman armor. Unwashed barbarians versus the civilized and developed.

Trajan remitted all tax debts when he returned to Rome, and ordered gladiator fights, pantomine shows, concerts to entertain the people for a few weeks in celebration of the first victory he won. Circus Maximus -the greatest arena of Rome- was in horrible shape, falling to ruin, Trajan restored it good as new, which won the hearts of the people once again.He restored great many things that were not maintained properly, for his predecessor Nerva ruled only a little over a year, and Nerva's predecessor Domitianus the tyrant confiscated people's properties and did many cruel acts instead of maintaining the public facilities.



I have so many photos (well over 1500!) I will share the best ones as I go, along with the stories as I am able.

amazon14:
Coward passenger! Why not slap the white man in your front of you? But choose to slap your fellow black. When we say Nigerians asslick Whites, they will think we joking.

Why resort to violent savage behavior int he first place?
Read the terms and conditions of the ticket before you confirm the purchase and make sure there is some kind of acceptable compensation for delayed and cancelled flights. If you don't like it, don't buy it, simple as that. I got a 7 hour delay in Munich once, we didn't go beating up the Lufthansa staff.

hakmah:
Are you a christian or an athiest?

Neither, I'm a pagan.

saintkeppy:
.

Please mention me when you're done postin' the pictures, to enable me learn few things about Italian's Ancient Architectural history.

Sometimes I travel by Readin'&Reseachin' most especially when it comes with pictures, Lol &over time this has help me intellectually, enlighten me as well as being well informed.

New photos and info incoming!

CC; lalasticlala , Martin0 , KOPT33 , FrankNetter , shaybebaby , simonlee , TochiPhotos , Stallion93

Here comes Marcus Ulpius Nervae Traianus, otherwise known as Trajan, the greatest emperor of Rome in my opinion, the best of the "five good emperors" along with Marcus Aurelius.

(The angle of the sun was not right, so the photos of those statues aren't so great, but I took better shots of the marble statues inside museums.)


Trajan stands in front of Trajan's forum and Trajan's market, which is adjacent to the forums of Caesar, Augustus and Nerva.
Now there is a tale to tell: I could literally tell you volumes about Trajan's reign. Comparing his magnificent rule and deeds to our times will make you weep, I sure as hell wept after reading a good bit of material about him.

Some of the majestic public buildings and infrastructure he had built still stand today, and the ruins of those that didn't speak of past magnificence and beauty. You can clearly see how splendid the forum used to be, even in ruins it is quite a sight.
I spent an entire day there, and yearning to go back to see better -and take better photos.

I gotta sleep now, but I will be back to post the photos I took at this amazing place and tell you all I know about Trajanic era and the epitome of Roman engineering that is Trajan's legacy.

The inscription says optimo principi - Emperor Trajan was the first ruler to receive the title Optimus Princeps (the best ruler) from the senate, for his incredibly good deeds.
Trajan is depicted holding a scroll on most statues, in fact I haven't seen one without a scroll other than the nude ones.

This is the ancient grave where Julius Caesar is buried. It is located in Forum Romanum, Caesar fans visit there and put flowers on the grave tumulus on the ideas of March (March 15th), the anniversary of his assassination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ides_of_March


Some barbarian tourists threw thrash, as you can see, for the site is visited by millions every year and not all of them are so civilized.
Quite a few others threw coins which glitter like a dragon's hoard. There are coins from many different countries.

Beware the ides of March!
Rest in peace Julius Caesar.

I love taking photos and looking at them on my laptop, but absolutely hate sorting and resizing them.
I use a Unix shell script to do batch resizing. I realized the images were a bit too low res, so I changed the script to resize them to 1280x1024 and better quality.
Don't worry they are still under 200 kb and shouldn't eat up the data quotas.

Here is one of the most important historical figures of Rome, Julius Caesar who is responsible for ending the republican era and beginning the empire. His name is immortal as the month of July is named after him.

#1: Bronze statue of Caesar in front of his forum, in the forums of the caesars district. There are several forums of the emperors here, the first one was built by Julius Caesar.

#2,#3, #4: This is a place called Largo di Torre Argentina, the site of the temple where Julius Caesar was assassinated. There is a cat sanctuary next to it, stray cats of Rome started congregating at the ruin site, so the good people opened a shelter and took all the cats in, vaccinated and provided vet care to them. One of the kitties was named Brutus.

I am not very well versed on Julius Caesar other than the superficial common knowledge, I downloaded his Gaul war chronicles so I can remedy my ignorance soon.


Caesar is reputed to be a great writer, his war diaries are counted among the greatest classics of Latin.

bukatyne:
Hmm interesting.

Thanks for the compliments and your e-persona is very likeable.

Lovely thread.

Did you learn anything about their culture? Male-female interactions?

Movies depict Romans as wanton people however, when I read some sites about the lives of their ancient women, it seems quite the opposite as they were portrayed as very restricted and quality of life heavily dependent on their fathers'/husbands' blessings and goodwill.

Thank you for the kind words!
Rome was a multicultural, vast empire with many different facets. The wanton behavior was common in the upper class and nobility, as I can deduce from the historical records. Men and women keeping multiple lovers was not uncommon -great historian Tacitus criticizes them for that decadent way of life and compares them to the Germanics, who were looked down on as unwashed barbarians, he says Germanics have better morals than the Romans since they are monogamous.

Women of upper classes, such as senators' wives kept popular gladiators as lovers while their husbands were busy with mistresses. They used herbs for birth control, as a result many such couples never produced children. At some point emperor Augustus noticed the low birthrate of the upper class and too many people dying with no heir, worried about that, he issued an edict to reward them for producing children (it's been a long while since I've read that stuff, can't recall the details.)

Looking at the epigraphical evidence, it is obvious there were women who had land, property and shops. I've seen the shop sign of a merchant woman who was an exporter of olive oil and wine. There were also female gladiators, called gladiatrix, although popular culture, movies, tv shows covered only the male gladiators. General public has no idea whatsoever gladiatrixes existed, they were mostly rich and noble women, fighting to the first blood (never to death since they were relatives of the patricial class, senators, generals etc.) here are reliefs depicting women fighting in the arena.

Brightgem:
Gosh! Such a vivid description! Wicked! Girls wnt stop embarrassing fellow girls.

Oh this is not vivid, you gotta see the battle scenes I write!

Abi those brothers have oil in dey heads!

Rubbiish:
The bold is not true...What about school?
Remember these things can happen anywhere, even in church?

Kids don’t go to school alone there, they either go with the school bus or their parents take them there. Sending kids to church alone is irresponsible too, there has been too many rapes by pedophile clergy.

GiantParrot:
I have seen some of Sowell's videos on Youtube. He's got to be one of the smartest men alive. Too bad black communities pay him no heed. Too bad

That is cause he is not a populist demagogue. People listen to loud mouth demagogues like Farrakhan and Trump.

IPOBrep:
The girl child have become an endangered specie in recent times.

Either they are been raped by their father/guardian or they are been mortgaged for money by their parents.

The killing by ritualists also comes to mind plus the increasing practice of incest on them by their brothers.

God please protect out daughters from scavengers

Where were the parents? Why was a 13 year old girl alone at a market in a dangerous city like Lagos?
Americans don’t let their kids go ahywhere without parent aupervision until they are old enough to drive, both boys and girls. Pedophiles were snatching kids from shopping malls (boys and girls) and so many kids were kidnapped, people don't let their kids go anywhere. It's irresponsible to let a 13 year old girl go to markets alone in such a dangerous city.

Princedapace:
So anyone who blames the president for hardship is an IPOB?

99% of Nairaland must be IPOB then! Right?!

Nairaland parties looked better than this. You guys can out-party the celebrities!