Shroud of Turin Case

The Historical Trail

Was the Shroud image the original image upon which all Byzantine icons were based? The icon pictured here is the Sinai Icon from the Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai Peninsula. It was created around 550 AD and has numerous "points of congruence" to the Shroud image. It curiously was crafted only 25 years after the Image of Edessa was discovered in 525AD. The field of Iconography suggests that the Shroud Image was the "Image not made by hands" from which all icons drew their inspiration. Was that inspiration what we know today as The Shroud of Turin?

Fast forward to France in the Middle Ages for now because that is where the fully documented and continuous history of the Shroud begins. But there is more to the story on the Shroud's probable history. We'll get to that later.

1353: The Shroud's fully documented history began in Western Europe when it was revealed by Geoffrey DeCharney in Lirey, France.

1452: DeCharney's granddaughter sold the cloth to the Duke of Savoy in exchange for two castles. It remained in the Savoy family until 1982 when it was officially willed to the Catholic church although it had custodial care of the Shroud for centuries.

1532: The burial linen was severely damaged by fire in Chambery, France. Thought to be arson the very security measures in place to protect it from theft thwarted the Shroud's rescue until it was too late to prevent severe damage. Theories about the fire somehow altering the carbon date of the cloth have proven to be erroneous. More on that later.

1534: The Shroud was repaired by the Poor Claire Nuns who were skilled in making textile repairs. The holes from the fire were patched and the entire cloth was attached to a backing cloth for support. This repair now looms large as the carbon dating tests of 1988 are called into question as having dated a medieval reweave rather than the original cloth of the Shroud. This now is the most credible explanation as to what the labs dated and why they were wrong.

1578: The cloth was moved to Turin, Italy for safe keeping and remains there until this day. It is kept in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist and is only brought out for public display on rare occasions. The next public exhibition will be held in 2020.

The history of the Shroud prior to 1353 is not fully documented, but a significant historical trail allows for the following reconstruction of the cloth's early history.

70AD: Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Empire. The "Legend of King Abgar" suggests the Shroud was taken to Edessa (now Urfa, Turkey) sometime prior to this date. The King was miraculously healed of leprosy after gazing upon a mysterious image and converted to Christianity. The first church outside the Holy Land was reported to have been built in Edessa in the early second century. Later that century persecutions would sweep the Roman Empire. The mysterious cloth would be hidden away inside the fortified wall surrounding the city and forgotten for 300 years.

525: A severe flood destroyed most of Edessa. During the rebuilding of the walls, a metal box containing the mysterious cloth was rediscovered. By this time the Emporer Constantine had declared Christianity to be the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire (330AD). It was safe to reveal the image without fear of the persecutions. It became known throughout the Byzantine world as "The Image of Edessa" and later was called the "Mandylion". It was described as "The true likeness of Christ, not made by human hands."

944: The Byzantine Imperial Army invaded Edessa for the express reason of retrieving the cloth from the city which had fallen to Islam. In exchange for gold and 200 prisoners of war, the cloth was delivered to the army without a fight. It was taken to Constantinople (now Istanbul) and presented to the Emperor. August 16th of 944, with great ceremony, the cloth was draped over the Emperor's throne and crowned with his crown. The sermon that night was delivered by Gregory the Arch Deacon of the Hagia Sophia, the great cathedral. In that sermon he points to both the face and side wound of the image declaring it to be that of Christ.

1204: Constantinople was invaded by the Fourth Crusade. After laying siege to the city for two years, they finally breached the walls and ended up burning down nearly half the city. In the carnage nearly everything of value was stolen. All the silver and gold were taken by the Venetians who had funded the campaign but the French desired the "relics of the saints" and, according to a letter to the pope written in 1205, "Most holy of all, the cloth in which our Lord was wrapped after his death and before the resurrection". The Mandylion as it was then known had disappeared and most likely in the hands of the French.

1204 to 1353: One of several gaps in the history of the Shroud, evidence suggests it was secretly kept by the Knights Templars for safe keeping. The Templars offered protection for items of great value. They had castles all over France and Europe and specialized in offering safe passage to pilgrims making their way to he Holy Land. They would a small army of "warrior monks" to accompany the pilgrims on their trek by land or sea. Such protection came at a price and the Templars became wealthy with land, castles and gold. They had the means to keep the safe the booty stolen from Constantinople.

1307: It was in this year that the King of France conspired with the Pope to bring down the Templars. They had become too rich and too powerful. The King had borrowed heavily from them to finance his war with England. It was decided that the Pope would issue a decree to have all Templars arrested and their property confiscated. It was Friday the 13th, 1307 when over 15,000 Templars were arrested in France on the same day and thrown into prisons. As part of the French Inquisition, the Catholic Church's crusade against heresy, they were all made to confess under torture to various heresies. One of those heresies was that they "worshiped" a mysterious image.

Two leaders of the Templars, Geoffrey DeCharney and Jacques DeMolay were burned at the stake for their "heresy".

1353: The Shroud is revealed in public for the first time at a small collegiate church in Lirey, France. Who owns it? None other than Geoffrey DeCharney. A coincidence? Not likely. Although how the Shroud came into his hands is not completely known, he was obviously a descendant to the Geoffrey DeCharney who was burned at the stake less than 50 years prior.

It is from this point that the history of the Shroud is without dispute. Did the Templars have it? We can only speculate. Was it the same cloth as the Mandylion that disappeared in 1204? It sure sounds like it from descriptions. Was it the same cloth that was revealed in 525 and heralded as the "True Likeness of Christ"? Was it the same image that was delivered to King Abgar in the First Century which brought about his healing of leprosy?

We can not answer these questions with certainty but only with probability. The pollen trail confirms this same historical trail. The evidence from Iconography also confirms it. Other evidence indicates its origin in Israel, its manufacture in the Middle East, and its correlation with other Jewish burial shrouds and burial practices.

Science : Achronology

1898: The Shroud was photographed for the first time by Secondo Pia. These first pictures led to the discovery that the image on the cloth is actually a negative. In other words, the image becomes positive only when the light values are reversed in a photographic negative. This discovery startled the scientific community and stimulated worldwide interest.

1931: Guisseppe Enrie photographed the Shroud again with more advanced film technology confirming that the Shroud is indeed a negative image. Copies of Enrie's photos were circulated throughout the world prompting more scientific inquiry and interest.

1950: Dr. Pierre Barbet, a prominent French Surgeon, published his landmark book, A Doctor at Calvary documenting 15 years of medical research on the Shroud image. He described the physiology and pathology of the man on the Shroud as "anatomically perfect".

1973: Max Frei, a noted Swiss criminologist, was given permission to take dust samples from the Shroud which contained pollen. He discovered 22 pollen species from plants that are unique to areas around Constantinople and Edessa, and 7 pollen species from plants common mostly to the Middle East. The pollen trail confirmed the historical trail.

1975: Air Force scientists John Jackson and Eric Jumper, using a sophisticated image enhancement analyzer (VP-8) designed for the space program, discovered the Shroud image contained encoded 3-D data not found in ordinary reflected light photographs. This discovery indicated that the cloth must have wrapped a real human figure at the time the image was formed.

1978: The Shroud was on public exhibit for the first time since 1933 and was displayed for six weeks. Over 3 million people passed through the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist to view it behind bullet proof glass. At the close of the exhibition, 40 scientists comprising the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), mostly from the United States, analyzed the Shroud for five continuous days (122 hours) working in shifts around the clock.

1980: In June, National Geographic magazine published a landmark article on the Shroud further propelling the cloth into a science superstar calling it "One of the most perplexing enigmas of modern times".

1980: This same year, microscopist Walter McCrone who was not part of the Shroud Project was given several fibers to analyze. After finding iron oxide particles and a single particle of vermillion paint, he broke ranks with the Shroud scientists who had agreed to make all findings public the following year. McCrone proposed that the Shroud was a painting of red ochre paint created from iron oxide particles suspended in a thin binder solution. However McCrone's findings in no way agreed with any of the highly sophisticated tests conducted by two dozen other scientists. McCrone jumped the gun for the sake of getting his own publicity. His claims have all been dismissed.

1981: After three years analyzing the data The Shroud of Turn Research Project (STURP) made their findings public at an international conference in New London, CT. All the scientists agreed upon the following statement: "We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist. The blood stains are composed of hemoglobin and give a positive test for serum albumin."

1988: The Shroud was carbon dated by three laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Arizona. They indcated a date range from between 1260 to 1390 making the cloth only about 700 years old. This earth shattering news seemed to contradict the conclusions of STURP which gave support to the Shroud's possible authenticity. This new data posed a great dilemma for proponents of the Shroud and further complicates an explanation for the Shroud's existence.

The Shroud cannot be explained in a medieval context because it demonstrates medical knowledge and artistic expertise unknown until centuries later. If it was not made by an artist then what is it? Was it a custom crucifixion performed to mimic that of Jesus? Knowledge of Roman crucifixion practices was totally unknown in the Middle Ages. There are dozens of reasons why a medieval date doesn't fit the evidence.

1997: Noted Israeli Botanist and a professor at Hebrew University, Avinoam Danin confirmed Dr. Alan Whanger's discovery of flower images on the Shroud. He also verified that several pollen were from plants that grow only around Jerusalem.

2000: Shroud researchers Joseph Marino and Sue Benford present a landmark paper at an international conference in Ovieto, Italy. Their paper would present initial evidence that the area of the Shroud cut for carbon dating in 1988 was actually a medieval reweave.

2002: The Shroud was secretly restored amidst much controversy. All the burns and patches were removed. The shroud was attached to a new backing cloth as well. Most researchers feel the restoration was unnecessary and that much important data will be lost to future researchers.

2004: Redeeming what may have been lost during the restoration, textile expert Mechthild Flury-Lemberg revealed that the seam on the Shroud that runs the entire length known as the side strip is typical of burial Shrouds found in Masada. This further supports the Shroud's ancient origin.

2004: Another result of the restoration was the discovery of the Shroud's double face image. Italian scientists, Giulio Fanti and Roberto Maggiolio of Padova University were able to analyze scans of the backside of the Shroud after it was removed from the backing cloth. This had never been done before. The previous backing cloth had been attached since 1534 as part of the restoration following the fire of 1532. Examining the scans revealed faint superficial images of the face and hands. The image occurs only on the top surface of the fibers, similar to the front side of the Shroud but there is no coloring of the threads in between. This enhances the mystery of image formation and makes it that much more difficult to ascribe the Shroud to the work of an artist.

2004: Thermal Chemist, Dr. Raymond Rogers, retired Fellow with the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory proves using samples from the area cut for carbon 14 dating and samples from the main body of the Shroud that the sample cut in 1988 for C-14 dating was in fact a medieval reweave confirming Marino and Benford's hypothesis presented in 2000. Rogers also determined the evidence of a madder root dye used to blend in the color of newer threads with the more yellowed threads of the original Shroud. He also found cotton in the C-14 sample but not from the main body of the Shroud indicating both cotton and flax were used in the repair. Lastly and most importantly, he found that 37% of the vanillin remained intact in the lignon from the C-14 fibers whereas the vanillin content from the main body of the Shroud had decayed to 0%, similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Not only does this new evidence show that the carbon dating tests were severely flawed by dating an erroneous sample, but that the evidence also shows the main body of the Shroud is much older as indicated by the lack of vanillin. This critical research is precisely the kind of micro-chemical analysis the carbon dating labs were supposed to do in 1988, prior to taking the sample according to the original protocol, but failed to follow.

The carbon dating tests of 1988 have been thoroughly and completely invalidated by good science rather than the shoddy and arrogant effort demonstrated by the carbon labs in 1988. The cloud has been lifted.

More on the 1978 Shroud Project and what was determined:

Team Scientists Represented:

• Los Alamos National Laboratory
• New England Institute of Medicine
• Sandia Laboratories
• U.S. Air Force Academy
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Santa Barbara Research Institute
• Nuclear Technologies Corp.
• Colorado State University

Tests performed in 1978 include:

• Particle analysis
• Chemical analysis
• Blood analysis
• Photo microscopy
• Spectroscopy
• X-ray radiography
• Infra-red thermography
• X-ray fluorescence spectrometry
• Scanning photography from infra-red to ultra violet
• And others

Primary Test Results:

X-Ray Fluorescence

• Result: No detectable difference in elemental composition between image and non-image areas.
• Conclusion: No inorganic pigments present.

X-Radiography

• Result: No density discontinuities associated with body image.
• Conclusion: No substances manually applied to cloth.

Photoelectric Spectrophotometry

• Result: No spectral characteristics of stains, dyes or pigments were detected in image or non-image areas.
• Conclusion: No typical artistic substances are on the cloth .

Ultraviolet Fluorescence

• Result: No evidence of aromatic dyes or amino acids.
• Conclusion: No collagen binder as would be used with paint .

Evidence from Dirt

• Result: Microscopic dirt particles found solely on the dorsal foot imprint.
• Conclusion: Can be explained only by the folding of a barefoot man in the Shroud.

Image Characteristics

• Purely superficial -- penetrates only top 3 microfibrils
• Yellowing of image is uniform in intensity
• No capillary action apparent
• Fibrils not cemented to each other
• No substances between threads
• No directionality to image
• No Outline to image

STURP findings, published in 1981, contain the following results:

• "No pigments, paints, dyes, or stains have been found on the fibrils. X-ray fluorescence and microchemistry preclude the possibility of paint being used as a method for creating the image."

• "It is clear that there has been a direct contact of the Shroud with the body, which explains certain features such as the scourge marks, as well as the blood. However, while this type of contact might explain some features of the torso, it is totally incapable of explaining the image...there are no chemical or physical methods known which can account for the totality of the image..."

• "We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist. The blood stains are composed of hemoglobin and give a positive test for serum albumin."

Additional Facts From STURP and other Researchers:

Textile Analysis:

• No similar material found from Medieval times.
• Threads hand woven - pre 12th Century
• Unique manufacture indicates a Middle East origin
• The cloth measures exactly 2 x 8 Syrian cubits, a Middle East measurement.

Particle Analysis:

• Travertine Aragonite limestone particles indigenous to caves surrounding Jerusalem
• Outside pollen are mineral coated whereas inside pollen are uncoated
• Suggests placement in damp tomb or cave

3-D Encoding:

The image density corresponds to a mathematical gradient related to distance between body and cloth. “Confirmation that the Shroud covered a body shape at the time of image formation.” -Dr. John Jackson

The Blood:

“The blood is, in fact, real blood.” -Dr. John Heller Confirmed by presence of heme, porphyrins,bile pigments and serum albumin. Confirmed also by spectrographic analysis. “The blood marks seen on the shroud are consistent with a contact transfer to the cloth of blood clot exudates that would have resulted from major wounds inflicted on a man who died in the position of crucifixion.” -Dr. Al Alder -Dr. Gil Lavoie “The stains have a central hollowness which probably results from the physical separation of red blood cells from serum.” -Dr. Robert Bucklin “The remarkably fine detailing of the scourge marks revealed by ultraviolet fluorescence would be impossible to obtain by any other means than direct contact between a body and the linen.” -Dr. Sam Pellicori

The wounds are consistent with the Gospel account of Christ’s ordeal:

• Crown of thorns
• Bruising of face
• Shoulder abrasions
• Knee abrasions
• Scourge marks
• Nail wounds in wrist & feet
• Wound in side
• Legs not broken

Iconographgy

• Uncanny comparisons to Ancient Icons.
• Evidence indicates the Shroud was the model upon which Byzantine icons were based beginning in the 6th Century.
• “The peculiarities are so distinctive and prevalent that it seems doubtful they could be mere imagination or coincidence.” -Ian Wilson

The Paradox

Four Possibilities:

1. A Medieval work of art
2. A Medieval “Custom Crucifixion”
3. Someone else who died by crucifixion in the 1st century

"The Shroud of Turin is either the most awesome and instructive relic of Christ in existence...or it is one of the most ingenious, most unbelievably clever products of the human mind and hand on record...it is either one or the other, there is no middle ground" --John Walsh, Author--

GnomeXGurl

Shroud of Turin- The Fact or Just a hoax?

The Shroud of Turin first came to the attention of the public in 1355 when it was exhibited at the Church of St. Mary in Lirey, France. It had been given to the church by a French knight, Geoffroy de Charny, who probably acquired it in Constantinople.

The shroud soon became the subject of controversy. A report to Pope Clement argued that the shroud was merely a painting, and that it was being falsely displayed as a true relic in order to solicit donations to the church. As a consequence, Pope Clement declared the relic a fraud.

In 1453 the shroud was acquired by de Charny’s granddaughter who eventually sold it to the Duke of Savoy. The Savoys exhibited it for many decades, claiming that it was the holy shroud that had covered Christ as he lay in the tomb. In 1532 it was almost destroyed in a fire. The shroud still displays burn marks from this incident.

Throughout the twentieth century researchers dueled back and forth over the shroud’s authenticity. In 1982 a group calling itself the Shroud of Turin Research Project declared it to be genuine after studying samples lifted from the cloth using tape. However, radiocarbon tests performed later during the 1980s dated the shroud to approximately the fourteenth century, indicating that the relic was a fake. Nevertheless, shroud supporters found many reasons to dispute the radiocarbon testing, and so the debate raged on and likely will for the foreseeable future.

Every two or three years shroud researchers from around the world gather to share new

information and discuss the many enigmatic questions that surround this artifact. The most recent such gathering took place in the grand ballroom of the elegant Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas, Texas in September of 2005. About 100 scientists, archaeologists and historians representing a broad spectrum of Catholics, Anglicans (Episcopalians), Protestants, Evangelical Christians and non-Christians attended the conference. Most are academics. Many are retired and have time to devote to many hours to the study of the shroud. Almost all believe at some level that the shroud is genuine, even if they cannot prove it. Many share Ball’s view expressed in Nature that if it could be shown to be first century, it would nonetheless be impossible to prove, at least scientifically, that it was Jesus’ burial shroud.

The 2005 Dallas Conference on the Shroud of Turin was unlike previous conferences. It would redefine controversy about this cloth as not so much between skeptics and believers but between researchers and the Papal Custodians on matters of science and preservation. The conferees were upbeat. Most, for many years, had believed that the 1988 carbon 14 dating was flawed. But they could only suspect why before Rogers completed his peer-reviewed studies. And there had been other recent exciting developments. In April 2004, the peer-reviewed scientific Journal of Optics, published by the Institute of Physics in London, carried a paper by two scientists, Giulio Fanti and Roberto Maggiolo, from the University of Padua in Italy. Using modern image enhancement techniques, the team had discovered a faint image of a face on the backside of the cloth. The press dubbed it the “second face.” It wasn’t clear what it meant, but it was new information for consideration. And there was new analysis of the burn marks and water stains on the cloth. Some of the stains suggested that the cloth had been folded and stored in a jar similar to jars found at Qumran in which some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were stored. A key document had been prepared over the course of two years. It was a list of about one hundred and fifty scientific facts and confirmed observation, including very recent findings, compiled from over a hundred scientific papers, many of them published in secular peer-reviewed journals. Twenty-eight researchers were listed as authors. The list was entitled “Evidence for Testing Hypotheses about the Body Image Formation of the Turin Shroud.” But most researchers simply called it “The List.” It was to be presented at the conference. The better understanding of image chemistry was leading to new ideas on how the images formed on the cloth. One hypothesis, getting serious consideration, is a Maillard reaction.

Based on the photomicrograph, it's later showed where two fibers were pulled from an adhesive sampling tape leaving their colored coating behind. The coating is too thin to measure accurately with a standard microscope; however, it appears to be 180-600 nanometers, thinner than most
bacteria.

Rogers and Arnoldi had proposed it in their paper published in Melanoidins. The hypothesis suggests that volatile body vapors, such as cadaverine and putrescine, reacted with the starch and saccharides film that coats the outermost fibers of the cloth. The images are chemically
consistent with this type of reaction. And it is well understood that such vapors from a corpse, given the right conditions, will cause browning on a cloth that has the right sort of residues on its fibers. But if this is how the images formed, it is only hypothetical. There are unresolved problems. And there are possibly other ways to create this caramel-like condition. “Hypothesis,” researchers say, is the right word to use, for no proposal yet meets the scientific
criteria needed to be called a theory. But despite the positive feelings about progress, most attendees were frustrated and angry with the Papal Custodians of the Shroud of Turin. They were angry about the restoration. They were dismayed that Turin officials were ignoring scientific evidence. Many felt that the shroud’s custodians were ignoring advice by the late Pope John Paul II when in 1998 he said, “the Church does not have specific competence to pronounce on these questions. It entrusts to scientists the task of continuing to investigate to find suitable answers to questions regarding the Shroud.” Ghiberti and textile conservator Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, who had managed the restoration work, were in Dallas to defend the restoration and to reiterate their claim that they had not seen evidence of discreet mending. Scientists and archeologists wanted to ask them questions and express their own views. But conference organizers decided to prohibit questions and comments from the floor. And at the last minute they cancelled a PowerPoint presentation of “The List” which did contain scientific facts that disagreed what Turin officials were saying. When Fanti, who had served as the primary editor of the document, asked why, he was told that the document was “too political.”
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State, perhaps having sensed what was to happen in Dallas, had written a letter to the conferees saying, “His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI] trusts that the Dallas Conference will advance cooperation and dialogs among various groups engaged in scientific research on the Shroud . . .” But cooperation did not happen. The conferees were undaunted. In a presentation that had been billed as a tribute to the late Raymond Rogers, researcher Barrie Schwortz instead showed an interview with Rogers videotaped shortly before his death on March 8, 2005. In the interview, Rogers explained the discreet mending and why that invalidated the 1988 carbon 14 dating. And he offered a blistering criticism of the secretive restoration. He explained why the cloth and the still-unexplained images of a crucified man may have been damaged during the restoration. While the conferees applauded the interview Ghiberti walked out of the room, a gesture that perhaps signaled future non-cooperation. It was peculiar because it would be fair to say that probably every researcher in the grand ballroom of the hotel thought the shroud might be the real thing even if they could not prove it.

Controversy between skeptics and believers seemed to be a thing of the past. While skepticism is valid and indeed welcomed, the reasons propounded in the past now seemed moot to the conferees. The argument that the shroud’s images were painted, advanced by microscopist Walter McCrone in 1989, had been refuted. There is no paint. And the medieval carbon 14 dating was now well understood to be meaningless. Controversy was now between the scientists and the Papal Custodians. The conferees do not want it and they offered suggestions. Why not, for instance, test carbonized fabric dust scraped from the shroud during the restoration, as Rogers proposed in his Thermochimica Acta article? Why not allow high resolution, spectrally sensitive scans of both the front and the backside?

Kim Dreisbach, an Episcopal priest who presented a paper at the conference, had an interesting suggestion: get advice and oversight from the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Involved, as they are, in world health, global warning and cosmology studies, they have access to some of the best scientific minds who could provide advice to Turin on future studies and preservation of the shroud.

THE OLD “IT WAS PAINTED” CONTROVERSY

It is often reported that microscopist Walter McCrone proved that the images were painted. This is incorrect. McCrone, who examined 32 slides containing fibers from the cloth, found traces of iron oxide which he determined was “jewelers rouge.” He concluded that the images were painted with this. McCrone also claimed to have found a concentration of mercury that he
says was used to make vermilion paint used to paint the bloodstains. But chemical investigation shows that small quantities of iron oxide particles are evenly distributed in both image and non image areas and that the quantities are too small to form a visible image. The bloodstains are from real blood. Different scientists, working independently, conducted immunological, fluorescence and spectrographic tests, as well as Rh and ABO typing of blood antigens that clearly show this. And several experts in forensic medicine and blood chemistry conclude that the stains were formed by real human bleeding from real wounds to a real human body that came into direct contact with the cloth. See the peer reviewed Canadian Society of Forensic Science Journal, Volume 14 (1981), pp.81-103. In 1389, Pierre d’Arcis, the Bishop of Troyes, France, drafted a memorandum to Pope Clement VII of Avignon stating that the
shroud was a painted forgery. However, there is no historical evidence that draft memorandum was ever finalized or sent. The account of a confession by a painter is second hand. Pierre claimed that his predecessor, Bishop Henri de Poitiers, conducted an inquest in which a painter had confessed to painting the shroud. The inquest is not in the historical records. The painter is
not identified. Several other documents of the period challenge the veracity of the d'Arcis Memorandum. The historical conspectus suggests that the memorandum was part of a squabble about revenues from pilgrims visiting the nearby town of Lirey, where the shroud was kept, rather than Troyes. It is all moot. Visible and ultraviolet spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, pyrolysis-massspectrometry, laser-microprobe Raman analyses, and microchemical testing show no evidence of such material in sufficient
quantity to form any visible image. Moreover, it is well understood now, that the images are formed by a caramel-like substance within the otherwise clear coating of starch and polysaccharides on outer fibers. McCrone continued to defend his position that the shroud was painted until his death in 2002. The McCrone Institute continues to carry material written by him on the organization’s website, but it out of date. The McCrone Institute in Chicago can be
contacted at 312-842-7100.

Historical Support

The problem of the shroud’s authenticity is usually thought of in scientific terms. And indeed that is where much of the research is focused. But there is much, as well, that can be learned from history. Historians and biblical scholars are constantly probing for new material. Even, today, libraries of ancient documents are being translated that shed new light on the possible provenance of the cloth. It is often reported that there is no historical record of the shroud before 1356 CE. That is incorrect. However, it is correct to say that there are no known records about the shroud in western medieval Europe before that time. Several historians believe that the shroud was taken by French knights of the Fourth Crusade during the sacking of Constantinople in 1204. In 1205, Theodore Ducas Anglelos, writing about the looted treasures in a letter to Pope Innocent III wrote, “The Venetians partitioned the treasure of gold, silver and ivory, while the French did the same with the relics of saints and the most sacred of all, the linen in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after His death and before the resurrection.” Moreover, there is certain knowledge that on August 15, 944 CE, an image bearing cloth known as the Cloth of Edessa, was forcibly transferred from Edessa to Constantinople. It had been in Edessa since at least the middle of the 6th century when it was found concealed behind some stones above one of the city gates. It was, when found, to the people of Edessa, the lost cloth of a great legend. According to legend the cloth, with a miraculous picture of Jesus, was brought to Abgar V Ouchama, the King of Edessa from 13 –50 CE, by a disciples known as Thaddeus Jude. According to the legend he was sent by the apostle Thomas. Whether or not the legend is true is immaterial. In the late 6th century, Evagrius Scholasticus’ Ecclesiastical History mentions that Edessa was protected by a “divinely wrought portrait,” an acheiropoietos sent by Jesus to Abgar. In 730 CE, St. John Damascene describes the cloth as a himation, which is translated as an oblong cloth or grave cloth. Thus, if the Edessa Cloth is the Shroud of Turin, the written record goes back to the sixth century. By the sixth century, a traditional understanding that Jesus’ image was left on his burial shroud had developed. In Visigothic Spain, there was a formula for worship known as the Mozarabic Rite. One element of the rite was the illatio (Præfatio). There were numerous illationes (proper prefaces) for special days. One used at Eastertide read, “Peter ran with John to the tomb and saw the recent imprints of the dead and risen man on the linens.” The word imprints is a translation of vestigia which can also mean traces or marks. It canalso mean footsteps or footprints, but these do not make contextual sense.

In the eighth century Pope Stephen III (reigned 752 to 757 CE) stated that Christ had “spread out his entire body on a linen cloth that was white as snow. On this cloth, marvelous as it is to see . . . the glorious image of the Lord's face, and the length of his entire and most noble body, has been divinely transferred.”


Christ Pantocrator, an icon at St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai(550 C.E.)

In the sixth century a new common appearance for Jesus emerged in icons, paintings, mosaics and Byzantine coins. And they had an uncanny resemblance to the face of the man of the shroud. Indeed, some scholars think that the shroud was the source for new ideas of what Jesus looked like. Prior to this time, pictures of Jesus were mostly of a young, beardless man, often with short hair, and often in story-like settings in which he was depicted as a shepherd. Suddenly, Jesus had a forked beard. He looked out at us, in full frontal images, from large owlish eyes. His face was gaunt and his nose was long and thin. Numerous other characteristics appeared in these pictures, and some of them were seemingly strange and of no particular artistic merit. Many portraits had two wisps of hair that dropped at an angle from a central parting of the hair.


Paul Vignon, a French scholar who first categorized these facial attributes in 1930, also described a square cornered U shape between the eyebrows, a downward pointing triangle on the bridge of the nose, a raised right eyebrow, accents on both cheeks with the accent on the right cheek being somewhat lower, an enlarged left nostril, an accent line below the nose, a gap in the beard below the lower lip, and hair on one side of the head that was shorter than on the other side. The most famous and the earliest of these full frontal pictures of Jesus is Christ Pantocrator, an icon at St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai. This icon has been reliably dated to the middle of the sixth century, at just about the time that the Edessa Cloth was found behinds stones above the city’s gate. When one image is overlaid on the other, facial feature locations and shapes are almost perfectly aligned.


The shroud of Turin is a woven cloth about 14 feet long and 3.5 feet wide with an image of a man on it. Actually, it has two images, one frontal and one rear, with the heads meeting in the middle. It has been noted that if the shroud were really wrapped over a body there should be a space where the two heads meet. And the head is 5% too large for its body, the nose is disproportionate, and the arms are too long. Nevertheless, the image is believed by many to be a negative image of the crucified Christ and the shroud is believed to be his burial shroud. Most skeptics think the image is a painting and a pious hoax. The shroud is kept in the cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.

Apparently, the first historical mention of the shroud as the "shroud of Turin" is in the late 16th century when the shroud was brought to the cathedral in that city, though it allegedly was discovered in Turkey during one of the so-called "Holy" Crusades in the so-called "Middle" Ages. In 1988, the Vatican allowed the shroud to be dated by three independent sources--Oxford University, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology--and each of them dated the cloth as originating in medieval times, around 1350. The shroud allegedly was in a fire during the early part of the 16th century and, according to believers in the shroud's authenticity, that is what accounts for the carbon dating of the shroud as being no more than 650 years old. To non-believers, this sounds like an ad hoc hypothesis. According to microchemist Dr. Walter McCrone,

The suggestion that the 1532 Chambery fire changed the date of the cloth is ludicrous. Samples for C-dating are routinely and completely burned to CO² as part of a well-tested purification procedure. The suggestions that modern biological contaminants were sufficient to modernize the date are also ridiculous. A weight of 20th century carbon equaling nearly two times the weight of the Shroud carbon itself would be required to change a 1st century date to the 14th century . Besides this, the linen cloth samples were very carefully cleaned before analysis at each of the C-dating laboratories.

It may interest skeptics to know that many people of faith believe that there is scientific evidence which supports their belief in the shroud's authenticity. Of course, the evidence is limited almost exclusively to pointing out facts that would be true if the shroud were authentic. For example, it is claimed to be the negative image of a crucifixion victim. It is claimed to be the image of a man brutally beaten in a way which corresponds to the way Jesus is thought to have been treated. It is also claimed that the image is not a painting but a miraculously transposed image. Skeptics disagree and argue that the shroud is a painting and a forgery.

The relic trade

Skeptics believe that the shroud of Turin is just another religious relic invented to beef up the pilgrimage business or impress infidels. (Another equally famous painting, also claimed to have miraculously appeared on a cloth, cropped up in Mexico in the 16th century, "Our Lady Of Guadalupe") The case for the forged shroud is made most forcefully by Joe Nickell in his Inquest On The Shroud Of Turin, which was written in collaboration with a panel of scientific and technical experts. The author claims that historical, iconography, pathological, physical, and chemical evidence points to inauthenticity. The shroud is a 14th century painting, not a two-thousand year-old cloth with Christ's image.

One theory is that "a male model was daubed with paint and wrapped in the sheet to create the shadowy figure of Christ." The model was covered in red ocher, "a pigment found in earth and widely used in Italy during the Middle Ages, and pressed his forehead, cheekbones and other parts of his head and body on to the linen to create the image that exists today. Vermilion paint, made from mercuric sulphide, was then splashed onto the image's wrists, feet and body to represent blood."

Walter McCrone analyzed the shroud and found traces of chemicals that were used in "two common artist's pigments of the 14th century, red ochre and vermilion, with a collagen (gelatin) tempera binder" ( Wlater McCrone 1998. He makes his complete case that the shroud is a medieval painting in JudgmentDay of the Shroud of Turin (March 1999). For his work, McCrone was awarded the American Chemical Society's Award in Analyctical Chemistry in 2000.

The evidence for authenticity

The shroud, however, has many defenders who believe they have demonstrated that the cloth is not a forgery, dates from the time of Christ, is of miraculous origin, etc. It is claimed that there is type AB blood on the shroud. Skeptics deny it. Blood has not been identified on the shroud directly, but it has been identified on sticky tape that was used to lift fibrils from the shroud. Dried, aged blood is black. The stains on the shroud are red. Forensic tests on the red stuff have identified it as red ocher and vermilion tempera paint. Other tests by Adler and Heller have identified it as blood.* If it is blood, it could be the blood of some 14th century person. It could be the blood of someone wrapped in the shroud, or the blood of the creator of the shroud, or of anyone who has ever handled the shroud, or of anyone who handled the sticky tape. But even if there were blood on the shroud, that would have no bearing on the age of the shroud or on its authenticity.

It is claimed that the cloth has some pollen grains and images on it that are of plants found only in the Dead Sea region of Israel. Avinoam Danin, a botanist from Hebrew University of Jerusalem claims he has identified pollen from the tumbleweed Gundelia tournefortii and a bean caper on the shroud. He claims this combination is found only around Jerusalem. Some believers think the crown of thorns was made of this type of tumbleweed. However, Danin did not examine the shroud itself. His sample of pollen grains originated with Max Frei who tape-lifted pollen grain samples from the shroud. Frei's pollen grains have been controversial from the beginning. Frei, who once pronounced the forged "Hitler Diaries" to be genuine, probably introduced the pollen grains himself or was duped and innocently picked up pollen grains another pious fraud had introduced (Nickell).

Danin and his colleague Uri Baruch also claim that they found impressions of flowers on the shroud and that those flowers could only come from Israel. However, the floral images they see are hidden in mottled stains much the way the image of Jesus hidden is in a tortilla or the image of Mary is hidden in the bark of a tree. The first to see flowers in the stains was a psychiatrist, who was probably an expert at seeing personality traits in inkblots (Nickell, 1994)

Danin notes that another relic believed to be the burial face cloth of Jesus (the Sudarium of Oviedo in Spain) contains the same two types of pollen grains as the Shroud and also is stained with type AB blood. Since the Sudarium is believed to have existed before the 8th century, according to Danin, there is "clear evidence that the shroud originated before the eighth century." The cloth is believed to have been in a chest of relics from at least the time of the Moorish invasion of Spain. It is said to have been in the chest when it was opened in 1075. But, since there is no blood on the shroud of Turin and there is no good reason to accept Danin's assumption that the pollen grains were on the Shroud from its origin, this argument is spurious.

In any case, the fact that pollen grains found near the Dead Sea or Jerusalem were on the shroud means little. Even if the pollen grains weren't introduced by some pious fraud, they could have been carried to the shroud by anyone who handled it. In short, the pollen grains could have originated in Jerusalem at any time before or after the appearance of the shroud in Italy. This is not a very strong piece of evidence.

Moreover, that there are two cloths believed to have been wrapped around the dead body of Jesus does not strengthen the claim that the shroud is authentic, but weakens it. How many more cloths are there that we don't know about? Were they mass produced like pieces of the true cross, straw from Christ's manger, chunks of Noah's ark? That cloths in Spain and Italy have identical pollen grains and blood stains is a bit less than "clear evidence" that they originated at the same time, especially since there is clear evidence that the claim that they have identical pollen grains and blood stains is not true. But, even if it were true, it would be of little value in establishing that either of these cloths touched the body of Jesus.

Unraveling the weave

The weave of the cloth is said to be typical of the weave wealthy Jews would have had in the time of Jesus. The weave of the wealthy Jew doesn't seem consistent with the kind of people Jesus supposedly hung out with. However, as one reader, Hal Nelson, pointed out, "The linen cloth was supplied by Joseph of Arimathea, described in Matthew 27 as a "rich man" as well as a disciple. (The weave of Turin is herring bone; the weave of Oviedo is taffeta, proving, I suppose, that Jesus had disciples of all types, even AB.)

The image is of a man about six feet tall. The size and weave of the cloth have convinced one researcher/believer that the cloth may have been used as a tablecloth for the Last Supper. It could have been used for a lot of other things as well, I suppose.

To the believer, however, it is not the scientific proof of the shroud's authenticity that gives the shroud its special significance. It is the faith in the miraculous origin of the image that defines their belief. The miracle is taken as a sign that the resurrection really happened and that Jesus was divine.

Just another Relic?

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the shroud of Turin controversy is the way true believers keep bringing up red herrings and the way skeptics keep taking the bait. Danin made his plant image/pollen grain argument in 1998, a follow-up on another plant image argument he made in 1997. He said in the 1998 article that his evidence showed that "the Shroud could have come only from the Near East." An AP article by Traci Angel (8/3/99) quotes Danin as saying that the evidence "clearly point to a floral grouping from the area surrounding Jerusalem." No doubt, a raging debate will follow (once again!) as to the origin of the plants and pollen gains. As if it matters. Even if it is established beyond any reasonable doubt that the shroud originated in Jerusalem and was used to wrap up the body of Jesus, so what? Would that prove Jesus rose from the dead? I don't think so. To believe anyone rose from the dead can't be based on physical evidence, because resurrection is a physical impossibility. Only religious faith can sustain such a belief. To believe that someone floated up to the sky and disappeared (i.e., rose into heaven) is also not going to be proved one way or the other by these shroud arguments. Finally, no amount of physical evidence could ever demonstrate that a man was God, was also his own Father and conceived without his mother ever having had sex. Thus, no matter how many brilliant scientists marshal forth their brilliant papers with evidence for images of Biblical ropes, sponges, thorns, spears, flowers, tumbleweeds, blood, etc., none of it has the slightest relevance for proving these matters of faith.

Some people believe the Shroud of Turin is the cloth that covered Jesus Christ at His burial. There are serious problems with this view, even if we ignore carbon dating tests in 1988 that showed the cloth may be only 600 or 700 years old.

Scientist, experts and researchers admit that carbon dating can give crazy results, so this is not proof of the shroud's age. Even so, there are serious problems with the view that this shroud shows a picture of Christ.

• It is clear from the Bible and from Jewish burial customs that several pieces of cloth bound Christ at His burial — not one large sheet like the shroud.
• In John 20:5-7 we find there was a separate piece wrapped around Christ's head. Yet the Shroud of Turin depicts a face on the sheet.
• The Bible says linen strips bound Jesus, not a large cloth (see John 19:40).
• The Bible is the authoritative record of Christ's death, burial, and ressurection, and the Bible mentions nothing of a shroud.
• Walter C. McCrone, head of a Chicago research institute and a specialist in authenticating art objects, examined the shroud. He found a pale, gelatin-based substance speckled with particles of red ochre on fibers from the part of the cloth that supposedly showed the figure of Christ. He also found that fibers from the “wounds” had stains, not of blood, but of particles of a synthetic vermilion developed in the Middle Ages. He said the practice of painting linen with gelatin-based temperas began in the late thirteenth century and was common in the fourteenth. He concluded that a fourteenth century artist had forged the shroud.
• In the 1980s, Jesuit priest Robert A. Wild expressed surprise that the bloodstains, if they were blood, showed no trace of smearing after all the movement and transport the body would have endured. Wild also noted that the hands of the body masked the genitals. He said this couldn't be right. No matter how you arrange a body after rigor mortis, he said, the hands cannot cover the genitals unless you prop up the elbows on the body and bind the hands tightly in place. Yet this is not what the shroud's image shows.
• The first record of the shroud's appearance was in 1353, when Geoffrey de Charny presented it to the small local church in the French town of Lirey. Three years later, in 1356, the bishop of the region wrote to the pope, in Latin, telling of his annoyance that certain people wanted this “painted” cloth displayed as the burial cloth of Christ. The bishop added that his predecessor, Henry of Poitiers, “after diligent inquiry and examination,” had found the artist who painted it. The artist testified that “it was the work of human skill and not miraculously wrought.”
• Interestingly, this date accords with the carbon-14 tests, which dated the shroud to about the first quarter of the 1300s. It also agrees with art expert Walter McCrone's estimate of the age based on known painting styles (see point 4 above).
• The verses that tell of Joseph of Arimathea's wrapping Jesus in linen cloth are Matthew 27:59, Mark 15:46, Luke 23:53, and John 19:40. Look in Vine's Expository Dictionary, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, and the Ryrie Study Bible. They all tell us the Greek words used in Matthew, Mark, and Luke (entulisso and eneileo) mean “to roll in, wind in”, “to twist, to entwine”, “to enwrap”, “to wrap by winding tightly”. Winding, twisting and entwining imply wrappings, or strips of bandage, rather than a single shroud. But if they did mean a single sheet, then Matthew, Mark, and Luke would conflict with John 19:40, which is clearer by using the Greek word othonion, meaning “linen bandage” (Strong's concordance). If the Bible writers had meant a single linen sheet like the shroud, the word used should have been othone (a single linen cloth, a sail, or a sheet). From this, it seems that all four Gospel writers were telling followers that normal long strips of linen covered Jesus

Mysterious Batu Katak (Frog Rock )formation

Known as Batu Katak (Frog Rock) by local. Located halfway to Sibu Sarawak from Bintulu-Sibu Highway. According to local stories, this mysterious rock brings good luck to punters and during the highway construction, several attempts to destroy the rock failed even after being blast with numbers of dynamites by workers. In one accounts, claimed to be haunted and few peoples who tries to moved the rock end up dead. How far was the claim nobody knows but the rock formation still standing to this day and a roof was build by anonymous people especially punters especially Chinese to seek their lucky numbers.

Fadlee@Katana Blade
ParaCrypt Research and Study Group Member

-UPDATE-

A local visitor near the formation
Last September 2008, PRSG team lead by Fadlee went to the site to conduct investigation regarding the phenomenon. Based on their report submitted to the admin, the investigation shows that the rock was nearly fully written with lucky numbers visitors often came to the spot for wishing. According to interview and data collecting session, the formation already exist there almost 3 decades. And the clearing of the area for highway construction reveal the mysterious rock formation and later unexplained death cases and incidents occurred after several attempt to destroy the rock for highway constructions. PRSG Team also conducting night research near the area and encounter mysterious thick fog appeared near the area in certain time (PRSG didn't took this phenomenon as hard evidence of haunting due to location of thick forest at the side of the rock formation and temperature drop is normal in this kind of forest environment. But still it was taken as findings for reference in order to release future research articles based on scientific explaination) and apparition of dark figure and unexplained moving human shape fog crossing the road and vanished near the rock formation.

Ketaksuban terhadap Cenderawasih

Hanya kerana taksub terhadap kepercayaan tahyul burung cenderawasih mampu menarik kekayaan serta membawa ‘tuah’, ada golongan kenamaan dan kerabat diraja sanggup menawarkan RM1 juta bagi mendapat seekor burung itu yang diseludup masuk dari Irian Jaya, Indonesia.

Malah lebih pelik apabila helaian bulu burung itu yang direndam dalam minyak masak sebelum dibotolkan turut boleh dijual menjangkau harga RM5,000 sebotol.

Keghairahan luar biasa ini menyebabkan ada peniaga ubat-ubatan tradisional sanggup menipu dengan meletakkan bulu ayam atau burung spesies lain sebelum dijual kepada orang ramai yang taksub terhadap ‘keramat’ burung berkenaan.

Timbalan Pengarah Jabatan Perlindungan Hidupan Liar dan Taman Negara (Perhilitan), Celescoriano Razond, berkata kegilaan terhadap perkara mistik yang terdapat pada burung cenderawasih itu menyebabkan pemburu haram di negara jiran berlumba-lumba menyeludup masuk bangkai burung spesis ini ke Malaysia kerana menyedari terdapat permintaan tinggi di negara ini.

Anehnya penduduk dan rakyat di Indonesia sendiri tidak mengendahkan kewujudan burung berkenaan yang diyakini ramai penduduk negara ini berkesan sebagai ‘pelaris’ diri dan perniagaan selain turut diyakini boleh menjadi minyak pengasih.

Menurutnya, hal ini terjadi berikutan ramai pengamal perubatan tradisional dan individu yang berpegang kuat pada amalan mistik yakin bahawa burung ini hanya makan embun syurga malah ia didakwa mengeluarkan wangian yang sukar digambarkan.

“Akibatnya setiap inci badan burung ini termasuk isi perut dan bulunya mempunyai khasiat misteri dan kebanyakannya digunakan untuk perubatan, paling dicari adalah bulu cenderawasih yang yang dianggap pelaris paling besar.

“Bagaimanapun, menyeludup dan memiliki burung cenderawasih adalah satu kesalahan dan boleh didakwa mengikut Seksyen 68, Akta Perlindungan Hidupan Liar 1972 (pindaan 1988) yang membawa hukuman denda maksimum RM3,000 atau penjara tiga tahun, atau kedua-duanya, jika sabit kesalahan,” katanya.

Menurutnya, terbaru, pegawai Perhilitan sebelum ini pernah memberkas dua lelaki Indonesia berusia 30-an yang didapati menyeludup masuk lebih lima ekor burung cenderawasih ke negara ini.

“Mereka tidak sekadar cuba menjual burung cenderawasih yang awet itu malah turut menawarkan minyak berisi bulu burung cenderawasih yang didakwa boleh dijadikan minyak pengasih. Ini terbukti apabila kami menemui kotak kayu berisi berpuluh botol kecil yang didakwa minyak sakti burung cenderawasih

“Pegawai Perhilitan turut merampas satu kitab mengenai hikmat dan keajaiban doa burung cenderawasih dan pelbagai buku lain yang menceritakan kehebatan burung cenderawasih ini,” katanya.

Menurutnya, berdasarkan kitab yang ditemui itu, bulu burung cenderawasih didakwa boleh bertukar menjadi batu permata sekiranya jatuh ke bumi.

“Manakala isi perutnya dicampur dengan minyak kepala hijau dijadikan ubat pelbagai penyakit. Ia turut boleh digunakan untuk mengeratkan hubungan suami isteri dalam memperoleh kebahagiaan rumah tangga.

“Bulu burung ini pula jika dipakai di kepala atau dijadikan tangkal boleh dijadikan ubat pengasih, pelaris atau penunduk,” katanya.

Namun katanya, apa yang menyebabkan burung cenderawasih digilai golongan kenamaan adalah kerana kepercayaan ia boleh mendatangkan tuah ‘segunung emas’ selain memberi kekuasaan jika disimpan di rumah.

Bagaimanapun menurutnya, kepercayaan itu tidak berasas dan fakta disampaikan nyata tidak benar kerana cenderawasih sememangnya wujud sebagai spesies burung biasa di bumi dan bukannya berasal dari syurga seperti diwar-warkan.

Difahamkan terdapat 43 jenis spesies cenderawasih yang dibezakan daripada beberapa ciri seperti warna bulu dan saiznya. Kebanyakan burung jenis ini berhabitat di kawasan hutan tropika dan banyak ditemui di Australia Timur, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea dan Kepulauan Maluku.

Malah menurutnya, Taman Burung Kuala Lumpur sendiri memiliki tiga cenderawasih berjenis Paradisea Apoda yang masih hidup untuk dipamerkan untuk tontonan pengunjung, sejak lima tahun lalu.

“Yang pasti burung ini lebih gemar berada di atas pokok menyebabkan dia dianggap sebagai burung keramat dari syurga dengan cerita palsu kononnya burung ini tidak pernah memijak tanah.

“Cenderawasih hidup dan mati seperti burung biasa. Mungkin cenderawasih yang dijual kononnya sebagai objek misteri tidak reput kerana ia sudah diawetkan terlebih dahulu,” katanya.

Menurutnya, orang ramai yang menjual atau menyimpan burung cenderawasih terbabit boleh dikenakan tindakan undang-undang kerana memiliki burung liar yang dilindungi mengikut Akta Hidupan Liar.

Petikan dari Harian Metro
Ditulis oleh Mohd Jamilul Anbia Md Denin

Cenderawasih- Real facts behind the myth

Cenderawasih/pheonix living among the clouds based on Malay and Chinese believed

Cenderawasih or Fenghuang/Pheonix by some culture refers to a mystical bird which have the power of healing and prosperity also good luck. Among the malay, cenderawasih considered as birds from heavean or bird of paradise due to physical look of the fauna- colourful feathers and unique looking believed to have mystical powers. But what actually are these bird and does it really exist or just a myth?

Cenderawasih or Paradisaea minor is a medium-sized, up to 32cm long, maroon brown bird of paradise (Paradisaeidae) with a yellow crown and brownish yellow upper back. The male has dark emerald green throat, a pair of long tail-wires and adorned with pale yellow and white ornamental flank plumes, the character of males are polygamous, and they perform courtship displays in groups. The female paradisae is a maroon bird with dark brown head and white below and usually lays two pinkish eggs with dark markings in tree nest high above ground. Maybe that's why people especially Malays believed the bird never touches the ground.

These species actually a members of the family Paradisaeidae of the order Passeriformes - the largest and most diverse commonly recognized clade of birds which largely distributed throughout the forests of Misool and Jobi Islands of West Irian Jaya, Torres Straits, Eastern Australia and northern New Guinea. The Passeriformes (or ‘passerine’ birds) are synonymous with what are commonly known as "perching birds"; this group also contains within it a major radiation commonly known as songbirds (oscine Passerines or Passeri). Of the 10,000 or so extant species of birds, over half (~5,300) are perching birds.

Melospiza melodia family

Perching birds have a worldwide distribution, with representatives on all continents except Antarctica, and reaching their greatest diversity in the tropics. Body sizes of passerines vary from about 1.4 kg in northern populations of Ravens (Corvus corax) to just a few grams. Perching birds include some of the most colorful and mysterious of all birds, such as birds of paradise from New Guinea and the bright orange Cock of the Rock from tropical South America. Because of their high diversity, generally small body size and relative ease of observation, collection and field study, perching birds have historically attracted the attention of a wide range of descriptive and experimental biologists, including systematists, behavioral ecologists, and evolutionary biologists. The tradition of recognizing perching birds (Passeriformes) as the most diverse and rapidly radiating clade has been questioned because there are few obvious “key innovations” that should cause systematists to recognize Passeriformes over any other arbitrarily larger or smaller monophyletic group within birds (Raikow, 1986). One point that has been missed in debates on this issue is that the branch leading to the songbirds (oscines), a group comprising 80% of extant perching birds, is the longest internal branch on the DNA hybridization tree produced by Sibley and Ahlquist (1990). This branch has also been one of the few to be well resolved in applications of mtDNA sequences to higher level questions in birds, presumably because it is long. Given the large number of clades that will require names under phylogenetic taxonomy, perhaps the length of branches leading to particular clades should be one criterion whereby systematists decide which of the many clades to name.

The basal lineages of passeriformes have for over a century included two major clades, the oscines and suboscines. Suboscines (sometimes called Tyranni, though this name has confusingly been used also for more restrictive groups within Suboscines) are a largely tropical group of about 1,000 species that reaches its greatest diversity in South America; most suboscines are thought to sing “innate” songs. Oscines (Passeri) include about 4,000 species and are what many laypersons refer to as “songbirds”; they are worldwide in distribution and are distinguished from suboscines by a complex voice box (syrinx) and song learning capacity. The German anatomist Müller first drew attention to the syringeal differences (Müller, 1878), and since then both morphological (Ames, 1971) and molecular (Edwards et al., 1991; Sibley and Ahlquist, 1990) analyses have confirmed this basic division of perching birds. However, it has recently been determined that an even more basal division within passerines is between the diminutive New Zealand wrens (Acanthisittidae; Raikow, 1987) and all others (Barker et al. 2002, 2004).

Male Paradisae Minor

The diet of these species consists mainly of fruits and insects. Paradisaea species having a kind of lek-type mating system ( a gathering of males, of certain animal species, for the purposes of competitive mating display. Leks assemble before and during the breeding season, on a daily basis. The same group of males meet at a traditional place and take up the same individual positions on an arena, each occupying and defending a small territory or court. Intermittently or continuously, they spar individually with their neighbors or put on extravagant visual or aural displays (mating "dances" or gymnastics, plumage displays, vocal challenges, etc).

Others, such as the Parotia and Cicinnurus species, have highly ritualized mating dances. Males are polygamous in the sexually dimorphic species and hybridization is frequent in these birds. Many hybrids have been described as new species, and in some forms, such as Rothschild's Lobe-billed Paradisaidae, even today some doubt remains whether they might not be valid.

Paradisaea apoda on the tree. Note the way of the bird hiding its leg

Male Paradisaea apoda

The largest member in the genus Paradisaea, the Greater Bird of Paradise (above picture) is distributed to lowland and hill forests of southwest New Guinea and Aru Island, Indonesia. The diet consists mainly of fruits, seeds and small insects. A small population was first introduced by Sir William Ingram in 1909-1912 to Little Tobago Island of West Indies in an attempt to save the species from extinction due to overhunting for plume trades. The introduced populations survived until at least 1958 and most likely are extinct now. Paradisaea apoda is a large, up to 43cm long, maroon brown with a yellow crown, dark emerald green throat and blackish brown breast cushion. The male is adorned with large yellow ornamental flank plumes and a pair of long tail wires. The female has unbarred maroon brown plumage. For further information on other genus of these bird, information can be found under the tag- Paradisaea in encyclopedia of birds.

Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist,physician and zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of nomenclature and also known as the "father of modern taxonomy and ecology which was the most renowned botanist of his time, and was also noted for his fine linguistic skills named the species Paradisaea apoda, or "legless bird of paradise", because early trade-skins to reach Europe were prepared without feet by natives; this lead to the misconception of european that these birds were beautiful visitors from paradise that floated in the air and never touched the earth until death. The same perceptions also similar to the Asianb especially Malays and Chinese stories of the bird origins mystical powers.

Below are some of the genus of the Bird of Paradise:

Genus Lycocorax

Paradise Crow Lycocorax pyrrhopterus

GenusManucodia

Glossy -mantle Manucode, Manucodia atra

Jobi Manucode, Manucodia jobiensis

Crinkle-collared Manucode, Manucodia chalybata

Curl-crested Manucode, Manucodia comrii

Trumpet Manucode, Manucodia keraudrenii

Genus Paradigalla

Long-tailed Paradigalla, Paradigalla carunculata

Short-tailed Paradigalla Paradigalla brevicauda

Genus Astrapia

Arfak Astrapia, Astrapia nigra

Splendid Astrapia, Astrapia splendidissima

Ribbon-tailed Astrapia, Astrapia mayeri

Stephanie's Astrapia, Astrapia stephaniae

Huon Astrapia, Astrapia rothschildi

Genus Parotia

Western Parotia, Parotia sefilata

Carola's Parotia, Parotia carolae

Berlepsch's Parotia, Parotia berlepschi

Lawes's Parotia, Parotia lawesii

Eastern Parotia, Parotia helenae

Wahnes's Parotia, Parotia wahnesi

Genus Pteridohora

King of Saxony Bird of Paradise, Pteridophora alberti

Genus Lophorina

Superb Bird of Paradise, Lophorina superba


Eventhough science and zoology already explained what sort of species the bird was, what are the common diets, breeding etc, but still people who are believers of superstitions insist that the proof of the bird really have that power was by looking at the bird carcass which stay fresh eventhough already dead for long time. However this can be explained by using modern science, by injecting chemicals certain chemical into the carcass so that the carcass look natural and fresh. The issue of the bird mystical stories and tall tales still embeded in some culture and it is up to the believer itself either to stay in fantasies or to move on with modern reality.


Ezan
ParaCrypt Research Team

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ALL VISITORS AND MEMBERS

Recently, the admin found a lot of page url which using the name of Paracrypt Research and study Group to spread malware and trojans into visitors pc by republishing some paragraph from the articles to cover their activities.

Some of the url example:

• hantu langsuir gambar ghosts blog malaysia alam amp online jenis ...
  ghosts online malaysia hantu jenis langsuir alam amp gambar blogGhosts in ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Jika orang bertanyakan apakah dia yang dimaksudkan ...
  rujnews.org/2091 - 26k - Cached

• gambar hantu dan pontianak malaysia bogel melayu video amp info ...
  bogel dan pontianak gambar video malaysia amp info hantu melayugambar hantu ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Lembaga yang dipercayai langsuir atau pontianak di ...
  newshuyws.org/2530 - 25k - Cached

• gambar hantu yang benar dan amp malaysia internet archive indonesia ...
  malaysia benar hantu amp internet indonesia gambar yang archive danMingguan ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Jika orang bertanyakan apakah dia yang dimaksudkan ...
  nikops2.org/gambar-hantu-yang-benar - 27k - Cached

• memek madonna mp3 download telanjang sex free video crayz azhari ...
  telanjang memek sex azhari madonna free mp3 video crayz downloadhentai ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site . perubahan memek muka serta pertuturan dan sebagainya. ...
  xilnews.org/1253 - 26k - Cached

• entiti paranormal video videos search hantu youtube malaysia community ...
  online paranormal video search community youtube malaysia videos hantu entitia ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Sebelum mengupas lebih lanjut tentang fenomena ...
  colueja.info/entiti-paranormal - 27k - Cached

• gambar langsuir hantu fotopages malaysia blog cerita misteri pontianak ...
  misteri amp langsuir hantu pontianak malaysia cerita fotopages blog ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Lembaga yang dipercayai langsuir atau pontianak di ...
  newshuyws.org/1875 - 25k - Cached

• hantu leak forum indonesia amp film misteri gambar april ngobrol ... misteri gambar film amp ngobrol leak indonesia forum april hantuFILM LEAK, ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Jika orang bertanyakan apakah dia yang dimaksudkan ...news9de.org/1157 - 25k - Cached

• gambar jin dan hantu indonesia net view malaysia topic forum b9do0.info
  indonesia topic net forum hantu malaysia view jin gambar danwinona rider ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Dan bukan itu sahaja, dewasa ini terdapat pelbagai ...
  b9do0.info/745 - 26k - Cached

• foto hantu dan paranormal malaysia gambar indonesia cerita forum gadis ...
  gadis indonesia foto cerita gambar dan paranormal forum hantu malaysiagambar ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Dan bukan itu sahaja, dewasa ini terdapat pelbagai ...
  news9de.org/1348 - 27k - Cached

• gambar misteri hantu forum cerita amp mystery blog paranormal seram ...
  blog seram paranormal cerita gambar hantu forum misteri mystery ampSeram, ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Jika orang bertanyakan apakah dia yang dimaksudkan ...
  rujnews.org/1497 - 26k - Cached

• gambar langsuir hantu melayu fotopages malaysia amp foto cerita ...
  langsuir malaysia foto gambar fotopages melayu hantu amp cerita ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Lembaga yang dipercayai langsuir atau pontianak di ...
  vvnewsd.info/1875 - 26k - Cached

• gambar langsuir hantu fotopages malaysia blog amp cerita misteri ...
  langsuir malaysia fotopages hantu gambar cerita blog pontianak misteri ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Lembaga yang dipercayai langsuir atau pontianak di ...
  gioe9.org/1875 - 26k - Cached

• Movement Begini | ~CALON PILIHAN ABAH~
  The information in the article below comes straight from ... ParaCrypt Study and Research Group Paranormal.. ... Related: ParaCrypt Study Research Group ...
  listing1.movements-online.info/Movement-Begini.htm - 47k - Cached

• gambar hantu langsuir blog malaysia powered misteri indonesia artis ...
  gambar artis langsuir alam indonesia powered blog misteri hantu ... ParaCrypt RSG Official Site Jika orang bertanyakan apakah dia yang dimaksudkan ...
  colueja.info/gambar-hantu-langsuir - 27k - Cached

and more...

Please note that Paracrypt Research and Study Group DOES NOT link, publish,related or whatsoever with above url. Due to visitor's computer security reasons, do not click or open any documents, downloading any programs or softwares from these mentioned sites.

The only url of official blog of Paracrypt Research and Study Group is only at http://www.paracrypt.blogspot.com. Paracrypt RSG will not responsible for any damage or problems caused by opening these annonymous urls, downloading materials and articles from it.

This information is to protect visitor's computer from being hijacked or infect by trojans , worms and etc.


Thank you.

Hasnida
Paracrypt Research and Study Group
Admin Member