Giant SPIDERS in the Congo, Africa?

1. Arachnophobia (fear of spiders) in the Congo

I spent 48 hours on the Dark Web

(Aevy TV)

Leftist forums oppose Zionist-Israel's IDF kill squads (Aevy TV)

1,000 hidden Buddhist caves of Tibet

The oldest religious center of Tibet: A hidden world travelers have never seen, still used by monks

Tibet Travel (Tibet Vista) Oct 16, 2025: This is Jamyang from Tibet Vista, the leading Tibetan local travel agency since 1984. This video goes on a journey to three amazing places in Tibet.

• First, a hidden gem that most travelers have never seen—the religious center of the Guge Kingdom (Tholing Monastery?)
• Second, the sacred and breathtaking Manasarovar Lake
• Third, Purang County, the only place where Nepalese and Tibetans live together.

Let’s see all three places in detail so viewers can get a true sense of them and plan their future tours of Tibet.

(Living in China) Dunhuang, Western China, desert Silk Road crossroads

Dunhuang Caves, Mogao Caves, Silk Road transmission of Buddhism 

Any questions about Tibet or tours? Do not hesitate to ask. Jamyang is always happy to help. Email: jamyangtour@gmail.com. Website: tibettravel.org. Facebook: tibetvista.

Mountain discovery on Silk Road (video)

Uncovering a lost mountain metropolis

(nature video) Oct. 23, 2024: An isolated plateau in the highlands of southeastern Uzbekistan in Central Asia looks like an expanse of rolling hills. But look closer and a shard of pottery or the stony remnant of an ancient wall might hint at an archeological secret hidden for hundreds of years. Now a team of archeologists have used drone-mounted LiDAR to virtually peel back the layers of sediment and vegetation. Revealing two ancient cities, much larger than previously imagined, built 2,000 meters above sea level. The finding of these urban centers, called Tashbulak and Tugunbulak, at such high altitudes, may mean that highland areas may have played a more important role in medieval trade than previously thought.

• Read the paper: nature.com/articles/s4158...
• Buddhism in Uzbekistan, Central Asia
• Buddhism in Central Asia

This is a big deal with amazing art found (© Marc Dozier/Getty Images/Popular Mechanics).

Asia (the East) connected with the Roman Empire (the West) for centuries through the Silk Road

A mountaintop discovery is changing everything we knew about the Silk Road

• A new LiDAR survey of previously discovered Silk Road sites reveals a more sprawling urban history than first imagined.
• An aerial survey of the Tashbulak and Tugunbulak sites in Uzbekistan, Central Adia, uncovered more than 300 medieval archeological features, suggesting a robust urban community.
• The Silk Road or Route — which existed from 114 B.C. to 1450 A.D. — was a vital and expansive trade route that connected the Eastern and Western worlds.

A new survey of two archeological sites along the Silk Road has unveiled a stunning new discovery that rewrites our understanding of the famed Eurasian (Europe-Asia) trade route that spanned continents and centuries.

Monk meditates on Silk Road (en.unesco.org)

As reported in Newsweek, a new aerial survey of Tashbulak and Tugunbulak — two archeological sites roughly three miles apart in the Uzbekistan mountains — utilized LiDAR (a remote sensing technology that uses laser pulses to penetrate obstacles and create 3D images of a landscape) to reveal more than 300 medieval archeological features.

• [Buddhism in Central Asia was prevalent along the Silk Road. Its history there is closely related to the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism during the first millennium of the common era. It has been argued that the spread of Indian culture and religions, especially Buddhism, as far as Sogdia, corresponded to the rule of the Kidarites over the regions from Sogdia to Gandhara [4]. Islam invaded and displaced Buddhism. Uzbekistan [5] and Kazakhstan [6] have the most Buddhists, largely practiced by their Koryo-saram minority, although the former has the lowest percentage of Buddhists. Due to historical Tibetan, Mongol, and Manchurian influence, Kyrgyzstan [7] has the highest percentage of Buddhists in Central Asia. More]

Empires of the Silk Road (C. I. Beckwith)

The two sites, which were discovered in 2011 and 2015, are located 6,562 to 7,218 feet above sea level. At that elevation, the land was unlikely to have supported large-scale urban development at the time, given the difficulties posed to construction and agriculture.

But this new survey — the results of which were published in Nature — indicates that that’s exactly what occurred at Tashbulak and Tugunbulak.

“The LiDAR results indicate that the scale of urbanization in this area was much more expansive than previously known,” Brown University researcher Zachary Silvia told Newsweek.

Silvia, while not involved directly in the study, has published a News & Views article for Nature about the results and singled out the significance of this revelation

 “This is the first — and probably only — ancient or medieval city located at this elevation in Central Asia, which forces us to reconsider what we know about urbanization in the area.”

Among the structures discovered by the study’s LiDAR flights were “watchtowers connected with walls along a ridgeline, evidence of terracing, and a central fortress surrounded by walls made of stone and mud brick.”

The Silk Road (Valerie Hansen)

But while this survey revealed what structures were once present at Tashbulak and Tugunbulak, there are still more questions to be answered.

“Typically, remote sensing techniques are one tool within the broader tool kit of the archaeologist,” Silvia noted to Newsweek. “The next step for the team would be to confirm their findings through geophysics — techniques that ‘see’ below the surface — and targeted excavations that can confirm whether or not this is indeed such an extensive settlement. I am optimistic that this is precisely what the team will find in the coming years.” Source

• Valeriana everything we know about Mexico's lost city
• VIDEO: 100-million-year-old discovery: Scientists uncover ancient seafloor hidden deep beneath earth (MSN) A groundbreaking discovery has revealed remnants of an ancient seafloor beneath the Pacific Ocean, potentially rewriting Earth's geological history! Scientists believe this is just the beginning of uncovering hidden structures in Earth's depths, offering new insights into our planet’s complex past. What other secrets lie beneath? Location: London WooGlobe Ref: WGA177390.
• VIDEO: Top 10 mysterious moving statues that scientists can't explain
• Are the ancient precision-cut granite Barabar caves in India older than we think?
• Scientists may have finally found the origin of one of history's most important inventions
• Scientists decipher 3,000-year-old map to find location of Noah's Ark
• Michael Natale, Popular Mechanics via MSN, Oct. 29, 2024; Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Ancient Afghanistan and its Buddhist history

Fortress of Lugh, 9/8/21; Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Ancient Origins and Myths of Afghanistan

(Fortress of Lugh) This is a brief look at the ancient origins, history, and myths of the region of modern-day Afghanistan [ancient Gandhara, Scythian Central Asia]. The region is extremely complex with a very eventful history, so this is a very general account. It does not necessarily reflect the origins of ALL ethnic groups in modern Afghanistan. Primary focus is on the Pashtuns, Tajiks, and other Iranian (Aryian) peoples in the region.

A few of the images were drawn from eupedia.com. To support the channel and get extra content, discussion, requests, and so on, see patreon.com/fortressoflugh. Paypal donations are greatly appreciated.

The Buddha was born in Afghanistan

The Buddha was born in a place called "Kapilavastu," the three seasonal capitals of the Saka/Shakya (Scythian) people, which Indian historian Dr. Ranajit Pal, Ph.D. (Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander, New Delhi, 2002) identifies as Bamiyan and Kabul/Kapil, and we concur, placing the third seasonal capital in or near Mes Aynak, home of the largest unexcavated Buddhist temple complex in the world, seated above an ancient gold and rare earth mineral mining operation.

Bamiyan has the largest Buddha statues in the world, with the largest being a 1,000-foot-long reclining-into-nirvana Buddha buried for its protection, as the CIA and Pakistani ISI collaborated to create the Taliban by releasing hardened criminals from prisons and turning them into Mujahadeen fighters, useful in the CIA's proxy war against Russia in Central Asia, particularly in Afghanistan.

The CIA's hand is seen in the creation and promotion of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida, "The List," as well, turning disaffected young Muslims into enemy forces as a pretext for bringing in the American military-industrial complex "war machine" to set up some of the largest U.S. military bases in the world, which keep the US Department of War Defense within easy reach of the geopolitical "Middle East," Russia, and other targeted countries, such as:

• Iran,
• Iraq,
• Northern African states like
• Israel,
• Libya,
• Egypt,
• Syria,
• Yemen,
• Somalia,
• Jordan,
• Saudi Arabia, and
• Lebanon,

keeping them and others in check because we have an endless need of targets to promote imperialism and hegemony.

In ancient times, this sweeping area was known as Scythia and before that as Gandhara, which gives us the term Gandharan or Greco-Buddhist art, from the first human depictions of the historical Buddha, Prince Siddhartha "Shakyamuni" Gautama. The ancient Greeks came to the area to set up a country called Bactria, and there were other would-be empires in the militarily strategic area that yet remains problematic, geo-politically speaking, such as the Sasanian Empire.

Dr. Pal maintains that Prince Siddhartha's mother (and her sister, his foster mother, both co-wives of the Future-Buddha's father, King Suddhodana, though perhaps more accurately to be thought of as a kind of Afghan chieftain carrying on ancient traditions of Afghans, Gandharans, Pashtuns, and Scythian nomads like the loya jirga or "great councils") were from Sistan-Balochistan, on the border of today's Afghanistan and Iran.

CIA/ISI/Taliban damage in Bamiyan

This is where his mother was returning when she was pregnant with him, giving birth along the way in a magnificent garden grove that came to be called Lumbini, the Buddha's birthplace outside Kapilavastu, not to be confused with any place now in Nepal, as Dr. Pal asserts that its placement in Nepal is a Jonesian archeological fraud, prompted more by religious politics and tourism than reality.

India utterly controls tiny Nepal and could get it to officially accede to anything, including locating some of these Buddhist Circuit sites on their territory, as borders are said to have moved over the centuries. But as Dr. Pal correctly points out, the wandering ascetic Siddhartha was an outsider, not an Indian. In fact, there was no "India" at that time. This was Proto-India, which would become "India" proper under the Buddhist Emperor Asoka centuries later. Siddhartha traveled to Magadha, Savatthi, Rajagriha, and Bihar (named after the many vihars Buddhists set up to practice in).

• The long history of Buddhism in Afghanistan
• Buddhism in Central Asia (The Stans)
• Persecution of Buddhists out of Buddhist lands
• Sarvestan Palace (not unlike later Buddhist stupa dome architecture)

Buddhism in Ancient Gandhara (Afghanistan)

Khyentse Foundation, Nov. 10, 2022; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The golden face of the Scythian Prince Siddhartha, the Buddha (Mes Aynak, Afghanistan)

The Goodman Lectures: Buddhism in Ancient Gandhara and Recent Manuscript Discoveries

(Khyentse Foundation) The Goodman Lectures. Professor Mark Allon of the University of Sydney presented this talk on October 22, 2022.

• Gandhāran Buddhist texts

Several major collections of Buddhist manuscripts from ancient Buddhist Gandhara (present-day northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan [both of which were parts of India before Partition in 1947]) have come to light over the past three decades.

The oldest of these are the Gandhari [language] manuscripts, which date from approximately the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE, making them the earliest Buddhist manuscripts yet found.

After a historical survey of Buddhism in Gandhara (Central Asia), including local artistic innovations and the importance of the region in the spread of Buddhism to Central Asia and China, this lecture highlights:

• recent manuscript discoveries,
• the impact they are having on our understanding of Buddhism,
• the new technologies that make collaboration and digital repatriation possible.

ABOUT: Khyentse Foundation has organized this series. These online offerings by leading Buddhist Studies scholars are called "The Goodman Lectures." They are organized in honor of long-time Khyentse Foundation friend and advisor Professor Steven D. Goodman (1945–2020), whose enduring vision to make academic talks available to people beyond the classroom inspired Khyentse Foundation and its friends in academia to share their Buddhist knowledge and insight with a general audience.

The views expressed in the Goodman Lectures are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Khyentse Foundation. For more information, visit: khyentsefoundation.org/the-go..., khyentsefoundation.org/events.

Kizil Caves of 1,000 Buddhas (photos)

CC Liu (ecns.cn), Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit Kizil Caves

University shows overseas murals from Buddhism's Kizil Caves, China (ecns.cn)

How did the sky devas/ancients cut out rock to make Buddhist monastic art caves?

.

Principal Buddhist disciple Maha Kassapa (Kizil)

The Kizil Caves are a set of Buddhist rock-cut caves located near Kizil Township (克孜尔乡, Kèzī'ěr Xiāng), Baicheng County, Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, China.

Their name in Chinese is 克孜尔千佛洞, 克孜爾千佛洞, literally "Kizil Caves of the Thousand Buddhas," Uighur قىزىل مىڭ ئۆي, lit. "The Thousand Red Houses," Romanized Qizil or Qyzyl Caves, where kizil means "red."

University shows overseas murals from Buddhist red Kizil Caves (ecns.cn)

Kizil Cave of the Painters, using new materials like the first oil paint in Bamiyan

.

A closer look at Ven. Maha Kassapa

The site is located on the northern bank of the Muzat River, 65 km (75 km by road) west of Kucha. This area was a commercial hub of the Silk Road [3],

The Buddhist caves have an important role in Central Asian art and in the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism [from their home in the three Shakya Land seasonal capitals of Bamiyan, Mes Aynak, and Kabul/Kapilavastu, Afghanistan/Gandhara and neighboring Magadha and Bihar in India].

Why do Buddhists meditate in artsy caves, soma?

They are said to be the earliest major Buddhist cave complex in China, with development occurring between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE [3].

The caves of Kizil are the earlier of their type in China, and their model was later adopted in the construction of Buddhist caves further east [4].

Kizil of 1,000 Buddhas (xinjiangtravel.org)

Another name for the site has been Ming-oi (明屋, "The Thousand Houses"), although this term is now mainly used for the site of Shorchuk (Shikshin Temple) to the east [5].

The Kizil Caves were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014 as part of the Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor World Heritage Site [6]. More

What is it in brief?

Kizil Thousand Buddha Caves | WindhorseTour.com | Ancient Buddhist art (pinterest.com)

• The Kizil Caves of a Thousand Buddhas are 236 Buddhist rock-cut caves located in Xinjiang, China

Kizil: 236 Buddhist rock-cut caves (Alamy)

The site is located on the northern bank of the Muzat River 75 km northwest of Kucha (Kuqa), a commercial hub of the Silk Road. The caves are said to be the earliest major Buddhist cave complex in Xinjiang, with development occurring between the 3rd and 8th centuries. Although the site has been both damaged and looted, at least 1,000 square meters of wall paintings — mostly Jataka Tale rebirth stories — remain (Alamy).

Kyrgyzstan Buddhist temple reopens (video)

Ruins of ancient temple to open in Kyrgyzstan (rferl.org); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Kyrgyzstan to reopen ancient Buddhist temple to the public (Buddhistdoor Global)

Ruins of ancient Buddhist temple set to open in Kyrgyzstan (rferl.org)

Where did Buddhism begin?

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddha (Gandhara Greco-Buddhist art)

Where did Silk Road Buddhism come from? Gandhara or what is now Afghanistan (the home of the Buddha and his extended family, the Indo-Sakas/Scythians known as the Shakyas) or proto-India (Bihar and Magadha, before the formation of modern "India" under Emperor Ashoka, or China, after Buddhism traveled from there and spread out from there?

Dr. Ranajit Pal (ranajitpal.com) would agree that while Buddhism began in what is now India, it co-arose in the Buddha's homeland, what we could call "Shakya Land," around the three seasonal capitals of Kapilavastu (Kabul/Kapil), Bamiyan, and Mes Aynak, all in modern Afghanistan, Central Asia.

History of Buddhism in West Turkistan

Afghanistan, after all, has the largest and some of the oldest Buddhist statues in the world, and the Buddha visited it seven years after his great awakening, returning to his people, many of whom then ordained and either followed him back East or stayed and formed large monastic communities for nuns and monks, practicing in accordance with the Doctrine the Buddha was establishing all around the Gangetic plain and foothills of the Himalayas.

Maybe this is how it went: Silk Road expansion

He was not from Nepal, not a Hindu, not a member of the formal caste system but a "warrior" and therefore labelled a kshatriya in accordance with the Brahmin priests and their Vedas ("Knowledge Books") and view of the four varnas or categories of social obligations (duty, dharma) one is necessarily born into, with the Brahmins placing themselves on top. 

But the administrators, the warrior-nobles or Aryans reckoned themselves in accordance with this imposed system, in the vicinity of the remains of the once great Indus Valley Civilization. Gandhara in Indo-Pakistan (with Taxila or Takkasila as its capital) is ancient even by that time, according to Buddhist sources (Jāt. 96).

• Who were the Scythians? Where is Scythia?
• Kurgan hypothesis (the people of the stupas)
• Buddhism in Central Asia (The Stans/USSR)
• History of Buddhism in West Turkistan
• Kyrgyzstan | Silk Roads Program (unesco.org)
• Buddhist Kyrgyzstan Monastery (Great Patron)
• PHOTOS: Stone Buddhist Stupa, hollow cavity
• There's a hollow, echoing stupa in Kushinagar/Kusinara (Gorakhpur, India).

Tash Rabat: Kyrgyzstan Buddhist Monastery?

Kyrgyzstan Buddhist Monastery (The Great Patron of Buddhism | Facebook)

Fortunately, some stupas or kurgans are hollowed out early temple prototypes (Kyrgyzstan)

Maitreyas (Metteyyas) teach.

Tash Rabat is a well-preserved 15th century stone caravanserai in At Bashy District, Naryn Province, Kyrgyzstan. It is located at an altitude of 3,200 meters (10,500 feet).

Research: As early as 1888, Russian traveler Dr. Nicolay Lvovich Zeland suggested that it was originally a Nestorian or Buddhist monastery.

Research undertaken at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s by the Institute of History of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences [mistakenly*] concluded that Tash Rabat was originally built as a Nestorian monastery in the 10th century, although no Christian artifacts were ever found during excavations. More

*Later it was determined to be a Buddhist monastery as all inscriptions, artifacts, and references were found to be Buddhist in nature.

This was further supported by the fact that its inhabitants were Buddhist during the period of its construction (Khudyakov, Ju. (2009). Таш Рабат - Караван-сарай или замок [Tash Rabat - caravanserai or temple]. Priroda (in Russian). Russian Academy of Sciences (6): 55. Retrieved 2 May 2014). 

COMMENTARY

Jesus in India (Holger Kersten)

[Its hollowed stupa and Mongolian-style compound, with yurts to weather the Central Asian snow and grassland, certainly appears more Buddhist than later Christian traditions influenced by Buddhist monasticism. It might have been both, built up for both purposes, as Russian Christian Nicolas Notovitch found at Hemis Gompa in his travels through Buddhist Tibet/India, Ladakh, where Jesus (Christ) of Nazareth had stayed and trained. See more at Jesus in India and in particular the works of Holger Kersten.]

Tash Rabat is a medieval Buddhist caravanserai in Kyrgyzstan (Central-Asia.Guide)