Anthropology news updates
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Category: General History
Forum Name: Archaeology & Anthropology
Forum Discription: Topics on archaeology and anthropology
URL: http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=31361
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Topic: Anthropology news updates
Posted By: Don Quixote
Subject: Anthropology news updates
Date Posted: 13-Mar-2012 at 17:40
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120306131640.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120306131640.htm "..."...ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2012) — A professor of
classics is translating and analyzing ancient inscriptions from columns,
stones, tombs, floors, and mosaics of ancient Israel to uncover the
life of the common men -- and women -- of antiquity....
...Graffiti, which comprise a significant amount of the collected
inscriptions, are a common phenomenon throughout the ancient world.
Famously, the walls of the city of Pompeii were covered with graffiti,
including advertisements, poetry, and lewd sketches. In ancient Israel,
people also left behind small traces of their lives -- although
discussion of belief systems, personal appeals to God, and hopes for the
future are more prevalent than the sexual innuendo that adorns the
walls of Pompeii.
"These are the only remains of real people. Thousands whose voices
have disappeared into the oblivion of history," notes Prof. Price. These
writings are, and have always been, a way for people to perpetuate
their memory and mark their existence.
Of course, our world has its graffiti too. It's not hard to find,
from subway doors and bathroom stalls to protected archaeological sites.
Although it may be considered bothersome and disrespectful now, "in two
thousand years, it'll be interesting to scholars," Prof. Price says
with a smile..." ..."
An ancient Greek graffito from Beth She'arim. (Credit: Image courtesy of Am
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Replies:
Posted By: Arab
Date Posted: 14-Mar-2012 at 13:46
http://www.theage.com.au/national/scientists-stumped-by-prehistoric-human-whose-face-doesnt-fit-20120314-1v3m0.html - http://www.theage.com.au/national/scientists-stumped-by-prehistoric-human-whose-face-doesnt-fit-20120314-1v3m0.html
Scientists stumped by prehistoric human whose face doesn't fit
THEY have been dubbed the Red Deer Cave people and they are a big mystery. Fossils of this previously unknown group of prehistoric humans, who lived as recently as 11,500 years ago, have been discovered in south-west China by a team including Melbourne researchers. Their highly unusual mix of archaic and modern features raises the possibility they represent a new species of human. Team co-leader Darren Curnoe, of the University of NSW, said the physical appearance of these extinct people was unique. ''They look very different to all modern humans, whether alive today or in Africa 150,000 years ago.'' He said one possibility was that they were modern humans who left Africa very early on and reached China, but then did not contribute genetically to people alive in East Asia today. Alternatively, they could be a previously unknown species of human, an explanation he cautiously favours. ''While finely balanced, I think the evidence is slightly weighted towards the Red Deer Cave people representing a new evolutionary line,'' Professor Curnoe said. The find follows the discoveries of two new human species in Asia, dubbed the Hobbit and the Denisovans, in the past eight years. The research describing the Red Deer Cave people is published today in the journal PLoS One. The discovery team, co-led by Professor Curnoe and Professor Ji Xueping, of Yunnan University in Kunming, includes researchers from five Australian and six Chinese institutions. The fossils, dated between 14,500 and 11,500 years old, were found in Maludong, or Red Deer Cave, in Yunnan Province and in Longlin Cave in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The prehistoric people had short, flat faces with archaic features such as big teeth and thick skulls, but brains with modern-looking frontal lobes. They cooked and ate lots of venison, including a giant red deer now extinct. They may have survived in isolation from the modern-looking people who lived around them and were beginning to develop a farming culture. Professor Colin Groves, of the Australian National University, who was not involved in the find, said: ''I think it is potentially very important, telling us something about species close to us but not quite 'us'.'' The Red Deer Cave population are the youngest people to have been found in the world who do not look like modern humans. In 2004 it was announced that the remains of a tiny species, Homo floresiensis, who lived on the Indonesian island of Flores until about 17,000 years ago, had been unearthed. Then, in 2010, a mysterious group of humans who lived about 30,000 to 50,000 years ago were identified from DNA extracted from a little finger found in Denisova Cave in Siberia. |
------------- "Prayer is when you talk to God. Insanity is when you talk to God and he answers back."
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 14-Mar-2012 at 13:54
That's a very interesting info, Arab, thank you for posting it. I've been digging on the Denisovans and other possible human sub-species and this comes just on time. Here a picture from the article you posted, I'll take the liberty to post it here, /I hope you don't mind/ just for illustration /I love pictures/
The highly unusual mix of archaic and modern features raises the possibility they represent a new species of human. Photo: Peter Schouten
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/scientists-stumped-by-prehistoric-human-whose-face-doesnt-fit-20120314-1v3m0.html#ixzz1p7Qpv9fX - http://www.theage.com.au/national/scientists-stumped-by-prehistoric-human-whose-face-doesnt-fit-20120314-1v3m0.html#ixzz1p7Qpv9fX
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 14-Mar-2012 at 14:01
This is kinda old, and may have been posted somewhere else on the threads /even though I haven't encounter it/, but it's relevant to the Denisovans: "...ScienceDaily (Feb. 7, 2012) — The Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany, has
completed the genome sequence of a Denisovan, a representative of an
Asian group of extinct humans related to Neandertals.... ..."The genome is of very high quality," says Matthias Meyer, who
developed the techniques that made this technical feat possible. "We
cover all non-repetitive DNA sequences in the Denisovan genome so many
times that it has fewer errors than most genomes from present-day humans
that have been determined to date."
The genome represents the first high-coverage, complete genome
sequence of an archaic human group -- a leap in the study of extinct
forms of humans. "We hope that biologists will be able to use this
genome to discover genetic changes that were important for the
development of modern human culture and technology, and enabled modern
humans to leave Africa and rapidly spread around the world, starting
around 100,000 years ago" says Pääbo. The genome is also expected to
reveal new aspects of the history of Denisovans and Neandertals...." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120207133602.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120207133602.htm I'd love to find if there is some connection between the Denisovans and the Red Deer Cave people.
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 16-Mar-2012 at 17:59
Interesting research on the effect of the climatic changes ovef the development of human cultures - the Agricultural Revolution in this case: "...ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2012) — A fundamental
shift in the Indian monsoon has occurred over the last few millennia,
from a steady humid monsoon that favored lush vegetation to extended
periods of drought, reports a new study led by researchers at the Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The study has implications for
our understanding of the monsoon’s response to climate change.... The Indian peninsula sustains over a billion people, yet it lies at the
same latitude as the Sahara Desert. Without a monsoon, most of India
would be dry and uninhabitable. The ability to predict the timing and
amount of the next year’s monsoon is vital, yet even our knowledge of
the monsoon’s past variability remains incomplete....
...“What the new paleo-climatic information makes clear is that the
shift towards more arid conditions around 4,000 years ago corresponds to
the time when agricultural populations expanded and settled village
life began,” says Fuller of the Institute of Archaeology, University
College London. “Arid-adapted food production is an old cultural
tradition in the region, with cultivation of drought-tolerant millets
and soil-restoring bean species. There may be lessons to learn here, as
these drought-tolerant agricultural traditions have eroded over the
past century, with shift towards more water and chemical intensive
forms of modern agriculture.”
Together, the geological record and the archaeological evidence tell a
story of the possible fate of India’s earliest civilizations. Cultural
changes occurred across the Indian subcontinent as the climate became
more arid after ~4,000 years. In the already dry Indus basin, the urban
Harappan civilization failed to adapt to even harsher conditions and
slowly collapsed. But aridity favored an increase in sophistication in
the central and south India where tropical forest decreased in extent
and people began to settle and do more agriculture. Human
resourcefulness proved again crucial in the rapid proliferation of
rain-collecting water tanks across the Indian peninsula, just as the
long series of droughts settled in over the last 1,700 years...." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120316145802.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120316145802.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2012/03/120316145802-large.jpg">
Map of the
Indian peninsula, showing where the monsoon winds blow (white arrows)
and how the salinity (white lines) is lower in Bay of Bengal due to
monsoon rain over the Bay and rivers draining into the it. (The black
arrow represents non-monsoon wind.) The study's sediment core (red dot)
was extracted from a “sweet spot” in the Bay of Bengal where the
Godavari River drains the central Indian peninsula and over which
monsoon winds carry the most precipitation. (Credit: Courtesy of C.
Ponton and L. Giosan)
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 23-Mar-2012 at 02:13
More on the connection between climate changes are human evolution: "...ScienceDaily (Mar. 15, 2012) — According to a paper published in Science, models of how animal and plant distributions are affected by climate change may also explain aspects of human evolution....
The approach takes existing knowledge of the geographical spread of
other species through the warming and cooling of the ice ages to provide
a model that can be applied to human origins.
"No one has applied this knowledge to humans before," said Dr John
Stewart, lead author on the paper and researcher at Bournemouth
University.
"We have tried to explain much of what we know about humans,
including the evolution and extinction of Neanderthals and the
Denisovans (a newly discovered group from Siberia), as well as how they
interbred with the earliest modern populations who had just left Africa.
All these phenomena have been put into the context of how animals and
plants react to climate change. We're thinking about humans from the
perspective of what we know about other species."...
...Climate is believed to be the driving force behind most of these
evolutionary processes, including geographical range change. It dictates
which species are where at what time, driving their geographical spread
or contraction.Dr Stewart continued: "Ultimately, this model explains why Homo sapiens as a species are here and the archaic humans are not."
The research also leads to interesting conclusions as to how and why
Neanderthals, and indeed the Denisovans, evolved in the first place."One of the models we've formulated is that the adoption of a new
refugium (an area of refuge from the harsh climatic conditions of the
Ice Age) by a subgroup of a species may lead to important evolutionary
changes, ultimately leading to the origins of a new species. In fact
this could apply to all continental species, whether animals or plants"
said Dr Stewart..." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120315152514.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120315152514.htm
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 28-Mar-2012 at 11:42
The Neolithic Revolution may have started some 8 milllenia earlier than thought: "...Excavation of 19,000-year-old hunter-gatherer remains, including
a vast camp site, is fuelling a reinterpretation of the greatest
fundamental shift in human civilisation – the origins of agriculture...."
"...The moment when the hunter-gatherers laid down their spears and began
farming around 11,000 years ago is often interpreted as one of the most
rapid and significant transitions in human history – the ‘Neolithic
Revolution’.
By producing and storing food, Homo sapiens both mastered the natural
world and took the first significant steps towards thousands of years
of runaway technological development. The advent of specialist
craftsmen, an increase in fertility and the construction of permanent
architecture are just some of the profound changes that followed.
Of course, the transition to agriculture was far from rapid. The
period around 14,500 years ago has been regarded as the point at which
the first indications appear of cultural change associated with
agriculture: the exploitation of wild grains and the construction of
stone buildings. Farming is believed to have begun in what is known as
the Fertile Crescent in the Levant region, which stretches from northern
Egypt through Israel and Jordan to the shores of the Persian Gulf, and
then occurred independently in other regions of the world at different
times from 11,000 years ago.
Recent evidence, however, has suggested that the first stirrings of
the revolution began even earlier, perhaps as far back as 19,000 years
ago. Stimulating this reinterpretation of human prehistory are
discoveries by the Epipalaeolithic Foragers in Azraq Project (EFAP), a
group of archaeologists and bioarchaeologists working in the Jordanian
desert comprising University of Cambridge’s Dr. Jay Stock, Dr. Lisa
Maher (University of California, Berkeley) and Dr. Tobias Richter
(University of Copenhagen).
Over the past four years, their research has uncovered dramatic
evidence of changes in the behaviour of hunter-gatherers that casts new
light on agriculture’s origins, as Dr. Stock described: “Our work
suggests that these hunter-gatherer communities were starting to
congregate in large numbers in specific places, build architecture and
show more-complex ritual and symbolic burial practices – signs of a
greater attachment to a location and a changing pattern of social
complexity that imply they were on the trajectory toward agriculture.”..." http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-foraging-farming-year-revolution.html - http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-foraging-farming-year-revolution.html http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-foraging-farming-year-revolution.html -
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 28-Mar-2012 at 17:33
A nice example of ecological thinking and careful resource-usage in ancient native cultures - Hawaian, in this case.
Ancient Hawaiians Caught More By Fishing Less "...Centuries ago, Hawaiians caught three times more fish annually than
scientists generally consider to be sustainable in modern times — and
maintained this level of harvest for more than 400 years, researchers
report in a new study in the journal Fish and Fisheries.The findings could be instructive for agencies that enforce fishing limits in overfished waters around the globe. Native
Hawaiians caught about 50 percent more fish than modern fleets catch
today in both Hawaii and the Florida Keys, the two largest reef
ecosystems in the United States, said a co-author of the study, http://j.mp/GDCeD0 - Loren McClenachan , a fisheries researcher at http://www.colby.edu/ - Colby College in Waterville, Me. Hawaiians
harvested about 15 metric tons of fish per square kilometer of reef
annually from the years 1400 to 1800, the study found. That’s five times
the median harvest in island nations worldwide today. Dr. McClenachan and her co-author, http://j.mp/GHzR0B - John Kittinger , a researcher at the http://centerforoceansolutions.org/ - Center for Ocean Solutions
in Monterey, Calif., drew on a variety of historical records and a
method called catch reconstruction to estimate historical harvests in
the Hawaiian Islands and the Florida Keys. The Hawaiians used many
techniques similar to those employed today, like temporary or permanent
bans from fishing in certain areas, restrictions on certain species and
gear, and catch limits. But they enforced the rules strictly; breaking
them could mean corporal punishment or even death...." http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/ancient-hawaiians-caught-more-by-fishing-less/ - http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/ancient-hawaiians-caught-more-by-fishing-less/
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 28-Mar-2012 at 17:58
Interesting perspective on gender roles and the impact the social values on the them in different cultures:
"...For economic and social
reasons, many Afghan parents want to have a son. This preference has led
to some of them practising the long-standing tradition of Bacha Posh -
disguising girls as boys.
When Azita Rafhat, a former member of the Afghan parliament,
gets her daughters ready for school, she dresses one of the girls
differently.Three of her daughters are clothed in white garments and
their heads covered with white scarves, but a fourth girl, Mehrnoush, is
dressed in a suit and tie. When they get outside, Mehrnoush is no
longer a girl but a boy named Mehran.
Azita Rafhat didn't have a son, and to fill the gap and avoid
people's taunts for not having a son, she opted for this radical
decision. It was very simple, thanks to a haircut and some boyish
clothes.There is even a name for this tradition in Afghanistan - Bacha Posh, or disguising girls as boys."When you have a good position in Afghanistan and are well
off, people look at you differently. They say your life becomes complete
only if you have a son," she says....
This child has been temporarily transformed from Mehrnoush the girl to Mehran the boy
....Many girls disguised as boys can be found in Afghan markets. Some
families disguise their daughters as boys so that they can easily work
on the streets to feed their families.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15262680#story_continues_2 -
If my parents force me to get married, I will compensate for the sorrows of Afghan women and beat my husband so badly ”Elaha
Girl who lived as a boy
Some of these girls who
introduce themselves as boys sell things like water and chewing gum.
They appear to be aged anywhere between about five and 12. None of them
would talk to me about their lives as boys.Girls brought up as boys do not stay like this all their
lives. When they turn 17 or 18 they live life as a girl once again - but
the change is not so simple....
Elaha lives in Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan. She
lived as a boy for 20 years because her family didn't have a son and
reverted only two years ago when she had to go to university.However, she does not feel fully female: she says her habits are not girlish and she does not want to get married."When I was a kid my parents disguised me as a boy because I
didn't have a brother. Until very recently, as a boy, I would go out,
play with other boys and have more freedom."She has returned reluctantly to her gender and says she has done it only because of the social traditions....
...The tradition has existed in Afghanistan for centuries. According to
Daud Rawish, a sociologist in Kabul, it may have started when Afghans
had to fight their invaders and for this women needed to be disguised as
men.But Qazi Sayed Mohammad Sami, head of the Balkh Human Rights Commission, calls it a breach of human rights.
"We cannot change someone's gender for a while. You cannot
change a girl to a boy for a short period of time. It's against
humanity," he says.The tradition has had a damaging effect on some girls who
feel they have missed out on essential childhood memories as well as
losing their identity.For others it has been good experiencing freedoms they would never have had if they had lived as girls.
But for many the key question is: will there be a day when Afghan girls get as much freedom and respect as boys?..." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15262680 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15262680
I can understand that - who would like to be a woman in sexist society with rigid gender roles? Even in proclaimed gender-equal society it's hard enough to be a woman /women are far more frequently abused, psychologically, physically and sexually than men are - only in the US 600 women are raped or sexually assaulted every day /2006 data/, one can imagine what this number is worldwide/, let alone in societies that proclaim rigid traditional gender roles.
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 31-Mar-2012 at 12:35
I have the sense that you wanted to post this one in the "Archeology News" thread, CV.
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 31-Mar-2012 at 12:39
Modern Bedouin customs and their connection to ancient ones:
Bedouin Animal Sacrifice Rituals Provide Clues to Archaeological Remains "...Miami, FL -- ( http://www.sbwire.com/ - SBWIRE ) -- 03/28/2012 --
Harvard University educated archaeologist and president of the
Paleontological Research Corporation, Dr. Joel Klenck, conducted an
ethnoarchaeological study of modern Bedouin sacrificial practices in the
Levant to provide insight on the deposition of remains at ancient cult
sites. Ethnoarchaeology comprises the analysis of modern behaviors and
the remains left over from these activities. These studies are linked
with a concept in archaeology called middle range theory where
observations of natural processes or human behaviors are used to explain
the deposition of archaeological finds. Deriving his theories from the
sociologist Robert Merton, the American archaeologist Lewis Binford
strongly encouraged middle range theory and completed ethnographic
studies of Australian aborigines, Nunamiut Eskimo and other groups.
Binford then compared his data to remains from archaeological sites.
Klenck remarks, “During my excavations and research in the Levant, I
observed many foot bones of sheep, goats and cattle near ancient
sanctuaries particularly at the Middle Bronze IIB/C period (1800-1550
B.C.) cult site at Tel Haror. At the same time, I learned that modern
Bedouin communities sacrificed sheep, goats, cattle and an occasional
camel to a “weli” or a revered person at their sepulchers.” Sponsored by
a grant from the Joe Alon Museum, Klenck conducted an
ethnoarchaeological study of Bedouin sacrificial rituals taking
photographs and recordings of his observations. He then analyzed the
animal bone remains strewn around the venerated areas after the rituals.
An analysis was completed in 2012 of the butchery and preservation
processes affecting these bones for a forthcoming manuscript. Klenck
comments, “It was quickly apparent that the bones with meat on them such
as upper limb bones, ribs and vertebrae were subjected to more
intensive butchery processes, were boiled and eaten by the families and
then targeted by dogs and other scavengers after the Bedouin left the
cult areas. At two of the sacrificial areas, the Bedouin burned the
bones. Without any hides covering them, the meat bones disintegrated in
the fires.” The archaeologist notes that the foot bones
were treated in a different manner. Klenck states, “Bedouin removed the
hooves from the carcass at the beginning stages of butchery. The foot
bones remained encased in animal skins and were discarded around the
cult sites and not eaten. The sparse meat and marrow in these bones made
them less attractive to scavengers and the skin surrounding these bones
protected foot bones when Bedouin burned animal bones at the conclusion
of the sacrificial meals.” The researcher then compared activities
around the venerated tombs to the types of animal bones brought into
Bedouin homes. The latter brought mostly meat bones into their homes
while foot bones were removed in butcher shops at considerable distances
from their domestic dwellings. Conversely, at the cult sites the entire
butchery process was conducted near the venerated sepulcher. Klenck
concludes, “The study of Bedouin sacrificial rituals provides
archaeologists with valuable insight as to behaviors that might explain
the enhanced preservation of foot bones at ancient cult sites in the
Near East.”..." http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/bedouin-animal-sacrifice-rituals-provide-clues-to-archaeological-remains-133733.htm - http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/bedouin-animal-sacrifice-rituals-provide-clues-to-archaeological-remains-133733.htm
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 12-Apr-2012 at 13:01
"...A
research team of archaeologists and paleoecologists have concluded that
a group of pre-Columbian farmers living in the savannas surrounding the
Amazonian rainforest in French Guiana, South America, practiced an
agricultural and land-use technique that can serve as an example of
sustainability for the future.
The research, published in the April 9, 2012 issue of the journal http://pnas.org/ - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , shows
that an indigenous people living in a savanna environment near the
Amazon forest farmed without using fire, otherwise called "slash and
burn" agriculture. By analysing pollen, charcoal and other plant remains
across a period of more than 2,000 years, they determined that the
early inhabitants of these savannas practiced 'raised-field' farming,
which required the construction of cultivated agricultural mounds using
wooden implements. This method resulted in improved drainage, soil
aeration and moisture retention. Increased fertility was obtained by
removing nutrient-rich muck from the flooded basin of the area and then
depositing it on the mounds. The total system limited or eliminated the
need to use fire, conserved soil nutrients and organic matter, and
preserved critical soil structure. This is in contrast to the wide use
of "slash-and-burn" agriculture and the use of fire for deforestation to
achieve needed levels of production to sustain growing populations in
the past and present, a major reason underlying the disappearance of
environmentally critical ecosystems in today's world.
The study results contradict the long-standing belief that the
arrival of Europeans after 1492, and the ensuing collapse of as much as
95 percent of the native populations due to disease and other means
brought by European conquerors and settlers, led to decreased forest
clearance and agricultural burning by the indigenous population. The
prolific use of fire as an agricultural technique in these Amazonian
savannas is thus actually a post-1492, as opposed to the generally
accepted pre-1492, phenomenon. In fact, the research suggested a sharp increase in fires with the arrival of the first Europeans..." ...This ancient, time-tested, fire-free land use could pave the way for
the modern implementation of raised-field agriculture in rural areas of
Amazonia," says lead author Dr José Iriarte of the University of Exeter.
"Intensive raised-field agriculture can become an alternative to
burning down tropical forest for slash and burn agriculture by
reclaiming otherwise abandoned and new savanna ecosystems created by
deforestation. It has the capability of helping curb carbon emissions
and at the same time provide food security for the more vulnerable and
poorest rural populations."..." http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/march-2012/article/achaeologists-say-ancient-south-american-farmers-provide-example-of-sustainability - http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/march-2012/article/achaeologists-say-ancient-south-american-farmers-provide-example-of-sustainability
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 14-Apr-2012 at 17:45
Rarely revealed by
Western researchers, Arab pastoral nomads practice several types of
sacrificial rituals other than the main feast of sacrifice or “Id al
‘Adha” that occurs the tenth day of the Hadj or “Dhul Hijjah” and is
practiced by all observing Muslims. Three other rituals include
sacrifices to spirits or “ginn”, ritual slaughters to ward off curses
and bless newly married couples, and commemorations to deceased family
members. Another type of sacrifice practiced by Bedouin in the Levant
comprises sacrifices to a “weli” or revered person. Klenck states,
“Bedouin sacrifice sheep, goats, cattle and occasionally a camel to a
weli to redeem vows, incur healing, give thanks or insure fertility.
Individuals performing the sacrifices believe the weli will act as a
mediator between them and Allah to facilitate their requests.”
Around 1771, Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, a cleric who traveled
throughout Saudi Arabia and Iraq, began to influence the ruler of
Dara’iya, Muhammad Ibn Sa’ud, whose tribe created the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia in 1932. The religious leader al-Wahhab formed a movement that
denounced Bedouin believing in the special powers of a weli, punished
individuals performing sacrificial rituals to these revered persons and
largely eradicated these practices.
Although sacrifices to Bedouin saints are mostly forbidden in Saudi
Arabia, these rituals continue to be practiced by Muslim pastoral nomads
in the Levant and North Africa. Klenck states, “I was able to observe
Bedouin venerating the tombs of Sheikh Abu-Hurreira, Ibrahim, Hussein,
Falougie, Nebi Musa, and the adjacent sepulchers of Al-Azzam and
Al-Nabari. The sheikhs’ tombs vary in their size, care and decoration.
The tombs often feature sticks of wood mostly of palm with white or
green cloth tied to each structure. According to the Bedouin, the white
cloth represents peace and goodwill and is a beneficial omen for those
petitioning Allah through a weli. The Bedouin consider the color green
to be very holy as its significance stems from their traditions and
because they allege the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad and the Kabbah in
Saudi Arabia are covered with green tapestries. At the tombs the Bedouin
often light candles and sometimes leave salt, sugar, matches, and coins
in the sacred area.”
While Bedouin women perform prayers and light candles at the tombs, the
men perform animal sacrifices near the sepulchers. At the tombs of
Al-Azzam and Al-Nabari, the trees surrounding the sacred areas exhibit
slash marks where Bedouin hang animal carcasses during butchery
activities. After the sacrifice, the meat is boiled and everyone
participates in the subsequent feast, especially the poor. Several
Bedouin stated that in past centuries, individuals left valuable
possessions at the sheikh’s tombs knowing that no Bedouin would dare
steal from the tomb for fear of being cursed. Klenck concludes, “Studies
of Bedouin animal sacrifices reveal a diversity of beliefs and are
important in understanding cultures and ritual activities in the
Levant.”
More Information: http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=54628 - http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=54628[/url] Copyright © artdaily.org
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 16-Apr-2012 at 19:45
Chimpanzee Ground Nests Offer New Insight Into Our Ancestors' Descent from the Trees "...ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2012) — The first study
into rarely documented ground-nest building by wild chimpanzees offers
new clues about the ancient transition of early hominins from sleeping
in trees to sleeping on the ground. While most apes build nests in
trees, this study, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, focused on a group of wild West African chimpanzees that often shows ground-nesting behaviour....
..."We believe that, like modern apes, the common ancestor of
chimpanzees and humans also slept in the trees 6 million years ago,"
said Dr Koops. "However, these nests are not preserved in the fossil or
archaeological record, so it is impossible to study directly the ancient
transition from sleeping in trees to building shelters on the ground.
Recording this rare behaviour in the chimpanzee, our closest relative,
may provide vital clues."
As the Nimba chimpanzees do not yet tolerate human presence at close
range, the team used new molecular genetic techniques to analyse hairs
collected from the nests. This allowed the team to establish the sex of
chimpanzees displaying the behaviour and to identify individuals in the
group..." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120416113058.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120416113058.htm
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 08-May-2012 at 13:50
Anthropologists Discover New Research Use for Dental Plaque: Examining Diets of Ancient Peoples "...Scott obtained samples of dental calculus from 58 skeletons buried in
the Cathedral of Santa Maria in northern Spain dating from the 11th to
19th centuries to conduct research on the diet of this ancient
population. After his first methodology met with mixed results, he
decided to send five samples of dental calculus to Poulson at the
University's Stable Isotope Lab, in the off chance they might contain
enough carbon and nitrogen to allow them to estimate stable isotope
ratios.
"It's chemistry and is pretty complex," Scott explained. "But
basically, since only protein has nitrogen, the more nitrogen that is
present, the more animal products were consumed as part of the diet.
Carbon provides information on the types of plants consumed."..." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120502184838.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120502184838.htm
http://images.sciencedaily.com/2012/05/120502184838-large.jpg">
Centuries
ago, dental calculus would build up through the years, layer after
layer, like a stalagmite, sometimes reaching impressive proportions.
University of Nevada, Reno researchers have discovered that analysis of
tiny fragments of this material can be used effectively in paleodietary
research – the study of diets of earlier ancient and populations –
without the need to destroy bone, as other methods do.
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 08-May-2012 at 13:58
Mystery of the Domestication of the Horse Solved: Competing Theories Reconciled
"...ScienceDaily (May 7, 2012) —
New research indicates that domestic horses originated in the steppes
of modern-day Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, mixing with
local wild stocks as they spread throughout Europe and Asia... ...
For several decades scientists puzzled over the origin of
domesticated horses. Based on archaeological evidence, it had long been
thought that horse domestication originated in the western part of the
Eurasian Steppe (Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan);
however, a single origin in a geographically restricted area appeared at
odds with the large number of female lineages in the domestic horse
gene pool, commonly thought to reflect multiple domestication "events"
across a wide geographic area.
In order to solve the perplexing history of the domestic horse,
scientists from the University of Cambridge used a genetic database of
more than 300 horses sampled from across the Eurasian Steppe to run a
number of different modelling scenarios.
Their research shows that the extinct wild ancestor of domestic horses, Equus ferus, expanded out of East Asia approximately 160,000 years ago. They were also able to demonstrate that Equus ferus
was domesticated in the western Eurasian Steppe, and that herds were
repeatedly restocked with wild horses as they spread across Eurasia...." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120507154107.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120507154107.htm
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 09-May-2012 at 17:51
George Washington University Professor’s Research on Ancient Ballgame Reveals More about Early Mesoamerican Society "...While early games used a hard rubber ball, the ballgames Dr. Blomster
researches bear little resemblance to today’s Major League Baseball.
The games and the costumes or uniforms participants wore were tied to
themes of life and death, mortals and underworld deities or symbolizing
the sun and the moon. In some instances, the ballcourt itself
represented a portal to the underworld.
According to Dr. Blomster, “Because the ballgame is associated with
the rise of complex societies, understanding its origins also
illuminates the evolution of socio-politically complex societies.”
During the Early Horizon period, or roughly between 1400 BCE (Before
the Common Era) and 1700 BCE, there was little evidence of ballgame
activity in the way of artifacts in the Oaxaca region of Mexico. Dr.
Blomster’s findings of a clay figurine garbed in distinctive ballgame
costume, similar to both Olmec figurines and monumental sculptures from
the Gulf Coast, indicate such engagement did take place in the area.
“Exploring the origins and spread of the ballgame is central to
understanding the development of the Mesoamerican civilization,” he
said. “We know there were earlier versions of a ballgame prior to the
Early Horizon with both a ballcourt and rubber balls found in coastal
Chiapas and the Gulf Coast, but the institutionalized version of the
ballgame, a hallmark of Mesoamerican civilizations, developed during the
Early Horizon. While there has been some limited evidence about the
participation of the nearby Valley of Oaxaca in the ballgame, the
Mixteca has largely been written off in terms of involvement in the
origins of complex society in ancient Mexico. This discovery
reemphasizes how the ancient Mixtecs were active participants in larger
Mesoamerican phenomenon.”..." http://www.gwu.edu/explore/mediaroom/newsreleases/georgewashingtonuniversityprofessorsresearchonancientballgamerevealsmoreaboutearlymesoamericansociety - http://www.gwu.edu/explore/mediaroom/newsreleases/georgewashingtonuniversityprofessorsresearchonancientballgamerevealsmoreaboutearlymesoame
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 24-May-2012 at 22:00
"...Study reveals trade patterns for crucial substance played key role in Maya collapse
Shifts in exchange patterns provide a new perspective on the fall
of inland Maya centers in Mesoamerica approximately 1,000 years ago.
This major historical process, sometimes referred to as the "Maya
collapse" has puzzled archaeologists, history buffs, and the news media
for decades. The new research was published online today in the journal Antiquity.
"Our research strongly suggests that changing patterns of trade
were instrumental in prompting the 'Maya collapse,'" said Gary Feinman,
curator of anthropology at The Field Museum, which collaborated with the
University of Illinois at Chicago on the study.
The new research casts doubt on the idea that climate change was
the sole or principal cause, Feinman said, noting that some Maya
centers, which flourished after the collapse, were located in the driest
parts of the Maya region. Feinman said that climate change, along with
breakdowns in leadership, warfare, and other factors, contributed to the
collapse, but the shifting exchange networks may have been a key
factor.
For the Maya, who did not have metal tools, obsidian (or
volcanic glass) was highly valued because of its sharp edges for use as
cutting instruments. Maya lords and other elites derived power from
controlling access to obsidian, which could be traded for important
goods or sent as gifts to foster important relationships with other
Mayan leaders.
The Field Museum researchers found that prior to the fall of the
Maya inland centers, obsidian tended to flow along inland riverine
networks. But over time, this material began to be transported through
coastal trade networks instead, with a corresponding increase in coastal
centers' prominence as inland centers declined.The shift in trade might have involved more than obsidian. Field
researcher Mark Golitko said, "The implication is that other valuable
goods important to these inland centers were also slowly being cut off."
Golitko led the Social Network Analysis that graphically depicts the
change in trade patterns.
Researchers compiled information on obsidian collected at Maya
sites, and used chemical analysis to identify the source(s) that
produced obsidian found through
archaeological studies at each location. Obsidian from three sources in
Guatemala and
several sources in central Mexico and Honduras were identified. The
researchers generated data for each of four time periods: Classic
(approximately 250-800 AD),Terminal classic (approximately 800-1050 AD), Early Postclassic
(approximately 1050-1300 AD), and Late Postclassic (approximately
1300-1520AD).
Using Social Network Analysis (SNA) software, the researchers developed
maps illustrating which sites had the same or similar percentages of
each type of obsidian, in each of the four time periods. These
percentages were then utilized to infer the likely network structure
through which obsidian was transported
A comparison of the resulting SNA maps show that Classic period
networks were located in inland, lowland areas along rivers, mostly in
what is today the northern part of Guatemala, the Mexican state of
Chiapas, the southern Yucatan, and western Belize. However, maps bearing
data from later time periods show that inland networks diminished in
importance and coastal networks were thriving, in what today is the
northern Yucatan and coastal Belize.
The SNA data "is a very visual way to let us infer the general
layout of the networks that transported obsidian, and the likely paths
it took," Golitko said.Feinman termed the study results significant. "The use of SNA to
display and analyze the obsidian data graphically gives us a new
perspective on these data, some of which has been present for years."
The study did not explore the question of why the transport
networks began to shift. Feinman said there may have been military
animosities that made the inland, river routes less safe or easy to use,
and added that during this period the seagoing transport may have
become more efficient with larger canoes. He noted that scientists
simply don't have the definitive answers to some of these questions...." http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/fm-srt052312.php - http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/fm-srt052312.php
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 30-May-2012 at 01:20
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-zooarchaeological-indicating-hominids-sophisticated-techniques.html - http://phys.org/news/2012-05-zooarchaeological-indicating-hominids-sophisticated-techniques.html "...More than ten thousands of bone fragments were recovered from
the Lingjing site, Henan Province during 2005 and 2006. By taking
statistical analyses of the skeletal elements of the two predominant
species in this assemblage, aurochs (Bos primigenius) and horse (Equus
caballus), scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and
Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Henan
Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, found that
hominids at this site have already practiced sophisticated hunting
techniques and subsistence strategies and may be quite familiar with the
ecological and anatomical characteristics and nutritional values of the
large-sized prey animals and can accordingly take different processing
and handling strategies at the hunting site..."
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 30-May-2012 at 01:47
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-ages-proof-thousand-years-sicilian.html - http://phys.org/news/2012-05-ages-proof-thousand-years-sicilian.html "...Archaeological excavations have provided the first
substantiation that a farmland estate in Sicily boasts a history which
reaches back over a thousand years. Numerous finds demonstrate the
continuous use of the land complex as a nexus of settlement and economic
and religious life between the 5th and 16th century. The findings are
the result of two projects of the Austrian Science Fund FWF which
comprise the first in-depth archaeological exploration of Sicily's
Byzantine period. The projects' findings are now accessible to the
public in the Krahuletz Museum in Eggenburg, Austria...."
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 30-May-2012 at 01:49
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/march-2012/article/climate-change-contributed-to-ancient-indus-civilization-demise-researchers-say - http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/march-2012/article/climate-change-contributed-to-ancient-indus-civilization-demise-researchers-say "...Using
archaeological data and geoscience technology, an international team of
scientists has concluded a study that shows that the great Indus Valley
civilization, otherwise known as the Harappan civilization, declined
and disappeared in large measure due to climatic and landscape changes.
The study results suggest that a major, gradual decline in monsoon rains
led to a weakened river system, adversely affecting the Harappan
culture and leading to its collapse. The ancient culture relied on river
floods to sustain its system of agriculture.
"We reconstructed the dynamic landscape of the plain where the Indus
civilization developed 5200 years ago, built its cities, and slowly
disintegrated between 3900 and 3000 years ago," said geologist Liviu
Giosan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). "Until now,
speculations abounded about the links between this mysterious ancient
culture and its life-giving mighty rivers." Giosan is also the lead
author of the study report now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Harappan civilization was the largest of the "big three" early
urban cultures of the world (the others being ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia), but less is known about it. Archaeological exploration
over the past century has shed much more light on the culture. Its
remains extend more than 1 million square kilometers across the plains
of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges River, over what
is now Pakistan, northwest India and eastern Afghanistan. Much like
ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Harappan people built and sustained
their urban society along the recurring highs and lows of flowing rivers
that provided the basis for the production of agricultural surpluses,
vitally important for the development and sustenance of great urban
centers...." http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/march-2012/article/climate-change-contributed-to-ancient-indus-civilization-demise-researchers-say">
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 19-Jun-2012 at 07:10
"...The
spread of indigenous pre-Columbian settlements in the Amazon Basin was
not an even one, according to an analysis of the results of a recent
study conducted by researchers from four research institutions.
The researchers, from the Florida Institute of Technology, the
Smithsonian Institution, Wake Forest University and the University of
Florida, led by Florida Tech's Crystal McMichael and Mark Bush, were
attempting to determine the impact of human population in Amazonia
before the Europeans arrived. Their hypothesis: If the Pre-Columbian
Amazon was a landscape highly altered by humans, then most of the
Amazon's current biodiversity could be the result of human impact.
Because the Amazon Basin represents one of the planet's most significant
areas of biodiversity, the question of how Amazonia was modified by
humans in the past contributes to our understanding of rainforest
ecology and informs us in our conservation efforts.
The team collected 247 soil cores from 55 locations in the central
and western Amazon, sites like river banks and locations that
archeological evidence had indicated were occupied by people. They also
collected cores farther from the rivers, where historical and
archaeological data were lacking. By using markers set in the cores,
they were able to track the chronology of fire, vegetation and human
alterations in the soil. No samples were collected form the eastern
Amazon, as it has already been thoroughly studied. ..." http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2012/article/a-new-picture-of-amazon-populations-before-columbus-emerges - http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2012/article/a-new-picture-of-amazon-populations-before-columbus-emerges
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 29-Jun-2012 at 02:21
http://www.omda.bg/engl/ethnography/ritual_bread.htm - http://www.omda.bg/engl/ethnography/ritual_bread.htm "...distinguished
from ordinary bread in its form, preparation and decorative
elements. It was made from the largest and purest wheat grains. The
flour was sieved three times and the dough was mixed with "silent" water
- one brought by a maiden in absolute silence - in which flowers and herbs had
been soaked. The ritual bread used to be worked up by a young girl or a recently
married young woman. The form of the ritual bread was round, but in some
cases it could be oval or elongated. Different objects were represented on
top - images ranging from suns to pens or gardens. Ritual
breads were consecrated by incensing and were broken cross-wise. Several pieces
were usually left as offering to God. People also used to bury pieces of
the ritual bread near their pens or cornfields hoping that the year would
be fruitful and rich. Nowadays the Bulgarian people are not accustomed
to preparing ritual breads in their everyday life, but home-made round loaves
are still widespread.
The kneading of ritual bread is specific for each
http://www.omda.bg/engl/ethnography/festivals.html - folkThe bread prepared for Christmas is known as Bogova pita (Lord's
bread); it is decorated with varied representations such as pens full of sheep, wine casks,
etc. depending on the occupation of the master of the house.
Wedding breads are abundantly
decorated with spirals, rosettes and figures of doves meant to symbolize good luck
and blessings.
By way of wishing good health, the
http://www.omda.bg/engl/ethnography/festivals.html#Koledouvane - koledari are given specially made rolls of bread which they
string up on the tops of their shepherd's crooks.
In North-West Bulgaria, on the holiday of Mladentsi (the Day of the Holy Infants)
the saint is venerated
with a small loaf of bread shaped to represent a human figure.
..."
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 01-Jul-2012 at 01:55
http://sciencenordic.com/mystical-marks-virgin-forest-explained - http://sciencenordic.com/mystical-marks-virgin-forest-explained "...
Pine bark has been used in times of famine by all the peoples of the
High North. Norwegian farmers would chop down the trees and then scrape
off all the bark, or simply scrape the bark off trees in continuous
rings. The pines with the strange scars in Dividalen haven’t been
so brutally handled. The cuts in the bark are on just one side of the
trees, which enables them to survive the injury. Arve Elvebakk poses next to one of the marked pines at Dividalen. (Photo: UiT) The local Sami, who did not have tools for chopping down large trees, were more careful when they reaped bark. “The harvesting was done in the spring. We think it was a job for women and children,” says Elvebakk. Researchers
have found five different tools made of bone that were used to harvest
bark. The inner bark was the prize they were after.
Buried and toastedAfter the pine bark was scraped away from the trees it was packed in birch bark and buried. “A bonfire was lit on the ground above the buried bark and allowed to burn for up to four days,” says Elvebakk. The heat slowly toasted strips of the bark and removed the bitter taste. “The bark flour was mild and tasty. It was considered a delicacy when mixed with other food, such as porridge or a stew with animal fat.”
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 07-Jul-2012 at 05:35
Classic Maya "Collapse" Did Not Happen, Say Researchers
The Classic period Maya civilization did not really collapse, say some scholar-researchers. It was essentially transformed through societal reorganization, much of which manifests itself to this day through the modern Maya population. This suggestion challenges some long-held views by a broad spectrum of scientists and scholars who have theorized that the ancient Classic Maya civilization experienced a dramatic collapse between about 800 and 1,100 C.E. In the paper, The Last Gasp: Demystifying the "Collapse" of the Terminal Classic Lowland Maya, published in the premier issue of http://anthrojournal.com/ - AnthroJournal , author Elizabeth Votruba presents the arguments against collapse, suggesting that a different, more contextualized and holistic approach needs to be taken in researching, analyzing and interpreting the evidence of the ancient Maya existence and environment. "The Classic Maya collapse did not happen, as has been exaggerated to the general public by a handful of particularly boastful scholars," she maintains. "Dramatic and decontextualized versions of Mesoamerican pasts can no longer perpetuate discourse and need to be reconsidered as a series of societal reorganizations rather than a momentous and all-encompassing systemic failure."[1] Scholars have traditionally and variously pointed to three major causes -- "ecological overload" (resulting from activities such as unsustainable agricultural practices), endemic warfare, and climatic catastrophe (such as widespread drought), for the collapse, which has been defined by dramatic changes such as the termination of temple construction and stone monument production, the end of kingships, and abandonment of settlements due to population decline. Some scholars have suggested a combination of two or more of the causes as the basis, and a significant body of scientific evidence has been advanced to support the various suggested causes........ | http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2012/article/classic-maya-collapse-did-not-happen-say-researchers - http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2012/article/classic-maya-collapse-did-not-happen-say-researchers
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
|
Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 07-Jul-2012 at 05:46
Searching for an Ancient Syphilis DNA in Newborns
Left femur, two right humerus and a right hemifrontal bone belonging to at least two newborns found at "La Ermita de la Soledad" in Huelva. All show signs of bone lesions diagnosed as congenital syphilis. |
Ancient DNA of the bacteria causing syphilis, the Treponema pallidum pallidum, can be recovered from the ancient bones of newborns. This is the conclusion reached by a study led by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), which was able to obtain the genetic material from the bacteria in more than one individual, in what is considered to be the oldest case known to date. Several previous attempots had only yielded this material in one occasion and from only one individual.Studying syphilis represents a challenge for researchers, in part because of the impossibility of using or genetically manipulating cell cultures, given that the subspecies of T. pallidum cannot be differentiated morphologically using immunofluorescence or electron microscopes. This makes diagnosis extremely difficult and complicates epidemiological and phylogenetic analyses. In contrast, molecular typification has be shown to be a useful method with which to detect some of these subspecies, such as the one affecting humans, T.pallidum pallidum. Palaeopathology - the science that studies diseases in ancient human remains - benefits from these molecular techniques to identify specific varieties of ancient syphilis and generate information that is useful for the phylogenetic reconstruction of modern varieties. They additionally can help to discover the historical development of the disease and its moment of origin in the continent -- a highly debated issue amongst scientists -- and its geographic distribution and epidemiology. In this study, published in PLoS ONE and led by Assumpció Malgosa, professor of Physical Anthropology at UAB, researchers extracted the bacteria's DNA from four bone fragments of two newborns showing clear signs of having suffered from congenital syphilis. The remains were recovered from the crypt of “La Ermita de la Soledad” (16th–17th centuries), located in the province of Huelva in the northwest of Spain......... | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120703120628.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120703120628.htm
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
|
Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 07-Jul-2012 at 06:14
The ginger gene revealed
Red hair, often associated with a fiery temper, not to mention the bad behaviour of media millionaire Chris Evans, may be the legacy of Neanderthal man. Oxford University scientists think the 'ginger gene', which is responsible for red hair, fair skin and freckles, could be up to 100,000 years old. They say their discovery points to the gene having originated in Neanderthal man, who lived in Europe for 260,000 years before the ancestors of modern man arrived from Africa about 40,000 years ago. Research leader Dr Rosalind Harding said: 'It is certainly possible that red hair comes from the Neanderthals.' The Neanderthals are generally thought to have been a less intelligent species than modern man, Homo sapiens. They were taller and stockier, but with shorter limbs, bigger faces and noses, receding chins and low foreheads. They had a basic, guttural vocabulary of around 70 words, probably at the level of today's two-year-old, and they never developed a full language, art or culture. They settled in Europe about 300,000 years ago, but 40,000 years ago a wave of immigrants - our fore-bears, Cro-Magnon Man - emerged from Africa and the two species coexisted for 10,000 years. Dr Harding's research - which she is presenting at a conference of the Human Genome Organisation later this week - suggests the two species interbred for the ginger gene to survive. But Dr Harding said Chris Evans and other redheads should not be offended by being linked to the primitive Neanderthals. She said: 'If it's possible that we had ancestry from Neanderthals then it says that Neanderthals were more similar to us than we previously thought. 'No one should take offence from the research.' Scientists at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, at Oxford University, compared the human ginger gene - known in scientific terms as the melanocortin-1 receptor - with the equivalent in chimpanzees. They found 16 differences, or mutations, between the two genes. Since an early version of the gene developed in chimps roughly ten million years ago, the scientists estimated there has been one mutation every 625,000 years. They used a computer to calculate how long it must have taken for one particular mutation - the one responsible for ginger hair - to have passed down through the generations and become so common among people in Britain. They concluded the mutation was older than 50,000 years and could be as old as 100,000 years. A Channel 4 drama last year explored new evidence that Neanderthals were actually 'ultrahumans' - able to adapt to extremes of climate and surviving for 272,000 years, compared with modern man's 40 ,000 years and 'civilised ' man's 7,000. But they finally became extinct - about 28,000 years ago - because Cro-Magnon Man was more socially advanced and able to develop communities and a language. In the end, Neanderthals were outwitted for territory and food. | http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-38826/The-ginger-gene-revealed.html - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-38826/The-ginger-gene-revealed.html
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
|
Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 07-Jul-2012 at 06:28
Turning History's 'Lost' Into 'Found': Pictorial History-Map of Santa Catarina Ixtepeji, a Village in Mexico Rediscovered
Detail of the codice. In a 1917 letter to the AGS, the seller, California mining engineer A. E. Place, wrote: “Were it not for the fact that I am forging into business here, after having lost nearly all my property in Mexico, I would not sell the map at any price.” |
A rare 17th-century Latin American document that was "lost" for nearly a century resurfaced earlier this year. The kicker: It was right where it should have been all along -- in the American Geographical Society (AGS) Library at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM).But it's a wonder that the document -- a pictorial history-map of Santa Catarina Ixtepeji, a village in Mexico -- was rediscovered at all. The 7-foot-long painted scroll is one of the few known pictorial documents that contain text in the indigenous Zapotec language. It had been in the hands of private collectors early in the 20th century, including California mining engineer A.E. Place, who sold it to the AGS in 1917 for $350. Fast forward to 1978. The AGS collection moved from New York to UWM, where archivists have been piecing together the stories of the more than 1 million items in the collection bit by bit over the last 34 years. The contents include maps, globes, diaries and other memorabilia gathered by the society's member-explorers, from Charles Lindbergh to Teddy Roosevelt. In 1995, AGSL curator Christopher Baruth came across a tattered scroll containing both writing and pictures. There were no markings on it to link it to a card in the collection's catalog. "I had asked someone about it at that time," he remembers, "but that person didn't think it was anything of significance." That could have been the end of the story. Baruth formally retired in 2011 after 31 years with the AGSL, 16 as curator. After fielding a staff member's question about the scroll while organizing his office, Baruth decided to get a second opinion. He called Aims McGuinness, UWM associate professor of history, who could tell that the scroll was written in both Spanish and an indigenous language. To home in on its origin, McGuinness consulted with someone who specializes in colonial Latin America -- and she was just downtown at Marquette University. It takes a community Laura Matthew, an assistant professor of history, remembers being psyched to see the "mystery document," which, she says, recounts the history of leadership and land ownership in a specific town in Mexico. "It continued an older tradition of documents kept by royal houses that were intended to accompany an oral presentation, like a visual aid." The document was written in both the native and Spanish languages because it would have been used to legitimize land ownership in a bureaucratic process involving Spanish officials. Two dates inscribed on it -- 1691 and 1709 -- were probably the dates it was used, Matthew surmises. Matthew is not an expert in Zapotec, but she knows someone who is. Michel Oudijk at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México knew exactly what the scroll was from looking at emailed photos -- and he knew because he had been looking for it for more than a decade. "That's when we knew we had something valuable," says Matthew. "And luck played a part, because he had already studied this type of document and that made for a fast identification." Oudijk and colleague Sebastián van Doesburg had found scholarly reports from the 1960s indicating two documents from Santa Catarina Ixtepeji had been sold in the early 20th century. One was sold by a British consular official in Oaxaca named Rickards, a Mexican of Scottish descent. But the research did not reveal that mining engineer Place was the buyer, or that it had ended up at the AGS. Mystery solved That information came some 50 years later when UWM's Baruth consulted the last batch of archival material -- 10,000 pounds of it -- that arrived in Milwaukee from New York in 2010. He unearthed a letter from Place, dated 1917, stating the price he wanted for his piece of antiquity. It provided the final piece in the puzzle of how the rare scroll had found its way from Mexico to Milwaukee. Baruth believes that Place probably secured the artifact from Rickards, as the two were both in the mining community around Oaxaca. By the time Place wanted to sell the artifact, the AGS was preoccupied with boundary disputes in Europe as World War I drew to a close. Baruth suspects that's why the document entered the collection with little notice. It was mostly likely shelved without sufficient identification and forgotten. The discovery and identification of this piece illustrates the value of the work by librarians, archivists and the global community of scholars, says McGuinness. "This is more than just a curiosity," he says. "This document tells us in the present something about Mexico that we would not otherwise have known. So UWM and Marquette are part of a circuit that creates and disseminates information of worldwide significance." Collaboration extended beyond the academic. Jim DeYoung, senior conservator at the Milwaukee Art Museum, advised that the scroll never be rolled again. He designed and constructed the frame that it is now displayed in. Through it all, McGuinness' and Matthew's students witnessed the mystery unfold. "This has been invaluable to teach students about the impact of research," says McGuinness. "My students could see knowledge being produced and the cooperation among institutions that made it happen." | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120705204933.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120705204933.htm
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 10-Jul-2012 at 04:28
Ancient Hunter-Gatherers Kept in Touch
Far-flung cousin? This 8000-year-old skeleton of a hunter-gatherer, found in a Spanish cave, is genetically similar to skeletons found in central and Eastern Europe. |
Until about 8500 years ago, Europe was populated by nomadic hunter-gatherers who hunted, fished, and ate wild plants. Then, the farming way of life swept into the continent from its origins in the Near East, including modern-day Turkey. Within 3000 years most of the hunter-gatherers had disappeared. Little is known about these early Europeans. But a new genetic analysis of two 8000-year-old skeletons from Spain suggests that they might have been a remarkably cohesive population both genetically and culturally—a conclusion that other researchers find intriguing but possibly premature. The http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6085/1086.short - first modern human hunter-gatherers occupied Europe at least 40,000 years ago. But their fortunes waxed and waned with fluctuations in climate, and during the height of the last ice age—between about 25,000 and 20,000 years ago—they were forced to take refuge in southern European regions such as modern-day Spain, Portugal, and southern France. Only after 12,000 years ago, when a permanent warming trend set in, were they able to spread across all of Europe again, marking the beginning of a period called the Mesolithic. Yet, while researchers have intensively studied the ancient farmers who followed them, relatively little is known about Europe's Mesolithic people. Scientists have extracted http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/05/farming-conquered-europe-at-leas.html?ref=hp - ancient DNA from dozens of farmer skeletons , but from fewer than 30 Mesolithic skeletons. Nearly all of these are from central and Eastern Europe......... | http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/06/ancient-hunter-gatherers-kept-in.html?ref=hp - http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/06/ancient-hunter-gatherers-kept-in.html?ref=hp
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 26-Jul-2012 at 10:30
Archaeologists uncover Palaeolithic ceramic art
Leg and torso from the model of a four-legged animal, possibly a deer or horse. This is one of 36 ceramic items recovered from Vela Spila, Croatia. |
Evidence of a community of prehistoric artists and craftspeople who “invented” ceramics during the last Ice Age – thousands of years before pottery became commonplace – has been found in modern-day Croatia. The finds consist of 36 fragments, most of them apparently the broken-off remnants of modelled animals, and come from a site called Vela Spila on the Adriatic coast. http://phys.org/tags/archaeologists/ - Archaeologists believe that they were the products of an artistic culture which sprang up in the region about 17,500 years ago. Their ceramic art flourished for about 2,500 years, but then disappeared.
The study, which is published in the journal PLoS ONE, adds to a rapidly-changing set of views about when humans first developed the ability to make ceramics and pottery. Most histories of the technology begin with the more settled cultures of the Neolithic era, which began about 10,000 years ago.
Now it is becoming clear that the story was much more complex. Over thousands of years, ceramics were invented, lost, reinvented and lost again. The earliest producers did not make crockery, but seem to have had more artistic inclinations.
The Vela Spila finds have been the subject of intensive investigation by researchers at the University of Cambridge and colleagues in Croatia since 2010. Their report, published this week, suggests that although earlier ceramic remnants have been found elsewhere, they had no connection with the site, where the ability to make these artefacts appears to have been independently rediscovered by the people who lived there.
“It is extremely unusual to find ceramic art this early in prehistory,” Dr. Preston Miracle, from the University of Cambridge, said.
“The finds at Vela Spila seem to represent the first evidence of Palaeolithic ceramic art at the end of the last Ice Age. They appear to have been developed independently of anything that had come before. We are starting to see that several distinct Palaeolithic societies made art from ceramic materials long before the Neolithic era, when ceramics became more common and were usually used for more functional purposes.”
Vela Spila is a large, limestone cave on Korčula Island, in the central Dalmatian archipelago. Excavations have taken place there sporadically since 1951, and there is evidence of occupation on the site during the Upper Palaeolithic period, roughly 20,000 years ago, through to the Bronze Age about 3,000 years ago......... | http://m.phys.org/news/2012-07-archaeologists-uncover-palaeolithic-ceramic-art.html - http://m.phys.org/news/2012-07-archaeologists-uncover-palaeolithic-ceramic-art.html
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 27-Jul-2012 at 09:12
Genomic Study of Africa's Hunter-Gatherers Elucidates Human Variation and Ancient Interbreeding
Human diversity in Africa is greater than any place else on Earth. Differing food sources, geographies, diseases and climates offered many targets for natural selection to exert powerful forces on Africans to change and adapt to their local environments. The individuals who adapted best were the most likely to reproduce and pass on their genomes to the generations who followed....... | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726122118.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726122118.htm
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: red clay
Date Posted: 27-Jul-2012 at 12:33
Originally posted by TheAlaniDragonRising
Archaeologists uncover Palaeolithic ceramic art
Leg and torso from the model of a four-legged animal, possibly a deer or horse. This is one of 36 ceramic items recovered from Vela Spila, Croatia. |
Evidence of a community of prehistoric artists and craftspeople who “invented” ceramics during the last Ice Age – thousands of years before pottery became commonplace – has been found in modern-day Croatia.
The finds consist of 36 fragments, most of them apparently the broken-off remnants of modelled animals, and come from a site called Vela Spila on the Adriatic coast. http://phys.org/tags/archaeologists/ - Archaeologists believe that they were the products of an artistic culture which sprang up in the region about 17,500 years ago. Their ceramic art flourished for about 2,500 years, but then disappeared.
The study, which is published in the journal PLoS ONE, adds to a rapidly-changing set of views about when humans first developed the ability to make ceramics and pottery. Most histories of the technology begin with the more settled cultures of the Neolithic era, which began about 10,000 years ago.
Now it is becoming clear that the story was much more complex. Over thousands of years, ceramics were invented, lost, reinvented and lost again. The earliest producers did not make crockery, but seem to have had more artistic inclinations.
The Vela Spila finds have been the subject of intensive investigation by researchers at the University of Cambridge and colleagues in Croatia since 2010. Their report, published this week, suggests that although earlier ceramic remnants have been found elsewhere, they had no connection with the site, where the ability to make these artefacts appears to have been independently rediscovered by the people who lived there.
“It is extremely unusual to find ceramic art this early in prehistory,” Dr. Preston Miracle, from the University of Cambridge, said.
“The finds at Vela Spila seem to represent the first evidence of Palaeolithic ceramic art at the end of the last Ice Age. They appear to have been developed independently of anything that had come before. We are starting to see that several distinct Palaeolithic societies made art from ceramic materials long before the Neolithic era, when ceramics became more common and were usually used for more functional purposes.”
Vela Spila is a large, limestone cave on Korčula Island, in the central Dalmatian archipelago. Excavations have taken place there sporadically since 1951, and there is evidence of occupation on the site during the Upper Palaeolithic period, roughly 20,000 years ago, through to the Bronze Age about 3,000 years ago......... | http://m.phys.org/news/2012-07-archaeologists-uncover-palaeolithic-ceramic-art.html - http://m.phys.org/news/2012-07-archaeologists-uncover-palaeolithic-ceramic-art.html
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I wonder when they will finally do away with the designation "Pre-Ceramic". On a global scale, there really isn't such.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 29-Jul-2012 at 00:13
Study Reveals New Clues to Human Diversity and Environmental Adaptability in Evolutionary History
Research also found evidence of ancient interbreeding between ancestors of modern Africans and another hominin lineage. |
A genetic study of African hunter-gatherers has revealed important new insights to how human populations of the distant past have evolved to adapt to their environments, a key component of change in human evolution that has led to the genetic diversity we see today in modern human populations. The research, published on July 26th in the journal Cell and led by Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania, involved sequencing whole genomes of 15 individuals, five each from three different hunter-gatherer population groups in Africa. "We sequenced the genomes of five males from each of three African hunter-gatherer populations (Western Pygmy, Hadza, and Sandawe) at high coverage", she said. "We then compared these genome sequences to a previously published genome sequence from a San hunter-gatherer and to publicly available whole-sequence data from other ethnically, linguistically, and geographically diverse African populations.....These genomes were compared to publicly available high-coverage genomes sequenced and analyzed using the same technology and software in a diverse panel of 53 unrelated individuals (including 4 Luhya from Kenya, 4 Maasai from Kenya, 10 Yoruba from Nigeria, and 51 non-Africans), allowing the genomes of African hunter-gatherers to be placed within a global context". [1] The researchers identified more than 13 million variations in DNA sequences in the tested genomes, and more than 3 million of them have not been found in existing databases. "This is the first population genomics analysis using high-coverage whole-genome sequencing," Tishkoff says. "Many of the variants we found would not have been identified without this kind of analysis." Until now, scientists have analyzed only six African genomes that had been sequenced at high coverage, which involves sequencing regions numerous times to achieve high accuracy. Africa is considered to be the ancestral homeland of all modern humans and contains the highest level of genetic diversity among all of the continents. But, says Tishkoff, "even though African populations have played an important role in human evolutionary history, relatively little is known about variation in African genomes". The study has shed more light on the genetic signs of natural selection. As compared to agricultural and pastoral populations, the hunter-gatherer populations showed distinctly different DNA patterns related to immunity, metabolism, smell, and taste, suggesting that the populations adapted to specific pathogens, food sources, and other factors of the local environments they inhabited. In addition, they identified several candidate genes that could be responsible for the short stature of the Western Pygmies, and perhaps, by extension, pygmies in general. The study also revealed evidence of ancient interbreeding between the ancestors of modern Africans and another hominin (possible archaic form of humans)* lineage. "A striking finding in our data set", writes Tishkoff, et. al., "is that compelling evidence exists that extant hunter-gatherer genomes contain introgressed archaic sequences, consistent with previous studies.......In short, we find that low levels of introgression from an unknown archaic population or populations occurred in the three African hunter-gatherer samples examined, consistent with findings of archaic admixture in non-Africans." [1] In other words, just as previous studies have suggested interbreeding between ancenstral modern humans and Neanderthals in Europe, this study shows evidence that the same had occurred between the ancestors of modern Africans and an archaic form of human or other hominin. Exactly what archaic population it might have been is still unknown. The researchers hope that the study will provide an additional foundation for other scientists moving forward with similar genetic research. "Our study has not only vastly increased knowledge about human genomic variation," said Tishkoff, "but also shed light on human evolutionary history and the origins of traits that make each of us unique". | http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2012/article/study-reveals-new-clues-to-human-diversity-and-environmental-adaptability-in-evolutionary-history - http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2012/article/study-reveals-new-clues-to-human-diversity-and-environmental-adaptability-in-evolutionary-history
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 31-Jul-2012 at 13:27
Religion in Human Evolution, part 1: the co-evolution of gods and humanity
I am not fully recovered yet from my heart attack, but have been occupying my convalescence with Robert Bellah's book http://j.mp/Le0KHU - Religion in Human Evolution , and it's so powerful that I am going to write about it anyway. It is an account of some of the ways in which human beings have made religions and religions have made us. The process continues, of course. If there are two faculties that make us into people, they are narration and contemplation. Religions unite them, and stimulate both. But it does much more than that. The book makes a change for http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/series/how-to-believe - this series : it only came out this year, and the author, a distinguished US sociologist, is still very much alive. But I think it is as important here as any of the classic authors we have dealt with before. That's a large claim. But Bellah offers a perspective on the various phenomena we call religion that unites history (in so far as we have it) with psychology and sociology. Any overarching theory must be this ambitious, because religion is complicated. It is something that people do to themselves, and to their societies, and at the same time something that whole societies do to themselves, to each other and to their constituent individuals. It has – sometimes – theoretical aspects. It has ritual aspects too. Even within Christianity, which is what most of us in the west know best, there are elements of dance, of play, of the exercise of power, of logic, poetry and morality; there are hermits and popes, inquisitors and housewives: all of these can be found without even mentioning myths. Such an enormous diversity of roles is, of course, dependent on a diverse and complex society. You don't find popes, priests or inquisitors among the Bushmen, nor anywhere in prehistory. If we're looking for something common to all expressions of religion, it will not be sufficient to describe any single one. So Bellah starts with the common experience of everyday life – an endless round of purpose-driven problem-solving in which our wants can never be completely satisfied. The first, and almost the most important, point he makes is that everyday life is quite literally intolerable if there is nothing else and no other way to live. But, as he goes on to point out, no one has to live like that. It's certainly not the world we live in all the time: " http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xHr-uN4XpAgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PR15#v=onepage&q=language-using%20humans&f=false - Among language-using humans , however, the world of daily life is never all there is, and the other realities that human culture gives rise to cannot fail to overlap with the world of daily life, whose relentless utilitarianism can never be absolute.
"In spite of its 'apparent actuality', the world of daily life is a culturally, symbolically constructed world, not the world as it actually is. As such, it varies in terms of time and space, with much in common across the historical and cultural landscape, but with occasional sharp differences."
This is important. Not only are religions profoundly different from one another, but so are the worlds that they provide escape from and meaning to. There may be – and, in fact, there probably are – psychological or cognitive mechanisms underlying the different ways in which all cultures deal with the world. But these are differently expressed and elaborated, just as languages are, so that you simply can't translate entirely between them. The evolution of language is necessarily closed off from us. With the possible exception of http://www.omniglot.com/writing/piraha.php - Pirahã , all the languages spoken today seem to be on a similar level of complexity, and we can't reconstruct how they got there. Religions are different. The big ones have histories, more or less partial and incomplete. Preliterate societies are still to be found and studied. Even though none of them have been untouched by modern industrial culture (if only by the fact of being studied), we can still see how they differ from one another, and from us. This is where he starts, in worlds where there are neither gods nor people as we know them. A great part of the story of this book is the co-evolution of gods and humanity. Although he finishes in the " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age - axial age ", when modern religious and philosophical thought first appeared, and with it universalist ethics, he avoids the slithery optimism of http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/karenarmstrong - Karen Armstrong . What we have are numerous universalist ethics, not just one. What got us here was not progress: "No serious reader of this book can think it is a paean to any kind of religious triumphalism."
He writes: " http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xHr-uN4XpAgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PR15#v=onepage&q=language-using%20humans&f=false - That religious evolution is simply the rise , onward and upward, of ever more compassionate, more righteous, more enlightened religions could hardly be farther from the truth." | http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/jul/16/robert-bellah-religion-in-human-evolution - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/jul/16/robert-bellah-religion-in-human-evolution
Religion in Human Evolution, part 2: faith, language, music and play. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/23/robert-bellah-religion-human-evolution - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/23/robert-bellah-religion-human-evolution
Religion in Human Evolution, part 3: the primacy of ritual over language. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/30/religion-in-human-evolution-rituals - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/30/religion-in-human-evolution-rituals
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 02-Aug-2012 at 01:11
DNA hints at African cousin to humans
Expeditions to Africa may have brought back evidence of a hitherto unknown branch in the human family tree. But this time the evidence wasn’t unearthed by digging in the dirt. It was found in the DNA of hunter-gatherer people living in Cameroon and Tanzania. Buried in the genetic blueprints of 15 people, researchers found the genetic signature of a sister species that branched off the human family tree at about the same time that Neandertals did. This lineage probably remained isolated from the one that produced modern humans for a long time, but its DNA jumped into the Homo sapiens gene pool through interbreeding with modern humans during the same era that other modern humans and Neandertals were mixing in the Middle East, researchers report in the August 3 Cell. The evidence for ancient interbreeding is surprisingly convincing, says Richard “Ed” Green, a genome biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “There is a signal that demands explanation, and archaic admixture seems to be the most reasonable one at this point,” he says........ | http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/342711/title/DNA_hints_at_African_cousin_to_humans - http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/342711/title/DNA_hints_at_African_cousin_to_humans
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 06-Aug-2012 at 22:48
The Roots of Jewishness
Scholars of all kinds have long debated one seemingly simple question: What is "Jewishness?" Is it defined by genetics, culture, or religion? Recent findings have revealed genetic ties that suggest a biological basis for Jewishness, but this research didn’t include data from North African, Ethiopian, or other Jewish communities. Now a new study fills in the genetic map—and paints a more complex picture of what it means to be Jewish. Modern Jews, who number more than 13 million worldwide, are traditionally divided into various groups. They include Middle Eastern Jews, who live in Iraq, Iran, and other places in the Levant; Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal; Ashkenazi Jews from Europe, who comprise 90% of American Jews; North African Jews from Morocco, Algeria, and other countries north of the Sahara; Ethiopian Jews; and many other communities scattered across the globe. In the Bible, the roots of Jewishness reach back 4000 years to Abraham and his descendants. But historians have suggested the story of Jewishness is more complicated, and may not include a single ancestor. Some have even argued that most modern Jews are descended from converts to Judaism and don’t share genetic ties at all. Recent studies have turned to DNA for answers. In 2010, human geneticist Harry Ostrer of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and colleagues found that http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/06/tracing-the-roots-of-jewishness.html?ref=hp - three of the major Jewish groups—the Middle Eastern, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi Jews—share a genetic connection going back more than 2000 years , and are more closely related to each other than to nearby non-Jewish groups. Genetic ties within each of the groups were even closer, about the equivalent of fourth or fifth cousins. But that study didn't include North African Jews, who represent the world's second largest Jewish population, or any groups whose claim to Jewishness has been controversial, such as Ethiopian Jews. So Ostrer and his colleagues gathered new DNA samples from Jews living everywhere from Morocco to Yemen. Using three distinct strategies for identifying genetic similarities, including a method called identity by descent (IBD) that can determine how closely related two individuals are, the team compared these DNA samples to each other, to the samples from their 2010 study, and to samples from non-Jews. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1204840109 - Most of the sampled groups shared genetic features, indicating a common heritage dating back to before Roman times , the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. North African Jews—and Moroccan/Algerian Jews in particular—showed a close genetic connection to Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, and little evidence of interbreeding with contemporary non-Jewish populations in North Africa. Georgian Jews shared genetic features with Middle Eastern Jews, instead. Yemenite Jews were distantly related to Middle Eastern Jews, while Ethiopian Jews formed their own cluster and shared little IDB with other Jewish populations. Each group showed little interbreeding with local non-Jewish groups. Moroccan/Algerian Jews, for example, were about as close genetically as third or fourth cousins; Jews from the Tunisian Island of Djerba were as close as first cousins once removed. "I didn’t know what to expect," Ostrer says. "I've been surprised to learn there's such a shared biological basis for Jewishness." The team's results suggest that while most Jewish groups are genetically related, some are not and instead arose from converts to Judaism. But regardless of their origins, Jewish groups remained genetically isolated once formed. The results complement historical accounts of multiple Jewish migrations and expulsions. The genetic ties between North African Jews and Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews may reflect the expulsion of European Jews from Spain and Portugal during the Spanish Inquisition in the late 1400s, and their limited breeding with local North African populations in the centuries that followed. Distinct populations, such as Ethiopian Jews, likely arose from Jewish founders who converted the local population by proselytizing but did not intermarry. "This is certainly the most extensive genomic study of Jewish populations to date," says geneticist Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the work. "And it shows there's both a genetic and a cultural component to being Jewish." Identifying the genetic component of Jewishness—though controversial because the Holocaust was predicated on the idea that Jewishness was a genetic trait that could be eliminated from the German population—could have medical as well as historical value, Tishkoff adds, because many Jewish populations have high incidences of genetic disease. Knowing more about the groups' biological makeup could enable doctors to provide more informed genetic counseling to Jewish couples, or better personalize courses of treatment. Tishkoff notes that the little-studied Jewish populations of India, sub-Saharan Africa, China, and Burma weren’t examined in the latest analysis. Ostrer says his team plans to include their DNA in a future study to complete what he calls "the tapestry of Jewishness." | http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/08/the-roots-of-jewishness.html?ref=hp - http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/08/the-roots-of-jewishness.html?ref=hp
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 08-Aug-2012 at 21:48
Early Human Ancestors Had More Variable Diet
Scientists conducted an analysis of the fossil teeth, indicating that Australopithecus, a predecessor of early Homo, had a more varied diet than early Homo. |
New research sheds more light on the diet and home ranges of early hominins belonging to three different genera, notablyAustralopithecus, Paranthropus and Homo -- that were discovered at sites such as Sterkfontein, Swartkrans and Kromdraai in the Cradle of Humankind, about 50 kilometres from Johannesburg. Australopithecus existed before the other two genera evolved about 2 million years ago.Scientists conducted an analysis of the fossil teeth, indicating that Australopithecus, a predecessor of early Homo, had a more varied diet than early Homo. Its diet was also more variable than the diet of another distant human relative known as Paranthropus. An international team of researchers, including Professor Francis Thackeray, Director of the Institute for Human Evolution at Wits University, will be publishing their latest research on what our early ancestors ate, online in the journal,Nature, on August 8, 2012. The paper titled 'Evidence for diet but not landscape use in South African early hominins' was authored by Vincent Balter from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France; Jose´ Braga from the Université de Toulouse Paul Sabatier in Toulouse in France; Philippe Te´louk from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon in France; and Thackeray from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in South Africa. According to Thackeray, the results of the study show that Paranthropus had a primarily herbivorous-like diet, while Homo included a greater consumption of meat........ | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120808132711.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120808132711.htm
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 09-Aug-2012 at 09:43
New Kenyan Fossils Shed Light On Early Human Evolution
Kenyan fossil find: The KNM-ER 1470 cranium, discovered in 1972, combined with the new lower jaw KNM-ER 60000; both are thought to belong to the same species. The lower jaw is shown as a photographic reconstruction, and the cranium is based on a computed tomography scan. |
Exciting new fossils discovered east of Lake Turkana confirm that there were two additional species of our genus -- Homo -- living alongside our direct human ancestral species,Homo erectus, almost two million years ago. The finds, announced in the scientific journal Nature on August 9th, include a face, a remarkably complete lower jaw, and part of a second lower jaw.They were uncovered between 2007 and 2009 by the Koobi Fora Research Project (KFRP), led by Meave and Louise Leakey. KFRP's fieldwork was facilitated by the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI), and supported by the National Geographic Society, which has funded the KFRP since 1968. Four decades ago, the KFRP discovered the enigmatic fossil known as KNM-ER 1470 (or "1470" for short). This skull, readily distinguished by its large brain size and long flat face, ignited a longstanding debate about just how many different species of early Homolived alongside Homo erectus during the Pleistocene epoch. 1470's unusual morphology was attributed by some scientists to sexual differences and natural degrees of variation within a single species, whereas others interpreted the fossil as evidence of a separate species. This decades-old dilemma has endured for two reasons. First, comparisons with other fossils have been limited due to the fact that 1470's remains do not include its teeth or lower jaw. Second, no other fossil skull has mirrored 1470's flat and long face, leaving in doubt just how representative these characteristics are. The new fossils address both issues...... | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120808132705.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120808132705.htm
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: red clay
Date Posted: 09-Aug-2012 at 12:50
This sort of puts the last nail in the coffin for the concept of linear evolution.
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 10-Aug-2012 at 03:16
Pre-Columbian Cahokia Mound Builders Consumed "Black Drink", Say Researchers"...Like
other pre-Columbian Native Americans in the southeastern U.S., people
living 700 to 900 years ago in Cahokia, a large settlement distinquished
by its massive earthenwork mounds in south-western Illinoise, consumed a
"black drink", a caffeinated drink made from the leaves of a holly tree
that grew hundreds of miles away from the Cahokia site, according to a
recent study. Consumption of the brew, according to the researchers, had
a ritualistic or religious significance.
The discovery was made as the research team, consisting of
scientists at the University of Illinois, the University of New Mexico,
Millsaps College in Mississippi and Hershey Technical Center in
Pennsylvania, were sampling plant residue found within distinct and
relatively rare ancient cylindrical Cahokian beakers. They found key
biochemical markers, which included theobromine, caffeine and ursolic
acid, proportioned much like that found within drinking vessels at other
sites in the southeastern U.S. The beakers, dating from A.D. 1050 to
1250, were found at ritual sites in and around Cahokia.
Anthropologist Patricia Crowan of the University of New Mexico and
chemist Jeffrey Hunt of the Hershey Technical Center conducted the
chemical analyses. The study was in part an outgrowth of a similar
project where they performed tests on ceramic vessels found at the Chaco
Canyon archaeological site in New Mexico. In A.D. 1100-1125, the
inhabitants of Chaco consumed liquid chocolate from special ceramic
vessels found there, as the ancient Maya did in Mexico and Central
America centuries before...." http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2012/article/pre-columbian-cahokia-mound-builders-consumed-black-drink-say-researchers - http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2012/article/pre-columbian-cahokia-mound-builders-consumed-black-drink-say-researchers
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 10-Aug-2012 at 03:23
"...Left to right. Táin Bó Cúailnge, Beowulf, Iliad. Wikimedia Commons
Physicists study famous historical myths for hidden truths
http://www.printfriendly.com">
The truth behind
some of the world’s most famous historical myths, including Homer’s
epic, the Iliad, has been bolstered by two researchers who have analysed
the relationships between the myths’ characters and compared them to
real-life social networks.
In a study published in the journal EPL (Europhysics Letters), Pádraig Mac Carron and Ralph Kenna from Coventry University performed detailed text analyses of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad - Iliad , the English poem, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf - Beowulf , and the Irish epic, the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A1in_B%C3%B3_C%C3%BAailnge - Táin Bó Cuailnge .
Comparing well known myths with works of fiction
They found that the interactions between the characters in all three
myths were consistent with those seen in real-life social networks.
Taking this further, the researchers compared the myths to four known
works of fiction — Les Misérables, Richard III, Fellowship of the Ring, and Harry Potter — and found clear differences.
“We can’t really comment so much on particular events. We’re not
saying that this or that actually happened, or even that the individual
people portrayed in the stories are real; we are saying that the overall
society and interactions between characters seem realistic,” said Mac Carron.
Mapping character interaction
To arrive at their conclusions, the researchers created a database
for each of the three stories and mapped out the characters’
interactions. There were 74 characters identified in Beowulf, 404 in the Táin and 716 in the Iliad.
Each character was assigned a number, or degree, based on how popular
they were, or how many links they had to other characters. The
researchers then measured how these degrees were distributed throughout
the whole network.
The types of relationships that existed between the characters were
also analysed using two specific criteria: friendliness and hostility.... Friendly links were made if characters were related, spoke to each
other, spoke about one another or it is otherwise clear that they know
each other amicably. Hostile links were made if two characters met in a
conflict, or when a character clearly displayed animosity against
somebody they know.
Similar to real-life networks
The three myths were shown to be similar to real-life networks as
they had similar degree distributions, were assortative and vulnerable
to targeted attack. Assortativity is the tendency of a character of a
certain degree to interact with a character of similar popularity; being
vulnerable to targeted attack means that if you remove one of the most
popular characters, it leads to a breakdown of the whole network –
neither of these appears to happen in fiction.
Of the three myths, the Táin is the least believed. But Mac Carron
and Kenna found that its apparent artificiality can be traced back to
only 6 of the 404 characters.
“In terms of degree distributions, all three myths were like real
social networks; this wasn’t the case for the fictional networks.
Removing the eponymous protagonist from Beowulf also made that network
assortative, like real networks.
“For the Táin we removed the ‘weak links’ associated with the top
six most connected characters which had previously offset the degree
distribution, this adjustment made the network assortative,” continued Mac Carron.
The researchers hypothesise that if the society of the Táin is to be
believed, the top six characters are likely to have been fused together
from other characters as the story passed orally through the
generations.
The researchers acknowledge that there are elements of each of the
myths that are clearly fantasy, such as the character Beowulf slaying a
dragon; however, they stress they are looking at the society rather than
specific events. Historical archaeological evidence has been
interpreted as indicating that some elements of the myths, such as
specific locations, landmarks and characters, are likely to have
existed."..." http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/08/2012/physicists-study-famous-historical-myths-for-hidden-truths - http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/08/2012/physicists-study-famous-historical-myths-for-hidden-truths
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 11-Aug-2012 at 03:18
Flat-Faced Early Humans Confirmed—Lived Among Other Human Species"...
New fossils recast a flat-faced oddity as a star species in the first chapter of the human story—perhaps even as our oldest known truly human ancestor. At
the least, the fossils confirm that at least three different human
species inhabited the same Kenyan neighborhood at the dawn of humanity,
according to a new study led by paleontologists http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/leakeys/ - Meave and Louise Leakey . (Related: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/09/110908-apes-humans-evolution-australopithecus-sediba-lee-berger-science/ - "Human Ancestor May Put Twist in Origin Story, New Studies Say." ) Consisting of a face, a complete lower jaw, and part of a second jaw, the new fossils were found east of http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/kenya-guide/ - Kenya 's http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/multimedia/geography-lake-turkana/?ar_a=1&ar_r=999 - Lake Turkana
between 2007 and 2009. The products of a 40-year search, they provide
the needed evidence to confirm that a disputed skull found in 1972 does
in fact represent a new species, the team says. Dated to between
1.78 million and 1.95 million years ago, the remains were uncovered
within six miles (ten kilometers) of the 1972 skull, which was
discovered by Meave Leakey's husband, paleoanthropologist Richard
Leakey...." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/08/120808-human-evolution-fossils-homo-nature-science-meave-leakey-flat/ - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/08/120808-human-evolution-fossils-homo-nature-science-meave-leakey-flat/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/08/120808-human-evolution-fossils-homo-nature-science-meave-leakey-flat/">
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Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 11-Aug-2012 at 17:52
Evidence The Sophisticated Carpentry Developed Alongside Agriculture During Neolithic Period "...A new study from http://www.tau.ac.il/index-eng.html - Tel Aviv University reveals that the transition from hunting to agricultural societies parallels development of woodworking tools.
Early man evolved from hunter-gather to farmer and agriculturalist during the http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/155751/museum_iceman_might_be_contaminated/ - Neolithic Age , from approximately 10,000 – 6,000 BCE. http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112648435/oldest-neolithic-bow-discovered-in-europe-at-la-draga-neolithic-site-in-banyoles/ - Neolithic man
also began living in larger settlements with a variety of domesticated
animals and plant life. This transition brought about significant
changes in the economy, architecture, man’s relationship to the
environment, and more.
Dr. Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University’s Department of http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/about_us_department.html - Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations , along with a team of colleagues, has shed new light on this milestone in http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112665284/human-evolution-interbreeding-neanderthals/ - human evolution . The study demonstrates a direct connection between the development of woodworking tools and an agricultural society.
Prior to the Neolithic period, no evidence has been found to suggest
that tools were powerful enough to cut and carve wood, let alone fell
trees. New evidence suggests that as the Neolithic age progressed,
sophisticated carpentry developed alongside agriculture.
“Intensive woodworking and tree-felling was a phenomenon that only
appeared with the onset of the major changes in human life, including
the transition to agriculture and permanent villages,” says Dr. Barkai,
whose research was published in the journal http://www.plosone.org/home.action - PLoS ONE .
Working at the archeological site Motza, in the Judean hills, Dr. Barkai and his fellow researchers, Professor Rick Yerkes of http://www.osu.edu/ - Ohio State University and Dr. Hamudi Khalaily of the http://www.antiquities.org.il/ - Israeli Antiquity Authority ,
unearthed evidence that increasing sophistication in terms of carpentry
tools corresponds with increased agriculture and permanent settlements.
This is the first time the use of functional tools in relation to
woodworking in the Neolithic age has been studied in detail..." http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112673605/neolithic-carpentry-081012/ - http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112673605/neolithic-carpentry-081012/
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 15-Aug-2012 at 03:58
Evolution of Humans in Europe More Complex Than Previously Thought
Nothing is as simple as it looks, as the saying goes. And it seems to apply as well to the picture of how humans evolved in present-day Europe, if recent studies and advances in genetic research have any say. In a report just published in the Cell Press journal, Trends in Genetics, the authors maintain that advances in analytical techniques and genetic applications are up-ending long-held, simplistic views about European human evolutionary history. Findings and analyses are indicating that there were actually many climatic, demographic and cultural events and a diverse group of mechanisms that worked together over time to shape the genetic variation we see today among modern Europeans. "We are currently at a stage in which next-generation sequencing technologies, ancient DNA analyses, and computer simulation modeling allow us to obtain a much more accurate and detailed perspective on the nature and timing of major prehistoric processes such as the colonization of Europe by modern humans, the survival of human populations during the Ice Age, the Neolithic transition, and the rise and fall of complex societies and empires," says author Dr. Ron Pinhasi of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. "These methods and technologies hold great potential to shed new light on past genetic variation, the onset of major cultural and technological changes that left their imprint on past and present genomes, and potentially on the impact of changes in lifestyle and demography on the appearance of certain diseases and genetic disorders." Following the height of the Ice Age (from 27,000 to 16,000 years ago), hunter-gatherer groups began to re-populate most parts of Europe. Then, about 8,000 years ago, farming populations began to make their presence on the continent during the "Neolithic transition". For several thousand years, two distinctly different modes of life coexisted across Europe: hunter-gatherer populations, relying on food resources obtained in the wild, and farming populations, practicing domesticated crops, livestock, pottery-making, housing, and storage techniques. It has long been theorized that European human genetic diversity formed during the Neolithic transition; But now, scientists (at least those involved in this report) suggest that it was also shaped before and after the transition. In addition, they write, the expansion of farming is likely to have varied by region, resulting in a more complex mix of farmers' and local hunter-gatherers' genetic contributions to European populations......... | http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2012/article/evolution-of-humans-in-europe-more-complex-than-previously-thought - http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2012/article/evolution-of-humans-in-europe-more-complex-than-previously-thought
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 15-Aug-2012 at 20:11
Renaissance Women Fought Men, and Won
A three-year study into a set of manuscripts compiled and written by one of Britain's earliest feminist figures has revealed new insights into how women challenged male authority in the 17th century.Dr Jessica Malay has painstakingly transcribed Lady Anne Clifford's 600,000-word Great Books of Record, which documents the trials and triumphs of the female aristocrat's family dynasty over six centuries and her bitter battle to inherit castles and villages across northern England. Lady Anne, who lived from 1590 to 1676, was, in her childhood, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. Her father died when she was 15 but contrary to an agreement that stretched back to the time of Edward II -- that the Clifford's vast estates in Cumbria and Yorkshire should pass to the eldest heir whether male or female - the lands were handed over to her uncle. Following an epic legal struggle in which she defied her father, both her husbands, King James I and Oliver Cromwell, Lady Anne finally took possession of the estates, which included the five castles of Skipton, where she was born, Brougham, Brough, Pendragon and Appleby, aged 53. Malay, a Reader in English Literature at the University of Huddersfield, is set to publish a new, complete edition of Lady Anne's Great Books of Record, which contains rich narrative evidence of how women circumvented male authority in order to participate more fully in society. Malay said: "Lady Anne's Great Books of Record challenge the notion that women in the 16th and 17th centuries lacked any power or control over their own lives. "There is this misplaced idea that the feminist movement is predominantly a 1960s invention but debates and campaigns over women's rights and equality stretch back to the Middle Ages." The Great Books of Record comprise three volumes, the last of which came up for auction in 2003. The Cumbria Archives bought the third set and now house all three. In 2010, Malay secured a £158,000 grant from the Leverhulme Trust to study the texts........ | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120814130059.htm - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120814130059.htm
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 20-Aug-2012 at 18:31
SKULL RESETS HUMAN MIGRATION CLOCK
Fragments of a human skull found in Laos suggest humans had a single, rapid migration to Asia. |
A reconstruction of the human skull discovered in Tam Pa Ling. |
THE GIST- A skull found in Laos suggests human migrated to southern Asia 20,000 years earlier than thought.
- The discovery suggests that the first modern humans to leave Africa spread around the world much earlier.
Newfound pieces of human skull from "the Cave of the Monkeys" in Laos are the earliest skeletal evidence yet that humans once had an ancient, rapid migration to Asia. Anatomically modern humans first arose about 200,000 years ago in Africa. When and how our lineage then dispersed http://www.livescience.com/11651-ancient-arabian-artifacts-rewrite-oout-africao-story.html - out of Africa has long proven controversial. Archaeological evidence and genetic data suggest that http://www.livescience.com/19039-human-species-china-cave.html - modern humans rapidly migrated out of Africa and into Southeast Asia by at least 60,000 years ago. However, complicating this notion is the notable absence of fossil evidence for modern human occupation in mainland Southeast Asia, likely because those bones do not survive well in the warm, tropical region....... | http://news.discovery.com/human/skull-human-migration-asia-120820.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1 - http://news.discovery.com/human/skull-human-migration-asia-120820.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 24-Aug-2012 at 19:14
Generation Gaps Suggest Ancient Human-Ape Split
We aren’t the only primates with a big generation gap. Human parents are, on average, a whopping 29 years older than their kids. That had been considered unusually long for a primate, but a new study reveals that chimpanzees and gorillas have their own large generation gaps, about 25 years and 19 years, respectively. The findings also indicate that our ancestors split from those of chimpanzees at least 7 million to 8 million years ago, more than 1 million years earlier than previously thought. For the past 45 years, geneticists have suggested that http://www.sciencemag.org/content/158/3805/1200.abstract?sid=cf4b8865-d2db-4bc9-a752-323220086760 - the ancestors of today's humans and chimps went their separate ways about 4 million to 6 million years ago , and the ancestors of gorillas diverged about 7 million to 9 million years ago. There are almost no fossils of chimps and gorillas, however, so these dates were calculated by counting the number of DNA sequence differences between the three species and dividing that number by an estimated "mutation rate" for primates—or how fast mutations arise over time. The problem is that scientists often calculate the mutation rate using dates from fossils of other primate species, then applying this rate to the African apes and humans. The approach is subject to error because it relies on the accuracy of the ages of fossils and assumes that mutation rates are similar across ape species. There is a better way, says molecular anthropologist Linda Vigilant of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Instead of looking at fossils and other primates, she says, researchers can use data from recent genome sequencing in humans, which estimates more precisely the average number of mutations that arise per generation in human families. Then, scientists can use the new generation time estimates to derive the yearly mutation rates in humans and apes to calculate how long ago the lineages split. Until recently, however, researchers didn’t have DNA samples from enough chimps and other primates in the wild to prove paternity so that they could calculate average generation times accurately........ | http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/08/generation-gaps-suggest-ancient.html?ref=hp - http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/08/generation-gaps-suggest-ancient.html?ref=hp
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 26-Aug-2012 at 11:45
Research verifies a Neandertal's right-handedness, hinting at language capacity
There are precious few Neandertal skeletons available to science. One of the more complete was discovered in 1957 in France, roughly 900 yards away from the famous Lascaux Cave. That skeleton was dubbed "Regourdou." Then, about two decades ago, researchers examined Regourdou's arm bones and theorized that he had been right-handed. "This skeleton had a mandible and parts of the skeleton below the neck," said David Frayer, professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas. "Twenty-plus years ago, some people studied the skeleton and argued that it was a right-handed individual based on the muscularity of the right arm versus the left arm." Handedness, a uniquely human trait, signals brain lateralization, where each of the brain's two hemispheres is specialized. The left brain controls the right side of the body and in a human plays a primary role for language. So, if Neandertals were primarily right-handed, like modern humans, that fact could suggest a capacity for language. Now, a new investigation by Frayer and an international team led by Virginie Volpato of the Senckenberg Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, has confirmed Regourdou's right-handedness by looking more closely at the robustness of the arms and shoulders, and comparing it with scratches on his teeth. Their findings are published today in the journal PLOS ONE. "We've been studying scratch marks on Neandertal teeth, but in all cases they were isolated teeth, or teeth in mandibles not directly associated with skeletal material," said Frayer. "This is the first time we can check the pattern that's seen in the teeth with the pattern that's seen in the arms. We did more sophisticated analysis of the arms—the collarbone, the humerus, the radius and the ulna—because we have them on both sides. And we looked at cortical thickness and other biomechanical measurements. All of them confirmed that everything was more robust on the right side then the left." Frayer said Neandertals used their mouths like a "third hand" and that produced more wear and tear on the front teeth than their back ones. "It's long been known the Neandertals had been heavily processing things with their incisors and canines," he said. Frayer's research on Regourdou's teeth confirmed the individual's right-handedness. "We looked at the cut marks on the lower incisors and canines," said the KU researcher. "The marks that are on the lip side of the incisor teeth are oblique, or angled in such away that it indicates they were gripping with the left hand and cutting with the right, and every now and then they'd hit the teeth and leave these scratch marks that were there for the life of the individual." Frayer said that the research on Regourdou shows that 89 percent of European Neandertal fossils (16 of 18) showed clear preference for their right hands. This is very similar to the prevalence of right-handers in modern human populations—about 90 percent of people alive today favor their right hands. Frayer and his co-authors conclude that such ratios suggest a Neandertal capacity for language. "The long-known connection between brain asymmetry, handedness and language in living populations serves as a proxy for estimating brain lateralization in the fossil record and the likelihood of language capacity in fossils," they write. | http://phys.org/news/2012-08-neandertal-right-handedness-hinting-language-capacity.html - http://phys.org/news/2012-08-neandertal-right-handedness-hinting-language-capacity.html
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 31-Aug-2012 at 09:20
Peer Pressure Starts Early
This may come as painful news to parents: toddlers are more likely to copy the actions of a crowd than those performed by one person, according to new research in Current Biology. “When we think of peer pressure, we think of teenagers and the reasons they start http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=smoking - smoking or drinking,” says Daniel Haun of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=anthropology - Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “We don't necessarily think of two-year-olds as being under peer pressure. But it turns out they are.” To investigate peer pressure's origins, Haun observed human toddlers and chimpanzees as they learned a simple task: placing a ball into one of three boxes. First the subjects watched other members of their species do it—both as one individual placed a ball three times into one box and as three individuals placed one ball each into a second box. When it was the observer's turn, both humans and chimps tended to choose the box that was used by the majority. The chimps were even more prone than the children to copy the group. This tendency to conform might have provided an evolutionary benefit that helped humans learn new skills and avoid dangers. “If you know nothing, following the majority isn't a bad strategy,” Haun says. Haun now wants to see if chimps and toddlers, when performing a familiar task, might switch their behavior to fit with the majority, even if they know that the group is wrong. Such behavior has been observed in older children, although whether it serves any evolutionary advantage is less obvious. | http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=peer-pressure-starts-early - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=peer-pressure-starts-early
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 02-Sep-2012 at 07:34
Alexandria dig uncovers graves, traces of African-American community
ALEXANDRIA -- If you come to http://alexandriava.gov/recreation/info/default.aspx?id=12286#Ft_Ward - Fort Ward Park in Alexandria, you'll see people running or walking their dogs and taking advantage of this open space. Fort Ward was built by the Union Army to protect Washington, D.C., during the Civil War. Now it's a http://alexandriava.gov/FortWard - historic site . But an archaeological dig at the park identified the location of 43 graves, confirming that a portion of the grounds was once used as a cemetery. The dig also found the site of what was once the "Fort Community," a post-Civil War, African-American community that was occupied until the 1960s. "We've been working since 2009 after it was brought to the city's attention that there may be some unmarked graves in the park, "says Lance Mallemo, the Historic Alexandra Office director. He says a shovel test survey was done across the park on the 30 to 35 acres that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. About 1,300 small holes were dug. They were each about two to four feet in diameter and up to four feet deep and they were dug every 30 feet, says Mallemo. The small holes acted like windows into the past. He says the holes gave archaeologists an idea if they could identify an area of significance. He says the 43 graves that were found in the park will be fenced off and all the graves, for now, will have blank markers. He says when, and if, the remains are identified, the person's name will be added along with any other information that is discovered. Mallemo says the dig is considered finished but more work could be done as part of a park management plan that's being prepared. The plan will protect resources for the future. He says the plan is needed to avoid putting a picnic table in a burial area, for example. He says there's a policy in place that prevents digging in the park unless an additional survey or review is done in that area first. | http://www.wtop.com/134/3017653/Alexandria-dig-uncovers-historic-graves - http://www.wtop.com/134/3017653/Alexandria-dig-uncovers-historic-graves
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 13-Sep-2012 at 01:14
Study: Peking Man an isolated population
3D laser scanning and the accurate measurement of parietal area (ZKD 3). |
Paleoanthropologists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, used both traditional metrics and recently developed 3D scanning techniques to explore the morphological variations of Peking Man's skulls at Zhoukoudian Locality 1, and found that the skull of the latest inhabitant did increase in every direction as compared to the earliest inhabitant, but the shape remained relatively stable. The slow evolutionary rates derived from11 cranial measurements indicate Peking Man is an isolated population. Researchers reported in the latest issue of Acta Anthropologica Sinica 2012 (3). Peking Man is a collective name given to a group of hominid fossils found at Zhoukoudian in the suburbs of Beijing. Six skulls from Peking Man were discovered at Zhoukoudian Locality 1 since the official excavation in 1927. In 1941, Pere Teilhard de Chardin emphasized the morphological stability of Homo erectus from Zhoukoudian throughout the 50 meters of sediments of Locality 1. He believed that not a single anatomical difference could be detected between the skull remains found at the very bottom of the deposit and those collected at the very top. This morphological stability was evidence of a slowness that characterized biological evolution whenever not obscured, disturbed or accelerated by the intrusive immigration of foreign elements. This morphological stability was challenged when skull ZKD 5 was described which was estimated about 300,000 years younger than the skull ZKD 3 from the bottom deposits. The morphological variations of skulls between the probable first and last inhabitants, represented by ZKD 3 and ZKD 5, were scaled by those between NJ 1 and NJ 2 skulls from Nanjing, whose owners probably spent the same duration as ZKD 3 and 5. After comparison, researchers found that the skull of the latest (or top) inhabitant at Zhoukoudian Locality 1 increased in every direction as compared to the earliest (or bottom) inhabitant, while the shape somehow remained relatively stable after hundreds of thousand years of evolution. "We used 11 cranial measurements to determine evolutionary rates of Homo erectus from Zhoukoudian and Nanjing. The results show that biological evolutionary rate is very slow, compared with that of hominid from Nanjing. The Homo erectus crania from Zhoukoudian may represent an isolated population, and as a result, lacked evidence of gene flow from outside populations", said first author XING Song of the IVPP. | http://phys.org/news/2012-09-peking-isolated-population.html - http://phys.org/news/2012-09-peking-isolated-population.html
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 22-Sep-2012 at 11:37
This certainly goes against what was earlier believed to have happened, and readjusted the time line by a good few thousands of years.
Extensive DNA Study Sheds Light on Modern Human Origins
DNA analysis of southern African groups shows an early diversification
with implications for the evolution of early modern humans. |
A new study of human genetic variation in sub-Saharan Africa, where modern Homo sapiens
are believed to have originated, helps to reveal the region's rich
genetic history, with implications for understanding the complexity of
early modern human evolution.
The largest genomic study ever conducted among the Khoe and San
population groups in southern Africa reveals that these groups are
descendants of the earliest diversification event in the history of all
humans - some 100,000 years ago, well before the largely accepted
'out-of-Africa' migration date range of modern humans.
Some 220 individuals from different regions in southern Africa
participated in the research, leading to the analysis of around 2.3
million DNA variants per individual – the largest such study ever
conducted.
The research was conducted by a group of international scientists,
including Dr. Carina Schlebusch and Assistant Professor Mattias
Jakobsson from Uppsala University in Sweden and Professor Himla Soodyall
from the Human Genomic Diversity and Disease Research Unit in the
Health Faculty at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
"The deepest divergence of all living people occurred some 100,000
years ago, well before modern humans migrated out of Africa and about
twice as old as the divergences of central African Pygmies and East
African hunter-gatherers and from other African groups," says lead
author Dr Carina Schlebusch, a Wits University PhD-graduate now
conducting post-doctoral research at Uppsala University in Sweden.
According to her colleague Matthias Jakobsson, these deep divergences
among African populations have important implications and consequences
when the history of all humankind is deciphered. The deep structure and
patterns of genetic variation suggest a complex population history of
the peoples of Africa. "The human population has been structured for a
long time," says Jakobsson, "and it is possible that modern humans
emerged from a non-homogeneous group."....... | http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/september-2012/article/extensive-dna-study-sheds-light-on-modern-human-origins - http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/september-2012/article/extensive-dna-study-sheds-light-on-modern-human-origins
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 22-Sep-2012 at 12:43
Does the adorning of oneself show self awareness? I cannot readily think of a good reason for Neanderthals to have done so without this ability.
Neanderthals Wore Feathers As Ornamentation, Bird Fossil Study Suggests
Artist's impression of a Neanderthal with feathers |
A new analysis of bird bones at Neanderthal sites suggests our extinct human cousins adorned themselves with dark feathers plucked from vultures, jackdaws, eagles and other species. The study is the latest to challenge the notion that symbolic behavior, like creating art and body decorations, was exclusive to modern humans. A team of scientists led by researchers at the Gibraltar Museum examined 1,699 sites across Eurasia for evidence of birds and http://www.livescience.com/22664-most-neanderthals-were-right-handed-like-us.html - Neanderthals living side-by-side. There was a clear association between Neanderthal occupation and the remains of raptor and corvid species, the researchers reported Monday (Sept. 17) in the journal PLoS ONE. The team then looked at 604 bird bones from three different http://www.livescience.com/2879-neanderthals-ate-seals-dolphins.html - Neanderthal sites in Gibraltar (Gorham's Cave, Vanguard Cave and Ibex Cave). Several of the bones showed clear cut-marks made by Neanderthal stone tools, and more than half (337) were wing bones — a finding that the researchers say isn't random. Wing bones are low in meat compared with other parts of the birds, which suggests the Neanderthals weren't collecting these animals for food, but rather intentionally harvesting them for their feathers. "This activity was clearly related to the extraction of the largest, most durable, and arguably most visually striking, elements of a bird's plumage," the researchers wrote. http://www.livescience.com/12938-neanderthals-bird-feathers-symbolic.html - Previous research at another Neanderthal site, Grotta di Fumane in Italy, found peeling and scraping marks on bird bones that would have been useless for food purposes; as such the researchers suggested in their 2011 paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that Neanderthals were using the colorful feathers from various bird species for symbolic reasons, such as wearing them for decoration. The new PLoS ONE study also could shed light on the feather fashion preferences of the Neanderthals. The researchers found a "clear over-representation" of birds with dark feathers in sites where there was evidence of ancient humans. Use of ornaments suggests complex thinking, and the authors of the paper write that their findings assign "unprecedented cognitive abilities to these hominins." | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/neanderthals-feathers-ornamentation-bird-fossil_n_1897509.html?utm_hp_ref=archaeology - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/neanderthals-feathers-ornamentation-bird-fossil_n_1897509.html?utm_hp_ref=archaeology
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 22-Sep-2012 at 19:30
Humans hunted for meat 2 million years ago
Evidence from ancient butchery site in Tanzania shows early man was capable of ambushing herds up to 1.6 million years earlier than previously thought
Ancient humans used complex hunting techniques to ambush and kill antelopes, gazelles, wildebeest and other large animals at least two million years ago. The discovery – made by anthropologist Professor Henry Bunn of Wisconsin University – pushes back the definitive date for the beginning of systematic human hunting by hundreds of thousands of years. Two million years ago, our human ancestors were small-brained apemen and in the past many scientists have assumed the meat they ate had been gathered from animals that had died from natural causes or had been left behind by lions, leopards and other carnivores. But Bunn argues that our apemen ancestors, although primitive and fairly puny, were capable of ambushing herds of large animals after carefully selecting individuals for slaughter. The appearance of this skill so early in our evolutionary past has key implications for the development of human intellect. "We know that humans ate meat two million years ago," said Bunn, who was speaking in Bordeaux at the annual meeting of the http://www.eshe.eu/ - European Society for the study of Human Evolution (ESHE). "What was not clear was the source of that meat. However, we have compared the type of prey killed by lions and leopards today with the type of prey selected by humans in those days. This has shown that men and women could not have been taking kill from other animals or eating those that had died of natural causes. They were selecting and killing what they wanted." That finding has major implications, he added. "Until now the oldest, unambiguous evidence of human hunting has come from a 400,000-year-old site in Germany where horses were clearly being speared and their flesh eaten. We have now pushed that date back to around two million years ago." The hunting instinct of early humans is a controversial subject. In the first half of the 20th century, many scientists argued that our ancestors' urge to hunt and kill drove us to develop spears and axes and to evolve bigger and bigger brains in order to handle these increasingly complex weapons. Extreme violence is in our nature, it was argued by fossil experts such as Raymond Dart and writers like Robert Ardrey, whose book African Genesis on the subject was particularly influential. By the 80s, the idea had run out of favour, and scientists argued that our larger brains evolved mainly to help us co-operate with each other. We developed language and other skills that helped us maintain complex societies. "I don't disagree with this scenario," said Bunn. "But it has led us to downplay the hunting abilities of our early ancestors. People have dismissed them as mere scavengers and I don't think that looks right any more." In his study, Bunn and his colleagues looked at a huge butchery site in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The carcasses of wildebeest, antelopes and gazelles were brought there by ancient humans, most probably members of the species Homo habilis, more than 1.8 million years ago. The meat was then stripped from the animals' bones and eaten......... | http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/23/human-hunting-evolution-2million-years?CMP=twt_fd - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/23/human-hunting-evolution-2million-years?CMP=twt_fd
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 22-Sep-2012 at 20:34
Why humans have evolved so fast
What explains the extraordinarily fast rate of evolution in the human lineage over the past two million years?
A leading human origins researcher has come up with an idea that involves aggression between groups and the boom-bust cycles that have punctuated our spread into new environments.
Prof Ian Tattersall said there were few examples to rival the accelerated evolution that led to our species.
He was speaking at this year's http://www.gibmuseum.gi/Calpe_Home.html - Calpe conference in Gibraltar .
"However you slice it, evolution within this [human family] has been very rapid indeed," Prof Tattersall, from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, told the conference.
"I think it's fair to say that our species Homo sapiens and its antecedents have come much farther, much faster than any other mammalian group that has been documented in this very tight time-frame."
This phenomenon of accelerated evolution is known as "tachytely".
Among our ancestors, brain size doubled between two million and one million years ago. Then it has almost doubled again between one million years and the present day.
Along with the increase in brain size came a reduction in the size of the teeth and face along with other changes in the skull.
The increase in brain size seems to have coincided with a modern physique characterised by a linear shape, long legs and relatively narrow hips. These features can already be seen in the skeleton of the "Turkana boy" from Kenya, who lived about two million years ago.
This contrasts sharply with the short legs and long arms of the Turkana boy's antecedent "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis), who lived in Ethiopia about one million years earlier.
Radical shift
Such fast change is not seen among apes, and while Prof Tattersall acknowledges the importance of the move our ancestors made from a tree-dwelling, to a ground-dwelling existence - something which has not affected our primate cousins - he says it is not enough to explain what is observed.
"Clearly the definitive abandonment of dependence on trees... has to count as one of the most radical shifts in adaptive zone ever made by any vertebrate since the very first tetrapod heaved itself out of water and on to terra firma," he said.
"Under natural conditions, it is very hard to see how the initial invasion of a new ecozone by hominids could have so consistently driven rapid change over the long period of time that we're talking about."
Human culture was probably the special, consistently present ingredient that drove the continuing fast pace of change in our lineage after we left the forests, said Prof Tattersall, but not in the way that some other researchers have proposed.
Certain evolutionary psychologists have popularised a model in which culture and brain complexity spurred each other on to greater heights in humans.
But Prof Tattersall said the way our technology transformed in fits and starts, along with the way these changes were often separated from biological evolution, meant this idea was not as good a fit for what is seen in the archaeological and fossil records.
Aggression between small, distinct human groups in the past is one of the major remaining agents of such changes, he said.
"Inter-group conflict would certainly have placed a premium on such correlates of neural function as planning and throwing," Prof Tattersall explained.......... | http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/why-humans-have-evolved-so-fast.html#.UF5YN7JlTA0 - http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/why-humans-have-evolved-so-fast.html#.UF5YN7JlTA0
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 24-Sep-2012 at 07:52
Tracing the development of play in Scotland
An ideal childhood is generally considered to be a carefree one, full of play. The Scottish Parliament recently heard a call from a campaign group for there to be a legal right to play. But when did the idea of play, as opposed to children just playing, become so important? "I like playing outdoor games lots," says nine-year-old Kate. "And I also like playing imaginary games, just with a few toys or animals or dolls, or something like that. "If you have lots of work and no play, you're going to be very dull and you won't have any fun." But when did an idea of play as being important in itself come to the fore? Professor Robert Davis of Glasgow University says that while children have always played wherever and whenever they are living, there was a real change in thinking towards the end of the 18th Century. "The concept of children's play as being something defining about childhood itself receives far greater attention," he said. "We started to prize childhood in a special way, as a phase in the development of human beings it was vital to protect for the future wellbeing of every individual." These ideas were influential in the embryonic early-education movement, and were famously put into practice in a small settlement in South Lanarkshire. New Lanark may be busy with tourists and a couple of chattering school parties on the day of my visit, but 200 years ago it was a cotton mill and village. It is now a World Heritage Site in recognition of the huge influence it had on ideas about how people should be treated at work and what a decent childhood involved. Under the management of the social pioneer Robert Owen, children were not allowed to work in the mill until they were 10 years old - quite a contrast to what was happening elsewhere in the 19th Century. He believed everyone had the right to education and recreation. Lorna Davidson, the director of the New Lanark Trust, said the regime was much more concerned with children as little human beings rather seeing them as being "like any other machines". She said the forecourt outside The Institute for the Formation of Character had been the world's first playground, and that time was built in for exercising and drilling during the day. "Now if you think that it wasn't until the 1870s that they finally passed legislation to stop young children being used as chimney sweeps, you can see that Robert Owen was around half a century ahead of his time," she says. "He very much recognised the importance of playing out in the fresh air, of children enjoying themselves." The playgrounds of today are of course very different places. For instance, the first sand pits only appeared in the American city of Boston in the 1880s. But does the very idea of separate places for children to play say anything about how, historically, children themselves were viewed, or what kind of mischief they might get up to?......... | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-19699768#?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-19699768#?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 25-Sep-2012 at 06:43
A Neanderthal trove in Madrid
Teams of up to 70 people are working on the digs at the Lozoya River Valley |
The Lozoya River Valley, in the Madrid mountain range of Guadarrama, could easily be called "Neanderthal Valley," says the paleontologist Juan Luis Arsuaga. "It is protected by two strings of mountains, it is rich in fauna, it is a privileged spot from an environmental viewpoint, and it is ideal for the Neanderthal, given that it provided the with good hunting grounds."
This is not just a hypothesis: scientists working on site in Pinilla del Valle, near the reservoir, have already found nine Neanderthal teeth, remains of bonfires and thousands of animal fossils, including some from enormous aurochs (the ancestor of cattle, each the length of two bulls), rhinoceros and fallow deer.
The Neanderthal is a human species that is well known and unknown at the same time. It is well known because numerous vestiges have been found from the time when they lived in Europe, between 200,000 and 30,000 years ago. But it is also unknown because of the many unresolved issues that keep cropping up, including, first and foremost: why did they become extinct just as our current species made an appearance on the continent?
Nobody knows for sure whether the Neanderthal was able to talk, or whether they shared territory with Homo sapiens, or whether both species ignored each other until one - ours - proliferated while the other got lost forever... Scientists in charge of the sites at Pinilla del Valle could make significant contributions to finding the answers to these and other questions about the lives of the Neanderthal people.
"There are around 15 sites in Spain: in the Cantabrian mountain range, along the eastern Mediterranean coast and in Andalusia, but none on the plateau, where there are no limestone formations and no adequate caves to preserve human remains for thousands of years," adds Arsuaga. But Pinilla del Valle is an exception to the rule. "There is limestone here. It was like a cap made of stone under which the Neanderthal presumably took refuge to prepare for the hunt, to craft their tools, to eat... It's not that they lived inside in the sense of a home; they wandered in the fields, and this was probably more like a base camp to take refuge when they needed to."
"The site, which has great potential, extends some 150 meters and we are now working in three areas: the cave of Camino, the refuge of Navalmaillo and the cave of Des-Cubierta, which cover three different time frames," says Enrique Baquedano, director of the Regional Archeology Museum in Madrid.
It was on the floor of Des-Cubierta that the Neanderthal must have placed the dead body of a small child aged two-and-a-half to three years old. They placed two slabs of stone and an aurochs horn on top, and set the body on fire. Baquedano explains that they found some of the child's teeth - they call it a little girl, although they have no scientific evidence of its gender - as well as a piece of coal that turned up just a few days ago and which will enable precise dating. "Complete burials, with a clear structure that allows [researchers] to reconstruct behaviors, is a very rare thing in any part of the world," says Arsuaga, who is also co-director of the excavations at the major prehistoric site of Atapuerca......... | http://networkedblogs.com/CB6u9 - http://networkedblogs.com/CB6u9
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Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 25-Sep-2012 at 09:03
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/08/28/why-humans-give-birth-to-helpless-babies/ - Human babies enter the world utterly dependent on caregivers to tend to their every need. Although newborns of other primate species rely on caregivers, too, human infants are especially helpless because their brains are comparatively underdeveloped. Indeed, by one estimation a human fetus would have to undergo a gestation period of 18 to 21 months instead of the usual nine to be born at a neurological and cognitive development stage comparable to that of a chimpanzee newborn. Anthropologists have long thought that the size of the pelvis has limited human gestation length. New research may challenge that view. The traditional explanation for our nine-month gestation period and helpless newborns is that natural selection favored childbirth at an earlier stage of fetal development to accommodate selection for both large brain size and upright locomotion—defining characteristics of the human lineage. In this view, adaptations to bipedalism restricted the width of the birth canal and, hence, the size of the baby that can pass through it. Human babies are thus born when their brains are less than 30 percent of adult brain size so that they can fit through the narrow passageway. They then continue development outside of the womb, with brain size nearly doubling in the first year. But when Holly M. Dunsworth of the University of Rhode Island and her colleagues tested this so-called obstetrical dilemma hypothesis, their findings did not match its predictions. For example, the hypothesis predicts that because the female pelvis is broader than the male pelvis, walking and running should be more energetically demanding for women than for men. Yet most studies of the energetics and mechanics of locomotion in women and men found no such penalties for having a wider pelvis, the researchers report. Furthermore, the team asserts, to accommodate an infant at a chimplike stage of brain development—that is, a brain that is 40 percent of adult brain size, or 640 cubic centimeters—the pelvic inlet (the top of the birth canal, which is the narrowest part) would only have to expand by three centimeters on average. Some women today have pelvic inlets that wide, and those larger dimensions have no measurable effect on locomotor cost. The researchers argue that instead of fetal brain expansion being constrained by the dimensions of the pelvis, the dimensions of the human pelvis have evolved to accommodate babies, and some other factor has kept newborn size in check. That other factor, they contend, is mom’s metabolic rate. “Gestation places a heavy metabolic burden (measured in calories consumed) on the mother,” Dunsworth and her co-authors explain. Data from a wide range of mammals suggest that there is a limit to how large and energetically expensive a fetus can grow before it has to check out of the womb. Once outside of the womb, the baby’s growth slows down to a more sustainable rate for the mother. Building on an idea previously put forth by study co-author Peter T. Ellison of Harvard University known as the metabolic crossover hypothesis, the team proposes that “energetic constraints of both mother and fetus are the primary determinants of gestation length and fetal growth in humans and across mammals.” By nine months or so, the metabolic demands of a human fetus threaten to exceed the mother’s ability to meet both the baby’s energy requirements and her own, so she delivers the baby......... | | http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/08/28/why-humans-give-birth-to-helpless-babies/ - http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/08/28/why-humans-give-birth-to-helpless-babies/
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