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Don Quixote View Drop Down
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Anthropology news updates
    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


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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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post 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

I'd love to find if there is some connection between the Denisovans and the Red Deer Cave people.

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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Mar-2012 at 13:54
That's a very interesting info, Arab, thank you for posting itSmile. 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.

The highly unusual mix of archaic and modern features raises the possibility they represent a new species of human. Photo: Peter Schouten




Edited by Don Quixote - 14-Mar-2012 at 14:13
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  Quote Arab Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post 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

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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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Mar-2012 at 17:40
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


Edited by Don Quixote - 13-Mar-2012 at 17:41
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