Oldowan behavior and raw material transport: perspectives from the Kanjera Formation
by thomas plummer, Laura Bishop, and David Braun
The archaeological record of Oldowan hominins represents a diverse behavioral system. It has been suggested that exploitation of lithic resources by Oldowan hominins was simplistic and represented mostly use of local sources of stone. Here we investigate the raw material selection and transport behaviors of Oldowan hominins reflected in the stone artifact assemblages from the Kanjera South Formation, South Rachuonyo District, Kenya. Using geochemical methods (ED-XRF) artifacts are linked to primary and secondary source outcrops throughout southwestern Kenya. These data show that...
DownloadBookmark Sonja Conference: Entangled Worlds. Network analysis and complexity theory in historical and archaeological research
by Sonja Dünnebeil, Stefan Eichert, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, and Mapping Medieval Conflict
Entangled Worlds. Network analysis and complexity theory in historical and archaeological research International Conference, April 13th-15th 2016 (Vienna) Venue: Institute for Medieval Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Wohllebengasse 12-14, 1040 Vienna Organisers: Institute for Medieval Research (IMAFO), Austrian Academy of Sciences (project MEDCON) - Austrian Archaeological Institute (OeAI) Outline: While the term “network” has been used abundantly in historical and archaeological research in the last years, the actual number of studies taking into account the methodology...
DownloadBookmark László 1999 (with co-authors). Kompolt-Kistér: újkőkori telep. Újkőkori, bronzkori, szarmata és avar lelőhely. Leletmentő ásatás az M3 nyomvonalán (A Neolithic, Bronze age, Sarmatian and Avar site. Rescue excavation at the M3 motorway). Eger.
by László Bartosiewicz and Eszter Banffy
The 73 Neolithic features excavated at Kompolt 14, North Eastern Hungary, suggest the presence of a settlement that had significant dimensions. This is especially so, if on the basis of the settlement's layout one presumes that the path of the planned motorway probably runs along the edge of the prehistoric village, i. e. the centre of this settlement probably lay to the south. The features were arranged along an empty space, probably a road. Eight Neolithic graves, with red ochre and spondylus jewellery (beads and also a pendant) were also found. The assemblage at Kompolt 14 shed light of...
DownloadBookmark Barbara Relational Networks and Religious Sodalities at Catalhoyuk
by Barbara J Mills
DownloadBookmark Aren Frumin, S., Maeir, A.M., Horwitz, L.K. and Weiss, E. 2015. Studying Ancient Anthropogenic Impacts on Current Floral Biodiversity in the Southern Levant as reflected by the Philistine Migration. Scientific Reports 5:13308 | DOI: 10.1038/srep13308
by Aren Maeir, Suembikya (Sue) Frumin, Ehud Weiss, and Liora Kolska Horwitz
In this study it is demonstrated that with the appearance of the Philistine culture in Canaan, not only did new species of plants appear, species which originate in different parts of the eastern Mediterranean, but new modes of utilization of various plants species already existing in the Levant can be seen. This not only strengthens previous evidence of the multiple origins of the Philistine migrants, but also shows that the Philistine culture had new and different food patterns and agrarian traditions. In addition, it demonstrates the applicability of an “invasion biology” perspective in...
DownloadBookmark Aren Studying Ancient Anthropogenic Impacts on Current Floral Biodiversity in the Southern Levant as reflected by the Philistine Migration
by Aren Maeir, Suembikya (Sue) Frumin, and Ehud Weiss
Human migrations across geographic boundaries can facilitate the introduction of new husbandry practices and dispersal of plants and animals, resulting in changes in biodiversity. As previously demonstrated, the 12th century BC Philistine migration – to the southern Levantine littoral, involved the transportation of pigs from Europe, engendering long term genetic displacement of local Near Eastern haplotypes. Building on this, and combining biogeographical methods of Floral List comparisons with archaeological data, we have elucidated the Philistine impact on Southern Levantine floral...
DownloadBookmark Enrico R. An ABC of Lithic Arrowheads
by Enrico R. Crema, Stephen Shennan, and Kevan Edinborough
If archaeology is to take a leading role in the social sciences, new theoretical and methodological advances emerging from the natural sciences cannot be ignored. This requires considerable retooling for archaeology as a discipline at a population scale of analysis. Such an approach is not easy to carry through, especially owing to historically contingent regional traditions; however, the knowledge gained by directly addressing these problems head-on is well worth the effort. This paper shows how population level processes driving cultural evolution can be better understood if mathematical...
DownloadBookmark Avraham Faust, A., 2009, Review of Rudolph Cohen and Hannah Bernick-Greenberg, Excavations at Kadesh Barnea (Tell el-Qudeirat) 1976-1982, Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2007, American Journal of Archaeology 113.2 (on-line publication)
by Avraham Faust
Review of Rudolph Cohen and Hannah Bernick-Greenberg, Excavations at Kadesh Barnea (Tell el-Qudeirat) 1976-1982, Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2007,
DownloadBookmark Konstantinos The King's Household, Royal Gifts and the International Trade in the Amarna Age
by Konstantinos Kopanias
The Amarna Letters seem quite puzzling to the modern reader, because they refer mostly to private affairs of the kings, while matters of diplomacy and trade are discussed only very briefly or not at all, as if the kings were not interested in the foreign policy of their states. In this paper it is argued that this was just a façade, designed to keep up the pretext that the countries of the Great Kings were self-sufficient from the military and economic point of view; economic and diplomatic requests needed to be made in a way that none of the involved parties would ‘loose face’. The...
DownloadBookmark Cagan A Birder's Guide to Turkey
by Cagan Sekercioglu
At the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, Turkey has tremendous biological (not to mention cultural and historical) wealth that is often underappreciated. This is a combination of three of world’s 37 major plant zones meeting in Turkey and various mountain ranges further dividing the country into a diversity of biomes. These range from temperate rainforest along the Black Sea, where tea, hazelnuts and oranges are grown and Caucasian Grouse and Caspian Snowcocks thrive under the protective shadow of Caucasus mountains, to sub-desert scrub in the southeast where Nile monitors and striped...
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Coastal foraging : Burmese macaques use stone tools to open oysters, chimps use stones to break mongongo nuts
63001intertidal stone use in Mac.fascicularis
Marine prey processed with stone tools by Burmese long-tailed macaques Michael D Gumert 2012 AJPA 149:447-457
Mac.fascicularis feed opportunistically in many habitats. The Burmese subspecies M.f.aurea inhabits coastal areas in SW-Thailand & Myanmar, some of their populations have adapted lithic customs for processing encased foods in inter-tidal habitats.
We investigated their diet in Laemson Nat.Park (Thailand), we identified the variety of foods they processed with stones. 36 shore surveys studied tool sites following feeding activity: we counted the minimum nr of individual (MNI) food items found at each site.
We identified 47 food spp (43 animals, 4 plants) from 37 genera. We counted 1991 food items during surveys: - 1924 were mollusks, - the 67 others mostly crustaceans & nuts.
The 2 most common foods composed 80 % of our sample: - 1062 rock oysters Saccostrea cucullata & - 538 nerite snails Nerita spp.
Macaques selected a wide variety of foods, but heavily concentrated on those that were - abundant, - easy to access & - sufficiently sized.
Their stone-processed diet (which focuses on intertidal marine prey) differs from Sapajus & Pan, who use stones primarily for encased nuts & fruits. In terms of diversity of foods exploited, coastal stone-based predation by macaques resembles the diet of coastal-foraging humans H.s.sapiens.
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Central Europe Violence 7ka lower limbs, torture(post-deluge 7.7ka)
The massacre mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten reveals new insights into collective violence in Early Neolithic Central Europe Christian Meyer cs 2015 PNAS doi 10.1073/pnas.1504365112
The Early Neolithic massacre-related mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten presented here provides new data & insights for the discussions of prehistoric warfare in C-Europe. Although several characteristics gleaned from the analysis of the human skeletal remains support & strengthen previous hypotheses based on the few known massacre sites of this time, a pattern of intentional mutilation of violence victims identified here is of special significance. Adding another key site to the evidence for Early Neolithic warfare generally allows more robust & reliable reconstructions of the possible reasons for the extent & frequency of outbreaks of lethal mass violence, and the general impact these events had on shaping the further development of the C-European Neolithic.
Conflict & warfare are central, but also disputed themes in discussions about the European Neolithic. Although a few recent population studies provide broad overviews, only a very limited number of currently known key sites provide precise insights into moments of extreme & mass violence & their impact on Neolithic societies. The massacre sites of Talheim (Germany) & Asparn/Schletz (Austria) have long been the focal points around which hypotheses concerning a final lethal crisis of the first C-European farmers of the Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik Culture (LBK) have concentrated.
With the recently examined LBK mass grave site of Schöneck-Kilianstädten, we present new conclusive & indisputable evidence for another massacre, adding new data to the discussion of LBK violence patterns. At least 26 individuals were violently killed by blunt force & arrow injuries, before being deposited in a commingled mass grave. Although the absence & possible abduction of younger females has been suggested for other sites previously, a new violence-related pattern was identified here: the intentional & systematic breaking of lower limbs. The abundance of the identified peri-mortem fractures clearly indicates torture or mutilation of the victims. This new evidence for unequivocal lethal violence on a large scale is put into perspective for the Early Neolithic of C-Europe. In conjunction with previous results, it indicates that massacres of entire communities were not isolated occurrences, but rather were frequent features of the last phases of the LBK.
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Evidence of massacre found in Neolithic Germany 18.8.15
Violent conflicts in Neolithic Europe were held more brutally than has been known so far. A recent anthropological analysis of the 7-ka mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten (PNAS) shows that victims were murdered & deliberately mutilated.
It was during the time when Europeans first began to farm. To what degree conflicts & wars featured in the early Neolithic (5600-4900 BC), esp.in the Linear Pottery culture (Linearbandkeramik LBK) is a disputed theme. Were social tensions responsible for the termination of this era? So far, 2 mass graves from this period were known to stem from armed conflicts: - Talheim Germany, - Asparn/Schletz Austria.
Researchers now report new findings after analyzing the human remains of the mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten, a massacre site discovered in 2006: the prehistoric attackers used unprecedented violence against their victims. The team examined & analyzed the bones and skeletons of at least 26, mainly male, adults & children: most exhibited severe injuries.
Torture & mutilation
Besides various types of (bone) injuries caused by arrows, they also found many cases of massive damage to the head, face & teeth, some inflicted on the victims shorty before or after their death. The attackers systematically broke their victims' legs, pointing to torture & deliberate mutilation. Only few female remains were found: women were not actively involved in the fighting, and were possibly abducted by the attackers.
The authors presume that such massacres were not isolated occurrences, but represented frequent features of the early Central European Neolithic. The Neolithic massacre sites examined so far are all located in some distance to each other, this further underlines this conclusion. The goal of this massive & systematic violence may have been the annihilation of entire communities.
Human body shape/size change since 430,000 yrs ago
Study reveals four stages of human body evolution. 31.8.15
Research into 430-ka fossils in N-Spain found that the evolution of the human body's size & shape has gone through 4 main stages. Arsuaga, Quam cs (2015 PNAS) studied the body size & shape in the human fossil collection from Sima de los Huesos, Sierra de Atapuerca. This site (c 430 ka) preserves the largest collection of human fossils found to date anywhere in the world.
They found that the Atapuerca individuals were rel.tall, with wide muscular bodies & less brain mass rel.to body mass compared to Neanderthals. The Atapuerca humans shared many anatomical features with the later Hn not present in Hs, and analysis of their post-crania indicated that they are closely related evolutionarily to Hn. Rolf Quam: "... it suggests that the evolutionary process in our genus is largely characterized by stasis (i.e. little to no evolutionary change) in body form for most of our evolutionary history."
Comparison of the Atapuerca fossils with the rest of the human fossil record suggests that the evolution of the human body has gone through 4 main stages, depending on the degree of arboreality (living in the trees) & bipedalism (walking on two legs). The Atapuerca fossils represent the 3rd stage: tall, wide & robust bodies & an exclusively terrestrial bipedalism, with no evidence of arboreal behaviors. This same body form was likely shared with earlier members of our genus (e.g. H.erectus) & some later members (e.g. Hn). Thus, this body form seems to have been present in the genus Homo for over a million years.
It was not until the appearance of Hs, when a new taller, lighter & narrower body form emerged. Thus, Quam cs suggest that the Atapuerca humans offer the best look at the general human body shape & size during the last million years before the advent of Hs.
Schoningen Germany - ancient spears 300ka found at ancient lake (later bog) - possible "hunting or caching on lake-ice". [use of ice to store foods?] (horse fossils with spears) [This area is far north of the 40ka lion/ess figurine at Ulm]
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The depositional environments of Schöningen 13 II-4 and their archaeological implications Mareike C Stahlschmidt, Christopher E Miller, Bertrand Ligouis, Paul Goldberg, Francesco Berna, Brigitte Urban & Nicholas J Conard 2015 JHE doi 10.1016/j.jhevol.2015.07.008 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2015.07.008> <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2015.07.008>Get>
Geo-archaeological research at the Mid-Pleistocene site of Schöningen 13 II-4 ("Speerhorizont") has focused on describing & evaluating the depositional contexts of the well-known wooden spears, butchered horses & stone tools. These finds were recovered from the transitional contact between a lacustrine marl & an overlying organic mud.
It was originally thought to be a peat that accumulated in place under variable moisture conditions: the original excavators proposed - that hominin activity (incl. hunting & butchery) occurred on a dry lake-shore, - that this was followed by a rapid sedimentation of organic deposits that embedded & preserved the artifacts.
Our geo-archaeological analysis challenges this model: we present evidence that these sediments were deposited in a constantly submerged area of a palaeo-lake. We cannot exclude the possibility that the artifacts were deposited during a short, extreme drying event, but there are no sedimentary features indicative of surface exposure in the sediments.
Accordingly, this paper explores 3 main alternative models of site formation: - anthropogenic disposal of materials into the lake, - a geological relocation of the artifacts, - hunting or caching on lake-ice.
These models have different behavioral ramifications concerning hominin knowledge & exploitation of the landscape & their subsistence strategies.
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I think the oldest deep-keeled sailboats were invented at the Seas of Armenia (Lake Van, Lake Sevan & Lake Urmia)
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"Until recently it was thought they bypassed New Guinea and just migrated via outlying islands but [this find] suggests the Austronesian-speaking peoples developed ties with people living in the New Guinea Highlands on their way from South-East Asia to colonise remote Oceania," Gaffney says.
The Lapita people left Southeast Asia and entered the Western Pacific 4000-3000 years ago. About 300 years later they started heading east to become the first people to settle on the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, moving later to Samoa and Tonga.
Evidence of their settlement is found in the remains of intricately patterned pottery used for rituals.
Gaffney says the study, published today in PLOS One, is based on analysis of a number of pottery sherds excavated from Wanelek in the Kaironk River valley, in the New Guinea Highlands in the 1970s.
The research team returned to the excavation site recently and, using carbon dating technology, were able to date the site of the find to around 3000 years ago. Chemical analysis of the clay and temper on the pottery also revealed its manufacturing origin.
Gaffney says three technological factors - manual tempering, red slip, and paddle and anvil technique - found on the samples were indicative of Austronesian manufacture.
Eleven of the 12 pottery fragments analysed were made from materials found in inland New Guinea and then "traded up" into the Highlands. However one piece was manufactured along the northeast coast of New Guinea.
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Environmental significance of Upper Miocene phosphorites at hominid sites in the Lukeino Formation (Tugen Hills, Kenya) Sedimentary Geology 327:43-54 doi 10.1016/j.sedgeo.2015.07.005 Perrine Dericquebourg, Alain Person, Loïc Ségalen, Martin Pickford, Brigitte Senut & Nathalie Fagel 2015
The Lukeino Fm contains an important sedimentary & fossiliferous record of the late Miocene (6.095.68 Ma), it has yielded the fossil remains of the oldest E.African bipedal hominid, Orrorin tugenensis.
This fluvio-lacustrine sedimentary succession crops out in the Kenyan part of the E.African Rift. It is mainly composed of clay to sandy clay deposits, intercalated with volcanic ash horizons, and localized layers of carbonates & diatomites. A detailed sedimentological & mineralogical study of the Lukeino Fm was conducted, to throw light on the hominids' environmental conditions.
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"So long as our relationship is defined by our differences,
we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace".
US President, Barack Hussein Obama Jr.
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பன்றி (Tamil) panra = pig
NOT found in Kurukh dictionary. Both Oroan-Kurukh and Tamil are (supposedly) Dravidian languages. So what is the word for pig in Kurukh? I still haven't found it in the Kurukh-English dictionary.
I did find a reference to modern Kurukh farmwomen having domestic pigs, which I consider separate from the ancient Oroan-Kurukh Wild Boar totem, in paralell to the (speculated) Hindu Cow totem.
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[3gb = wagy, a festival of Egypt, possibly linked to Ijebu/Jebus/Egypt?] - - -
"The Wagy festival was not celebrated at Giza (you're undoubtedly thinking of Abydos.) The Wagy festival honored the deceased ancestors and, like the flood, it arrived at each village. They didn't have to go anywhere to experience it."
> "Inundation" was simply a colloquial term that was > used to describe an immersion through rising water > whereas "3gb" was a scientific term that applied > to a specific cause of inundation
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Correction:
பன்றி (Tamil) panri = pig
NOT found in Kurukh dictionary. Both Oroan-Kurukh and Tamil are (supposedly) Dravidian languages. So what is the word for pig in Kurukh? I still haven't found it in the Kurukh-English dictionary.
Tamil: pig 1. பன்றி [paṉṟi] [sounds like pond-ri or possibly pan-tli] 2. கசடு [kacaṭu] [sounds like casa-deu]
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in Hindi, pig is suara (may link to soo-ey, since in Tamil B'uey is a call to a pig)
LONDON—In a remarkable technical feat, researchers have sequenced DNA from fossils in Spain that are about 300,000 to 400,000 years old and have found an ancestor—or close relative—of Neandertals. The nuclear DNA, which is the oldest ever sequenced from a member of the human family, may push back the date for the origins of the distinct ancestors of Neandertals and modern humans, according to a presentation here yesterday at the fifth annual meeting of the European Society for the study of human evolution.
Ever since researchers first discovered thousands of bones and teeth from 28 individuals in the mid-1990s from Sima de los Huesos (“pit of bones”), a cave in the Atapuerca Mountains of Spain, they had noted that the fossils looked a lot like primitive Neandertals. The Sima people, who lived before Neandertals, were thought to have emerged in Europe. Yet their teeth, jaws, and large nasal cavities were among the traits that closely resembled those of Neandertals, according to a team led by paleontologist Juan-Luis Arsuaga of the Complutense University of Madrid. As a result, his team classified the fossils as members of Homo heidelbergensis, a species that lived about 600,000 to 250,000 years ago in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Many researchers have thought H. heidelbergensis gave rise to Neandertals and perhaps also to our species, H. sapiens, in the past 400,000 years or so.
But in 2013, the Sima fossils’ identity suddenly became complicated when a study of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from one of the bones revealed that it did not resemble that of a Neandertal. Instead, it more closely matched the mtDNA of a Denisovan, an elusive type of extinct human discovered when its DNA was sequenced from a finger bone from Denisova Cave in Siberia. That finding was puzzling, prompting researchers to speculate that perhaps the Sima fossils had interbred with very early Denisovans or that the “Denisovan” mtDNA was the signature of an even more ancient hominin lineage, such as H. erectus. At the time, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who had obtained the mtDNA announced that they would try to sequence the nuclear DNA of the fossils to solve the mystery.
After 2 years of intense effort, paleogeneticist Matthias Meyer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has finally sequenced enough nuclear DNA from fossils of a tooth and a leg bone from the pit to solve the mystery. The task was especially challenging because the ancient DNA was degraded to short fragments, made up of as few as 25 to 40 single nucleotides. (Nucleotides—also known as base pairs—are the building blocks of DNA.) Although he and his colleagues did not sequence the entire genomes of the fossils, Meyer reported at the meeting that they did get 1 million to 2 million base pairs of ancient nuclear DNA.
They scanned this DNA for unique markers found only in Neandertals or Denisovans or modern humans, and found that the two Sima fossils shared far more alleles—different nucleotides at the same address in the genome—with Neandertals than Denisovans or modern humans. “Indeed, the Sima de los Huesos specimens are early Neandertals or related to early Neandertals,” suggesting that the split of Denisovans and Neandertals should be moved back in time, Meyer reported at the meeting.
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Denisovans had more genetic variation than all Neanderthals put together. - - -
"Now a new report by the news site of journal Science states that analysis on the Denisovan finger bone and molars as well as cave material shows these little-known ancient people 'occupied the cave surprisingly early and came back repeatedly'.
The young female 'lived at least 50,000 years ago and that two other Denisovan individuals died in the cave at least 110,000 years ago and perhaps as early as 170,000 years ago'.
This showed that 'the Denisovan inhabitants in that one cave were not closely related. They had more genetic variation among them than all the Neanderthals so far sequenced, although Neanderthals are known to be similar genetically'.
The team sequenced 'their entire mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genomes and placed them on a family tree. Then they counted the number of mtDNA differences between individuals and used the modern human mutation rate to estimate how long it might have taken those mutations to appear. They concluded that the girl with the pinky finger was in the cave roughly 65,000 years after the oldest Denisovan, who was there at least 110,000 years ago and possibly earlier'.
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Giant virus found in 30ka Siberian squirrel's nest
The saga of giant viruses (i.e. visible by light microscopy) started in 2003 with the discovery of Mimivirus. Two additional types of giant viruses infecting Acanthamoeba have been discovered since: the Pandoraviruses (2013) and Pithovirus sibericum (2014), the latter one revived from 30,000-y-old Siberian permafrost. We now describe Mollivirus sibericum, a fourth type of giant virus isolated from the same permafrost sample. These four types of giant virus exhibit different virion structures, sizes (0.6–1.5 µm), genome length (0.6–2.8 Mb), and replication cycles. Their origin and mode of evolution are the subject of conflicting hypotheses. The fact that two different viruses could be easily revived from prehistoric permafrost should be of concern in a context of global warming Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Ochre as skin UV protection or camouflage?
Evaluating the Photoprotective Effects of Ochre on Human Skin by In Vivo SPF Assessment: Implications for Human Evolution, Adaptation and Dispersal Riaan F Rifkin ... Francesco d'Errico 2015 PLoS doi 10.1371/journal.pone.0136090
Archaeological indicators of cognitively-modern behaviour become increasingly prevalent during the African Middle Stone Age (MSA). The exploitation of ochre is viewed as a key feature of the emergence of modern human behaviour, but the uses to which ochre & ochre-based mixtures were put remain ambiguous.
Here we explore the efficacy of ochre as a topical photo-protective compound, through the in vivo calculation of the sun protection factor (SPF) values of ochre samples, obtained from Ovahimba women (Kunene Region, N-Namibia) & the Palaeozoic Bokkeveld Group deposits of the Cape Supergroup (W-Cape, SA). We characterise ochre samples, using - visible spectroscopy, - energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (ED-XRF), - X-ray diffraction (XRD) & - granulometric analyses.
We confirmed the capacity of ochre to inhibit the susceptibility of humans to the harmful effects of exposure to UV radiation, we identified the mechanisms implicated in the efficacy of ochre as a sun-screen.
Did the habitual application of ochre represent a crucial innovation for MSA humans, by limiting the adverse effects of UV exposure? Did this facilitate the colonisation of geographic regions largely unfavourable to the constitutive skin colour of newly arriving populations?
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Basically a portable religious manuscript, the more than 4,000-year-old roll, contains depictions of divine and supernatural beings which predate the famous drawings found in the Book of the Dead manuscripts and the so-called Netherworld Books from the New Kingdom onwards (1550 B.C. onwards).
Religious spells, formulated in the first person singular, also abound there.
“They were likely recited by a priest,” Sherbiny said.
It is known that priests used to carry leather rolls to reference while reciting sacred texts during religious rituals. - - -
The first Egyptian to obtain his PhD in Egyptology in 2008 from the Leuven University in Belgium, Sherbiny specializes in the ancient Egyptian religious texts and is preparing the full publication of the unique leather roll.
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The Akhbār al-zamān is a treasury of medieval lore about the world before the Flood and the wonder of Egypt before and after the Deluge. This text has long been considered the earliest extant account of these myths, but its exact origins and provenance are unknown. Based on internal evidence and the dates when manuscripts were copied, it appears that the text was composed no earlier than 904 CE and no later than 1140, though it is clearly based on much older sources, including the work of Abu Ma‘shar, dating to 840-860 CE, and Christian chronographic material, likely the chronography of Anianus, dating back to Late Antiquity. Its author is unknown. Tradition, and one manuscript, attribute it to al-Masʿūdī (c. 896-956 CE), who wrote a thirty-volume encyclopedia with the same title. Close similarities in language, and an ascription on a 1211 CE manuscript now in St. Petersburg, suggest that the author might have been the mysterious figure known as Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah, a presumed twelfth century writer. The question of the true author remains open.
This valuable book of lore is the earliest surviving form of stories better known to the West from their appearance in Murtada ibn al-‘Afif’s thirteenth century Prodigies of Egypt and al-Maqrizi’s fifteenth century Al-Khitat. I have made the following translation from the French edition of Baron Carra de Vaux, published in 1898 as L’abrégé des merveilles. I have tried to be as literal as possible. Words and phrases in parentheses are explanatory notes, adapted from those of Carra de Vaux. Material in square brackets are lines that do not appear in all four of the manuscripts Carra de Vaux used in preparing his text. Bracketed lines marked as variant are alternative readings to the preceding sentence appearing in a single manuscript.
In the name of God, clement and merciful, Abu al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Hodali al-Masʿūdī said:
We begin by giving glory to God by thanking him for his blessings, by invoking his blessings on all his prophets and all his angels, especially on our Lord and Prophet Muhammad and on his wives and his companions. We will present what we know of the secrets of nature and the different types of creatures, limiting ourselves to what relates to our design. We will append the traditions concerning the kings of the earth, the wonders they made, and the description of the different wonders that the different countries contain, magical instruments, talismans, temples, laws, countries, and inscriptions on stones. We will discuss all the things which have been reported. We will also discuss what is known about the ancient laws and pagan doctrines, as well as what was transmitted by the sages of old. May God be our guide!
I have titled my book: The Book of the History of Time and That Which Was Destroyed by Revolutions, the Wonders of the Countries, of the Seas, and of the Lands. I therefore say:
God, whose glory is great and whose names are holy, has created without need; he made his creatures grow without his need for them, but he created them only so that they might serve him and glorify him, that they might thank him for his blessings. That is why he said: “I created the djinn and mankind only that they might serve me. I did not need them to feed me” (Quran 60:56-57). For God himself is the sustenance of all things, and all power comes from him. His creation does not grow by even the weight of an atom, nor does their loss reduce its grandeur by even a hair. It is unchanging: it does not generate power, and its power is diminished neither by the days, nor by night. He endowed his creatures with hearing, sight, intelligence, so that by these faculties they might know the true and the false, the useful and the harmful. He gave them the earth as an expanse that they might walk therein by spacious roads (Quran 71:19-29), and the sky as a solidly built roof (Quran 21:32); He has sent down from heaven the clouds, which pour out rain and fertility. He set the course of the moon in the night and that of the sun during the day, so that they in turn serve a useful function; he gave them the night as a rest (Quran 6:96) and the day as a time for action (Quran 78:11). He made the sign of the night and made the sign of the day; both were established to enable people to know the times (Quran 17:12) of their different obligations, prayer, almsgiving, fasting, pilgrimage, and so they can calculate the years and the maturities of their debts. God the Almighty said: “They ask you about the new moons. Answer them that they are used to measure the time for men and to regulate the pilgrimage” (Quran 2:189). He also said: “It is God who placed the sun as a torch and the moon as a light, and measured their houses to calculate years and time. He has created these things in view of justice” (Quran 10:5).
Sa‘id bin Jubayr narrated from Ibn ‘Abbas this tradition: The world lasts for one week of the other world; and these weeks are comprised of days of a thousand years. Six thousand years and many hundreds of years more have already passed. There are still a few hundred years to come. — Nāfi‘ told from the son of Omar: “I heard the Prophet of God say ‘You have come through the report of past nations as in the space of time between the prayer of ‘aṣr and sunset.’” — Abu Hureyrah said: “The Prophet of God said: ‘My mission and the time of the end of the world are like these two fingers,’ and he pointed to the index and middle finger.” — A tradition taken from Sahl ibn Sa’d al-Sa’idi holds that the Prophet of God said, “Time and I, we are like two racehorses struggling near the end of the race.”
According to Ibn ‘Abbas, the Prophet would have said: “The first creature of God is the Qalam (reed pen); He created it from light. Its length is five hundred years of operation.” He then created the preserved tablet, from a white pearl, and it gave it an edge of red hyacinth. Its width equals the distance between heaven and earth. He created them before creatures, before heaven, and before earth. He told the Qalam, “Write.” The Qalam replied, “What shall I write?” He said, “Write everything I know of creation until the day of resurrection.” Then the Qalam inscribed on the tablet all that had to happen until the day of resurrection, and all that was in the knowledge of God. God Almighty looks at this tablet three hundred and sixty times each day, and then he creates, he develops, he gives life, and he causes death; he performs everything he wishes to do and he executes all he has decided.
The Prophet was asked, “Where was God before our master created humanity, heaven, and the earth?” He said that he had been in a cloud, having only air above him and air below him. He then created his tabernacle on the water. — We asked Ibn ‘Abbas: “What does the water sit upon?” He replied: “On the back of the wind; and when the Creator wished to produce the creatures, he gave to the wind power over the water, and the water swelled in waves, splashed with foam, and sent vapor over itself. And these vapors remained high above the water, and God called this heaven. The foam solidified and became land. The earth was placed on a fish [and fish on a bull].”
This is discussed in the book of God, where it says: “N...” [There is a lacuna in the text, which likely referenced Quran 68:1: “Nun. By the Qalam and what is written thereby.”] The Qalam and that which was written thereby place the fish in the water and the water upon on a rock and the rock on the back of the wind. The earth shook, and God ordered the waves to rise above it in steep mountains, and the waves arrested themselves in this position and remained stable. This is what the Almighty says: He has been established firm places on earth. “We have established,” he said, “on earth, solid mountains, that they might they secure your home” (Quran 16:15).
Ibn ‘Abbas reported that the Jews came to the Prophet and asked about the origin of the world. He answered them that God created the earth on Sunday and Monday. He created the mountains along with that which they contain on Tuesday. He created the water, trees, towns, and fertile fields on Wednesday. Such is his word: “Do not disbelieve him who created the Earth in two days,” up to the words “also to all those who ask” (Quran 41:9-10). On Thursday, he created the sky, the planets, the fixed stars, and the angels. On Friday, he created heaven and the fires of hell, and Adam, on whom may there be salvation. “And after?” asked the Jews. After that, Muhammad said he stood balanced on his throne (Quran 7:54). The Jews answered, “You would have spoken well if you had finished by saying: ‘And then he rested.’” The Prophet of God was very angry with this remark, and he received revelation of this verse: “We created the heavens and the earth and what is between them in six days, and we have not felt fatigue. Be patient over what they say” (Quran 50:38-39).
We read in a tradition of Asad ibn Musa that God Almighty commanded the skies to rise and they rose; he ordered the earth to spread and to descend as it spread; God spread it around the location of the holy house. — The Prophet said: “The world is hollow and pushed back; if it were not so, the sun and moon would burn the earth and everything on it. In between one heaven and the next heaven there is a space of five hundred years of walking, and between the seventh heaven and the throne, a space of one thousand years.”
The Prophet says of God: “He is the first, and there is nothing before him; and the last, and there is nothing after him.” — Zorarah ibn Abu Aufa reports that the Prophet said: “I asked Jibril (the angel Gabriel): ‘Have you ever seen your Lord?’ Jibril was confused and said, ‘O, Muhammad, between me and him there are seventy thousand veils of light. If I approached one of those veils, I would be burned.’”
After God decided to create Adam, he ordered Jibril to descend onto the earth and take up a handful of the earth, with which he would create man. But the earth said to Jibril: “I beg you in the name of God not take anything from me.” And Jibril returned to God, saying, “The earth implored me in your name.” God sent Israfil, who returned with the same message. Then he sent the angel of death, and the earth still implored him in the name of God; but the Angel of Death answered: “I come by order of my Lord, and I beg you not to allow me to return to him without executing his command.”
Many traditionalists say that God first infused the spirit into Adam in the head and eyes, before infusing it in the rest of the body. Adam, before seeing the fruits of paradise, wished to move to reach them, before the spirit had started his legs, so he could not. That is why God said, “Man is overly hasty” (Quran 17:11).
When Adam was created, the angels were amazed at him, and God ordered them all to bow down before him. They bowed in obedience, except for Iblis (the devil), who was filled with pride and became animated by a spirit of hatred and revolt. [“I am better than him,” he said to God, “for you created me from fire whereas you created him from mud.”] God became irritated with Iblis, the accursed: this was the cause of his fall to the earth, [and he became evil].
The ancient sages say that God gathered the stars in Aries. He gave them the Sun for a king; Mercury assumed the place of secretary; Jupiter was the judge; Mars, the guardian who carries weapons; the Moon was the treasurer; Venus, the wife, and Saturn, the counselor. The nodes (i.e. the points where the ecliptic crosses the equator) were employed in the operation of the celestial sphere.
The ancients reported that there were on earth twenty-eight races of creatures endowed with spiritual powers and strength, corresponding to the twenty-eight houses (of the moon). They believed that past nations were under the direction of the fixed stars. There are one thousand and twenty fixed stars, each of which runs through the zodiac over thirty-six thousand years. It is they who produce all operations and direct all world affairs.
Some traditionalists say God created the celestial spheres out of sea water and after the water had been inflated, it solidified. The spheres are seven in number; on top of them is placed the Inhabited House; this house has three hundred and sixty doors, each of which opens onto a degree of the sphere. All blessings and all graces flow from these open doors onto the signs (of the zodiac), and those are the stars which transmit them to the Earth. — The traditionalists further say: God created a substance that fills his kingdom and is called the mind. Above are the veils, and above all this is placed the throne. That is why God said, “He has expanded his throne above the heavens and the earth.” The throne and everything in it are themselves placed in the tabernacle; the tabernacle and everything in it are contained in the knowledge of God.
The highest of the seven wandering stars is Saturn. Below it, Jupiter is placed, followed in order by Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. — Several among the ancient sages believed that the stars were angels, each having a share in the administration of the world. This is why they glorified them and worshiped them.
Some think that the higher creatures, which are the angels, are divided into twelve classes corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac, and that God’s commands are transmitted from one class to another. God gave these angels their strength and various faculties. Some may assume a figure so colossal that it would fill the earth; others may assume one so small it would pass through the eye of a needle; they penetrate into the depths of the earth, in the seas, in the mountains, and no one can stop them. There are angels which have wings in pairs of two, three, or four; it is of them that God says, “They travel in a flash to the ends of the earth.” There are some that are made of light; others are azure like the flame, and still others are resplendent. Some angels are carriers of the grace of God, while others function as guards and supervisors; these originate from water vapor; they have lovely faces, but dark in color. They are occupied solely in the service of God, and they have various forms to infinity.
Physicists teach that, after the creation of the spheres, the spheres played the role of the body in relation to the stars, and the stars played the role of spirits relative to the spheres.
Hermes said: “After creating the signs of the Zodiac, God divided time among them. He gave to Aries the presiding role for twelve thousand years; Taurus assumed it for eleven thousand years; Gemini assumed it for ten thousand years, [nine thousand to Cancer], eight thousand to the Lion, seven thousand to the Virgin, six thousand to Libra, five thousand to Scorpio, four thousand to Sagittarius, three thousand to Capricorn, two thousand to Aquarius, and one thousand to Pisces. The full tour of the entire celestial sphere is seventy-eight thousand years. The planet Saturn has dominated for fifty-six thousand years; the remaining time is shared between the other planets. During the time that the world was under the signs of Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, there were no animals. This lasted the duration of thirty-three thousand years; there were no longer any spiritual being on earth. When the turn of Cancer came, there appeared sea monsters and the giants of the earth. When Leo had taken the presiding role, quadrupeds appeared on earth. When it was the turn of the Virgin, there were born the two humans, Adamānūs and Hīwāūs. The birds appeared during the reign of Libra.”
Here is what physicists think of the size of the stars: The Sun is one hundred and sixty-three times as big as the Earth; Saturn, ninety-one and a half times as big as her; Jupiter, eighty-one times; Mars, seventy-three times; Venus, sixty and a bit more times; Mercury thirty-three and a third; Moon, twenty-seven times and a quarter. The Sun is, as we have said, the king of the planets.
There are philosophers who think that the planets are alive, endowed with reason and senses. According to some of them, the planets have the senses of hearing, sight, and touch, but not those of taste and smell, which would be useless for them. Many say that the celestial sphere is alive, and that it distinguishes all that is in it and that has corporeal form. They say that the Moon borrows its light from the Sun, because when these two stars meet, the Moon loses its light. According to some of them, the world was created, but it will never end because it is the work of wisdom and the work of wisdom cannot perish. On the length of time, they express different opinions, of which we will report only that which has a wonderful character, without worrying about the truth. The book of Sindhind (i.e. Siddhānta, or Indian philosophy), from which were made the Almagest and several tables, teaches that the orbit the Sun, from its starting point in Aries, will only be completed in the space of 1,400,020,000 rounds, each of which is one year, being the year of three hundred sixty-five days and a quarter. They say that the measure of the cycle is 4,320,000,000 rounds, each comprising one thousand years. The traditionalists report that the age of the world up to Adam was seven thousand years. Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari says, as we reported earlier, that from Adam until the end of the world seven thousand years must pass; and he tells us that before the end of time, the sun will rise in the West. Some people say that when the Heart (Antares, in Scorpius) reaches the fifteenth degree of the Lion, there will be a deluge of fire that will consume the world, leaving no living being in the sea or on land. After that God will restore such creatures as he pleases. Aristotle believed that time has neither beginning nor end and that nature is eternal.
Chapter 2: The Nations Created before Adam
It is said that God created twenty-eight nations corresponding to the heavenly mansions inhabited the moon, because this star was the attendant, by the permission of God, of the government of the earthly world. These races were created using different mixtures of elements: water, air, fire, and earth, and the individuals in them had various forms. There is a race where the individuals are tall and very agile and have wings, and whose language is formed by the snapping of fingers. In another race, the individuals have the bodies of lions and birds’ heads, covered in hair and having long tails, and their language is a buzzing. In another, they have two faces, one in front and one behind, and several feet; their language is similar to that of birds. These nations are the djinn; there is among others a kind of djinn which has the form of dogs, complete with tails; their language is an incomprehensible growl. In another of these races, individuals resemble men except that they have their mouths in the middle of their chests and speak by whistling. Another race is similar to long snakes provided with wings, legs, and tails; others are like halves of men, having only one eye, a hand, and a foot and walking by jumping and bounding; their language resembles that of cranes. Others have the faces of men and loins covered tortoiseshell like turtles; they have claws for hands, long horns on their heads, and their language is similar to the howling of wolves. Others have two heads with two faces like the heads of lions; they are great and speak an incomprehensible language. Others have a round face, white hair, tails like oxen, and they spit fire from their mouths. Others look like women, with hair and breasts; there are no males in this race; these women are made pregnant by the wind, and they bring forth that individuals who resemble them; they have lovely voices and they attract many people of other races by the charm of their voices. Others are shaped like reptiles and insects. Although they are tall, they eat and drink like cattle. Still others are like the beasts of the sea; but they have tusks like wild boars and long ears. The rest of these twenty-eight breeds are of various forms, and all have a wild appearance.
They say that these nations interbred, and that the number of distinct races grew to one hundred and twenty.
The Djinn, Their Tribes, and the Their Kinds They asked the emir of the believers, Ali ibn Abu Talib, if before Adam there existed on earth creatures capable of serving God. He replied: Yes; God created the earth, and then he put onto it races of djinn who celebrated ceaselessly his glory and holiness. They flew into heaven, they met with the angels, they greeted them, and they received from them the knowledge of good and of the disasters that that would arrive from heaven. But some of the djinn rebelled, rejecting the authority of God and filling the earth with injustice. Some elevated themselves above the others; they shed blood, and they displayed corruption and contempt for divine things. The rest of the djinn persevered in religion and in obedience and broke the rebels. They, because of their submission, could continue to fly up to heaven.
Angels, as we have said above, are spiritual creatures, equipped with wings that enable them to fly where God sends them. They live between the levels of heaven, and there they praise God and proclaim his holiness tirelessly until they are called for a mission. The angel closest to God is Israfil (Raphael); Mikhail (Michael) comes after him, then Jibrail (Gabriel). [The revelation is passed from one to another until it reaches us.]
The Indians, the Persians, and the Greeks treated the genealogy and tribes of the djinn and gave the names of their kings, and they believed they were divided into twenty-one tribes. When their empire had lasted five thousand years, they appointed a king from among themselves and called Shāma’īl, son of Aras. Then they divided and named five kings, and they stayed a long time in this state. At the end, some of the djinn attacked each other, and there were a great number of battles and terrible wars.
Iblis (the Devil) is a djinn. He has many names, varying with languages; his name in Arabic is al-Harit, and his nickname, Abu Murrah (Father of Bitterness). He was a very powerful creature; he ascended into heaven, stood in the middle of the angelic orders and served God with great zeal. When discord broke out among the djinn and these wars took place among them, he came down to earth with an army of angels and defeated and massacred the djinn; then he established his empire on earth. But he swelled with pride and prevarication. One of his sins was his refusal to prostrate himself before Adam, as God tells us in his book. His form was changed into a hideous one, a figure of great repulsiveness, and all the tribes of djinn disowned him and moved away from him in horror. Seeing this, he fixed his abode on the sea. God made him raise a throne on the water. Later, he fathered a lineage, as Adam did. But the deformity of his race was manifested even in the act of reproduction; his descendants were similar to birds in this, and hatched from eggs.
The scholars have mentioned the types of the djinn. According to them, there are thirty-five tribes of satans, fifteen tribes of djinn that fly in the air, [twenty-five tribes of djinn who walk on land, twenty tribes of djinn that live in the water, twelve tribes of djinn who run in storms,] ten tribes of djinn who run in the flame, thirty tribes of djinn occupied with the magic of sounds. The kings of these tribes are responsible for protecting them against danger.
It is reported that there is a kind of fairy that assumes the form of beautiful women and marries men. This adventure happened, they say, to Sa‘id bin Jubayr. He married one of the women-fairies, without knowing what she was. She stayed close to him and gave him children. One night while she was with him on a terrace overlooking the countryside, plaintive voices of women were heard in the distance. She was troubled and told her husband, “Do not you see the fairy lights? I leave to your care your house and your children.” And she flew away and did not return.
There is also a kind of djinn that sets upon a man when they find him alone in the rocks or in ruins; they take him by the hand, forcing him to dance until he falls down, dizzy, and they suck his blood.
There are some which are no different snakes; sometimes men kill them and die immediately; [if the killer is a child, his father dies, or someone even more powerful.] It is said that a young Ansarian (companion of the Prophet), being close to getting married, asked the Prophet for permission to celebrate the wedding and reunite his family at a feast during the Battle of the Ditch. The Prophet allowed him to do so. Back at his home, this Ansarian found his wife standing at the door; he conceived a great jealousy, and made the gesture of directing his spear against her; but she stopped and said: “Abandon this thought, and instead enter and see what is on your bed.” He entered and saw on the bed a great snake. He killed it with a spear, and instantly he died.
The Arabs report the next adventure as having occurred to ‘Abīd ibn al-Abraṣ. He left with some men to visit Syria. At one point along the way, he saw a shojā’ serpent panting with thirst, and behind him, a black [saudā] serpent which was chasing it. He dismounted and killed the black serpent; then untying his water-skin, he sprinkled water on the shojā’, which crawled under a stone. ‘Abīd went on his way, and he finished his business in Syria. As he was returning, he fell asleep in a deserted place, and he saw, when he awoke, that his camels were lost. Not knowing the way, he remained in the same place; but, when night had already enveloped all in shadow, he heard a voice saying:
“O, master of the young camel, you who have lost your way and have with you no guide to lead you, I offer you a young camel; climb up on him; and when the darkness of the night is dissipated, and the morning will be near and the star will shine, removes his saddle from him and let him go free.”
When he heard these words of the voice, ‘Abīd turned and caught sight of a camel of surpassing beauty. He climbed up on it and traveled the rest of the night. In the morning, he found himself in front of himself; yet the day before he was twenty-one stations from his home. He descended from the camel and began to speak.
“O young camel, I am here thanks to you saving me from a mortal peril. I was a traveler in the night without a guide. Return covered in the praise I heap upon you, so that the good you did to me is returned to you at night or in the morning.”
The camel replied saying, “I am the shojā’ serpent whom you met in distress and dying of thirst. You gave me water without thinking about yourself, and you did not reason like the men with hard hearts. Goodness persists long; evil is the worst provision that you can put in your travel bag.” The camel said, “The black snake that was following me is one of my slaves who sought to kill me. You removed me from his evil designs, and you quenched my thirst. This good deed will not be lost; God will count it.”
Ibn ‘Abbas said: Most tame animals are types of djinn. Dogs, among others, are djinn. When they see you eat, throw them some of your food because they have souls; that is to say that they understand what they see with their eyes.
The Arabs report that a man riding a camel the size of a ram appeared in the market of ‘Okāz and said, “Who will give me eighty camels both the white and brown?” Seeing that no one answered him, he struck his camel, and it flew between heaven and earth with the speed of lightning. The crowd was amazed and a man from among them recounted this fact: “I once met,” he said, “in a desert a character mounted on an ostrich; he had both eyes split across the width of his face. At first I was afraid of him; then I asked him to stop and I said: ‘Do you know some poems?’ — ‘Yes,’ he said. — ‘Recite them for me, then.’ He began to recite the poem that begins with this line: ‘Will Kitami finally abandon her coquetry, or will she always remain stingy with greetings and words?’
“And he went through to the end. I told him, ‘Excellent! But the brother of the son of Dhubyan (i.e. al-Nābighah al-Dhubiyānī) wrote these verses before you.’ He replied, ‘O my brother, I have, by God, uttered these very words in the market of ‘Okāz four hundred years before him.’”
It is said that God created one thousand and twenty nations, according to the number of fixed stars. There are six hundred in the sea and four hundred and twenty on the continents. Of all these races, the human race is the most beautiful, the most perfect, the most beloved of the Creator, [and the human form is the one in which the proportions are most admirable]. Man was created in the image of Israfil, who is the angel closest to God. It is written in the Torah (Bible): God created man in his image; and a tradition holds: Do not hit faces because they are in the likeness of Israfil; another holds: Do not stop gazing on the faces of beardless youths because they throw glances like those of black-eyed houris. They also say that there is something of all other creatures in man; that is why he is above other animals, mastering, hunting, and enslaving them. God has prepared for his food plants and animals; he has prepared for him all sorts of pleasures, and made him capable of performing any kind of work through his hands. Man has the power of speech, laughter, reflection, intelligence, and the capability of invention; and it is with him that the Creator communicates; it is he who orders and defends, he who invented the arts, who developed science, who builds tools, who digs mines, who extracts the hidden wonders in the depths of the seas, and who rules over all.
Among the wonderful creatures, one must mention the Nasnās. The Nasnās is built like half a man; it has one hand and one foot; he walks by jumps and he runs with great speed. Once it was found in Yemen and sometimes in non-Arab countries. The Arabs hunted and ate it. An Arab legend says that one day some travelers arrived in a country where there were many Nasnās. They cornered one, and it killed, and roasted it, yet it was very fat. When they had sat down to eat, one traveler said, “How did the Nasnās grow fat?” Another Nasnās who was hiding near there in a tree began to respond:
"He ate mastic (Pistacia lentiscus), which is what made him fat.” The hunters, tipped off by this explanation, seized that nasnās and killed him. Another then said, in a tree where he was hiding, “If he had presence of mind, he would have been talking to himself instead of you.” The hunters took him in turn and killed him. At that moment, a fourth Nasnās, hidden in a hole in the ground, shouted: “I am cleverer, so I will say nothing!” He was immediately seized and put to death like the first. Travelers were thus provided with food. They say the Nasnās feed on fruits and plants and they are able to withstand thirst.
It is said that in the east of the world, toward the sea, there is a breed that is both human and wild beast. Individuals have a wide face and are hairy like the lion, have round and shiny eyes, sharp teeth, long tails and long ears; but they have the bodies of men, except the extremities are provided with large curved and sharp claws. There are more nations beyond that; they serve as food for the animals of the sea.
One of the races that is most similar to man is that of the Wāḳwāḳ. These individuals hang from branches by their hair; they have breasts and sexual organs similar to those of women, and they have a ruddy complexion; they constantly shout “Wak Wak!”, and if one of these females is captured, it goes silent and falls dead.
We read in the Book of Treasure that the traveler who passes by this nation comes to another race entirely of women, greater than these and more beautiful in the face and the rest of the body. These, after being captured, survive a little over a day. Many times those who took them used them for their pleasure; they are similar to women, but they have a pleasant smell and they provide the most delicious pleasures. The atmosphere of this country is more fragrant than camphor. This race does not comprise thousands. We do not know anything else of them except that given in the accounts of sailors who have been driven to that country.
Another wonderful breed is that of marine women called water girls. They have the appearance of beautiful women with flowing hair; they are provided with developed sex organs and breasts, and they speak an incomprehensible language accompanied by laughter. Sailors have recounted that they had been thrown by the winds against an island where there were forests and freshwater rivers, and there they heard shouts and laughter. They approached unseen and surprised two women whom they tied up. They remained with those who had captured them. The sailors visited them all the time, and they found very great pleasure in them. One of them made her his mistress and took off her chains, but immediately she ran into the sea and he never saw her again.
The other remained captive to her master; she became pregnant by him and gave him a son. The sailor took her to sea with the child; having seen in the ship that she did not wish to be separated from her son, he had pity on her and removed her bonds; immediately she abandoned the child and jumped into the sea. The next day she showed herself to the sailor and threw him a shell that contained a precious pearl.
[Al-Masʿūdī said:] We have spoken of the celestial spirits from what we have learned, — but God knows his creation best! — and of other things, looking for wonderful legends and not the exact truth. Whoever reads our book will have to guard against the stories we report herein. In God we find our strength, salvation, and duration.
Chapter 3: The Earth and What It Contains cont'd....
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
The Kalahari Desert (Namibia) is the largest continuous sand surface on Earth. - - -
lift/loft/doff/duffle/shaduof/terumah-ruum = lub = slough(Carnival lingo: teardown/pack to travel)
wow that slough word gets around!
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
A study published last week in the journal Science reported that the ancestors of the Inuit evolved unique genetic adaptations for metabolizing omega-3s and other fatty acids. Those gene variants had drastic effects on Inuit bodies, reducing their heights and weights.
Rasmus Nielsen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of the new study, said that the discovery raised questions about whether omega-3 fats really were protective for everyone, despite decades of health advice. “The same diet may have different effects on different people,” he said.
As the Inuit people spread across the Arctic, they developed one of the most extreme diets on Earth. They didn’t farm fruits, vegetables or grains. There weren’t many wild plants to forage, aside from the occasional patch of berries on the tundra.
For the most part, the Inuit ate what they could hunt, and they mostly hunted at sea, catching whales, seals and fish. Western scientists have long been fascinated by their distinctly un-Western diet. Despite eating so much fatty meat and fish, the Inuit didn’t have a lot of heart attacks.
In the 1970s, Danish researchers studying Inuit metabolism proposed that omega-3 fatty acids found in fish were protective....But recent trials have failed to confirm that the pills prevent heart attacks or stroke. And now the story has an intriguing new twist.
A study published last week in the journal Science reported that the ancestors of the Inuit evolved unique genetic adaptations for metabolizing omega-3s and other fatty acids. Those gene variants had drastic effects on Inuit bodies, reducing their heights and weights. ...
Even more intriguing was the fact that one of these gene variants was present in almost every Inuit in the study. It is much less common in other populations: About a quarter of Chinese people have it, compared with just 2 percent of Europeans.
Natural selection is the only known way this gene variant could have become so common in the Inuit. Dr. Nielsen said this adaptation might have arisen as long ago as 20,000 years, when the ancestors of the Inuit were living in the Beringia region, which straddles Alaska and Siberia.
To uncover the effect of this variant gene, the scientists compared the Inuit in their study with others with more European ancestry. Some had inherited a European version of the variant. People with two copies of the Inuit gene had different blood levels of fatty acids than people without them, the researchers found.
It’s possible that with so much extra omega-3 in their diet, the Inuit evolved a way to bring blood levels of fatty acids back into a healthy balance. “It seems that a genetic adaptation has counteracted the high intake of omega-3 fatty acids,” said Marit E. Jorgensen, an author of the new study from the University of South Denmark. .. The adaptation did more than just change blood levels of fatty acids, the scientists found. Inuit who carried two copies of the variant gene were on average an inch shorter and 10 pounds lighter than those without a copy.
“That’s quite extreme,” said Dr. Nielsen.
Indeed, it’s rare to find a single gene that can influence height and weight so drastically. In recent years, scientists have run a number of large studies pinpointing hundreds of genes that affect height and weight, but each one played a minuscule role in the variation from person to person.
Those studies missed this influential gene variant because they focused mostly on people of European ancestry. So Dr. Nielsen and his colleagues also investigated how it affects Europeans. As it turns out, the gene variant is linked to a drastic drop in height and weight in that population, too.
The idea that the Inuit adapted to eating fatty food was very plausible, said Anthony G. Comuzzie, a geneticist at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio who was not involved in the study. But he cautioned that natural selection might not have favored the FADS variant but a neighboring, as yet unknown piece of DNA that conferred evolutionary advantages.
As that gene spread through the Inuit population, the FADS variant might simply have been passed down with it.
Dr. Nielsen and his colleagues are planning to investigate the long-term health effects of the gene variants they’ve found. They may help explain why some of us metabolize fats more effectively than others, and why omega-3s haven’t been the heart panacea once hoped. - - -
Note: They probably got it backwards - dome living is more common in full-blood eskimos than in mixed-blood eskimos, so stronger selection for small body size. (Nappy hair isn't associated with Inuit dome living as it is in Pygmies due to cold).
Note: Igloo(Inuit) = mongolu(Mbuti dome hut built by females) - mother/mbua/mo = igloo built by men/hunters.
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We present here evidence for an early Holocene case of decapitation in the New World (Burial 26), found in the rock shelter of Lapa do Santo in 2007. Lapa do Santo is an archaeological site located in the Lagoa Santa karst in east-central Brazil with evidence of human occupation dating as far back as 11.7–12.7 cal kyBP (95.4% interval). An ultra-filtered AMS age determination on a fragment of the sphenoid provided an age range of 9.1–9.4 cal kyBP (95.4% interval) for Burial 26. The interment was composed of an articulated cranium, mandible and first six cervical vertebrae. Cut marks with a v-shaped profile were observed in the mandible and sixth cervical vertebra. The right hand was amputated and laid over the left side of the face with distal phalanges pointing to the chin and the left hand was amputated and laid over the right side of the face with distal phalanges pointing to the forehead. Strontium analysis comparing Burial 26’s isotopic signature to other specimens from Lapa do Santo suggests this was a local member of the group. Therefore, we suggest a ritualized decapitation instead of trophy-taking, testifying for the sophistication of mortuary rituals among hunter-gatherers in the Americas during the early Archaic period. In the apparent absence of wealth goods or elaborated architecture, Lapa do Santo’s inhabitants seemed to use the human body to express their cosmological principles regarding death.
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A New Model of Human Dispersal Trevor Underwood1 Independent researcher
This presentation examines previously unpublished allele counts obtained from the French-San-Neanderthal-Chimpanzee alignment of the high quality DNA sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains [1]. This analysis indicates the existence of an unidentified third archaic ancestor of present-day Europeans, which diverged from its common ancestor with sub-Saharan Africans and Neanderthals around 900 thousand years ago. It also shows that the relative proportions of derived alleles of Neanderthals versus sub-Saharan Africans versus the third archaic ancestor, in the 0.0826% the European genome that is not shared with the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzee, are 13.6%, 32.3% and 54.2%, respectively. In addition, analysis of the also unpublished allele counts from the alignment of the 45 Kya fossil from Ust’-Ishim in western Siberia [2] and of the alignment of the 36.2 Kya Kostenki 14 (Markina Gora) fossil from Kostenki-Borshchevo in European Russia [3] show similar relative proportions, suggesting that these individuals were closely related to the ancestor of present-day Europeans. These results differ significantly from previous estimates of the proportion of Neanderthal ancestry in present-day Europeans which range from 1.3% to 2.7% [1, 4, 5]. This presentation also identifies a mathematical error in the derivation of the admixture proportion estimators used to generate the previous estimates which explains this difference. The analysis of the allele counts together with anthropological and archaeological evidence suggests a new model of human dispersal based on a Eurasian lineage in the Levant, which admixed with Neanderthals between 250-55 Kya as they expanded eastward, and subsequently with members or descendants of the African mtDNA haplogroup L3 after their emergence from Africa between 84-63 Kya. This was followed by radiation from a basal admixed population in the Levant from around 55-50 Kya, with no subsequent major contribution to the European genome. Ancestors of the Ust’-Ishim individual, a member of mtDNA haplogroup R, probably went northeast from the Levant into western Siberia around 47 Kya; and ancestors of the Kostenki 14 individual, a member of mtDNA haplogroup U2, probably moved northward from the Levant into the Central European Plain between 40-36 Kya. It is likely that other members of these hybrid populations with a morphology similar to present-day Homo sapiens, including mtDNA haplogroups N, R, U, U2, U8 and JT, expanded westward into Europe along the Danube and Mediterranean coast and replaced the already dwindling Neanderthal populations between 45-35 Kya, rather than newly emerged sub-Saharan Africans as has been assumed. This analysis indicates the existence of an unidentified third archaic ancestor of present-day Europeans, which diverged from its common ancestor with sub-Saharan Africans and Neanderthals around 900 thousand years ago. Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Asar Imhotep: "...fresh look into the meaning of the name Nsw.t Bjt.y (Nesut Bity “King”) in the ancient ci.Kam (Egyptian) languages..."
Scientists warn that similar event to collapse of volcano on Cape Verdean island of Fogo 73,000 years ago poses major threat to nearby islands
The sudden collapse of a volcano caused a tsunami that created waves up to 240 metres (800ft) high 73,000 years ago, scientists have discovered.
The mega-tsunami took place near the Cape Verde islands off west Africa when the slopes of the volcano gave way – a process known as a “flank collapse” – and some experts fear a similar collapse could present a real threat today, especially around volcanic islands.
The ancient collapse occurred at the Cape Verdean island of Fogo, one of the world’s largest and most active island volcanoes, which towers 2,743 metres above sea level.
An estimated 167 cubic km (40 cubic miles) of rock fell into the ocean, resulting in a wave that engulfed an island more than 30 miles away.
By comparison, the largest known recent tsunamis, which devastated Indian Ocean coasts in 2004 and eastern Japan in 2011, attained maximum heights of about 30 metres. These tsunamis were triggered by undersea earthquakes rather than volcanic collapses.
Clues left by the mega-tsunami include boulders the size of lorries that had been carried up to 600 metres inland and nearly 200 metres above sea level on Santiago island, 34 miles from Fogo.
A huge boulder found on Santiago island carried more than 30 miles by the tsunami.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A huge boulder found on Santiago island carried more than 30 miles by the tsunami. Photograph: Ricardo Ramalho/Columbia University/PA The boulders, weighing up to 770 tonnes, matched marine-type rocks ringing the island’s shores and were quite unlike the volcanic terrain on which they were found.
By calculating the energy needed to hurl the boulders such a distance, the scientists were able to estimate the size of the wave. Their findings are reported in the journal Science Advances. Prof Bill McGuire, a tsunami expert from University College London, believes such mega-tsunami events occur once every 10,000 years.
He said: “Nevertheless, the scale of such events, as the Fogo study testifies, and their potentially devastating impact, makes them a clear and serious hazard in ocean basins that host active volcanoes.”
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With the help of Andrew George, associate dean of languages and culture at SOAS and translator of "The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation" (Penguin Classics, 2000), Al-Rawi translated the tablet in just five days. The clay artifact could date as far back to the old-Babylonian period (2003-1595 B.C.), according to the Sulaymaniyah Museum. However, Al-Rawi and George said they believe it's a bit younger and was inscribed in the neo-Babylonian period (626-539 B.C.).
Al-Rawi and George soon discovered that the stolen tablet told a familiar story: the story of Gilgamesh, the protagonist of the ancient Babylonian tale, "The Epic of Gilgamesh," which is widely regarded as the first-ever epic poem and the first great work of literature ever created. Because of the time period when the story was written, the tale was likely inscribed on "tablets," with each tablet telling a different part of the story (kind of like modern chapters or verses).
What Al-Rawi and George translated is a formerly unknown portion of the fifth tablet, which tells the story of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu (the wild man created by the gods to keep Gilgamesh in line) as they travel to the Cedar Forest (home of the gods) to defeat the ogre Humbaba.
The new tablet adds 20 previously unknown lines to the epic story, filling in some of the details about how the forest looked and sounded.
"The new tablet continues where other sources break off, and we learn that the Cedar Forest is no place of serene and quiet glades. It is full of noisy birds and cicadas, and monkeys scream and yell in the trees," George told Live Science in an email.
In a parody of courtly life, the monstrous Humbaba treats the cacophony of jungle noises as a kind of entertainment, "like King Louie in 'The Jungle Book,'" George said. Such a vivid description of the natural landscapes is "very rare" in Babylonian narrative poetry, he added
Other newfound lines of the poem confirm details that are alluded to in other parts of the work. For example, it shows that Enkidu and Humbaba were childhood buddies and that, after killing the ogre, the story's heroes feel a bit remorseful, at least for destroying the lovely forest.
"Gilgamesh and Enkidu cut down the cedar to take home to Babylonia, and the new text carries a line that seems to express Enkidu's recognition that reducing the forest to a wasteland is a bad thing to have done, and will upset the gods," George said. Like the description of the forest, this kind of ecological awareness is very rare in ancient poetry, he added.
The tablet, now mud-free and fully translated, is currently on display at the Sulaymaniyah Museum. A paper outlining Al-Rawi and George's findings was published in 2014 in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies.
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Wally: " In fact, the Arabic terms for Blacks or Africans (aswad;sud;sooda) seem to derive directly from Egyptian words: Egyptian: "Sut";sedge swamps > Arabic: "Sudd" > as_sud > a-swad > aswad
Yes, and the "Sedge Country" was southern Egypt and the Sudan, ie, the noted "Sedge swamps" of Sudan...
Also note that the king of Lower or Northern Egypt's title was "Biti" (bee) and his ideogram was that of a bee, and the northern kingdom was represented by the "Papyrus swamps" or the marshes of the Delta. It's totally complementary in concept. And so you have the title for the king of both "Upper and Lower Egypt" as "NsuBiti"
(I wonder what if any relationship this (NsuBiti) has with the Nsibidi people of Nigeria) " - - -
Wally: "Pharaoh"- Great Double-House, also means the king; "Pharaoh" too.
~ double house = 2 breasts of mother = mbuangualua
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Theories that Hn buried their dead with flower-filled funeral rites have been called into question by new research: natural processes are still depositing pollen in the same way in the same caves.
In the 1950s & 60s, pollen analyst Josette Leroi-Gourhan found clumps of pollen & flowers in a Hn burial in Shanidar Cave in Iraq, she deduced from their variety & concentration that animals were unlikely to have placed them there: they must have been part of a ritual.
Ralph Solecki (excavation leader, "Shanidar, The First Flower People" 1971): "With the finding of flowers in association with Hn, we are brought suddenly to the realization that the universality of mankind & the love of beauty go beyond the boundary of our own species. No longer can we deny the early men the full range of human feelings & experience."
The difficulty of digging in Iraq in the intervening time has made it difficult to re-examine the site, but John Moores cs (2015 Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology) made the trip recently: they found similar buildup of pollen to that found in the burial on the surface, which they attribute to the action of bees: the similar pollen found under the surface by the Solecki expedition is simply bee-pollen & wind-blown vegetation, that has been covered up over the last 60 ka since the burial.
It is still evident from the Shanidar burials & other sites that Hn took considerable care over the internment of the dead: They kept them safe from scavengers & marked the sites with carved stone ornaments, but sadly the poetic image of flower-laden prehistoric graves seems to be far less likely now.
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Paper mulberry (bark cloth) shows human trail from Taiwan to Polynesia
(Note: compare Pygmy fig bark loincloths to Hawaiian Tapa cloth)
New evidence for direct link/migration between Taiwan and Polynesia based on paper mulberry DNA analysis.
Full text:www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/09/30/1503205112.full.pdf PNAS Early edition:
A holistic picture of Austronesian migrations revealed by phylogeography of Pacific paper mulberry
Chi-Shan Chang (張至善)a,1, Hsiao-Lei Liu (劉筱蕾)b,1, Ximena Moncadac, Andrea Seelenfreundd, Daniela Seelenfreunde, and Kuo-Fang Chung (鍾國芳)b,2
A holistic picture of Austronesian migrations revealed by phylogeography of Pacific paper mulberry
image
A holistic picture of Austronesian migrations re... Author contributions: C.-S.C., A.S., D.S., and K.-F.C. designed research; A.S. and K.-F.C. contributed new reagents/analytic
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Te(Mongol) clear sky She(Chinese) sun Khoi(KhoiSan) ? Xy(Paleo) open sky/shine/skin/she.ltr/shi.eld
Circuit/Cycle/Sequence/Circle relate to sun's/moon's path through the sky; it is also applied to the circuitous route of Hunting/Gathering Nomadic tribes as well as later pastoralists following herds seeking fresher fields.
Tien(Chinese) high peaks Zion(Hebrew) high peaks Sandwe(Khoi-San) ? only KS clan with conical huts
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Te(Mongol) clear sky She(Chinese) sun Khoi(KhoiSan) ? sky? open-sky people? Xya(Paleo) open sky/shine/skin/she.ltr/shi.eld
Circuit/Cycle/Sequence/Circle relate to sun's/moon's path through the sky; it is also applied to the circuitous route of Hunting/Gathering Nomadic tribes as well as later pastoralists following herds seeking fresher fields.
Tien(Chinese) high peaks Zion(Hebrew) high peaks Sandwe(Khoi-San) ? only KS clan with conical huts
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80,000 yr old teeth of AMH H sapiens at Cave near Tangbei village, Lefutang town, Daoxian County, Southern China
The hominin record from southern Asia for the early Late Pleistocene epoch is scarce. Well-dated and well-preserved fossils older than 45,000 years that can be unequivocally attributed to Homo sapiens are lacking . Here we present evidence from the newly excavated Fuyan Cave in Daoxian (southern China).
The Daoxian sample is more derived than any other anatomically modern humans, resembling middle-to-late Late Pleistocene specimens and even contemporary humans. Our study shows that fully modern morphologies were
present in southern China 30,000–70,000 years earlier than in the Levant and Europe
Notably, although fully modern humans were already pre-sent in southern China at least as early as 80,000 years ago, there is no evidence that they entered Europe before 45,000 years ago. This could indicate that H. neanderthalensis was indeed an additional ecological barrier for modern humans, who could only enter Europe when the demise of Neanderthals had already started
- cavities (rare before agriculture) - no bones or stone tools associated - Finder claims humans came from China - biased
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A nearly complete right hand of an adult hominin was recovered from the Rising Star cavesystem, South Africa. Based on associated hominin material, the bones of this hand areattributed to Homo naledi. This hand reveals a long, robust thumb and derived wrist morphologythat is shared with Neandertals and modern humans, and considered adaptive for intensified manual manipulation. However, the finger bones are longer and more curved than in mostaustralopiths, indicating frequent use of the hand during life for strong grasping during loco-motor climbing and suspension. These markedly curved digits in combination with an otherwisehuman-like wrist and palm indicate a significant degree of climbing, despite the derived natureof many aspects of the hand and other regions of the postcranial skeleton in H. naledi. - - -
Human ancestors/relatives sleeping in forest canopy bowl nests, before dome hut inversion.
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Shabono(Yanomami) = Kampong(Malay) = Hamlet(English) = Xyambuatl(Paleo) = Open-Sky Building
A shabono (also xapono, shapono, or yano) is a hut used by the Yanomami Amerindians of extreme southern Venezuela and extreme northern Brazil. Used as temporary homes, traditionally constructed mainly of thatched palm leaves and wood. Shabonos are built in clearings in the jungle, using the wood cleared to build a palisade with a thatched roof that has a hole in the middle
Dog domestication DNA: The analysis "suggests that dogs were likely domesticated in Central Asia, plausibly around modern-day Nepal and Mongolia," said the study.
Actually Tibetan wolves were isolated on Phu Quoc Island south of Cambodia, Pygmies in coracles (mongolu/harigolu) found them and domesticated them 45ka but deliberate breeding for traits began 15ka with incipient agriculture and territorial sedentary advantages.
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"For instance, only in Neanderthals, not AMHs, does body mass, and hence brain volume, increase over time."
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Lefties and lingos - not linked?
<http://www.amazon.com/Handedness-Brain-Asymmetry-Right-Theory/dp/184169104 6> Some researchers still in 2002 claimed to support the monogenic theory, suggesting that handedness is determined by a single genetic locus with 2 alleles. But with the advent of advanced molecular & genetic techniques, the foundation of monogenic theories has become increasingly shaky, not just for handedness, but for many complex traits, e.g. for skin color & height, some cancers & other multifaceted diseases. Clyde Francks : "Many human traits that are continuous in nature in the population (e.g. height, weight, blood pressure, aspects of brain lateralization) are likely to have complex contributions to their variability, both genetic & environmental. As neuroscientists, we are very puzzled that there is this weird link between left-handedness & cerebral organization."
Even with the knowledge that traits as complex as brain lateralization & hand preference were unlikely to have a simple genetic foundation, Somers admits that he sought the elusive single gene that could explain the well-established behavioral distribution: "I was hoping to find the major gene that linked language lateralization & handedness."
So a few years ago, he & colleagues tracked down families in a Dutch village that had a bizarre demographic trait: disproportionately large numbers of southpaws, going back generations. Somers cs studied the genetic makeup of 355 people from 37 large families that comprised generations of lefties, performing genetic linkage analyses of left-handedness, atypical lateralization & degree of language lateralization in the brain. Although they identified genome regions that were linked to all of those phenotypes separately, none of the regions overlapped. J Neurosci 35:8730-36, 2015 <http://www.jneurosci.org/content/35/23/8730.short>, The finding "overturns this older idea of a shared gene," and serves as strong evidence that monogenic theories of handedness or language lateralization are incorrect: "It is more complicated, and it is more in line with many recent findings that traits are composed of many genes rather than single genes."
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Determining the timing, identity and direction of migrations in the Mediterranean Basin, the role of “migratory routes” in and among regions of Africa, Europe and Asia, and the effects of sex-specific behaviors of population movements have important implications for our understanding of the present human genetic diversity. A crucial component of the Mediterranean world is its westernmost region. Clear features of transcontinental ancient contacts between North African and Iberian populations surrounding the maritime region of Gibraltar Strait have been identified from archeological data. The attempt to discern origin and dates of migration between close geographically related regions has been a challenge in the field of uniparental-based population genetics. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) studies have been focused on surveying the H1, H3 and V lineages when trying to ascertain north-south migrations, and U6 and L in the opposite direction, assuming that those lineages are good proxies for the ancestry of each side of the Mediterranean. To this end, in the present work we have screened entire mtDNA sequences belonging to U6, M1 and L haplogroups in Andalusians—from Huelva and Granada provinces—and Moroccan Berbers. We present here pioneer data and interpretations on the role of NW Africa and the Iberian Peninsula regarding the time of origin, number of founders and expansion directions of these specific markers. The estimated entrance of the North African U6 lineages into Iberia at 10 ky correlates well with other L African clades, indicating that U6 and some L lineages moved together from Africa to Iberia in the Early Holocene. Still, founder analysis highlights that the high sharing of lineages between North Africa and Iberia results from a complex process continued through time, impairing simplistic interpretations. In particular, our work supports the existence of an ancient, frequently denied, bridge connecting the Maghreb and Andalusia.
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The Pygmies did not shrink from taller ancestors, a fiction produced by Open Sky Peoples, including many scientists.
The Ituri River rainforest is/was rich in okapi (forest giraffe), giant forest hogs, buffalo (smaller than savanna ones, with incurved horns), antelope, forest elephant, monkeys.
Forest Elephants have 5 front toes, while savanna elephants have 4 front toes, indicating derivation and enlargement, since all mammals had 5 toes ancestrally.
---
Bopi (Mbuti) children's playground, where they learn to climb trees, and to make bows/nets etc. by miming elders who stay there while parents are out hunting and gathering.
"The Mbuti have long understood the need for conservation. They created a no-hunting area in the center of the Ituri forest, guarded by their Deity (cf Humbaba).
Ba Miki Ba Ndula(Mbuti) Children of the rainforest
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bolo(Philipino) machete to skin bark from tree bolo(African) peel bark cf pelage/pelt/bowl
ndula(Mbuti) = endura(Mbuti) = endu/in + ra/area =forest interior/undercanopy
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Possible link of H erectus to Lake Turkana and coastal migrations (Java/Dmanisi-Georgia 1.8ma)?
- - -
Freshwater stingrays from the Plio/Pleistocene of the Turkana Basin, Kenya and Ethiopia Craig S Feibel 2007 Lethaia 26:359-366 doi 10.1111/j.1502-3931.1993.tb01542.x
The fossil freshwater stingray from the Turkana Basin of Kenya & Ethiopia is re-described & re-assigned to Dasyatis africana on the basis of extensive new collections. The ray apparently evolved into an endemic freshwater species, derived from a stock which entered the Turkana Basin from the Indian Ocean at c 1.9 Ma. At that time, the ancestral Omo River system flowed through a major lake, and exited to the SE. A fluvial corridor (the Turkana River) connected the Turkana Basin with the Indian Ocean. Once established in the basin, the rays flourished & persisted for > 1/2 My. Their extinction has been placed subsequent to 1.3 Ma, it likely reflects the changing environmental & tectonic conditions, recorded in subsequent strata. The fluvial corridor which formed the route of migration into the Turkana Basin has important implications for modern & past African bio-geography.
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Homo naledi cavers:
Hypn <https://disqus.com/by/hypn/> <https://disqus.com/by/hypn/>€12> 12 days ago <http://ncse.com/blog/2015/10/cave-homo-naledi-textbook-example-how-to-do-s cience-0016693#comment-2319909560> <http://ncse.com/blog/2015/10/cave-homo-naledi-textbook-example-how-to-do-s cience-0016693#comment-2319909560>I>
I am a member of the club who made the discovery of the Naledi Fossil. The article above creates the incorrect impression of the cave. The cave itself has been known to us and visited frequently for as long as I have been a member of the club. It has indeed been well surveyed and what initially started as three different cave systems were all eventually interconnected to create one large system. The fossils were discovered in a section knows as the Dragons back. This section was visited and surveyed and has never seen visitors since the survey was first created (I stand to be corrected but I believe 1980s).
A new adventurous member of the club - Steven - set out to re-explore the cave. His visit to the chamber was met with the discovery of the first mandible which had collapsed from the breccia above. It was more a matter of good luck and 20 years of nature's impact that led to the discovery. At least three of the surveyors are alive today, and I will gladly pose any questions readers might have.
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Ancient watercourses and biogeography of the Sahara explain the peopling of the desert
Nick A. Drakea,1, Roger M. Blenchb, Simon J. Armitagec, Charlie S. Bristowd, and Kevin H. Whitee
Map of Green Sahara and northern Africa Hydrology, includes Megalake Chad and (Eo)Sahabi River, but not Dr. Winter's Congo Sea.
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Some preliminary findings. (Note also that Celtic languages and Fula language have in common consonant mutations). Many of the Fula words have a suffix (eg. -gol, -ugol); so try to disregard the suffix and look at the main part of the word to observe the similarity with the Celtic words. Examples included from Proto-Celtic; Breton; Cornish; Welsh; Old Irish; Irish; Scots Gaelic; and Manx.
There were numerous others but I though these few stood out somewhat. More research is of course required."
- - -
Note: According to Bantu oral history, Aka-Fula
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According to Bantu oral history, Lake Malawi had only Aka-Fula Pygmies living there when Bantus arrived. - - -
If Fula(ni) language is linked to Aka-Fula pygmies of Lake Malawi(East Af. Rift valley) then we see a clear link:
kutiru(Aka-Fula) dog (Pygmies Africa)
kutaka(Mbabaram) dog (Australian Pygmies at Queensland coast) ---
ola(Spanish: wave) ~ o-na.mi(Japanese:big wave)
spill/drill/filings/tendril/tinder/timber
ololoa(Aztec) = wear(E) = end.u.erre(Latin: to put on) = Chu.q(Hmong) ~ (chuck(E) to throw/toss)
" apa
(Ainu)=doorway/entrance/gateway/the open mouth of a river as looked at from the sea,= apan(N)=river,=apanne(Ainu)=edible kind of mussel,=tlapatlaxintli(N)=square/cut on 4-sides,= patlaxima(N)=patla/swap shave/xima(N/E)=shim/shimmy(E)=wedge/dance." iueli/iaxi blog
apa(Ainu) doorway = opening of hut/clam/sea
apa(Mbuti) fire in front of doorway of dome hut, at center hub of camp/chum/cabin
ape(Ainu) fire
api(M) fire
bon(fire)(E) fire, from gr/m/bound fire
buni(Austl.) fire
amber/amba(orange)/u.ember/Xyambua
Xyambua.tlay = Smo.key/Sham.an.Ki = xmbo.Keyhole to enter Chum/cone/honai = KeMet.ankh'
The ankh, also known as breath of life, the key of the Nile or crux ansata (Latin meaning "cross with a handle"), was the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic character that read "life", a triliteral sign for the consonants ꜥ-n-ḫ.
note: xmbo = KMT(Egypt) and Jambo(Afr: (gr/m)eet/(gr/m)ate) ~ Botai
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Upper Palaeolithic genomes reveal deep roots of modern Eurasians
We extend the scope of European palaeogenomics by sequencing the genomes of Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,300 years old, 1.4-fold coverage) and Mesolithic (9,700 years old, 15.4-fold) males from western Georgia in the Caucasus and a Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,700 years old, 9.5-fold) male from Switzerland. While we detect Late Palaeolithic–Mesolithic genomic continuity in both regions, we find that Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG) belong to a distinct ancient clade that split from western hunter-gatherers ~45 kya, shortly after the expansion of anatomically modern humans into Europe and from the ancestors of Neolithic farmers ~25 kya, around the Last Glacial Maximum. CHG genomes significantly contributed to the Yamnaya steppe herders who migrated into Europe ~3,000 BC, supporting a formative Caucasus influence on this important Early Bronze age culture. CHG left their imprint on modern populations from the Caucasus and also central and south Asia possibly marking the arrival of Indo-Aryan languages.
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Why do humans exist? Because of Dark Matter.
Leading Harvard physicist has a radical new theory for why humans exist
Cosmic impact + resulting volcanism/Ozone destruction/UV radiation is cyclical producing regular extinctions leaving fauna that sleep/hibernate in tree trunks and earth burrows alive. Not radical, nor original.
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TANN arc network •Human nature’s dark side helped us spread across the world •Prehistoric rock paintings found in Andhra Pradesh •Traces of human activities dating back a million years found in Shaanxi •Biologists trace how human innovation impacts tool evolution •Middle Kingdom wall unearthed in Egypt's Avaris •Italy roadworks unearth frescoed Roman room •DNA analysis reveals Roman London was a multi-ethnic melting pot •Loss of mastodons aided domestication of pumpkins, squash •Getting under the skin of a medieval mystery •Egypt to do more tests in search for Nefertiti •Study tracks genetic adaptations in Europe’s first farmers •Prehistoric man in the Galilee preferred legumes •New species of early anthropoid primate found amid Libyan strife •Stretchy slabs found in the deep Earth
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How wind sculpted Earth's largest dust deposit University of Arizona, September 1, 2015 [phys.org] and [uanews.arizona.edu]
From dust to dust: Quaternary wind erosion of the Mu Us Desert and Loess Plateau, China by Alicia, university of Arizona, [www.geo.arizona.edu]
Paper at [www.geo.arizona.edu]
Abstract at [geology.gsapubs.org] From dust to dust: Quaternary wind erosion of the Mu Us Desert and Loess Plateau, China
Submitted by Alicia on Fri, 09/18/2015 - 10:52
Title of Publication:
From dust to dust: Quaternary wind erosion of the Mu Us Desert and Loess Plateau, China
Author:
Kapp, Paul, Pullen, Alex, Pelletier, Jon D., Russell, Joellen, Goodman, Paul, and Cai, Fulong
Publication Info:
GEOLOGY, September 2015; v. 43; no. 9; p. 835–838 | Data Repository item 2015283 | doi:10.1130/G36724.1
Abstract:
The Ordos Basin of China encompasses the Mu Us Desert in the northwest and the Chinese Loess Plateau to the south and east. The boundary between the mostly internally drained Mu Us Desert and fluvially incised Loess Plateau is an erosional escarpment, up to 400 m in relief, composed of Quaternary loess. Linear ridges, with lengths of ~102–103 m, are formed in Cretaceous–Quaternary strata throughout the basin. Ridge orientations are generally parallel to near-surface wind vectors in the Ordos Basin during modern winter and spring dust storms. Our observations suggest that the Loess Plateau previously extended farther to the north and west of its modern windward escarpment margin and has been partially reworked by eolian processes. The linear topography, Mu Us Desert internal drainage, and escarpment retreat are all attributed to wind erosion, the aerial extent of which expanded southeastward in China in response to Quaternary amplification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation.
Full article .
(Paul H @ HoM)
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Only our lineage has ever used trackways-reading, to find unseen & unheard targets. All other terrestrial animals (incl.great apes) use scent trails & airborne odors. Trackways possess an information-rich narrative structure. There is good evidence we began to exploit conspecific trackways in our deep past, at first purely associatively, for safety & orienteering when foraging in vast featureless wetlands.
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note: "step on a crack break your mother's back" = step on an animal track, your mother will have to forage (bending and picking plants) for your supper since you will lose the animal you prey for.
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Ngadjon shares 27% overlap with jdinji/Yidiny - related pygmy tribe
Ngadjon glossary - North Australian pygmies
janjuu lawyer cane basket [law/leg/logsplitter]
japun eel
jarragan scrub hen
jidu fire stick. Also the name of the tree which is used (Halfordia scleroxylla) [firetenderill/sh'ankh/tletl]
jigaru thunderstorm [shalako(Zuni)/shango(Yoruba]
jiigan (Lomandra longifolia) Used to make baskets. Base edible
Jillan the Bora Ground near Butchers Creek, said by the Ngadjonji to be the site of a massacre (see Massacre)
jimama turkey trap
jiman (Tetrasynandra laxiflora - Tetra Beech) Preferred wood for the twirling stick to make fire. [Xy'man? tendril/twirl/willywilly duster]
jubula (Prumnopitys amara - Black Pine) Kernel processed for starchy food.
julu julu (Xanthostemon whitei - Red Penda) Wood used for spear tips and for yam sticks.
junjum (Xanthostemon chrysanthus - Golden Penda) used for swords.magurra (Ficus variegata - Variegated Fig) Used sometimes for making shields.
mija dome-shaped, rain proof thatched huts. Also home country, home. (cf mongolu(Mb), mita(Hebrew)]
mayi the native bee (cf melita(Grk, Hawaii, madhu honey(M))
munyan boomerang
muramba aboriginal people
ngunuy (Xanthorrhoea johnsonii - Grass Tree) A word shared by Yidiny and Ngadjon. The resinous sap is used as a lacquer in shield making.
warrama corroborees involving a number of tribes
warrgin open forest
yagal (Pandanus spp) Generic term for pandanus, used for baskets cf magal(Basque) magan(Hebrew) pacal(Maya) machan(Malay) woven wicker shield]
yapulam (Calamus australis) Lawyer cane used for handles of baskets
Yamani the rainbow serpent, also rainbow. [(compare to Yamana/yaghan of Tierra del fuego), arc d'anciel(French:rainbow, ciel sky yellow]
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This article shows how Open-Sky people do not understand the Pygmy diaspora. ---
The Australian Barrineans and Their Relationship to Southeast Asian Negritos: An Investigation using Mitochondrial Genomics
Authors
Peter McAllister, PERAHU, School of Humanities, Gold Coast Campus, Griffith University, Queensland, AustraliaFollow Nano Nagle, Department of Genetics, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia Robert John Mitchell, Department of Genetics, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia
Abstract
The existence of a short-statured Aboriginal population in the Far North Queensland (FNQ) rainforest zone of Australia’s northeast coast and Tasmania has long been an enigma in Australian anthropology. Based on their reduced stature and associated morphological traits such as tightly curled hair, Birdsell and Tindale proposed that these "Barrinean" peoples were closely related to "negrito" peoples of Southeast Asia and that their ancestors had been the original Pleistocene settlers of Sahul, eventually displaced by taller invaders. Subsequent craniometric and blood protein studies, however, have suggested an overall homogeneity of indigenous Australians, including Barrineans. To confirm this finding and determine the degree of relatedness between Barrinean people and Southeast Asian negritos, we compared indigenous Australian mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences in populations from the FNQ rainforest ecozone and Tasmania with sequences from other Australian Aboriginal populations and from Southeast Asian negrito populations (Philippines Batek and Mamanwa, and mainland Southeast Asian Jahai, Mendriq, and Batak). The results confirm that FNQ and Tasmanian mtDNA haplogroups cluster with those of other Australian Aboriginal populations and are only very distantly related to Southeast Asian negrito haplogroups.
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In Science this week, researchers have reported they have reconstructed the entire genome of the H. pylori that lived in Ötzi’s gut and the results give us an interesting picture into the peopling of Europe approximately 5,000 years ago.
Most H. pylori lives harmlessly in our stomachs. Sometimes this bug can cause ulcers and stomach cancer. I have in the past shared research on how H. pylori has been used as proxy to understand human migrations. The deepest branches of the bacteria’s family tree are found in Africa and as humans expanded to other continents, they took distinctive strains with them.
In studying Ötzi’s gut flora, the researchers have found out something very remarkable! Compared to living Europeans, he has a nearly pure ancestral Asian strain of H. pylori.
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Crimea/Chimera/XyYamMera=sky/seas
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Genomic Signatures of Selective Pressures and Introgression from Archaic Hominins at Human Innate Immunity Genes Matthieu Deschamps cs 2016 Am.J.hum.Gen.98:521 doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2015.11.014
Human genes governing innate immunity provide a valuable tool for the study of the selective pressure imposed by micro-organisms on host genomes. A comprehensive genome-wide study of how selective constraints & adaptations have driven the evolution of innate immunity genes is missing.
Using full-genome sequence variation from the 1000 Genomes Project, - we show that innate immunity genes have globally evolved under stronger purifying selection than the remainder of protein-coding genes: we identify a gene-set under the strongest selective constraints, mutations in which are likely to predispose individuals to life-threatening disease, as illustrated by STAT1 & TRAF3, - we evaluate the occurrence of local adaptation: we detect 57 high-scoring signals of positive selection at innate immunity genes, variation in which has been associated with susceptibility to common infectious or auto-immune diseases, - we show that most adaptations targeting coding variation have occurred in the last 613 ka (when populations shifted from hunting & gathering to farming), - we show that innate immunity genes present higher Hn introgression than the remainder of the coding genome: among the genes presenting the highest Hn ancestry, we find the TLR6-TLR1-TLR10 cluster, which also contains functional adaptive variation in Europeans.
This study identifies highly constrained genes that fulfill essential, non-redundant functions in host survival, and reveals others that are more permissive to change‹containing variation acquired from archaic hominins or adaptive variants in specific populations‹improving our understanding of the relative biological importance of innate immunity pathways in natural conditions.
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Introgression of Neandertal- and Denisovan-like Haplotypes Contributes to Adaptive Variation in Human Toll-like Receptors Michael Dannemann cs 2016 Am.J.hum.Gen.98:2233 doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2015.11.015
... Although adaptive alleles generally arise by mutation, introgression can also be a valuable source of beneficial alleles. Archaic humans (who lived in Europe & W-Asia for >200 ky) were probably well adapted to this environment & its local pathogens. It is conceivable that Hs entering Europe & W-Asia, who admixed with them, obtained a substantial immune advantage from the introgression of archaic alleles.
Here we document a cluster of 3 Toll-like receptors (TLR6,-1,-10) in Hs that carries 3 distinct archaic haplotypes, indicating repeated introgression from archaic humans: - 2 of these haplotypes are most similar to the Hn genome, - the 3rd haplotype is most similar to the Hd genome.
The Toll-like receptors are key components of innate immunity, and provide an important first line of immune defense against bacteria, fungi & parasites. The unusually high allele frequencies & unexpected levels of population differentiation indicate that there has been local positive selection on multiple haplotypes at this locus.
We show - the introgressed alleles have clear functional effects in Hs, - archaic-like alleles underlie differences in the expression of the TLR-genes, and are associated with reduced microbial resistance & increased allergic disease in large cohorts. This provides strong evidence for recurrent adaptive introgression at the TLR6-1-10 locus, resulting in differences in disease phenotypes in Hs.
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Kambiz Kamran 8.1.16 Anthropology.net blog:
2 new papers (Am.J.hum.Gen.) document how we should thank Hn & Hd for our allergies & boosted immune systems.
Both studies highlight the functional importance of 3 inherited of Toll-like receptor genes: TLR1, TLR6, TLR10. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll-like_receptor> These Toll-like receptors respond to antigens from bacteria, fungi & parasites, and elicit an inflammatory response, ultimately activating the adaptive immune system.
1) compared 1500 genes known to play a role in the innate immune system from the 1000 Genomes Project, and contrasted it with the genomes of ancient humans. They looked for patterns in variation & change, looking at the timing of change. Most adaptations in protein-coding genes occurred in the last 6 to 13 ka, as human populations shifted from hunting & gathering to farming. Some underwent very little change, indicating constraints. Others have undergone quick selective sweeps likely as a process of selection. The biggest surprise was that the TLR1-6-10 cluster is among the genes presenting the highest Hn ancestry in both Europeans & Asians.
2) also screened Hs genomes for evidence of extended regions with high similarity to the Hn & Hd genomes. They then examined the prevalence of those regions in people from around the world, which led to the same 3 TLR gene, and these introgressed variants offered a selective advantage. The archaic-like variants are thought to increase activity to pathogens ... which in turn may have given greater protection against infection, but also increased the susceptibility of Hs to allergies. Certainly possible as Hn were living in Eurasia for 200 ky before Hs, and had already well exposed & adapted to the local Eurasian pathogens. And by interbreeding with Hn, Hs gained these advantageous adaptations.
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Zebra stripes - camouflage?
22.1.16 Zebra stripes not for camouflage?
Amanda Melin (2016 PLoS, with Tim Caro, Donald Kline, Chihiro Hiramatsu): "The most longstanding hypothesis for zebra striping is crypsis (camouflaging), but until now the question has always been framed through human eyes. We carried out a series of calculations, through which we were able to estimate the distances at which lions & spotted hyenas, as well as zebras, can see zebra stripes under daylight, twilight, or during a moonless night. In earlier studies, Caro cs have provided evidence suggesting that the zebra's stripes provide an evolutionary advantage by discouraging biting flies. In the new study, Melin cs found that stripes cannot be involved in allowing the zebras to blend in with the background of their environment, or in breaking up the outline of the zebra: at the point at which predators can see zebras stripes, they probably already have heard or smelled their zebra prey. Caro: "The results from this new study provide no support at all for the idea that the zebra's stripes provide some type of anti-predator camouflaging effect: we reject this long-standing hypothesis, debated by Charles Darwin & Alfred Russell Wallace."
... the researchers passed digital images taken in the field in Tanzania through spatial & color filters that simulated how the zebras would appear to their main predators (lions & spotted hyenas) & to other zebras. They measured the stripes' widths & light contrast (luminance), to estimate the maximum distance from which lions, spotted hyenas & zebras could detect stripes, using information about these animals' visual capabilities: beyond 50 m in daylight (and 30 m at twilight, when most predators hunt), stripes can be seen by humans, but are hard for zebra predators to distinguish. And on moonless nights, the stripes are particularly difficult for all spp to distinguish beyond 9 m. This suggests that the stripes don't provide camouflage in woodland areas (earlier it been theorized that black stripes mimicked tree trunks, and white stripes blended in with shafts of light through the trees). And in open treeless habitats, lions could see the outline of striped zebras just as easily as they could see similar-sized prey with fairly solid-colored hides, e.g. waterbuck, topi, impala). It had been earlier suggested that the striping might disrupt the outline of zebras on the plains, where they might otherwise be clearly visible to their predators.
Stripes also not for social purposes: The study did not yield evidence that the striping provides some type of social advantage by allowing other zebras to recognize each other at a distance. While zebras can see stripes over somewhat further distances than their predators can, the researchers also noted that other spp of animals that are closely related to the zebra are highly social and able to recognize other individuals of their species, despite having no striping to distinguish them.
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Remains of the highly nutritious aquatic plant Fox nut (Euryale ferox Salisb., Nymphaeaceae) were found at the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel. Here, we present new evidence for complex cognitive strategies of hominins as seen in their exploitation of E.ferox nuts. We draw on - excavated data & - parallels observed in traditional collecting & processing practices from Bihar, India.
We suggest that during the early-Mid-Pleistocene, hominids implemented multi-stage procedures, comprising underwater gathering & subsequent processing (drying, roasting & popping) of E.ferox nuts.
Hierarchical processing strategies are observed in the Acheulian lithic reduction sequences and butchering of game at this and other sites, but are poorly understood as regards the exploitation of aquatic plant resources. We highlight the ability of Acheulian hominins to resolve issues related to underwater gathering of E.ferox nuts dur
1. Introduction Studies of the evolution of hominin cognitive abilities & the origins of intelligence & language focus primarily on stone tool manufacture & on the exploitation of medium-sized to large terrestrial mammals. Here, we examine additional aspects of these cognitive abilities, as reflected in a little-known example of skilled behaviour patterns: the exploitation of aquatic flora & fauna in the wetland habitats of paleo-Lake Hula. Although wetlands play an important role in supplementing human diet & enhancing its nutritional balance (Joordens cs 2009, Wrangham cs 2009, Cunnane & Steward(sic) 2010), few studies have explored the nutritional and/or medicinal properties of wetlands plants in the archaeological context (Stewart 1994, 2010, Colonese cs 2011, Cortés-Sánchez cs 2011, Hardy & Moncel 2011, Verhaegen & Munro 2011).
Along with Trapa natans (Water chestnut), they formed part of the botanically rich aquatic habitat of paleo-Lake Hula (>24 spp of water plants). Both spp are currently extinct in the Levant. E.ferox & T.natans are floating annual aquatic plants, that grow in low-energy or still-water bodies, generally c 1.5 m deep, occurring within a wetlands ecosystem that was exploited by the GBY Acheulian hominins. The prickly nature of E.ferox (prickly waterlily) renders gathering & processing its nuts far more difficult than those of T.natans. Here, we present novel evidence for advanced cognitive abilities of Acheulians at GBY, as attested by their adoption of complex multi-stage procedures for collecting & processing E.ferox nuts. E.ferox is widely prevalent in tropical & subtropical regions in ecological contexts similar to paleo-Lake Hula. In many such places, it is collected & processed, using traditional methods by predom.fresh-water fishing communities. The range of these strategies, particularly evident in the water-bodies of N-Bihar (Madhubani District, India), is of immense relevance when examining the archaeological context of E.ferox nut remains at GBY. The Acheulian site of GBY (GBY fm) is located on the shores of paleo-Lake Hula, Upper Jordan Valley, Dead Sea Rift. This Early- to Mid-Pleistocene sedimentary sequence documents an oscillating freshwater lake, and represents ~100 ky of hominin occupation (MIS 18-20), beginning earlier than 790 ka (Feibel 2001, 2004). Studies of the 15 excavated archaeological horizons indicate that Acheulian hominins - repeatedly occupied lake-margins, - produced stone tools, - systematically butchered & exploited animals, - gathered plant food & - controlled fire.
The prickly waterlily is an annual or perennial plant with long-petiole leaves, whose large rounded blades (normally up to 1.3, occasionally 2.4 m in diameter) float on the water surface. The long petiole & veins that protrude from the bottom of the blade are densely covered with sharp prickles. The rhizome is sunk deep in the ground with groups of thick & fleshy roots. The plant develops 15–20 spongy fruits, each of which contains 30–40 nuts. When the fruit is ripe, it dehisces & releases the nuts, which are covered by a mucilaginous arillus. The plant grows in shallow stagnant water, generally 0.3–1.5m deep, at a neutral pH. In the study region in Madhubani District, water-depths reach up to 3.5 m. Flowering occurs in April–May, and the fruits ripen & dehisce between June & August, when spherical nuts are released. The nuts have a mucilaginous arils, that holds them above the water-surface for several days, after which they sink to the bottom of the water body. The plant germinates in early winter, and grows with surprising speed, the bio-mass doubling each month from January to July. The maximal biomass found in a pond in India was 1.7 kg/m² fresh weight in July. Tp has a profound effect on the rate of biomass production.
E.ferox nuts contain - 12.8 % moisture, - 9.7 % protein, - 0.1 % fat, - 0.5 % minerals, - 77 % carbohydrates, - 0.9 % P, - 0.02 % Ca, - 1.4 mg/100 g carotene. The calorific value is - 362 kcal/100g for raw E.ferox, - 328 kcal/100g for popped nuts. Popped nuts are comparable with wheat & rice. The essential amino acid indices (EAAI) in the raw & popped parts of edible E.ferox nuts are 93 & 89 % resp., cf - rice 83, - wheat 65, - Bengal grain 82, - soya bean 86, - amaranth 57.5, - human milk 81.5, - cow's milk 89, - fish 89, - mutton 87.
E.ferox nuts are superior to dry fruits (almonds, walnuts, coconuts, cashew nuts) in sugar, protein, ascorbic acid & phenol content. E.ferox was present in Europe in the geological past, becoming extinct during the Quaternary. Fossil nuts have been reported from the the Pleistocene in Poland & England ...
... we draw on ethnographic analogies, citing traditional methods of E.ferox exploitation in the water-bodies of N-Bihar. Planned sequential procedures & decision-making strategies are employed by local communities in collecting processing E.ferox nuts. The procedures adopted in Bihar imply an excellent knowledge of the environment & seasonality & the plants' life cycle. The prickles/spines on mature fruits make them very difficult to harvest with bare hands. Once the mature fruits burst, the seeds float near the leaves, then sink to the base of the pond, from where they are collected (Fig.5-8). Gathering is carried out by adult males, assisted by a few adolescent boys, with a division of activities that is related to age and/or experience: 1) the equipment required (bamboo collection baskets of various types) is organized, 2) bamboo poles fixed to the base of the pond serve as guides to demarcate spaces selected for underwater gathering of the nuts, and are shifted as collection proceeds across the water body, 3) adults repeatedly dive underwater, to collect nuts that have sunk to the pond bed, at the base of the plant, 4) the nuts are scooped into bamboo baskets (sieves), 5) in larger ponds, the nuts are scooped into a large cane basket, and given a preliminary cleaning underwater by repeated rotation, 6) an adolescent (inexperienced in diving) floats on the water surface (with the aid of pitchers or jerry cans) and employs a sieve to collect stray nuts that float to the surface, 7) the nuts brought to the shore are cleaned, by trampling to remove roots, plant matter & associated mollusks Children actively participate in gathering molluscs, crabs & other plants that are associated with the E.ferox roots and are washed up on the shore during the gathering & cleaning procedure.
(beautiful photos)
... there are several ways to harvest & process E.ferox nuts. The major difficulty is the presence of prickles/spines, that make processing the fruit difficult. Further difficulties involve collection of seeds after the fruit bursts. The Bihar method described here overcomes both of these problems through adoption of underwater collection procedures: a) gathering of E.ferox seeds takes place after they ripen & sink to the bed of the water body, b) gathering by diving is a necessity: the plants grow in still waters, and seeds are not washed to the edges of the water body, c) the work necessitates observation of the life-cycle of the plant & of the prime time for gathering seeds, d) drying & popping seeds was done at a distance from the water body, where fire & dry land facilitated later stages of processing, e) roasting & popping are both procedures requiring the technology of fire & that of anvils & hammers, f) a well-established division of labour was associated with each stage of gathering & processing. ... the archaeological record of GBY, which includes the use of fire & the presence of pitted stones, anvils & hammerstones in association with E.ferox seeds, strongly supports the use of analogies with traditional modes of gathering & processing, such as that practiced by communities in Bihar. Studies of the GBY archaeological record provides information on the co-occurrence of a range of finds that may be compared with the ethnographic data. 1) In each of the archaeologically rich horizons, there were spatial concentrations of burned flint micro-artifacts. Analysis of these concentrations suggests the presence of phantom hearths, the earliest evidence for the control & continual use of fire in W-Eurasia. High-resolution data from excavations enables estimation of the size of these hearths: c 0.49 m long, 0.35 m wide. 2) Pitted stones & hammerstones + newly identified thin basalt anvils were also found in each of these horizons. 3) In all archaeological horizons, remains of T.natans & E.ferox were discovered. The pristine taphonomic context of the archaeological horizons at GBY + the significant patterns of association noted between various find categories discussed above provide a background for our discussions of the spatial patterning of past activities. Spatial analysis of these associations & analyses of Layer II-6 Levels 2 & 6 provide further insight into the proximity of hearths & pitted stones (on both blanks & blocks). This correlation of nuts, phantom hearths & pitted stones at GBY leads us to suggest that some key aspects of the methods of collecting & processing noted in Bihar (incl. roasting & subsequent popping of the seeds) may be of greater relevance for the GBY data than those described from elsewhere in India. Greater precision in spatial associations between the nuts & other features in the vicinity of the paleo-lake is not possible, owing to the light weight of the seeds. However, common aquatic taxa in the Upper Jordan Valley (Lake Hula), the Acheulian site of GBY & Bihar (India) reflect the extent of ecological similarity, despite their great bio-geographical distance. The habitat & surrounding environment of paleo-Lake Hula was a rich & diverse Mediterranean one, as evidenced by the identification of an array of 60 edible taxa recorded at GBY + a wealth of fish, crustaceans, birds & mammals. E.ferox grows in water-bodies with water-depths ranging from c 0.3 to 1.5 m, up to 2.5 or 3.5 m. Although Acheulian hominins may have consumed seeds raw, this would have entailed considerable effort in harsh conditions, owing to the prickly nature of the plants. With the technology enabling them to process nuts using fire, anvils & percussive tools, hominins could avoid the difficulties posed by exploitation of raw seeds. The fluctuating water level of paleo-Lake Hula would have been an obstacle to adopting simpler methods for gathering nuts, in view of the plant's life cycle & the water-depths & geochemistry required for its growth & survival. A desiccation scenario of fluctuating lake-levels would have resulted in the death of plants, unable to regenerate (germination occurs under water). Exposure to atmospheric conditions would have resulted in the complete decomposition of the macro-botanical remains found at the site. The entire issue of organic preservation is based on anaerobic conditions (= inappropriate conditions for bacteria responsible for the decomposition of organic material). Irrespective of the depth of the water, hominins would have had to collect nuts from beneath the lake surface, entailing some amount of time spent underwater. We do not suggest that Acheulian hominins followed modes of collecting or processing that were identical to those practiced today, particularly in the case of elements dictated by modern economic conditions, e.g. use of bamboo poles to demarcate underwater areas, sieves for sorting nuts for sale, gender-based division of labour. Such cognitive procedural abilities of planning & performance in aquatic habitats (particularly when combined with exploitation of fish) have not previously been reported for Acheulian hominins. Ethnographic analogies demonstrate that exploitation of E.ferox nuts is performed by communities of fishermen in water-bodies that are also used for fishing. The most abundant fish spp currently exploited in habitats associated with E.ferox include 3 families of air-breathing fish: - Cyprinidae carps, - Clariidae catfish & - Bagridae catfish. At GBY, remains of Cyprinidae & Clariidae were recovered, predom. Cyprinidae, mainly the large Barbus sp & Barbus longiceps. The cyprinids remains were recovered in association with living floors excavated in Area B. The archaeological association between E.ferox nuts, large quantities of cyprinid remains & other cultural activities documented at GBY presents novel evidence for intensive exploitation of the aquatic fauna & flora of paleo-Lake Hula.
The advanced & sophisticated cognitive abilities described above are supported by a series of additional observations, drawn from various multi-disciplinary studies of the GBY Acheulian record, e.g. - aspects of planning & communication, as derived from stone-tool production sequences, - spatial cognition of the landscape & intra-site spatial organization, - procedural cognition, technical & procedural know-how & specialization, - social cognition. These cognitive abilities are expressed in the multi-phase process of realisation of the plan for achieving a particular goal. This is seen especially in the chaîne opératoire of basalt bifaces (handaxes & cleavers), documenting cognitive abilities in the structure of the long-term processes involved in biface manufacture. The site is characterised by both richness & diversity of spp, contributing substantially to the reconstruction of hominin knowledge of the environment in exploitation of - terrestrial wildlife, e.g. modern-like processing of Dama sp, - aquatic resources such as turtles & fishPalaeobotanical evidence contributes to our understanding of the multiple facets of the environmental knowledge of Acheulian hominins and their ability to structure modes of exploitation of diverse resources.
Discussion
... Ethnographic analogies, when considered with archaeological evidence of nuts, pitted anvils & charred organic material, among other features, point to the possibility of a complex sequence of exploitation of an aquatic nut, that included gathering by diving, underwater processing, drying, roasting & possibly popping. This process adds to a plethora of evidence of Acheulian hominin activities & diverse associated cognitive abilities, all of which emerge from the analyses of early-Mid-Pleistocene Acheulian finds from the Levantine Corridor.
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Beginnings of Plate Tectonics / Continental Drift 3ba
[ Interesting early date, I hadn't known if it began much later due to cosmic collisions and change in sun temps/orbital speed ]
Archean upper crust transition from mafic to felsic marks the onset of plate tectonics Ming Tang, Kang Chen & Roberta L Rudnick 2016: Science 351:372-5 doi 10.1126/science.aad5513
The Archean Eon witnessed - the production of early continental crust, - the emergence of life & - fundamental changes to the atmosphere. The nature of the first continental crust (the interface between the surface & deep Earth) has been obscured by the weathering, erosion & tectonism that followed its formation. We used Ni/Co & Cr/Zn ratios in Archean terrigenous sedimentary rocks & Archean igneous/meta-igneous rocks, to track the bulk MgO composition of the Archean upper continental crust. This crust evolved - from a highly mafic bulk composition before 3000 Ma - to a felsic bulk composition by 2500 Ma. This compositional change was attended by a 5-fold increase in the mass of the upper continental crust, due to addition of granitic rocks, suggesting the onset of global plate tectonics at ~3000 Ma.
New crustal clues from old rocks Brent Grocholski 2016 Science 351:350-1 doi 10.1126/science.351.6271.350-f
The ghost of continental crust long eroded away may exist in certain element ratios found in Archean rocks. Tang cs used Ni/Co & Cr/Zn ratios as a proxy for the MgO that long ago weathered away in Earth's oldest rocks. This allowed a reconstruction of rock composition, which appears to be very different from that of the crust today. The shift to contemporary crust composition occurred after the Archean, suggesting the onset of plate tectonics.
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Re. Zebra stripes - camouflage?
"The most longstanding hypothesis for zebra striping is crypsis (camouflaging)
Crocodiles find it difficult to choose a zebra when more than one enters water.
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History of poison arrow use by African San bushmen
Poison is slow-acting paralysis chemical from the cocoon of a desert beetle, used by all San hunters, it slows the prey, allowing hunter to follow ad kill.
The investigation reports poison use for nine San nations in Botswana and Namibia: G|ui, G||ana, G||olo, Hai||on, Ju’|hoansi, Kua, Naro, Tsila and Xao-ǁ’aen.
New research sharpens understanding of poison-arrow hunting in Africa Caroline (pink shirt) sifting out beetles from sand dug up by San hunter (right), Nyae Nyae Conservancy, Kalahari, Namibia [Credit: University of Kansas] "Arrow-hunting appears in ancient rock-paintings of the San, but it is unclear when poisons might have been adopted," Chaboo said. "We suspect poisons were adopted very early."
She said the San use arrows to hunt large game like antelope, buffalo, cheetah, eland, elephant, gazelle, giraffe, impala, lion, puku, springbok, warthog, wildebeest and zebra.
As an entomologist specializing in leaf-beetle species, Chaboo was especially interested how the San collect beetle poison, prepare it and apply it to arrows.
"In general, the beetle larvae are harvested by digging up soil around the host, sifting out the cocoons to take home," she said. "Later, the cocoons are cracked open and the beetle larvae extracted. Some San hunters squeeze the beetle body fluids out onto the arrowhead, or they make a concoction with other plant juices. The arrow preparer is very careful in handling all the materials and in storing the poisoned arrows and remaining cocoons away from the community."
According to the KU researcher, the biological purpose of the poison in beetles and plants remains unclear.
"This is the next big glaring question to answer," Chaboo said. "We can guess that this protein toxin has some physiological value to the insect, perhaps protecting it from the harsh dry climate above ground or possibly even an anti-predatory defense. These beetle larvae already have two other levels of defenses -- their hard cocoons and their underground location."
New research sharpens understanding of poison-arrow hunting in Africa KU Professor Caroline Chaboo (pink shirt) sets up a photo-shoot with Hai||om hunters in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, Kalahari, Namibia [Credit: University of Kansas] Chaboo said the poison slowly brings about paralysis in the prey of San hunters, although the biological mechanism remains unclear.
"The poison is a slow-acting paralyzing poison," she said. "The animal continues to run after being hit, but over the next few hours, the animal becomes increasingly unable to move well, and it finally falls over. Then the hunter can finish off the animal. Cell breakdown and interference with cell membrane channels are implicated."
Indeed, this slow chase by the hunter is the basis for the San's famous tracking culture.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
"Translation uncovers a disagreement between two languages on how concepts are grouped under a single word," says co-author and Santa Fe Institute and Oxford researcher Hyejin Youn. "Spanish, for example, groups 'fire' and 'passion' under 'incendio,' whereas Swahili groups 'fire' with 'anger' (but not 'passion')."
Guangdong was big port during Song dynasty before Mongols arrived, A Jewish merchant wrote a book about his trade journey there, City of Light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_of_Ancona Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
First partial-domesticate/ endu.monguotlu/goati=gulu=kept/cooped/gebt-kemt) in canyons and unable to escape.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Cana'an = Canyon trapped tortoises/goats
Bambuti women set up cane/wicker/weirs across small streams allowing waterflow but stopping fish-turtles for hand collecting (noodling), this was used in Jordan River too.
Salmon and tuna spawning up small streams into Black Sea etc. were also caught in canyons.
Salt was made in sunny canyons.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Sign of early settlement in the Nordic region date back to the cradle of civilization (Sapmi?)
The discovery of the world's oldest storage of fermented fish in southern Sweden could rewrite the Nordic prehistory with findings indicating a far more complex society...
Lund University. The discovery of the world's oldest storage of fermented fish in southern Sweden could rewrite the Nordic prehistory with findings indicating a far more complex society than previously thought. The unique discovery by osteologist Adam Boethius from Lund University was made when excavating a 9,200 year-old settlement at what was once a lake in Blekinge, Sweden.
"Our findings of large-scale fish fermentation, a traditional way of preserving fish, indicate that not only was this area settled at that time, it was also able to support a large community," says Adam Boethius, whose findings are now being published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The discovery is also an indication that Nordic societies were far more developed 9,200 years ago than what was previously believed. The findings are important as it is usually argued that people in the north lived relatively mobile lives, while people in the Levant -- a large area in the Middle East -- became settled and began to farm and raise cattle much earlier.
Because people did not have access to salt or the ability to make ceramic containers, they acidified the fish using, for example, pine bark and seal fat, and then wrapped the entire content in seal and wild boar skins and buried it in a pit covered with muddy soil. This type of fermentation requires a cold climate.
Note: Eskimos used rancid seal fat (rich in vit C / ascorbic acid) to treat scurvy, possibly Nordics did too
Posted by Mindovermatter (Member # 22317) on :
What a stupid comment there^^, are you really stupid enough to believe that present day Nordic peoples had anything to do with those people, 9000 years ago?
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Did someone claim that?
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Rhetorical question:
Why are the first words of a fool/troll always "stupid"?
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
^Why do skitzo's and religious fanatics only talk to themselves and fuch-up forums?
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Thanks for your participation in my thread, Mike111, are your African-American grandparents from Rhodesia?
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
AI:pph "Nswt/Nesut Bjty/Bity (King) in Ancient Egyptian: A Lesson in Paronymy and Leadership in the ancient ci.Kam (Egyptian) languages using the analytical tools of anthropological linguistics and comparative cultural anthropology".
ALL languages are merely open-sky dialects of xyaMbuangduaela including Mbuti-Mand'enga'la-San'b'aktwae-Bangla-Mbabalryam-Mb'yali-Nd'ama'wa'a. Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
The roots of the mammalian family-tree have long been shrouded in mystery: when did the placental mammals go their separate ways? Now, researchers say they've found where the family tree of placental mammals first branched apart, and when it happened.
Placental mammals consist of 3 main groups that diverged rapidly, evolving in wildly different directions: - Afrotheria: elephants, tenrecs... - Xenarthra: armadillos, sloths... - Boreoeutheria: all others. The relationships between them have been a subject of fierce controversy, with multiple studies coming to incompatible conclusions over the last decade, leading some researchers to suggest that these relationships might be impossible to resolve: - which is the oldest sibling of the 3? - did the mammals go their separate ways, due to S.America & Africa breaking apart? - when did placentals split up?
Tarver: "This has been one of the areas of greatest debate in evolutionary biology, many researchers consider it impossible to resolve. Now we've proven these problems can be solved: you just need to analyze genome-scale data-sets, using models that accurately reflect genomic evolution.²
The researchers assembled the largest mammalian phylogenomic dataset ever collected, before testing it with a variety of models of molecular evolution, choosing the most robust model, and then analysing the data, using several supercomputer clusters: "We tested it to destruction. We threw the kitchen sink at it." Slavish Mirarab: "A complication in reconstructing evolutionary histories from genomic data is that different parts of genomes can & often do give conflicting accounts of the history. Individual genes within the same species can have different histories. This is one reason why the controversy has stood so long: many thought the relationships couldn¹t be resolved.²
To address the complexities of analysing large numbers of genes shared among many spp, the researchers paired 2 fundamentally different approaches: - concatenated & - coalescent-based analyses. When the dust settled, the team had a specific family-tree: Atlantogenata (African Afrotheria + S.American Xenarthra) is the sister group to all other placentals.
The team then tested 3 of the most influential rivals against each other with the same model. All of the previous studies suddenly fell into line, their data agreeing with Tarver cs.
The researchers folded in another layer: a molecular clock analysis. Mario Dos-Reis: "The molecular clock analysis uses a combination of fossils & genomic data, to estimate when these lineages diverged from each other: Afrotheria & Xenarthra diverged from one another c 90 Ma." Previously, scientists thought that when Africa & S.America separated >100 Ma, they broke up the family of placental mammals. But the researchers found that placental mammals didn't split up until after Africa & S.America had already separated. Bob Asher: "We propose that South America's living endemic Xenarthra colonized the island-continent via overwater dispersal." At the time, the proto-Atlantic was only a few 100 miles wide. New World monkeys crossed the Atlantic later, when it was much bigger, probably on rafts formed from storm debris.
Note: SAm monkies & cavvies left Africa into Antarctica, then South America via Patagonia; there was NO rafting on storm debris.
And, of course, mammals repeatedly colonised remote islands like Madagascar. Carver: "You don't always need to overturn the status-quo to make a big impact. All of the competing hypotheses had some evidence to support them: that¹s precisely why it was the source of such controversy. Proving the roots of the placental family tree with hard empirical evidence is a massive accomplishment."
The Interrelationships of Placental Mammals and the Limits of Phylogenetic Inference James E Tarver, Mario dos Reis, Siavash Mirarab, Raymond J Moran, Sean Parker, Joseph E O¹Reilly, Benjamin L King, Mary J O¹Connell, Robert J Asher, Tandy Warnow, Kevin J Peterson, Philip CJ Donoghue & Davide Pisani 2016 Genome Biol. Evol.8:330 doi 10.1093/gbe/evv261 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evv261>
Placental mammals comprise 3 principal clades: - Afrotheria, e.g. elephants & tenrecs, - Xenarthra, e.g. armadillos & sloths), - Boreoeutheria (all other placental mammals)...
Previous analyses have found support for all 3 hypotheses: some concluded that this phylogenetic problem might be impossible to resolve, due to the compounded effects of - incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) & - a rapid radiation.
Here we use - a genome-scale nucleotide data-set, - microRNAs & - re-analysis of the 3 largest previously published amino-acid data-sets: the root of Placentalia lies between Atlantogenata & Boreoeutheria. Although we found evidence for ILS in early placental evolution, we are able to reject previous conclusions that the placental root cannot be resolved. Re-analyses of previous data-sets recover Atlantogenata + Boreoeutheria: contradictory results are a consequence of poorly fitting evolutionary models. When the evolutionary process is better-modeled, all data-sets converge on Atlantogenata. Our Bayesian molecular clock analysis estimates - marsupials diverged from placentals 157-170 Ma, - crown Placentalia diverged 86-100 Ma, - crown Atlantogenata diverged 84-97 Ma. Our results are compatible with placental diversification being driven by dispersal rather than vicariance mechanisms, postdating early phases in the protracted opening of the Atlantic Ocean.
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Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
No Y-chromosomes of recent Indian origin in Australians
Deep Roots for Aboriginal Australian Y Chromosomes
Anders Bergström et al.
Australia was one of the earliest regions outside Africa to be colonized by fully modern humans, with archaeological evidence for human presence by 47,000 years ago (47 kya) widely accepted [ 1, 2 ]. However, the extent of subsequent human entry before the European colonial age is less clear. The dingo reached Australia about 4 kya, indirectly implying human contact, which some have linked to changes in language and stone tool technology to suggest substantial cultural changes at the same time [ 3 ]. Genetic data of two kinds have been proposed to support gene flow from the Indian subcontinent to Australia at this time, as well: first, signs of South Asian admixture in Aboriginal Australian genomes have been reported on the basis of genome-wide SNP data [ 4 ]; and second, a Y chromosome lineage designated haplogroup C∗, present in both India and Australia, was estimated to have a most recent common ancestor around 5 kya and to have entered Australia from India [ 5 ]. Here, we sequence 13 Aboriginal Australian Y chromosomes to re-investigate their divergence times from Y chromosomes in other continents, including a comparison of Aboriginal Australian and South Asian haplogroup C chromosomes. We find divergence times dating back to ∼50 kya, thus excluding the Y chromosome as providing evidence for recent gene flow from India into Australia. (Dieneckes)
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Congo pygmies were just the western part of the tropical rainforest belt.
Model-based analyses of whole-genome data reveal a complex evolutionary history involving archaic introgression in Central African Pygmies
PingHsun Hsieh et al.
Comparisons of whole-genome sequences from ancient and contemporary samples have pointed to several instances of archaic admixture through interbreeding between the ancestors of modern non-Africans and now extinct hominids such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. One implication of these findings is that some adaptive features in contemporary humans may have entered the population via gene flow with archaic forms in Eurasia. Within Africa, fossil evidence suggests that anatomically modern humans (AMH) and various archaic forms coexisted for much of the last 200,000 yr; however, the absence of ancient DNA in Africa has limited our ability to make a direct comparison between archaic and modern human genomes. Here, we use statistical inference based on high coverage whole-genome data (greater than 60×) from contemporary African Pygmy hunter-gatherers as an alternative means to study the evolutionary history of the genus Homo. Using whole-genome simulations that consider demographic histories that include both isolation and gene flow with neighboring farming populations, our inference method rejects the hypothesis that the ancestors of AMH were genetically isolated in Africa, thus providing the first whole genome-level evidence of African archaic admixture. Our inferences also suggest a complex human evolutionary history in Africa, which involves at least a single admixture event from an unknown archaic population into the ancestors of AMH, likely within the last 30,000 yr.
Link
Genome Research Published in Advance February 17, 2016, doi: 10.1101/gr.192971.115
Whole-genome sequence analyses of Western Central African Pygmy hunter-gatherers reveal a complex demographic history and identify candidate genes under positive natural selection
PingHsun Hsieh et al.
African Pygmies practicing a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle are phenotypically and genetically diverged from other anatomically modern humans, and they likely experienced strong selective pressures due to their unique lifestyle in the Central African rainforest. To identify genomic targets of adaptation, we sequenced the genomes of four Biaka Pygmies from the Central African Republic and jointly analyzed these data with the genome sequences of three Baka Pygmies from Cameroon and nine Yoruba famers. To account for the complex demographic history of these populations that includes both isolation and gene flow, we fit models using the joint allele frequency spectrum and validated them using independent approaches. Our two best-fit models both suggest ancient divergence between the ancestors of the farmers and Pygmies, 90,000 or 150,000 yr ago. We also find that bidirectional asymmetric gene flow is statistically better supported than a single pulse of unidirectional gene flow from farmers to Pygmies, as previously suggested. We then applied complementary statistics to scan the genome for evidence of selective sweeps and polygenic selection. We found that conventional statistical outlier approaches were biased toward identifying candidates in regions of high mutation or low recombination rate. To avoid this bias, we assigned P-values for candidates using whole-genome simulations incorporating demography and variation in both recombination and mutation rates. We found that genes and gene sets involved in muscle development, bone synthesis, immunity, reproduction, cell signaling and development, and energy metabolism are likely to be targets of positive natural selection in Western African Pygmies or their recent ancestors.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Neanderthals used Manganese dioxide to start fires easier
A.aethiopicus KNM-WT-17000 "Black Skull": "high manganese content of the embedding matrix”
This fits with my hypothesis that iron oxides were used both as ochre colorants and fire poker coatings - the first metal foils
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Bedbugs & humans in caves, from bat parasites
Bedbug book says bedbugs on humans started at north Africa/Canaan coast 100s of 1000s of years ago from cave bat parasites; ancient humans began staying in caves there so the bugs changed form from clinging on bats on cave ceilings to sleeping humans on cave floor (bugs became less furry, longer legs, larger mouth for larger human red blood cells), these bugs didn't emigrate to other regions in Europe (eg. Germany) or China until much later ~ 15th c
Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it describes. Linguists think that just a small proportion of words are made this way in every language. But scientists don¹t actually know how that process happens. In the first study to explore how sounds become words in real time, researchers used a ³telephone² style game: they asked 16 volunteers to imitate sounds e.g. sloshing water, ripping paper. They then played those imitations for a new group of volunteers, who replicated them for new volunteers, and so on. Over time, something strange happened: the imitations started to sound like words. <http://sapir.psych.wisc.edu/evolang/fidelity.html#/> They developed stable initial sounds & vowels, becoming so regular that new volunteers were able to repeat them without any problems: - an imitation of ripping paper morphed from a drawn-out friction-full noise into the 2-syllable "chee-ah", - an imitation of sloshing water transformed itself into the guttural utterance "glong-glong". When a separate group was asked to trace the new "words" back to their original sounds, they were able to guess the correct answers well above chance. This suggests - people can turn meaningful sounds into meaningful words, - these kinds of sound-derived words may be much more widespread in human language than previously thought.
Brain & Behavior <http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/taxonomy/term/352> doi 10.1126/science.aaf4069
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New hominin fossil humeri from Koobi Fora: implications for Homo erectus (sensu lato) origin and diversity MICHAEL LAGUE, MEAVE & LOUISE LEAKEY & WILLIAM JUNGERS 2016 ...
To date, 3 humeral morphs have been identified among 2-1-Ma fossils in E-Africa - Paranthropus boisei, - Homo habilis, - Homo erectus.
In this study, we use diaphyseal morphology to diagnose 3 new fossil humeri from Koobi Fora c 2-1.5 Ma: - 2 isolated specimens: KNM-ER-64034 & 64037, - 1 associated with a 2.02-2.03 Ma partial skeleton ER-64061 (thought to represent early Homo). ...
ER-64034 (Okote Mb.) has clear affinities with "H.erectus", ER-64037 (Upper Burgi Mb.) with "P.boisei".
ER-64061 bears a strong resemblance to the humerus of WT-15000 "Turkana Boy" in size & shape, but both specimens differ substantially from the "H.erectus" group, and most closely resemble H.naledi UW-101-0283 & 101-0948.
ER 64061 & 64034 support the presence of 2 variants within African/Georgian H.erectus sensu lato (complementing previous findings, based on temporal bone morphology).
The ER-64061 skeleton establishes the presence of H.erectus sensu lato at an earlier date than previously documented.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
[Early Americans or First Americans?]
Ancient DNA shows European wipe-out of early Americans 2.4.16
The first largescale study of ancient DNA from early American people has confirmed the devastating impact of European colonisation on the Indigenous American populations of the time.
Bastien Llamas cs (2016 Science Advances) looked directly into the DNA of 92 pre-Columbian mummies & skeletons, between 500 & 8600 years old. They reveal a striking absence of the pre-Columbian genetic lineages in modern Indigenous Americans, showing extinction of these lineages with the arrival of the Spaniards: "Surprisingly, none of the genetic lineages we found in almost 100 ancient humans were present, or showed evidence of descendants, in today's Indigenous populations. This separation appears to have been established as early as 9000 years ago, and was completely unexpected, so we examined many demographic scenarios to try & explain the pattern. The only scenario that fit our observations was: - shortly after the initial colonisation, populations were established that subsequently stayed geographically isolated from one another, - a major portion of these populations later became extinct following European contact. This closely matches the historical reports of a major demographic collapse immediately after the Spaniards arrived in the late 1400s."
Llamas cs sequenced whole mtDNAs, extracted from bone & teeth samples from 92 pre-Columbian (mainly S.American) human mummies & skeletons. The ancient genetic signals also provide a more precise timing of the first people entering the Americas--via the Beringian land-bridge that connected Asia & the NW tip of N.America during the last Ice Age. Alan Cooper: "Our genetic reconstruction confirms that the first Americans entered c 16 ka via the Pacific coast, skirting around the massive ice sheets that blocked an inland corridor route, which only opened much later. They spread south-ward remarkably swiftly, reaching S-Chile by 14.6 ka." Lars Fehren-Schmitz:
"Genetic diversity in these early people from Asia was limited by the small founding populations, which were isolated on the Beringian land bridge for c 2400 to 9000 years. It was at the peak of the last Ice Age, when cold deserts & ice sheets blocked human movement, and limited resources would have constrained population size. This long isolation of a small group of people brewed the unique genetic diversity observed in the early Americans." Wolfgang Haak: "Our study is the first real-time genetic record of these key questions regarding the timing & process of the peopling of the Americas. To get an even fuller picture, however, we will need a concerted effort to build a comprehensive data-set from the DNA of people alive today & their pre-Columbian ancestors, to further compare ancient & modern diversity."
Mapping the earliest dated sites that contain a Nubian component does not permit an unequivocal identification of a region of origin for the Nubian Technology. Quaternary International doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2016.02.008
“Diffusion with modifications”: Nubian assemblages in the central Negev highlands of Israel and their implications for Middle Paleolithic inter-regional interactions
Mae Goder-Goldberger, Natalia Gubenko, Erella Hovers
Nubian Levallois cores, now known from sites in eastern Africa, the Nile Valley and Arabia, have been used as a material culture marker for Upper Pleistocene dispersals of hominins out of Africa. The Levantine corridor, being the only land route connecting Africa to Eurasia, has been viewed as a possible dispersal route. We report here on lithic assemblages from the Negev highlands of Israel that contain both Levallois centripetal and Nubian-type cores. Wetter conditions over the Sahara and Negev deserts during MIS 6a–5e provided a generally continuous environmental corridor into the Levant that enabled the dispersal of hominin groups bearing the Nubian variant of prepared core technologies. The Negev assemblages draw renewed attention to the place of the Levant as one of the dispersal routes out of Africa during the Late Pleistocene and could suggest that processes of human dispersals and cultural diffusion resulted in the spread of Nubian technology across eastern Africa, the western Sahara and the Nile Valley, the southern Levant and Arabia.
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Supernovae showered Earth with radioactive debris. A series of massive supernova explosions near our solar system showered the Earth with radioactive debris between 3.2 and 1.7 million years ago, Australian National University, April 6, 2016 [www.sciencedaily.com] and [phys.org]
The papers are:
Wallner, A., J. Feige, N. Kinoshita, M. Paul, L. K. Fifield, R. Golser, M. Honda, U. Linnemann, H. Matsuzaki, S. Merchel, G. Rugel, S. G. Tims, P. Steier, T. Yamagata, and S. R. Winkler, 2016, Recent near-Earth supernovae probed by global deposition of interstellar radioactive 60Fe. Nature. vol. 532, no. 7597: 69-72. DOI: 10.1038/nature17196 [www.nature.com]
Breitschwerdt, D., J. Feige, M. M. Schulreich, M. A. de. Avillez, C. Dettbarn, and B. Fuchs, 2016, The locations of recent supernovae near the Sun from modelling 60Fe transport Nature. vol. 532, no. 7597, pp. 73–76. doi:10.1038/nature17424 [www.nature.com]
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Koro Pok Guru (Ainu) Jomon bowl/dome = *Cophwrgl = qufa/parical/harigolu = Coracle/Cwrwgl (Anglo-Saxon/English interpretation of Gaelic-Welsh) /\ mongolu(Mbuti) moon dome ~ Selene Artemus(Gk) bow(l)woman/moon vs Apollo/sun-fire
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John Hawks at Symposium on Naledi hominins, tweets
Note: directly above the Dinaledi chamber was an unbroken chert ceiling. Note: Caver said mudstone & fossils were above the Dragons Back ridge, not the chamber.
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Primates in Asia moved to Africa
The recent paper in Science now suggests that the Simia (Anthropoidea) came from S-Asia to Africa (which doesn¹t explain how Strepsirhini/lemurs got in Madagascar). They were probably monkeylike insecti-frugivores, possibly 1 or 2 kg.
It¹s not impossible [per MVerhaegen) that, as Guiseppe Sera suggested some 90 years ago, the early Simia (vs tarsiers & Strepsirhini) already had some aquatic features (IHO of ears, nose, vagina, kidneys & spleen IIRC), e.g. for surface-swimming (e.g. to reach other trees in swamps e.g. during the flooded season? cf sloths?). I think that Saadanius c 30 Ma (found near Mekka, in mangroves then) had elongated nasal bones, nostrils very close to each other, "tenting" nostrils & large paranasal maxillary sinuses for frequent surface-swimming. Did the early Simia reach Africa floating?? (The NWM-LCA seem to have rafted to S.America.) Have galago ancestors (Strepsirhini) always lived in Africa? Of course, there were a lot of parallelisms in primates lineages, as always, but the Simia seem to have followed a somewhat different evolutionary path than the prosimians.
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Oligocene primates from China reveal divergence between African and Asian primate evolution Xijun Ni, Qiang Li, Lüzhou Li & K Christopher Beard 2016 Science 352:673-7 doi 10.1126/science.aaf2107
Climate filters dominant species
The transition between the Eo- & Oligocene was marked by distinct cooling. Because primate spp are particularly susceptible to cold, this change in climate drove a retraction of primates globally. After this transition, anthropoid primates were dominant in Afro-Arabia, but little has been known about primate reestablishment in Asia.
Ni cs describe 10 previously unknown primates found in Yunnan Province, that show that primates took a different path in Asia. Instead of anthropoids, strepsirrhine (lemur-like) primates were dominant. It is still unknown whether this difference was due to the environment or chance.
Abstract
Profound environmental & faunal changes are associated with climatic deterioration during the Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT) c 34 Ma. Reconstructing how Asian primates responded to the EOT has been hindered by a sparse record of Oligocene primates in Asia.
Here, we report the discovery of a diverse primate fauna from the early Oligocene of S-China. In marked contrast to Afro-Arabian Oligocene primate faunas, this Asian fauna is dominated by strepsirhines. There appears to be a strong break between Paleogene & Neogene Asian anthropoid assemblages. Asian & Afro-Arabian primate faunas responded differently to EOT climatic deterioration: the EOT functioned as a critical evolutionary filter, constraining the subsequent course of primate evolution across the Old World.
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9.5.16 New Oligocene primates from China highlight key evolutionary period Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters
Profound environmental & faunal changes are associated with climatic deterioration during the Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT) c 34 Ma. Primates are among the most environmentally sensitive of all mammals. Reconstructing how Asian primates responded to the EOT has been hindered by a sparse record of Oligocene primates on that continent.
NI Xijun cs (Science 6.5.16) reported the discovery of a diverse primate fauna from the early-Oligocene of S-China. In marked contrast to Afro-Arabian Oligocene primate faunas, this Asian fauna is dominated by strepsirhines. There appears to be a strong break between Paleogene & Neogene Asian anthropoid assemblages. Asian & Afro-Arabian primate faunas responded differently to EOT climatic deterioration: the EOT functioned as a critical evolutionary filter, constraining the subsequent course of primate evolution across the Old World. This study provides a deeper understanding of a pivotal moment in the evolution of primates.
These newly discovered fossil primates were collected via careful excavation & screen-washing at Lijiawa (upper part of Caijiachong Fm, Yuezhou Basin). The Lijiawa fossil site has yielded >10 mammal taxa that indicate an early-Oligocene age. Researchers described 10 previously unknown primates, represented by fossil teeth, jaws & a few other bones, helping to fill the gap in the record of Asian primate evolution.
Anthropoids (monkeys & apes) originated in Asia, with their earliest fossils dating from 45 Ma. Only later, c 38 Ma, did some anthropoids migrate to Africa. It was on that continent 200 ka that humans arose.
The transition between the Eo- & Oligocene was marked by distinct cooling. This change in climate drove a retraction of primates globally. Comparing the composition of the early-Oligocene primate faunas from Yunnan & Pakistan with later Eocene Asian primates known from China, Myanmar & Thailand, researchers revealed that surviving the EOT entailed a high degree of taxonomic & ecological selectivity. - Later Eocene primate assemblages in China, Myanmar & Thailand tend to be dominated (in taxonomic richness & numerical abundance) by stem anthropoids belonging to the families Eosimiidae & Amphipithecidae. - In stark contrast, only 1 of the 6 primates known from the early Oligocene of Yunnan is an anthropoid. - 3 of 5 primate spp documented from the late early Oligocene of Pakistan are anthropoids, but even in this case, the anthropoid taxa known from Pakistan differ from their contemporary African relatives in being relatively small-bodied.
However, late-Eocene-early-Oligocene primates from Afro-Arabia show a very different pattern of taxonomic selectivity in response to the EOT. - There, very few strepsirhines (none of which were large) survived the EOT, - but anthropoids diversified both taxonomically & ecologically, and became dominant in Afro-Arabian regions.
NI Xijun: "The EOT functioned as a critical evolutionary filter during the evolutionary history of primates. - Before the Tps dropped, Asia's primates were dominated by anthropoids. - Afterward, they were dominated by lemur-like primates, with the monkey-like ones decimated².
The EOT climatic deterioration may be the reason why apes & people emerged in Africa, even though anthropoids first appeared in Asia. Co-author Christopher Beard : "We had a lot of evidence previously that the earliest anthropoids originated in Asia. The EOT climate crisis virtually wiped out Asian anthropoids, so the only place where they could evolve to become later monkeys, apes & humans was Africa."
Dynamic changes to the Asian physical environment during the interval spanning the EOT included - progressive retreat of the Para-Tethys Sea from C-Asia, - continued uplift of the Tibetan-Himalayan orogen & - opening of the South China Sea.
Co-author LI Qiang: "Africa was not immune to global climatic changes across the EOT, but it did not experience the dramatic tectonic & paleo-geographic alterations that characterized Asia at this time. It is tempting to attribute the different patterns of turnover in Asian & African primate faunas across the EOT to local changes in vegetation & paleo-environment, but current evidence is not sufficient to rule out the possibility that random processes may also play a substantial role".
Beard: "We have so many primates from the Oligocene at this particular site in China, because it was located far enough to the south that it remained warm enough during that cold, dry time that primates could still survive there." They crowded into the limited space that remained available to them. Like most of today's primates, they were tropical tree-dwellers. The lone anthropoid in the group, a small, monkey-like primate named Bahinia banyueae, probably resembled some of today's smaller S.American monkeys such as marmosets, and its teeth suggest its diet was mainly fruits & insects.
MV @ AAT: There was a single source once of all primates (the primate LCA), but there might have been parallel evolutions in some prosimian or earlier groups (some omomyids//paromomyids, some strepsi-//haplorrhines etc.), esp. on different continents (e.g. Africa//Asia//Madagascar?), but I have no good insight in these fossils. My impression FWIW, the primate LCA was possibly a rel.slow end-branch grasping arboreal (cf nails instead of claws), feeding on flowers, nectar & fruits & later insects. The early haplorrhines seem to have become faster hunters on flying insects (cf strongly overlapping visual fields). The early simians became more frugivorous again?
Haplorrhines = tarsiers + simians=anthropoids: - Tarsiers = SE.Asia. - Simia = New + Old World simians: -- NW monkeys probably crossed the Atlantic 40-30 Ma (then much narrower). -- OW simians (OWMs + hominoids) probably originated in Africa-Arabia, but the simian LCA might have come from S.Asia 40 Ma or more. Strepsirrhines today: Madagascar, Africa, S.Asia.
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Jomon - Pygmies in Japan lived in dome huts shingled with butter-burr leaves
Ama Divers - Women who have dived for seafood with wood buckets/coracles since Jomon era, similar to Tasmanian, Polynesian, Tierra del Fuego women divers.
Note: shima = island (Okinawa dialect) Note: Ama may relate to Ama.te.rasu/Sun goddess/Sh.ama.sh: Sumer sun god)/tamate-tomato Japan's women of the sea hope G7 will boost their dying way of life
The ama divers of the Shima peninsula, who harvest shellfish from the seabed, see the nearby gathering of world leaders as a chance to promote their culture
Justin McCurry in Osatsu
Wednesday 25 May 2016 06.43 BST
Michiko Nakamura can personally vouch for the provenance of the oysters and clams bubbling away on the grill inside her hut in Osatsu, a fishing village overlooking the Pacific ocean.
Hours earlier, the 64-year old put on her face mask, fins and wetsuit, took a deep breath and propelled herself into the depths in search of lunch.
She is one of a dwindling number of ama – female divers who eschew breathing apparatus as they scour the seabed up to ten metres down for shellfish, seaweed and the occasional octopus and lobster.
With their way of life under pressure from falling seafood stocks and waning interest among younger women, Nakamura and her fellow divers are hoping that this week’s G7 summit in nearby Ise-Shima will boost the campaign to prevent their profession becoming a cultural relic.
Akie Abe, the wife of Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, is hoping to take leaders’ spouses to watch a demonstration by ama divers, whom she has described as the embodiment of “Japanese values”.
In a column in the Mainichi Shimbun, Abe said she was impressed by the divers’ commitment to sustainable fishing “by setting areas where they can catch seafood and self-regulating the way they fish through the ages”.
Local officials said they would use the summit to push the Japanese government to approve its bid for Unesco to put ama diving culture on its intangible cultural heritage list.
Nakamura said she understood why her daughter, who is in her 20s with children of her own, had decided not to follow in her mother’s footsteps. “There are times when even I don’t feel like diving, when there’s a really cold wind or the sea is rough,” she said. “But young women don’t want to do this job any more, so that’s why I carry on.”
Just after the second world war, Japan was home to about 10,000 ama – literally, women of the sea – with 6,000 of them concentrated on the coast of the Shima peninsula, where Barack Obama and other G7 leaders will meet for two days of talks in late May. By 2014, the number of ama had plummeted to about 2,000 nationwide, with 750 or so in the Shima region.
Nakamura’s grandmother was one of about 600 divers in Osatsu, where the average age of the 100 or so remaining divers is 65. The oldest is in her mid-80s.
“Most women retire in their 70s,” said Takuya Agata, curator at the Toba sea-folk museum. “In 10 years’ time, I think there will be about half the number of divers there are now.”
The failure of attempts to nurture a new generation of divers, including attracting younger women from other parts of Japan, means the end could be drawing near for a tradition dating back 3,000 years.
Chisels and other diving tools were excavated from the Jōmon era (14,000BC–300BC) ruins on the Shima peninsula, while the first reference to ama appears in Man’yoshu, an eighth-century collection of poetry. The first images of the women, naked from the waist up, appeared in 18th-century ukiyo-e prints.
They did not start covering up in white cotton clothing until the early 1900s, and have used wetsuits since the 1960s.
Most of the women can recall at least one dive that they were convinced would be their last. For Nakamura, it came one morning three years ago, when the rope attached to her waist became snagged on a rock, bringing her ascent to a halt inches beneath the surface.
“Every time a wave passed I looked to the sky and gasped for air before going under again,” she said. “Afterwards, I went to the shrine and prayed that it would never happen again, but I can feel myself panicking even now thinking about it.”
Not surprisingly, ama culture is steeped in superstition. The five-pointed star – or seiman – a talismanic design that appears on the ama’s headscarves and tools, is written in a single stroke, starting and ending at the same point, to symbolise a safe return to the surface. An accompanying lattice-design dohman symbol is meant to keep out danger. Before each dive, the women knock on the side of the boat or wooden bucket with their chisel, and recite a short mantra.
The risk of injury, or worse, is not the only reason why the ama’s days appear to be numbered. Few young women are interested in becoming free divers, while overfishing and global warming have eaten into stocks of their most prized catch, abalone, which sell for as much as 8,000 yen (£50) a kilo.
“I remember a time when you’d be stepping on abalone, there were so many of them,” said Nakamura. “Now, if you find a good spot you can come up with about 12kg in a session.”
Multiple dives of just under a minute – what the ama call their “50-second battle” – also take a toll on their health: surveys show that many of the women, who lose up to 10kg in weight during a typical season, experience hearing problems later in life.
Some ama, like Nakamura, dive in groups, with each diver attached by a rope to a wooden bucket that also acts as a float. Those who dive deeper work with their fishermen husbands, who remain on the boat and haul their wives from the depths after each dive.
No one is certain why women, rather than their husbands, took on the role of free diver. One explanation is that women generally have more subcutaneous fat and can tolerate cold water for longer periods; another theory is that fishing close to the shoreline seemed a natural job for women while their husbands ventured offshore in their boats.
During their heyday after the war, the ama were something of an aberration in what was a largely patriarchal society. Orie Iwasaki, of the local tourism association, said: “Women had very few rights back then, but in this world they were seen as strong, and a match for their husbands.”
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Florida Africans before Clovis/Bering strait?
Florida sinkhole archeological site recasts 'peopling of the Americas' narrative. Stone tools, mastodon bones, and dung provide 'vindication' for 30-year-old Florida underwater archeological dig site that had presented evidence that the Americas were populated much earlier than originally thought by Eva Botkin-Kowacki, Christian Science Monitor, May 13, 2016. [www.csmonitor.com]
Stone Knife and Mastodon Bones Point to Earlier Arrival of First Americans. A sinkhole in Florida’s Aucilla River is an “archaeological gold mine” that offers a rare glimpse of life in ancient America by Greg Harlin, National Geographic, May 13, 2016. [news.nationalgeographic.com]
Mastodon meal scraps revise US prehistory by Jonathan Webb, BBC News, May 14, 2016 [www.bbc.com]
The paper is:
Halligan, J. J., M. R. Waters, A. Perrotti, I. J. Owens, J. M. Feinberg, M. D. Bourne, B. Fenerty, Ba. Winsborough, D. Carlson, D. C. Fisher, T. W. Stafford, Jr, and J. S. Dunbar, 2016, Pre-Clovis occupation 14,550 years ago at the Page-Ladson site, Florida, and the peopling of the Americas. Science Reports. vol. 2, no. 5, e1600375 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600375
Abstract at: [advances.sciencemag.org]
PDF file at: [advances.sciencemag.org]
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Late Stone Age human remains from Ishango (Democratic Republic of Congo): New insights on Late Pleistocene modern human diversity in Africa I Crevecoeur, A Brooks, I Ribot, E Cornelissen & P Semal 2016 JHE 96:3557 doi 10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.04.003 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.04.003> <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.04.003>Get>
... Here, we present a morphometric comparative analysis of the earliest Late-Pleistocene Hs remains from Ishango (Dem.Rep.Congo). The early Late Stone Age layer (eLSA) of this site (Last Glacial Maximum 2520 Ka) contains >100 fragmentary human remains. The exceptional associated archaeological context suggests: these remains derived from a community of hunter-fisher-gatherers, exhibiting complex social & cognitive behaviors, incl. - substantial reliance on aquatic resources, - development of fishing technology, - possible mathematical notations & - repetitive use of space, likely on a seasonal basis.
Comparisons with large samples of Late Pleistocene & early Holocene Hs fossils from Africa & Eurasia show: the Ishango human remains exhibit distinctive characteristics & a higher phenotypic diversity, in contrast to recent African populations. In many aspects, as is true for the inner ear conformation, these eLSA human remains have more affinities with Mid-to-early Late Pleistocene fossils worldwide than with extant local African populations. Cross-sectional geometric properties of the long bones are consistent with archaeological evidence suggesting reduced terrestrial mobility resulting from greater investment in & use of aquatic resources. Our results on the Ishango human remains provide insights into past African Hs diversity & adaptation that are consistent with genetic theories about the deep sub-structure of Late Pleistocene African populations & their complex evolutionary history of isolation & diversification.
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Scholars have long discussed the introduction and spread of iron metallurgy in different civilizations. The sporadic use of iron has been reported in the Eastern Mediterranean area from the late Neolithic period to the Bronze Age. Despite the rare existence of smelted iron, it is generally assumed that early iron objects were produced from meteoritic iron. Nevertheless, the methods of working the metal, its use, and diffusion are contentious issues compromised by lack of detailed analysis. Since its discovery in 1925, the meteoritic origin of the iron dagger blade from the sarcophagus of the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun (14th C. BCE) has been the subject of debate and previous analyses yielded controversial results. We show that the composition of the blade (Fe plus 10.8 wt% Ni and 0.58 wt% Co), accurately determined through portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, strongly supports its meteoritic origin. In agreement with recent results of metallographic analysis of ancient iron artifacts from Gerzeh, our study confirms that ancient Egyptians attributed great value to meteoritic iron for the production of precious objects. Moreover, the high manufacturing quality of Tutankhamun's dagger blade, in comparison with other simple-shaped meteoritic iron artifacts, suggests a significant mastery of ironworking in Tutankhamun's time.
The period from the late third millennium BC to the start of the first millennium AD witnesses the first steps towards food globalization in which a significant number of important crops and animals, independently domesticated within China, India, Africa and West Asia, traversed Central Asia greatly increasing Eurasian agricultural diversity. This paper utilizes an archaeobotanical database (AsCAD), to explore evidence for these crop translocations along southern and northern routes of interaction between east and west. To begin, crop translocations from the Near East across India and Central Asia are examined for wheat (Triticum aestivum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) from the eighth to the second millennia BC when they reach China. The case of pulses and flax (Linum usitatissimum) that only complete this journey in Han times (206 BC–AD 220), often never fully adopted, is also addressed. The discussion then turns to the Chinese millets, Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica, peaches (Amygdalus persica) and apricots (Armeniaca vulgaris), tracing their movement from the fifth millennium to the second millennium BC when the Panicum miliaceum reaches Europe and Setaria italica Northern India, with peaches and apricots present in Kashmir and Swat. Finally, the translocation of japonica rice from China to India that gave rise to indica rice is considered, possibly dating to the second millennium BC. The routes these crops travelled include those to the north via the Inner Asia Mountain Corridor, across Middle Asia, where there is good evidence for wheat, barley and the Chinese millets. The case for japonica rice, apricots and peaches is less clear, and the northern route is contrasted with that through northeast India, Tibet and west China. Not all these journeys were synchronous, and this paper highlights the selective long-distance transport of crops as an alternative to demic-diffusion of farmers with a defined crop package.
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One line of evidence that has been largely overlooked in archaeological investigations of Madagascar and, indeed, eastern Africa more broadly is ancient plants. However, it is estimated that some 10% of Madagascar’s flora was introduced from elsewhere (10), and plant introductions include a significant number of staple crops, spices, and arable weeds of Asian origin (11). Historically or currently important crops on Madagascar, like banana (Musa spp.), yam (Dioscorea alata), taro (Colocasia esculenta), and coconut (Cocos nucifera), are Southeast Asian cultivars (12, 13). Asian rice (Oryza sativa), which was domesticated separately in East and South Asia but is the basis of traditional agriculture across much of Madagascar today, was also widely grown in Southeast Asia by the first millennium CE (14⇓–16). Other Asian crops, like mung bean (Vigna radiata) and Asian cotton (Gossypium arboreum), are also cultivated on Madagascar. The fact that early crop introductions to Madagascar may have arrived with Austronesian settlers seems particularly feasible given that Austronesian expansion into the Pacific was linked to the spread of a similar suite of cultivars (17).
To directly explore early cultivated plants on Madagascar and their potential to inform on its colonization history, we collected new archaeobotanical data from the island as well as contemporaneous sites on the African mainland coast (Kenya and Tanzania) and nearshore islands (Pemba, Zanzibar, and Mafia) and the Comoros.
Research across various Old World sites suggests that exotic crops introduced to a region as new plants usually featured as a minor component of subsistence systems for centuries and, in some cases, millennia after arrival before becoming a major resource (24, 25). This pattern is seen, for example, with the introduction of Asian crops at Roman Period port sites on the Red Sea (26, 27). The arrival at coastal sites in eastern Africa of rice and mung bean together with Near Eastern crops, like wheat and pea, can be understood as part of the broader acquisition of exotic goods that occurred with eastern Africa’s entry into the Indian Ocean commercial sphere (28).
In contrast, the overwhelming dominance of Asian crops in the earliest records of the Comoros and Madagascar is consistent with patterns observed when crops move through human colonization. Such a pattern is observed in Japan, where the immigration of new groups from the mainland after approximately 2,800 y B.P. is associated with the arrival of wet rice cultivation (29). It is also observed, for example, in Neolithic Europe, where the first crops are entirely Near Eastern, reflecting the arrival of migrants from this region (30). The presence of Asian crops apparently brought by migrating people on the Comoros and Madagascar is important given that Madagascar is known to have been colonized by settlers from Asia. The findings, nonetheless, require careful consideration given that there are diverse potential sources for the crops and that the present day inhabitants of the Comoros speak Bantu rather than Austronesian languages (31).
Rice and mung bean are the two main Asian food crops identified in archaeological assemblages from the Comoros and Madagascar. Fig. 3 presents a summary of Indian Ocean sites at which these two crops have been identified. Given the paucity of data for the period of 650–1200 CE, sites from an earlier period, 500 BCE to 650 CE, are also included for comparison. The fact that the combination of rice and mung bean is rare in the Near East and Arabia is notable. Indeed, it is only recorded at two Roman-period sites on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea, where it was associated with the presence of Indian traders engaged in the pepper trade (26, 27). At these sites, the crops are found in small quantities within overall assemblages dominated by Mediterranean crops. Mung bean seems to be absent from Medieval cookbooks of the Islamic world, and these sources also indicate that rice played a minor role in the cuisine of the Arab world (32). Although rice was adopted into cultivation in parts of Iran and Mesopotamia more than 2,000 y ago, it was not a staple in the Middle East in the Medieval Period (33).
Fig. 3.
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This part is very refreshing: "Take body size. In the developed world, we are big, and sadly getting bigger in unhealthy ways. Better nutrition has led to increased body mass in many populations across the world. We also associate being large with being human, as it was thought that our ultimate ancestors, the australopithecines (living in Africa between about 4m and 2m years ago) were small, and that our own genus, Homo, marked a substantial increase in body size.
But that may not have been the case. In fact, nearly all the early, extinct species and subspecies of Homo were small, if not very small. The global average human body weight (combined sexes) now is over 60kg. No fossil hominin until the Neanderthals and modern humans reached an average of 50 kg, and most were below 40 kg – half the size of the average American male. Pygmy populations in Africa and Asia also weigh about 40kg, which means that most early and extinct hominins were pygmy sized. There are many advantages to large body size – such as resisting predators, access to larger prey – and the fact that our earliest ancestors did not become large tells us a lot about the energetic constraints under which they lived and reproduced.
We may picture our ancestors as rugged versions of ourselves, tall and strong, but they were not. We need to start thinking of them as creatures that were as unique as ourselves, but in different ways."
Enriching soils in Central Africa = rainforest extinction
They discovered that the ancient West African method of adding charcoal and kitchen waste to highly weathered, nutrient poor tropical soils can transform the land into enduringly fertile, carbon-rich black soils which the researchers dub 'African Dark Earths'.
From analysing 150 sites in northwest Liberia and 27 sites in Ghana researchers found that these highly fertile soils contain 200-300 percent more organic carbon than other soils and are capable of supporting far more intensive farming.
Professor James Fairhead, from the University of Sussex, who initiated the study, said: "Mimicking this ancient method has the potential to transform the lives of thousands of people living in some of the most poverty and hunger stricken regions in Africa.
"More work needs to be done but this simple, effective farming practice could be an answer to major global challenges such as developing 'climate smart' agricultural systems which can feed growing populations and adapt to climate change."
Similar soils created by Amazonian people in pre-Columbian eras have recently been discovered in South America -- but the techniques people used to create these soils are unknown. Moreover, the activities which led to the creation of these anthropogenic soils were largely disrupted after the European conquest. Read more at https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2016/06/700-year-old-fertile-soil-technique.html#gXSlC3XpeRmsxZUf.99 Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Generations of macaques used 'tools' to open their oysters and nuts 10.6.16
A new study looks into the history of stone tools used by wild macaques in coastal Thailand: they have been using them for decades, possibly 1000s of years, to crack open shellfish & nuts.
This is the first report into the archaeological evidence of tool use by OWMs (Michael Haslam cs 2016 JHE). It is just the 1st step in finding out how their behaviour compares with that of early humans living in similar environments.
From a distance in boats off the coast, researchers spent hundreds of hours watching how groups of macaques in the marine national park on Piak Nam Yai Island selected stones as tools to crush marine snails, nuts & crabs. While the tide was out, the macaques broke open oysters attached to large boulders. They dislodged the top half of the shell, using their crushing tool, and then scooped out the meat with their fingers from the remaining part still attached to the rock. The researchers also found that once a macaque had a good stone fit for the job, they would keep it to crack open other shells or nuts before dropping it. Once the job was done, the macaques often discarded their tools around the same boulders, where they had enjoyed their meal.
When the macaques had left the shore, the research team went on land to closely examine the tools for marks, e.g. - pitting on the flat side, - crushing & fracture marks on the narrow ends of the stones. They also excavated the area beneath a prominent boulder for evidence of discarded stone tools used by previous generations of macaques. Having identified the tell-tale marks of food processing, the researchers spotted 10 tools in the oldest archaeological layer, at 65 cm below the surface. They were limited in how far down they could dig, given the high tides that inundated the boulder twice a day. They indirectly dated the excavated tools as between 10 & 50 years old (radio-C dates for oyster shell debris in the same undisturbed archaeological layer).
Haslam: '... primates with much smaller brains than humans have innovative ways of exploiting the food sources available to them. Macaques in the forests on the island come down to the shore, when the tide is out, to forage, and use stones as tools, to break open shells & hard nut-casings. What we don't have at the moment is a body of archaeological evidence to compare the evolutionary behaviour of other primates with our own. Uncovering the history of the macaques' foraging behaviour is a first step. As we build up a fuller picture of their evolutionary history, we will start to identify the similarities & differences in human behaviour & that of other primates.'
The Primate Archaeology Project runs archaeology work at various sites around the world. For the macaques, Primarch is working in cooperation with a programme on macaque tool use in Thailand (Michael Gumert & Suchinda Malaivijitnond).
In previous research led by Haslam, a team also observed the tool-carrying distances of the macaques on Piak Nam Yai Island: the monkeys typically moved their tools 1 m or less from where they picked them up, although the longest distance that a macaque carried a tool was 87.6 m. On average, they ate 9 oysters at a time, moving short distances with the same tool, but in 1 case, they observed a hungry macaque eat 63 oysters in a row, using the same stone tool to cleave the shells open.
Michael Haslam cs 2016 Archaeological excavation of wild macaque stone tools JHE doi 10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.05.002
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Venturing out safely: The biogeography of Homo erectus dispersal out of Africa Carotenuto F, Tsikaridze N, Rook L, Lordkipanidze D, Condemi S & Raia P 2016 JHE 95:1-12 doi 10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.02.005
The dispersal of He out of Africa at some 1.9 Ma is one of the most important, crucial, and yet controversial events in human evolution. Current opinions about this episode expose the contrast between - those who see He as a highly social, cooperative species seeking out new ecological opportunities to exploit & - those preferring a passive, climate-driven explanation.
By using geo-statistics techniques & probabilistic models, we characterised the ecological context of He dispersal, from its E.African origin to the colonization of Eurasia, taking into account - the presence of other large mammals & - the physical characteristics of the landscape as potential factors.
Our model indicated that He followed almost passively the large herbivore fauna during its dispersal. - In Africa, the dispersal was statistically associated with the presence of large freshwater bodies (Rift Valley Lakes). - In Eurasia, the presence of He was associated with the occurrence of geological outcrops likely yielding unconsolidated flint.
During the early phase of dispersal, our model indicated that He actively avoided areas densely populated by large carnivores. This pattern weakened as He dispersed over Europe, possibly because of the decreasing presence of carnivores there + the later acquisition of Acheulean technology. During this later phase, He was associated with limestone & shaley marl, and He seems to have been selecting for high-elevation sites.
Our results do not directly contradict the idea that He may have been an active hunter, but they clearly point to the fact that predator avoidance may have conditioned its long-distance diffusion as it moved outside Africa.
The modelled dispersal route suggests that He remained preferentially associated with low/middle latitude (i.e. comparatively warm) sites throughout its colonization history.
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“Just saying it is comfortable is not enough,” said Zamma, who decided to nap in a chimp’s bed in Tanzania’s Mahale mountain range during a research trip in 1999. “It removed all of the tension from my muscles in a way that ordinary beds don’t – that’s the effect of lying on something that takes into account the natural shape of the body, and it’s why chimpanzees sleep as well as they do.”
A chimpanzee relaxes in its treetop bed in the Mahale mountain range, Tanzania. Primates’ beds are designed to envelop the body. Photograph: Picasa/Koichiro Zamma
He decided to design a version for humans during a particularly hot summer in Japan several years ago. “It was so hot and humid and I was having trouble sleeping, and then I remembered how cool the chimp’s bed in Tanzania had been,” he said. He added humans’ ape-like forebears were thought to have slept in treetop beds up to 4m years ago. “In that sense, this is like sleeping in our ancestors’ beds.”
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But there are two steps in speciation, The first is geographic separation until enough characters are built up that there is a sexual separation first meeting attractiveness, then genetic separation.
The out of Africa theory is a flawed theory because it does not account for this geographic separation. Ernst Mayr and Stephen J Gould both said "speciation can not occur in the presence of ones ancestors"
When Homo arrives in China 2.5 million years ago, it radiates crossing thousands of rivers millions of times. In that same time. The bonobo chimpanzee and the common chimp have been separated by a single river. Why? Because chimps share zero of our dozens of adaptations that allow us to swim.
Just think about that if we were all chimpanzees 6 million years ago then you would see some residual gene flow from the chimpanzee to Africans. But the 2012 genome study showed the exact opposite. Africans have fewer copy number variation CNV than non Africans! Same study found there is more genetic diversity (genes) and more copy numbers of genes in Asian and Polynesian homo. Africa has more single nucleotide polymorphism's which means it has a greater population size in the last million years. African genes are young, but Africans share all of the same adaptations of the non-Africans. Why?
All humans are all equally diverged. Each set of chromosomes contains 6 billion nucleotides of which there are only 5 million differences between all humans. This would be impossible if we had an ancestor in Africa just 6 million years ago. Impossible...
Why? Because our ancient ancestors 3 million years ago would need to be fully human with all aquatic adaptations, this leaves just 3 million years since the supposed separation from chimps. Homo was so capable as to cross millions of rivers survive thousands if not millions of Winters, hunting adeptly, making tools... yet in in Africa, it's homeland, every single one of them had to die. This makes no sense.
To explain our lack of genetic diversity homo would have needed to reintroduced by a new genetically thin population with no chimpanzees genes. Then those new Africans would have to repopulate the entirety of Africa.
Marc points out so well that all humans share zero copies of the end I just retrovirus PTERV1, whereas all African apes, and primates have hundreds of copies. Same could be said with the baboon C retrovirus, Simian immunodeficiency virus and many more.
In order for Homo to speciate, we had to fight a different war, that was not in Africa. This is a certainty. Because half of our genome is dedicated toward fighting viruses and it is once a virus is embedded in our genome it virtually impossible to lose. Humans have our own set of retroviruses not seen in the African apes (barbulescu and many many others), same as orangutan (pongerv), gibbon, every other mammal depending upon their niche."
Jon @ AAT
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Marine and terrestrial foods as a source of brain-selective nutrients for early modern humans in the southwestern Cape, South Africa
K Kyriacou, DM Blackhurst, JE Parkington & AD Marais 2016 JHE 97:8696 doi 10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.04.009 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.04.009> <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.04.009>Get>
Many attempts have been made to define & reconstruct the most plausible ecological & dietary niche of the earliest members of the human species. While earlier models emphasise big-game hunting in terrestrial, largely savannah environments, more recent scenarios consider the role of marine & aquatic foods as a source of poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) & other brain-selective nutrients.
Along the coast of S-Africa, there appears to be an association between the emergence of anatomically modern humans AMHs & accumulation of some of the earliest shell middens during the Middle Stone Age 200 - 40 ka.
Fragmentary fossil remains classified as AMHs, along with marine food residues & numerous material cultural indicators of increased social & behavioural complexity have been recovered from coastal sites.
In this paper, new information on the nutrient content of marine & terrestrial foods available to early modern humans in the SW-Cape is presented & compared with existing data on the nutritional value of some wild plant & animal foods in Africa.
Results: Coastal foraging (particularly the collection of abundant & predictable marine molluscs) would have allowed early modern humans to exploit some of the richest & most accessible sources of protein, micro-nutrients & longer-chain omega-6 & omega-3 fatty acids. Reliable & accessible sources of omega-3 eicosapentaenoic & docosahexaenoic acid DHA are considerably more restricted in terrestrial foods
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Linguistic links indicate travels along tropical rainforest belt:
Camer.on Highlands, Malaya Camer.oon W. Africa Damre mtns. Cambodia Samre.por Cambodia Damre negritos Semi.en mountains, Ethiopia Sumer/Shinar(H) Sumba, Sumbawa Sunda, Sumatra *Xyuamb.ue - through.way
Khampa Tibet Champa India Champa Viet Nam - - -
turn-around from Afghanistan westwards:
Dhofar mtns. Oman Darfur mtns. Sudan Afar mtns. Ethiopia
Kanda.har Afghanistan Hor.eb mtn. Jordan-Israel
- - -
Orange river, southwest Africa Oromo river, east Africa similarity to Andaman Onge/Aung(person), Malay orang(person), aura(dawn-gold-orange)
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Deep Skull from Niah Cave and the Pleistocene Peopling of Southeast Asia
Darren Curnoe et al.
The Deep Skull from Niah Cave in Sarawak (Malaysia) is the oldest anatomically modern human recovered from island Southeast Asia. For more than 50 years its relevance to tracing the prehistory of the region has been controversial. The most widely held view, originating with Brothwell's 1960 description and analysis, is that the Niah individual is related to Indigenous Australians. Here we undertake a new assessment of the Deep Skull and consider its bearing on this question. In doing so, we provide a new and comprehensive description of the cranium including a reassessment of its ontogenetic age, sex, morphology, and affinities. We conclude that this individual was most likely to have been of advanced age and female, rather than an adolescent male as originally proposed. The morphological evidence strongly suggests that the Deep Skull samples the earliest modern humans to have settled Borneo, most likely originating on mainland East Asia. We also show that the affinities of the specimen are most likely to be with the contemporary indigenous people of Borneo, although, similarities to the population sometimes referred to as Philippine Negritos cannot be excluded. Finally, our research suggests that the widely supported “two-layer” hypothesis for the Pleistocene peopling of East/Southeast Asia is unlikely to apply to the earliest inhabitants of Borneo, in-line with the picture emerging from genetic studies of the contemporary people from the region.
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Probably derived from Mbuangualua/Mbo.njua/Bo(r).niah.
- - -
"The name Mlabri is a Thai/Lao alteration of the word Mrabri, which appears to come from a Khmuic term "people of the forest". In Khmu, mra means "person" and bri "forest". They are also known locally as Phi Tong Luang (Thai: ผีตองเหลือง, Lao: ຜີຕອງເຫລືອງ) or "spirits of the yellow leaves", since they abandon their shelters when the leaves begin to turn yellow." wiki
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Oldest Human footprints 1.5ma Kenya
Earliest direct evidence of modern human-like foot function from 1.5 Ma hominin footprints at Ileret, Kenya
KEVIN HATALA & BRIAN RICHMOND 2016 AAPA
The Hs foot generates propulsion during bipedal locomotion, using a functional pattern that is unlike any other extant apes. Understanding when this functional pattern emerged during human evolution is complicated: - soft tissues do not fossilize, - complete, associated foot & leg skeletons are not known for any early hominins.
However, fossil hominin footprints preserve direct records of the external motions of fossil hominin feet. Newly discovered 1.5-Ma hominin footprints from Ileret were compared to - the footprints of habitually barefoot Hs & - the 3.7-Ma footprints from Laetoli.
Re-sampling analyses were used for quantitative comparisons, 3-D geometric morphometrics were used to visualize morphological differences. Differences were interpreted in the context of experimental results that link patterns of footprint variation to gait biomechanics: - The Ileret footprints preserve forefoot morphologies similar to Hs footprints. - The Laetoli footprints differ significantly.
The 1.5-Ma Ileret footprints therefore preserve the earliest direct evidence of human-like foot function: - a medial transfer of pressure, - propulsion derived from the medial fore-foot.
We argue that this implies a human-like morphology of many (if not all) of the anatomical structures in the Ileret legs & feet. These results support the hypothesis: - an essentially modern bipedal gait was not present at 3.7 Ma, - it evolved in certain hominin taxa by the early Pleistocene.
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Eritrean footprints 800,000 years ago around lakeshore now desert:
The discovery is the first time that footprints from the mid-Pleistocene era have been found, a very important period of transition in human evolution, in which human species with larger brains and more modern bodies than homo erectus developed.
A likelihood analysis (supertree with 488 primate taxa incl.134 fossils) was performed to test hypotheses of ancestral areas.
The results show significant differences from previous analyses that did not include fossils:
- Both Primates s.l. (+Plesiadapiformes) & Euprimates are inferred to have originated in N.America, supported by the presence on that continent of the oldest groups of plesiadapiforms, omomyoids & adapoids.
- Strepsirrhini s.l. (+ adapoids) appears to be Asian in origin, vs previous analyses that have considered them Malagasy, Eurasian, and/or African, supported by the presence in Asia of primitive adapoids.
- Crown-strepsirrhines are inferred to have originated in Africa.
- The place of origins of Anthropoidea remains uncertain, but none of the most likely resolutions include Africa.
- Pongines probably originated in E-Asia,
- the African ape-human clade most likely originated in Europe or in W-Asia (i.e. Anatolia), not in Africa as some have previously inferred.
----- comments: MV
"It's sometimes dangerous to include fossils in extant taxa: mosaic, reverse, convergent, parallel etc.evolutions!
When fossil & DNA data are seemingly in conflict, the DNA data (if enough available) are correct.
Early hominoids (coastal forest dwellers IMO) after Africa-Arabia hit Eurasia ?18 Ma: - first hylabatids left Africa, - then hominids-pongids ("great apes"): pongids E-Tethys = S.Asia, hominids W-Tethys = Medit.coastal forests (Anatolia then = archipelago)."
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The ecological niche of the Morotopithecus, with implications for hominoid evolution
LAURA MACLATCHY, JAMES ROSSIE & JOHN KINGSTON 2016 AAPA
The Moroto II locality (Uganda >20.6 Ma) is best known for the hominoid Morotop.
Recently, dental fossils from the site have revealed evidence for folivory:
- long tooth row,
- large, narrow M2 with well-developed cristids.
Additional recovery of femoral fragments have completed the shaft of MUZM 80:
Morotop had a short shaft relative to femoral joint proportions, as in other hominoids, unlike Proconsul & cercopithecoids.
This corroborates earlier interpretations that Morotop loaded the hind- & forelimbs differentially in behaviors incl.orthograde slow climbing.
Morotop (one of the oldest hominoids) is more derived post-cranially than pene-contemporaneous & younger taxa.
To date, Morotop is found only in NE-Uganda, not at the younger Napak sites to the South, or at any of the Kenyan early Miocene sites in the Eastern rift.
The C-isotopic dietary signatures obtained from the enamel from a range of herbivore guilds at Moroto
- are considerably more positive than in modern closed-canopy forest-dwellers,
- suggest a fragmentary forest or woodland habitat.
Our combined data suggest an explanation for these incongruities:
Morotop may have evolved its more versatile postcranium to better exploit leaves arboreally at large body size in an environment in which it became necessary to traverse gaps in a broken canopy.
This perspective contrasts with the long-held view that exploitation of ripe fruit selected for hominoid postcranial apomorphies. _______
This Y form links may indicate proto-Bantu transit from South Sudan westward to Cameroon/Nigeria.
Also, this shifting, much earlier,may have allowed New World Monkey transit to South America via volcanic isles, rather than via Antarctica as I'd thought.
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Oldest recorded hymn 3.4ka - Hurrian (Semitic) tablet, played on lyre
Seasonality and Modern Human Foraging Behaviors in the MSA of Northwest Ethiopia
BRETT NACHMAN, NEIL TABOR, JOHN KAPPELMAN & LAWRENCE TODD 2016 AAPA
Ongoing PA research along the Shinfa River (a tributary of the Blue Nile) has recovered evidence of riverine foraging by Middle Stone Age populations. Surface collection & excavation along the ancient river channels has yielded MSA lithics in association with a substantial ichthyo-fauna, mollusks, reptiles & mammals.
The modern climate at Shinfa is highly seasonal: - brief, intense wet seasons, - protracted, extremely arid dry seasons. High-energy, bankfull river flows during the wet season make exploitation of aquatic fauna prohibitive. However, during the dry season, when evaporative processes reduce the river to a series of waterholes, modern populations living nearby can effectively exploit the river's resources. Preliminary isotopic data suggests that a seasonal environment may have also existed during the Late-Pleistocene, when MSA people occupied the area. Stable C & O isotope values recovered from isolated spot sampling of fossil bovid enamel (n=13) indicate: this sample was dominated by C4-feeders whose crowns formed, at least partially, in a warm, arid environment.
Serial sampling along the growth axis of the tooth was undertaken on 5 fossil & 3 extant bovids from Shinfa. Serial sampling revealed 18O values & sinusoidal patterns of intra-tooth variation, consistent with a shift from wet to dry seasonal environments during crown fm.
We hypothesize: similar to populations living in the Shinfa area today, MSA people occupying the area were best able to exploit available riverine resources during dryer climatic periods.
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South Arabia Paleolithic:
Another type of stone technology is interesting for tracing the demographic expansion of Homo sapiens. This is the Nubian technology. This kind of predetermined flake production on stone (chert, flint, quartzite…) was previously known only in northeastern Africa, until it was found in south Arabia (especially in the region of Dhofar (see Rose et al. Plos One 2011), in Oman, but also in Hadramawt in Yemen), and more recently in central Saudi Arabia, close to the modern city of Al-Kharj (Crassard & Hilbert, Plos One 2013). This technology is dated to more than 100,000 years in Arabia, a technology that seems to have only otherwise been produced by AMHs in Africa. Further research is needed, including new dates and stratified sites, to confirm these interpretations. http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/06052014/article/the-first-arabians Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
The Seven Seals of Judeo-Islamic Magic: Possible Origins of the Symbols
Lloyd D. Graham
The Seven Seals of medieval Islamic magic, which are believed to constitute the Greatest Name of God, also feature in Jewish Kabbalah from the same period. While many Seal symbols make sporadic appearances in early Islamic amulets bearing Kufic script, the source of the symbols and their eventual ordering remains a matter of legend. As this topic was first – and last – examined systematically by Dr. Hans Winkler in 1930, a wider-ranging and more modern review is long overdue. The present survey focuses on potential sources for the symbols rather than on their exegesis. It first examines the possibility that a precedent for the Seal series exists in an undecipherable “seven signs repeated seven times” inscribed on a Late Babylonian amulet. It then considers the possibility that the Seals’ origins lie in other cuneiform symbols from ancient Mesopotamia; in Egyptian hieroglyphs or scripts; in paleo-Hebrew characters or the letters of ancient South Arabian scripts; in Libyco-Berber or Tifinagh letters from North Africa; or in the symbol repertoire of Late Antique magic, including the highly potent seven Greek vowels. The review also explores the possibility that at least some of the symbols originated in numerological ciphers or religious emblems, canvassing sources as diverse as Indian Hinduism and Byzantine Christendom. The article concludes by considering the recent suggestion that the Seal series may have acquired its privileged status because its symbols reflect “shape archetypes” that are hard-wired into the human nervous system.
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The lesions described consist primarily of subperiosteal new bone deposition onthe limbs and endocranial surface. However, the presence of cribra orbitaliain a number of individuals indicates concurrent iron-deficiency anaemia. A differential diagnosis of haematogenous osteomyelitis, congenital syphilis,yaws, scurvy, hypervitaminosis A, trauma, Caffey’s disease, and iron-defi-ciency anaemia is discussed. It was concluded that the most likely cause forthe lesions observed is a synergistic relation between infection (weanling diarrhoea, yaws) and metabolic disease (scurvy and possibly hypervitamin-osis A). Trauma is not ruled out as contributing to the development of somepathologic lesions. It is concluded that, in the Pacific Islands at least, multi-ple causes for skeletal pathology in subadults should be considered ratherthan a single aetiology. Am J Phys Anthropol 113:481–505, 2000.
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Pleistocene footprints show intensive use of lake margin habitats by Homo erectus groups
Here we present data from 481 fossil tracks from northwestern Kenya, including 97 hominin footprints attributed to Homo erectus. These tracks are found in multiple sedimentary layers spanning approximately 20 thousand years. Taphonomic experiments show that each of these trackways represents minutes to no more than a few days in the lives of the individuals moving across these paleolandscapes. The geology and associated vertebrate fauna place these tracks in a deltaic setting, near a lakeshore bordered by open grasslands. Hominin footprints are disproportionately abundant in this lake margin environment, relative to hominin skeletal fossil frequency in the same deposits. Accounting for preservation bias, this abundance of hominin footprints indicates repeated use of lakeshore habitats by Homo erectus. Clusters of very large prints moving in the same direction further suggest these hominins traversed this lakeshore in multi-male groups. Such reliance on near water environments, and possibly aquatic-linked foods, may have influenced hominin foraging behavior and migratory routes across and out of Africa.
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Some quotes from "Pleistocene footprints show intensive use of lake margin habitats by Homo erectus groups":
This sedimentary sequence was deposited by rel.low-energy fluvial & shallow-lacustrine processes on a deltaic lake margin. The fossil tracks are located on multiple discrete, bedded silt layers, found throughout the 20-ka sequence & on the Ileret Tuff layer itself. Many prints preserve fine detail, e.g. ridges between the toes, indicative of mud that was both plastic & firm enough to retain shape after the tracks were formed. Typically, tracks were infilled by fine or silty sand, prior to deposition of the following silt layer. In some cases, this depositional couplet was repeated multiple times. No soil development or root traces occur within the footprint layers: these surfaces were quickly buried after the tracks were emplaced.
Taphonomic experiments on Hs footprints made on muds along the shores of Lake Turkana show that on average human footprints retain fine detail for 1.3 days.
This is consistent with data from non-hominin fauna in similar environments.
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A large 1.5 million-year-old hominin radius from Koobi Fora, Kenya
CAROL WARD, IAN WALLACE, BIREN PATEL, J MICHAEL PLAVCAN & FRANCIS KIRERA 2016 AAPA
A nearly complete hominin radius KNM-ER 48100 was found in 2008 at Ileret (Kirera cs 2009), unassociated with cranio-dental remains.
The OH 80-11 radius from Olduvai Gorge (Domingez-Rodrigo cs 2013) is securely attributed to Au.boisei, based on association with teeth.
ER-48100 has a head with deep, straight sides, a neck that is rel.round in cross-section, differing from the narrow, beveled radial head margin & compressed neck of OH 80-11, morphologies also seen in the diminutive ER-1500 specimen often attributed to Au.boisei as well.
This & its large size indicate that ER-48100 is most likely attributable to H.erectus.
The most notable feature of ER-48100 is its impressive size:
- its head diameter overlaps that of female gorillas,
- its length is estimated at c 300 mm (longer than the radius of almost any human in the comparative sample, substantially larger than the ER-15000 H.erectus radius, comparable to the Omo L40-19 ulna).
Published stature regression formulas yield stature estimates of over 188 cm.
The ER-48100 radius indicates the presence of very large H.erectus individuals in E.Africa c 1.5 Ma, also suggested by a metacarpal from West Turkana & other pene-contemporaneous Koobi Fora fossils. - - -
Body Mass Estimation from Knee Dimensions in Hominins
NICOLE SQUYRES & CHRIS RUFF 2016 AAPA
... Most previous studies have concentrated on weight-bearing elements of the lower limb, in particular the femoral head.
This study used new body mass estimation equations derived from measurements of the knee in 110 living humans of known body mass, to estimate body mass in 11 fossil hominins, including Au.africanus, Au.afarensis & early Homo.
ML breadth measurements were taken from AP RX of the knee, and regressed against recorded body weight, to generate body mass estimation equations.
Knee dimensions were generally found to be good predictors of body mass in the modern human sample, with median absolute % prediction errors of 7 to 8 % (comparable to similar equations derived from the femoral head).
Taxon average estimated body masses were
- 46 kg for Au.afarensis,
- 42 kg for Au.africanus,
- 55 kg for early Homo.
Estimates for early Homo were similar to those generated previously from the femoral head.
Estimates for australopiths, however, were larger than those generated from femoral head equations by an average of 8 kg.
This result supports the idea that relative loading of the femoral head may have differed between australopiths & Homo, perhaps due to subtle differences in gait.
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Fish oil & Iodine essential for childhood brain growth - - -
The Rift Valley - ancient homeland of Homo? Freshwater stingrays 1.8ma in Lake Turkana indicate marine incursion, was the Rift Valley an extension of the Red Sea / Indian Ocean? Were ancestral hominins climbing the vertical cliffs and diving for fish, mollusks, crustaceans?
Iceland Rift valley (submerged) same as African Rift valley: Silfra Crack (beautiful pictures! Any link to Shinfa River, Ethiopia? (a tributary of the Blue Nile with evidence of river foraging)?
MP: "Iceland is carbon copy of Afar Triangle. It also sits on a plume, hotspot, which is part of ridge. Iceland emerged 18 - 16 mya, Afar Triangle some 30 mya.
"...In the full text you will find outlined our evidence for a previously unknown contribution of people with relatedness to Australo-Melanesians and Andaman Islanders, that we hypothesize is due to pulses of migration from a substructured Pleistocene population in Beringia..."
A genetic perspective of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in the Siberian Arctic: Mitochondrial DNA analysis of human remains from 8000 years ago Lee et al.
Basically, five mtDNA sequences were obtained including one classified as haplogroup C4 from the Zhokhov site (~8000 BP) and one A2b from the Bol'shaya Chukoch'ya River area (170 BP). The former closely resembles a common Siberian haplotype (carried by Evenks, Yakuts, etc.) and the latter is an Eskimo haplotype of New World origin. Here is the abstract:
"Abstract Archaeological evidence of human occupation in Arctic Siberia dates to at least 27,000 years before present (YBP) but the population history of these early inhabitants is not fully understood. Genetic research on contemporary indigenous Siberian populations has suggested a distinct pattern between populations from south/central Siberia and the extreme northeast Siberia. However, the picture is complicated by the fluctuations of movement by various cultural groups in the last millennium that has resulted in admixture as well as genetic drift. In order to better understand the genetic history of early humans in northern Siberia, we obtained ten human skeletal remains from four areas of the eastern Siberian Arctic, stretching from the low Yana River in the west to midstream of Bol'shaya Chukoch'ya River and Kolyma River in the east, and the Zhokhov site in the New Siberian Islands. We extracted DNA from the skeletal remains ranging from around 27,000 YBP to as recent as the 18th century AD and analyzed the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region. We successfully identified five haplotypes that include haplogroups A2 and C4. The presence of haplogroup C4 in Arctic Siberia by 8000 years ago illustrates the antiquity and widespread distribution of the maternal lineage in the region. On the other hand, haplogroup A2 is frequent among contemporary northeastern Siberian populations. Overall, the results from our ancient DNA analysis suggest maternal lineages among contemporary Siberians were present as far back as 8000 years ago in the Siberian Arctic."
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5.3ma LCA Human/Chimp split per gut bacteria
Hominid superorganisms Julia Segre & Nick Salafsky 2016 Science 353:350-1 doi 10.1126/science.aag2788
Mutualistic symbiotic relationships are those in which both spp benefit, e.g. the vivid colors of coral reefs come from symbiotic algae that provide their living coral hosts with nutrients & O2 through photosynthesis, in exchange for protection. A similar mutualistic relationship exists between gut-dwelling bacteria & their animal hosts. But to what degree has symbiosis shaped host-microbial interactions & coevolution?
Moeller cs (p.380) show that gut bacterial strains co-speciated with hominids (apes & humans) over the past 15 Ma. This sets the stage for exploring the evolutionary processes that underlie the symbiotic relationship between hominids & their gut-dwelling microbes.
Moeller cs obtained fecal samples from wild Pan troglodytes (Tanzania), P.paniscus (Dem.Rep.Congo), G.gorilla (Cameroon) & H.sapiens (US). They use DNA gyrase subunit B (gyrB, a single-copy protein-coding gene in bacterial genomes that evolves at a moderate rate) as a marker to assess strain diversity of Bifido-bacteriaceae (Biff.), Bacteroidaceae (Bact.) & Lachnospiraceae (Lach.) in the gut of humans, chimpanzees, bonobos & gorillas. This rel.constant gyrB molecular clock data allows them to compare the timing of speciation of gut bacterial communities with the known speciation patterns of their hominid hosts. For different Bact.spp, Moeller cs explore the phylogenetic relatedness of closely related strains from the feces of the hominids. Taking the most commonly related gyrB-sequence from each hominid, the authors calculate the LCA: bonobo- & chimp-associated strains are most closely related to each other, and together form a sister-clade to the gorilla & human clades.
This phylogenetic relationship among hominid-associated Bact.strains mirrors the host evolutionary topology. For most genera of Bact.e, the dominant pattern of diversification is hominid-microbial parallel co-speciation, but the authors also report small anomalies, e.g. some Bact.lineages are absent from either humans or gorillas, representing lost microbial diversity. Biff.strain phylogeny +-mirrors that seen for Bact.lineages, but Lach.strains show evidence for transfer between host spp, perhaps because Lachn. can survive as spores (can more readily disperse & transfer among host spp). Thus, different evolutionary pressures & forces may shape both host & microbial community members.
Evidence for cospeciation
Moeller cs demonstrate that Bact. & Biff.strains (shown as hues of the same color) co-speciated with their hosts. This suggests that symbiosis may be an evolutionary force. To corroborate their findings, Moeller cs also re-analyzed ribosomal sequence data from chimps & gorillas that live together in regions of Cameroon. They found no sequences that were 100 % identical, suggesting that distinct strains co-evolved with their hosts. To explore if geographic separation might foster diversification within a species, they show that bacterial lineages differ between humans in Malawi & US.
Based solely on the sequence divergence of gut bacteria, Moeller cs date the H/P split at 5.3 Ma, in agreement with estimates based on host mtDNA, but slightly later than estimates based on nuclear genomes. They calculate the H/G split at 15.6 Ma, older than estimates based on mtDNA, but within the range of estimates based on nuclear genomes.
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Incidentally, the lack of diversity of the Mlabri component (C5 of Fig. 2) is identical to what was found in the mtDNA studies. 100% of the Mlabri mtDNA sequences belonged to haplogroup B5a." GH - - - "Mlabri are different from the Kha Tong Luang (Phi Tong Luang, Yellow Leaf) in Laos, who are Western Viet-Muong (Wurm and Hattori 1981). Sometimes employed by the Hmong. Some nomadic. Traditional religion."
names: Luang, Ma Ku, Mabri, Malabri, Mla, Mla Bri, Mrabri, Phi Thong, Yellow Leaf, Yumbri - - -
compare to: Mani negritos of Thailand & Samre Pear/Por of Cambodia ~ (Samre/Damre(elephant) & Aka Bea of Andamans.
The MlaBri people are also known as Yellow Leaf people. They used to live deep in the jungles of Thailand and were rarely seen. Banana leaves were used as a roof on shelters
Historically, there was a large lake in the area of Gebel Ramlah - today only its outline is visible in the desert area. Around it, during the last season of the research archaeologists discovered the remains of many settlements from different periods of the Neolithic. They assume that people once lived there in light huts (no remains of residential structures have been preserved). So how do the archaeologists know that they have discovered settlements?
image: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ekjrji8J8rY/V5TDk8bRYnI/AAAAAAABt4c/ZBg0IDiOYmwiCbDtDuCA_JpgwM6Wiwd5QCLcB/s640/shepherds02.jpg Archaeologists search for the first shepherds of Africa Gebel Ramlah - study of a Neolithic settlement [Credit: R. Kenig] "We encounter traces in the form of pits that were used to store food or dispose of garbage. We also find millstones, grinders, broken pottery and flint tools, remains of hunted gazelles, remains of goats, sheep and cattle they kept - all this clearly indicates that in these places people had lived, worked, ate meals", explained Prof. Kabaciński.
Last season brought an unexpected discovery. In the settlement, archaeologists discovered workshops, in which on rocks containing large amounts of hematite were processed into ochre. Ochre is a red dye, commonly used in funeral ceremonies. Earlier, Polish researchers discovered numerous graves sprinkled with the dye. "This are the first known hematite processing workshops discovered in the area of the Western Desert", emphasised Prof. Kabaciński.
In his view, in addition to the symbolic meaning, ochre was important in everyday life, because this mineral has preserving properties and facilitates processing leather. "It could also be used to dye clothing", he added.
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Orang Rimba, Sumatra - People of the rainforest, now people of the plantation
Hadrume(n)tum (sometimes called Adrametum or Adrametus) was a Phoenician colony that pre-dated Carthage and stood on the site of modern-day Sousse, Tunisia. Greek writers referred to Hadrumentum by the names Ἀδρούμητος, Ἀδρύμης and Ἀδραμητός.
Sounds very much like mirror of Hadrumat/Adiramite (Yemen).
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4ka flood in China - Yellow River dammed
Geologists have found evidence for an ancient megaflood which they say is a good match for the mythical deluge at the dawn of China's first dynasty.
The legend of Emperor Yu states that he tamed the flooded Yellow River by dredging and redirecting its channels, thereby laying the foundations for the Xia dynasty and Chinese civilisation.
Previously, no scientific evidence had been found for a corresponding flood.
But now a Chinese-led team has placed just such an event at about 1,900BC.
Writing in Science Magazine, the researchers describe a cataclysmic event in which a huge dam, dumped across the Jishi Gorge by a landslide, blocked the Yellow River for six to nine months.
The sediments from this outburst flood are up to 20m thick and up to 50m higher than the Yellow River - indicating an unprecedented, devastating flood Dr Wu Qinglong, Nanjing State University
When the dam burst, up to 16 cubic kilometres of water inundated the lowlands downstream.
The evidence for this sequence of events comes from sediments left by the dammed lake, high up the sides of Jishi Gorge, as well as deposits left kilometres downstream by the subsequent flood.
Lead author Dr Wu Qinglong, from Nanjing Normal University, said he and colleagues stumbled on sediments from the ancient dam during fieldwork in 2007.
"It inspired us to connect the next possible outburst flood with the abandonment of the prehistoric Lajia site 25km downstream," he told journalists in a teleconference.
"But at that time we had no idea what the evidence of a catastrophic outburst flood should be."
The Lajia site, famously home to the world's oldest noodles, is known as China's Pompeii; its cave dwellings and many cultural artefacts were buried by a major earthquake.
The Yellow River near the Lajia siteImage copyright Wu Qinglong Image caption Researchers found tell-tale flood deposits around the Guanting basin, near the Lajia site
"In July 2008 I suddenly realised that the so-called black sand previously revealed by archaeologists at the Lajia site could be, in fact, the deposits from our outburst flood," Dr Wu said.
It's among the largest known floods to have happened on Earth during the past 10,000 years Dr Darryl Granger, Purdue University
"The subsequent investigation confirmed this speculation and showed that the sediments from this outburst flood are up to 20m thick, and up to 50m higher than the Yellow River - indicating an unprecedented, devastating flood."
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Hairless Chimp dies after anaesthesia
Mongo the hairless chimp dies suddenly at Twycross Zoo
30 July 2016 Last updated at 17:30 BST
A hairless chimpanzee from Twycross Zoo that became an internet hit has died suddenly.
Mongo, 22, who had alopecia, was undergoing a routine health check but failed to come round from the anaesthetic.
A film that appeared to show him in a fight was viewed more than a million times online, fuelled in part by Mongo's appearance.
Twycross Zoo said it was "displaying" rather than fighting and was perfectly normal behaviour for chimpanzees.
Twycross Zoo's hairless chimp Mongo dies 'unexpectedly'
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Mowgli - Talented Chimpanzee carries 12 oranges - shows arboreal heritage (walking bipedally on ground holding oranges between toes and in arms).
[I noted the similarity between a priest's collar and the Jane Goodall Institute Photo of a Chimp with white fringed facial beard.]
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The environmental conditions in the area are the probable explanation, Xue says. Sediment often accumulates in floodplain settings, and Xue thinks the Drepanophycus plants in the area were constantly being swamped by sand and silt. They responded by growing ever-upwards to stay at the surface.
In other words, the rhizomes didn’t grow down through 15 metres of sand and silt; they actually grew upwards by that amount as the land gradually rose. At any one time it was probably only the rhizomes in the top few centimetres that were alive, says Xue.
Even so, the underground network of dead rhizomes would have helped stabilise the sediment – an important first step on the way to developing the first deep soils. “The importance of rhizomes in the early colonisation of terrestrial environments has been overlooked,” says Xue.
“It’s a spectacular sequence of sediments,” says Paul Kenrick at the Natural History Museum in London. He points out that Drepanophycus doesn’t appear to have been making soils as we would recognise them today. “It’s not creating a structured soil profile, more of a stabilised sediment,” he says. But there is little evidence of those thick, organically stabilised sediments elsewhere in the world at the time. “It’s important in that respect,” he says.
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Oasis duck hunting 250,000 years ago: indicated by stone tool protein residue
Middle Pleistocene subsistence in the Azraq Oasis, Jordan: Protein residue and other proxies A Nowell, C Walker, CE Cordova, CJH Ames, JT Pokines, D Stueber, R DeWitt, ASA al-Souliman 2016
J.archaeol.Sci.73:36-44
full text google e.g. "nowell azraq journal archaeological science"
Excavations at Shishan Marsh (former desert oasis in Azraq, NE.Jordan) reveal a unique eco-system and they provide direct family-specific protein residue evidence of hominin adaptations in an increasingly arid environment c 250 ka. Based on lithic, faunal, paleo-environmental & protein residue data, we conclude that Late-Pleistocene hominins were able to subsist in extreme arid environments through a reliance on surprisingly (modern) human-like adaptations, including - a broadened subsistence base, - modified tool kit & - strategies for predator avoidance & carcass protection.
they hunted ducks, "fan delta, lacustrine"
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Tortoises
Tortoises as a dietary supplement: A view from the Middle Pleistocene site of Qesem Cave, Israel Ruth Blasco cs 2016 Quaternary Science Reviews 133:165182 doi 10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.12.006 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.12.006> <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.12.006>Get>
€Dietary reconstructions reflect the human capacity for adaptation to the environment. €Faunal remains allow for the study of behavioural variation & its evolutionary significance. €Tortoises represent an important combination of edible & non-edible resources. €Tortoises served mainly as supplementary resources at Qesem Cave, 420-300 ka. €Data on small game at Qesem shed light on livelihood strategies & eco-social behaviour.
... How did hominids fill the gaps in large prey availability with small game? What role did small game play in pre-Upper-Palaeolithic societies?
Some of this work has focused on tortoises: they represent an important combination of edible & non-edible resources, that are easy to collect if available.
The exploitation of these slow-moving animals features prominently in prey choice models: the low handling costs of these reptiles make up for their small body size.
Here, we present new taphonomic data from 2 tortoise assemblages (lower sequence of the Mid-Pleistocene site of Qesem Cave 420-300 ka).
We show -hominid damage on large tortoise specimens from Qesem Cave is not unusual, -cut-marks, percussion marks & consistent patterns of burning suggests established sequences of processing to access the visceral content, e.g. -- cooking in the shell, -- defleshing & -- direct percussion.
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"Here, we isolate 86,000 base pairs of plastid DNA from a geographically broad sample of archaeological and living bottle gourds. In contrast to the earlier results, we find that all pre-Columbian bottle gourds are most closely related to African gourds, not Asian gourds. Ocean-current drift modeling shows that wild African gourds could have simply floated across the Atlantic during the Late Pleistocene."
Tangerine; is a perfect match for tawny/tan/sand/faun.a(mobile root/fawn.tail = fan.ember = flammable/flambeau)/aur.a.t.h / A(b/v/u)rahm / oro(Spanish:gold) / orange / (o/ua).(r/tl).ange(rine).
tangerine is exactly in the midst of the morning breakfast fire-drill and sunrise/horizon of the Open Sky people. Note that Abvurahm is of Oroan maternal totem taboo lineage, links to AhuraMazda (Avestan)and Brahma/Brahman(Hindu), and Oroan links to Ukraine as Ochre/Ore.an.
tangerine fits into the midst of the morning breakfast fire-drill and sunrise/horizon of the Open Sky people (those who had left the tropical rainforest belt). Note that Abvurahm is of Oroan maternal totem taboo lineage, links to AhuraMazda (Avestan)and Brahma/Brahman(Hindu), and Oroan links to Ukraine as Ochre/Ore.an and plausibly to the Tauri of Crimea, and to the city of Oran, Algiers. - - -
tangerine (n.) Look up tangerine at Dictionary.com 1842, from tangerine orange (1820) "an orange from Tangier," seaport in northern Morocco, from which it was imported to Britain originally. As an adjective meaning "from Tangier," attested from 1710, probably from Spanish tangerino. As a color name, attested from 1899. (etymologyonline) - - -
False lead? Let's see.
Tangier was founded by Carthaginian colonists in the early 5th century BCE, who were probably the first ones to settle around the coast. [en.wikipedia.org]
Tangier etymology: The city's name is said to come from Tingis, the daughter of Atlas, the mythical supporter of the Heavens. However, it more likely derives from the Semitic word tigisis, meaning "harbour".
Oran (Arabic: وهران Wahrān; Berber: ⵡⴻⵀ Wehran) is an important coastal city that is located in the north-west of Algeria. [en.wikipedia.org]
The name "Wahran" (Oran in Arabic) is derived from the Berber word "uharan" that means (two lions).
[DD Note: lion/leon(Span)/simba(ki-Swah)/singa(Malay)/harimau(Malay:tiger)/ari, labi(Hebrew) are clearly linked to orange/aura/yellow]
A legend says that in 900 AD, lions still lived in the area. The last two lions were hunted on a mountain near Oran and are elsewhere referred to as "mountain lions".[5] - - -
How close is Tangerine to Orange? How near is Tangier to Oran?
Modern Peanut's Wild Cousin, Thought Extinct, Found in Andes
A new study reveals how two ancient species of this legume were combined 10,000 years ago, in Andean valleys, to create the modern peanut
By Andrea Small Carmona on March 22, 2016
But where does it come from? Its origin seems to be in South America, specifically Bolivia, according to new studies.
The modern peanut (Arachis hypogaea) is the result of the hybridization of two older types of Andean peanut. It has 20 pairs of chromosomes—the total from both old species, which have 10 chromosomes each. Scientists always thought—a suspicion now confirmed—that the "parents" of this peanut were the variants Arachis duranensis, very common in the Andean foothills between northwestern Argentina and southeastern Bolivia, and Arachis ipaensis, a species that had been reported but unconfirmed in a Bolivian town several hundred kilometers north, but thought to be extinct, until now.
"We now know that the first inhabitants of South America in their long voyages carried A. ipaensis to the land of A. duranensis 10,000 years ago. Once in the same area, bees pollinized the peanut plant flowers, allowing the birth of the hybrid that our South American ancestors ate and that eventually led to the modern peanut, Arachia hypogaea. It's a fascinating story," says David Bertioli, a researcher at the Center for Applied Genetic Technologies at U.G.A. and lead author of the study, published in Nature Genetics. (Scientific American is part of Springer Nature).
Although it has not been studied how old A. duranensis and
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A Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) growing in the highlands of northern Greece has been dendrocronologically dated to be more than 1075 years old. This makes it currently the oldest known living tree in Europe.
"The finding can provide us with unique information about Eurasia' steppe tribes in the Late Bronze Age, a period when the Saka and Cimmerians mentioned by Herodotus emerged," Novozhenov said.
"Later, in the 9th to 8th century BC, these tribes migrated to western Eurasia up to the Black Sea coast, forming the Persian Scythian-Sakas community," he added.
Oldest jewellery in East Timor (Indonesia) Asia is crafted 37,000-year-old sea shell 8/18/2016 11:30:00 PM
Shell jewellery and ornaments up to 42,000 years old, discovered in East Timor, have overturned long-held assumptions that the first inhabitants of South-East Asia were culturally unsophisticated. The finds represent the oldest evidence of ornament and jewellery-making in the region.
Oldest jewellery in East Asia is crafted 37,000-year-old shell Researchers found sea snail shells with small holes drilled near the top, wear on the sides and red staining that suggest they had been worn as jewellery. These 37,000-year-old shells are the oldest examples of jewellery to be found in South East Asia [Credit: Journal of Human Evolution] The most ancient example of shell jewellery is 82,000 years old and was found in Morocco, although some shell art may date even further back. As humans migrated out of Africa, shell jewellery started appearing in the European archaeological record from about 50,000 years ago.
Humans moved into East Asia around the same time, but the area has yielded few examples of personal ornamentation of such antiquity. Some researchers had speculated that the early settlers abandoned crafts and so were less technologically advanced than their European counterparts.
Now Michelle Langley of the Australian National University in Canberra and her colleagues have made finds in the Jerimalai cave of East Timor that refute that idea. One was the shell of an Oliva sea snail (pictured on the right of the image at the top), dated to 37,000 years back – making it the oldest piece of jewellery ever found in the region.
A hole in the top of the shell suggests that it was used in a necklace or bracelet. Marks on the side were characteristic of rubbing against adjacent shell beads, while traces of red ochre may have come from contact with body paint.
Experiments with modern Oliva shells showed that the natural wear and tear could not have formed the hole.
Separately, the team is publishing details of ornaments made from the shell of Nautilus pompilius, some of which they dated indirectly to as far back as 42,000 year ago. Found in the same cave, the artefacts show traces of drilling, pressure flaking, grinding and staining with red ochre.
The team previously found 42,000-year-old tuna bones in the Jerimalai cave, suggesting that the inhabitants had developed some of the oldest known deep-sea fishing methods.
“All of this together shows that the people who lived in Jerimalai were very well adapted to the coast – they understood the environment, they knew what was there, and the best way to get it,” says Langley. “It was not a cultural backwater as once thought.”
A lack of excavations partly explains why fewer relics have been uncovered in this part of the world, says Ian McNiven of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. “Because Europe has such a long history of large scale archaeological excavation of ice age sites, they have found the bulk of the world’s known ice age jewellery.”
The more we excavate in the region, the more interesting artefacts are coming to light, he says. For example, a 30,000-year-old shell necklace was recently found in Australia.
Langley believes that our understanding of the region’s history will continue to shift. “Lots of new excavations are being undertaken, so we think it will be a completely different picture in 10 years’ time.”
The findings are published in the Journal of Human Evolution.
One of the rarest manuscripts in the world has been revealed hidden beneath the pages of an equally rare but later Mexican codex, thanks to hi-tech imaging techniques.
The Codex Selden, a book of concertina-folded pages made out of a five-metre strip of deerhide, is one of a handful of illustrated books of history and mythology that survived wholesale destruction by Spanish conquerors and missionaries in the 16th century.
Some of the pages have more than 20 characters sitting or standing, similar to other Mixtec manuscripts – from the Oaxaca region of modern Mexico – which are believed to depict kings and their councils, but uniquely in this case depicting men and women. One so far unidentified figure appears repeatedly, and is symbolised by a twisted cord and a flint knife.
Other pages include people walking with sticks and spears, women with red hair or elaborate headdresses, and what appear to be place names with symbols for rivers.
Looks like an elephant, tail swings like a trunk!
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Academia.edu
Gennady Baryshnikov
Phylogeography of lions ( Panthera leo ssp.) reveals three distinct taxa and a late Pleistocene reduction in genetic diversity
Jorge Morin de Pablos Jorge Morin de Pablos AUDEMA, Prehistory, Iron Age, Roman, Late Antiquity, Visigothic Kingdom, Al-Andalus and Medieval, Modern and Contemporany Archaeology, Faculty Member
Arisgotas, el pueblo que conservo un palacio entre sus casas. LA_VANGUARDIA. 10 de Agosto de 2016
La noticia recoge los trabajos arqueológicos en el yacimiento de Los Hitos (Arisgotas, Toledo).
¿Tuvo Santa María del Naranco un protipo en un palacio visigodo de Toledo? LA VOZ DE ASTURIAS. 10 de Agosto de 2016
Mark McCoy Mark McCoy Southern Methodist University, Anthropology, Faculty Member
The Geographic Range of Interaction Spheres During the Colonization of New Zealand (Aotearoa): New Evidence for Obsidian Circulation in Southern New Zealand
During the colonization of remote Pacific Islands, founding communities forged novel interaction spheres within newly settled archipelagos. We report on new research on the geographic range of interaction spheres in the first centuries of occupation of New Zealand based on geochemical source identifications from obsidian assemblages found along the coast of the Otago region in the southern South Island. Results suggest that while there is evidence for interaction spanning the entire archipelago, logistical limitations on long-distance mobility along the long north-south axis of New Zealand...
Darcy Mathews Darcy Mathews University of Victoria, Environmental Studies, Post-Doc
Intertidal resource use over millennia enhances forest productivity
Human occupation is usually associated with degraded landscapes but 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia's coastal First Nations has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity. This is particularly the case over the last 6,000 years when intensified intertidal shellfish usage resulted in the accumulation of substantial shell middens. We show that soils at habitation sites are higher in calcium and phosphorous. Both of these are limiting factors in coastal temperate rainforests. Western redcedar (Thuja plicata) trees growing on the middens were...
View Paper
Alexander Georgiev Alexander Georgiev Northwestern University, Anthropology, Post-Doc
Cospeciation of gut microbiota with hominids
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Many cultures trace their origins to the hazy horizon where history meets legend. In China's case, that blurry line occurs sometime between 2200 B.C.E. and 2000 B.C.E., when a legendary hero named Yu tamed Yellow River flooding and earned a mandate to become the founding emperor of the Xia dynasty, the country's first. That’s the story according to texts written long after the fact, and many Chinese believe their civilization started with emperor Yu. But archaeologists have been unable to find convincing evidence for either the flood or the Xia dynasty itself. ... The massive flood “provides us with a tantalizing hint that the Xia dynasty might really have existed," says David Cohen, an archaeologist and co-author at National Taiwan University in Taipei. The devastating flood could have inundated settlements even a thousand or more kilometers downstream, he says, and created chaos from which a new political order emerged. This sequence of events neatly fits the legend of Yu controlling the flooding by dredging channels to confine the Yellow River and its tributaries. This feat, the ancient texts say, allowed him to claim a mandate as the first emperor of the Xia dynasty. The timing is curiously coincidental. Around 1900 B.C.E., Cohen says, Chinese society was transitioning from the Neolithic to the Bronze age. The date also correlates with what is called the Erlitou culture, which is known from palace buildings and bronze smelting workshops discovered near Zhengzhou, about 2500 kilometers downstream from Jishi Gorge. Many scholars have argued that Erlitou is a manifestation of the elusive Xia dynasty, but a link is not firmly established. - - -
Four decades after the discovery of Lucy, her remains are quite possibly the most famous discovery in paleoanthropology and one of the more important. The impact of finding a nearly entire skeleton from a 3.2 million year old hominid revealed a lot about human evolution. We’ve learned a lot from Lucy, from biophysics to the geological environment she lived in. Up until recently, however, her cause of death was unknown to us, until now.
John Kappelman, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin, with 3-D printouts of Lucy’s skeleton. Credit Marsha Miller/University of Texas at Austin —John Kappelman, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin, with 3-D printouts of Lucy’s skeleton. Credit Marsha Miller/University of Texas at Austin
Almost 10 years ago, Lucy went on tour. While at the University of Texas at Austin, a team put her through a CT scanner and conducted a sort of forensic and paleontologic experiment. Their findings were published in Nature, last week. The team discovered she sustained a compressive fracture, which was confirmed by consulting multiple orthopedists. Lead author, Kappelman, looked at the remainder of the skeleton and found more compressive fractures along with greenstick fractures. The scientists concluded that she came down feet-first and then tumbled forward, holding out her hands in a futile hope of protecting herself. The fractures to her rib cage suggest crushing injuries to her internal organs that would have killed her.
Dr. Kappelman and his colleagues hypothesize that Lucy must have fallen from a tree because geologists have determined about the environment where she lived, at the time, was a low-lying wooded area around a stream, with no cliffs nearby. While this is certainly a plausible scenario, many paleoanthropologists are skpetical. - - -
Forensic opinion on 'Lucy bad fall'. Nature magazine should not be content with a "plausible scenario for the demise of Lucy", as said by paleoanthropologist William Jungers of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who reviewed the paper for Nature. Normal fossilization processes can specifically result in this "about mandible ten fragments". The fact certainly indicates a very severe blow to the symphysis. This is the only possible conclusion and, when it comes to topics fossilized, likelihood is that fractures are the result of fossilization. https://www.academia.edu/657066/Dental_Microwear_And_Mechanisms_In_Early_Ho minids_From_Laetoli_And_Hadar
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The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) is a federal assistance program of the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for healthcare and nutrition of low-income pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and infants and children under the age of five. Their mission is to be a partner with other services that are key to childhood and family well-being.
That’s the definition of the program that basically tries to provide instant assistance to help children stay nourished.
The program is incredibly important and still runs today, it was started somewhere in the late 60s to early 70s. A meme has been circulating stating that this was started by the Black Panther Party, however some places are contesting this. BUT there is some evidence to substantiate this claim.
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Re-Examining the "Out of Africa" Theory and the Origin of Europeoids (Caucasoids) in Light of DNA Genealogy Anatole A Klyosov & Igor L Rozhanskii 2016 Advances in Anthropology 2:80-86 open access doi 10.4236/aa.2012.22009 <http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/aa.2012.22009>
7556 haplotypes of 46 subclades in 17 major haplogroups were considered in terms of their base (ancestral) haplotypes & time-spans to their common ancestors, for the purposes of designing of time-balanced haplogroup tree.
It was found: African haplogroup A (originated 132 ka ±12) is very remote time-wise from all other haplogroups, which have a separate common ancestor (β-haplogroup) and originated 64 ka ±6. It includes a family of Europeoid (Caucasoid) haplogroups from F through T, that originated 58 ka ± 5.
A downstream common ancestor for haplogroup A & β-haplogroup (coined the α-haplogroup) emerged 160 ka ± 12. A territorial origin of haplogroups α- & β-remains unknown, but the most likely origin for each of them is a vast triangle - from C-Europe in the W - through the Russian Plain to the E & - to Levant to the S.
Haplogroup B is descended from β-haplogroup (not from haplogroup A, from which it is very distant, separated by 123 ky "lateral" mutational evolution) likely migrated to Africa after 46 ka.
The finding that the Europeoid haplogroups did not descend from "African" haplogroups A or B is supported by the fact that bearers of the Europeoid haplogroups, as well as all non-African haplogroups do not carry either SNPs M91, P97, M31, P82, M23, M114, P262, M32, M59, P289, P291, P102, M13, M171, M118 (haplogroup A & its subclades SNPs) or M60, M181, P90 (haplogroup B), as it was shown recently in "Walk through Y" FTDNA Project (the reference is incorporated therein) on several 100 people from various haplogroups.
- - -
Uncertain about this analysis.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
Re-Examining the "Out of Africa" Theory and the Origin of Europeoids (Caucasoids) in Light of DNA Genealogy Anatole A Klyosov & Igor L Rozhanskii 2016 Advances in Anthropology 2:80-86 open access doi 10.4236/aa.2012.22009 <http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/aa.2012.22009>
7556 haplotypes of 46 subclades in 17 major haplogroups were considered in terms of their base (ancestral) haplotypes & time-spans to their common ancestors, for the purposes of designing of time-balanced haplogroup tree.
It was found: African haplogroup A (originated 132 ka ±12) is very remote time-wise from all other haplogroups, which have a separate common ancestor (β-haplogroup) and originated 64 ka ±6. It includes a family of Europeoid (Caucasoid) haplogroups from F through T, that originated 58 ka ± 5.
A downstream common ancestor for haplogroup A & β-haplogroup (coined the α-haplogroup) emerged 160 ka ± 12. A territorial origin of haplogroups α- & β-remains unknown, but the most likely origin for each of them is a vast triangle - from C-Europe in the W - through the Russian Plain to the E & - to Levant to the S.
Haplogroup B is descended from β-haplogroup (not from haplogroup A, from which it is very distant, separated by 123 ky "lateral" mutational evolution) likely migrated to Africa after 46 ka.
The finding that the Europeoid haplogroups did not descend from "African" haplogroups A or B is supported by the fact that bearers of the Europeoid haplogroups, as well as all non-African haplogroups do not carry either SNPs M91, P97, M31, P82, M23, M114, P262, M32, M59, P289, P291, P102, M13, M171, M118 (haplogroup A & its subclades SNPs) or M60, M181, P90 (haplogroup B), as it was shown recently in "Walk through Y" FTDNA Project (the reference is incorporated therein) on several 100 people from various haplogroups.
- - -
Uncertain about this analysis.
Anatole A. Klyosov theory is groundless. I proved this in a recent article: Were the First Europeans Pale or Dark Skinned?, http://file.scirp.org/pdf/AA_2014081417215651.pdf ,the first Europeans were Black--not white.
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quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: 4ka flood in China - Yellow River dammed
Geologists have found evidence for an ancient megaflood which they say is a good match for the mythical deluge at the dawn of China's first dynasty.
The legend of Emperor Yu states that he tamed the flooded Yellow River by dredging and redirecting its channels, thereby laying the foundations for the Xia dynasty and Chinese civilisation.
Previously, no scientific evidence had been found for a corresponding flood.
But now a Chinese-led team has placed just such an event at about 1,900BC.
Writing in Science Magazine, the researchers describe a cataclysmic event in which a huge dam, dumped across the Jishi Gorge by a landslide, blocked the Yellow River for six to nine months.
The sediments from this outburst flood are up to 20m thick and up to 50m higher than the Yellow River - indicating an unprecedented, devastating flood Dr Wu Qinglong, Nanjing State University
When the dam burst, up to 16 cubic kilometres of water inundated the lowlands downstream.
The evidence for this sequence of events comes from sediments left by the dammed lake, high up the sides of Jishi Gorge, as well as deposits left kilometres downstream by the subsequent flood.
Lead author Dr Wu Qinglong, from Nanjing Normal University, said he and colleagues stumbled on sediments from the ancient dam during fieldwork in 2007.
"It inspired us to connect the next possible outburst flood with the abandonment of the prehistoric Lajia site 25km downstream," he told journalists in a teleconference.
"But at that time we had no idea what the evidence of a catastrophic outburst flood should be."
The Lajia site, famously home to the world's oldest noodles, is known as China's Pompeii; its cave dwellings and many cultural artefacts were buried by a major earthquake.
The Yellow River near the Lajia siteImage copyright Wu Qinglong Image caption Researchers found tell-tale flood deposits around the Guanting basin, near the Lajia site
"In July 2008 I suddenly realised that the so-called black sand previously revealed by archaeologists at the Lajia site could be, in fact, the deposits from our outburst flood," Dr Wu said.
It's among the largest known floods to have happened on Earth during the past 10,000 years Dr Darryl Granger, Purdue University
"The subsequent investigation confirmed this speculation and showed that the sediments from this outburst flood are up to 20m thick, and up to 50m higher than the Yellow River - indicating an unprecedented, devastating flood."
The founder of the Xia civilization was Yu. The Great Yu was the regulator of the waters and the builder of canals. He is also alleged to be the inventor of wetfield adriculture. Wolfram Eberhard, in The Local culture of South and East China (Leiden,1968), maintained that Yu came from the south and established the Xia dynasty in Shansi.
Archaeological evidence supports this view. The foreunner of the Xia civilization was the Lung-shan (Longshan) culture. The Taosi ruins , a Longshan between the Fenhe and Chongshan ranges is considered a middle and late Xia period site. Another important Longshanoid site is Qingliangang. The Qingliangang culture is a decendant of the Hemudu culture and dates to the fifth millennium B.C.(K.C. Chang, "In search of China's beginnings new light on an old civilization", American Scientist, 69 (1981) pp.148-160:154).
The oldest neolithic culture in China is the Hemudu culture in northern Zhejiang province. This culture group had incised and cord-impressed pottery, rice and domesticated water buffalo, dog and pig (Chang, 1981: p.152). The Hemudu pottery is reminiscent of pottery found along the coastal areas of southeastern China and Taiwan (Chang, 1981: p.154). This indicates that southern Chinese, who were predominantly Black early settled those parts of China associated with the Xia and Shang civilizations.
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Asimina Vafiadou
Advances in Surface Luminescence Dating: New Data from Selected Monuments
In the present study, an attempt is being made to date samples from three archaeological sites in the Mediterranean using surface luminescence dating techniques. The methods are well established and this study is an effort to apply it to monuments that have not being dated with these methods before. Megalithic structures are eligible for absolute dating using OSL approaches in routine-based procedures. The structures that were chosen for dating are Osirion and Seti A' Temples in Abydos, Egypt, and a precipitate from a Saudi Arabian rock art site. OSL ages obtained for the Saudi Arabia...
Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie, Post-Doc
Examination of the Deep Sounding in the Great Courtyard of the Jupiter Sanctuary at Baalbek – the Lithic Evidence of the Southern section
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News Article "Marinas controversy hardly the first for city's Virginia Key" with photo of only AA beach in Miami "Dade County Parks Virginia Beach Colored Only" sign, Black families sunbathing...
Caitlin Uren et al., Fine-Scale Human Population Structure in Southern Africa Reflects Ecogeographic Boundaries. Genetics 2016. Freely accessible → LINK [doi:10.1534/genetics.116.187369]
Abstract
Recent genetic studies have established that the KhoeSan populations of southern Africa are distinct from all other African populations and have remained largely isolated during human prehistory until ∼2000 years ago. Dozens of different KhoeSan groups exist, belonging to three different language families, but very little is known about their population history. We examine new genome-wide polymorphism data and whole mitochondrial genomes for >100 South Africans from the ≠Khomani San and Nama populations of the Northern Cape, analyzed in conjunction with 19 additional southern African populations. Our analyses reveal fine-scale population structure in and around the Kalahari Desert. Surprisingly, this structure does not always correspond to linguistic or subsistence categories as previously suggested, but rather reflects the role of geographic barriers and the ecology of the greater Kalahari Basin. Regardless of subsistence strategy, the indigenous Khoe-speaking Nama pastoralists and the N|u-speaking ≠Khomani (formerly hunter-gatherers) share ancestry with other Khoe-speaking forager populations that form a rim around the Kalahari Desert. We reconstruct earlier migration patterns and estimate that the southern Kalahari populations were among the last to experience gene flow from Bantu speakers, ∼14 generations ago. We conclude that local adoption of pastoralism, at least by the Nama, appears to have been primarily a cultural process with limited genetic impact from eastern Africa.
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seeing sun at dawn/dusk means you are arisen to mountaintop level, exposed to the sun; something that our ancestral pygmies in the tropical rainforest rarely witnessed, but open-sky people later became enthralled by.
Legesse said that in Tigrinha/Amharina languages, Ethiopia is called Tabiya. That fits Nubia and Libya in rhythm, and parallels the Sioux Indian tribe:
Nubia/Tabia/Libia = 3 bands of NE Africa 'tribe' NTL(uai)bia = Ndula(Bambuti pygmy:interior/under) + bia (??)[Note: Ota Benga, the Pygmy displayed at zoo, his actual name was Bye Otai Mbenga].
Nakota/Dakota/Lakota = 3 bands of Sioux tribe = NDL(a)kota = Ndula(Mbuti pygmy: interior/under) + cote/goati/Coat(skin of bison). These bands lived in open-sky plains (steppe/savanna/prairie) inside buffalo hide tipis.
Tipi/Top links to Bantu Topan(Canopy/Sky god) and to both Tabiya/Ethiopia and to (English) taupe (gray with brown) & tawny/fauna/aura as related to the dawn, likely linked to (Z)oroaster =(Z)AurAvestan (related to but distinct from Vedas).
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“We haven’t abandoned the trees. We are perfectly good in the trees if we choose to go up there – and take our shoes off.”
The ancient fossil of an Australopithecus hominid – the same genus as the famous Lucy – was found in South Africa in the 1990s, but was only dated last year.
Whereas Lucy was just 1.1 metres tall, the South African fossil, nicknamed Little Foot, was about the same size as a modern Western woman.
[DD: More likely KhoiSan woman? Western scientists tend to enlarge bones to match themselves]
According to Professor Crompton, Lucy was a pygmy Australopithecus, much like there are pygmy Homo sapiens today.
Little Foot is the most complete Australopithecus ever found with, crucially, both legs surviving virtually intact.
Professor Crompton, an expert in computer modelling of walking who has worked on Lucy for 20 years, now plans to use Little Foot’s dimensions to establish exactly how she walked.
Twenty years ago, he caused international controversy when he was the first to claim Lucy walked upright much like modern humans do – based on computer models – and he believes Little Foot will finally put the argument to rest.
But Professor Crompton and other scientists have found evidence that our foot is kept stiff by muscles and tendons, rather than locked in place by the bones.
“Humans have flexible feet just like other apes. There’s nothing special about them and in particular they resemble the foot of gorillas,” he said.
“There is little special about human feet to suggest they are primarily adapted to life on the ground.
- - -
Getting closer to the truth. Human ancestors lived along feeder streams (no crocs) in dome huts in circular camps in openings surrounded by thorn thickets in the tropical rainforest.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Hadza in East African Rift Valley
(Unread but might be of interest, by "Joe Gruffbane" at SAP)
Aka is an ancient clan name: in Congo Basin : Aka pygmies, Baka pygmies, in Andamans Islands: Aka Bea pygmies, in African Rift Valley Hadza ancestors: Aka Kaanebe (per Hadza Oral History) and Lake Malawi: Aka Fula pygmies (per Bantu Oral History).
Sandawe KhoiSan of Rift make conical huts = Sandhu = Xanadu Mongolian camp Bambatwa pygmies of southern Congo speak with clicks and keep hearths in their huts, while other pygmies don't click and keep the campfire outside the hut.
I'd guess that the Melanesian self-name Kanak (including Samoan: Tanata and Hawaiian: Kanaka) is derived from A.ka.na, as is Ashanti/Akan language of Ghana.
Sandawe (Wassandaui) of Tanzania near Bubu and Mpondwe Rivers.
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"The Hadza's oral history of their own past is divided into four epochs, each inhabited by a different culture. According to this tradition, in the beginning of time, the world was inhabited by hairy giants called the Akakaanebe or Gelanebe, "ancestors". The Akakaanebe did not possess tools or fire; they hunted game by staring at it and it fell dead; they ate the meat raw. They did not build houses but slept under trees, as the Hadza do today in the dry season. In older versions of this story, fire was not used because it was physically impossible in the earth's primeval state, while younger Hadza, who have been to school, say that the Akakaanebe simply did not know how. In the second epoch, the Akakaanebe were succeeded by the Tlaatlanebe, equally gigantic but without hair. Fire could be made and used to cook meat, but animals had grown more wary of humans and had to be chased and hunted with dogs. The Tlaatlanebe were the first people to use medicines and charms to protect themselves from enemies and initiated the epeme rite. They lived in caves. The third epoch was inhabited by the Hamakwabe "nowadays", who were smaller than their predecessors. They invented bows and arrows, and containers for cooking, and mastered the use of fire. They also built houses like those of Hadza today. The Hamakwabe were the first of the Hadza's ancestors to have contact with non-foraging people, with whom they traded for iron to make knives and arrowheads. The Hamakwabe also invented the gambling game lukuchuko. The fourth epoch continues today and is inhabited by the Hamaishonebe, "modern". When discussing the Hamaishonebe epoch, people often mention specific names and places, and can approximately say how many generations ago events occurred."[15]
The Hadza received introgression from a hominid that split off from our lineage 1.2-1.3 million years ago. The last sweep of hairlessness (dark skin genes) occurred in Africa 1.2 million years ago. 1.3 Million year old introgression = hairy ergaster, hairy giants without fire
The Hadza's are "little people" dominated by Y Hap A and therefore closest to "Former Y Adam" (160k old A not 270k+ year old A00). Neighbor tribes of little people, and possibly the Hadza, also have 700k introgression. 700K introgression = Kabwe/ Bodo Archaic Homo Sapiens and the spread of Levaloise into Africa. 700K Introgression = African "heidelbergs," hairless giants with fire
160K- Age of Hadza's A lineage, earliest date of proto-Microliths in Africa (Aterian culture, bows and arrows, first fossils of Archaic Homo Sapiens Sapiens in Africa).
Homo Ergaster and Homo Heidelbergensis in Africa are both extremely tall. Ergaster has been said to average 6'1 and some populations of "Archaic Homo Sapiens" reached 7' on average.
Archaic Homo Sapiens Sapiens, on the other hand, are all much shorter.
Mbo people (270k old Y Hap 270k) are average global height (5'8 - 5'10) or taller, whereas all groups dominated by Y Haplogroup A (not A00) are well below global average (5 foot to 5'4).
The only other populations worldwide who exibit 5' to 5'4 average in males are those dominated by Y hap C or D or which contain basal Y Hap C.
Y hap D dominate Andaman Islanders have similar 600k Introgression. Proto-microliths and 5' tall robust archaic Homo Sapiens Sapiens appear in Northern India 150k ago alongside larger bodied Levaloise using Archaic Homo Sapiens who have been there since 600k years BP.
The 150K old 5' tall Archaic Homo Sapiens Sapiens has a shoulder bone almost identical to Andamanese islanders. Other than being robust they are anatomically modern, as all early anatomically modern people were. The difference between Anatomically modern and Archaic Homo Sapiens Sapiens in this case, and in most cases, is in the features of the face and skull.
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Spiny plants, mammal browsers, and the origin of African savannas
Tristan Charles-Dominique cs 2016 PNAS doi 10.1073/pnas.1607493113
Africa hosts contrasting communities of mammal browsers: it is the ideal background for testing their effect on plant communities & evolution. In this study at the continental scale, we reveal which mammal browsers are most closely associated with spiny communities of trees. We then show a remarkable convergence between the evolutionary histories of these browsers (the bovids) & spiny plants. Over the last 16 Ma, plants from unrelated lineages developed spines 55 times. These convergent patterns of evolution suggest that the arrival & diversification of bovids in Africa changed the rules for persisting in woody communities. Our data suggest that browsers predate fire by millions of years as agents driving the origin of savannas.
Savannas first began to spread across Africa during the Miocene. A major hypothesis for explaining this vegetation change is the increase in C4 grasses, promoting fire. Did mammals contribute to savanna expansion, by using spinescence as a marker of mammal herbivory? Looking at the present distribution of 1852 tree spp, we established that spinescence is associated with 2 functional types of mammals: - large browsers & - medium-sized mixed feeders.
Using a dated phylogeny for the same tree spp, we found that spinescence evolved at least 55 times. The diversification of spiny plants - occurred long after the evolution of Afrotherian proboscideans & hyracoids, - is remarkably congruent with diversification of bovids (incl.the antelope that predom.browse these plants today).
Our findings suggest that herbivore-adapted savannas evolved several million years before fire-maintained savannas, probably in different environments: - Spiny savannas with abundant mammal herbivores occur in drier climates & on nutrient-rich soils. - Fire-maintained savannas occur in wetter climates on nutrient-poor soils. - - -
Afrotherians = elephants etc. are native to Africa.
Antelopes etc. are not from Africa, they moved in after the tectonic plate collision of Africa and EurAsia, along with many other taxa.
I claim that Homo sapiens originated in the tropical rainforest belt, mainly living along feeder streams (shallow tributaries which flowed into larger rivers or coastal estuaries) that did not have large predators (except leopards, which KhoiSan claim are the most dangerous animals to humans). Today's Congo Pygmies live in this way, choosing to camp in small forest openings which are surrounded by thickets (which grow fast when large old trees are felled by high winds above the canopy, same in temperate forest - blackberry thickets full of thorns grow quickly). While rainforest soils are generally poor in nutrients and are kept constantly moist, forest openings created by fallen trees are microclimates which have relatively rich soil (temporarily) and sun-dried surface, encouraging 'micro-savanna' conditions desirable to forest antelope seeking low-hanging foliage to browse. Similarly, in temperate forests that are logged, deer quickly invade to browse on the fallen vegetation and the new ground growth.
DDeden
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snw.ntr = en.signat(ure/ory)
ensign (n.) 15c., "a token, sign, symbol; badge of office, mark or insignia of authority or rank;" also "battle flag, flag or banner of a ship or troop of soldiers," via Scottish, from Old French enseigne (12c.) "mark, symbol, signal; flag, standard, pennant," from Latin insignia (plural); see insignia, which is a doublet of this word.
sequel (n.) Look up sequel at Dictionary.comearly 15c., "train of followers," from Old French sequelle (14c.), from Late Latin sequela "that which follows, result, consequence," from sequi "to follow, come after, follow after, attend, follow naturally," from PIE root *sekw- (1) "to follow" (source also of Sanskrit sacate "accompanies, follows," Avestan hacaiti, Greek hepesthai "to follow," Lithuanian seku "to follow," Latin secundus "second, the following," Old Irish sechim "I follow"). Meaning "con.sequence" is attested from late 15c.
signet: late Middle English: from Old French, or from medieval Latin signetum, diminutive of signum ‘token, seal.’
sign (v.) Look up sign at Dictionary.comc. 1300, "to make the sign of the cross," from Old French signier "to make a sign (to someone); to mark," from Latin signare "to set a mark upon, mark out, designate; mark with a stamp; distinguish, adorn;" figuratively "to point out, signify, indicate," from signum (see sign (n.)). Sense of "to mark, stamp" is attested from mid-14c.; that of "to affix one's name" is from late 15c. Meaning "to communicate by hand signs" is recorded from 1700. Related: Signed; signing.sign (n.) Look up sign at Dictionary.comearly 13c., "gesture or motion of the hand," especially one meant to communicate something, from Old French signe "sign, mark," from Latin signum "identifying mark, token, indication, symbol; proof; military standard, ensign; a signal, an omen; sign in the heavens, constellation," according to Watkins, literally "standard that one follows," from PIE *sekw-no-, from root *sekw- (1) "to follow" (see sequel).
Ousted native token. Meaning "a mark or device having some special importance" is recorded from late 13c.; that of "a miracle" is from c. 1300. Zodiacal sense in English is from mid-14c. Sense of "characteristic device attached to the front of an inn, shop, etc., to distinguish it from others" is first recorded mid-15c. Meaning "token or signal of some condition" (late 13c.) is behind sign of the times (1520s). In some uses, the word probably is a shortening of ensign. Sign language is recorded from 1847; earlier hand-language (1670s).
Linguistically, the Austroasiatic languages (whose range is illustrated on the map below) are most familiarly represented by Vietnamese, even though Vietnam itself has a larger Han Chinese genetic component than it does an Austroasiatic one, due to migrations from Chinese rice farming populations into mainland Southeast Asia in the Bronze Age or later, very roughly contemporaneous with the Austronesian expansions.
These Chinese mass migrations, however, had far less impact on Island Southeast Asia than they did on mainland Southeast Asia. Other Austroasiatic languages are Khmer (a.k.a. Cambodian), Munda (spoken by some populations in Northern India who have ancestors in Southeast Asia), Nicobarese (spoken in the Southern Andamanese islands but not believed to be the language of the oldest layer of the indigenous Andamanese people whose language is widely classified as a language isolate).
Austroasiatic Language Map Per Wikipedia
South Asian migration to the region dates to about 2,500 years ago, but is very modest outside geographically adjacent Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar). Most of this migration was limited to South Asian elites who left only a little genetic footprint in the long run.
The supplementary materials also include an interesting TreeMix figure that highlights the ancestry of some notable negrito populations of the region which don't appear to be described in the figure above, although regrettably, the TreeMix figure is without a legend and the color scheme is not the same in this chart as in the one above from the same paper. The genetics of some of these populations are remarkably distinct from each other for populations that are often lumped in a single bucket by anthropologists.
The (closed access) paper and its abstract are as follows:
Alexander Mörseburg, et al., "Multi-layered population structure in Island Southeast Asians," European Journal of Human Genetics (15 June 2016).
The history of human settlement in Southeast Asia has been complex and involved several distinct dispersal events. Here, we report the analyses of 1825 individuals from Southeast Asia including new genome-wide genotype data for 146 individuals from three Mainland Southeast Asian (Burmese, Malay and Vietnamese) and four Island Southeast Asian (Dusun, Filipino, Kankanaey and Murut) populations. While confirming the presence of previously recognised major ancestry components in the Southeast Asian population structure, we highlight the Kankanaey Igorots from the highlands of the Philippine Mountain Province as likely the closest living representatives of the source population that may have given rise to the Austronesian expansion. This conclusion rests on independent evidence from various analyses of autosomal data and uniparental markers. Given the extensive presence of trade goods, cultural and linguistic evidence of Indian influence in Southeast Asia starting from 2.5 kya, we also detect traces of a South Asian signature in different populations in the region dating to the last couple of thousand years.
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" The discovery was made close to where the frozen, mummified remains of a Neolithic hunter were found by two German hikers 25 years ago. Since nicknamed Oetzi after a local mountain range, the mummified corpse has revealed a wealth of information on what people of the period wore and ate, how they hunted and armed themselves and how they travelled.
He is believed to have died 5,300 years ago as a result of a violent attack – he was shot by an arrow and then possibly hit with a blunt instrument such as a club. Scientists at the press conference said the discovery of the snowshoe was “exceptional”. "The shoe is evidence that people in the Neolithic period were living in the Alps area and had equipped themselves accordingly," said Dr Catrin Marzoli, the director of the province’s cultural heritage department. "
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Might Otzi have used and left a coracle/snow-saucer in a glacial valley nearby?
I've speculated that coracles were used to transport ice-blocks (wrapped in [gold-sticky-buttered] sheepskins {as in Jason's Golden Fleece} &/or reeds?) downstream from the Taurus/Zagros mountains to Mesopotamian river-side ice-storehouses, similar to later Roman sherbet methods. Otzi had arsenic-bronze residue and copper tools, so if he had a coracle it was probably ballasted with a metal umbo, which would make it stronger in white-water and a better snow-sliding-saucer. [www.amazon.com] [Note: "paricon" very close to parical (India:coracle) and parasol.] Note: Buckler(round-shield) ~ bungalow/burglar(house-thief)/byre(OEdial. hut, cow shed)/mongolu(Mbuti:dome hut) [en.wikipedia.org]
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Tracing the path of pygmies' shared knowledge of medicinal plants
When members of the BaYaka Pygmies living in the northern Republic of Congo get sick, they don't just go to
The findings show the important role of marital bonds in passing information to otherwise distant families.
"We found that long-term pair bonds between men and women allowed otherwise distant families to combine information on medicinal uses of plants," Salali says. "Living in multi-family camps, on the other hand, enabled Pygmies to exchange and accumulate plant knowledge related to cooperative foraging and social beliefs."
The most commonly reported medicinal uses of plants were for treating digestive and respiratory disorders. The BaYaka also use some plants for collecting caterpillars or honey and as a poison for killing monkeys or fish. Other plants were used to regulate social life, including matters concerning lying or sexual taboos.
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Compare to KhoiSan !Xharo trade of etched eggshells & water bottle gourds (opo/calabash) & coconuts (Malay:kelapa)
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Genetics of African Khoesan populations maps to Kalahari Desert geography
Genetics of African Khoesan populations maps to Kalahari Desert geography
Geography and ecology are key factors that have influenced the genetic makeup of human groups in southern Africa...
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Dear "Sub-Saharan" genetics paper authors, are you "Sub-Canadian"?
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Yup, sub brings inferiority to mind which is why it was coined to replace 'south of Sahara'.
The whole concept is bankrupt since Sahel and Savannah folk differ little from folk of the Sahara.
Doc Ben taught us over 40 years ago that it's The Black Man's North and East Africa
Way back in my university days a Mzabi friend of mine used that book to sit his Holy Quran upon.
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Interesting articles at Academia.edu
Ryan Schacht Ryan Schacht University of Utah, Anthropology, Post-Doc
The evolution of monogamy in response to partner scarcity
The evolution of monogamy and paternal care in humans is often argued to have resulted from the needs of our expensive offspring. Recent research challenges this claim, however, contending that promiscuous male competitors and the risk of cuckoldry limit the scope for the evolution of male investment. So how did monogamy first evolve? Links between mating strategies and partner availability may offer resolution. While studies of sex roles commonly assume that optimal mating rates for males are higher, fitness payoffs to monogamy and the maintenance of a single partner can be greater when...
Şevket Dönmez Şevket Dönmez İstanbul üniversitesi, Archaeology, Faculty Member
“Türk Kurgan Kültürünün Trakya’da Bulunan İlk Örneği”, # Tarih 25 (Haziran 2016). 16-17.
A Re-evaluation of inverse segregation in prehistoric As-Cu objects
This study revaluates reported cases of prehistoric As-Cu objects with ‘silvery surfaces’, which are usually interpreted as the result of inverse segregation. Further possible explanations for such surfaces, such as an arsenic-rich α-solid solution, cementation, or post-depositional precipitation, are discussed. The segregation of arsenic was studied in As-Cu ingots produced in chill cast moulds at several compositions, which underwent surface treatment with an NaCl solution. The microstructure and surfaces of the As-Cu alloys were analysed using optical microscopy and SEM-EDXS. Special...
Gregory Mumford Gregory Mumford University of Alabama at Birmingham, Anthropology, Faculty Member
The Sinai Peninsula, a special issue of the Journal for Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, vol. 7.1 (Lexington: the University of Arizona Egyptian Expedition, 2015), Edited by Gregory D Mumford (See JAEI for pdfs of issue contents; details attached)
SUMMARY: The Sinai Peninsula is a vast region, encompassing around 60,000 square kilometers with hundreds, if not thousands of archaeological sites, only a relative small sample of which have been fully explored. The Sinai attracted people in ancient times and continues to do so today, whether as a dwelling place, an area rich in resources, a defensive zone, a refuge, a holy site, or simply as a land through which merchants, armies, emissaries, and others might travel from one region to another. The papers presented here contribute to a greater understanding and appreciation of the rich...
János Jakucs János Jakucs Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of Archaeology, Department Member
János Jakucs et alii and Alasdair Whittle: Between the Vinča and Linearbandkeramik Worlds: The Diversity of Practices and Identities in the 54th–53rd Centuries cal BC in Southwest Hungary and Beyond
Perhaps nowhere in European prehistory does the idea of clearly-defined cultural boundaries remain more current than in the initial Neolithic, where the southeast–northwest trend of the spread of farming crosses what is perceived as a sharp divide between the Balkans and central Europe. This corresponds to a distinction between the Vinča culture package, named for a classic site in Serbia, with its characteristic pottery assemblage and absence of longhouses, and the Linearbandkeramik (LBK), with equally diagnostic but different pottery, and its apparently culturally-diagnostic longhouses,...
Damien Flas Damien Flas Université de Toulouse 2 - Jean Jaurès, TRACES Travaux et Recherches Archéologiques sur les Cultures, les Espaces et les Sociétés UMR 5608, Faculty Member
Reassessment of the Lower Palaeolithic (Acheulean) presence in the western Tien Shan
Kulbulak (Uzbekistan) is among the most important Paleolithic sites in Central Asia. Based on excavations from the 1960s to the 1980s, a stratigraphic sequence yielding 46 archeological horizons of the Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic has been described. The lowermost 22 layers were at that time defined as Acheulean, both in cultural and chronological aspects. Based on these previous works, Kulbulak has thus often been cited as one of the rarest occurrences of Lower Paleolithic and Acheulean in the region. However, this attribution was debatable. New excavations at Kulbulak in 2007–2010...
Mariarita Sgarlata Mariarita Sgarlata Università di Catania, Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche, Faculty Member
Dalla catacomba ai loca sancta: la storia archeologica di Lucia
Karim Sadr Karim Sadr University of the Witwatersrand, Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, Faculty Member
THE EFFECT OF URBAN SPRAWL ON ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES BETWEEN JOHANNESBURG AND THE RIVER VAAL: A GIS STUDY
Urban sprawl destroys archaeological sites. This paper examines the current urban sprawl of Johannesburg and its effect on the Iron Age and colonial ruins between the Witwatersrand Ridge and the River Vaal. Freely available satellite imagery and other relevant spatial data are analysed with open source Geographical Information System (GIS) and statistical software, in order to measure the damage done to archaeological sites. Among other things, this will improve the analysis of past settlement patterns.
Karim Sadr Karim Sadr University of the Witwatersrand, Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, Faculty Member
REDUCING INTER-ANALYST VARIABILITY IN THE CLASSIFICATION OF IRON AGE STONE-WALLED STRUCTURES FROM SATELLITE IMAGERY OF THE SOUTHERN GAUTENG PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA
Previous remote sensing studies of South African Iron Age stone-walled ruins revealed considerable variation in how different analysts subjectively classify the ruins into one or another of several architectural types. In our previous studies, such high disagreement in classifying individual ruins co-existed, curiously, with similarity in the regional site distribution maps produced by the different analysts. Here, we propose and test two hypotheses to explain this anomaly and to help reduce inter-analyst variations in classifying the ruins. We find support for both hypotheses. Our results...
Noémi S Müller Noémi S Müller British School at Athens, Fitch Laboratory, Department Member
Modelling thermal stresses in prehistoric cooking ware
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The Black Prince of Florence 1531 - 1537 Alessandro de' Medici, Head of State Last legitimate heir of Lorenzo the Magnificent by Catherine Fletcher
Scientists have smashed through another time barrier in their search for ancient proteins from fossilized teeth & bones, adding to growing excitement about the promise of using proteins to study extinct animals & humans >1 Ma. Until now, the oldest sequenced proteins are largely acknowledged to come from a 700-ka horse in Canada's Yukon territory, despite claims of extraction from much older dinosaurs. <http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/06/signs-ancient-cells-and-proteins-fo und-dinosaur-fossils>.
Geneticists (7th Internat.Sympos.Biomol.Archaeol.) reported extraction of proteins from - 3.8-Ma ostrich egg-shells in Laetoli & - 1.7-Ma tooth enamel of extinct horses, rhinos & deer in Dmanisi.
Enrico Cappellini & Matthew Collins said their team had extracted & decoded 5000 amino-acids from a half-dozen proteins, which they will now analyze to determine the animals' sex, species etc. Collins also reported that his team has extracted proteins from 3.8-Ma ostrich egg-shells from Laetoli. <http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/02/early-humans-toed-line> Although such ancient proteins have not yet been recovered form hominin fossils, these studies prove that such ancient proteins can survive, and are fast becoming a resource to mine for information about the biology of organisms too old to produce ancient DNA.
<http://www.sciencemag.org/category/archaeology> doi 10.1126/science.aah7314
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the early modern humans who lived on tiny Okinawa Island between mainland Japan and Taiwan nearly 30,000 years ago are the world’s oldest known anglers. Now, archaeologists have discovered the oldest known fishhooks in a limestone cave in the island’s interior, dating back nearly 23,000 years. The fishhooks, all carved from shells, were found in Sakitari Cave, which was occupied seasonally by fishermen taking advantage of the downstream migrations of crabs and freshwater snails. Unlike their mainland counterparts, who fashioned tools and beads out of shells and stones, the ancient people of Okinawa Island used shells almost exclusively. Japanese archaeologists excavating the cave discovered both a finished and an unfinished fishhook that had been carved and ground from sea snail shells. By radiocarbon dating pieces of charcoal found in the same layer as the fishhooks, the researchers determined the hooks were between 22,380 and 22,770 years old. Accounting for margin of error, that gives them an edge over similar fishhooks found in East Timor (between 23,000 and 16,000 years old) and New Ireland in Papua New Guinea (20,000 to 18,000 years old). The findings lend support to the idea that these early modern humans were more advanced with maritime technology than previously thought, and that they were capable of thriving on small, geographically isolated islands.
See Fishing techniques of the Jomon people may have diffused from fishermen of the Wallacea-Spice Islander / Sundaland-Sahul region
This finding would also be more concordant with Matsumoto’s GM study The origin of the Japanese race based on genetic markers of immunoglobin G which found that none of the Japanese populations surveyed, including the Ainu or those from the Okinawa and southern islands shared the same GM marker pattern as southern Melanesian or Micronesian groups southern group, who showed a remarkably high frequency of the afb1b3 marker (excepting a very small component of the mainland Japanese in Osaka and Sendai that attributable to later admixing influxes from the continent). Other Japanese early fishing technology have shown similarities to prehistoric Northeast Pacific Rim fishing lithics.
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Jomon (Pygmy) people, lived in dome huts per Ainu oral history
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Songe Nimasow and friend Khandu Degio rap in the endangered Aka language of Arunachal Pradesh, India, near Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Bhutan and China.
Guy on right appears to be a Asian Pygmy. I'd heard of Burmese pygmies, I think these are them.
Words seem like Malay pronunciation but different
cf Aka Bea Pygmies of Andaman Islands cf Aka, Baka, Bayaka Pygmies of Congo cf Samre Pear Negritos of Cambodia
Wikipedia: Aka
"Aka (tribe)" redirects here. For the Pygmy tribe in Africa, see Aka people. For the subtribe of Hani, see Akha people.
Aka Alternative names: Hrusso[1]
The Aka, also known as Hrusso, are found in the Thrizino (cultural hub), Bhalukpong (commercial hub), Buragaon, Jamiri, Palizi, Khuppi area in West Kameng of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.
The Aka share strong cultural affinities with the Miji, and intermarriage with the Miji is prevalent.[3] Handicrafts, basket weaving and wood carving are the principal arts among the Aka tribe.
Dual language[edit]
Among the Aka live a second group of people, with their own language, the Koro. They are culturally integrated with the Aka, but have somehow maintained their separate, only distantly related Tibeto-Burman language. Koro has more similarities with the Tani language group, in easternmost Tibet. There are thought to be 800 to 1200 remaining speakers of Koro, and 4,000 to 6,000 speakers of Aka.
Face tattooing is another notable feature among some Aka. Especially in the case of the women, they tattoo their faces in a straight line from the forehead to the chin (cf Ainu women, West Coast AmerIndian women)
The Aka are mainly Animists–who are described to follow a variant of the Nyezi-No religion, which means Sky and Earth.[5]
Shizhou proved to be the most popular form of magic ritual among the Aka, and anybody who is angry may resort to conduct Shizhou rituals on his foe.
The rituals of Shizhou involve slaughtering a dog, draining the blood from its head, and either sprinkling a few drops of the blood onto the enemy undetected, throwing them into his house, or burning them in his hearth. If the ritual succeeds, the enemy is supposed to lose his life. - - - The area around is hill forest with cloud orchards, orchids, hoolok gibbons, crocs...
Aka linked to Hani Negritos of Thailand, Koro linked to Tani of Tibet.
Black Florida: Photo-documentary book of black communities of southern Florida, by Johanne Rahaman (from Trinidad, now living in Miami)
blackflorida.org {photo archive}
(Unfortunately, I can't access the site from Miami Public Library, perhaps because it is "Uncategorized". "Access to blackflorida.org is blocked according to the organization security policy")
Razib writes on the current wealth of countries ruled by the Hapsburg empire:
"The map to the right shows GDP per capita in the European Union in 2014 broken down by regions. I’ve long observed that the wealthiest regions of Europe are disproportionately those which were long under Habsburg rule. This fact transcends ethnicity and religion. Catholic northern Italy, Catholic southern Germany, as well as Protestant Netherlands, are all notably economically productive, and were long under Habsburg rule or hegemony.
The observation is just that, an observation. I have no grand theory to explain what is going on. "
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Zika Virus - first detected at Ziika forest of Uganda near Lake Victoria
The scientists named it “Zika” — Ziika means “overgrown” in the local Luganda language, but the second “i” was dropped by colonialists who misheard its pronunciation.
[DD: Ziika ~ dziungla/jungle = cutover thicket]
Decades later, Zika Forest and the surrounding environs are overgrown once more. Like many semi-urban areas in Africa, it has suffered from human encroachment. In 1947, Uganda’s population was about 4.5 million; today, it is nearly 40 million.
Zika Virus in same family as West Nile Virus, Yellow Fever. Does not affect strongly people of Uganda, the mosquitoes prefer to bite high canopy monkeys. But Zika in America is in a different mosquito, much more aggressive to humans.
Possibility that small brains/crania of gorillas compared to their body size might be related to this?
"The only circumstance when this makes sense to have happened is at the genesis of the Oranian/Iberomaurusian culture, which is likely related to Iberian (Gravetto-)Solutrean, which has dates c. 22 Ka ago. The fact that we find several unmistakable H lineages in Taforalt (Oranian culture, 12 Ka ago, Kefi 2005) rather confirms this process of spread and demands at least Solutrean ages for mtDNA H1, H3, H4 and H7."
Wang Jianxin, a professor at China's Northwest University, said they found a large tomb believed to belong to royal families of the Kangju Kingdom in Southern Uzbekistan during a joint mission by Chinese and Uzbek archaeologists that began in 2013.
Wang, who is also in charge of the joint archaeological mission, said conventional wisdom holds that the Kushan Empire was built by Dayuezhi, another ancient nomad kingdom in the area, yet it was possible that the Kushan had defeated and incorporated the Dayuezhi.
According to Wang, since September 2015, archaeological experts from the two countries have been digging 20 km southwest of the Uzbek city of Samarkand, where they found the tomb along with pottery, stoneware, and other items made of bone, bronze and iron dating back to the 2nd century BC.
However, he noted more research and evidence are needed before coming to a conclusion about the relationship between the Kushan and Dayuezhi.
The 2,800-year-old sewage system, which was discovered in the castle in 2004, was finally unearthed under the structures in the western part of the castle. The sewage is one meter in width and 30 meters in length and covered with fine stones.
The head of the Culture and Tourism Ministry-supported excavations, Rafet Çavuşoğlu, an associate professor in the Archaeology Department of Yüzüncü Yıl University, said the Çavustepe Castle was particularly important in history because it was once located on a major trading route.
“The Urartians thought carefully about what to build and where. They did everything in line with a project. When establishing this city 2,800 years ago, the Urartians made an urban plan and built structures according to infrastructure. This is very important to us. We found an engineering marvel here,” Çavuşoğlu said.
He added that the sewage system was built with stone and inside was a gutter through which water flowed.
“This work defines civilization to us. It shows how ancient civilization was developed. There is also a toilet in the palace section. The toilet water flows outside through the sewage system, which reveals that the Urartians were a very civilized society,” Çavuşoğlu said.
“During the construction of houses today, an excellent system is planned with schools, hospitals, mosques and infrastructure. Urartians did the same 2,800 years ago,” he added.
The city established around the castle was nearly one kilometer in diameter and surrounded by protective walls, according to the excavations head.
“Measures were taken against the danger of enemies. Large dikes were opened up on both the eastern and western sides. They made their defense system in this way,” Çavuşoğlu stated.
"The earliest Dravidian writings are attested around this time, but no Dravidan language has ever been attested anywhere West of Pakistan."
Around 2,150 B.C.E., the short lived Gutian dynasty of Sumer, founded by invaders from the Central Zargo Mountains seized power from the dynasty that established the Akkadian Empire.
[Ein Gedi (Hebrew:wild goat kid spring) may be from Agade (Sanskrit) health water) DD]
About 3,400 years ago (1400 B.C.E.), the Northern Zargos Mountains and this site were both home to the Mittani Empire, whose leaders spoke a Sankrit derived Indo-Aryan language. But, the Mittani Empire was long gone by 800 B.C.E.
Just to the North of the region of interest at the same time, the Uratu Kingdom was in existence in the Armenian Highlands.
One of the last attested West Eurasian non-Indo-European language was spoken in the Elamite Empire (2800 BCE to 550 BCE) in present day Iran (with proto-Elamite writings a few hundred years earlier), and according to Wikipedia: "Elamite is regarded as a language isolate and has no close relation to the neighboring Semitic languages, to the Indo-European languages, or to Sumerian, even though it adopted the Sumerian syllabic script." (I personally suspect some distant relationship between Elamite and the Sumerian, Hattic, Hurrian and Minoan languages.) These names aren't an obvious fit to any of these.
The best guess for the source of the people speaking the newly discovered language would be between Elam and the Neo-Assyrian empire. The Medes and Persians came onto the scene after the tablet was written.
Background on the author's work at this site can be found here: "He has also been working for over a decade at the site of Ziyaret Tepe in southeastern Turkey, now identified as the Neo-Assyrian provincial capital of Tushan, where he is both project epigrapher and directs excavations in the lower town."
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Papua dog/Australia dingo study
Phylogenetic analyses based upon mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA support the hypothesis that there are at least two distinct populations of dingo, one of which occurs in the northwest and the other in the southeast of the continent. Conservative molecular dating based upon mitochondrial DNA suggest that the lineages split approximately 8300 years before present, likely outside Australia but within Oceania. The close relationship between dingoes and New Guinea Singing Dogs suggests that plausibly dingoes spread into Australia via the land bridge between Papua New Guinea and Australia although seafaring introductions cannot be rejected. The geographical distribution of these divergent lineages suggests there were multiple independent dingo immigrations
[H/T GH at Human Migrations Yahoo Group; she mentioned that the mtDNA of aborigines of SE Austrl seem distinct from other Austl Aborigines.]
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The Alps, the Himalayas, and the Northern glaciers. Anatolia was cold and dry then. Then the big melt, which raised sea levels 110m about 8ka, filling the freshwater Black sea oasis and greening the Sahara. Then 5ka the Sahara dried out again. - - -
In reference to Otzi the Iceman's snowshoes found in the Alps and a later ski found in a Norse glacier. - - -
I just read a book by Carl Zimmer, he said that chimps sometimes make and wear 'sandals' in thornbush areas. I didn't know that, the website I found doesn't have references:
" For one thing, chimpanzees and other apes have proved surprisingly gifted at making tools. In order to walk across thorn-covered ground, chimpanzees can fashion sandals out of leaves. In order to eat termites, they can strip sticks to create fishing tools. Unfortunately, a leaf-sandal doesn’t leave a fossil. But some researchers believe that the hands of hominids may shed some light on the mystery of tools." http://www.alearned.com/chimpanzee/ - - - I think the 'sandals' are leaves/twigs compressed between the toes.
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3.5ka SW Greek - long Black curly hair
In 2015, archaeologists discovered a 3,500-year
old undisturbed shaft grave near the Palace of Nestor at Pylos in southwestern Greece. Excavators Dr. Shari Stocker and Professor Jack Davis describe spectacular weapons, ivory combs, seal stones, and Minoan-style gold rings, which afford unparalleled insights into art and ritual at the dawn of Mycenaean civilization. The University of Cincinnati archaeological excavations at the Palace of Nestor, Pylos resumed on May 18, 2015 for the first time since 1969. During the course of the campaign, the so-called grave of the “Griffin Warrior” was discovered a few hundred meters from the Palace.
This is the face of the mysterious 'Griffin warrior' from Pylos Facial reconstruction of the mysterious 'Griffin warrior' from ancient Pylos [Credit: Lynne Schepartz & Tobias Houlton, University of the Witwatersrand] The warrior was probably a very handsome man with long black hair, we have reconstituted his face based on a depiction of a warrior found on a seal inside the grave which will be presented next year, said to ANA-MPA Dr. Stocker. The reconstitution of the warrior's face was conducted by Lynne Schepartz and Tobias Houlton of the University of Witwatersrand of Johannesburg.
The so-called Griffin Warrior of Pylos aged between 30 and 35 was named after a griffin depicted on two objects found in the grave which indicate that the man in the grave was very important "the griffin reflects a very well known authority system that existed in Pylos and the Minoan Crete," said Stocker.
The Cobalt pipeline: Tracing the path from deadly hand-dug mines in Congo to consumers’ phones and laptops, Todd C. Frankel, The Washington Post [www.washingtonpost.com]
I'm reading a book: People, Parasites and Plowshares.
Interesting hypothesis about Southern Whites of Confederacy, hookworms causing anemia/"laziness" brought to the South by enslaved Africans. Rockefeller established a medical foundation, found that soil type mattered, hard clay resisted hookworm larvae movement, but sandy loam (good for cotton plantations) allowed hookworms to travel in moist soil to infect further.
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NOTE: ARI (Hebrew:lion/yellow/tawny); KhoiSan: ridgeback dog; India: dog
Evidence for a Common Origin of Blacksmiths and Cultivators in the Ethiopian Ari within the Last 4500 Years: Lessons for Clustering-Based Inference Lucy van Dorp et al
The Ari peoples of Ethiopia are comprised of different occupational groups that can be distinguished genetically, with Ari Cultivators and the socially marginalised Ari Blacksmiths recently shown to have a similar level of genetic differentiation between them (FST ≈ 0.023 − 0.04) as that observed among multiple ethnic groups sampled throughout Ethiopia. Anthropologists have proposed two competing theories to explain the origins of the Ari Blacksmiths as (i) remnants of a population that inhabited Ethiopia prior to the arrival of agriculturists (e.g. Cultivators), or (ii) relatively recently related to the Cultivators but presently marginalized in the community due to their trade. Two recent studies by different groups analysed genome-wide DNA from samples of Ari Blacksmiths and Cultivators and suggested that genetic patterns between the two groups were more consistent with model (i) and subsequent assimilation of the indigenous peoples into the expanding agriculturalist community. We analysed the same samples using approaches designed to attenuate signals of genetic differentiation that are attributable to allelic drift within a population. By doing so, we provide evidence that the genetic differences between Ari Blacksmiths and Cultivators can be entirely explained by bottleneck effects consistent with hypothesis (ii). This finding serves as both a cautionary tale about interpreting results from unsupervised clustering algorithms, and suggests that social constructions are contributing directly to genetic differentiation over a relatively short time period among previously genetically similar groups.
The four women were from a distinct population that had no evidence of mixing with the ancestors of people living in Papua New Guinea today, as the team reports in Nature this week. Instead, the women shared all their ancestry with the indigenous Atayal people in Taiwan and the Kankanaey people in the Philippines.
Because X chromosomes are more likely to be inherited from mothers (sons get only a Y from their fathers), that suggests that much of the Melanesian DNA came through the male line, as Melanesian men interbred with Polynesian women. “The female ancestors of modern-day Oceanians are mainly Lapita, whereas their male ancestors include Papuans,” Skoglund says.
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Papua had pigs which must have been brought from China/Taiwan with Austronesians about 3ka, as pigs were not native to Papua.
Papuan pigs had no tapeworms (Taenia solis). Austronesians must have brought only suckling pigs, which had no chance to get tapeworms via feeding. In that region, human mothers may suckle piglets.
Recently Indonesia sent Balinese pigs to Papua which were infected with tapeworms, this resulted 5 years later in numerous Papuans falling into campfires, due to the pork tapeworms migrating to the brains of Papuans, who annually feast on almost raw pork. The 5 year delay was due to the long intra-intestinal larval stage, only the mature tapeworm caused delirium. [cf book: People, Parasites & Plowshares https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/recommended-people-parasites-and-plowshares/ ].
Papua is also the area where ceremonial cannibalism of deceased parents' brains produced prions (cf mad cow disease). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
Sugar cane is native to Papua. It may have been an early trade incentive, resulting in additional trade items back and forth (trepang, coconuts, spices, bananas, honey...) producing widespread adoption of fast long dugout logboat canoes, rather than the earlier (IMO) coracles used.
I think Papua is where the dugout logboat canoe was first invented, as a result of harvesting and later deliberate cultivation of wood boring grubs for food, resulting in empty wood shells.
Culinary uses[edit]
Sago worms in Papua New Guinea The larval grub is considered a delicacy in Southeast Asian countries. The worm are considered a speciality in Vietnam,[27] Malaysian Borneo,[28][29] and in eastern Indonesia of West Papua, as well on Papua New Guinea.[30] Sago grubs have been described as creamy tasting when raw, and like bacon or meat when cooked. They are often prepared with sago flour. In Vietnam, the larvae are usually eaten alive with fish sauce. Other methods of cooking include toasting and steaming. They are eaten with sticky rice and salad or cooked with porridge. The larvae are known in the Vietnamese language as đuông dừa ("coconut beetle-larva").[27] The larvae are also eaten either raw or roasted in Malaysian Bornean states of Sabah and Sarawak, and regarded as a special high-nutrient meal among the natives there like the Kadazan-Dusun, Melanau and the Dayak.[29][31] It is called in Sabah as butod.[32] The Asmat, Korowai and Kombai peoples of southern New Guinea also hold the larva in high regard as a food source.[33] Sago worms are roasted on a spit to celebrate special occasions in New Guinea.[34] Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Grain agriculture followed H & G wetland reed 'cultivation'
direct botanical evidence emphases the importance of the wetlands as an under-recognized reliable plant resource. Significantly, the use of these reliable wetland plant resources at Kharaneh IV represents an unexpected ‘Neolithization’ pathway.
Risk, Reliability and Resilience: Phytolith Evidence for Alternative ‘Neolithization’ Pathways at Kharaneh IV in the Azraq Basin, Jordan
‘Neolithization’ pathway refers to the development of adaptations that characterized subsequent Neolithic life, ...
Our ancestors chose reeds over grain when quitting nomadic life
Fig 1. Location map of Kharaneh IV and the other sites mentioned. When ancient hunter-gatherers first began t...
PLOS 1, Pileta blog
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Siberian sculpture of Caucasian was altered to Sinitic
" But that wasn't the only cross-species sex our ancestors got up to. Known only from a few fragments of bones, the enigmatic Denisovans evolved from the same branch that gave rise to the Neanderthals, and are thought to contribute to between 3 and 5 percent of the genomes of aboriginal Australians. That is literally all we know about the Denisovans.
But even more mysteriously, it seems that there is genetic evidence for another species that may have lived in Southeast Asia around the same time as the Denisovans and us. While no physical fossils have ever been found, genetic analysis of Pacific Islanders seems to show that a distinct species of ancient human, thought to be another sister group to the Neanderthals and Denisovans, may have been breeding with our ancestors as they moved into Southeast Asia. Who these may have been, nobody knows. Some suggest that the environment in this part of the world means that fossils are unlikely to survive, while others argue that as we know so little about the genetic diversity of the Denisovans, this mysterious DNA could still be from them.
Yet this is not the first time that researchers have discovered what they think is evidence for an ancient species of human hidden in our genes. Analysis of people's genetics in Africa show that something similar may have occurred there too, with suggestions of another cross-species romance. But there is still a hole in African genetics.
"Africans have been underrepresented in genetics research - they're not as well studied as European and Asian populations, yet they are more diverse genetically than any other group," Dr Bohlender said.
With the rich evolutionary history of hominins within Africa, this will likely yield even more interbreeding events, and it is highly likely there are other yet to be revealed instances from other parts of the planet. As ever, things are never quite as straightforward as they first seem."
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The Y-chromosome landscape of the Philippines: extensive heterogeneity and varying genetic affinities of Negrito and non-Negrito groups
Frederick Delfin,1,2 et al.
Abstract
The Philippines exhibits a rich diversity of people, languages, and culture, including so-called ‘Negrito' groups that have for long fascinated anthropologists, yet little is known about their genetic diversity. We report here, a survey of Y-chromosome variation in 390 individuals from 16 Filipino ethnolinguistic groups, including six Negrito groups, from across the archipelago. We find extreme diversity in the Y-chromosome lineages of Filipino groups with heterogeneity seen in both Negrito and non-Negrito groups, which does not support a simple dichotomy of Filipino groups as Negrito vs non-Negrito. Filipino non-recombining region of the human Y chromosome lineages reflect a chronology that extends from after the initial colonization of the Asia-Pacific region, to the time frame of the Austronesian expansion. Filipino groups appear to have diverse genetic affinities with different populations in the Asia-Pacific region. In particular, some Negrito groups are associated with indigenous Australians, with a potential time for the association ranging from the initial colonization of the region to more recent (after colonization) times. Overall, our results indicate extensive heterogeneity contributing to a complex genetic history for Filipino groups, with varying roles for migrations from outside the Philippines, genetic drift, and admixture among neighboring groups.
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Common chimps x bonobo chimps = hybridization of Central common chimps, not in West or East African chimps
Chimpanzee genomic diversity reveals ancient admixture with bonobos Marc de Manuel ... Christina Hvilsom ... 2016 Science
Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees & bonobos have a complex demographic history. We analyzed the high-coverage whole genomes of 75 wild-born chimps & bonobos from 10 countries in Africa: chimpanzee population substructure makes genetic information a good predictor of geographic origin at country & regional scales. Multiple lines of evidence suggest: gene-flow occurred from bonobos into the ancestors of central & eastern chimps between 200 & 550 ka, probably with subsequent spread into Nigeria-Cameroon chimps. Together with another, possibly more recent contact after 200 ka, bonobos contributed < 1 % to the central chimpanzee genomes. Admixture thus appears to have been widespread during hominid evolution.
- - -
Ethiopian Rift dynamics
A pulse of mid-Pleistocene rift volcanism in Ethiopia at the dawn of modern humans William Hutchison cs 2016 Nature
The Ethiopian Rift Valley hosts the longest record of human co-existence with volcanoes on Earth, but current understanding of the magnitude & timing of large explosive eruptions in this region is poor.
Detailed records of volcanism are essential for - interpreting the palaeo-environments occupied by our hominin ancestors, - evaluating the volcanic hazards posed to the 10 million people currently living within this active rift zone.
Here we use new geo-chronological evidence to suggest: a 200 km-long segment of rift experienced a major pulse of explosive volcanic activity between 320 & 170 ka. During this period, - at least 4 distinct volcanic centres underwent large-volume > 10 km3 caldera-forming eruptions, - eruptive fluxes were elevated 5 times above the average eruption rate for the past 700 ka.
We propose that such pulses of episodic silicic volcanism would have drastically remodelled landscapes & ecosystems occupied by early hominin populations.
The Siberian Times reports that beads made of ostrich eggshells were discovered in Denisova Cave, which is located in the Altai Mountains. The beads measure less than one-half inch in diameter and are thought to be between 45,000 and 50,000 years old. cuevadelapileta at BlogSpot
Inuit Eskimo Body Fat Gene Derived From Denisovans
A new pre-print finds that a gene that enhances selective fitness in Arctic Inuits related to body fat, which is protective in cold temperatures, has origins in the Denisovan genome. The only prior instance of likely selective fitness enhancing Denisovan introgression was of high altitude adaptation genes in Tibetans. Among other things, this suggests non-Melanesians experienced Denisovan introgression in the area where Denisovan remains were found, even if this ancestry was subsequently highly diluted.
A recent study conducted the first genome-wide scan for selection in Inuit from Greenland using SNP chip data. Here, we report that selection in the region with the second most extreme signal of positive selection in Greenlandic Inuit favored a deeply divergent haplotype that is closely related to the sequence in the Denisovan genome, and was likely introgressed from an archaic population. The region contains two genes, WARS2 and TBX15, and has previously been associated with adipose tissue differentiation and body-fat distribution in humans. We show that the adaptively introgressed allele has been under selection in a much larger geographic region than just Greenland. Furthermore, it is associated with changes in expression of WARS2 and TBX15 in multiple tissues including the adrenal gland and subcutaneous adipose tissue, and with regional DNA methylation changes in TBX15.
Fernando Racimo, et al., "Archaic adaptive introgression in TBX15/WARS2" doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/033928 .
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When kingship came down from heaven, (the city of) Kish was sovereign; in Kish, Gushur exercised (kingship) for 2,160 years.
So begins the oldest SKL manuscript, which dates to the time of Shulgi (ca. 2093-2046 BCE), the second king of the Third Dynasty of Ur (also called Ur III). Later compilers apparently felt uncomfortable with the prominence accorded to the city of Kish and provided a new beginning to the composition by devising a prior descent of kingship in the Sumerian city of Eridu.
In the original version, however, Kish was likely to have been the first seat of kingship. In that city a certain Gushur (‘Tree-Trunk’?) reigned for hundreds and hundreds of years. Similarly long-lived kings of Kish reigned until the city was defeated and kingship was transferred to Uruk, or rather to Eana, the sacred precinct of Uruk.
Various kings succeeded one another in Eana until Uruk was also defeated and kingship moved to another city. The same story is repeated many times; according to the SKL, kingship continued to shift from one city to another. In this narrative, all the rulers who allegedly held sovereignty over the whole of Babylonia are listed one after the other without interruption, except for one break – a time of political confusion and anarchy, during which it was not clear who the king was.
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A massive, 1,500-year-old stone complex that may have been built by nomad tribes has been discovered near the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan.
The complex contains numerous stone structures sprawled over about 300 acres (120 hectares) of land, or more than 200 American football fields, archaeologists reported recently in the journal Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia.
"When the area was examined in detail, several types of stone structures were identified," archaeologists Andrey Astafiev, of the Mangistaus State Historical and Cultural Reserve; and Evgeniï Bogdanov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences Siberian Department's Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, wrote in the journal article. The smallest stone structures are only 13 feet by 13 feet (4 by 4 meters), and the biggest are 112 feet by 79 feet (34 by 24 m). [See Photos of the Massive Stone Structure and Artifacts]
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Egyptian ships: rowing vs sailing, night vs day
2.1 Henet-ship and Shabet-ship The first important observation is that, in the ship scenes of the private tombs of the early Old Kingdom, a differentiation between two different ship types is possible. One type encompasses wooden ships with a prow bearing the head of a hedgehog twisted backwards,32 this ship is called Henet.33 The other type is made up of wooden vessels whose hull imitates that of marsh ships built from papyrus stems,34 this type of ship is named Shabet.35 Both designations are documented starting from the early Fourth Dynasty, that is, from the time of Khufu and Djedefra.36 The main particularities of the hedgehog-headed Henet-ship and the Shabetship can be easily discovered through examples of both vessels from the tomb of Seneb in Giza, which is probably to be dated in the early Fourth Dynasty.37 In this early Giza tomb both ships are shown in a single relief field on the south wall of the southern outer post of the false door. In the top register, a Shabet-ship is being rowed; the inscription says: hnt m Sibt, "rowing in a Shabet-ship". In the lower register, the representation of a Henet sailboat with a prow in the shape of the turned-back head of a hedgehog can be found. Its action is designated by the inscription as fijt tlw m hnt, "sailing in a Henetboat" (fig. 3). 32 V.
40 The implications connected with the Henet- and Shabet-ships shall be discussed by the author in a study under the title "Day and Night as represented in the Reliefs of the Old K i n g d o m " [forthcoming].
Any link to the difference between mongolu(mother/moon night dome hut) and kupharigolu(father/sun-fire Day bowl boat)? Note -phari- = ferry = pharaoh-perro-pulq(boatsled) hound
Diagram 1: Convoy of sailing and rowing ships in a file. The diagram makes it clear that, in principle, the position of the individual ships within the sequence, whether sailing or rowing, does' not change. From there, the only conclusion is that in both cases a kind of ferrying motion is achieved, a perpetual to and fro between two destinations.
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Sweden 8ka Coastal lagoon - red deer hunters, fish trappers
Note: India fish trap: "kudu", similar pron. to African kudu antelope and Tibetan khudru coracle of wicker & buttered yak hide)
Underwater Stone Age settlement mapped out 14.11.16
6 years ago, divers discovered the oldest known stationary fish traps in N-Europe, off the coast of S-Sweden. Since then, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have uncovered an exceptionally well-preserved Stone Age site. The location was a lagoon environment, where Mesolithic humans lived during parts of the year.
A submerged Mesolithic lagoonal landscape in the Baltic Sea, south-eastern Sweden Early Holocene environmental reconstruction and shore-level displacement based on a multiproxy approach Anton Hansson cs 2016 Quat.Internatl. <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2016.07.059>
Several unprecedented archaeological findings made in the study area are presented & discussed, including stationary fishing constructions, dated to c 9.1 8.4 ka. These constructions (the oldest known in N-Europe) indicate extensive riverine & lagoonal fishing, previously not recorded during the Mesolithic in Sweden. Bones & antlers of red deer with slaughter marks & a unique pick axe made of elk antler provide evidence of human exploitation of terrestrial resources. The Haväng site shows the strong potential of submerged landscapes as palaeo-ecological source materials, and demonstrates the importance of resources at coastal settings near river-mouths for Mesolithic communities.
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Note: I saw in a book on ancient boats a stone carving of a canoe with paddlers with a man holding up a pair of either snowshoes or fish traps.
fish trap (South India, Karnataka?) kudu snowshoes (Norse) truger (trek/tracker?) snowshoes (Croatian) krplje
The only link I've found to Africa & snowshoes is ancient Egypt sandals (possibly Ankh = sandal strap) and a reference to chimps making leaf "sandals" (leaves bunched under toes) to crossover thorny ground. I'd think sandals were first made to walk over very hot desert ground, but I don't think the KhoiSan wore sandals. Snowshoes are only worn in soft deep snow, like desert sand, and may have developed directly from sandals.
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Dentognathic remains of Australopithecus afarensis from Nefuraytu Ethiopia
Au.afarensis is the best-known & most dimorphic species in the early hominin fossil record. Here, we present a comparative description of new fossil specimens from Nefuraytu, a 3.3303.207-Ma fossil collection area in the central Afar.
NFR-VP-1/29, one of the most complete & largest mandibles assigned to Au.afarensis, likely represents a male individual. It retains almost all of the distinctive archaic features documented for Au.afarensis: - a posteriorly sloping symphysis, - a low & rounded basally set inferior transverse torus, - antero-superiorly opening mental foramen, - a lateral corpus hollow bound anteriorly by the C/P3 jugae, and posteriorly by the lateral prominence, - the ascending ramus arising high on the corpus.
Dental morphology & metrics of the Nefuraytu specimens also falls within the range of Au.afarensis. The presence of this species at Woranso-Mille 3.330 - 3.207 Ma confirms its close spatial & temporal proximity to other mid-Pliocene hominin taxa, e.g. - the Burtele foot BRT-VP-2/73 & - the recently named species Au.deyiremeda. This has important implications for our understanding of middle Pliocene hominin diversity.
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Jomon origins
We found that the Jomon population lineage is best considered to have diverged before diversification of present-day East Eurasian populations, with no evidence of gene flow events between the Jomon and other continental populations. This suggests that the Sanganji Jomon people descended from an early phase of population dispersals in East Asia.
They have words for the numerals "one" and "two" only, but can count to ten by tapping the nose with the finger-tips of both hands, uttering for each in turn the word #-&= "and this," until, when the last is reached, the expression drduru implies " all."
Industrial pollution may seem like a modern phenomenon, but in fact, an international team of researchers may have discovered what could be the world's first polluted river, contaminated approximately 7,000 years ago.
In this now-dry riverbed in the Wadi Faynan region of southern Jordan, Professor Russell Adams, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Waterloo, and his colleagues found evidence of early pollution caused by the combustion of copper. Neolithic humans here may have been in the early stages of developing metallurgy by learning how to smelt.
Bucky Fuller speculated that bronze age began in Thailand, where a river flows between a copper rich range and a tin rich range with evidence of kilns.
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With the Neanderthal genome now published, for the first time, scientists have a rich new resource of comparative evolution. For example, recently, scientists have shown that humans and Neanderthals once interbred, with the accumulation of elements of Neanderthal DNA found in up to 5 percent in modern humans. Scientist have found evidence of accumulation of a Neanderthal DNA region found on chromosome 3 that contains 18 genes, with several related to UV-light adaptation, including the Hyal2 gene. Their results reveal this region was positively selected and enriched in East Asians, ranging from up to 49 percent in Japanese to 66 percent in Southern Chinese.
Earliest direct evidence of plant processing in prehistoric Saharan pottery Julie Dunne, Anna Maria Mercuri, Richard Evershed cs 2016 Nature Plants 3:16194 doi 10.1038/nplants.2016.194
The invention of thermally resistant ceramic cooking vessels c 15 ka was a major advance in human diet & nutrition, opening up new food groups & preparation techniques. Previous investigations of lipid bio-markers contained in food residues have routinely demonstrated the importance of prehistoric cooking pots for the processing of animal products across the world. Remarkably, however, direct evidence for plant processing in prehistoric pottery has not been forthcoming, despite the potential to cook otherwise unpalatable or even toxic plants. In N.Africa, archaeo-botanical evidence of charred & desiccated plant organs denotes that Early Holocene hunter-gatherers routinely exploited a wide range of plant resources.
Here, we reveal the earliest direct evidence for plant processing in pottery globally, from Takarkori & Uan Afuda, Libyan Sahara 8200–6400 bC. Characteristic carbon number distributions & δ13C values for plant wax-derived n-alkanes & alkanoic acids indicate sustained & systematic processing of C3/C4 grasses & aquatic plants, gathered from the savannahs & lakes in the Early to Mid-Holocene green Sahara.
Researchers studied unglazed pottery (>10 ka) from 2 sites in the Libyan Sahara.
... Ancient cooking would have initially involved the use of fires or pits: the invention of ceramic cooking vessels led to an expansion of food preparation techniques.
Cooking would have allowed the consumption of previously unpalatable or even toxic foodstuffs, it would also have increased the availability of new energy sources.
Until now, evidence of cooking plants in early prehistoric cooking vessels has been lacking.
The researchers detected lipid residues of foodstuffs preserved within the fabric of unglazed cooking pots.
Over half of the vessels studied were found to have been used for processing plants based on the identification of diagnostic plant oil & wax compounds.
Detailed investigations of the molecular & stable isotope compositions showed a broad range of plants were processed: - grains, - the leafy parts of terrestrial plants & - most unusually aquatic plants.
The interpretations of the chemical signatures obtained from the pottery are supported by abundant plant remains preserved in remarkable condition, due to the arid desert environment at the sites.
The plant chemical signatures from the pottery show that the processing of plants was practiced for >4 ky, indicating the importance of plants to the ancient people of the prehistoric Sahara.
Julie Dunne: "Until now, the importance of plants in prehistoric diets has been under-recognised, but this work demonstrates the importance of plants as a reliable dietary resource. These findings also emphasise the sophistication of these early hunter-gatherers in their utilisation of a broad range of plant types, and the ability to boil them for long periods of time in newly invented ceramic vessels would have significantly increased the range of plants prehistoric people could eat."
Richard Evershed: "The finding of extensive plant wax & oil residues in early prehistoric pottery provides us with an entirely different picture of the way early pottery was used in the Sahara compared to other regions in the ancient world. Our new evidence fits beautifully with the theories proposing very different patterns of plant & animal domestication in Africa & Europe/Eurasia."
- - - Note: much cooking can be and was done without pots.
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I spent a winter living in Guerrero Negro (Black Warrior) village in Baja Mexico. Huge salt mining center. I haven't been to Black Warrior Basin, Alabama, perhaps will someday.
"The Phoenician language and its later, divergent form Punic are extinct Semitic languages that originated in the Near East and were spoken in antiquity across into North Africa and southern Iberia by Phoenician and Carthaginian traders and colonists. Needless to say, an origin for a number of British and Irish names in these languages is an intriguing possibility, and such a linguistic hypothesis does, in fact, have a potential historical context too."
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Circumcision in West Africa, as related to HIV 1 & 2
Populations from three regions in particular possess distinctive autosomal genetic signatures indicative of likely refugia: one, in the north, centered around the eastern coast of the Black Sea, the second, with a more Levantine focus, and the third in the southern Arabian Peninsula. - - -
Oldest obsidian trade/transport 200ka:
Evidence from the ∼200 ka Middle Stone Age Baringo, Kenya
The majority of obsidian derives from the farthest source, 166 km to the south of the site.
The SSRS thus provides important new evidence that long-distance raw material transport, and the expansion of hominin inter-group interactions that this entails, was a significant feature of hominin behavior ∼200 ka (when H.sapiens first appeared): ∼150 ky before similar behaviors were previously documented in the region.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Recent work at Tam Pa Ling (cave), Laos, is beginning to alter this picture, having produced some of the earliest modern human fossils in the entire Southeast Asianregion, dated to a minimum age of ~63-46 ka (Demeter et al.,2012a,b; 2015). The work sets somewhat of a precedent in the re-gion, with the authors providing some very robust stratigraphic data including a basic depositional environment reconstruction(Demeter et al., 2015).
^ Great link and info
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Thanx xyyman,
I erred on title date, should be 55,000 years ago, not 5,500. Very likely a pygmy group from Central India's Narmada River went east to Laos.
Interesting find: The Nihali are an ancient band in central India, often called thieves by newer peoples there.
"Fire" (Nihali) apo (Malay) api (Ainu) ape' (Mbuti) apa
very ancient word, meaning ember/birth, precedes fire drill.
Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
Just finished the Jomon paper. really fascinating. Showed how aDNA can correct a lot of false beliefs. Jamon are really the Ainu people. Ainu were a tropical people in the Japanese Islands. I posted on thsi several years ago. Now aDNA is proving me correct. I hate patting myself on the back but I must.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Hate to burst your bubble, but the when the Ainu arrived in north Japan, they found the Jomon already living there in dome huts shingled with butter burr leaves. The Ainu built square huts, as they had in central Asia.
What you are seeing is the mixed descendants of Jomon and Ainu.
Modern Japanese have this and also Hmong (Laos), Korean and Chinese mixture.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
"Defective gene" in Europeans = immunity to HIV, plaque, smallpox
(somitcw @ AAT)
"The one that I heard about was a few Europeans had a faulty gene for the CCR5 ( Calcium Cell Receptor # 5 ) CCR5 is how smallpox and the plague enter a cell.
First smallpox or plague epidemic in Europe killed many but people with one faulty CCR5 gene ( called delta 32 ) had some resistance so were more likely to live and have offsprings. After many epidemics, more had the CCR5 delta 32 gene. Some descendants inherited a "defective" gene from each parent so were immune to any disease that enters only through CCR5 which includes smallpox, plague, early HIV infections, and many others.
Today, one percent of Europeans have two copies so are immune to smallpox, several poxes, the plague, and HIV.
Today, ten percent of Europeans are resistant to smallpox, several other poxes, the plague, and HIV.
Is the CCR5 delta 32 mutation really a "faulty" mutation? If I don't have the "faulty" gene now, I want it. "
The papers all confirmed the "Out of Africa" origins of modern humans, while disagreeing on the timing of when a more southern migration route (into Southeast Asia and Australia) may have occurred.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Monkey dumplings form due to cold weather exposure
Why a White Christ Continues to Be Racist: The Legacy of Albert B. Cleage Jr.
Easter Sunday 2017 will mark the 50-year anniversary of Albert B. Cleage Jr.’s unveiling of a mural of the Black Madonna and child in his church in Detroit, Michigan. This unveiling symbolized a radical theological departure and disruption. The mural helped symbolically launch Black Christian Nationalism and influenced the Black Power movement in the USA. But 50 years later, what has been the lasting impact of this act of theological innovation? What is the legacy of Cleage’s emphasis on the literal blackness of Jesus? How has the idea of a Black Madonna and child informed notions of black womanhood, motherhood? LGBTQ communities? How has Cleage’s theology influenced Christian education, Africana pastoral theology, and the Black Arts Movement? The contributors to this work discuss answers to these and many more questions. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-54689-0_1 Posted by Snakepit1 (Member # 21736) on :
quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: Sweden 8ka Coastal lagoon - red deer hunters, fish trappers
Note: India fish trap: "kudu", similar pron. to African kudu antelope and Tibetan khudru coracle of wicker & buttered yak hide)
Underwater Stone Age settlement mapped out 14.11.16
6 years ago, divers discovered the oldest known stationary fish traps in N-Europe, off the coast of S-Sweden. Since then, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have uncovered an exceptionally well-preserved Stone Age site. The location was a lagoon environment, where Mesolithic humans lived during parts of the year.
A submerged Mesolithic lagoonal landscape in the Baltic Sea, south-eastern Sweden Early Holocene environmental reconstruction and shore-level displacement based on a multiproxy approach Anton Hansson cs 2016 Quat.Internatl. <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2016.07.059>
Several unprecedented archaeological findings made in the study area are presented & discussed, including stationary fishing constructions, dated to c 9.1 8.4 ka. These constructions (the oldest known in N-Europe) indicate extensive riverine & lagoonal fishing, previously not recorded during the Mesolithic in Sweden. Bones & antlers of red deer with slaughter marks & a unique pick axe made of elk antler provide evidence of human exploitation of terrestrial resources. The Haväng site shows the strong potential of submerged landscapes as palaeo-ecological source materials, and demonstrates the importance of resources at coastal settings near river-mouths for Mesolithic communities.
Is it pronounced with a click-consonant, as in the San language? There's a YT video where linguist C. Ehret pronounces it (more or less) correctly. The "K" is a click consonant.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
I don't know exactly how it is pronounced, but expect very similarly. Very likely, kudu is related to hide (of animal), but not sure why fish basket trap (no skin) would have same name in Karnataka, India.
Joshua Conner Moon please post that fascinating article at your own thread, and add commentary/analysis of your own. Thank you. DD'eDeN
- - -
TANN
Heat from Earth's core could be underlying force in plate tectonics
Posted: 18 Jan 2017 03:30 AM PST
For decades, scientists have theorized that the movement of Earth's tectonic plates is driven largely by negative buoyancy created as they cool. New research, however, shows plate dynamics are driven significantly by the additional force of heat drawn from the Earth's core. Researchers find the East Pacific Rise is dynamic as heat is transferred, showing that plate dynamics are driven significantly by additional force of heat...
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Green Sahara's ancient rainfall regime revealed
Posted: 18 Jan 2017 03:00 AM PST
Rainfall patterns in the Sahara during the 6,000-year "Green Sahara" period have been pinpointed by analyzing marine sediments, according to new research. The multicorer device being lowered into the ocean takes eight one-foot cores from the seafloor. Scientists analyze such cores for clues to the climate of the past several thousand years [Credit: Peter deMenocal]What is now the Sahara Desert was the home to hunter-gatherers...
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Finding ways to fix the climate before it is too late
Posted: 18 Jan 2017 02:30 AM PST
Scientists and policymakers rely on complex computer simulations called Integrated Assessment Models to figure out how to address climate change. But these models need tinkering to make them more accurate. What kind of climate does the future hold? Scientists have created a number of different computer models to predict what different technologies and government policies will mean for the climate — but they can be improved...
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Climate change to shift global pattern of mild weather
Posted: 18 Jan 2017 02:00 AM PST
As scientists work to predict how climate change may affect hurricanes, droughts, floods, blizzards and other severe weather, there's one area that's been overlooked: mild weather. But no more. This global map shows the change in the annual number of mild days for 2081-2100 with areas of blue seeing an increase and areas of brown seeing a decline. The six graphics below the global map show the changes occurring in several...
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A catalogue of habitable zone exoplanets
Posted: 18 Jan 2017 12:30 AM PST
The last two decades have seen an explosion of detections of exoplanets, as the sensitivity to smaller planets has dramatically improved thanks especially to the Kepler mission. These discoveries have found that the frequency of planets increases to smaller sizes: terrestrial planets are more common than gas giants. This artist’s concept depicts an exoplanet [Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech]The significance of a universe rich in...
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Mars rover Curiosity examines possible mud cracks
Posted: 18 Jan 2017 12:00 AM PST
Scientists used NASA's Curiosity Mars rover in recent weeks to examine slabs of rock cross-hatched with shallow ridges that likely originated as cracks in drying mud. The network of cracks in this Martian rock slab called "Old Soaker" may have formed from the drying of a mud layer more than 3 billion years ago. The view spans about 3 feet (90 centimeters) left-to-right and combines three images taken by the MAHLI camera on...
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Royal Alberta Museum to crack open 1,600 year old roasting pit with meal still inside
Posted: 17 Jan 2017 12:00 PM PST
Royal Alberta Museum archaeologists are about to start a lengthy and intricate process of figuring out what ancient Albertans cooked for supper. Royal Alberta Museum archaeologists beginning excavation in September 2016 at Head-Smashed-in Buffalo Juamp [Credit: Royal Alberta Museum]Last year, they dug up a 1,600-year-old roasting pit at Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump in southern Alberta. The oven was intact and still had a...
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Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
re. "I don't know exactly how it is pronounced, but expect very similarly. Very likely, kudu is related to hide (of animal), but not sure why fish basket trap (no skin) would have same name in Karnataka, India.
Kudu must have been a variant of mongolu (Mbuti), which in Chinese is gulu, and meant round (shield/shelter). The word hide (English) for animal pelt is derived, not primitive, since in the rainforest pelts are not used, since they rot so quickly. KhoiSan make round reed huts, but in the rainy season they cover them with antelope hides.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Canary islands - slave(?) cemetery
Although researchers found many references to this reality, they still failed to find any evidence until now. But eight researchers from universities in Spain, the U.k., Peru and United States, along with the Tibicena archaeological company confirmed the existence of a slave cemetery, thanks to analysis of ancient DNA, stable isotopes, and skeletal markers of physical activity.
Oldest cemetery of African slaves found in Canary Islands DNA was extracted from the bones of the skeletons and revealed that the group was made up of a Canarian aboriginal woman, four black men and another six bodies belonging to native groups of Europe and Africa [Credit: EPA]
Most of the skeletons studied revealed that the slaves died in their 20s, with injuries in the {vertebral? DD} column, suggesting “a pattern of labor involving high levels of effort” — about the same physical markers found in slave plantations in South Carolina, Surinam and Barbados.
The figurines were exhibited in 2014 at Manchester Museum's 'Fragmentary Ancestors' exhibition. Despite the fact that high temperatures typically accelerate DNA damage, and there are only a few previous reports of the recovery of ancient DNA from exposed sites in Sub-Saharan Africa as a result, Professor Terry Brown and PhD student Heather Robinson managed to recover ancient DNA from inside three of the figurines using forensic-style swabs and a magnetic extraction method.
The findings of the researchers suggest that exotic plants such as banana and pine, which are not native to Ghana, were prized by the unknown ancient culture for use in religious rituals as well as other West African plants. Banana and pine could only have been obtained via trade with North Africa, and suggest that the prehistoric inhabitants of the Yikpabongo archaeological site were connected to other parts of the World via trade, because banana is an east Asian cultigen.
We find a genetic signature in present-day Papuans that suggests that at least 2% of their genome originates from an early and largely extinct expansion of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) out of Africa. Together with evidence from the western Asian fossil record, and admixture between AMHs and Neanderthals predating the main Eurasian expansion, our results contribute to the mounting evidence for the presence of AMHs out of Africa earlier than 75,000 years ago. Pagani, et al., "Genomic analyses inform on migration events during the peopling of Eurasia", Nature (Published online 21 September 2016). Hat tip: Marnie at Linear Population Model.
We find that a population that diverged early from other modern humans in Africa contributed genetically to the ancestors of Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains roughly 100,000 years ago. By contrast, we do not detect such a genetic contribution in the Denisovan or the two European Neanderthals. We conclude that in addition to later interbreeding events, the ancestors of Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains and early modern humans met and interbred, possibly in the Near East, many thousands of years earlier than previously thought. Martin Kuhlwilm, et al., "Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals", Nature, Volume 530, Pages 429-433 (25 February 2016).
Using fineSTRUCTURE, we find in the genomes of Papuans and Philippine Negritos more short haplotypes assigned as African than seen in genomes for individuals from other non-African populations. This pattern remains after correcting for potential confounders such as phasing errors and sampling bias. These shorter shared haplotypes would be consistent with an older population split. Indeed, the Papuan–Yoruban median genetic split time (using multiple sequential Markovian coalescent (MSMC)) of 90 kya predates the split of all mainland Eurasian populations from Yorubans at ~75 kya. This result is robust to phasing artefacts. Furthermore, the Papuan–Eurasian MSMC split time of ~40 kya is only slightly older than splits between west Eurasian and East Asian populations dated at ~30 kya. The Papuan split times from Yoruba and Eurasia are therefore incompatible with a simple bifurcating population tree model.
At least two main models could explain our estimates of older divergence dates for Sahul populations from Africa than mainland Eurasians in our sample: 1) admixture in Sahul with a potentially un-sampled archaic human population that split from modern humans either before or at the same time as did Denisova and Neanderthal; or 2) admixture in Sahul with a modern human population (extinct OoA line; xOoA) that left Africa after the split between modern humans.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Siberians genetically unchanged 7.7ka vs Black Sea
Ancient genomes have revolutionized our understanding of Holocene prehistory and, particularly, the Neolithic transition in western Eurasia. In contrast, East Asia has so far received little attention, despite representing a core region at which the Neolithic transition took place independently ~3 millennia after its onset in the Near East. We report genome-wide data from two hunter-gatherers from Devil’s Gate, an early Neolithic cave site (dated to ~7.7 thousand years ago) located in East Asia, on the border between Russia and Korea. Both of these individuals are genetically most similar to geographically close modern populations from the Amur Basin, all speaking Tungusic languages, and, in particular, to the Ulchi. The similarity to nearby modern populations and the low levels of additional genetic material in the Ulchi imply a high level of genetic continuity in this region during the Holocene, a pattern that markedly contrasts with that reported for Europe. - - - ghorvat: "current Ulchi mtDNA sequences are interesting. They can be connected to both the Ainu and Jomon samples." Furthermore Y is connected to the Funadomari Jomon N9b. As stated by Adachi et al. (2011) - "Haplogroups N9b, D4h2, G1b, and M7a were observed in these [Jomon] individuals, with N9b being the predominant one. .. It is true, though, that not much about N9 and {mtDNA group} Y is mentioned in papers concerning Native American origins but Japan has been connected to Tibet via Y chromosome haplogroup D and which Asian population has the highest frequency of mtDNA haplogroup A (xA2) sequences? Tibet. "
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Archaeological excavations cast new light on Abu Dhabi’s earliest inhabitants
By Wam Published Wednesday, February 01, 2017
Remarkable discoveries by archaeologists from Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, TCA Abu Dhabi, at ancient sites on the island of Marawah and in Baynunah, have revealed new information on Abu Dhabi’s earliest inhabitants, evidencing a rich history stretching back over 7,000 years.
Artefacts excavated from a village on the island of Marawah and in Baynunah indicate that during this time, a sophisticated and highly skilled population were able to trade and thrive in challenging conditions and adapt to the changing environment around them.
Commenting on the latest discoveries, Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of TCA Abu Dhabi, said, "These important discoveries signify Abu Dhabi’s advanced construction methods from the Neolithic era and the influential role it had in early long-distance maritime trade. The expertise of our team of archaeologists allows us to build a narrative of the emirate’s development and history, piecing together an intriguing and intricate story of the earliest known inhabitants of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. We are encouraged to assign more excavation works, and our aim is to conduct extensive studies to further understand our ancestors and our land, and our mission is to share these findings with the world."
On the island of Marawah, just off the coast of Abu Dhabi, excavations have revealed one of the earliest stone-built villages in the Arabian Gulf.
The new excavations, completed in October last year, focused on one of seven mounds in the village, and revealed a structure with three joining stone-built rooms.
TCA Abu Dhabi Coastal Heritage archaeologist Abdulla Khalfan Al Kaabi said, "Radiocarbon dating of the deposits show that the village dates back more than 7,500 years to the Neolithic period. This style of architecture is unique for this period and has never been found before in the region."
"These sites can reveal so much information about the very early history of our land and I am proud to be working on both of them," added Al Kaabi.
"These discoveries and findings will provide crucial information in the future for research and documentation, allowing everyone access, from scholars and students to the general public, to a precious part of our history, and gives us opportunities to publish all this information in all mediums available for future generations. These valuable findings can only be obtained through the careful study and excavation work of such archaeological sites," he added.
Hundreds of artefacts have also allowed TCA Abu Dhabi archaeologists to piece together what life was like for these villagers and inhabitants 7,500 years ago.
The ancient people herded sheep and goats, and used stone tools to hunt and butcher other animals, like gazelles.
The large amounts of fish, dugong, turtle and dolphin bones show how people had come to understand the sea and use its resources for food and sustenance.
The excavation also found very fine, small beads made from shell and a small shark’s tooth, which had been very carefully drilled, which archaeologists believe were probably worn as adornments.
During previous excavations at the site, archaeologists and experts also found a complete and highly decorated ceramic jar, made in Iraq, which gives evidence to the fact that the inhabitants of Marawah also used the sea for trade.
This jar was transported more than a thousand kilometres and is early evidence for the beginnings of long-distance maritime trade in the Arabian Gulf.
Marawah inhabitants enjoyed a climate that had more rainfall than exists today. Around 6,000 years ago, however, the situation changed and the area became very arid.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
due to post-glacial 7.7ka deluge of Black Sea oasis?
Or, due to widespread drying of Sahara/Arabia/Mongolia/Tarim sub-tropical deserts?
or both? or neither?
Per facial features:
mongoloids fit open steppe-savanna-desert (epicanthic fold = sun glare), dark irises (good in clear sky) but sand-colored skin (camouflage) yet not too dry (small nose-sinuses)
caucasoids fit (semi-)closed forests-woodlands (round eyes), mixed irises (little direct sunlight, very cloudy), variable light skin tone (olive-tawny-reddish-white), seasonal dryness (variable nose/sinus size, cold dry winter air but warm moist summer air)
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
W. E. B. Du Bois vs. Scientific American (1913 graphs)
Note: extreme Eurocentric bias at Sci.Am. in graph.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Interesting article on AMHs (modern humans) vs ancient lineage. Especially see top photo of Neanderthal face, the large brow ridges produce a Chinese-like eye morphology (epicanthic fold), allowing better vision under open skies.
"The term 'modern' is somewhat misleading," says Hublin. "When you say 'modern', people assume you mean 'more evolved', but in fact in our case it may mean 'more primitive'."
" Our bones are continually renewed and remodelled
Hublin and his team can also use their software to mature the skulls of children, giving an idea of what they would have looked like when they became adults
When they applied it to the skull fragments of H. antecessor, they got something that looked both primitive and modern at the same time.
"The face has more prominence than modern humans," says Hublin. "But it doesn't have the derived features we see in the Neanderthal."
Something even more surprising emerged when the fossilised skulls of H. antecessor were placed under a microscope. So when Lacruz, Bromage and their colleagues popped the skull fragments from H. antecessor under the microscope, they were staggered to find that the maxilla and canine fossa were heavily pitted. Not only that, but the pattern of bone reabsorption they noticed was similar to that seen in modern humans.
"These similarities suggest that one of the key developmental changes responsible for the characteristic face of modern humans can be traced back to H. antecessor," says Lacruz. "This is important, because antecessor not only showed this human-like growth pattern, but also shows some human-like morphology around 800,000 years ago." "The bone in modern humans fractures much earlier," says O'Higgins. "It suggests efficient biting we get from our flat faces was not the result of natural selection, but something else."
It now seems that our powerful bites are related to the size of our noses. "H. heidelbergensis and Neanderthals had gigantic brow ridges," says O'Higgins. "It was like having a peaked cap on the top of the forehead."
" With big brow ridges, the movement of the eyebrows is limited
In research presented at the Madrid conference, he and his colleagues used their computer models to shave away the brow ridges, then looked at how this affected the structure of the face and skull. They found that the brow ridges did not provide any structural advantage. Instead, they believe these prominent arches of bone above the eyes may have served to signal dominance to other members of the species, much like the huge antlers of modern male moose.
Stringer has also suggested this, comparing ancestral hominins to olive baboons. These monkeys raise their eyebrows as part of their dominance displays. Similarly, mandrills also use bright colours on their eyebrows and snouts to indicate their rank in their group.
At the 2016 meeting, O'Higgins and his colleagues presented preliminary findings suggesting that, when our ancestors lost these aggressive-looking brow ridges, they gained a subtler form of communication. - - -
This is big.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
From Black Sea Oasis to Canaan to Nile to Mega-Lake Chad/Bodele?
paper. Land of lakes It’s important to remember that the sun played a pivotal role in Egyptian religion. Every day it would rise in the east and set in the west. “The west for the Egyptians was always the underworld, also the realm of the dead,” said Schneider. This can be seen in Egyptian burial traditions. “Most of the necropolises of Egypt were located in the west,” he said. “To some extent the Egyptians were aware that once they moved to the west they moved to the realm of the dead.” Chad, being far to the west of Egypt, may have played a role in these traditions. Professor Schneider has been investigating an ancient text called the Amduat, a “guide” of sorts that helped the king through the afterlife. Divided into 12 “hours,” complete examples of it were painted onto the walls of royal tombs 3,500 years ago. “It describes in a comprehensive way the topography of the underworld – a place that was unknown to the living Egyptians,” said Schneider. He believes that some of those topographical references were inspired by actual places in ancient Chad. “Initially it is very down to earth with measurements, with descriptions.” Schneider, in his paper, writes of one example, seen in the first hour, that, “Re gains access to the underworld through the ‘western portico (arry.t) of the horizon,’ a passageway of 1,260 km,” a pretty exact number for a mystical place. “If this number has any factual basis, it could be seen as the distance between the oasis of Dakhlah [the start of the trail] and the northern shore of Lake Bodele,” writes Schneider. The second and third hours of the Amduat may also refer to Chad. The second hour tells of “a region dominated by a gigantic body of water that fills the entire hour, a sweet- water ocean that is the source of abundant vegetation on its shores,” writes Schneider. Another measurement is given here, the “gigantic lake with its surrounding lands is given the precise dimensions of 309 by 120 jtrw (3,245 km by 1,260 km).” Intriguingly the text refers to the “green plants that are in the Wernes” and describes the underworld figures as “farmers of the Wernes.” Schneider said that the word “Wernes” is important. It’s a word that does not appear to have an Egyptian etymology and its ancient pronunciation was wūd˘ỉ-ỉensəu, which is remarkably similar to fwodi-yezze-u, a word spoken in the Tubu language of Central Africa. It roughly means “waterway/lake of the sun.” That isn’t the only language similarity between Egyptian and Tubu. Schneider said in his article that about 4,000 years ago the consonantal sequence of Apophis, a snake-like villain in Egyptian mythology, was d-r-p-p. “On that basis, an appropriate etymology is provided by the Tubu duro bu bu (which means) ‘very big snake.” The third hour of the amduat tells of a second large lake albeit the same size as the one mentioned in the second hour (3,245 km by 1,260 km). “This topographical structure of an intermediate realm stretching from the Nile Valley 1,260 km (120 jtrw of 10.5 km) to the West, and followed by two gigantic lakes, finds an exact match in the palaeo-environmental situation of the Western Desert and the Chad Basin around 2000 bce,” writes Schneider.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
The scientists who uncovered why zebras have black and white stripes (to repel biting flies), took the coloration question to giant pandas in a study published this week in the journal Behavioral Ecology.
The study, a collaboration between the University of California, Davis, and California State University, Long Beach, determined that the giant panda's distinct black-and-white markings have two functions: camouflage and communication.
Through these comparisons, the study found that most of the panda -- its face, neck, belly, rump -- is white to help it hide in snowy habitats. The arms and legs are black, helping it to hide in shade.
The scientists suggest that this dual coloration stems from its poor diet of bamboo and inability to digest a broader variety of plants. This means it can never store enough fat to go dormant during the winter, as do some bears. So it has to be active year-round, traveling across long distances and habitat types that range from snowy mountains to tropical forests.
The markings on its head, however, are not used to hide from predators, but rather to communicate. Dark ears may help convey a sense of ferocity, a warning to predators. Their dark eye patches may help them recognize each other or signal aggression toward panda competitors.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
"The researchers identified a series of major detrimental mutations in the Wrangel Island mammoth. One combination of altered genes likely led to the loss of a large number of olfactory receptors for detecting smells. Another suite of mutations would have reduced the number and variety of the animals’ urinary proteins. Together, those changes would have wreaked havoc on the mammoths’ ability to mark and recognize territory, determine rank, and choose mates, if—like modern mammals—they relied on odors for these tasks. The result for the Wrangel Island mammoth community, which numbered about 300 based on population genetics models, could have been social chaos, researchers report today in PLOS Genetics.
In another bizarre twist, two peculiar mutations to a gene known as FOXQ1—well studied in rodents and rabbits—would have given the Wrangel Island mammoths a translucent, cream-colored, satiny coat. The hairs of its fur would have lacked an inner core, possibly robbing them of their insulating properties." - - -
I would agree that inbreeding occurred, but question if 'white' fur coat is detrimental in arctic, and if hollow hair is detrimental in arctic, since polar bears have both conditions and have been very successful. Smelling might have lost importance, compared to vision. Tropical rainforest elephants have poor vision but good olfaction, Wrangels island was very different.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
DUF1220 gene & brain neocortex
Common variations in the BCL9 gene, which is in the distal area, confer risk of schizophrenia and may also be associated with bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder.[11]
Research is done on 10–12 genes on 1q21.1 that produce DUF1220-locations. DUF1220 is an unknown protein, which is active in the neurons of the brain near the neocortex. Based on research on apes and other mammals, it is assumed that DUF1220 is related to cognitive development (man: 212 locations; chimpanzee: 37 locations; monkey: 30 locations; mouse: 1 location). It appears that the DUF1220-locations on 1q21.1 are in areas that are related to the size and the development of the brain. The aspect of the size and development of the brain is related to autism (macrocephaly) and schizophrenia (microcephaly). It has been proposed that a deletion or duplication of a gene that produces DUF1220-areas might cause growth and development disorders in the brain [12] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1q21.1_deletion_syndrome Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
DUF1220 is a 65 amino acid protein domain that has undergone a striking human specific copy number expansion, resulting in the addition of over 80 new copies of the domain in humans compared to chimps. DUF1220 copy number increases as a function of a species' evolutionary proximity to humans with a trend of 28 copies being added every million years. The greatest number of copies (>270) is found in human while mice and rats have only 1 copy. DUF1220 sequences have also undergone recent positive selection and, while widely expressed, show high levels of expression in the fetal brain (Diskin et al. 2009) and in neurons (Popesco et al. 2006). The DUF1220 copy number in creases in humans involved both domain amplification and gene duplication (NBPF family), with the great majority of copies mapping to the 1q21.1 region.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Mindovermatter & Mike111 must be right - now albinos are taking over Antarctica
Ancient Egyptian Mummy Genomes Suggest an Increase of Sub-Saharan African Ancestry in Post-Roman Periods
Krause et al.
Egypt, located on the isthmus of Africa, is an ideal region to study historical population dynamics due to its geographic location and documented interactions with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Particularly, in the first millennium BCE Egypt endured foreign domination leading to growing numbers of foreigners living within its borders possibly contributing genetically to the local population. Here we mtDNA and nuclear DNA from mummified humans recovered from Middle Egypt that span around 1,300 years of ancient Egyptian history from the Third Intermediate to the Roman Period. Our analyses reveal that ancient Egyptians shared more Near Eastern ancestry than present-day Egyptians, who received additional Sub-Saharan admixture in more recent times. This analysis establishes ancient Egyptian mummies as a genetic source to study ancient human history and offers the perspective of deciphering Egypt’s past at a genome-wide level. - - -
xyyman: "It looks like even within Central Africa the extant population are NOT the original inhabitants. I am really interested who these late stone age Africans align with most Can’t wait for the paper. The “phenotype” is a teaser."
---- Xyyman's post:
QUOTE: [146] The Forgotten Significance of the Later Stone Age Sites near Hora Mountain, Mzimba District, Malawi Thompson, Jessica (Emory University), Alan Morris (University of Cape Town), Flora Schilt (University of Tuebingen), Andrew Zipkin (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Kendra Sirak (Emory University) In 1950, J. Desmond Clark led excavations at a Later Stone Age rockshelter at Hora Mountain, a large inselberg overlooking a modern floodplain in the Mzimba District of northern Malawi. At the Hora 1 site, he recovered two human skeletons, one male and one female, along with a rich—but superficially described and undated—cultural sequence. In 2016, our renewed excavations recovered a wealth of lithic, faunal, and other materials such as mollusk shell beads and ochre. Our reexamination of the skeletons also produced the first ancient DNA from the central African region, which together with previous morphological analysis demonstrates that the LSA foragers of the area cannot be readily fit within the known genetic and phenotypic parameters of living foragers. The significance of the Hora 1 site was made further clear by the relocation of several previously known sites also at the mountain, the discovery of four new rock art sites, and the discovery of four very rich new archaeological sites in the mountains adjacent to the floodplain. Here, we describe our renewed work and how it fits with the original findings to offer unprecedented promise for understanding the lifeways of Holocene foragers in central Africa.
xyyman: "Mota will not be lonely for much longer. "
- - - "mollusk shell beads and ochre. Our reexamination of the skeletons also produced the first ancient DNA from the central African region, which together with previous morphological analysis demonstrates that the LSA foragers of the area cannot be readily fit within the known genetic and phenotypic parameters of living foragers"
my comment: Lake Malawi had Aka Fula pygmies when Bantus arrived.
Paleo-Pygmies are ancestral to all people, before Caucasoids/Negroids/Mongoloids/Australoids existed.
"mollusk shell beads and *ochre*."
Significance: Pygmies do NOT use ochre at all, they use a crushed red wood as body paint, this preceded ALL use of ochre anywhere. That finding above indicates a visitor, not a homey.
ebembe/pimple/paint-point/pamphlet/palimpsest - all written scripts began as ceremonial body paint, as for Pygmy (and other) elima/female & nkumbe/male puberty ritual dances.
Cave wall paintings in France etc. are derived from these, and include about 30 standard symbols (spiral, triangle-Y, oval....). cf Genevieve von Petzinger master thesis on ancient scripts.
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moving
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Cass/ please post that on its own merit, not on mine.
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Abstracts of the Paleoanthropology Society 2016 Meeting Pages A1 - A34 10.4207/PA.2016.ABS14 PDF | How to cite | Export in BibTex format | Export in RIS format
Articles
Raw Material Exploitation, Transport, and Mobility in the Northern Caucasus Eastern Micoquian Pages 1 - 45 Ekaterina V. Doronicheva, Marianna A. Kulkova, and M. Steven Shackley 10.4207/PA.2016.ART98 PDF | How to cite | Export in BibTex format | Export in RIS format
3.3-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools and Butchery Traces? More Evidence Needed Pages 46 - 53 Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo and Luis Alcalá 10.4207/PA.2016.ART99 PDF | How to cite | Export in BibTex format | Export in RIS format
Archaeology and Context of Hugub, an Important New Late Acheulean Locality in Ethiopia's Northern Rift Pages 58 - 99 William Henry Gilbert, Vladimir B. Doronichev, Liubov V. Golovanova, Leah E. Morgan, Luis Nunez, and Paul Renne 10.4207/PA.2016.ART100 PDF | How to cite | Export in BibTex format | Export in RIS format
Varsche Rivier 003: A Middle and Later Stone Age Site with Still Bay and Howieson's Poort Assemblages in Southern Namaqualand, South Africa Pages 100 - 163 Teresa E. Steele, Alex Mackay, Kathryn E. Fitzsimmons, Marina Igreja, Ben Marwick, Jayson Orton, Steve Schwortz, and Mareike C. Stahlschmidt 10.4207/PA.2016.ART101 Supplementary Documents: journal/content/PA20160100_S01_xSCxZsz.pdf PDF | How to cite | Export in BibTex format | Export in RIS format
Dental Microwear Texture Analysis of Croatian Neandertal Molars Pages 172 - 184 Whitney M. Karriger, Christopher M. Schmidt, and Fred H. Smith 10.4207/PA.2016.ART102 PDF | How to cite | Export in BibTex format | Export in RIS format
The Appendicular Remains of the Kiik-Koba 2 Neandertal Infant Pages 185 - 210 Erik Trinkaus, Maria B. Mednikova, and Libby W. Cowgill 10.4207/PA.2016.ART103 PDF | How to cite | Export in BibTex format | Export in RIS format
Reviews
Straus, L.G. and M.R. González Morales (eds.) -- El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain: The Site and its Holocene Record Pages 54 - 57 Rita Dias 10.4207/PA.2016.REV153 PDF | How to cite | Export in BibTex format | Export in RIS format
Haidel, M.N., N.J. Conard, and M. Bolus (eds.) -- The Nature of Culture: Based on an Interdisciplinary Symposium 'The Nature of Culture,' Tübingen, Germany Pages 164 - 166 Susan Cachel 10.4207/PA.2016.REV154 PDF | How to cite | Export in BibTex format | Export in RIS format
Jones, S.C. and B.A. Stewart (eds.) -- Africa from MIS 6-2: Population Dynamics and Paleoenvironments Pages 167 - 171 Deborah I. Olszewski 10.4207/PA.2016.REV155 PDF | How to cite | Export in BibTex format | Export in RIS format
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nose forms
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Phoenician/PHuinduix/paint network
PLOS article: The pigment palette of Spanish Levantine rock art consists of just three colours: red, black and white, with a clear prevalence of the first throughout the entire relative chronological sequence as well as in most of the Levantine regions. To date little is known regarding the composition, preparation and use of these prehistoric pigments, and subsequently even less is known regarding chronological and geographical variations in these hypothetical chaînes opératoires.
Regarding colour selection, we have yet to identify the motivations behind colour choice, whether they correspond to specific social rules or rather are a function of limited access to mineral or organic raw materials. - - -
"Phoebe A. Hearst from the Museum of Anthropology had suggested that in order to acquire such high-priced and rare paints, the artists must have relied on a vast trading network." - - - (That would be Phoenician/Phoenix/Phuinduix/Poindexter/pintura/paste.l/finger-point|paint|ink/pamphlet/ebembe.) - - -
"Now, with new technology, archaeologists are able to look at the wooden images by studying the pigments, brush strokes, and the wood used to create the pieces. What the researchers discovered actually surprised them because the first pigments had been artificially manufactured. As for the bright colors, it was believed that the artists used them as the final top layer of paint.
However, these wooden portraits had been hidden beneath other colors. After further analysis, researchers realized why the artists paid so much for the pigments as their base coat – the red lead pigment used on the wooden portraits were tested and shown as having come from as far away as Spain. Other pigments used appeared to have been imported from Keos, Greece, and the wood that the portraits were painted on were imported from Central Europe.
Under all of the layers of red and yellow paint, the researchers found that the artists had sketched out the work with a certain pigment called Egyptian Blue, which was very valuable at the time. However, those bright colors were hidden under all the other colors"
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Mega-Lake Chott in Tunisia 200ka - 10ka
The researchers say the animal bones are particularly interesting, revealing a mixture of large fauna including rhinoceros, zebra, bovids (Oryx, hartebeest, gazelles, aurochs, and buffalo), carnivores and ostrich. According to Tunisian co-director of the project Nabiha Aouadi, ‘the faunal assemblage represents a sub-Saharan and savanna biotope very different from the one that exists there today’. The team believes that once the landscape was wet and green, which would have made it an ideal habitat for animals and human settlements.
A new paper in Frontiers in Earth Science by archaeologist Dr. David Wright, from Seoul National University, South Korea, challenges this view and suggests that humans may have also played an active role in driving climate change in this period.
“During the African Humid Period the Sahara had a completely different vegetation regime” explains Wright. “All of the plants that are found in the Sahara today were there, but you also had plants that are found in the Sahel, the semi-arid zone to the south of the Sahara, and even types of plants that are found in the Congo rainforest”. This so-called ‘Green Sahara’ was also capable of supporting large animals – rock paintings made in northern Africa dated to this time period depict crocodiles, elephants and giraffes, animals that could not be sustained in the Sahara today.
The wet conditions also had an important influence on human sustainability and cultural development, allowing humans to thrive in foraging and fishing communities. “Unlike a lot of other places, people in the Sahara became very sedentary, there was really no need for agriculture”, says Wright. “One of the dietary staples of people living in that period was Nile perch, an enormous 150 kg fish, and this was only possible due to the huge Saharan lakes which could support abundant fish and fishing populations”.
But such favorable conditions didn’t last. Although the exact timing and spatial distribution is still under debate, there is consistent agreement in geological and archaeological records that beginning approximately 8,200 years ago, the Sahara began a trend towards more and more arid conditions. Over the course of the next 3500 years, the landscape of northern Africa shifted from a diverse, wet ecosystem to conditions similar to those found today.
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This is powerful information.
> > Nyama (Mbuti pygmy) animal > > A ny ma = animate (mobile) > > Fita (Mbuti pygmy) pole sapling > > (Bbq) Spit/s.pike/post/picket in p.socket/punt in cunt-vent/p.l.unge im.pl.ant = ja.mbo= njama(thick)=jam(join.t)=pemmican(pounded fish.herb.berry)=em.bara.zada(em.pre.gn.ate)=bearer/ferry
> at-lo(Aka Bea) with-fire (west Andaman) > at (Aka Bea) fire (west Andaman) > apo (Nihali) fire (Central India) > api (Malay) fire (Malay-Indonesia) > ape (Ainu) fire (north Japan) > apa (Mbuti) fire (Congo Basin) > ur (Hebrew) fire (Canaan-Levant) > utu (Sumer) sun god (Mesopotamia) >xamax (Assyr) sun god (Mesopotamia)
"Some forty prehistoric engravings, more than 14,000 years old, have been discovered in Finistere, at the town of Plougastel-Daoulas, in Brittany (northwestern France)."
14ka aurochs tablet/pamphlet etching in Brittany shows radiating lines = Aura/Oro(Spanish: gold)/Toro(Spanish: bull)/Toro(Japanese: tiger (orange stripes)) = Sun-tiger-lion-morning hORizon/ORder/WORship ~ aurat(Arabic) hair-fur-clothing zone to be hidden from sun(burn) ~ "modesty" dobra UtRA (Russian) good mORNinG ~ ORaNGe Glow-yellow-red = Ochre/smokered guten mORGen (German) " " Ur (Hebrew: fire)
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Linguistic similarities from Congo to Japan very interesting. I guess you know Yoruba and Akan surnames & place names have virtual counterparts in East Asia.Edo State:Nigeria Azuka:Yoruban name Edo a Japanese city Azuka also a Japanese name.
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“Great Temple” is the name given to the sanctuary which was built in the 7th century BC in the small village Yeha in the northern Ethiopia Highlands. It was erected by immigrants from Saba in today’s Yemen following the South Arabian standards. Today the temple, with a preserved height of 14m, is the most significant sacral building in East Africa.
The Great Temple of Yeha was consecrated to the main god of the Yemeni kingdom of Saba, Almaqah. Today the temple remains visible from a great distance. The building material was not the local sandstone, but carefully smoothed white limestone, which had to be transported from the quarries of Wuqro, located some 80 km east of the temple. The sanctuary was considered not only a cult place, but also as a statement of political power of Di’amat, a community developed in the early 1st millennium BC in the Ethiopian Highlands. The Great Temple was probably destroyed by a fire around the mid-1st century. A church built within the temple in the 6th century prevented the total destruction of the structure
Note: name of god worshipped? Yeha YHWH YaHuWeHa? Note: temple ~ tepl(Aztec) ~ table(English:food offering)
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Tehutimes, rather than being surprised to see similarities, I'm more often surprised to see differences, which indicates some change unnoticed previously.
Major cause of change: climate of speaker's ancestors differ from speakers, such as a change from rainforest to dry desert over a few generations. The tones reduce, the clicks increase, and consonants move higher or deeper into throat, eg. g <-> c.
Akan seems related to Aka/Bye-Aka (Congo) and Aka Bea (Andamans), but I haven't checked.
We speak one language in 7.5 billion ways.
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Academia.edu articles re. Egypt
Willeke Wendrich Willeke Wendrich University of California, Los Angeles, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Faculty Member
Ideas Concerning a New Egyptological Knowledge Base: the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
Egyptology has a long history of excavating, collecting, classifying, and studying ancient artefacts from Egypt. This scholarly endeavour of almost 200 years has resulted in an impressive accumulation of information of many different types. Much of this information is still relevant to scholars of today, and publications of the early 20th century or older are still used and quoted. The situation is quite different in the sciences. To scientists, articles written a decade earlier are often completely outdated, and it puzzles them that Egyptologists still make grateful use of books that were... - - -
An Archaeological Survey in the Northeastern Part of the Fayum - - -
The preservation of exposed mudbrick architecture in Karanis (Kom Aushim), Egypt - - -
Lake Level Changes, Lake Edge Basins and the Paleoenvironment of the Fayum North Shore, Egypt, during the Early to Mid-Holocene
Fluctuations in the levels of Lake Qarun, Fayum, Egypt have long been recognized and are associated with Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic occupations dating to the early to mid-Holocene, some of which contain early evidence for the presence of southwest Asian domestic plants and animals. Here evidence for the extent and timing of these lake level changes is reassessed based on the analysis of a satellite derived digital surface model of the north shore of Lake Qarun. A more accurate topography for the region casts doubts on previously published lake level changes. The topography of a series of...
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peck/pick/pimp.le/prim.p/pamphlet/bimbo/ebembe
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EpiLanguage: using ancient tongue to translate another, since both are closer to the last common ancestor tongue.
Epi(Gk)/Uber(Germ)/Upper/Ebu(Malay:ancestor)/Ebi - Oba (Yoruba name probably = bar(Hebrew) born of whoich = ovich(Russ) = Fitz(Scot)) related to egg/oval. - - -
Representing linguistic structures
The philologist refers to this method as epilanguage; the Greek word epi translates as "on" or "above." Latin was superimposed over the foreign language. Thus, translators were able to represent the unfamiliar structures.
Reinhold Glei compiled his results by studying Arabic, Chinese and Persian texts and their respective translations from the period between the 17th and 19th centuries. He analysed, for example, various Quran translations. By comparing excerpts from the Latin translations with the originals, Glei identified to what extent the Latin versions reflected the structure of the original language.
An advantage of using the epilanguage was that it enabled translators to draw up neutral texts, before translating them into their respective vernacular language. "When Christians initially translated the Quran, the texts they created were for the most part ideologically charged. This resulted in corrupted translations," he says. Using Latin as epilanguage did not wholly eradicate the problem, but it was possible to represent the structure of the Arabic language in a more neutral manner.
Future perspectives
Research into epilanguage is still in its early stages. Reinhold Glei intends to analyse additional Latin translations from various languages, in order to gain a better grasp of the function of epilanguage. Glei also wishes to study another world language, namely Ancient Greek, in greater detail. His first impression is: "Ancient Greek appears to occur less frequently as epilanguage. This might be because the language is not dead; it lives on in Modern Greek."
Related to Papuan Singing Dog and Aust. Dingo, Carolina Dingo & Ridgeback dog. - - -
Red-Yellow Dogs 1st domesticated at Phu Quoc Island by Pygmies to pull coracles over calm deep sea and later sleds over snow.(Husky is very close genetically, but has Tamyr wolf admixture). Ridgebacks were specifically bred for this, with upcurled tail and ruff to hold; while the other ancient breeds were guard-hunting dogs.
DD ~ David ~ Da'ud ~ Diode ~ ∆^¥
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The Dead Sea region suffered mega-droughts 115,000 & 10,000 years ago.
The area's thick ozone reduces the amount of solar and cosmic radiation.
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good research opening!
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Curly hair, nose, lips, eyebrows
External projecting nose (unlike apes) + tightly curled hair (unlike all other mammals) + protruding everted lips (unlike most mammals) + distinct eyebrows (unlike apes, which have hairless boney browridges) = Tropical Rainforest Living in very small leopard-proof shallow-concave dome huts, physical sensing the interior in the dark = functional 'antennae'. The change from sleeping in exposed great ape aerial-arboreal bowl nests to dome huts on the rainforest floor (= wicker & leaves round-shields, no doorway initially, lifted/tilted for entry & egress, multi-functional sun-shade, rain-shed, foraging basket, baby cradle, hunting hide) combined with anti-insect smoldering fire produced selection for artificial-constructed micro-habitat unique to Homo species.
Moving away from tropical rainforest to exposure in drier climates resulted in alterations in hut form (cold, wind, direct sun) & height and resulted in variations of phenotype, including changes in form of nose (narrower & taller nasal spine), hair (bushier: sun, or, straighter & thicker: cold), lips (inverted: cold) and eyebrows (less projecting except in older men whose brows become bushy (primitive retention).
Congo River age: 1.5 - 2.5 ma, separating chimp sub-species 2ma.
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Rapid Evolution of Lighter Skin Pigmentation in Southern Africa BRENNA M. HENN1 , MENG LIN1 , ALICIA R. MARTIN2 and REBECCA SIFORD1 1 Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, 2 Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston Skin pigmentation is under strong directional selection for reduced melanin density in northern European and Asian populations. Conversely, dark pigmentation is thought to be under stabilizing selection in equatorial populations exposed to intense ultraviolet radiation. We high-throughput sequenced pigmentation genes in over 400 indi- viduals from South Africa and demonstrate that a canonical skin pigmentation gene, SLC24A5, experienced recent adaptive evolution in the KhoeSan populations of far southern Africa. The functionally caustive allele lightens basal skin pigmentation by 4 melanin units, explaining 11.9% variance in pigmentation in these popu- lations. Haplotype analysis and demographic models indicate that the allele was introduced into the KhoeSan only within the past 3,000 years likely by eastern African pastoralists. The most common haplotype is shared among the KhoeSan, eastern Africans and Europeans but has risen to a frequency of 25%, far greater than expected given initial gene flow. The SLC24A5 locus is a rare example of strong, ongoing adap- tation in very recent human history.
The complicated genetic landscape of skin color in India FLORIN MIRCEA ILIESCU1 , GEORGE CHAPLIN2 , NIRAJ RAI3 , GUY JACOBS1 , CHANDANA BASU MALLICK4,5, ANSHUMAN MISHRA3 , RIE GOTO1 , RAKESH TAMANG3 , GYANESHWER CHAUBEY4 , IRENE GALLEGO ROMERO6 , FEDERICA CRIVELLARO7 , RAMASAMY PITCHAPPAN8 , LALJI SINGH3 , MARTA MIRAZON-LAHR7 , MAIT METSPALU4,5, KUMARASAMY THANGARAJ3 , TOOMAS KIVISILD1,4,5 and NINA G. JABLONSKI2 1 Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 2 Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, 3 CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, 4 Estonian Biocentre, Tartu, 5 Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Tartu, 6 School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 7 Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, 8 Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Chettinad Health City Human skin color represents a classic example of a quantitative trait that is highly polymorphic in humans. Models based on natural selection suggest that pigmentation variation has accu- mulated in response to human dispersals and colonization of diverse environments, primarily due to differences in the damaging versus vitamin D synthesis-related effects of UV radiation (UVR) at different latitudes. Indian populations, despite being spread across a relatively narrow latitudinal range, show a high level of variation in skin color phenotype. Using recorded Melanin Index (MI) data from populations throughout the subcon- tinent we previously suggested the presence of phenotypic “overprinting” due to successive popu- lation migrations and the action of both natural and sexual selection forces. We now show that, in the context of pronounced endogamy, the role of the SLC24A5 functional polymorphism on skin color variation in India is variable on a popula- tion dependent basis. The presence of epistasis between skin color genes in studied popula- tions leads to some individuals homozygous for the SLC24A5 European allele having highly melanized skin; hence, the skin lightening effect of the rs1426654-A allele is overridden by the action of novel variants within skin color genes. Finally, considering the migration patterns and the variable social selection forces at play across India, we tested the correlation between the skin color dimorphism observed within some Indian populations and genetic variation patterns. These results thus further illustrate the complex genetic landscape of skin color around the world and warrant caution when predicting color pheno- types from ancient DNA studies. ---
Can Small be All? The Limited Commonalities of Mata Menge and Liang Bua Hominins on Flores MACIEJ HENNEBERG1 , ADAM J. KUPERAVAGE2 , SAKDAPONG CHAVANAVES3 and ROBERT B. ECKHARDT3 1 Adelaie Medical School, The University of Adelaide, 2 Department of Public and Allied Health Sciences, Delaware State University, 3 Laboratory for the Comparative Study of Morphology, Mechanics, and Molecules Department of Kinesiology, Pennsylvania State University The original diagnosis of “Homo floresiensis” from the Liang Bua skeletal remains listed among numerous others these defining elements: Small- bodied; endocranial volume similar to, or smaller than, Australopithecus africanus; lacks masti- catory adaptations present in Australopithecus and Paranthropus; first and second molar teeth of similar size; mandibular coronoid process higher than condyle; mandible without chin. We already have shown in 2015 that these and many additional defining elements largely are those of the LB1 individual, since most LB specimens are represented by only one or two bones each. Even some of the few duplicated elements differ: The LB6 mandibular ramus is shorter than that of LB1 and lacks a coronoid higher than condyloid process. Statures originally were under-estimated and are matched in regional extant small bodied humans, as are small, chinless mandibles. The Mata Menge (0.7 Ma) gnathic specimens include a fragment of mandibular corpus (SOA-MM 4) plus six teeth. These establish little other than small size within the already known human range. For example, SOA-MM1 shows uncor- rected dimensions of 9.7 mm MD x 8.9 mm BL, close to Klasies River Mouth KRM14624 (9.3x8.8) and KRM43110 (10.2x9.1). Given the extremely limited Flores skeletal evidence, and the known unreliable correlations of body and brain size with tooth sizes, it is premature to suggest that the Mata Menge gnathic fragments establish any more than previously known archaeological evidence: the existence of hominins of as yet indeterminable taxonomic status on an island where Homo sapiens is known to have a living and archeological presence.
DD ~ David ~ Da'ud ~ Diode ~ ∆^¥°∆
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High frequencies of L1c (Pygmy admixture marker) among Southern African Bantus:
An interesting element is the commonality of L1c, typical of Western Pygmies and some other populations from Gabon (possibly representative of the wider West-Central Africa jungle region, not too well studied otherwise), among almost all Bantu populations in this dataset.
The exceptions are the Herero, Himba, Kgalagadi and Tswana (0%), as well as the NE Zambians (4%). All the rest have frequencies between 12% and 30%. Even the non-Bantu Damaras have 11% of it.
In my understanding this almost certainly implies a notable level of admixture with Western Pygmies of the Bantus from especially Angola and West Zambia. A phenomenon that may be widespread in Central-West Africa.
It is notable however that at least many of the populations with the highest likely Khoisan admixture (in its various forms, discussed in the previous sections) have the lesser frequencies of L1c (Pygmy admixture). So to a great extent these two aboriginal influences in Bantu mtDNA seem mutually exclusive and were probably produced after settlement rather than "on the march".
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Did religious ritual (prohibiting meat of quadrupeds) and increased sedentary urban concentration select for increased rate of egg laying, nonaggression occur with changes in pigment (plumage, integument?) in medieval Europe? ___ I thought it had happened in India & SEAsia earlier, hybridizing gray & red jungle fowl?
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Tamga is unique symbols used by nomadic peoples, who used these symbols as stamp or seal to identify their livestock belonging to a specific owner. In addition, similar Tamga inscriptions were found on a die discovered at the Huns’ tomb in Gol Mod, Mongolia. “Tamga symbols are being discovered in sites where the Huns expanded and conquered,” Kang explained. “These symbols are in the shape of a rising sun and seem to represent the king.”
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In the 19th century – when horse racing was America’s most popular sport – former slaves populated the ranks of jockeys and trainers, and black men won more than half of the first 25 runnings of the Kentucky Derby.
A newly discovered 3,800 year-old pyramid at Dahsur has an inscription on a wooden box in its burial chamber that tells of a princess named "Hatshepset"
"Rickets is returning again to Britain, and the polite British media has so far failed to report that all of those cases are among immigrant children, not British children.
To put another way, there is a combination of traits that work together that include skin color and lactase persistence"
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PALEOECOLOGY, SUBSISTENCE, AND 14C CHRONOLOGY OF THE EURASIAN CASPIAN STEPPE BRONZE AGE
Shishlina, Zazovskaya, VanderPlicht, Hedges, Sevastyanov, Chickagova RADIOCARBON, Vol 51, Nr 2, 2009, p 481–499 [Link]
ABSTRACT. Combined analysis of paleoenvironment, 13C, 15N, and 14C in bone, including paired dating of human bone and terrestrial materials (herbivore bone, wood, charcoal, and textile) has been performed on many samples excavated from Russian kurgan graves. The data can be used for dietary reconstruction, and reservoir corrections for 14C dating of human bone. The latter is essential for an accurate construction of chronologies for the Eneolithic and Bronze Age cultures of the Caspian
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In the English language, to say that a man 'has earned a feather to his cap' is to suggest that he has gained a new skill or passed an important milestone. Similar traditions around Europe can be found as Richard Hansard noted in the Description of Hungary (1599):
"It hath been an ancient custom among them [Hungarians] that none should wear a fether but he who had killed a Turk, to whom onlie yt was lawful to shew the number of his slaine enemys by the number of fethers in his cappe."
Another commonality that can be found across Eurasia and America is that it often appears to have been a personal martial decoration. For example, in Scotland it went to the best marksman, hunter or chieftain, in Hungary to the man who had killed a Turk. (basically a more ancient version of medals, badges and service ribbons). Feathers were also use as a trophy, as when The Black Prince slayed King John of Bohemia, taking King John's ostrich plume for his personal coat of arms.
What's interesting is that the baskets' circumference is about what should be expected for the quill of larger birds, such as a raptor, goose or ostrich. I've done some analysis on these items based on measurements taken by the British museum and they appear to curl between 22mm and 30mm and, with a few exceptions, are remarkably close to each other. This recently discovered (and unmolested) Kirkhaugh basket has an interesting shape because it could be taking the form of an eagle flight feather quill (which is not perfectly round, but more of a spherical triangle).
- - -
Japanese military & Aztec warriors used feather armor.
Was the feather basket actually a feathered cap?
Plumage (quill pen/finger paint) = ebembe ~ emblem
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Per Plato, Atlantis story given to his ancestor Solon at Temple of Sais, Egypt. Sais ~ Tanais = Donetz/Don River per Herodotus.
Bosporus is the name of 2 different straits, one at Anatolia linking Dardanelles (Jordan-Helles?) to Black Sea, the other at Kerch linking Crimea to Caspian Sea near Don River.
Edene is the name of a spring 5 km NE of Gobekle Tepe (11ka temple of T shaped pillars).
Persian term - (paradise) Firdaus: enclosed garden
French term - Jardin: garden
Malay term - Kebun: garden
So likely, *uangbuatlaya which I'd link to xyuamba.tlaya(womb area + compost) =of.fer.tile/title/tilth, firdaus, garden grown due to family food debris + manure(human & animal) in backyard/Or?chard~(uar)guard ~ wall/ward/watered/waged/wasted(egested, pro-ject-ile) Note: Jam linked, pemmican, (com)pound.
Your comment is awaiting moderation. 05/14/2017 at 20:05 According to my research, the roots of the Garden of Eden (eDeN) legend, Noah’s flood (and 9 other flood hero stories), and Plato’s Atlantis resulted from the post-glacial Atlantic Marine Incursion (Black Sea Deluge 7.7ka Ryan & Pitman), based on the position around the Crimea at a confluence of 4 Rivers: DaNube, DNieper, DNiester and DoNetz(TaNais per Herodotus-Strabo), when the Black Sea was the largest (non-frozen) freshwater oasis in Europe & Asia during and after the Ice Age. If valid, then the oldest signs at Gobekle Tepe might refer to trade or transit there, while post-deluge signs might refer to its utter destruction & death. I see no indications that GT was part of the Garden of Eden itself.
-- DD ~ David ~ Da'ud ~ Diode ~ ∆^¥°∆
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Photo of the "oldest people", they have Y DNA A00 preceding AMHs origin, from the forest of Cameroon, Pygmies with some introgression
It was said that, so far, the oldest y-dna haplogroup is A00. First, it was found in an African-American individual whose ancestor named Perry and then later it was also found in several people of Bangwa-Nweh tribe and Mbo tribe in Cameroon. So, that means the earliest people are not the Khoisan anymore right? Anyway, the link below is the picture of people with A00.
A human skeleton thought to be the oldest in Japan has been found in a collapsed cave in Okinawa, a local museum said Friday, adding that it appears to be around 27,000 years old. The nearly complete skeleton, dating from the Old Stone Age, appears to have been intentionally placed in the cave, providing the first evidence of a funerary rite dating from that period, according to the Okinawa Prefecture Archeological Center. Previously, the oldest human bones discovered in Japan were a set dating from around 22,000 years ago that were found in the southern part of Okinawa Island. The skeleton was discovered in Shirahosaonetabaru cave on Ishigaki Island during research at the site from 2010 to 2016. - - -
"Indigenous people lived along Australia's coast about 50,000 years ago, archaeologists say, after discovering dietary remains on an island off Western Australia. The remains in a cave on Barrow Island, about 50km off the Pilbara coast, provide the earliest evidence of the coastal occupation of Australia, says Professor Peter Veth, the study's lead archaeologist from the University of Western Australia. "We've actually got very firm evidence of people living on the coast that we didn't have before," he said. "The cave was used predominantly as a hunting shelter about 50,000 and 30,000 years ago before becoming a residential base for family groups after 10,000 years ago."
(I thought the Buti/Booty island site was older, 55ka?)
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Eastern Mediterranean site of Graecopithecus, possibly the oldest hominid with human-like dentition.
All languages to all extents are related
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
the questioner: "All languages to all extents are related"
<corrected form>
the questioner: "Are all languages to all extents related?"
Languages derive from a single ancestral oral communication system, almost certainly descended from mother & child speech reciprocal facial gestures. The muscles of the face are the only muscles directly attached to the skin, and are involved in vital signaling.
Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
Bump
quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: Rapid Evolution of Lighter Skin Pigmentation in Southern Africa BRENNA M. HENN1 , MENG LIN1 , ALICIA R. MARTIN2 and REBECCA SIFORD1 1 Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, 2 Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston Skin pigmentation is under strong directional selection for reduced melanin density in northern European and Asian populations. Conversely, dark pigmentation is thought to be under stabilizing selection in equatorial populations exposed to intense ultraviolet radiation. We high-throughput sequenced pigmentation genes in over 400 indi- viduals from South Africa and demonstrate that a canonical skin pigmentation gene, SLC24A5, experienced recent adaptive evolution in the KhoeSan populations of far southern Africa. The functionally caustive allele lightens basal skin pigmentation by 4 melanin units, explaining 11.9% variance in pigmentation in these popu- lations. Haplotype analysis and demographic models indicate that the allele was introduced into the KhoeSan only within the past 3,000 years likely by eastern African pastoralists. The most common haplotype is shared among the KhoeSan, eastern Africans and Europeans but has risen to a frequency of 25%, far greater than expected given initial gene flow. The SLC24A5 locus is a rare example of strong, ongoing adap- tation in very recent human history.
The complicated genetic landscape of skin color in India FLORIN MIRCEA ILIESCU1 , GEORGE CHAPLIN2 , NIRAJ RAI3 , GUY JACOBS1 , CHANDANA BASU MALLICK4,5, ANSHUMAN MISHRA3 , RIE GOTO1 , RAKESH TAMANG3 , GYANESHWER CHAUBEY4 , IRENE GALLEGO ROMERO6 , FEDERICA CRIVELLARO7 , RAMASAMY PITCHAPPAN8 , LALJI SINGH3 , MARTA MIRAZON-LAHR7 , MAIT METSPALU4,5, KUMARASAMY THANGARAJ3 , TOOMAS KIVISILD1,4,5 and NINA G. JABLONSKI2 1 Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 2 Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, 3 CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, 4 Estonian Biocentre, Tartu, 5 Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Tartu, 6 School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 7 Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, 8 Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Chettinad Health City Human skin color represents a classic example of a quantitative trait that is highly polymorphic in humans. Models based on natural selection suggest that pigmentation variation has accu- mulated in response to human dispersals and colonization of diverse environments, primarily due to differences in the damaging versus vitamin D synthesis-related effects of UV radiation (UVR) at different latitudes. Indian populations, despite being spread across a relatively narrow latitudinal range, show a high level of variation in skin color phenotype. Using recorded Melanin Index (MI) data from populations throughout the subcon- tinent we previously suggested the presence of phenotypic “overprinting” due to successive popu- lation migrations and the action of both natural and sexual selection forces. We now show that, in the context of pronounced endogamy, the role of the SLC24A5 functional polymorphism on skin color variation in India is variable on a popula- tion dependent basis. The presence of epistasis between skin color genes in studied popula- tions leads to some individuals homozygous for the SLC24A5 European allele having highly melanized skin; hence, the skin lightening effect of the rs1426654-A allele is overridden by the action of novel variants within skin color genes. Finally, considering the migration patterns and the variable social selection forces at play across India, we tested the correlation between the skin color dimorphism observed within some Indian populations and genetic variation patterns. These results thus further illustrate the complex genetic landscape of skin color around the world and warrant caution when predicting color pheno- types from ancient DNA studies. ---
Can Small be All? The Limited Commonalities of Mata Menge and Liang Bua Hominins on Flores MACIEJ HENNEBERG1 , ADAM J. KUPERAVAGE2 , SAKDAPONG CHAVANAVES3 and ROBERT B. ECKHARDT3 1 Adelaie Medical School, The University of Adelaide, 2 Department of Public and Allied Health Sciences, Delaware State University, 3 Laboratory for the Comparative Study of Morphology, Mechanics, and Molecules Department of Kinesiology, Pennsylvania State University The original diagnosis of “Homo floresiensis” from the Liang Bua skeletal remains listed among numerous others these defining elements: Small- bodied; endocranial volume similar to, or smaller than, Australopithecus africanus; lacks masti- catory adaptations present in Australopithecus and Paranthropus; first and second molar teeth of similar size; mandibular coronoid process higher than condyle; mandible without chin. We already have shown in 2015 that these and many additional defining elements largely are those of the LB1 individual, since most LB specimens are represented by only one or two bones each. Even some of the few duplicated elements differ: The LB6 mandibular ramus is shorter than that of LB1 and lacks a coronoid higher than condyloid process. Statures originally were under-estimated and are matched in regional extant small bodied humans, as are small, chinless mandibles. The Mata Menge (0.7 Ma) gnathic specimens include a fragment of mandibular corpus (SOA-MM 4) plus six teeth. These establish little other than small size within the already known human range. For example, SOA-MM1 shows uncor- rected dimensions of 9.7 mm MD x 8.9 mm BL, close to Klasies River Mouth KRM14624 (9.3x8.8) and KRM43110 (10.2x9.1). Given the extremely limited Flores skeletal evidence, and the known unreliable correlations of body and brain size with tooth sizes, it is premature to suggest that the Mata Menge gnathic fragments establish any more than previously known archaeological evidence: the existence of hominins of as yet indeterminable taxonomic status on an island where Homo sapiens is known to have a living and archeological presence.
DD ~ David ~ Da'ud ~ Diode ~ ∆^¥°∆
Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
Thanks for the link DDeden. This paper when publish will answer a lot of questions. Both Henn's paper may contradict Martin et al
since 2013 and the paper was never published.....wow!!!!! The Genetic Architecture Of Skin Pigmentation In Southern Africa. A. R. Martin1 - 'After controlling for admixture from European and Bantu-speaking populations, we find that globally common variants are not significantly associated with pigmentation. Rather, our results indicate that there are a multitude of rare variants in known pigmentation genes, and suggest that previously unidentified genes acting in canonical pigmentation pathways may be involved' "The KhoeSan hunter-gatherers, believed to have diverged from other populations 100,000 years ago, maintain extraordinary levels of genetic diversity, but it is unknown whether light skin pigmentation represents convergent evolution or the ancestral human phenotype"
Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
You may find this interesting. But I knew it. "Pay me a dollar $ 9". As I said white skin came from Africa. And to irate by brothas. It may be "ancestral".
-- A Complex, Polygenic Architecture for Lightened Skin Pigmentation in the Southern African KhoeSan ALICIA R. MARTIN1,2,3,
April 21, 2017 , Studio 7 Add to calendar
While >200 genes have been associated with pigmentation in animal models, fewer than 15 have been directly associated with skin pigmentation in humans. This has led to its characterization as a relatively simple quantitative trait. We show that skin color is more variable in admixed and equatorial populations by comparing phenotypes from ~5000 individuals in >30 populations, providing evidence of increased polygenicity closer to the equator. ***Strikingly***, no quantitative gene discovery efforts for pigmentation have yet been published in continental Africa, despite skin pigmentation varying more there than any other continent. Light skin pigmentation is observed in the southern latitudes of Africa among KhoeSan hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari Desert. The KhoeSan are unique in their early divergence from other populations, dating back at least ~100,000 years. We demonstrate that skin pigmentation is highly heritable (h2>0.85), with similar estimates from pedigrees identified via ethnographic interviews, unrelated population-based samples, and haplotype sharing. Further, genes previously associated with skin pigmentation, rapidly evolving genes, and pigmentation genes discovered in animal models explain significantly more heritability than random genes. We show that some canonical pigmentation loci, including SLC24A5, are polymorphic in the KhoeSan and at higher frequency than explained by recent European admixture alone. We identify novel skin pigmentation loci, including near SMARCA2 and TYRP1, using a genome-wide association approach complemented by targeted resequencing in >440 individuals. Our results suggest that pigmentation loci can evolve rapidly in response to latitude and highlight the utility of studying geographically and genetically diverged populations for understanding human adaptation.
Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
So there are "good" white people. Here the author is stating he doesn't understand why Africa is not studied more in trying to understand the ...white skin. Strikingly=they do not want to know. Delusion?
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
xyyman, glad you saw it. I'm no geneticist, so I can't interpret it for sure. I view the KhoeSan as a branch of Batwa Pygmies that split south & east to Rift long long ago.
Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
Man, I would like to get my hands on this paper. Like to see the data. So like Shriver proposed white skin is African,,,,who would of thought.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
"While great apes typically have two or three separate and diverging roots, the roots of Graecopithecus converge and are partially fused — a feature that is characteristic of modern humans, early humans and several pre-humans including Ardipithecus and Australopithecus,"
Note: "great apes (today) *typically* have 2 or 3 roots". Do any apes have partially fused roots? Is it a variable epigenetic morphological function of diet? Is it variable among geographically disparate human populations? Is it found in Sahelanthropus or Oreopithecus, (both upright bipedalist)?
" geological evidence to support a climate similar to present-day Africa. Giraffes, antelopes and even rhinoceros lived in that region for some time."
Short-necked giraffes (Okapi)?
"there's another significant finding: that human split occurred in the eastern Mediterranean and not Africa, as it is believed."
Unless chimp, gorilla or orangutan fossils are found there, the split could have happened in Africa, with only hominid ancestors moving east to Greece & Thrace.
" Changing conditions may have forced the animals and pre-humans toward the equator, to Africa."
The teeth date between the Tortonian & Messinian crises, partial drying up of the Mediterranean, while the Black Sea was the central EurAsian oasis during the droughts and ice ages, until the post-glacial Eden-Atlantis marine incursion 7.7ka which was the impetus for outward emigration: PIE north, Sumer south, Semitic east Qazharite/Qshrut then south Horite, etc.
me (DDeden aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves change)
May 26
The ape from Atlantis/Adan-eDeN
Moon & Menstruation-ovulation cycle 29.53 days AMHs female
Gibbons, orangutans & humans = upright bipeds, all menstruatrate on moon cycle 29 days. (Graecopithecus, Ardipithecus, Australopithecus included; Oreopithecus & Sahelanthropus also likely.
Chimps, gorillas (knuckle-walk) and monkeys(palm-walk) = ground-readapted quadrupeds, do not menstruate on moon cycle eg. 10, 18, 23 days.
Graecopithecus has fused-root canine teeth, this is typical in all Homo species, Ardipithecus & Australopithecus, and not typical in chimp or gorilla.
me (DDeden aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves change)
2:35 PM (less than a minute ago)
Tooth truth: Human teeth tell the story of humanity through our fragile relationship with the sun Date:May 18, 2017 Source:McMaster University Summary:Researchers have developed a new method to read imperfections in teeth caused by a lack of sunlight, creating a powerful tool to trace events ranging from human evolution and migration out of Africa to the silent damage of vitamin D deficiency that continues to affect 1 billion worldwide
Molecular clock errant? AGREED!! Phenotype divergence vs Genotype divergence WITH YOU
African Pygmies are most genotypically divergent, while OOA2 are most phenotypically divergent. Quite possibly
H/T Jack @AAT [/QB]
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Dhofar, Israel 60ka
Israeli study finds Neanderthals had versatile habitats
Posted: 08 Jun 2017 01:00 PM PDT
The Neanderthals, known in folklore as “cavemen”, conducted much of their activities in the open landscape. According to the study published today in the journal Scientific Reports by an international team lead by Israeli researchers, Neanderthals in the Levant constituted a resilient population that survived successfully in caves and open landscapes 60,000 years ago, when dispersing modern humans reached the region. The lower limbs... ---
New excavations at Samahram Oman reveal evidence of human presence 60,000 years ago
Posted: 08 Jun 2017 11:00 AM PDT
Results of new excavations at World Heritage site of Khor Rori also popular as Samahram in Dhofar have revealed startling new evidence that human presence on the site dates back to the Palaeolithic Period, from a time some 60,000 years ago. The findings also show that Samahram was at the core of maritime/commercial network, acting as a bridge between the East and the West on the rising trade and cultural route between faraway lands...
TANN
Dhofar- Sharaha raise cattle in dome huts & caves continuously, smolder frankincense to repel insects, ancient scrawlings in caves, betel trilithons- pyramidal, per Road to Ubar.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Xya - sky/shine/skin/external Xyua - sieve/through/filtered Ndula - inside/internal (Mbuti) Dua - 2, divide in two (Malay)
IMO by the Agricultural era, kmt may have had altered meanings, including skintone or soilshade - - - ndjama/jambo thicken/meet-m.ate.r + p.ate.r Xyambua / ebembe bodypaint !hxaro etch eggshell carta/chart/card (Portolan sea maps)
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Jewish Psychologist Romanian-born David Wechsler - human intelligence testing: Bellevue-Wechsler scale (IQ test)
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
This is intriguing.
Does reading or saying or hearing the word "sunshine" make your pupils constrict just as if you were suddenly exposed to bright sunshine? This study claims so:
The meaning of a word is enough to trigger a reaction in our pupil: when we read or hear a word with a meaning associated with luminosity ("sun," "shine," etc.), our pupils contract as they would if they were actually exposed to greater luminosity. And the opposite occurs with a word associated with darkness ("night," "gloom," etc.). These results open up a new avenue for better understanding how our brain processes language.
DD: Interesting hypothesis, which I have found to be more true than I would have thought long ago. Our words are both a projection (of sound and meaning) today and a reflection (echo) from the past words of our deep ancestors. It is not a mere accident that Sun is similar to shine and sky and skin and surface. In other languages, words of different sounds but of the same meaning eg. ari (daylight) is linked to aurat (fur/hair radiating out from body) and aurora (glow radiating out from solar/stellar body). The pupillary light response is physical reaction to brightness, as is the photic sneeze in some people, dark adaptation is the opposite. Are these also found in reading, writing, hearing words? How about blind people? how about people in rainforest vs. open plains?
1.Sebastiaan Mathôt, Jonathan Grainger, Kristof Strijkers. Pupillary Responses to Words That Convey a Sense of Brightness or Darkness. Psychological Science, 2017; 095679761770269 DOI: 10.1177/0956797617702699
All in the eyes: What the pupils tells us about language
Date:June 15, 2017 Source:CNRS Summary:The meaning of a word is enough to trigger a reaction in our pupil: when we read or hear a word with a meaning associated with luminosity ("sun," "shine," etc.), our pupils contract as they would if they were actually exposed to greater luminosity. And the opposite occurs with a word associated with darkness ("night," "gloom," etc.). These results open up a new avenue for better understanding how our brain processes language.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Holy rock
Mysterious holes drilled in Sudanese rocks supported makeshift shelters
This reminds me of holed stones in Israel made by snails, which dissolve the limestone.
- - -
A 3,400 year-old tomb, originally built for a "master gold worker" named "Khnummose," has been discovered on Sai Island, on the Nile River, in Sudan. Discoveries include an inscribed stone shabti and heart scarab.
Anyone that has difficulties with that definition, contact me or any Biologist.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Gihon Spring, just downhill from the ancient city of Jerusalem, was crucial to the survival of its inhabitants, and archaeologists had uncovered the remains of a massive stone tower built to guard this vital water supply. Based on pottery and other regional findings, the archaeologists had originally assigned it a date of 1,700 BCE. But new research conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science provides conclusive evidence that the stones at the base of the tower were laid nearly 1,000 years later. Read more at https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2017/06/jerusalem-tower-younger-than-thought.html#uZIs24uyMhMvVW61.99
The date revealed by this radiocarbon dating was sometime around 800-900 BCE. That is nearly 1,000 years later than thought, and it moves the building of the tower to another historical period entirely, from the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age.
To complete the study, Boaretto and her team asked whether any explanation could allow the tower to have been built earlier -- repairs, for example -- but the presence of the large boulders sitting above layers of earth containing the remains of everyday activities would appear to be fairly conclusive evidence that the later date is the correct one. Boaretto: "The conclusive, scientific dating of this massive tower, placing it in a later era than was presumed, will have repercussions for other attempts to date construction and occupation in ancient Jerusalem."
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
John Hawks on elephant evolution, discusses Homo erectus, but misses the significance that the Ituri rainforest is the common source of elephants, giraffes and humans.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Alina is the name of a people mentioned in the Rigveda.(RV 7.18.7) They were probably one of the tribes defeated by Sudas at the Dasarajna,[1] and it was suggested that they lived to the north-east of Kafiristan, because the land was mentioned by the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang.[1]
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
About Alinas, I checked in Mayrhofer, and he's wondering if this is connected to the name Arya. Yes like the Alans
I didn't know about the 'Turanian Dânus'; Saha is also a name of a turcic people, I think (Yakut area). 'Danaoi' is often stated as an argument for the Kurgan hypothesis, obviously as connected to some rivers' names in that region (Danube, Don, Dniepr etc).
- - -
Note: Ituri, Itoro, Ekale are rivers in Congo that share intial E/I of river name, as in E-den, E.DeN.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
300ka mtDNA Mbo - Cameroon-Nigeria Pygmies 300ka early Hs - Morocco bones & stone tools 260ka KhoiSan split south from MbaTwa Pygmies 300ka bone sawing - Qesem cave, Israel 300ka Tantan stone sculpture doll - Morocco 300ka ochre-covered/carried stones - So. Africa
Hamburg.dweller, jambalaya, gumbo, gupot, soup pot etc.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Errata: re. 300ka mtDNA Mbo should be Y DNA Mbo. - - -
Ancient Japanese basket & square base found:
A mystery that long puzzled archaeologists may have been solved with the first discovery of a finely woven basket complete with a square wooden footed stand, believed to be from the late second century
Note: the basket shares form with sieve(xyua), comb(xyuamb), combine/copina(Aztec), container-kantong(Malay)-canada(Iroquois)-canastros(Greek:cane basket) and when inverted became conical straw hat, and tipi(Dakota) and honai(Papua Yali Pygmy men's hut of poles), link to horn & cornucopia. The square base indicates wood planing. TANN
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Abstract: The population history of Aboriginal Australians remains largely uncharacterized. Here we generate high-coverage genomes for 83 Aboriginal Australians (speakers of Pama–Nyungan languages) and 25 Papuans from the New Guinea Highlands. We find that Papuan and Aboriginal Australian ancestors diversified 25–40 thousand years ago (kya), suggesting pre-Holocene population structure in the ancient continent of Sahul (Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania). However, all of the studied Aboriginal Australians descend from a single founding population that differentiated ~10–32 kya. We infer a population expansion in northeast Australia during the Holocene epoch (past 10,000 years) associated with limited gene flow from this region to the rest of Australia, consistent with the spread of the Pama–Nyungan languages. We estimate that Aboriginal Australians and Papuans diverged from Eurasians 51–72 kya, following a single out-of-Africa dispersal, and subsequently admixed with archaic populations. Finally, we report evidence of selection in Aboriginal Australians potentially associated with living in the desert.
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The paper is published alongside a larger study which analysed 300 genomes from 142 diverse populations, homing in on groups underrepresented in existing research.
This study, also published in Nature, suggests that the rate of genetic mutations among non-African populations has increased by 5% since diverging from African populations.
On a 2011 hike through the Indonesian rainforest, Topher White stumbled across a rogue logger cutting down a tree. The man was working just a short distance from the ranger station, but the din of chirping birds and buzzing insects obscured the sound of his chainsaw, keeping him hidden in plain sight.
This gave White an idea. The San Francisco-based engineer dreamt of a device that could listen for chainsaws and report their whereabouts to park authorities.
White, now 35, learned that parts of the rainforest boast remarkable mobile phone service. Cell towers abound, even where roads and power lines are scarce. Locals can make calls and send texts from the outskirts of the forests, where illicit loggers do their work.
On a subsequent trip to Indonesia, White installed a handful of cell phones around a gibbon reserve. The phones would notify park rangers when they heard the putter of chainsaws. Shortly after setting up the system, White received an email notification from one of his phones. He told the rangers, who followed the faint sound of a chainsaw through the woods. They caught a band of loggers in flagrante. - - -
Same thing can be done in Congo rainforest and Amazon rainforest.
Don't blame the poachers - loggers, they need to eat too. It is our economic system that is to blame.
- - -
Siamangs are the most endangered apes on Earth.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
New article: OOA2, Neanderthals & Denisovans all had genetic sequence/enhancer which resulted in shorter long bones and osteo-arthritis, Africans did not.
It is presumed to be a cold-temperature selection.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
"Mice homozygous for a knock-out allele exhibit hypopigmentation and ocular albinism"
found in KhoiSan, European-Caucasian, Ethiopian
"It's under selection all over the place: Europe, Ethiopia, and now among the Bushmen. The advantage can't be more vitamin D, nor is it associated with agriculture. It does have other effects. Next, the haplotype is very long, yet has been around a long time." https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2017/07/10/slc24a5-yet-again/ - - -
Old Asians (Melanesian)
Posted on July 10, 2017 by gcochran9
There is reason to believe that Australo-Melanesians used to occupy a much larger area than they do today. Let’s define them by their genetic affinity to that odd genetic trace in Amazonian Amerindians: those related include Papuans, Aboriginal Australians, Andaman Islanders ( closest), and Negrito groups in Southeast Asia and the Philippines.
Skeletal evidence says that they used to occupy all of Southeast Asia (probably at least as far north as southern China, fairly recently), and have been largely replaced by people from further north over the past few thousand years. Same is the case for the Philippines & most of Indonesia.
In fact, even further north than that: a skeleton from Tianyuan cave, not far from Beijing, shows the same genetic trace. From about 40,000 years ago. So it’s more plausible that there was a potential source population in a more geographically felicitous area ( for settling the New World) at the proper time ( ~20k BC).
Ardipithecus ramidus and the evolution of language and singing: An early origin for hominin vocal capability HOMO - J compar human Biol doi 10.1016/j.jchb.2017.03.001
Did the early hominin Ar.ramidus have vocal capabilities far exceeding those of any extant non-human primate? We argue that erect posture combined with changes in cranio-facial morphology (reduced facial & jaw length) - provides evidence for increased levels of pro-sociality, - increased vocal ability.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Note: The eyes (lens) have non-nucleated cells that cannot breathe, unlike other cells which are oxygenated, this explains why the beneficial bacteria survived in an oxygen-depleted incubator, they would be out-competed in normal oxygenated incubator since they grow slow. Note that the author does not confuse pathogens with beneficial bacteria. -
To confirm that certain microbes actually call the eyes home, scientists need to demonstrate living bacteria. So, a team of researchers swabbed the eyes of mice and rubbed the samples onto petri dishes to see what would grow. Most of the dishes came up blank, but one was accidentally left for a week in an oxygen-depleted incubator. When the researchers realized their mistake and went to clear the forgotten dish, they found thin streaks of a slow-growing bacteria—which they claim is the first confirmed species of the mouse ocular microbiome.
The species was identified as Corynebacterium mastitidis, a bacteria known to live on human skin. However, the bacteria looked a bit strange—it grew in thin threads called filaments, distinct from its usual rod-like shape. The team suggested this may be due to stress, although they didn’t run experiments to conclusively determine this. It’s possible these bacteria find the eye environment somewhat hostile, even though they’re able to survive.
”We know that C. mastitidis must be a ‘permanent resident’ as opposed to a ‘guest’ because it has to be instilled onto the eye, or acquired from the mother in infancy,” said Anthony St. Leger, lead study author and postdoctoral research with the National Institutes of Health. “It does not transfer from one adult mouse to another in the same cage, even after weeks of co-housing.” - Note: One possible function of weeping - to share eye microbes & tears? - By removing and studying resident C. mastitidis from some mice, scientists demonstrated that its presence helped fend off eye infections. Tears from mice with C. mastitidis were more lethal to pathogenic strains of the fungi Candida albicans and bacteria Pseudomonas than the tears of mice lacking the bacteria.
The scientists think the bacteria plays a beneficial role by turning on immune pathways which keep the eye awash with antimicrobials and pathogen-killing immune cells. The idea came from a special strain of mice that lack the immune molecule IL-17. Without it, the mice are prone to nasty ocular bacterial infections—what we know of as pink eye. The scientists hypothesized that IL-17 is a key player in ocular defense, and wondered if bacteria living on the eye might trigger the molecule to be expressed. In tissue culture experiments, they showed that C. mastitidis induces IL-17 production in ocular immune cells. And when mice lacking the bacteria were inoculated with it, they began producing more IL-17, and became resistant to eye infections. --- Gizmodo: Your Eyeballs May Be Covered in Disease-Fighting Bacteria. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwhM-BtjU
Eyes have a symbiotic bacteria which prevents pathogens from infection.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
New species of fossil bird discovered in New Mexico Posted: 10 Jul 2017 05:30 AM PDT
Bruce Museum Curator Dr. Daniel Ksepka has published a research paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science announcing the discovery of a new species of fossil bird in New Mexico. Artist’s rendering of Tsidiiyazhi abini [Credit: Sean Murtha]The fossil is important because it is the *oldest tree-dwelling species among modern bird groups*. It lived just a few million years after the dinosaurs went extinct. Live-in grandparents helped human ancestors get a safer night's sleep - - -
A sound night’s sleep grows more elusive as people get older. But what some call insomnia may actually be an age-old survival mechanism, researchers report. A Hadza man sleeps on the ground on an impala skin in northern Tanzania [Credit: David Samson]A study of modern hunter-gatherers in Tanzania finds that, for people who live in groups, differences in sleep patterns commonly associated with age help ensure that at least one... ... In between, they roused from slumber several times during the night, tossing and turning or getting up to smoke, tend to a crying baby, or relieve themselves before nodding off again.
As a result, moments when everyone was out cold at once were rare. Out of more than 220 total hours of observation, the researchers were surprised to find *only 18 minutes when all adults were sound asleep simultaneously*. On average, more than a third of the group was alert, or dozing very lightly, at any given time.
“And that’s just out of the healthy adults; it doesn’t include children, or people who were injured or sick,” said Samson, now an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, Mississauga.
Yet the participants didn’t complain of sleep problems, Samson said.
The findings may help explain why Hadza generally don’t post sentinels to keep watch throughout the night -- they don’t need to, the researchers say. Their natural variation in sleep patterns, coupled with light or restless sleep in older adults, is enough to ensure that at least one person is on guard at all times.
Note: Dome huts of woven branches & grass are derived from rainforest branches & broad leaf dome huts which evolved from domeshields which derived from ape bowl nests.
Analyses of 40,000 year old ochre finds in Ethiopia's Porc-Epic Cave point to symbolic use
Posted: 11 Jul 2017 12:00 PM PDT
The EU-funded TRACSYMBOLS project, which closed in 2015, investigated archaeological sites in South Africa for early use of symbols by homo sapiens, examining painting kits, spear points, beads and *ostrich egg shell engravings* [DD: !hxaro]. They also studied the usage of the reddish iron-rich rock, ochre. And it was to ochre that members of the project team have more recently returned. View of Porc-Epic Cave [Credit: A. Herrero] - - -
Lena River Siberia fish meal 9ka - harpoon, net floats of birch bark, preserved bones
Note: I found a giant conch at my swimming hole, might cook it up some day, or might let it go. - - - Vitamin D deficiency
Vitamin D deficiency in expectant mothers during pregnancy has a negative effect on the social development and motor skills of pre-school age children, a new study in the British Journal of Nutrition reports.
Examining data gathered from over 7,000 mother-child pairs, researchers from the University of Surrey, and the University of Bristol, discovered that pregnant women who were deficient in vitamin D (less than 50 nmol per litre in blood) were more likely to have children with low scores (bottom 25 percent) in pre-school development tests for gross and fine motor development at age 2½ years than children of vitamin D sufficient mothers. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170712074457.htm Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Clet (Slavic)= (mon)golu(tla) = hut of withies ~ cloth.e/en.close cf. in colo(Latin) ~ cleg (Scottish) crook-shepherd's hook
Tom Wolfe, Kingdom of Speech Dan Everett, Don't Sleep, There are Snakes
Per Everett, the Piraha tribe of Amazon have an unusually simple language, fewest letters, no colors, no counting, no recursion (inserting a phrase into a sentence eg. "I saw him in the park". would be: I was in the park. I saw him.
I found this of interest: A tonal language can not be whispered, but can be whistled. Piraha has two tones, as does Yoruba, Piraha is indeed whistled, and sung, as well as spoken, but not written except in translation.
Everett was a missionary, eventually he converted out, became a linguist.
Wolfe wrote about Everett's story and Noam Chomsky's reaction.
"Don't sleep, there are snakes" is the equivalent to saying "Good night, sweet dreams".
Note: Moetherium - 37ma semi-aquatic ancestor of elephantidae, somewhat similar to manatee (but with rear limbs), distinct from Hyrax & elephant shrew (much larger). It consumed river & swamp plants.
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John Hawks blogs about new DNA elephant study, which finds that the EurAsian straight tusked elephant descended from African Forest Elephant, and that the Forest elephant hybred with mammoths and mastodons.
"All four of the P. antiquus mitochondrial lineages are on the same branch as living forest elephants, and in fact some forest elephants have mtDNA genomes that are closer to P. antiquus than to some other forest elephants. In other words, the mitochondrial genomes of P. antiquus fall within the variation of L. cyclotis."
"In humans, mtDNA is markedly less diverse than most parts of the nuclear genome, and mtDNA types occur across wide geographic areas. Elephants are the opposite. Their mitochondrial DNA exhibits substantially greater variation among populations than the average for the nuclear genome, because female elephants very rarely transfer between groups. Most gene flow in elephants is male-mediated, and male elephants sometimes disperse over very long distances."
Note: Elephant herds with females and young are always led by matriarchs (as are bison).
"What they found was that P. antiquus mitochondrial genomes are not related to Elephas at all; they’re related to forest elephants:
Surprisingly, P. antiquus did not cluster with E. maximus, as hypothesized from morphological analyses. Instead, it fell within the mito-genetic diversity of extant L. cyclotis, with very high statistical support (Figure 2). The four straight-tusked elephants did not cluster together within this mitochondrial clade, but formed two separate lineages that share a common ancestor with an extant L. cyclotis lineage 0.7–1.6 Ma (NN) and 1.5–3.0 Ma (WE) ago, respectively.
"That’s not a small difference. Living Asian and African elephants came from a common ancestral population more than 6 million years ago, during the Late Miocene. They are about as different from each other genetically as humans and chimpanzees. The fossil story was just wrong–and it’s as big a difference as misidentifying a Neanderthal as a fossil chimpanzee."
A widespread extinct species of elephant, which on morphological grounds was interpreted as an Asian elephant relative, is actually related to forest elephants within Africa. Forest elephants today are a relative island species in central Africa, surrounded by savanna elephants. So from today’s standpoint, forest elephants look like a geographic and phylogenetic relict of a much more diverse lineage that once existed."
Note: Dr. Hawks unfortunately confuses today's Ituri Rainforest elephants as a "relict" population of EurAsian straight tusked elephants. Actually the Ituri rainforest is the SOURCE population of both; as it is also the source of long-necked open plains giraffes from Ituri Okapi and tall AMHs open plains people from Ituri Pygmies. Principles of Parsimony & Continuity should not be ignored in accurate scientific explanation. - - - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6913934.stm
"The [2007 DNA] tree has the African elephant diverging from both the Asian elephant and the mammoth about 7.6 million years ago. Then, at 6.7 million years ago, the Asian elephant and the mammoth also go their separate ways. That took place in Africa in the same place where humans, chimps and gorillas diverged."
Note: Elephants split at same place and same time as hominins from apes, Congo.
Human comparison
"The cool thing about the mastodon is that we know pretty exactly from the fossil record when it diverged from the elephant and the mammoth," said Dr Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and one of the lead researchers.
"So using that time point and the genetic data, we could date when the African elephant, Asian elephant and mammoth diverged from each other," Dr Hofreiter explained.
"That took place in Africa in the same place where humans, chimps and gorillas diverged." The fact that it is now judged that the elephants went their separate ways in the same place and at about the same time we humans diverged from our ape brethren may of course be a coincidence.
Or, as Dr Hofreiter suggests, there may be a common environmental or climatic event which set both elephants and humans on their eventual evolutionary course. " - - - [Errata: Straight tusked elephants hybred with mammoths and Asian elephants, not mastodons.] - - -
Elephant hybridization
"Hybridization has already been found to be widespread among the varieties of mammoths, and it continues to occur between savanna and forest elephants despite what appears to be a multi-million year separation. We might expect the same of other extinct elephant species. When Eleftheria Palkopoulou presented on some of these data at a conference in 2016, she did talk about hybridization. Ewen Callaway reported on that conference presentation at the time: “Elephant history rewritten by ancient genomes”.
"Palkopoulou and her colleagues also revealed the genomes of other animals, including four woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) and, for the first time, the whole-genome sequences of a Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) from North America and two North American mastodons (Mammut americanum). The researchers found evidence that many of the different elephant and mammoth species had interbred. Straight-tusked elephants mated with both Asian elephants and woolly mammoths. And African savannah and forest elephants, who are known to interbreed today — hybrids of the two species live in some parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere — also seem to have interbred in the distant past. Palkopoulou hopes to work out when these interbreeding episodes happened."
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Australian North Coast - 65ka arrival of Pygmies
Note: Pygmies arrived in north Australia coasts 65ka, separated from African- Andaman-San-Pygmies 120ka. See photos.
Note: The Mbabaram Pygmies of North Coast historically made wood shields & spears. Their word for dog is kutaka/gudaga/dog.
Ground stone axes, use of ochre and micah (mirrors?)
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The following article confuses the pattern, Pygmies first to the North coast rainforest 65ka, some continued southward along the coasts (Tasmanian Pygmies had no fire-starters), while their inland descendants gradually moved into the drier open plains along gallery forests and intermittent stream valleys to become the conventional taller Aborigines who specifically hunted open plains animals to extinction with spear-thrower/atlatls & likely fire (with fire-starters). - - - "Previously it was thought that humans arrived and hunted them out or disturbed their habits, leading to extinction, but these dates confirm that people arrived so far before that they wouldn't be the central cause of the death of megafauna," Marwick said. "It shifts the idea of humans charging into the landscape and killing off the megafauna. It moves toward a vision of humans moving in and coexisting, which is quite a different view of human evolution."
"Our research traced the evolution of an important mucin protein called MUC7 that is found in saliva," he says. "When we looked at the history of the gene that codes for the protein, we see the signature of archaic admixture in modern day Sub-Saharan African populations."
The research was published on July 21 in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. The study was led by Gokcumen and Stefan Ruhl, DDS, PhD, a professor of oral biology in UB's School of Dental Medicine.
A tantalizing clue in saliva
The scientists came upon their findings while researching the purpose and origins of the MUC7 protein, which helps give spit its slimy consistency and binds to microbes, potentially helping to rid the body of disease-causing bacteria.
As part of this investigation, the team examined the MUC7 gene in more than 2,500 modern human genomes. The analysis yielded a surprise: A group of genomes from Sub-Saharan Africa had a version of the gene that was wildly different from versions found in other modern humans.
The Sub-Saharan variant was so distinctive that Neanderthal and Denisovan MUC7 genes matched more closely with those of other modern humans than the Sub-Saharan outlier did.
"Based on our analysis, the most plausible explanation for this extreme variation is archaic introgression -- the introduction of genetic material from a 'ghost' species of ancient hominins," Gokcumen says. "This unknown human relative could be a species that has been discovered, such as a subspecies of Homo erectus, or an undiscovered hominin. We call it a 'ghost' species because we don't have the fossils."
Given the rate that genes mutate during the course of evolution, the team calculated that the ancestors of people who carry the Sub-Saharan MUC7 variant interbred with another ancient human species as recently as 150,000 years ago, after the two species' evolutionary path diverged from each other some 1.5 to 2 million years ago.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Common chimps live north of the Congo River Bonobo chimps live south of the Congo River
Perhaps humans split similarly?
Tall humans lived north of the Congo River, Amazight moving further north.
Pygmy humans lived south of the Congo River, with KhoiSan splitting further south.
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Dogs vs wolves - genetic divergence
The team notes, for instance, that in addition to contributing to sociability, the variations in WBSCR17 may represent an adaptation in dogs to living with humans. A previous study revealed that variations in WBSCR17 were tied to the ability to digest carbohydrates — a source of energy wolves would have rarely consumed. Yet, the variations in domestic dogs suggest those changes would help them thrive on the starch-rich diets of humans. Links between another gene related to starch digestion in dogs and domestication, however, have recently been called into question (SN Online: 7/18/17).
Professor Martin Jones, Head of Cambridge's Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, is far more interested in a group of around 20 species of small-grained cereals that are generically termed millets. They look like wild grasses, don't need much water, grow quickly and have a good nutritional balance. Yet, until recently, they have been largely overlooked by the Western world as a food source for humans, and are most commonly found in packets of birdseed.
Now Jones has brought attention to this ancient grain as a means of mitigating against the boom–bust nature of harvests. His work has contributed to a growing market in Asia for high-quality millet from Aohan, Inner Mongolia, and the cereal's potential is attracting interest from big multinational companies.
All of this has come from Jones' archaeological interest in ancient farming practices. Searching for evidence of millet in the Neolithic, he discovered two key species – broomcorn and foxtail millet – in the prehistoric crop record in Europe, despite both being botanically East Asian. By piecing together the archaeological evidence, it became clear that Asian millets were coming into Europe, and that wheat and barley from Europe were moving into Asia.
"This wasn't a time when farming was transitioning from hunter-gathering to agriculture," says Jones. "What we were seeing was a move from single-season, single-crop agriculture to multi-season, multi-crop agriculture." Hundreds of years ago the Asian millets were being used in flexible and innovative ways, and became among the most geographically widespread crops in the world. By using crops from other regions, the farmers could add another growing season and significantly increase their yields.
Jones' archaeological work took him to a new site in Aohan when evidence emerged of local millet cultivation in Neolithic times. There, his Chinese colleagues found carbonised particles of foxtail and broomcorn millet dating from 7,700 to 8,000 years ago, which proved to be the earliest record of their cultivation in the world.
But it was his conversations with local farmers that radically altered his perception of the grains. "When we first visited Aohan it could sometimes be hard to tell whether the millet was growing as a crop or as a weed. We asked the locals, and rather than tell us it was a stupid question – that it was irrelevant whether it was crop or weed – they politely answered a different one. They told us what it tasted like and when they last ate it. These people had lived through hard times, famines, so to survive they had developed more open ideas. I realised then that I'd come with concepts that seemed universal but just weren't relevant to the lives of people in contemporary northern China."
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Asian Negritos of Malaya, Andamans & (denisovan linked) Philippines
"The results suggest the possibility that human terrestrial life began inside a forest rather than in the savannah."
"Why did our hominin ancestors descend from the trees to the forest floor?"
Acquisition of terrestrial life by human ancestors influenced by forest microclimate Hiroyuki Takemoto 2017 Scientific Reports 7:5741 doi 10.1038/s41598-017-05942-5
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I've been saying for years: Original hominins were chimps that about 5ma began adaptation of living on the rainforest floor, moving from the standard great ape forest canopy bowl nest, and did not live on grassland open plains until recently. Hominins made ape-like bowl nests portable ((food)BASKET/(predator)SHIELD/(rain)SHED/(sun)SHADE/SHUTTLE) of sharp-tipped pliable sticks & broad-leaves, and moved along the rainforest floor in nomadic groups, sleeping beneath these shields / shallow-dome huts near crystalline streams devoid of crocs. - - - (article, with comments from MV & DD)
The common ancestor of the Pan and human lineages is thought to have been an arborealist,(aquarborealist --mv)/(H/P arborealist with seasonal flooding DD) and all early hominin fossils have been found in forest patches or environments close to forests.(wetland Reed 1997 JHE --mv)/(mostly forest DD) Fossils of Ardipithecus ramidus, an early-stage human ancestor(?? --mv)/(yes, cf. canine teeth with fused roots cf Greicopithecus 7.2ma DD) after divergence from the Pan clade 4.4 Ma, prove that it adopted conditions involving terrestrial upright bipedality, and foraging in trees. Ar.ramidus thus demonstrates(?? --mv)/(yes, cont'd from Morotopithecus DD) that the human lineage never experienced knuckle-walking like that of modern chimpanzees or gorillas. Modern ape locomotion studies have shown that bipedalism can happen in an arboreal context to enable reaching flexible branches, although modern ape bipeds are not accompanied by anatomical specializations for upright bipedal locomotion. The above evidence may indicate that bipedalism, terrestriality & open habitat are not necessarily linked; and a partially terrestrial lifestyle in early hominins started in the time period when forests were still the main habitat for humans. IOW, the beginning of terrestrial life will be explained independently from the establishment of bipedalism or expanding into open habitat. However, there have been no reports about the ecological factors contributing to the transition from arboreal to terrestrial life inside forests during the course of human evolution. Why did our hominin ancestors descend from the trees to the forest floor? - - -
The origins of the Malagasy raise questions about ancient connections between continents; moreover, because ancestors are fundamental to Malagasy society, Malagasy origins is also a heated topic around the country, with numerous proposed hypotheses. This study provides a comprehensive view of genomic diversity (including maternal lineages, paternal lineages, and genome-wide data) based on a sampling of 257 villages across Madagascar. The observed spatial patterns lead to a scenario of a recent and sex-biased admixture between Bantu and Austronesian ancestors across the island. Moreover, we find geographical influences creating subtle signals of genetic structure that are independent of the Bantu/Austronesian admixture, suggesting that recent history has a role in the genomic diversity of the Malagasy.
Madagascar had a hunting & gathering tribe distinct from the Bantu and Malayan agriculturalists, this study has found the Mikea tribe is a mixture of both. http://www.pnas.org/content/111/3/936.long
The Mikea are the last known Malagasy population reported to be still practicing a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Earlier writers thought the Mikea were descended from ancient forager groups who have maintained their way of life up to the present. However, our analyses show that the Mikea are not a remnant population and, to the contrary, derived from a recent admixture of two agriculturalist populations: the Bantu (from Africa) and the Austronesian (from east-Asia). Thus, it is probable that the Mikea have adopted their hunter-gatherer way of life through a recent cultural reversion
Malaria therapy, experimental, and epidemiological studies have shown that erythrocyte Duffy blood group-negative people, largely of African ancestry, are resistant to erythrocyte Plasmodium vivax infection. These findings established a paradigm that the Duffy antigen is required for P. vivax erythrocyte invasion. P. vivax is endemic in Madagascar, where admixture of Duffy-negative and Duffy-positive populations of diverse ethnic backgrounds has occurred over 2 millennia. There, we investigated susceptibility to P. vivax blood-stage infection and disease in association with Duffy blood group polymorphism. Duffy blood group genotyping identified 72% Duffy-negative individuals (FY*BES/*BES) in community surveys conducted at eight sentinel sites. Flow cytometry and adsorption–elution results confirmed the absence of Duffy antigen expression on Duffy-negative erythrocytes. P. vivax PCR positivity was observed in 8.8% (42/476) of asymptomatic Duffy-negative people. Clinical vivax malaria was identified in Duffy-negative subjects with nine P. vivax monoinfections and eight mixed Plasmodium species infections that included P. vivax (4.9 and 4.4% of 183 participants, respectively). Microscopy examination of blood smears confirmed blood-stage development of P. vivax, including gametocytes. Genotyping of polymorphic surface and microsatellite markers suggested that multiple P. vivax strains were infecting Duffy-negative people. In Madagascar, P. vivax has broken through its dependence on the Duffy antigen for establishing human blood-stage infection and disease. Further studies are necessary to identify the parasite and host molecules that enable this Duffy-independent P. vivax invasion of human erythrocytes.
During malaria fever therapy trials, performed to treat neurosyphilis (1920s to 1960s) and in experimental field trials, it was consistently demonstrated that Africans and African-Americans were highly resistant to Plasmodium vivax blood-stage malaria when challenged with human blood or mosquitoes infected with limited numbers of P. vivax strains (1–3). Following identification of the Duffy blood group (Fy; reviewed in Zimmerman, 2004) (4), population studies showed that individuals of African ancestry expressed neither Fya nor Fyb antigens and were classified as Duffy negative, Fy(a−b−) (5). Following on observations that vivax malaria was rare in Africa (6), Miller et al. performed definitive in vivo studies to show that Duffy-negative people resisted, whereas Duffy-positive people were susceptible, to experimental P. vivax blood-stage infection following exposure to infected mosquitoes (7). This seminal work, and related Plasmodium knowlesi in vitro studies (7–9), established the paradigm that malaria parasites invade erythrocytes through specific “receptor”-based interactions and that the Duffy blood group was the receptor for P. vivax.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Big armoured dino had camouflage
Despite heavy armor, new dinosaur used camouflage to hide from predators
Date:August 3, 2017 Source:Cell Press
Summary:Researchers have named a new genus and species of armored dinosaur. The 110-million-year-old Borealopelta markmitchelli discovered in Alberta, Canada belongs to the nodosaur family. Now, an analysis of the 18-foot-long (5.5 m) specimen's exquisitely well-preserved form, complete with fully armored skin, suggests that the nodosaur had predators, despite the fact that it was the 'dinosaur equivalent of a tank.'
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
I predicted this one linguistically: Bali = Yali(Papuan Pygmies) = Bari(Australian Pygmies) = Yali (Thai Negritos) = kembali(Malay) come home Mbo(Balinese) mother(dome) = Jambu(Malay) attract = Jambo(Africa) mate.r
They were Pygmies from African rainforest in bowl boats (inverted dome huts/domiciles/dome shields which had been inverted ape nests)
Mt Toba blew 73.5ka killing many in India, but allowing migrations through new territory Papua, Australia, Andamans, Jomon.
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Real Evidence: 65-73ka human tooth on the tectonic tidal island of Sumatra
Two ancient teeth found in an Indonesian cave hint that our species had arrived there as early as 73,000 years ago – and may have had to deal with the biggest supervolcano eruption of the last few million years and also adapt to the challenges of living in thick rainforest.
Many archaeologists were puzzled by the recent discovery of 65,000-year-old stone tools and other artefacts in northern Australia. According to traditional thinking, early members of our species, Homo sapiens, were just beginning to venture out of Africa at this time.
To get from Africa to Australia, H. sapiens would also have needed to march across mainland Asia, then sail across the sea. The route should have included a stopover on the islands of Indonesia and Timor, but no H. sapiens artefacts older than 45,000 years had been found on these islands, until now. Kira Westaway at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and her colleagues have discovered that H. sapiens probably did set foot in these islands more than 65,000 years ago.
The team took another look at two teeth dug up by Dutch archaeologist Eugène Dubois in Lida Ajer cave on the Indonesian island of Sumatra in the late 19th century. Partly through comparisons with orangutan fossils found nearby, they confirmed the teeth belong to our species – and using a modern dating technique known as electron spin resonance dating, they dated them between 63,000 and 73,000 years old.
But the archaeology hints that the first members of our species to reach Sumatra faced a tough life. They may have been present in Sumatra when the island’s now-dormant supervolcano – Toba – gave rise to one of Earth’s biggest known eruptions, perhaps about 71,000 years ago according to recent estimates.
If that didn’t wipe out the early population, they would have had to adapt to Sumatra’s rainforest environment – very different from the savannahs of Africa where humans evolved. [HaHaHa SAVANNA! Mucho Stupido!]
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA—Kira Westaway of Macquarie University and her colleagues have found evidence of the presence of Homo sapiens on the Indonesian island of Sumatra dated to between 63,000 and 73,000 years ago, according to a report in New Scientist. “This is a significant finding because it supports emerging ideas that modern humans left Africa and reached Australia much earlier than we thought,” said Michelle Langley of Griffith University. The evidence came in the form of two teeth, discovered by Dutch archaeologist Eugene Dubois in a cave on Sumatra in the late nineteenth century. The researchers confirmed the teeth belonged to Homo sapiens by comparing them to orangutan fossils found near the cave, and then dated them with electron spin resonance dating. Scientists could now look for traces of early human habitation in the rainforest, such as evidence of cooking and stone tool use
Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
Good info. I never knew this.
quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: Whitewashing the war: Dunkirk movie review
Urban sea snakes have more melanin, shed heavy-metal skins.
Animals living in polluted areas can pick up toxic metals like lead and zinc from their diet. But these toxins bind to melanin, a pigment that many animals produce to create brown and black colors. So in theory, a dark-colored animal could use melanin to sequester these toxins, and even slough them off with its skin. Researchers tested this idea in turtle-headed sea snakes (Emydocephalus annulatus, pictured), in which some individuals are striped, and others are jet-black. Sure enough, when studying museum specimens and surveying areas in the South Pacific, reefs near cities and other polluted sites had far more black snakes: On average, four out of five snakes in these sites were black, compared with fewer than one in seven in pristine reefs, the team reports today in Current Biology. And the discarded skins of urban sea snakes—particularly the dark colored bands—were chock-full of heavy metals, further supporting the idea that dark snakes might shed pollutants along with their skin. Dark-colored pigeons (Columba livia) appear to get a similar advantage in cities, so this process may be widespread: One more for the list of ways in which animal species have rapidly evolved to cope with humanity.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
The Domuztepe Habitation Excavation Leader Professor Halil Tekin from Hacettepe University told Anadolu Agency that they found the "core" of Sumerians at the site.
Tekin noted that the settlement was the largest in the Near East in the Late Neolithic period, measuring around 49.4 acres. The settlement is thought to had been occupied between 6,200 B.C. and 5,450 B.C.
The people of the period did not have permanent settlements, meaning that there was no sufficient land suitable for agriculture near the settlement, the professor said, adding that their main sources of nutrition included goats, sheep and boars.
"[The settlement mound] was made out of a circular clay structure 6 meters in diameter, which indicates that they did not have a strong sense of a permanent structure," Tekin said, adding that their settlement was semi-permanent.
Tekin also highlighted that the people of the settlement lived peaceful lives for around 2,000 years and may have been forced to move as a result of climate change and other natural factors.
"The figures on pottery found here indicate that these people came from Asia… We knew around 100 to 150 years ago that Sumerians were also Asian," Tekin said, adding that they hope Domuztepe will enable researchers to connect crucial links in human history.
The Domuztepe settlement mount is located in Kahramanmaraş's Pazarcık district, near Kelibişler neighborhood. Excavations at the site have been led by professor Tekin since 1996.
The latest findings at western Georgia's Pichvnari excavation site have given historians material to enrich their studies of ancient Black Sea settlements following a series of recent discoveries in the region.
the findings unearthed by archaeologists include ceramic pieces, decorative objects and farming instruments.
In particular, experts noted a floor surfaced with bassanite material and a stone-made sinker used in farming, unveiled among remains of the settlement dating back to the 6th-4th centuries BC.
On the site of a nearby burial ground, archaeologists excavated golden beads, a terracotta ceramic piece featuring a wild boar illustration and "imported" clay vessels.
Beside the settlement and burial site remains, archaeologists are also working at a nearby site of a 5th century BC Greek necropolis in Pichvnari, with "contours" of burial sites found at the upper layer of the excavation site.
Decorative, farming and household items were among findings on the Pichvnari site [Credit: Adjara Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport] Located 10km north of the seaside town Kobuleti, Pichvnari is the contemporary name for an ancient settlement which first presented archaeologists with findings of 4th century BC silver drachma coins in 1951.
Further findings on the site included nearly 300 coins dating back to the 6th to 4th centuries BC and representing the Colchis ancient Kingdom.
Planned excavations started in the area in 1955, with further digs following in the 1960s. Suspended in the early 1990s, works were restarted in 1998 within the joint British-Georgian Pichvnari Expedition and continued in the 2000s.
The works carried out at Pichvnari since the mid-20th century have revealed an advanced industrial society in the area by the 1st century BC.
There have only been about five confirmed Trelleborg fortresses discovered in Denmark to date. They were all built in a curiously short period between 975 and 980 CE, during the reign of King Harald Bluetooth. They are massive, circular structures typically between 140 to 250 metres in diameter.
"They posed a real enigma about the Viking Age when they were first discovered," Sindbæk said. "The Vikings were perceived to be a society of local petty kings competing over power."
This kind of organised control was usually associated with much later medieval kingship. The fortresses represented a surprising degree of organisation and centralisation that was not easily found in other surviving aspects of Viking culture. So how did such large and expensive structures suddenly appear in the Danish landscape around the year 975?
[Kara'ites in Crimea were Jews, might link to Kara.khan.ids.]
The Karakhanids were the first Muslim Turkish state beyond the Syr Darya. The most important work from the period is "Qutadghu Bilig", written by Yusuf Khass Hajip in the 11th century for the Prince of Kashgar. The text has stories about the author and his society's beliefs, feelings and practices with regard to many topics, and depicts interesting facets of various aspects of life, as well as state issues in the Karakhanid Empire. It has often been described as a Central Asian version of the Mirror for Princes genre. Read more at https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2017/08/karakhanid-tomb-unearthed-in-kyrgyzstan.html#PHLZ8YtvZLguA6Bu.99
Pleistocene footprints show intensive use of lake margin habitats by Homo erectus groups Scient Reports 121 doi 10.1038/srep26374 Neil Roach, Kevin Hatala, Kelly Ostrofsky & Brian Richmond 2016
Reconstructing hominin paleo-ecology is critical for understanding our ancestors' diets, social organizations & interactions with other animals. Most paleo-ecological models lack fine-scale resolution, due to fossil hominin scarcity & the time-averaged accumulation of faunal assemblages.
Here we present data from 481 fossil tracks from NW-Kenya, incl. 97 hominin footprints attributed to H.erectus. These tracks are found in multiple sedimentary layers, spanning c 20 ky. Taphonomic experiments show: each of these trackways represents minutes to no more than a few days in the lives of the individuals moving across these paleo-landscapes. The geology & associated vertebrate fauna place these tracks in a deltaic setting, near a lake-shore, bordered by open grasslands. Hominin footprints are disproportionately abundant in this lake margin environment, relative to hominin skeletal fossil frequency in the same deposits. Accounting for preservation bias, this abundance of hominin footprints indicates repeated use of lake-shore habitats by H.erectus. Clusters of very large prints moving in the same direction further suggest these hominins traversed this lake-shore in multi-male groups. Such reliance on near water environments & possibly aquatic-linked foods may have influenced hominin foraging behavior & migratory routes across & out of Africa. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303372868_Pleistocene_footprints_s how_intensive_use_of_lake_margin_habitats_by_Homo_erectus_groups
Posted by vanilla (Member # 22812) on :
There is reason to believe that Australo-Melanesians used to occupy a much larger area than they do today
Last year, it was suggested Neanderthals starting breeding with archaic modern humans around 100,000 years ago. These two new papers pushes that back even further to between 130,000 to 145,000 years ago. And location of these sub-species encounters probably happened in the Middle East or the Arabian Peninsula, and before modern humans spread en masse into Europe and Asia. When comparing Vindija 33.19 genome to the UK Biobank database, with 112,338 modern individuals, the group identified that modern populations carry between 1.8 to 2.6% of Neanderthal DNA, which is higher than the previous estimates of about 1.5 to 2.1%. Curiously, East Asians carry about 2.3 to 2.6% Neanderthal DNA, while people from western Europe and Asia, on the other hand have retained about 1.8 to 2.4% DNA. African populations have virtually none because their ancestors did not mate with Neanderthals.
Straight hair from Neanderthals
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
the earlier estimate for Neanderthal-human was 1-4%
and Denisova 3% to 5% of the DNA of Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians
One recent article was talking about evidence of a different hominid mixture detected in an African sample
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Evolutionary geneticist Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania, the lead author of the new study measured the reflectance of light on the skin of 2,092 people from Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Botswana along with Nicholas Crawford. The eastern African groups, like the Mursi and Surma, had the darkest skin on objective reflectance assessments, and the lightest are the San with shades between such as the Agaw.
Concurrently, they collected blood samples of 1,570 of these people for genetic studies and sequenced more than 4 million SNPs. They found 8 sites of the human genome that are particularly associated with the level of skin pigmentation which makes up for 30% of the variation in skin tone we see. Four key areas of the genome, which emerged 900,000 years ago, have specific SNPs that correlate directly with skin color.
SLC24A5, that gene I commented on before, and that we’ve known about for over 12 years to be associated with lighter skin tones, is common in some Ethiopian populations. Variants of this gene appeared 30,000, likely from Middle Eastern groups returning to eastern Africa. Variants of two neighboring genes, HERC2 and OCA2, which are also associated with light skin, eyes, and hair phenotypes seen in Europeans ultimately arose in Africa. The SNPs we see in Europeans are ancient and common in the light-skinned San people. The team proposes that these SNPs arose in Africa over 1 million years ago and spread later to Europeans and Asians. Which is incredible and I’ll comment on later.
I think the most dramatic discovery is of MFSD12. Two SNPs which decrease expression of this gene were found in high frequencies in people with the darkest skin. They confirmed in culture cells that these mutant MFSD12 genes lead to more eumelanin. These variants arose about a 500,000 years ago, suggesting that human ancestors before that time may have had moderately dark skin, rather than the deep black hue created today by these mutations. These same two variants are found in Melanesians, Australian Aborigines, and some Indians, which implies that these groups may have inherited the variants from ancient migrants from Africa who followed a “southern route” out of East Africa, along the southern coast of India to Melanesia and Australia.
The latest findings suggest that some particularly dark skin tones evolved relatively recently from paler genetic variants, and these people migrated out of Africa. SNPs in OCA2 and HERC2 that are associated with lighter skin are ancient, over 1 million years old and come from Africa.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
A new study in Current Biology analyzed the entire genome of the Tianyuan man who was found near Beijing, China and lived around 40,000 years ago. The Tianyuan man’s genome marks the earliest ancient DNA from East Asia, but this is not the first time we have studied Tianyuan’s genes.
The Tianyuan skeleton was unearthed near the Zhoukoudian site, about 50 km southwest of Beijing. In 2013 paper in PNAS, the same group that published the Current Biology paper showed there is a closer relationship of Tianyuan to present-day Asians, based off his genes, than to present-day Europeans. At that time it was suggested that present-day Asian history has a deep lineage as far back as 40,000 years ago. In the last 4 years, we have had more data showing that modern Europeans derive from more prehistoric populations which separated early from other early non-African populations soon after the migration out of Africa. This hasn’t changed our understanding of East Asian ancestry however, showing that Tianyuan’s genetic similarity to Asians remained in comparisons including ancient Europeans without mixed ancestry… But, most interestingly it was surprising that when they compared Tianyuan to the 35,000-year-old individual from Belgium, GoyetQ116-1, who in other ways reflected an ancient European, he shared some genetic similarity to the Tianyuan individual that no other ancient Europeans shared. This suggests that the two populations represented by the Tianyuan and GoyetQ116-1 individuals derived some of their ancestry from a sub-population prior to the European-Asian separation.
-- http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27240370/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/worlds-first-dog-lived-years-ago-ate-big/#.WeI7H7pFzDd An international team of scientists has just identified what they believe is the world's first known dog, which was a large and toothy canine that lived 31,700 years ago and subsisted on a diet of horse, musk ox and reindeer, according to a new study. The discovery could push back the date for the earliest dog by 17,700 years, since the second oldest known dog, found in Russia, dates to 14,000 years ago. Remains for the older prehistoric dog, which were excavated at Goyet Cave in Belgium, suggest to the researchers that the Aurignacian people of Europe from the Upper Paleolithic period first domesticated dogs. Fine jewelry and tools, often decorated with depictions of big game animals, characterize this culture.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
"Most alleles associated with light and dark pigmentation in our dataset are estimated to have originated prior to the origin of modern humans ~300 ky ago (26). In contrast to the lack of variation at MC1R, which is under purifying selection in Africa (61), our results indicate that both light and dark alleles at MFSD12, DDB1, OCA2, and HERC2 have been segregating in the hominin lineage for hundreds of thousands of years (Fig. 4). Further, the ancestral allele is associated with light pigmentation in approximately half of the predicted causal SNPs; Neanderthal and Denisovan genome sequences, which diverged from modern human sequences 804 kya (62), contain the ancestral allele at all loci. These observations are consistent with the hypothesis that darker pigmentation is a derived trait that originated in the genus Homo within the past ~2 million years after human ancestors lost most of their protective body hair, though these ancestral hominins may have been moderately, rather than darkly, pigmented (63, 64)." N. G. Crawford et al., Science 10.1126/science.aan8433 (2017).
> Crawford, N.G., Kelly, D.E., Hansen, M.E., > Beltrame, > M.H., Fan, S., Bowman, S.L., Jewett, E., Ranciaro, > A., > Thompson, S., Lo, Y. and Pfeifer, S.P., 2017. > Loci > associated with skin pigmentation identified in > African populations. Science, p.eaan8433.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
German ape
Evidence of a chimpanzee-sized ancestor of humans but a gibbon-sized ancestor of apes.
Abstract
Body mass directly affects how an animal relates to its environment and has a wide range of biological implications. However, little is known about the mass of the last common ancestor (LCA) of humans and chimpanzees, hominids (great apes and humans), or hominoids (all apes and humans), which is needed to evaluate numerous paleobiological hypotheses at and prior to the root of our lineage. Here we use phylogenetic comparative methods and data from primates including humans, fossil hominins, and a wide sample of fossil primates including Miocene apes from Africa, Europe, and Asia to test alternative hypotheses of body mass evolution. Our results suggest, contrary to previous suggestions, that the LCA of all hominoids lived in an environment that favored a gibbon-like size, but a series of selective regime shifts, possibly due to resource availability, led to a decrease and then increase in body mass in early hominins from a chimpanzee-sized LCA.
Vallesian hominid-ape-gibbon of Germany, teeth found at Rhine river 9ma, preceded African great apes by 6ma.
Lutz, H., Engel, T., Lischewsky, B. & Berg, A. von (2017): A new great ape with startling resemblances to African members of the hominin tribe, excavated from the Mid-Vallesian Dinotheriensande of Eppelsheim. First report (Hominoidea, Miocene, MN 9, Proto-Rhine River, Germany). – Mainzer naturwissenschaftliches Archiv 54: xx-xx, 14 figs.; Mainz. A new great ape with startling resemblances to African members of the hominin tribe, excavated from the Mid-Vallesian Dinotheriensande of Eppelsheim. First report (Hominoidea, Miocene, MN 9, Proto-Rhine River, Germany). Herbert Lutz 1 , Thomas Engel 1 , Bastian Lischewsky 1 & Axel von Berg 2 1 Naturhistorisches Museum Mainz
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Nice article about sorghum domestication in the Sudan, Butana "Meroe island"
It is interesting that we always hear about Plant domestication beginning in the Middle East--but they never present actual sites and dates for this doemstication. Yet we do have dates for early plan domestication in Africa.
Moreover, they are finally admitting thatMillet was taken to India by Africans. I had already made this point back in 2008 web page .
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Tony Capra of Vanderbilt University in Nashville hypothesized last week at the annual meeting of The American Society of Human Genetics that genes we have considered to variant of Neanderthals and inherited to modern humans outside of Africa are not particularly Neanderthal genes, but rather, represent ancestral humans.
[DD: African genes, or perhaps pan-tropical-rainforest-belt-genes]
In other words, we can thank Neanderthals for giving back thousands of ancient African gene variants that were lost to Eurasians as their ancestors swept out of Africa in small bands, perhaps 60,000 to 80,000 years ago.
He and his team came about this finding by identifying African variants as they scoured the genomes of more than 20,000 people in the 1000 Genomes Project and Vanderbilt's BioVU data bank of electronic health records. Curiously they found vast stretches of chromosomes inherited from Neanderthals also carried ancient alleles, or mutations, found in all the Africans such as the Yoruba, Esan, and Mende peoples. In fact, there's about 47,261 of these SNPs across the genomes of Europeans and 56,497 SNPs in Asians. In Eurasians people, these alleles are only found next to Neanderthal genes, suggesting all this DNA was acquired at the same time, when the ancestors of today's Eurasians mated with Neanderthals roughly 50,000 years ago. h/t Kambiz Kamrani @ Anthropology.net
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Rise of East African Plateau dated by whale fossil Old bones' elevation constrains timing of uplift that influenced human evolution Ashley Yeager 2015
A 17-Ma whale fossil is helping scientists pinpoint when the E.African Plateau started to rise. Determining when the uplift happened has implications for understanding human evolution, scientists say. Shifts in the Earth's mantle pushed the E.African Plateau upward between 17 & 13.5 Ma. <http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1421502112> Their analysis was based on a Turkana ziphiid fossil, discovered at the edge of the plateau in Kenya in 1964. The beaked whale's skull was described in a 1975 paper, then misplaced until 2011, when it was rediscovered in a fossil collection kept at Harvard.
(Moroto, Uganda, where Morotopithecus ?17 Ma was found (the first eu-hominoid?), is now at 1380 m above sea-level --mv)
A 17-My-old whale constrains onset of uplift and climate change in east Africa Henry Wichura cs 2015 PNAS 112
An enigmatic fossil of the deep-diving open-ocean whale family Ziphiidae, 740 km inland, at 620 m elevation in West Turkana, Kenya was re-discovered, after it went missing for >30 yrs. This stranded whale fossil provides the first constraint on the initiation of E.African uplift from near sea level at 17 Ma, limiting the timing & initial elevation of environmental change indicated by geo-dynamic & climatic modeling, paleo-sols, isotopes, paleo-botany & the mammalian fossil record. At 17 Ma, - elevation was low, - rainfall was high, - vegetation was forested, - mammalian communities contained immigrants & native African spp incl.diverse primates. Uplift resulted in increasing aridity & open habitats that drove human evolution.
Timing & magnitude of surface uplift are key to understanding the impact of crustal deformation & topographic growth on atmospheric circulation, environmental conditions & surface processes. Uplift of the E.African Plateau is linked to mantle processes, but paleo-altimetry data are too scarce to constrain plateau evolution & subsequent vertical motions associated with rifting.
Here, we assess the paleo-topographic implications of a beaked whale fossil from the Turkana region, found 740 km inland from the present-day coastline of the Indian Ocean, at an elevation of 620 m. The specimen is ?17 My old, it represents the oldest derived beaked whale known, consistent with molecular estimates of the emergence of modern strap-toothed whales Mesoplodon. The whale traveled from the Indian Ocean inland along an east-ward-directed drainage system controlled by the Cretaceous Anza Graben, it was stranded slightly above sea-level. Surface uplift from near sea-level coincides with paleo-climatic change - from a humid environment - to highly variable & much drier conditions, this altered biotic communities, and drove evolution in E.Africa, including that of primates.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: Tony Capra of Vanderbilt University in Nashville hypothesized last week at the annual meeting of The American Society of Human Genetics that genes we have considered to variant of Neanderthals and inherited to modern humans outside of Africa are not particularly Neanderthal genes, but rather, represent ancestral humans.
[DD: African genes, or perhaps pan-tropical-rainforest-belt-genes]
In other words, we can thank Neanderthals for giving back thousands of ancient African gene variants that were lost to Eurasians as their ancestors swept out of Africa in small bands, perhaps 60,000 to 80,000 years ago.
He and his team came about this finding by identifying African variants as they scoured the genomes of more than 20,000 people in the 1000 Genomes Project and Vanderbilt's BioVU data bank of electronic health records. Curiously they found vast stretches of chromosomes inherited from Neanderthals also carried ancient alleles, or mutations, found in all the Africans such as the Yoruba, Esan, and Mende peoples. In fact, there's about 47,261 of these SNPs across the genomes of Europeans and 56,497 SNPs in Asians. In Eurasians people, these alleles are only found next to Neanderthal genes, suggesting all this DNA was acquired at the same time, when the ancestors of today's Eurasians mated with Neanderthals roughly 50,000 years ago. h/t Kambiz Kamrani @ Anthropology.net
These researchers have misinterpreted the data. If Neanderthals acquired the genes 50kya they were carried there by Africans, not Eurasians as assumed by the authors of this study.
The most interesting thing about their findings is that the Mande expanded all the way up to China, and the Yoruba lived in Anatolian for an extended period of time before they migrated back into Africa.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: [qb] Tony Capra of Vanderbilt University in Nashville hypothesized last week at the annual meeting of The American Society of Human Genetics that genes we have considered to variant of Neanderthals and inherited to modern humans outside of Africa are not particularly Neanderthal genes, but rather, represent ancestral humans.
[DD: African genes, or perhaps pan-tropical-rainforest-belt-genes]
In other words, we can thank Neanderthals for giving back thousands of ancient African gene variants that were lost to Eurasians as their ancestors swept out of Africa in small bands, perhaps 60,000 to 80,000 years ago.
He and his team came about this finding by identifying African variants as they scoured the genomes of more than 20,000 people in the 1000 Genomes Project and Vanderbilt's BioVU data bank of electronic health records. Curiously they found vast stretches of chromosomes inherited from Neanderthals also carried ancient alleles, or mutations, found in all the Africans such as the Yoruba, Esan, and Mende peoples. In fact, there's about 47,261 of these SNPs across the genomes of Europeans and 56,497 SNPs in Asians. In Eurasians people, these alleles are only found next to Neanderthal genes, suggesting all this DNA was acquired at the same time, when the ancestors of today's Eurasians mated with Neanderthals roughly 50,000 years ago. h/t Kambiz Kamrani @ Anthropology.net
These researchers have misinterpreted the data. If Neanderthals acquired the genes 50kya they were carried there by Africans, not Eurasians as assumed by the authors of this study.
Modern day Africans have very little to no Neanderthal DNA but recent research suggests admixture of Afruwith other hominids in Africans
Anatomically modern humans originated in Africa by about 200,000 years ago. The accepted theory is that there were two dispersals from African populations,[12][35] an early one via northern Africa which left traces in some human populations,[36] and a second one which populated the entire world.
The first dispersal took place between 130,000–115,000 years ago via northern Africa, but died out or retreated.[3][4][5][6] Chinese researchers question this extinction, claiming that modern humans were present in China already 80,000 years ago.[7]
A second dispersal took place via the so-called Southern Route, either before[37] or after[12][13] the Toba event, which happened between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago.[37] This dispersal followed the southern coastline of Asia, crossing about 250 kilometres (155 mi) of sea, and colonized Australia by around 65,000-50,000 years ago. According to this theory, Europe was populated either by a migration out of India, which was repopulated from southeast Asia after the Toba-event (pre-Toba hypothesis), or by an early offshoot which settled the Near East and Europe (post-Toba hypothesis).[12][13]
Nonetheless, in July 2017, evidence suggests that Homo sapiens may have migrated from Africa as early as 270,000 years ago, much earlier than the 70,000 years ago thought previously
. ___________________________________________
Therefore human admixture with Neanderthals could have taken place in the middle east. Modern day Africans have very little to no Neanderthal DNA
____________________________
Proportion of admixture
The proportion was estimated to be 1.5–2.1% in Prüfer et al. (2013),[3] but it was later revised to a higher 1.8–2.6% and it was noted that East Asians carry more Neandertal DNA (2.3-2.6%) than Western Eurasians (1.8-2.4%) in Prüfer et al. (2017).[4] Lohse and Frantz (2014) infer an even higher rate of 3.4–7.3%.[5]
_______________________________
The proportions are not very high
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
The region with the strongest associations was in and around the SLC24A5 gene, one variant of which is known to play a role in light skin color in European and some southern Asian populations and is believed to have arisen more than 30,000 years ago. This variant was common in populations in Ethiopia and Tanzania that were known to have ancestry from southeast Asia and the Middle East, suggesting it was carried into Africa from those regions and, based on its frequency, may have been positively selected.
Another region, which contains the MFSD12 gene, had the second strongest association to skin pigmentation. This gene is expressed at low levels in depigmented skin in individuals with vitiligo, a condition where the skin loses pigment in some areas.
"I still rememeber the 'ah ha!' moment when we saw this gene was associated with vitiligo," said Crawford. "That's when we knew we'd found something new and exciting."
The team found that mutations in and around this gene that were associated with dark pigmentation were present at high frequencies in populations of Nilo-Saharan ancestry, who tend to have very dark skin, as well as across sub-Saharan populations, except the San, who tend to have lighter skin. They also identified these variants, as well as others associated with dark skin pigmentation, in South Asian Indian and Australo-Melanesian populations, who tend to have the darkest skin coloration outside of Africa.
"The origin of traits such as hair texture, skin color and stature, which are shared between some indigenous populations in Melanesia and Australia and some sub-Saharan Africans, has long been a mystery." Tishkoff said. "Some have argued it's because of convergent evolution, that they independently evolved these mutations, but our study finds that, at genes associated with skin color, they have the identical variants associated with dark skin as Africans.
"Our data are consistent with a proposed early migration event of modern humans out of Africa along the southern coast of Asia and into Australo-Melanesia and a secondary migration event into other regions. However, it is also possible that there was a single African source population that contained genetic variants associated with both light and dark skin and that the variants associated with dark pigmentation were maintained only in South Asians and Australo-Melanesians and lost in other Eurasians due to natural selection." Read more at https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2017/10/genes-responsible-for-diversity-of.html#7GScshZBu5ffpee7.99 Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
A collection of 27 fragmented statues of the lioness goddess Sekhmet has been uncovered during excavation work at the King Amenhotep III funerary temple at the Kom El-Hettan area on Luxor’s west bank. The discovery was made by an Egyptian-European archaeological mission led by archaeologist Hourig Sourouzian as part of the King Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Oman was home to a civilisation almost 4,000 years old and had contacts with parts of present day Pakistan, a study has confirmed.
[Note: The Shahra of Oman raise cattle in dome huts and caves, where they burn frankinsence to fumigate.It is the only place in Arabia that has kept cattle continuously, other places became desert.]
“There are initial indications of its external relations with Sindh, in which the pottery or the storage jar, which was manufactured in the civilisation of Harappa, then in Sindh,” a statement from the university read.
It is believed that the place of manufacture of the pottery found in Dahwa is located in the central region of the Sindh valley in Pakistan, specifically the Mohenjodaro region, where archaeologists found the largest city in the world dating back to the early Bronze Age (2500-2000 BC).
Archaeologists also believe that this pottery was used to transport some products from the Indus Valley by small boats across the Indus River to the shores of the Arabian Sea. They were transported by larger boats to a port near the wilayat of Saham and then were carried on shoulders for 24 kilometers inwards through the edges of the Hajar Mountains to the Dahwa area. The strong presence of Sindh pottery in Dahwa indicates the extent of trade activity that prevailed between the Oman and Sindh during the early Bronze Age.
The nature of the materials that were imported from Sindh and transported in these jars has not yet been identified. It is known that the Oman was famous for the export of copper to Sindh, Mesopotamia and Iran during the period of Umm Al Nar (Mother of fire) culture.
https://www.livescience.com/61285-stone-tools-found-in-saudi-arabia.html > > More than 1,000 stone artifacts, some of which may be up to 1.76 million years old, have been discovered at Wadi Dabsa, in southwest Saudi Arabia near the Red Sea. > > The artifacts, which were found in what is now an arid landscape, date to a time when the climate was wetter; they may provide clues as to how and when different hominins left Africa, researchers said. > > The stone artifacts include the remains of hand axes, cleavers (a type of knife), scrapers (used to scrape the flesh off of animal hides), projectile points (that would have been attached to the ends of spears), piercers (stone tools that can cut small holes through hide or flesh) and hammer stones
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Sheba/Saaba, Dedan, Asir/Asshur linked
Genesis 25:3 Commentaries: Jokshan became the father of Sheba ...
biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/25-3.htm
Sheba, Dedan, and Asshurim are recurring names Genesis 10:7, Genesis 10:22, Genesis 10:28, describing other tribes of Arabs equally unknown. The three sons of Dedan may be traced in the tribe Asir of the south of Hejaz, the Beni Leits of Hejaz, and the Beni Lam of the borders of Mesopotamia.
Luzia et al ancestors were from a SEAsian-Papuan group that used bark-canoes (from Sago palm processing) riding the north Pacific Gyre of the warm-water Kuroshio current going up the Pacific coast when Beringia blocked today's cold Arctic current, northeastward-eastward (south of Beringia) then southward to California & Honduras to the equator where they met the northflowing Antarctic current and landed. AmerIndians arrived later from Mexico, their journey had begun earlier in Siberia. DD
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Ballito Beach boy
Being able to extract DNA and then sequence the full genomes of ancient human remains from tropical coasts is often considered precarious because of the warm, humid climate. Yet, we have now demonstrated the successful sequencing of full genomes (i.e. gaining the information of all chromosomes – including autosomes, X-chromosomes, Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA) obtained from Stone Age human remains found along the tropical east coast of southern Africa.1 With a minimalist sampling strategy, causing the least amount of morphological damage, we sequenced genome-wide data from three sets of approximately 2000-year-old human remains found 60 years ago on the Ballito and Doonside beaches of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. One set of remains – those of a young boy (Figure 1) – yielded a remarkably complete genome, where every position was covered by sequenced DNA (on average) 13 times
Ancient human DNA: How sequencing the genome of a boy from Ballito Bay changed human history
Marlize Lombard1 Mattias Jakobsson1,2,3 Carina Schlebusch1,2 AFFILIATIONS: 1Centre for Anthropological Research & Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa 2Department of Organismal Biology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden 3SciLife Lab, Uppsala, Sweden CORRESPONDENCE TO: Marlize Lombard EMAIL: mlombard@uj.ac.za KEYWORDS: human genome; hunter– gatherer; Homo sapiens; population split-time estimations HOW TO CITE: Lombard M, Jakobsson M, Schlebusch C. Ancient human DNA: How sequencing the genome of a boy from Ballito Bay changed human history. S Afr J Sci. 2018;114(1/2), Art. #a0253, 3 pages. http://dx.doi. org/10.17159/sajs.2018/a0253
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Importance of UV: EDAR evolution
Photograph of human upper incisors with significant "shoveling," anatomical variation influenced by the EDAR V370A allele alongside an increase in mammary duct branching [Credit: Christy G. Turner, II, courtesy G. Richard Scott]The genetic mutation, which probably arose 20,000 years ago, increases the branching density of mammary ducts in the breasts, potentially providing more fat and vitamin D to infants living in the far north where the scarcity of ultraviolet radiation makes it difficult to produce vitamin D in the skin.If the spread of this genetic mutation is, in fact, due to selection for increased mammary ductal branching, the adaptation would be the first evidence of selection on the human maternal-infant bond."This highlights the importance of the mother-infant relationship and how essential it has been for human survival," said Leslea Hlusko, an associate professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley.As for the teeth, it just so happens that the gene controlling mammary duct growth also affects the shape of human incisors. Consequently, as the genetic mutation was selected for in an ancestral population living in the far north during the last Ice Age, shovel-shaped incisors became more frequent too. Shoveled incisors are common among Native Americans and northeastern Asian populations but rare in everyone else.Hlusko and her colleagues outline the many threads of evidence supporting the idea in an article published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The finding could also have implications for understanding the origins of dense breast tissue and its role in breast cancer.For the study, Hlusko and her colleagues assessed the occurrence of shovel-shaped incisors in archeological populations in order to estimate the time and place of evolutionary selection for the trait. They found that nearly 100 percent of Native Americans prior to European colonization had shoveled incisors, as do approximately 40 percent of East Asians today.The team then used the genetic effects that are shared with dental variation as a way to discern the evolutionary history of mammary glands because of their common developmental pathway."People have long thought that this shoveling pattern is so strong that there must have been evolutionary selection favoring the trait, but why would there be such strong selection on the shape of your incisors?" Hlusko said. "When you have shared genetic effects across the body, selection for one trait will result in everything else going along for the ride."The vitamin D connectionGetting enough vitamin D, which is essential for a robust immune system and proper fat regulation as well as for calcium absorption, is a big problem in northern latitudes because the sun is low on the horizon all year long and, above the Arctic Circle, doesn't shine at all for part of the year. While humans at lower latitudes can get nearly all the vitamin D they need through exposure of the skin to ultraviolet light, the scarce UV at high latitudes forced northern peoples like the Siberians and Inuit to get their vitamin D from animal fat, hunting large herbivores and sea mammals.But babies must get their vitamin D from mother's milk, and Hlusko posits that the increased mammary duct branching may have been a way of delivering more vitamin D and the fat that goes with it.Geography of Beringia and levels of UV radiation. (A) Map of Beringia today. Cross-hatching indicates the region in which levels of UVMED (defined as the amount of UV radiation that will produce minimal erythema) that reach the Earth's surface are too low to promote cutaneous synthesis of vitamin D in humans on a year-by-year basis, requiring dietary supplementation. The black and white region marks the Arctic Circle, which has even less UV-B exposure, as would be expected from the increased latitude. The areas below the Arctic Circle in white and light blue are shallow seas as discerned from modern bathymetry, indicating land that would have been exposed during the LGM. (B) Map of Beringia during the Last Glacial Maximum showing the exposure of land at 117 meters below current sea level and the reconstructed terrestrial environments. The shrub tundra is the only area biologically productive enough to support a human population of the size estimated by molecular data. This population was genetically isolated for 2,500-9,000 years because of the ice to the east and extensive mesic tundra to the west [Credit: Leslea Hlusko, UC Berkeley]Hlusko, who specializes in the evolution of teeth among animals, in particular primates and early humans, discovered these connections after being asked to participate in a scientific session on the dispersal of modern humans throughout the Americas at the February 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. In preparing her talk on what teeth can tell us about the peopling of the New World, she pulled together the genetics of dental variation with the archaeological evidence to re-frame our understanding of selection on incisor shape.Incisors are called "shovel-shaped" when the tongue-side of the incisors -- the cutting teeth in the front of the mouth, four on top, four on the bottom -- have ridges along the sides and biting edge. It is distinctive of Native Americans and populations in East Asia -- Korea, Japan and northern China -- with an increasing incidence as you travel farther north. Unpersuaded by a previously proposed idea that shoveled incisors were selected for use softening animal hides, she looked at explanations unrelated to teeth.The genetic mutation responsible for shoveling -- which occurs in at least one of the two copies, or alleles, of a gene called EDAR, which codes for a protein called the ectodysplasin A receptor -- is also involved in determining the density of sweat glands in the skin, the thickness of hair shafts and ductal branching in mammary glands. Previous genetic analysis of living humans concluded that the mutation arose in northern China due to selection for more sweat glands or sebaceous glands during the last ice age."Neither of those is a satisfying explanation," Hlusko said. "There are some really hot parts in the world, and if sweating was so sensitive to selective pressures, I can think of some places where we would have more likely seen selection on that genetic variation instead of in northern China during the Last Glacial Maximum."The Beringian standstillClues came from a 2007 paper and later a 2015 study by Hlusko's coauthor Dennis O'Rourke, in which scientists deduced from the DNA of Native Americans that they split off from other Asian groups more than 25,000 years ago, even though they arrived in North American only 15,000 years ago. Their conclusion was that Native American ancestors settled for some 10,000 years in an area between Asia and North America before finally moving into the New World. This so-called Beringian standstill coincided with the height of the Last Glacial Maximum between 18,000 and 28,000 years ago.According to the Beringian standstill hypothesis, as the climate became drier and cooler as the Last Glacial Maximum began, people who had been living in Siberia moved into Beringia. Gigantic ice sheets to the east prohibited migration into North America. They couldn't migrate southwest because of a large expanse of a treeless and inhospitable tundra. The area where they found refuge was a biologically productive region thanks to the altered ocean currents associated with the last ice age, a landmass increased in size by to the lower sea levels. Genetic studies of animals and plants from the region suggest there was an isolated refugium in Beringia during that time, where species with locally adaptive traits arose. Such isolation is ripe for selection on genetic variants that make it easier for plants, animals and humans to survive."If you take these data from the teeth to interpret the evolutionary history of this EDAR allele, you frame-shift the selective episode to the Beringian standstill population, and that gives you the environmental context," Hlusko said. "At that high latitude, these people would have been vitamin D deficient. We know they had a diet that was attempting to compensate for it from the archaeological record, and because there is evidence of selection in this population for specific alleles of the genes that influence fatty acid synthesis. But even more specifically, these genes modulate the fatty acid composition of breast milk. It looks like this mutation of the EDAR gene was also selected for in that ancestral population, and EDAR's effects on mammary glands is the most likely target of the selection."The EDAR gene influences the development of many structures derived from the ectoderm in the fetus, including tooth shape, sweat glands, sebaceous glands, mammary glands and hair. As a consequence, selection on one trait leads to coordinated evolution of the others. The late evolutionary biologist and author Steven Jay Gould referred to such byproducts of evolution as spandrels."This Beringian population is one example of what has happened thousands of times, over millions of years: Human populations form, exist for a little while and then disperse to form new populations, mixing with other groups of people, all of them leaving traces on modern human variation today," Hlusko said. "An important take-home message is that human variation today reflects this dynamic process of ephemeral populations, rather than the traditional concept of geographic races with distinct differences between them."Author: Robert Sanders | Source: University of California - Berkeley [April 23, 2018] Labels Anthropology, East Asia, Genetics, Indigenous Cultures, North America TANN
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> Who & how? H habilis in coracles(My guess)? > H erectus on rafts? > Endurance runners underwater marathon? > H Flores swimming?
John Hawks apparently agrees with me re. H habilis:
"More relevant today is that we now know that hominins occupied Flores, Sulawesi, and now Luzon, all prior to 100,000 years ago. Flores and Luzon were peopled during the early Middle Pleistocene. What’s more, the Flores hominins may represent a hominin group that ** diverged earlier than the last common ancestor of Homo erectus ** and archaic and modern humans. **This is not a question of Homo erectus dispersing to islands**, it may be a question of a branch of hominins that–except for H. floresiensis–is presently unknown.
John PLEASE CALL THEM ** H habilis **, THE rainforest hominin, with inverted ape bowl nest domi.ciles which they inverted to make waterproof coracles to cross and follow rivers and get to nearby islands, occasionally stranding on small isles to become isolates like H floresensis hobbits.
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Unique video recording of a slave-ship survivor
Zora Neale Hurston and Kossula
At Language Log website
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Both from xyambuatlaya
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Sapiens.org
(Papua cultivation-processing of sago & taro flour into flatbread pancakes @44ka-24ka, followed by Jordan@14ka & Catalhoyuk@9ka bread crumbs of tubers & grains) -
Our results, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also allowed us to reconstruct the ingredients that went into this hunter-gatherer bread. The bread makers used flour ground from wild barley, einkorn, and oat. But we also found an unexpected type of plant: tubers. Club-rush tubers, an aquatic plant of the family of papyrus (Cyperaceae), was frequently present in the archaeobotanical assemblage from Shubayqa 1. These tubers were ground into flour, mixed with cereal flour, and likely baked on a hot stone to produce a flatbread product. The hunter-gatherer bread from Jordan was a multigrain and tuber bread—not necessarily what you might expect purely in terms of maximizing calories for the labor involved. (The plant remains in the fireplace also contained a surprisingly wide variety: from tubers to grasses, seeds, and fruit.)
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Sweet Potato
[www.cell.com]
Behind a pay wall but here is the summary
key points:
•The sweet potato had a single origin (monophyletic) by autopolyploidy* •Ipomoea trifida is most probably the progenitor of the sweet potato •Ipomoea trifida had a dual role in the origin of the sweet potato •The sweet potato arrived in Polynesia by long-distance dispersal in pre-human times
*an individual or strain whose chromosome complement consists of more than two complete copies of the genome of a single ancestral species
""he sweet potato is one of the world’s most widely consumed crops, yet its evolutionary history is poorly understood. In this paper, we present a comprehensive phylogenetic study of all species closely related to the sweet potato and address several questions pertaining to the sweet potato that remained unanswered. Our research combined genome skimming and target DNA capture to sequence whole chloroplasts and 605 single-copy nuclear regions from 199 specimens representing the sweet potato and all of its crop wild relatives (CWRs). We present strongly supported nuclear and chloroplast phylogenies demonstrating that the sweet potato had an autopolyploid origin and that Ipomoea trifida is its closest relative, confirming that no other extant species were involved in its origin. Phylogenetic analysis of nuclear and chloroplast genomes shows conflicting topologies regarding the monophyly of the sweet potato. The process of chloroplast capture explains these conflicting patterns, showing that I. trifida had a dual role in the origin of the sweet potato, first as its progenitor and second as the species with which the sweet potato introgressed so one of its lineages could capture an I. trifida chloroplast. In addition, we provide evidence that the sweet potato was present in Polynesia in pre-human times. This, together with several other examples of long-distance dispersal in Ipomoea, negates the need to invoke ancient human-mediated transport as an explanation for its presence in Polynesia. These results have important implications for understanding the origin and evolution of a major global food crop and question the existence of pre-Columbian contacts between Polynesia and the American continent.""
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Researchers also found fossilized bones belonging to fish and other animals, as well as stone tools and flakes, inside the Maedun cave, he said.
Prior to the South Korean find, the oldest fishing implements were believed to be fishing hooks, made from the shells of sea snails, that were found on a southern Japanese island and said to date back some 23,000 years
Mbuti link hunting nets making an internet to form an arc, the women drive prey into it while men spear the fauna. Did Pygmies add stone sinkers to get schools of small fish in the shallows? Congo Pygmies live along crystalline streams, give birth in them to avoid inciting army ants, discarding the placenta (unlike other terrestrial & arboreal fauna but like aquatic animals), but though they fish by hand, and Wade water with nets on their shoulders, I haven't read of their use to net fish. Some Pygmies use harpoons similar to the Katanda, Uganda harpoon, which may or not be ancient.
Posted by -Just Call Me Jari- (Member # 14451) on :
Thanks, already saw that one, cool. I think the Phoenicians got their alphabet from constellations(Brian Pellar's Astro-Alphabet Zodiac).
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Well, I've found a major Paleo-etymological link:
Molimo@Bambuti: communal feast of shared offerings (antelope, fruit, cigarettes) gotten by a few young men of the band, who set a snare or net in front of each hut to "capture" the ritual donations.
The significance: molimo@Mbuti = molitva@Serbian: male lamb/ram ritually offered/snared by young men for community feast = matla@Aztec: net = malamba(?)@Philippino: net = lamb@English: young male sheep, usually killed for food and vellum/lambskin/parchment, while females were kept for reproduction & milk/cheese.
Probably related to 'Mary had a little lamb (Jesus)'. Too complex to explain now, but more coming.
Very interesting, history supports my idea of tree bark dugout canoes preceding log dugouts.
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Asian domesticated eggplant closest kin live in lowland African savanna
Eggplant's history has been obscure
The eggplant (Solanum melongena) is a species that is a member of the giant genus Solanum (around 1,400 species) within the nightshade family (Solanaceae). Solanum also accounts for two other globally important food crops, the tomato and the potato. But in contrast to these New World crops, the eggplant hails from Asia. Historical documents and genetic data have shown that the eggplant was first domesticated somewhere in the region of China and India. It is only recently, however, that taxonomists have resolved the status of the wild species that are related to the cultivated eggplant - surprisingly many of them are found in the savannahs of Africa
Interesting fact, in 2017 they determined the Congo has been flowing uninterrupted for 17 million years, likely an impenetrable barrier.
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Bark-canoes of Australia and south-east Asia (English text without illustrations) Béat Arnold Le tour du monde en 80 pirogues Part Two ARNOLD Béat, 2015. Bark-canoes of Australia and south-east Asia (English text without illustrations). Le Locle, Editions G d’Encre (Le tour du monde en 80 pirogues, Part Two, PDF). Translated by Jane Davis Note: the English translation of the text is without figures (for the latter, see the original version in French). It can be downloaded free of charge from: www.editions-gdencre.ch/beat-arnold/103-canoe-ecorce-australie-978240501465.html
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> Temiar people of Malaysia Mountains craft rafts from giant bamboo on Nenggiri River. They call giant bamboo awen puak; rattan strips teg lok (once finished tali lok) > > http://linearpopulationmodel.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-manufacture-and-terminology-of.html > > The Manufacture and Terminology of Temiar Bamboo Rafts > > G. W. H. Davison > Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society > Vol. 62, No. 1 (256) (1989), pp. 97-104 > (Link) > > "A raft was constructed from 32 culms of the giant bamboo Gigantochloa scortechinii . . ." > > Related post on this blog: > > Towards a complete generic-level plastid phylogeny of the paleotropical woody bamboos (Poaceae: Bambusoideae)
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Sago palm peel & pound & sieve pith for starch flour for flat bread/pita/pan ~24ka and remaining rind/bark made with adze into bark canoe/piroge in the shape of pisang@Malay: banana or pizzle/penis/petla/post/pike. Removal of pith leaves a pit/hole/hull and a pitch/mound of flour to rinse and make pancakes.
"Pithxagro" cf !hxaro@San: bead
Very interesting match-ups.
What did Natufians 14ka call their canoes & their flat bread?
Punt? Pi(n)ta? (P)harina? Isn't Farina an Afro-Asiatic term for flour?
Harigolu@Indic: coracle
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Ecological Contingency Accounts for Earliest Seagoing in the Western Pacific Ocean Atholl Anderson The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 0:1-11, 2017 (Link)
Abstract
Seagoing at 1 mya to Flores, and sea gaps of >50 km crossed by 47 kya to Sahul, are evidence of earlier maritime migration in the western Pacific than anywhere else. Current opinion attributes the latter to the influence of anatomically modern human cultural complexity on seagoing technology and practice, together with the impetus of serial resource depression. It is argued here that seagoing was unusually advantaged in the western Pacific by a fortuitous conjunction of the warmest seas with a ready availability of large-diameter bamboo that occurred as natural rafts, and which could also be constructed into rafts large enough to transport viable colonizing groups from island to island across Wallacea to Sahul. The geography of Wallacea allowed migration solely by drifting, and exploratory landscape learning might have produced landfalls on Sahul sooner than is implied by subsistence forcing of mobility. Seagoing by drifting raft was much harder from Sahul to the east because of the virtual absence of large-diameter bamboo and longer distance to fewer or small islands; colonization occurred much later.
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Somalian albino cave fish lost DNA to fight UV light via visible light, unlike all other plants & animals
Clues from a Somalian cavefish about modern mammals' dark past
Posted: 11 Oct 2018 03:30 AM PDT
After millions of years living in constant darkness, a species of blind cavefish found only in Somalia has lost an ancient system of DNA repair. That DNA repair system, found in organisms including bacteria, fungi, plants, and most other animals, harnesses energy from visible light to repair DNA damage induced by ultraviolet (UV) light. A Somalian blind cavefish that, after evolving for millions of years in darkness, has lost the...
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Placental mammals: subterranean origins?
Modulation of DNA Repair Systems in Blind Cavefish during Evolution in Constant Darkness Haiyu Zhao, Giuseppe Di Mauro, Sebastian Lungu-Mitea, Daniela Vallone, Cristiano Bertolucci & Nicholas Foulkes 2018 Curr.Biol. doi https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.08.039
€During evolution, the cavefish P.andruzzii has lost photo-reactivation DNA repair. €Only P.andruzzii & placental mammals are known to lack photo-reactivation. €The D-box enhancer coordinates DNA repair in response to ROS, UV & visible light. €Loss of D-box function in P.andruzzii underlies the lack of photo.reactivation.
How does the environment shape the function & evolution of DNA repair systems? In a comparative study using zebrafish & the Somalian blind cavefish Phreatichthys andruzzii, we reveal: - during evolution for millions of years in continuous darkness, photo-reactivation DNA repair function has been lost in P.andruzzii, - this loss results in part from loss-of-function mutations in pivotal DNA-repair genes: C-terminal truncations in P.andruzzii DASH & 6-4 photolyase render these proteins predominantly cytoplasmic, with consequent loss in their functionality, - a general absence of light-, UV- & ROS-induced expression of P.andruzzii DNA-repair genes. This results from a loss of function of the D-box enhancer element, which coordinates & enhances DNA-repair in response to sunlight. Apart from Placentalia, P.andruzzii iq the only species described that lacks the highly evolutionary conserved photo-reactivation function. In the DNA repair systems of P.andruzzii, we may be witnessing the first stages in a process that previously occurred in the ancestors of placental mammals during the Mesozoic era.
If you're trying to understand the earliest days of mammal evolution, the genome of a blind cave-fish might not strike you as the most obvious place to hunt for clues. A study out today, however, suggests that's exactly where you can glimpse our distant ‹ and very dark ‹ past. Animals that live exclusively in lightless caves often share a suite of traits (troglomorphisms): - loss of pigmentation, - loss of vision & of the eyes entirely. The genomes of cave-dwellers have other (not always obvious) mutations & changes in genetic expression (genes remain unchanged, but are turned on or off), showing how the animal adapted to its environment over time. Researchers discovered: the Somalian blind cavefish shares a particular genetic quirk with nearly all mammals that led to the loss of a light-dependent DNA repair system. This particular DNA repair system is "highly conserved": once it evolved, very early in the history of life, it was a trait that was retained by virtually every living thing, from plants to animals to even bacteria. But not in the Somalian blind cavefish or placental mammals (every mammal aside from 5 monotreme spp (e.g. platypus) & a couple 100 marsupials: kangaroos, koalas, wombats, Tasmanian devils etc.). Unlike placentals, marsupials retained a crucial DNA repair kit known as photo-reactivation.
Lights Out
If you're a living thing on Earth exposed to sunlight (whether microbe or megafauna), you get hit with UV radiation, which can damage your DNA: sunlight is the most common & significant factor that leads to mutations & other errors in the genetic code. To promote DNA stability, organisms have DNA repair systems. The most common DNA repair kit is "photo-reactivation", which depends on light, and activates photolyases, that then go to town patching up an organism's genetic blueprint. Photoreactivation is an awesome thing ‹ and it is completely absent in placentals & 1 little cavefish. Placentals evolved a different DNA repair mechanism, not as efficient as photo-reactivation, but +- gets the job done. It's long been a puzzle in the study of mammal evolution over why & how this large diverse group of animals lost photoreactivation, so crucial a trait for most of the rest of life on Earth. Enter the "nocturnal bottleneck" concept. It was originally proposed decades ago, before genome decoding was a thing, to explain physical & behavioral traits common to mammals, e.g. certain thermo-regulation methods & acute hearing. These traits could be explained, went the theory, if the earliest mammals were generally nocturnal (most mammals today still are). And when you look at the ebb & flow of dominant animals over millions of years, it makes sense. There is some disagreement over where to draw the line between true mammals & ancestors that were on the evolutionary course to become true mammals, but mammals go back >160 Ma, possibly >200 Ma. Consider what else was 160-200 Ma: dinosaurs. Not just harmless herbivores, but a lot of swift & bitey predators. The fossil record suggests that the earliest/nearly-mammals were small shrew-like creatures. Burrowing into the ground (another typical mammalian trait) & limiting activity to night-time would have afforded some protection from hungry dinosaurs. Once the dinosaurs (except birds) bit the dust at the end-Cretaceous mass extinction 65 Ma, mammals were able to diversify & evolve to occupy all those emptied ecological niches, incl. daytime activity. Bereft of photo-reactivation for millions & millions of years, these later mammals evolved a different, less-efficient way to repair DNA damage. It's not yet known exactly when placentals developed their unique DNA repair kit.
Going To Ground
What if, however, the earliest placental mammals weren't just nocturnal? What if they went a step further and, instead of venturing out of their burrows only at night, didn't venture out at all? What if they stayed safe by staying subterranean? Let's hop back to P.andruzzii for a moment. Unlike many other cavefish, which occasionally may be exposed to sunlight or which have been shut off from it for merely 1000s of years, researchers believe the Somalian blind cave-fish has lived in the absence of sunlight for millions of years ‹ long enough, the authors say, to lose the ability to use sunlight to repair DNA damaged by sunlight: did P.andruzzii share a loss of photo-reactivation with placentals, because it shares the same lightless lifestyle as the animals at the very dawn of mammal evolution. It's not a conclusive finding: e.g. there's no evidence that the earliest placentals had the troglomorphisms you'd expect to find in an animal living without light. It's a tantalizing clue, however, that suggests maybe our very distant forebears went through not just a nocturnal bottleneck, but a subterranean one. <https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822
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On Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 8:25 PM Daud Deden <daud.deden@gmail.com> wrote:
From whence the cubical form so common today? Stone blocks of pyramids & castle walls, bricks in ziggurats, apparently started at the same place that flatbread was made.
Papuans encountered giant wombats in Australia, plausibly while paddling their new sago palm rind canoes.
Wombats are the only animals on Earth that excrete cubical feces, iow, they poop cubes, which they sometimes stack to attract the opposite sex.
The oldest ground-stone axes are from coastal Northern Australia.
Manure is widely used in India etc. in making clay bricks, adobe huts, flooring & walls, giving tensile strength. The Indus Valley civilization architecture featured sun-dried bricks. Did the design arrive with flat-bread, spatula-spade-paddles & canoes, ground axes, adzes, coconuts, bananas, sugar cane, via Papuan emigrés who eventually settled further west?
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So. Af. Caves redated
<http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0711-0>
UPb-dated flowstones restrict South African early hominin record to dry climate phases. Robyn Pickering, Andy Herries, Jon Woodhead, John Hellstrom, Helen Green, Bence Paul, Terrence Ritzman, David Strait, Benjamin Schoville & Phillip Hancox 2018 Nature <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0711-0.ris>
The Cradle of Humankind preserves a rich collection of fossil hominins representing Australopithecus, Paranthropus & Homo. The ages of these fossils are contentious, and have compromised the degree to which the S.African hominin record can be used to test hypotheses of human evolution. But UPb analyses of horizontally bedded layers of CaCO3 (flow-stone) provide a potential opportunity to obtain a robust chronology. Flowstones are ubiquitous cave features, and provide a palaeo-climatic context: they grow only during phases of increased effective precipitation, ideally in closed caves.
Here we show: flowstones from 8 Cradle caves date to 6 narrow time-intervals between 3.2 & 1.3 Ma. We use a kernel density estimate to combine 29 UPb ages into a single record of flowstone growth intervals. We interpret these as major wet phases: an increased water supply, more extensive vegetation cover & at least partially closed caves allowed for undisturbed semi-continuous growth of the flowstones. The intervening times represent substantially drier phases, during which fossils of hominins & other fossils accumulated in open caves. Fossil preservation, restricted to drier intervals, thus biases the view of hominin evolutionary history & behaviour, it places the hominins in a community of comparatively dry-adapted fauna. Although the periods of cave closure leave temporal gaps in the S.African fossil record, the flowstones themselves provide valuable insights into local & pan-African climate variability. ______
South Africa's hominin record is a fair-weather friend 21.11.18
New research from Robyn Pickering cs is the first to provide a timeline for fossils from the caves within the Cradle of Humankind. It also sheds light on the climate conditions of our earliest ancestors in the area. It corrects assumptions that the region's fossil-rich caves could never be related to each other. In fact, the research suggests fossils from Cradle caves date to just 6 specific time-periods.
Robyn Pickering: "Unlike previous dating work (which often focused on 1 cave, sometimes even just 1 chamber of the cave), we are providing - direct ages for 8 caves & - a model to explain the age of all the fossils from the entire region. Now we can link together the findings from separate caves, and create a better picture of evolutionary history in S-Africa."
The Cradle is a World Heritage Site, made up of complex fossil-bearing caves. It's the world's richest early hominin site, home to nearly 40 % of all known human ancestor fossils (e.g. Au.africanus "Mrs Ples").
Using U-Pb dating, researchers analysed 28 flow-stone layers, found sandwiched between fossil-rich sediment in 8 caves across the Cradle: the fossils in these caves date to 6 narrow time-windows between 3.2 & 1.3 Ma: "The flowstones are the key. We know they can only grow in caves during wet times, when there is more rain outside the cave. By dating the flowstones, we are picking out these times of increased rainfall. We therefore know that during the times in between, when the caves were open, the climate was drier, more like what we currently experience."
This means the early hominins living in the Cradle experienced big changes in local climate, from wetter to drier conditions, at least 6 times between 3 & 1 Ma, but only the drier times are preserved in the caves, skewing the record of early human evolution.
Up until now, the lack of dating methods for Cradle fossils made it difficult to understand the relationship between E & S.African hominin spp. The S.African record has often been considered undateable, compared to E.Africa, where volcanic ash layers allow for high resolution dating.
Andy Herries, co-author: "the S.African record was the first to show Africa as the origin point for humans, but the complexity of the caves & difficultly dating them has meant that the S.African record has remained difficult to interpret. In this study, we show that the flow-stones in the caves can act almost like the volcanic layers of E.Africa, forming in different caves at the same time, allowing us to directly relate their sequences & fossils into a regional sequence."
Pickering began dating the Cradle caves in 2005, as part of her PhD research. This new publication is the result of 13 years of work. The results return the Cradle to the forefront, and open new opportunities to answer complex questions about human history in the region.
Bernard Wood, no co-author:
"Robyn cs have made a major contribution to our understanding of human evolution. This is the most important advance to be made since the fossils were discovered. Dates of fossils matter a lot. The value of the S-African evidence has been increased many-fold by this exemplary study of its temporal and depositional context."
DDeden to me 5 minutes agoDetails Hymn to Ninkasi, god of beer
Bappir@Sum: flatbread, pita pan naan roti brod
You handle the dough, mix with shovel/spade/paddle/spatula in a pit, the bappir (barley flat bread) with date honey. You bake it in big oven, order the hulled grain piles, water the malts on the ground, then soak it in a jar, waves rise then fall, then spread the cooked mash on reed mats to cool, then hold the sweet wort brewed with honey & wine, and filter/sieve/sift into the collecting vat, then pour out the filtered beer like the onrushing Tigris & Euphrates.
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Papua canoe, axe/adze etc.
While smaller shell hoes were used to clear gardens and prepare areas for planting, heavier, hafted stone axes and adzes (emoa) were used for felling timber or for cutting and scraping wood. Landtman (1927: 33) was emphatic that the origin of all stone used by all coastal Papuan peoples was the Torres Strait, as the only naturally occurring stone along the southwest coast is the granitic outcrop of Mabudawan, and he wrote: According to what I was told at Mawata, the Torres Strait Islanders obtained the stones out of which axes (or adzes) and club-heads were made principally from the bottom of the sea, by diving. The diver had a long rope attached underneath one shoulder, by which his companions in the canoe helped him up to the surface when loaded with a heavy stone. The shaping of the stone was effected by a hammer stone and the grinding by means of a somewhat softer stone (Landtman 1933: 45).
However, Haddon, on a later visit to Yam Island in 1914, was shown an isolated place in the bush called Konakan where large stone slabs with deep depressions, used as grinding stones for the manufacture of stone implements, were seen and photographed (Haddon 1935, I: Plate I, figures 1 and 2, and Plate II, figure 1). The stone slabs at Konakan may still be seen today and, according to the present day Yam Islanders, were places where the heads of stone axes (gabagaba) were ground.
Emoa@Torres Straits Isl.: hafted stone axe/adze Gabagaba@Yam Isl.: ground stone axe/adze head
Provisional confirmation of antiquity of adze & canoe making in Papua region.
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Gut microbiome/genome "defines" ethnicity
Journal Reference:
Andrew W. Brooks, Sambhawa Priya, Ran Blekhman, Seth R. Bordenstein. Gut microbiota diversity across ethnicities in the United States. PLOS Biology, 2018; 16 (12): e2006842 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2006842 Cite
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Recent article shows KhoiSan developed lightened skin recently ~ 2- 3,000 years ago from East Africans/West EurAsians.
[My guess is that light skin began around the lowlands of the Dead Sea, and it spread outward, perhaps in part due to woven clothing & the cosmic impact/asteroid that hit the Dead Sea region (Sodom & Gomorrah?) about 3 - 2ka.]
Populations of indigenous people in southern Africa carry a gene that causes lighter skin, and scientists have now identified the rapid evolution of this gene in recent human history.
The gene that causes lighter skin pigmentation, SLC24A5, was introduced from eastern African to southern African populations just 2,000 years ago. Strong positive selection caused this gene to rise in frequency among some KhoeSan populations.
UC Davis anthropologist Brenna Henn and colleagues have shown that a gene for lighter skin spread rapidly among people in southern Africa in the last 2,000 years.
This is a "rare example of intense, ongoing adaptation in recent human history and is the first known example of adaptive gene flow at a pigmentation locus in humans," according to the paper published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Dec. 10.
The findings are based on research by multiple scientists. The primary author, Meng Lin, conducted the research as a graduate student at Stony Brook University, working with anthropologist Brenna Henn, now of the University of California, Davis, Genome Center and Department of Anthropology. Lin is now a post-doctoral researcher in genetics at the University of Southern California.
In previous work, the researchers looked at pigmentation variation in two KhoeSan populations from South Africa by performing a genome-wide association analysis in about 450 individuals. They followed up on the top associated gene, SLC24A5, by simulating population histories with and without positive selection. The DNA and pigmentation sampling took place in the Northern Cape of South Africa in the southern Kalahari Desert and Richtersveld regions.
To control for the possibility that genes in this category show an inflated allele frequency differentiation in general, we computed the same statistic for the Mbuti central African rainforest hunter-gatherer group but found no evidence for selection affecting the response to radiation category.
…
We speculate that the signal for selection in the response to radiation category in the San could be due to exposure to sunlight associated with the life of the Khomani and Juj’hoan North people in the Kalahari Basin, which has become a refuge for hunter-gatherer populations in the last millenia due to encroachment by pastoralist and agriculturalist groups.
I’m a bit puzzled here, because the implication seems to be that the San populations are darker than they were in the past. And yet earlier this summer I saw a talk which strongly suggested that there was a selection in modern Bushman populations for the derived variant of SLC24A5, presumably introduced through admixture from East African populations with Eurasian admixture.
In comparison to their neighbors the San are quite light-skinned, so it’s a reasonable supposition that they have been subject to natural selection recently. The Hadza, in contrast, seem to have the same complexion as their Bantu neighbors.
Posted by yumadro (Member # 22970) on :
Not a new article, but I don't know it it has been posted already.
quote:It has long been said that Christopher Columbus was not the first foreigner to step foot in the Americas by the time he reached there in 1492. Among the theories put forward is that the Vikings, Chinese, Greeks, and Italians may have all reached the New World before Columbus. Now new evidence suggests that the ancient Egyptians had been to the Americas as early as 1,000 BC, and for a surprising reason. German scientist Dr Svetla Balabanova was studying the mummified remains of Lady Henut Taui, a member of the ruling class, when she made a surprising discovery – the mummy contained traces of nicotine and cocaine. Disbelief in the findings led to alternative hypotheses, for example, that the tests were contaminated or the mummies were fakes, but these ideas were disproved and the mummy and the test results were found to be authentic. The results were particularly surprising considering that tobacco and coca plants, which were only found in the Americas at the time, were not exported overseas until the Victorian era in the 19 th century. Could it be that the ancient Egyptians had made it all the way to America 3,000 years ago?
Many Afrocentrics have speculated already that Egyptians visited American continents in ancient times and that some of the native Americans (who were black and not the white like modern history teaching claims) are actually descendants of Egyptians like the original black Hebrews.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
3.6ka vanillin in Megiddo
[Probably from tropical orchid in Africa or Indonesia via trade, not Mexico]
Rosenmops on January 8, 2019 at 5:24 pm According to the BBC children’s series “The Story of Britain” there have always been black people in Britain. And girls wanted to be warriors.
Reply
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Is Hemochromatosis(blood iron hoarding) ever found in (un-ad-mixed Africans?
I wrote to G Cochran this note:
Daud Deden says: January 19, 2019 at 9:27 pm OT. Help? I humbly request you to skim a post I wrote/pasted at sci.anthropology.paleo about a blood iron disorder. Would you please write a blog post with your thoughts on the condition? Consider Hemochromatosis vs anemia in light of evolutionary benefit, soil iron vs iodine, seasonally nomadic H&G (+seafood) vs settled grain agriculturalists with stored/processed grain/dairy/meat high-calorie diet, effects on society, aging etc. (This time it’s personal as well as theoretical). DD
By Michael E. Ruane January 20 As a slave, he was called “Morro” or “Uncle Moreau.”
A dignified man in his 60s, he was small in stature, unfit for hard work and had been enslaved for almost a quarter-century. He spoke limited English.
But his real name was Omar ibn Said. He had been a Muslim scholar in West Africa, where he was abducted in 1807. And in 1831, when few enslaved people in the United States could read or write, he wrote what is thought to be the only surviving slave narrative of its kind, in Arabic.
God reveals his name to Moses as “I am,” from the Hebrew root, “being.” The name YHWH, however, originates in Midian, and derives from the Arabic term for “love, desire, or passion.” Prof. Israel Knohl
quote:It’s been nearly 50 years since geologist and author Dorothy Vitaliano coined the term “geomythology”. This refers to the study of oral traditions from around the world that explain geological and other natural phenomena through metaphor and myth. Geomythology also involves investigating how pre-scientific cultures interpreted the geological and fossil phenomena they encountered in the world around them.
There are many benefits to this work. One is that it confirms how much knowledge and insight existed in pre-scientific cultures. Another is that a knowledge of local geomythology can help palaeontologists to identify and study important fossil sites.
There’s a lot of information about geomythology from places like North America, Europe and China. But very little is known about this field on the African continent, and particularly in southern Africa. We found this surprising: the region is home to the “Cradle of Humankind”, a world heritage site. It’s of critical importance in the origin of modern humans and has a tremendous fossil record, which includes numerous vertebrate trackways – the footprints that ancient species left as they moved around the landscape.
This evidence, coupled with the remarkable tracking ability of groups like the San, suggests that early southern African cultures might have been aware of this evidence in stone and what it represented: remarkable creatures that no longer existed.
We set out to better understand southern Africa’s geomythology. This was done using our combined knowledge, as well as literature searches. Our study features 21 sites across southern Africa – and also lists sites elsewhere in Africa, like Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon and Algeria – that show evidence of geomythology among pre-scientific societies.
Our hope is that this work will form a foundation for further studies, and that in time a diverse non-western, indigenous palaeontological and geomythological heritage will become evident in southern Africa. The resulting knowledge may shed new light on how our ancestors thought and behaved.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
(Rushed, pasted from thread)
...
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Jump to new posts Jump to Latest Posts next oldest topic next newest topic » Hello, DD'eDeN [ log out ] EgyptSearch Forums » Egyptology » Upper Paleolithic Femur from Borneo shows "Negrito" Affinities
- UBBFriend: Email this page to someone! Author Topic: Upper Paleolithic Femur from Borneo shows "Negrito" Affinities Tyrannohotep Avatar Image Member Member # 3735
Rate Member Icon 1 posted 05 February, 2019 07:20 AM Profile for Tyrannohotep Author's Homepage Send New Private Message Edit/Delete Post Reply With Quote Femur associated with the Deep Skull from the West Mouth of the Niah Caves (Sarawak, Malaysia)
From the abstract: quote: The skeletal remains of Pleistocene anatomically modern humans are rare in island Southeast Asia. Moreover, continuing doubts over the dating of most of these finds has left the arrival time for the region's earliest inhabitants an open question. The unique biogeography of island Southeast Asia also raises questions about the physical and cultural adaptations of early anatomically modern humans, especially within the setting of rainforest inhabitation. Within this context the Deep Skull from the West Mouth of the Niah Caves continues to figure prominently owing to its relative completeness and the greater certainty surrounding its geological age. Recovered along with this partial cranium in 1958 were several postcranial bones including a partial femur which until now has received little attention. Here we provide a description and undertake a comparison of the Deep Skull femur finding it to be very small in all of its cross-sectional dimensions. We note a number of size and shape similarities to the femora of Indigenous Southeast Asians, especially Aeta people from the Philippines. We estimate its stature to have been roughly 145–146 cm and body mass around 35 kg, confirming similarities to Aeta females. Its extreme gracility indicated by low values for a range of biomechanical parameters taken midshaft meets expectations for a very small (female) Paleolithic East Asian. Interestingly, the second moment of area about the mediolateral axis is enlarged relative to the second moment of area about the anteroposterior axis, which could potentially signal a difference in activity levels or lifestyle compared with other Paleolithic femora. However, it might also be the result of sexual dimorphism in these parameters as well as possibly reflecting changes associated with aging. And from the text of the paper itself: quote: For the Deep Skull femur, we used two sets of equations to estimate its stature: 1) the population-specific formula for modern Thai people of Mahakkanukrauh et al. (2011; Eqs. 5e7 in Table 2); and 2) the ‘pygmies’ equations of Hens et al. (2000; Eqs. 8e11 in Table 2). The second set of prediction formulae was selected because of the possibility that the Deep Skull individual possessed aspects of a tropical phenotype as seen today in some Indigenous groups such as the Aeta, Andaman Islanders and Efe, which includes short stature and short distal limb segments (Stock, 2013; Curnoe et al., 2016). In the absence of formulae for tropical Indigenous iSEA, the African ‘pygmy’ equations provide an alternative model for stature that takes account of this distinctive phenotype. Although, we acknowledge that there is phenotypic variation among ‘pygmy’ populations (Stock, 2013), which may not be adequately captured through the application of models developed from African people to samples drawn from Southeast Asian populations. quote: Because the femoral head is missing from the Deep Skull, maximum femur length was estimated from biomechanical length. In the absence of regression models based on Indigenous Southeast Asians, we estimated stature using two sets of published equations but argue there are compelling reasons for favoring the results based on an African ‘pygmy’ rather than a modern Thai sample. As noted already, the Deep Skull femur shows many phenotypic resemblances to Aeta femora, consistent with anearlier finding by us about its cranium (Curnoe et al., 2016), and islikely on the basis of current population genetics to have been more closely related to them than recent Thai populations... quote: The narrow subtrochanteric ML diameter indicates that the Deep Skull individual would have possessed a narrow bi-iliac breadth (or body width) and therefore a small body mass (Ruff, 1994; Weaver, 2003). This further supports the hypothesis of a tropically adapted body form in the Niah Caves individual. With an estimated body mass of 35 kg (±2 kg) the Deep Skull femur is only slightly larger than the mean for Casiguran Agta females (34 kg) but 6 kg smaller than males (41 kg; Wastl, 1957). Thus, estimated body mass confirms that its strongest affinities are likely with female Aeta (Curnoe et al., 2016). It is noteworthy in this regard that the Bayesian modeled date of 30e39 ka for the Deep coincides with molecular dates for the origins of the Aeta population of ca. 38 ka (Jinam et al., 2017) and that some contemporary Indigenous populations in Borneo such as the Bidayuh possess a ‘Negrito’ genomic component, their ancestry (Lipson et al., 2014). TL;DR: The Upper Paleolithic inhabitants of Borneo would have been short-statured, dark-skinned "Negrito" people like these. Posts: 4839 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004 | IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
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Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
MtDNA from Borneo & east Indonesia in Madagascar, Yemen
I added comments on Pygmoid 38ka Deep skull.
Posted by -Just Call Me Jari- (Member # 14451) on :
Archaeologists uncover South Africa’s lost city of Kweneng
Professor Sadr believes that Kweneng was once home to the Setswana-speaking people. In many respects, it was a thriving city with hundreds of homesteads and trade networks.
The professor holds a strong view that the city functioned similarly to how ours do in contemporary times. It had different levels of government, a civilised burial tradition and civic duties.
“There were four or five levels of local government, probably with regiments organised by age that could be called up for civic work or war. They buried their important dead under the walls of the central cattle enclosures but there was a very strong egalitarian tradition and the king went out of his way to not stand out,”
Near-identical mutation found indigenous family & African families
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
TANN
Monkey hunters of Sri Lanka 45ka From Papua? Stacked walls?
Bow & arrow or blowgun or baited snares to kill arboreal primates, birds, fruit bats? -
Arid zone Hunters Gatherers were Pygmy expansion: MbaTwa/Papua/Manwa/Mbabaram/Namakwa/ etc.
Using the genetic information they obtained to map out the populations' likely relationships to one another, the researchers unexpectedly found that four hunter-gatherer populations--the Hadza, Sandawe, Dahalo, and Sabue, each of whom dwell in distinct areas of eastern Africa--clustered together.
"Typically what we see is that populations cluster by geography, but here we're seeing an exception to that," Tishkoff says. "Here you have three groups that either speak a click language, have remnant clicks, or have an unclassified language, and they're showing a common ancestry even though they're spread across different countries."
Although the researchers could not identify a uniquely shared ancestry between these four groups of eastern African Khoisan hunter-gatherers and the southern African San people, who also speak a language with clicks, they did observe shared ancestry between the San and rainforest hunter-gatherers from Central Africa, despite being geographically far apart.
In contrast, other hunter-gatherer groups, such as the Wata, El Molo, and Yaaku, appeared more genetically similar to neighboring agriculturalist and pastorlist groups.
-
Lake Baringo ~ Lake Barinean, Queensland, Bali/Yali
Baringo lake Part of the East African Rift Valley, Lake Baringo is one of only two freshwater Rift Valley lakes, together with LakeNaivasha, in Kenya. ... Lake Baringo is fed by a number of rivers, but has no visible outlet.
The name Baringo is derived from the word mparingo which means 'lake' in the language of Njemps who live in the areas' south and south-east of the lake. The Ilchamus (sometimes spelled Ilchamus or Iltiamus, also known as Njemps), are a Maa people living south and southeast of Lake Baringo, Kenya. They number about 35,000 and are closely related to the Samburu living more to the north-east in the Rift Valley Province. ... The Chamus (Njemps) lives in Baringo.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
This is "Horn of Wismar". It was discovered more than 100 years ago near Wismar, Pomerania, Germany. It was made in the first half or the second millennium BC.
The decorations on the Horn of Wismar consist of geometric motifs such as circles and spirals as well as with depictions of boats and soldiers carrying spears and shields
The warriors depicted on the Horn of Wismar could be the same warriors who fought around Tollense river bridge. Wismar is located in in a deep bay, protected from the Baltic storms. It is a perfect harbour.
It's location at the entrance into the Baltic Sea makes it a perfect place to locate a fleet which could control the access to the amber coast further east.
The boats depicted on the Wismar horn are the same boats depicted on Late Bronze Age rock carvings across the Baltic Sea. Like these ones from Bohuslän, western Sweden.
===
Spears, shields, horns: Paleo to Neo Homo sapiens society defenses, from Australia to Congo to Japan to Europe etc.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
At Marnie's blog, Linearpopulationmodel, a 1975 article about the Papuan Awa people and their use of bamboo knives.
Wednesday, March 6, 2019 Use of Bamboo by the Awa Richard Loving The Journal of the Polynesian Society Vol. 85, No. 4 (December 1976), pp. 521-542 (22 pages) (Link)
page 522:
"Varieties of Bamboo"
"The Awa of Mobuta Village categorise kabahra, their generic term for bamboo, under six different varieties. The six do not include wild bamboo kuahraq which grows in the climax forest and from which most of their bow strings are made. Neither do they include the thick oriental type bamboo kotawe which the Awa plant primarily for shade. The six varieties of bamboo recognized by the Awa are anaura, mahrampa, pahra, mebe, antau, and niya ana. All six, with the possible exception of mebe, are varieties of Nastus elatus. the common bamboo of the Papua New Guinea Highlands."
page 532:
"Sogiq (knife)"
"Most Awa have scars which testify to the fact that bamboo cuts. However, bamboo does not cut simply by applying pressure to it. For bamboo to cut, it must be moved across the object being cut, or vice versa, because bamboo has small serrations which do the cutting. To obtain the best cutting edge a short section of a hard type of bamboo (anaura or pahra) is put near the fire to make it more brittle. As the sogiq is used it is "sharpened" as necessary simply by pulling off a sixteenth of an inch section along the cutting edge. This is done in such as way as to expose only the harder outside edge of the bamboo, the cutting portion. When used with the proper pulling slicing action, the effectiveness of the sogiq for cutting boneless meat is demonstrated by the fact that most Awa prefer the sogiq to steel knives when both are available. Before steel knives were available to them, the Awa also used the sogiq for peeling vegetables and for most other cutting functions now down with steel knives."
page 537:
"Tayeba (bamboo arrowhead)"
"Only the very hard bamboo, anaura and pahra, is used for making tayeba which is used almost exclusively for hunting pigs."
page 540:
"Pempiah (flutes)"
"All flutes except the secret flutes used in the men's cult are known as pempiah and are made from anaura."
DD: Awa men's secret flute may descend from Mbuti molimo bamboo trumpet? Tayeba@Awa: bamboo Arrowhead, likely source of Malay tat (blowgun dart and tattoo: needle art) and English tatting (stitching with needle) and Aztec atlatl (dart launcher). Sogiq@Awa: serrated bamboo knife likely original source of Malay pisau: knife, and English saw, compare Sahara/Sierra/serrated with Awa kabahra: bamboo, and pahra, a hard bamboo that is fire-hardened for blades. Compare the serrated knife to the ancient super-shark Megalodon's 7" serrated teeth, called the "ultimate curtting tool": https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190304134221.htm A photo of the jaws reminds me of the Pygmy preference for pointy teeth (at puberty, teeth are chipped to make them pointed though not serrated).
Awa fits perfectly as a tribal name, being between Namakwa(San), Kwakwa(Khoekhoe), Efe & Aka/Akka & Baka & Batwa/Tsua/Twa (Afr. Pygmies), Agta & Mamanwa(Philippines),https://goo.gl/images/pgF9CL Mbabaram(Austl Queensland), and part of Papua/Papawa, which is from mBambahtua or so, and perfectly fits the Awa's village name Mobuta as a link to the Ba-Mbuti.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Farming-cooking caused new speech sounds due to neotenous overbite in adults, F, V are agro-induced
Iberia genes: first H&G, then Anatolian farmers, then Indo-European steppe males whiped out local males and mated local females.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Pygmies in Israel-Egypt?
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Another mystery: How did the ancient Egyptian government get water to the miners? The nearest possible well is 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) away from Wadi el-Hudi, and it's possible that it wasn't in use long ago. "Best-case scenario, they were carrying water for 1,000 to 1,500 people a minimum of 3 km, but possibly in from the Nile [River]," which is about 18.6 miles (30 km) away, Liszka said.
During the excavation, the team found a mysterious, 3,400-year-old stela written in the name of a senior official named Usersatet, who was viceroy of Kush, a region to the south of Egypt. It dates to a time when there was no mining activity at Wadi el-Hudi and the site had been abandoned. This leaves archaeologists with the question of why someone bothered to drag the stela 18. 6 miles into the eastern desert and leave it at Wadi el-Hudi.
Archaeologists gather at Northwestern to share latest discoveries about medieval Saharan Africa Block Museum will host archaeologists working in Mali, Morocco and Nigeria, including panel and symposium
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University will host a week-long gathering of six archaeologists from Mali, Morocco, the U.K. and the U.S., working at the cutting-edge of research on medieval Africa.
The unprecedented gathering April 22 to 26 will bring this group of international scholars together for the first time to share their new findings about Africa's understudied medieval period with public audiences. The research points to Africa's participation in extensive trade and global interconnections in the eighth to 16th centuries.
The assembly of archeologists coincides with The Block's exhibition "Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture and Exchange across Medieval Sharan Africa", the first major exhibition addressing the scope of Saharan trade and the shared history of West Africa, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe in the medieval period. The participants have been advisors to the exhibition and are featured in videos throughout the exhibition. Several also wrote essays for the exhibition companion publication.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
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Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
The pronounced curve of this toe bone — the proximal phalanx — from a specimen of Homo luzonensis, an early human found in a Philippine cave, looks more like it came from tree-climbing Australopithecus than from a modern human, scientists say. Callao Cave Archaeology Project
NPR.com, JohnHawks.net, Gcochran9 at westhunterblog, Andrew at dispatches from turtle island report on H luzonensis discovery.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Lead author Cynthia Larbey of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge says, “Our findings provide the archaeological evidence that has previously been lacking to support the hypothesis that the duplication of the starch digestion genes is an adaptive response to an increased starch diet.”
“The results show these small ashy hearths were used for cooking food and starchy roots and tubers were clearly part of their diet, both from the earliest levels at around 120,000 years ago through to 65,000 years ago. So, despite changes in hunting strategies and stone tool technologies, they are still cooking roots and tubers.”
Earliest evidence of the cooking and eating of starch found in South Africa Map showing location of Klasies Cave, South Africa [Credit: C. Larbey & D. Redhouse]
The wider implications of this new research include a glimpse into early human migration. The ability to use cooked roots and tubers as a staple provided greater adaptability for humans to colonise new regions of the world.
Larbey adds, “Starch diet isn’t something that happens when we start farming, but rather, is as old as humans themselves.”
Just trying to see if there was an ancient link between Punt, Phoenicia & Phu Quoc island (VN, where IMO dogs were domesticated for pulling coracles through deep water before wood paddles or sails).
Phu Quoc Phoe (ni) Cia
In this scenario, Punt (Eritrea) was named AFTER arrival by Phoenicians(Kanaka) who then continued north to Mediterranean.
Very unclear though.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
They are the original residents of Mentawai islands and also one of the oldest tribes in Indonesia. Researchers believe that their ancestors lived in the islands since 500 BC.
Fun fact: Mentawai people call their homeland Bumi Sikerei.
2. They have their own belief named Sabulungan.
Although many of them have converted to Christianity and Islam, they have their own belief called Sabulungan. It is an animism belief where they believe all things have spirit and soul. When the spirits are not taken care of well, they might haunt and bring bad luck, including illnesses. The people also have strong belief towards objects they consider holy.
3. Their traditional house is similar to those of other tribes in Sumatra.
They have their own traditional house that looks similar to West Sumatran and Lampung's. Mentawai tribe has three types of houses: Uma, a large house containing 3 to 4 families; Lalep, a smaller house containing only one family; and Rusuk, a home for bachelors and widows.
4. Rice is not their staple food.
Unlike most Indonesian, Mentawai people consume sago as their staple food. The sago is usually grilled. For meat, they usually opt for warthog, chicken, and deer they get from hunting.
5. Their tattoos are more than just decorative images.
Mentawai tattoos are considered as the oldest in the world and for them, tattoos symbolize the balance between foresters and nature. The tattoos are made from natural ingredients such as charcoal. A shaman will pray for the charcoal before using it to make a tattoo.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Carriers of mitochondrial DNA macrohaplogroup L3 basal lineages migrated back to Africa from Asia around 70,000 years ago Vicente M. Cabrera, Patricia Marrero, Khaled K. Abu-Amero, and Jose M. Larruga BMC Evolutionary Biology July 19, 2018 (Link)
Background
The main unequivocal conclusion after three decades of phylogeographic mtDNA studies is the African origin of all extant modern humans. In addition, a southern coastal route has been argued for to explain the Eurasian colonization of these African pioneers. Based on the age of macrohaplogroup L3, from which all maternal Eurasian and the majority of African lineages originated, the out-of-Africa event has been dated around 60-70 kya. On the opposite side, we have proposed a northern route through Central Asia across the Levant for that expansion and, consistent with the fossil record, we have dated it around 125 kya. To help bridge differences between the molecular and fossil record ages, in this article we assess the possibility that mtDNA macrohaplogroup L3 matured in Eurasia and returned to Africa as basal L3 lineages around 70 kya.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
How a member of a family of light-sensitive proteins adjusts skin color Date: May 17, 2019 Source: Brown University Summary: Researchers have found that opsin 3 -- a protein closely related to rhodopsin, the protein that enables low-light vision -- has a role in adjusting the amount of pigment produced in human skin, a determinant of skin color.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
“Indeed, testing of several modern vessels that were filled with filtered and unfiltered beer and buried for three weeks underground, as well as further tests of a clay wine vessel that had not been used for more than two years, revealed that yeast cells can be found in the clay matrix, after an extended period of time.”
Dr. Hazan and co-authors then looked for ancient yeast cells in beer- and mead-related (honey wine) vessels from several archaeological sites.
“We tested ancient ceramic vessels from three different historical periods, found in four different archaeological sites located in Israel,” they explained.
“Each of these sites contained vessels that were assumed to have been associated with fermented beverages.”
The oldest vessels came from two Early Bronze Age (3100 BCE) sites.
“The first site is En-Besor in the northwestern Negev desert, a site relating to the Egyptian activities in southern Canaan during the late 4th millennium BCE. The second site was recently excavated at Ha-Masger Street in Tel Aviv and contained basin fragments, typical of Egyptian-style breweries, perhaps evidence of an Egyptian enclave within a local Canaanite settlement,” the researchers said.
The third site sampled was Philistine Tell es-Safi/Gath in central Israel.
“The Philistines, one of the so-called Sea Peoples, were an important culture in the Levant during the Iron Age (1200 to 600 BCE) and are often mentioned in the Bible as enemies of the Israelites. At the time, Philistine Gath was the largest and most important Philistine site in the region,” the authors said.
“We tested 12 samples from two well-preserved Philistine jugs of a type usually associated with beer or other fermented alcoholic drinks, based on their spout and a strainer spout on their side.”
“The fourth site was Ramat Rachel, located between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. During the Iron Age and Persian periods (ca. 8th to 4th century BCE), it served as the residence of the local representative of the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian empires, as a center for tax collection, and for diacritical feasting events. From this site, we examined four storage jars, typical of the Judean region during the early Persian period.”
The beer-producing yeast strain EBEgT12 isolated from a vessel from the site of En-Besor, Israel. Image credit: Aouizerat et al, doi: 10.1128/mBio.00388-19. The beer-producing yeast strain EBEgT12 isolated from a vessel from the site of En-Besor, Israel. Image credit: Aouizerat et al, doi: 10.1128/mBio.00388-19.
The scientists succeeded in isolating six yeast strains from 21 beer- and mead-related ancient vessels.
They then sequenced the full genome of each strain and found that the yeasts are very similar to those used in traditional African brews, such as the Ethiopian honey wine tej, and to modern beer yeast.
Finally, they tested the ability of the isolated yeast strains to produce drinkable alcoholic beverages.
Three of them — from En-Besor, Tell es-Safi/Gath and Ramat Rachel — produced aromatic and flavorful beer.
“The greatest wonder here is that the yeast colonies survived within the vessel for thousands of years — just waiting to be excavated and grown,” Dr. Hazan said.
“This ancient yeast allowed us to create beer that lets us know what ancient Philistine and Egyptian beer tasted like.”
“By the way, the beer isn’t bad. Aside from the gimmick of drinking beer from the time of King Pharaoh, this research is extremely important to the field of experimental archaeology — a field that seeks to reconstruct the past.”
“Our research offers new tools to examine ancient methods, and enables us to taste the flavors of the past.”
“We are talking about a real breakthrough here,” said co-author Dr. Yitzchak Paz, from the Israel Antiquities Authority.
“This is the first time we succeeded in producing ancient alcohol from ancient yeast. In other words, from the original substances from which alcohol was produced. This has never been done before.”
The findings appear in the journal mBio.
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Tzemach Aouizerat et al. 2019. Isolation and Characterization of Live Yeast Cells from Ancient Vessels as a Tool in Bio-Archaeology. mBio 10: e00388-19; doi: 10.1128/mBio.00388-19
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Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
The Out of East Asia model versus the African Eve model of modern human origins in light of ancient mtDNA findings Ye Zhang & Shi Huang 2019 https://doi.org/10.1101/546234
The 1st molecular model of Hs origins published in 1983 had the mtDNA phylogenetic tree rooted in Asia. This model was subsequently overlooked, and superseded by the African Eve model in 1987, that was premised on the unrealistic infinite site assumption & the now failed molecular clock hypothesis.
We have recently developed a new framework of molecular evolution: the maximum genetic diversity hypothesis (MGD), this has led us to discover a new model of Hs origins, with the roots of uni-parental DNAs placed in E.Asia: - the African mtDNA Eve model has haplotype N as ancestral to R, - our Asia model places R as the ancestor of all.
We here examined ancient mtDNAs from the literature, focusing on the relationship between N & R: all 3 oldest mtDNAs were R: -the 45-ka Ust-Ishim a basal type, -the two ~40-ka samples sub-branch of R.
Among the numerous mtDNAs of 39.5-30-ka, -most were R-subtype U, -only 2 were N samples (Oase1 39.5-ka, Salkhit 34.425-ka).
These N-types are basal, and hence likely close to the root of N.
These ancient DNA findings suggest: basal R is ~5 ky older than basal N, -confirming the E.Asia model & -invalidating the African Eve model.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
They've been pushing this ever since Java Man & Peking Man (Homo erectus) fossils were found a hundred years ago.
Whether from Asian or European minds, the analyzing tools were designed by scientists who un/sub consciously 'rig' algorithms biased towards their own broad racial group's viewpoints.
How could it be otherwise? They weren't born & raised in vacuums.
Results will reflect expectations based on the culture & norms that go back to their earliest literature.
Face it, Eve is only relevant as a "mother of all living" because of the Hebrew book B*reshiyth that affects Israelite, Christian, and Muslim regardless of nationality, race, or colour.
From a figure of a tribe's spirituality to a term in Western based science, Eve.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Humans are very weird apes. Yet apes are very weird primates. And primates are somewhat weird mammals, though not so drastically.
mother nature is a comedienne.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
Comments? Homo sapiens evolution occurred partly in America - From Jack at AAT yahoo group:
There was an ancient radiation of a large bodied ape around 20mya with Gorilla Chimp and LCAs splitting from the more ancient orang. What did that LCA look like? Similar to Siva/Ramipithecus. The Apiths are derived from this
They key differentiation here is the locus of this radiation of the great ape LCA. Was it Asia or Africa? Most anthropologist stupidly think Africa. This is the major mistake of anthropology. The apiths make sense as a halfway point from Siva/Rami/Orang to G/Pan
So why am I 100% on Asia? 1. the viral record shows the 18 Asian apes (hylobates/Orange) have zero African Virus shares by all 41 African Apes and G/Pan.
2. The preponderance of apes are in Asia. With only the highly mobile G/Pan in Africa.
3. The shared viral record shows G/P/Homo leaving Orang, for some time then simultaneously fracturing. With only a single shared virus between Homo/Pan. So it makes sense that the less mobile Orang ancestor was deposited into Borneo area at that time while G/P/H was radiating into Eurasia.
4. David Begun points out in his many studies the massive nature of the Eurasian great ape population in the Miocene.
5. Gorilla and Pan arrived into Africa at different times. Gorilla arriving first and being fully speciated by the time Pan arrives. My guess is 20+\- 4mya for G and 10mya+\- 2mya for P. When Pan enters it radiates broadly (as most invasive species do) extending to the southern tip and back up south of the Congo where the bonobo now resides. The Congo is huge and has run continuously for 17mya. This causes genetic separation between PPaniscus and PTroglodyte.
6. The bonobo has been spared infection from SIV, HIV in humans, it has no endogenous copies, whereas the active hunting Commin chimp north of the border has tons of copies. SIV/HIVhas been residing in African monkeys since 18mya. Bonobo and Chimp and Gorilla do shares thousands of other African Viruses raging between 2 and 15mya.
7. Interestingly, Homo has no African viruses or Asian Viruses. Indicating it’s Homo niche for the last 20mya was neither Eurasia or America. We do share viruses with the horse so this makes America a lock for our point of speciation. This is where Marc’s theory occurred. Not the Tethys sea.
8. Homo is the most similar to Orang in Morphology. 35 unique shared characters vs. 11 with G and 2 with P. (Schwartz and Grehan). This paradox makes perfect sense once you realize that the neutral theory is invalid. Shi Huang explained this via the MGD. The two species with last ancestor will diverge the quickest.
9. Homo went to a location with Zero apes or fruits in the trees, climbing was deselected and swimming promoted. Whereas Chimps found millions of monkeys to hunt in the trees of Africa. Homo found its food on the ground and under the water.
10. Homo begins encountering viruses and parasites once it arrives back in Eurasia 2.4mya. The lice record shows diversification similar to homos Eurasian radiation. Homo makes it to Africa and Europe around 1.6mya. Guns bring Chimp, monkey and gorilla within reach and the bushmeat industry causes SIV to cause HIV in humans. Because we have no immunity (like Chimps and African Monkeys). Similarly archaic homo had viruses that are spread in regional homo populations.
11. Lastly, just this week the eighth human to have his full genome sequenced, a bushman from Africa. Interestingly, only 6% of his SNPs were a match with chimpanzee. Far fewer than the human reference genome, or Asian genome. This finding completely in invalidates the out of Africa theory. No one on this forum much less biology should believe it in the least. It is racist, irrational and bad old scientific thought
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
National leader Korea 3 kingdoms
Gyeon hwon,[7] As he grew older, he had better body hair than any other soldiers, and went to Gyeongju to become a champion on the southwestern coast.
