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Humans were just as prone to injury as Neanderthals - And mostly the males

Ed Yong
Source
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 12:00 UTC
neanderthal
© Nikola Solic / ReutersA Neanderthal skull on display at Krapina, Croatia.
The very first Neanderthal to be described in the scientific literature, back in 1856, had an old elbow injury-a fracture that had since healed, but had deformed the bone in the process. Such injuries turned out to be incredibly common. Almost every reasonably complete Neanderthal skeleton that was found during the subsequent century had at least one sign of physical trauma. Some researchers attributed these lesions to fights, others to attacks by predators. But whatever the precise reason, scientists collectively inferred that Neanderthals must have lived short, stressful, and harsh lives.

In 1995, the anthropologists Thomas Berger and Erik Trinkaus cemented that impression by showing that Neanderthal injuries were concentrated around the head and neck. Of 17 skeletons, around 30 percent had signs of cranial trauma-a far higher proportion than in either prehistoric hunter-gatherers or 20th century humans. Only one group showed a similar pattern of fractures-rodeo riders.

"This is not meant to imply that Neanderthals would have met the behavioral qualifications for membership in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association," wrote Berger and Trinkaus. Rather, it suggests that they hunted large beasts like mammoths, using spears that were more suitable for thrusting than throwing. They engaged their prey at close range, and had to cling on to wounded, thrashing targets. "Given the tendency of ungulates to react strongly to being impaled, the frequency of head and neck injuries... in the Neanderthals should not be surprising," the duo wrote.

Comment: The similarities with Homo sapiens may go some way to explaining the interbreeding that occurred, to the extent that those of Eurasian ancestry inherited between 1-4% of their DNA from Neanderthals.

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Birthday Cake

History of vanilla rewritten as residue found in 3,600-year-old tomb in Palestine

Amanda Borschel-Dan
Time of Israel
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 12:47 UTC
Megiddo
© Robert S. HomsherInterior of Tomb 50, an undisturbed burial chamber from some 3,600 years ago at Megiddo, looking toward the south corridor.
The first evidence of the use of vanilla has been discovered in residue from an afterlife feast at a 3,600-year-old tomb in Israel, rewriting the history of the spice.

Prior to this find, it was thought by scientists that vanilla originated 13,000 miles away, in South America, several thousand years later.

The vanillin compound was discerned in three out of four small jugs, which were placed as part of burial food offerings surrounding three intact skeletons, adorned with gold and silver jewelry. The treasure trove of jewels - and now vanilla extract - comes from a spectacular untouched Bronze Age burial chamber first excavated in 2016 at Megiddo.

The surprise discovery, labelled Tomb 50, by a team of excavators led by Tel Aviv University's Prof. Israel Finkelstein, has been widely publicized; the displayed wealth is thought to be due to an elite, or even royal, Canaanite burial.

Comment: With traces of nicotine and cocaine discovered in Egypt at a time when it's believed there was no contact with the Americas, it's clear that our understanding of ancient trade routes is sorely lacking. It's also possible that, back then, climatic conditions were more favourable to its cultivation in the region.

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Archaeology

3,700 year old skeleton of a young Egyptian woman who died in childbirth found buried with unborn baby

Phoebe Weston
Daily Mail
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 12:08 UTC
Egyptian woman who tragically died during childbirth
The skeleton of an ancient Egyptian woman who tragically died during childbirth has been found alongside her tiny foetus (pictured)
The skeleton of an ancient Egyptian woman who tragically died during childbirth has been found alongside her unborn baby.

The woman, who died 3,700 years ago at the age of 25, was in the final weeks of pregnancy and officials believe she died following the start of labour.

She was buried in a graveyard used between 1750 BC and 1550 BC by nomadic people travelling north into the region of Nubia.

Experts from Yale University and the University of Bologna found the remains at the Kom Ombo archaeological project in Aswan, around 530 miles (852km) from Cairo.

Mustafa Waziri, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the cemetery was used by travellers during the second transition period, between 1750 and 1550 BC.

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Info

Complex stone tools found in China

Hu Yue, Bo Li & Ben Marwick
The Conversation
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 05:02 UTC
Stone Tools
© Hu Yue, CC BY-NDSeveral of the newly identified stone tools – unearthed from a museum collection.
You probably think of new technologies as electronics you can carry in a pocket or wear on a wrist. But some of the most profound technological innovations in human evolution have been made out of stone. For most of the time that humans have been on Earth, they've chipped stone into useful shapes to make tools for all kinds of work.

In a study just published in Nature, we've dated a distinctive and complex method for making stone tools to a much earlier time frame in China than had previously been accepted. Archaeologists had thought that artifacts of this kind had been carried into China by groups migrating from Europe and Africa. But our new discovery, dated to between 170,000 and 80,000 years ago, suggests that they could have been invented locally without input from elsewhere, or come from much earlier cultural transmission or human migration.

Several different species of humans lived on Earth at this time, including modern ones like us. But we haven't found any human bones from this site, so don't know which species of human made these tools.

These Chinese artifacts provide one more piece of evidence that changes the way we think about the origin and spread of new stone tool technologies. And intriguingly we made our discovery based on artifacts that had been excavated decades ago.
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Cow Skull

Viking city: Excavation reveals urban pioneers not violent raiders

David Crouch
The Guardian
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 11:00 UTC
viking
© Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty ImagesThe discoveries at Ribe defy the popular image of Vikings as mainly raiders.
Excavations in Ribe, Denmark show that Viking culture was based on sophisticated production and trade. Is their brutal reputation unfair?

In an extraordinary moment captured on film this summer, the tuning pegs and neck of a lyre, a harplike stringed instrument, were carefully prised out of the soil of Ribe, a picturesque town on Denmark's south-west coast. Dated to around AD720, the find was the earliest evidence not just of Viking music, but of a culture that supported instrument-makers and musicians.

The same excavation also found the remains of wooden homes; moulds for fashioning ornaments from gold, silver and brass; intricate combs made from reindeer antlers (the Viking equivalent of ivory); and amber jewellery dating to the early 700s.

Even more extraordinary, however, was the discovery that these artefacts were not for home consumption by farmers, let alone itinerant raiders. Instead, the Vikings who made them lived in a settled, urban community of craftsmen, seafarers, tradesmen and, it seems, musicians.

Comment: Evidently what we've been told about the Viking's is far from the truth, and it's likely they're used as cover by chroniclers to explain the disaster which befell Briton and nigh on wiped out the population.

As Laura Knight-Jadczyk in Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls writes:
Until that point in time, the Britons had held control of post-Roman Britain, keeping the Anglo-Saxons isolated and suppressed. After the Romans were gone, the Britons maintained the status quo, living in towns, with elected officials, and carrying on trade with the empire. After AD 536, the year reported as the "death of Arthur", the Britons, the ancient Cymric empire that at one time had stretched from Cornwall in the south to Strathclyde in the north, all but disappeared, and were replaced by Anglo-Saxons. There is much debate among scholars as to whether the Anglo-Saxons killed all of the Britons, or assimilated them. Here we must consider that they were victims of possibly many overhead cometary explosions which wiped out most of the population of Europe, plunging it into the Dark Ages which were, apparently, really DARK, atmospherically speaking.
And the Vikings were likely beneficiaries of the warm period that followed:
The Little Ice Age followed a period known as the "Medieval Maximum" that is dated to between 900 AD - 1280 AD, which copious records reveal was much warmer than modern times. For instance, grapevines grew in the area of today's shivering Wales! This was generally a period of prosperity for civilizations. There was a large increase in world population and an era of colonial expansion. During the years 800 AD - 1200 AD, Greenland and Iceland were settled by the Vikings.
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USA

James Corbett's "The WWI Conspiracy": The American Front

James Corbett
The Corbett Report
Mon, 19 Nov 2018 18:27 UTC
ww1 conspiracy
Difficult as it had been for the Round Table to maneuver the British Empire into the war with Germany, it would be that much harder for their American fellow travelers to coax the United States out of its neutrality and into World War One. The cabal was going to have to leverage its control of the press and key governmental positions to begin to shape public perception and instill pro-war sentiment. And once again, the full resources of these motivated co-conspirators were brought to bear on the task. Join The Corbett Report for Part Two of The WWI Conspiracy.

CLICK HERE for the complete transcript and downloads of The WWI Conspiracy.


Watch this video on BitChute / DTube / YouTube or Download the mp4

For those with limited bandwidth, CLICK HERE to download a smaller, lower file size version of this episode.

For those interested in audio quality, CLICK HERE for the highest-quality version of this episode (WARNING: very large download).

Comment: See previous episode of Corbett's series here: James Corbett's "The WWI Conspiracy": To Start A War

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Dig

Historian reveals true story behind the 'multiple and messy' Domesday books

Craig Chamberlain
Phys.org
Thu, 15 Nov 2018 10:33 UTC
Domesday Book
Domesday Book
Nearly a thousand years ago, a famous king created a famous book, later given the title "Domesday" (pronounced "doomsday").

At least that's been the common story: William the Conqueror, 20 years after his 1066 invasion of England from Normandy, ordered a massive survey of his new realm. One year later, he got a book with the results-a record of the nation's wealth and resources, everything from property to sheep to servants.

The "Great Domesday Book," as it was later named, is perhaps the most famous document in English history after the Magna Carta.

The book's origin story, however, had not been thoroughly investigated until University of Illinois history professor Carol Symes took up the task. "What had never been resolved is how this massive text was really created," Symes said, "and in this incredibly narrow timeframe."

Comment: Clearly the reliability of such texts should always be viewed with a critical eye, as Laura Knight-Jadczyk writes in The Golden Age, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction:
As I pointed out in Witches, Comets and Planetary Cataclysms the falsification of history that Fomenko has clearly identified occurred at the end of 300 years of disaster piled on disaster beginning with the decimation of the population of Europe by the Black Death. This certainly fits Zinoviev's model that, at a certain point, the old, distorted representation of history no longer serves and a new legitimation of authority is required to restore peace and keep the masses under control. What Fomenko notes is that the temporal and spatial parameters of much later times were imposed on the stories of the more distant past, but that does not entirely invalidate those stories; it just means that things were re-established and what was familiar to the 'trained specialists' was utilized to give the new view of the past a more realistic 'feel'.
See also: And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Who was Jesus? Examining the evidence that Christ may in fact have been Caesar!

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Dig

Archaeologists uncover 500-year-old Inca bones and relics hidden in Bolivian quarry


RT
Sun, 18 Nov 2018 16:53 UTC
Skull
© Reuters/David MercadoAn elongated skull was found among the treasures.
Bolivian archaeologists are celebrating an 'unprecedented' new haul of ancient Inca remains and artifacts, including human skulls and metal tools found buried in a quarry 12 miles from La Paz.

The discovery was made outside the capital earlier this month, with archaeology professor Jedu Sagarnaga, from the Universidad Mayor de San Andres, confirming that the remains date back to the era of the Inca civilisation.

"The vessels are whole and are Incan," Sagarnaga told the Associated Press.
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Alarm Clock

1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in Vienna

Andy Walker
BBC
Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:00 UTC
Vienna
A century ago, one section of Vienna played host to Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Tito, Sigmund Freud and Joseph Stalin.

In January 1913, a man whose passport bore the name Stavros Papadopoulos disembarked from the Krakow train at Vienna's North Terminal station.

Of dark complexion, he sported a large peasant's moustache and carried a very basic wooden suitcase.

"I was sitting at the table," wrote the man he had come to meet, years later, "when the door opened with a knock and an unknown man entered.

"He was short... thin... his greyish-brown skin covered in pockmarks... I saw nothing in his eyes that resembled friendliness."

The writer of these lines was a dissident Russian intellectual, the editor of a radical newspaper called Pravda (Truth). His name was Leon Trotsky.

Comment: See also: Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes

And check out SOTTs' radio show on the topic: The Truth Perspective: Introducing Political Ponerology, plus some odds and ends

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Comet 2

536 AD: Plague, famine, drought, cold, and a mysterious fog that lasted 18 months

Ann Gibbons
Science Mag
Thu, 15 Nov 2018 14:00 UTC
536AD
According to research from a Harvard professor, the year 536AD is a prime candidate for the unfortunate accolade as the worst year in the entirety of human history. The bleak year kick-started the coldest decade for more than two millennia
Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536." Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, "It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.

A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night-for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536-539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.

Comment: As noted on SOTT radio's Behind the Headlines: Who was Jesus? Examining the evidence that Christ may in fact have been Caesar! the planet had been overtaken by disaster in the years preceding and continued to be for at least a century:
540: Cometary bombardment (according to the Chinese historical record); Gildas reports cometary bombardment up in the northern regions of the U.K.; there was a collapse of the great dam of Mareb in Yemen, the country of Sheba...so that was an interesting year, 540...

541: The plague began in Egypt; there was a comet in Gaul; earthquake occurred in Kyzicus...there was a comet, there was drought, earthquake, earthquake, blah-blah-blah...so I'm getting this from all these different chroniclers...

542, the sun appeared at noon day...plague began in the east...

543: Plague in Mesopotamia...

544: Plague in Italy, southern France, Spain...

545: Plague in Persia; famine; plague (Mesopotamia 546)...

547: Tremendous thunder and lightning...

549: Flood in Cilicia; plague in the British territories (according to the Bishop of Llandaff)...

551: Another Beirut earthquake and tsunami; earthquake over the Middle East; "the sea retreats" (John Malalus)...

553: Earthquake, terrible thunder, and lightning (from Chronicle of Theophanes)...

554: Earthquake in Constantinople; the destruction of Baalbek (now that's interesting...wait till you read the next book and hear about Baalbek--that's very, very interesting)...

555: There's another earthquake in Constantinople and plague...

556: Famine [in] Constantinople, plague, ashes fell from the sky...
and that's just a snippet. Check out the show for all the gory details.

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