Welcome to Sott.net
Thu, 30 Sep 2021
The World for People who Think

Secret History
Map

Dig

Ancient Chinese skull suggests humans may have come out of Africa AND Asia

Colin Barras
New Scientist
Tue, 14 Nov 2017 15:49 UTC
dali skull
© Sheela Athreya
The origins of our species might need a rethink. An analysis of an ancient skull from China suggests it is eerily similar to the earliest known fossils of our species -found in Morocco, some 10,000 kilometres to the west. The skull hints that modern humans aren't solely descended from African ancestors, as is generally thought.

Most anthropologists believe, based on fossil evidence, that our species arose in Africa around 200,000 years ago. What's more, genetic studies of modern humans indicate that we are all descended from a single population that left Africa within the last 120,000 years and spread around the world. This African group is the source of all modern human genes, barring a few gained by interbreeding with other species like Neanderthals.

However, the Dali skull may not fit this story. Discovered in China's Shaanxi Province in 1978, it is remarkably complete, preserving both the face and the brain case. A study published in April concluded the skull is about 260,000 years old.

When researchers first described the Dali skull in 1979, they assumed it belonged to Homo erectus. This hominin species arrived in South-East Asia 1.8 million years ago and probably disappeared from the region by about 140,000 years ago. That fits with the standard story.
      Read More...
Dig

The strange 175,000-year-old circle structures built by Neanderthals in French cave

Colin Barras
New Scientist
Wed, 25 May 2016 16:10 UTC
Neanderthals circle cave
© Etienne Fabre/SSAC
Made by Neanderthals – but what were they for?
They worked by torchlight, following the same procedure hour after hour: wrench a stalagmite off the cave floor, remove the tip and base, and carefully lay it with the others.

Today we can only guess as to why a group of Neanderthals built a series of large stalagmite structures in a French cave - but the fact they did provides a rare glimpse into our extinct cousin's potential for social organisation in a challenging environment.

Gone are the days when we thought of Neanderthals as crude and unintelligent.

Archaeological evidence now suggests they were capable of symbolic thought, had a basic knowledge of chemistry, medicine and cooking, and perhaps some capacity for speech. They may even have taught modern humans new artisanal skills when the two species met and interbred.

A reassessment of evidence from Bruniquel cave, near Toulouse in south-west France, suggests even more Neanderthal sophistication. In one chamber, 336 metres from the cave entrance, are enigmatic structures - including a ring 7 metres across - built from stalagmites snapped from the cave floor.

Natural limestone growths have begun to cover parts of the structure, so by dating these growths a team led by Jacques Jaubert at the University of Bordeaux could work out an approximate age for the stalagmite constructions.
      Read More...
Info

3.3-million-year-old hominid child foot is "humanlike"

Bruce Bower
Science News
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 03:11 UTC
Fossil Foot
© J. DeSilva and Cody Prang
TINY WALKER - A fossil of an ancient hominid child’s foot (shown here from different angles) suggests that members of Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis, walked upright early in life.
Walking was afoot long ago among toddler-aged members of a hominid species best known for Lucy's partial skeleton.

A largely complete, 3.3-million-year-old child's foot from Australopithecus afarensis shows that the appendage would have aligned the ankle and knee under the body's center of mass, a crucial design feature for upright walking, scientists report July 4 in Science Advances.

"The overall anatomy of this child's foot is strikingly humanlike," says study director Jeremy DeSilva, a paleoanthropologist at Dartmouth College in Hanover.

But the foot retains some hints of apelike traits. Compared with children today, for example, the A. afarensis child - only about 3 years old at the time of death - had toes more capable of holding onto objects or anyone who was carrying her, the team found. Those toes included a somewhat apelike, grasping big toe. "Young children having some ability to grasp mom could have made a big energetic difference for Australopithecus afarensis adults as they traveled," DeSilva says.

Scientific debate about whether A. afarensis, which may have been ancestral to humans, primarily walked upright or hung out in trees has raged for nearly 40 years. Accumulating lower-body fossils, including foot bones (SN: 3/12/11, p. 8), as well as ancient footprints (SN: 1/21/17, p. 8), point to an adept two-legged stride among A. afarensis adults. But little was known about whether A. afarensis tykes walked early in life or slowly developed a stride-worthy stance.
      Read More...
Георгиевская ленточка

Egor Kholmogorov: Nicholas II - Tsar of normalcy, competence and humanity

Anatoly Karlin
The UNZ Review
Tue, 03 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
Nicholas II and Family
© Colorized by Olga.
Nicholas II & family, 1914.
Translator's Foreword (Fluctuarius Argenteus)

As the perfect companion piece to his takedown of Stalin, here's Egor Kholmogorov's appraisal of Nicholas II, styled an "anti-Stalin", written during his recent trip to Crimea, which provoked another round of teeth-gnashing among Neo-Stalinists and Sovietophiles. It should also be norws that a recent poll shows that Nicholas II has overtaken Stalin as the most positively-regarded Russian historical figure of the 20th century.

AK's Foreword
If you appreciate these translations, please feel free to give Kholmogorov a tip here.
-

Nicholas II: The Tsar of Normalcy

Original: Николай II становится для нас анти-Сталиным

"Here's where Nicholas II would go to visit his uncle. Yulia, get over here, grab a photo of him at this very place, I'll take a picture of you...", says a middle-aged man to his young daughter, two meters away from the spot where I am writing this article.
Nicholas II in Kharaks Crimea.

Nicholas II in Kharaks, Crimea.
I found the above photo just three weeks ago, when all the social media feeds were overflowing with the Emperor's portraits on his birthday. I've never seen so many photos and such warm comments before.

The political "exchange rate" of Nicholas II in our historical memory is on the way up. Previously, monarchism used to be retrospective and slightly abstract: sure, we respect the Russian historical statehood in general, Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality and all that stuff, and, given that this particular Tsar turned out to be the last one and died as a martyr, we'll respect him as well while taking note of his multiple foibles.

But these days I sense more and more of a markedly personal sympathy for the Emperor and his family among the people, going hand in hand with a more level-headed appraisal of his reign, gradually freed from Communist and Liberal propaganda clichés.

Comment: Further reading:

      Read More...
Better Earth

Australian tribes 10,000 year old tales of ancient sea rise are accurate

John Upton
Scientific American
Fri, 26 Jan 2018 12:00 UTC
Australia ancient
© Patrick Nunn / Nicholas Reid
Map of Australia showing the 21 coastal locations from which Aboriginal stories about coastal inundation are described in the Australian Geographer paper; also shown is the extent of the continental shelf that was exposed during the low sea-level stage of the Last Glacial Maximum, about 20,000 years ago. Image credit:
Melbourne, the southernmost state capital of the Australian mainland, was established by Europeans a couple hundred years ago at the juncture of a great river and a wind-whipped bay. Port Phillip Bay sprawls over 750 square miles, providing feeding grounds for whales and sheltering coastlines for brine-scented beach towns. But it's an exceptionally shallow waterway, less than 30 feet in most places. It's so shallow that 10,000 years ago, when ice sheets and glaciers held far more of the planet's water than is the case today, most of the bay floor was high and dry and grazed upon by kangaroos.

To most of us, the rush of the oceans that followed the last ice age seems like a prehistoric epoch. But the historic occasion was dutifully recorded - coast to coast - by the original inhabitants of the land Down Under.

Without using written languages, Australian tribes passed memories of life before, and during, post-glacial shoreline inundations through hundreds of generations as high-fidelity oral history. Some tribes can still point to islands that no longer exist - and provide their original names.

Comment: All around the world there are actually a great many myths which record the deluge which led to the rise in sea levels:

      Read More...
Book

The chronicles of Nearchus: Fatal first contact between ancient Greece and the tribes of the Indus river

Mark Oliver
Ancient Origins
Tue, 26 Jun 2018 13:44 UTC
Alexander the Great Mosaic
© Public Domain
1893 Reconstruction of the Alexander Mosaic.
Colonialism hasn't changed much.

More than 2000 years ago, when Alexander the Great conquered the Persia, he sent an ancient explorer named Nearchus to sail down the Indus River and map the lands ahead. It was a voyage filled with some strange and unnerving echoes of the explorers of the world to come.

Like the men who first journeyed into the heart of the Congo, Nearchus sailed down a great river, discovering new tribes the Greek world never knew existed. And just like the explorers of the Congo, he called them "savages" and he killed them all.

Nearchus's Journey Down the Indus River

Nearchus was an admiral in Alexander the Great's army . He helped lead the Greek fleet into battle with Persia and helped them advanced through their lines. And when Persia had fallen on their feet, Alexander the Great sent him to travel down the Indus River and write down everything he saw.

He was an explorer thousands of years before the Age of Exploration - one of the forgotten early men who ventured out into uncharted territories and came home with incredible stories of exotic animals and civilizations the likes of which the world had never seen.

Read the rest of the article here.
      Read More...
Black Magic

Sacrificial victims accompanied their mistress in the afterlife in ancient Mesopotamia

Dhwty
Ancient Origins
Sat, 30 Jun 2018 13:04 UTC
Ram in a Thicket Mesopotamia idol statue
© Jack1956/ CC BY SA 3.0
‘Ram in a Thicket’ found in PG 1237.
During Sir Charles Leonard Woolley's excavation of Ur from 1922 to 1934, any burial without a tomb chamber was given the name 'death pit' (known also as 'grave pits'). Arguably the most impressive death pit excavated by Woolley and his team was PG 1237, which Woolley dubbed as 'The Great Death Pit', due to the number of bodies that were found in it. These bodies were arranged neatly in rows and were richly dressed. It is commonly believed that these individuals were sacrificial victims who accompanied their master / mistress in the afterlife. It is unclear, however, if they had done so voluntarily.

PG 1237 - The Most Famous Pit of Death at Ur

During Woolley's archaeological excavations at Ur, a total of six burials were assigned as 'death pits'. Generally speaking, these were tombs and sunken courtyards connected to the surface by a shaft. These 'death pits' were thought to have been built around or adjacent to the tomb of a primary individual. This hypothesis, however, has been challenged in recent times. In any case, the 'death pits' discovered by Woolley and his team were filled with the remains of retainers belonging to an important individual.

The most impressive of Woolley's 'death pits' is PG 1237, which was named by Woolley as the 'Great Death Pit'. In this 'death pit', Woolley and his team identified a total of 74 individuals, six of whom were male and the rest female. The bodies of the six men were found near the entrance of the 'death pit' and were equipped with a helmet and weapons.

Read the rest of the article here.
      Read More...
Pistol

Who killed Tupac? New Netflix doc claims it finally has the answer

Marlene Lenthang & Anneta Konstantinides
The Daily Mail
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 11:59 UTC
Keefe D Tupac murder

Keefe D (pictured), who made the bombshell confession during a taped conversation under immunity, was riding in the car with Anderson on the night Tupac was killed
He is considered one of the greatest rappers in hip hop history, but Tupac Shakur's career came to a tragic end when he was murdered in a drive-by shooting in 1996.

Despite the myriad of conspiracy theories and attempts to solve the case of his murder, the identity of the gunman that took Tupac's life has remained a mystery for 22 years.

But the truth may have just been revealed in an interview with Tupac murder suspect Duane Keith Davis - also known as 'Keefe D'.

While filming the 10-part Netflix docuseries 'Unsolved, the Tupac and Biggie Murders', Keefe D revealed it was his nephew that pulled the trigger.

Keefe D, who made the bombshell confession during a taped conversation under immunity, said he was in the car when Orlando 'Baby Lane' Anderson opened fire.
      Read More...
Heart - Black

No saints: Anglo-Americans and their allies killed more innocents during WWII than Stalin

Marko Marjanović
Checkpoints Asia
Wed, 27 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
4 million to Stalin's 2 million. The only reason we think of them as moral is because the Nazis were even far worse
Anglo American destruction during WWII

There was unfortunately nothing particularly moral about the allies. The German-Japanese Axis merely made them look good by comparison
According to the best available study on the subject Germany lost 5.3 million military men to World War II. Of these, 340,000 were lost in Western Europe, 150,00 in Italy, 16,000 in Africa and up to 225,000 on the seas and in the air over Germany. Additionally the Germans lost 1,230,000 dead in the final battles in Germany of 1945, of which Overmans estimates about one third or 410,000 were inflicted by the Western Allies. Taken together the Germans lost just under 1.2 million military men to the Western Allies, chiefly the Anglo-Americans.[1]

Meanwhile in the course of the war between 360,000 to 460,000 German civilians died in the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign against German cities and towns. For every three German soldiers the Anglo-Americans also killed one German civilian (or sometimes a forced foreign laborer or an allied prisoner of war). Nor is this the complete tally of Anglo-American bombing in WWII Europe. An estimated 60,000 civilians were killed in the bombing raids over France and just as many in Italy. 20,000 more were killed in allied bombing raids in the Low Countries.

Theoretically the campaign against German cities was "strategic", but the raids over German-occupied territories were only "tactical". According to the architects of Combined Bomber Offensive, civilian deaths in Germany were a positive outcome of the raids. They would diminish German morale and aid the Allied cause. On the other hand any civilian deaths caused in German-occupied countries were only tangential to what the strikes were supposed to accomplish. In practice it did not make a whole world of difference. Altogether the Anglo-American bombs took the lives of roughly 550,000 civilians across German-run Europe.

Comment: And the blood lust of the Anglo-American regime continues unabated:

      Read More...
Heart

Stunning memento of wartime romance: Archeologists discover etched canteen carved by captive Russian solider in Poland during WWI

Cheyenne MacDonald
Daily Mail
Tue, 03 Jul 2018 14:16 UTC
trench art, WWI russian solder canteen carving

Etched into a canteen found at the site of the World War I prisoner-of-war camp at Czersk is a detailed scene of a man and woman caught in a loving embrace. Experts say the carving may depict the soldier 'and his sweetheart’
Archaeologists have discovered a stunning memento of wartime romance, carved more than 100 years ago by a captive Russian soldier in Poland.

Etched into a canteen found at the site of the World War I prisoner-of-war camp in Czersk is a detailed scene of a man and woman caught in a loving embrace.

It comes in stark contrast to the gruesome first-hand accounts of life at the POW camp, where hunger, forced labor, and infectious disease were widespread.

Experts say so-called trench art like this often captured life's sentimental moments even in the midst of hardship, reflecting the 'personal stories, feelings, and fears' of soldiers during war.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts