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The invention that forever changed the way we write

Stephen Dowling
BBC Future
Thu, 29 Oct 2020 16:45 UTC
ball point pen artwork
© Borja Buenafuente/BBC
Fountain pens were a stylish statement but messy and impractical. Their replacement was a stroke of design genius perfectly in time for the era of mass production.

On 29 October 1945, the New York City branch of Gimbels department store unveiled a new product. Billions upon billions would follow in its wake.

Gimbels was the first to sell a new kind of ink pen, the design of which had taken several decades to come to fruition. The pens, made by the Reynolds International Pen Company, promised an end to the messy mishaps users of fountain pens encountered - leaking ink, smudges and pooling ink blots.

The new ballpoint pens did away with this, using a special viscous ink which dried quickly and didn't leave smudges. At the heart of it, the rolling ball in the nib - and gravity - ensured a constant, steady stream of ink that didn't smear or leave solid pools of ink on the page.

The new ballpoint was clean and convenient. What it wasn't was cheap.
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Info

Scientists identify 34,000-year-old early East Asian of mixed Eurasian descent


Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Thu, 29 Oct 2020 04:33 UTC
In a new study, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences present an analysis of the genome of the oldest human fossil found in Mongolia to date. They show that the 34,000-year-old female inherited around 25 percent of her DNA from western Eurasians, demonstrating that people moved across the Eurasian continent shortly after it had first been settled by the ancestors of present-day populations. The study also shows that this individual as well as a 40,000-year-old individual from China carried DNA from Denisovans, an extinct form of hominins that inhabited Asia before modern humans arrived.
Ancient Skullcap
© Institute of Archaeology, Mongolian Academy of Science
The skullcap found in the Salkhit Valley in eastern Mongolia belonged to a woman who lived 34,000 years ago. Analyses Analyses showed: She had inherited about 25 percent of her DNA from Western Eurasian.
In 2006, miners discovered a hominin skullcap with peculiar morphological features in the Salkhit Valley of the Norovlin county in eastern Mongolia. It was initially referred to as Mongolanthropus and thought to be a Neandertal or even a Homo erectus. The remains of the "Salkhit" individual represent the only Pleistocene hominin fossil found in the country.

Ancient DNA extracted from the skullcap shows that it belonged to a female modern human who lived 34,000 ago and was more related to Asians than to Europeans. Comparisons to the only other early East Asian individual genetically studied to date, a 40,000-year-old male from Tianyuan Cave outside Beijing (China), show that the two individuals are related to each other. However, they differ insofar that a quarter of the ancestry of the Salkhit individual derived from western Eurasians, probably via admixture with ancient Siberians.
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Evil Rays

A brief history of government-funded electromagnetic, informational weapons and the remote manipulation of the human brain

Mojmir Babacek
Global Research
Fri, 06 Aug 2004 00:00 UTC
Electromagnetic weapons
Editors Note:

We bring to our readers this carefully documented review article by Mojmir Babajek first published in 2004.

While the text deals with a number of complex scientific processes, the implications of these findings are far-reaching. This study also has a bearing on the current Corona crisis.

The arsenal of electromagnetic and informational weapons, used to manipulate the human mind of targeted individuals or populations, is an integral part of the weapons system of the New World Order.

The US military possesses a sophisticated arsenal of psychotronic weapons which could be used both domestically and internationally.

Electromagnetic and informational Weapons could be used in conventional wars theatres, without the knowledge of the enemy.

It is therefore essential that we not only take cognizance of these findings, but we mobilize nationally and internationally against the use of brain manipulating technologies.

Michel Chossudovsky, 5 August 2004, 27, October 2020

***

In October 2000, Congressman Denis J. Kucinich introduced in the House of Representatives a bill, which would oblige the American president to engage in negotiations aimed at the ban of space based weapons.

In this bill, the definition of a weapons system included:
"any other unacknowledged or as yet undeveloped means inflicting death or injury on, or damaging or destroying, a person (or the biological life, bodily health, mental health, or physical and economic well-being of a person)... through the use of land-based, sea- based, or space-based systems using radiation, electromagnetic, psychotronic, sonic, laser, or other energies directed at individual persons or targeted populations for the purpose of information war, mood management, or mind control of such persons or populations"(15).

Comment: And remember, this article was written in 2004. See also:

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Key

The revelations of Wikileaks: No. 9 - Opening the CIA's vault

Patrick Lawrence
Consortium News
Mon, 26 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC
Hollande/Obama
© White House, Pete Souza
French President François Hollande and President Barack Obama, Air Force One
Feb. 10, 2014
As its publisher remains in prison awaiting judgment on his extradition case, we continue our series of looking at WikiLeaks' significant revelations contributing to the public's right to know.

On Feb. 6, 2017, WikiLeaks released documents detailing the Central Intelligence Agency's espionage program in the months leading up to and following France's presidential election in 2012. The agency used spies and cyberweapons to infiltrate and hack into the major political parties with competing candidates — the Socialists, the National Front and the Union for a Popular Movement. Their candidates — respectively François Hollande, Marine Le Pen and incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy — were also spied upon individually, as were many other prominent political figures.

The objectives of the program included ascertaining the contending parties' political strategies and platforms, their views of the U.S., and their relations with the European Union, with other European nations (Germany, Britain) as well as Israel, Palestine, Libya, Syria, and others. The CIA's French operation lasted 10 months, beginning in November 2011 and enduring until September 2012, several months after Hollande won the election and formed a Socialist government.

WikiLeaks' disclosure of the agency's project bears a special irony: It was just as WikiLeaks published this material in 2017 that the CIA helped propagate unsubstantiated (and later discounted) "intelligence" that Russian hackers and propagandists were interfering with France's presidential election that year. Similar allegations (similarly lacking in evidence) were floated as the European Union held parliamentary elections in May 2019.

As WikiLeaks reported at the time of the releases on the CIA's covert activities in France, those revelations were to serve "as context for its forthcoming CIA Vault 7 series." WikiLeaks' apparent intent was to display a CIA's hacking operation in action.
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Water

Ancient Maya had incredibly effective water filtration system

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Sat, 24 Oct 2020 12:00 UTC
Maya tikal

Tikal
Water is essential for basic human survival. But it can also be dangerous; contaminated water can spread deadly diseases that have the potential to eradicate whole communities. Safe, clean water offers humanity one of its best chances to thrive.

Several ancient civilisations, including the Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans, filtered their water. Sanskrit writings dating back to 2,000 BCE also mention water treatment methods. Now, archaeologists have discovered the Maya of Central America did too - and their water filtration system was incredibly effective.

In a reservoir in what was once the major Maya city of Tikal, the ruins of which crumble in a rainforest in present-day Guatemala, archaeologists have found zeolite and quartz - minerals that are not local to the area, and which are both effective at helping remove contaminants such as microbes, heavy metals, and nitrogen compounds from water.

Comment: Meanwhile 1,900 years ago in France: The brilliance of ancient engineers shown in watermill complex in southern France

See also: And check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: America Before: Comets, Catastrophes, Mounds and Mythology

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Info

Inks containing lead on Egyptian papyri unveil ancient writings


University of Copenhagen
Mon, 26 Oct 2020 20:19 UTC
Analysing 12 ancient Egyptian papyri fragments with X-ray microscopy, University of Copenhagen researchers were surprised to find previously unknown lead compounds in both red and black inks and suggest they were used for their drying properties rather than as a pigment. A similar lead-based "drying technique" has also been documented in 15th century European painting, and the discovery of it in Egyptian papyri calls for a reassessment of ancient lead-based pigments.
Egypt Medical Treatise
© The Papyrus Carlsberg Collection
Detail of a medical treatise (inv. P. Carlsberg 930) from the Tebtunis temple library with headings marked in red ink.
The ancient Egyptians have been using inks for writing since at least 3200 BC, using black inks for the primary body of text and using red inks to highlight headings and keywords. In a new study published today in PNAS, a cross-disciplinary team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen have employed advanced synchrotron radiation based X-ray microscopy equipment to investigate red and black inks preserved on a sample of 12 papyrus fragments from Roman period Egypt (around 100 to 200 AD).

"Our analyses of the inks on the papyri fragments from the unique Tebtunis temple library revealed previously unknown compositions of red and black inks, particularly iron-based and lead-based compounds." says Egyptologist and first author of the study Thomas Christiansen from the University of Copenhagen.

Chemistry Professor and co-author Sine Larsen adds:
The iron-based compounds in the red inks are most likely ocher - a natural earth pigment - because the iron was found together with aluminium and the mineral hematite, which occur in ocher. The lead compounds appear in both the red and black inks, but since we did not identify any of the typical lead-based pigments used to colour the ink, we suggest that this particular lead compound was used by the scribes to dry the ink rather than as a pigment.
A similar lead-based drying technique was used in 15th century Europe during the development of oil painting, and the researchers believe that the Egyptians must have discovered 1,400 years earlier that they could ensure their papyri did not smear by applying this particular ink. According to the researchers, their discovery calls for a reassessment of lead-based compounds found in ancient Mediterranean inks in that drying techniques may have been widespread much earlier than previously believed.
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Red Flag

Treason in America: An overview of the FBI, CIA and matters of 'National Security'

Cynthia Chung
Strategic Culture
Mon, 19 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC
JFK, Jacqueline K, Connally and wife
© The Guardian
President John F. Kennedy, wife Jacqueline, Texas Gov. John Connally, wife Nellie
Dallas, Texas • November 22, 1963
"Treason doth never prosper; what is the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
- Sir John Harrington.

As Shakespeare would state in his play Hamlet, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," like a fish that rots from head to tail, so do corrupt government systems rot from top to bottom.

This is a reference to the ruling system of Denmark and not just the foul murder that King Claudius has committed against his brother, Hamlet's father. This is showcased in the play by reference to the economy of Denmark being in a state of shambles and that the Danish people are ready to revolt since they are on the verge of starving. King Claudius has only been king for a couple of months, and thus this state of affairs, though he inflames, did not originate with him.

Thus, during our time of great upheaval we should ask ourselves; what constitutes the persisting "ruling system," of the United States, and where do the injustices in its state of affairs truly originate from?

Comment: The argument for full declassification in a timely fashion has long been tabooed by the same organizations and power structure that would be implicated in the reveal - a disservice to the many in the service and protection of the few.

Other articles of interest by Cynthia Chung:

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Info

The brilliance of ancient engineers shows in watermill complex in southern France

Ross Pomeroy
Real Clear Science
Mon, 26 Oct 2020 16:53 UTC
Musée de l'Arles antique, Arles, France
© Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany
Musée de l'Arles antique, Arles, France.
An international team of scientists has reconstructed the hydraulic operations of the 1,900-year-old Barbegal industrial watermill complex in southern France, revealing the subtle brilliance of antiquity's engineers.

The Barbegal watermill complex was a set of sixteen water wheels arranged in two parallel columns of eight along a thirty-meter slope near the French town of Arles. It's been hailed as having the "greatest known concentration of mechanical power in the ancient world." Each wheel was connected to a grinding mechanism, which milled grain into flour, perhaps as much as 25 tonnes per day from the entire complex. When the complex was constructed at the end of the 1st century, the area was part of the Roman Empire. Archaeologists have speculated that Barbegal could have supplied bread to the 27,000 inhabitants of the local town of Arelate. It may also have been used to produce mass quantities of hardtack, a long-lasting, dry, salted biscuit, for sailors at the nearby harbors.

Professor Emeritus Dr. Cees Passchier of Johannes Gutenberg University and his colleagues sought to understand the workings of this impressive industrial watermill. Unfortunately, today it's in ruins and all the wooden machinery has long since decayed.
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Archaeology

Fossil footprints mark a toddler's perilous prehistoric journey

Katherine Kornei
New York Times
Sun, 25 Oct 2020 17:43 UTC
human footprint giant sloth foot print
© National Park Service, via Associated Press
A human footprint found inside that of a giant sloth track at White Sands.
Mammoths and giant ground sloths roamed the same terrain that a young adult swiftly moved through while toting a young child.

The human footprint sequence from the Pleistocene era extends more than a mile and includes at least 427 human prints. The out-and-back journey was probably completed in no more than a few hours, the researchers suggested.Credit...Reynolds et al., Quaternary Science Reviews 2020

Several thousand years ago, a young adult moved barefoot across a muddy landscape. A toddler was balanced on the adult's hip. There were large animals — mammoths and ground sloths — just over the horizon. It was a perilous journey, and scientists reconstructed it by closely studying an exceptional set of human and animal footprints found recently in the southwestern United States.
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Blue Planet

Bronze Age herders 'less mobile than previously thought'


University of Basel
Wed, 21 Oct 2020 12:00 UTC
Caucasus mountain animal
© Sabine Reinhold
Grazing animals on Caucasus mountain pastures.
Bronze Age pastoralists in what is now southern Russia apparently covered shorter distances than previously thought. It is believed that the Indo-European languages may have originated from this region, and these findings raise new questions about how technical and agricultural innovations spread to Europe. An international research team, with the participation of the University of Basel, has published a paper on this topic.

During the Bronze Age (ca. 3900 - 1000 BCE), herders and their families moved across the slopes of the Caucasus and the steppes to the north, taking their sheep, goats and cattle with them. It is believed that the Indo-Germanic groups, who brought the Indo-European languages and technical innovations such as wagons, domestic horses and metal weapons to Europe, may have originated from this region.

Comment: A point that the above does not address is why numerous studies document changes in DNA that occurred with the advent of farming:

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