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Ancient mariners: Did Neanderthals sail to Mediterranean?

Charles Choi
LiveScience
Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:13 UTC
Akrotiri Aetokremnos
© Alan Simmons
Neanderthals or other extinct human lineages may have sailed to the Mediterranean Islands long before previously thought. Here, an excavation at Akrotiri Aetokremnos, a site in Cyprus dating back to about 10,000 B.C. where pygmy hippo fossils were found.
Neanderthals and other extinct human lineages might have been ancient mariners, venturing to the Mediterranean islands thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

This prehistoric seafaring could shed light on the mental capabilities of these lost relatives of modern humans, researchers say.

Scientists had thought the Mediterranean islands were first settled about 9,000 years ago by Neolithic or New Stone Age farmers and shepherds.

"On a lot of Mediterranean islands, you have these amazing remains from classical antiquity to study, so for many years people didn't even look for older sites," said archaeologist Alan Simmons at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

However, in the last 20 years or so, some evidence has surfaced for a human presence on these islands dating back immediately before the Neolithic.

"There's still a lot to find in archaeology - you have to keep pushing the envelope in terms of conventional wisdom," Simmons said.
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Stock Down

Human intelligence has been on an intellectual and emotional decline since its peak thousands of years ago

Steve Connor
The Independent
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:28 UTC
Human Brain
© The Independent
Is the human species doomed to intellectual decline? Will our intelligence ebb away in centuries to come leaving our descendants incapable of using the technology their ancestors invented? In short: will Homo be left without his sapiens?

This is the controversial hypothesis of a leading geneticist who believes that the immense capacity of the human brain to learn new tricks is under attack from an array of genetic mutations that have accumulated since people started living in cities a few thousand years ago.

Professor Gerald Crabtree, who heads a genetics laboratory at Stanford University in California, has put forward the iconoclastic idea that rather than getting cleverer, human intelligence peaked several thousand years ago and from then on there has been a slow decline in our intellectual and emotional abilities.

Although we are now surrounded by the technological and medical benefits of a scientific revolution, these have masked an underlying decline in brain power which is set to continue into the future leading to the ultimate dumbing-down of the human species, Professor Crabtree said.

His argument is based on the fact that for more than 99 per cent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities surviving on our wits, leading to big-brained humans. Since the invention of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effective stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical "intelligence" genes.
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Info

Ancient temple with marks of conflict uncovered near Jerusalem


LiveScience
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:18 UTC
Ancient Israeli Temple_1
© Dale Manor
Floor level of the temple at Beth Shemesh.
At a biblical border city outside of Jerusalem, archaeologists have uncovered a temple from the 11th century B.C. that they say bears evidence of conflict among the ancient Israelites, Canaanites and Philistines.

Spread across what would have been the floor at the complex at Tel Beth-Shemesh, a site about 12 miles (20 kilometers) west of Jerusalem, excavators found shards of painted chalices and goblets - not the type of containers that would have been used for daily household activities.

They also found animal bones surrounding a flat stone inside the building and discovered two more flat stones seemingly designed to direct liquids. Lacking the typical traces of domestic use, the excavators believe the building served as a place of worship.

But the complex didn't stay holy for long. The archaeologists found evidence that the temple was destroyed. What's more, an analysis of dirt at the site turned up microscopic remains of plants commonly eaten by livestock as well as the remnants of poop from grass-eating animals, suggesting the site was appropriated as a livestock pen.

The excavators believe the animal takeover of the temple might represent a deliberate desecration by the Philistines, who lived alongside, though hardly peacefully, with the Israelites and Canaanites. The ancient village of Beth-Shemesh, located at the crossroads of the three groups, frequently changed hands between the Philistines and the Canaanite and Israelite populations that resisted them. The researchers say the Philistines likely gained temporary control of Beth-Shemesh and then brought in livestock to reside on what they knew had been a holy place for their enemies.
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Bacon n Eggs

Was woolly mammoth Neanderthal lunch?


iol.co.za
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 03:41 UTC
Woolly mommoth and neanderthals

An archaeologist from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research works near the excavation site where a preserved woolly mammoth skeleton, nicknamed 'Helmut' by the excavation team and estimated to date from 125,000 to 200,000 years ago, has been discovered at a quarry site.
Changis-sur-Marne, France - French archaeologists have uncovered a rare, near-complete skeleton of a mammoth in the countryside near Paris, alongside tiny fragments of flint tools suggesting the carcass may have been cut into by prehistoric hunters.

The archaeologists say that if that hypothesis is confirmed, their find would be the clearest ever evidence of interaction between mammoths and ancient cavemen in this part of Europe.

"Evidence this clear has never been found before, at least in France," said Gregory Bayle, chief archaeologist at the site.

"We're working on the theory that Neanderthal men came across the carcass and cut off bits of meat."

Archaeologists came across the giant bones by accident while they were excavating ancient Roman remains in a quarry near the town of Changis-sur-Marne, 30km east of Paris.
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Cloud Lightning

Extreme weather preceded collapse of Maya civilization

Kat Kerlin
University of California - Davis
Thu, 08 Nov 2012 02:09 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Decades of extreme weather crippled, and ultimately decimated, first the political culture and later the human population of the ancient Maya, according to a new study by an interdisciplinary team of researchers that includes two University of California, Davis, scientists.

The collapse of the Maya is one of the world's most enduring mysteries. Now, for the first time, researchers have combined a precise climatic record of the Maya environment with a precise record of Maya political history to provide a better understanding of the role weather had in the civilization's downfall.

Their findings are published in the Nov. 9, 2012 issue of the journal Science.

"Here you had an amazing state-level society that had created calendars, magnificent architecture, works of art, and was engaged in trade throughout Central America," said UC Davis anthropology professor and co-author Bruce Winterhalder. "They were incredible craftspersons, proficient in agriculture, statesmanship and warfare - and within about 80 years, it fell completely apart."

To determine what was happening in the sociopolitical realm during each of those years, the study tapped the extensive Maya Hieroglyphic Database Project, run by UC Davis Native American Language Center director and linguist Martha Macri, a specialist in Mayan hieroglyphs who has been tracking the culture's stone monuments for nearly 30 years.

"Every one of these Maya monuments is political history," said Macri.

Comment: Bruce Winterhalder asks if we are in danger the same way the Classic Maya were in danger. The answer to this question is yes, and more. Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it. And our political elites know it, and yet do everything in their power to keep the masses in the dark, or by keeping them busy with manufactured terror threats, bloody expensive wars and circuses for elections. From where we sit, something wicked this way comes. The gradually increasing meteorite/comet fragment activity and extreme weather events may be precursors to the return of Ice Age conditions and the collapse of global civilization as we know it.

Read the following articles to learn more:
Reading Celestial Intentions Through the Wrong End of the Telescope: Missiles, UFOs and the Cold War
Reign of Fire: Meteorites, Wildfires, Planetary Chaos and the Sixth Extinction
Chemtrails, Disinformation and the Sixth Extinction
Incoming! Meteor or Comet Fragment Explodes Above Southwestern US, Prompting US Army 'Missiles' Cover-up

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Pocket Knife

Early humans tooled up


Nature.com
Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:02 UTC
Tolled up
© SIMEN OESTMO
Tiny microlith blades were being used by humans more than 70,000 years ago.
Sophisticated bladelets suggest that humans passed on their technological skill down the generations

A haul of stone blades from a cave in South Africa suggests that early humans were already masters of complex technology more than 70,000 years ago1.

The tiny blades - no more than about 3 centimetres long on average - were probably used as tips for throwable spears, or as spiky additions to club-like weapons, says Curtis Marean, an archaeologist at Arizona State University in Tempe who led the team that found the bladelets.

Twenty-seven such blades, called microliths by archaeologists, were found in layers of sand and soil dating as far back as 71,000 years ago and representing a timespan of about 11,000 years, showing how long humans were manufacturing the blades.
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Rainbow

An ancient civilization's wet ascent, dry demise


Science News
Sat, 10 Nov 2012 14:48 UTC
Wet ascent dry demise
© D. Kennett/Penn State
Researchers analyzed a stalagmite from this cave in Belize to reconstruct patterns of rainfall during Classic Maya civilization. Evidence suggests climate shifts accompanied the ancient society’s rise and fall.

Newly documented climate shifts helped shape Classic Maya destiny

Classic Maya civilization rose and fell with the rains.

This once-majestic society, known for massive pyramids and hieroglyphic writing, expanded during an unusually rainy time and declined as the sky's spigots dried up and periodic droughts arrived, a new study suggests.

A 2,000-year climate record, gleaned from a stalagmite inside a Belize cave, highlights a central role for climate shifts in the ancient civilization's fortunes, say anthropologist Douglas Kennett of Penn State University and his colleagues.

A bounty of rain nurtured Maya agriculture and city building from the years 440 to 660, Kennett's team reports in the Nov. 9 Science. A drying trend and occasional droughts after 660 were accompanied by declining crop yields, increasing warfare among Maya city-states and a shift of political centers northward into the Yucatan Peninsula, the researchers say. After the collapse of Maya political systems between 800 and 1000, a severe drought hit southern Belize from 1020 to 1100 and apparently motivated remaining Maya to leave the area.
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Megaphone

Our ancestors, the acoustical engineers

Douglas Starr
Discover Magazine
Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:29 UTC
Pictographs
© Shutterstock
The 4,000 year-old pictographs at Horseshoe Canyon in Utah may have been inspired by the spectacular acoustics there.
When priests at the temple complex of Chavín de Huántar in central Peru sounded their conch-shell trumpets 2,500 years ago, tones magnified and echoed by stone surfaces seemed to come from everywhere, yet nowhere. The effect must have seemed otherworldly, but there was nothing mysterious about its production.

According to archaeologists at Stanford University, the temple's builders created galleries, ducts, and ventilation shafts to channel sound. In short, the temple's designers may have been not only expert architects but also skilled acoustical engineers.

The findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that sound meant more to our ancestors than archaeologists once realized. We live in a sound-saturated society, full of iPods, thunderous special effects in movies, and thousand-watt car stereos.

New discoveries in the young field of acoustic archaeology hint that just as we create elaborate sonic environments with our electronics, the ancients may have sculpted their soundscapes as well. Like many artistic endeavors, their efforts may have been rooted in an attempt to reach the divine.
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Info

Ancient Roman giant found - Oldest complete skeleton with gigantism

Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
Fri, 09 Nov 2012 15:19 UTC
Giant Bone
© Simona Minozzi, Endocrine Society
The giant's tibia, or shinbone, compared with that of a normal Roman male of the same period.
It's no tall tale - the first complete ancient skeleton of a person with gigantism has been discovered near Rome, a new study says.

At 6 feet, 8 inches (202 centimeters) tall, the man would have been a giant in third-century A.D. Rome, where men averaged about 5 and a half feet (167 centimeters) tall. By contrast, today's tallest man measures 8 feet, 3 inches (251 centimeters).

Finding such skeletons is rare, because gigantism itself is extremely rare, today affecting about three people in a million worldwide. The condition begins in childhood, when a malfunctioning pituitary gland causes abnormally growth.

Two partial skeletons, one from Poland and another from Egypt, have previously been identified as "probable" cases of gigantism, but the Roman specimen is the first clear case from the ancient past, study leader Simona Minozzi, a paleopathologist at Italy's University of Pisa, said by email.
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Info

Iceman mummy finds his closest relatives

Tia Ghose
LiveScience
Fri, 09 Nov 2012 06:11 UTC
Otzi
© Reconstruction by Kennis © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, Foto Ochsenreiter
A new genetic analysis reveals that Otzi the Iceman is most closely related to modern-day Sardinians.
San Francisco - Ötzi the Iceman, an astonishingly well-preserved Neolithic mummy found in the Italian Alps in 1991, was a native of Central Europe, not a first-generation émigré from Sardinia, new research shows. And genetically, he looked a lot like other Stone Age farmers throughout Europe.

The new findings, reported Thursday (Nov. 8) here at the American Society of Human Genetics conference, support the theory that farmers, and not just the technology of farming, spread during prehistoric times from the Middle East all the way to Finland.

"The idea is that the spread of farming and agriculture, right now we have good evidence that it was also associated with a movement of people and not only technology," said study co-author Martin Sikora, a geneticist at Stanford University.

In what may be the world's oldest cold case, Ötzi was pierced by an arrow and bled to death on a glacier in the Alps between Austria and Italy more than 5,000 years ago.

Scientists sequenced Ötzi's genome earlier this year, yielding a surprising result: The Iceman was more closely related to present-day Sardinians than he was to present-day Central Europeans.
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