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Humans were drinking milk before they could digest it

Andrew Curry
Science Magazine
Wed, 27 Jan 2021 05:00 UTC
Sudan cow
© Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis/Getty Images
Cattle herders in South Sudan are part of a dairying tradition that stretches back at least 6000 years, according to a new study.
Our history with milk presents a chicken-or-egg conundrum: Humans couldn't digest the beverage before they evolved mutations that helped them do so, yet they had to already be consuming milk to change their DNA. "There's always been the question of which came first," says University of Pennsylvania geneticist Sarah Tishkoff. "The cultural practice or the mutation."

Now, scientists have found some of the oldest evidence yet for dairy drinking: People in modern Kenya and Sudan were ingesting milk products beginning at least 6000 years ago. That's before humans evolved the "milk gene," suggesting we were drinking the liquid before we had the genetic tools to properly digest it.

All humans can digest milk in infancy. But the ability to do so as an adult developed fairly recently, likely in the past 6000 years. A handful of mutations allows adults to produce the enzyme lactase, which can break down the milk sugar lactose. Genes that enable what's called lactase persistence are widespread in modern Africa, which has four known lactase persistence mutations. (European populations rely on just one.)

Comment: Mongolians survive extremely well in their harsh climate, in part thanks to their consumption of dairy and the essential fat and protein that it provides them with. As the article suggests, and as seems to be the case with agriculture, it seems that one of the primary drivers behind the consumption of dairy was due to environmental pressures, and in particular climatic upheaval. It's also notable that it's only in humanities recent history that we turned to farming, and then dairy:

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Info

Previously unknown kingdom discovered in Turkey

Mihai Andrei
ZME Science
Fri, 05 Feb 2021 18:00 UTC
"We had no idea about this kingdom. In a flash, we had profound new information on the Iron Age Middle East," said Prof. James Osborne of the Oriental Institute, an archaeologist who specializes in examining Iron Age cities. Osborne and colleagues have discovered what looks like a major political center in ancient Turkey from about 2700 years ago — and we knew nothing about it.
Ancient Stone
© James Osborne
The half-submerged stone with inscriptions dating to the 8th century BC.
It started in 2019, when a local farmer told the group that a nearby canal had a strange stone with some unknown writing on it. At that time, researchers were exploring a giant, ancient mound site in central Turkey called Türkmen-Karahöyük and went to investigate what the farmer had pointed out. They knew the area was riddled with archaeological finds, but they were shocked by what they found.
"We could see it still sticking out of the water, so we jumped right down into the canal - up to our waists wading around," said archaeologist James Osborne from the University of Chicago in early 2020.

"Right away it was clear it was ancient, and we recognised the script it was written in: Luwian, the language used in the Bronze and Iron ages in the area."
Osborne wasn't an expert in Luwian, but he was fortunate enough to work just down the hall from two experts who translated it as being written by a king called Hartapu.
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Bizarro Earth

Indonesian slaughter, Allen Dulles, and the assassination of JFK

Edward Curtain
Dissident Voice
Wed, 03 Feb 2021 09:37 UTC
JFK Dulles
A Review of Greg Poulgrain's book JFK vs. Allen Dulles

Before I digress slightly, let me state from the outset that the book by Greg Poulgrain that I am about to review is extraordinary by any measure. The story he tells is one you will read nowhere else, especially in the way he links the assassination of President Kennedy to former CIA Director Allen Dulles and the engineering by the latter of one of the 20th century's most terrible mass murders. It will make your hair stand on end and should be read by anyone who cares about historical truth.

About twelve years ago I taught a graduate school course to Massachusetts State Troopers and police officers from various cities and towns. As part of the course material, I had created a segment on the history of the United States' foreign policy, with particular emphasis on Indonesia.

No one in this class knew anything about Indonesia, not even where it was. These were intelligent, ambitious adults, eager to learn, all with college degrees. This was in the midst of the "war on terror"; i.e., war on Muslim countries, and the first year of Barack Obama's presidency. Almost all the class had voted for Obama and were aware they he had spent some part of his youth in this unknown country somewhere far away.

I mention this as a preface to this review of JFK vs. Dulles, because its subtitle is Battleground Indonesia, and my suspicion is that those students' lack of knowledge about the intertwined history of Indonesia and the U.S. is as scanty today among the general public as it was for my students a dozen years ago.

Comment: It goes without saying that the same malevolent geopolitical mechanisms to wrest control from whole sovereign nations continues to this day. See also:

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Books

Extreme weather events that hit Bristol 400 years ago revealed in newly transcribed chronicle

University of Bristol
Phys.org
Mon, 01 Feb 2021 12:00 UTC
Great Flood
© The British Library
News Pamphlet illustration depicting the Great Flood in the Bristol Channel Jan 1607
Historians from the University of Bristol have discovered contemporary accounts of numerous weird weather events that happened in the Bristol area around the turn of the 17th century, including devastating floods, massive snowfalls and frosts that saw rivers frozen for months.

The detail comes from a chronicle that was acquired by Bristol Archives in 1932 but then declared as 'unfit for production' due to its extremely fragile nature. Access to the manuscript was very limited making it difficult to investigate its contents.

Using digital photography, a team led by Dr. Evan Jones from the University of Bristol's Department of History, has now painstakingly transcribed the document which is named 09594/1.

Comment: The world is not getting warmer, instead all signs point to our planet entering a similar cycle to that described above: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Info

New study suggests how Genghis Khan really died

Charles Q. Choi
Live Science
Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:48 UTC
Genghis Khan
© The Art Science Museum
Genghis Khan may have died of bubonic plague, and not from blood loss after being castrated or other causes bandied about over the centuries, a new study finds.

Genghis Khan, born Temüjin of the Borjigin clan in 1162, was one of the most famous conquerors in history. In 1206, he founded and served as the first ruler of the Mongol Empire, which, at the time of his death in 1227, was 2.5 times larger by territory than the Roman Empire, the new study's authors noted. His legacy has reached global dimensions: A study published in 2003 in The American Journal of Human Genetics suggested that about 1 in 200 men worldwide may be Genghis Khan's direct descendants.

While the conqueror's influence is well known, his death is shrouded in mystery. Genghis Khan's family and followers were instructed to keep his demise as their most hidden secret, since it happened during a vital stage of their war against the Western Xia, an empire the Mongols had fought for more than 20 years, the researchers said.

To honor or sully Genghis Khan's memory, both friends and foes of the Mongols told a number of legends about his death, the scientists said. One story claims he succumbed to blood loss after getting stabbed or castrated by a princess of the Tangut people, a Tibeto-Burman tribe in northwest China. Others suggested he died of injuries sustained after tumbling from his horse, fell in battle against the Chinese or died of an infected arrow wound during his final campaign against the Western Xia.
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Bizarro Earth

Joe Biden and the revenge of the behaviorists: Why statistical thinking can get you killed

Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture
Wed, 03 Feb 2021 00:00 UTC
Holdren/Skinner/Brzezinski/Russell
© Xinhua/ZUMAPRESS/biograpy.com/Dances With Bears/Simplycharly.com/KJN
John Holdren • BF Skinner • Zbigniew Brzezinski • Bertrand Russell
As the spirit of patriotism and belief in scientific and technological progress was slowly suffocated throughout the Cold War, the governing class that Russell represented sunk its talons into civilization ever more deeply.

Ninety years ago, Bertrand Russell wrote a book entitled The Scientific Outlook.

In it, the philosopher and sometimes imperial grand strategist made the point that society has become far too complex to be left to democratic institutions. In the modern age of advanced warfare, only a scientific dictatorship could be trusted to lead society, while the thoughtless masses of human cattle should be given the illusion of democracy and freedom. Sovereign nation states must be superseded by world government and thus two parallel cultures, two educations and two moralities must be shaped.

Russell laid out his grim worldview of a master/slave dominated order in the following terms:
"The scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researchers of psycho-analysis, behaviorism and biochemistry will be brought into play... all the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called "cooperative" i.e.: to do exactly what every body else is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished will be scientifically trained out of them."
For the elites in Russell's dystopic world, a different role was envisioned:
"Except for the one matter of loyalty to the world state and to their own order, members of the governing class will be encouraged to be adventurous, and full of initiative. It will be recognized that it is their business to improve scientific techniques and to keep the manual workers contented by means of continual new amusements".
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Colosseum

The enigmatic tablets from Late Bronze Age Deir 'Alla

Michel de Vreeze
ASOR
Fri, 15 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC
Deir 'Alla
© Gerrit van der Kooij
A fragment of tablet 3524 found in situ next to a Late Bronze Age juglet on the floor of a large hall.
On April 1, 1964 Henk Franken and his Leiden University based team stumbled upon two clay tablets. Two days later a third tablet was found. These tablets still form an archaeological riddle up to this day. At some excavations tablets are a routine find but Franken and his teams were excavating at Deir 'Alla, a sizeable tell in the middle of the Jordan Valley, just above where the Zerqa river, the biblical Jabbok, confluences with the Jordan River.

Comment: See also: 4,400 year old Iranian cuneiform-type writing deciphered by French archaeologist

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Arrow Down

Insider Trading on 9/11: Profiting From Anticipated Attack And Tragedy Using "Put Options," And The Massive Cover-up That Followed

Lars Schall
Asia Times
Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00 UTC
firefighter ground zero

Comment: While the Gamestop story and its implications have caught the attention of the world in the last several days, there is a far larger story which suggests how Wall Street, the banking industry and US intelligence agencies have worked towards the organized fleecing of the general public; including the investigative agencies that are meant to bring arch criminality to justice - but don't...


There can be no dispute that speculative trade in put options - where a party bets that a stock will drop abruptly in value - spiked in the days around September 11, 2001 - even if the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the 9/11 Commission will not say so. More than a few people must have had advance warning of the terror attacks, and they cashed in to the tune of millions of dollars.

Is there any truth in the allegations that informed circles made substantial profits in the financial markets in connection to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States?

Arguably, the best place to start is by examining put options, which occurred around Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to an abnormal extent, and at the beginning via software that played a key role: the Prosecutor's Management Information System, abbreviated as PROMIS. [i]

PROMIS is a software program that seems to be fitted with almost "magical" abilities. Furthermore, it is the subject of a decades-long dispute between its inventor, Bill Hamilton, and various people/institutions associated with intelligence agencies, military and security consultancy firms. [1]

One of the "magical" capabilities of PROMIS, one has to assume, is that it is equipped with artificial intelligence and was apparently from the outset "able to simultaneously read and integrate any number of different computer programs or databases, regardless of the language in which the original programs had been written or the operating systems and platforms on which that database was then currently installed." [2]

Comment: The sick levels of greed and the unquenchable thirst for power exist at levels that are almost unimaginable to most relatively healthy and normally adjusted individuals. But until many more people truly understand how this is true - and are willing to address this problem of all problems, - psychopaths in positions of power - many millions of people will continue to be subjected to the injury and violence of pathologically motivated high crime.

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Cassiopaea

Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Is the great reset about a cosmic ray burst coming toward Earth?


Adapt 2030
Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:33 UTC
11-year solar cycles
© YouTube/Adapt 2030 (screen capture)
Through the last 3000 years, you can track rise and fall of civilizations by the cosmic ray density hitting the Earth. More cosmic rays, more clouds, and more difficult to grow food. We are about to receive high amounts of cosmic rays from 2021 forward, meaning global food production will decline, so is this the reason for the great reset. Elite trying to control a natural cycle.


Comment: See also:

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Rose

World's driest desert was once transformed into fertile oasis using guano

Peter Dockrill
Science Alert
Sat, 30 Jan 2021 12:00 UTC
Atacama
© (Ignacio Palacios/Getty Images)
Valle de la luna (Moon Valley), Atacama Desert.
The Atacama Desert has a fearsome reputation. The world's driest non-polar desert, located along the Pacific coast of northern Chile, constitutes a hyperarid, Mars-like environment - one so extreme that when it rains in this parched place, it can bring death instead of life.

Yet life, even in the Atacama Desert, finds a way. The archaeological record shows that this hyperarid region supported agriculture many hundreds of years ago - crops that somehow thrived to feed the pre-Columbian and pre-Inca peoples who once lived here.

"The transition to agriculture began here around 1000 BCE and eventually supported permanent villages and a sizeable regional population," a team of researchers, led by bioarchaeologist Francisca Santana-Sagredo from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, writes in a new study.

Comment:

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