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Best of the Web: The Devastating Effects of Agriculture: We're Getting Shorter NOT Taller and Our Brains are Shrinking, So is Farming to Blame?

People have got shorter and our brains have shrunk - and scientists believe farming could be to blame.

Modern humans are about 10 percent smaller and shorter than our hunter-gatherer ancestors, scientists have found, and our brains have fallen in size by the same proportion.

Most of that decline in physical size has occurred since the advent of farming about 10,000 years ago.

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© AlamyEasy life: Human beings have have shrunk 10 percent in the 10,000 years since the advent of farming
The findings run contrary to the popular notion that humans are growing progressively larger and taller.

Research shows that declines in height occurred in 19 of 21 societies that switched from hunter-gathering to farming - perhaps the greatest change in lifestyle in human history.

The findings pose a puzzle since societies that switch to farming usually experience a population boom as food becomes more plentiful.

Comment: Intelligent like this individual, for example?

Another thing to consider, in light of this recent article about human beings being *behold the hubris!* "extinction proof" due to the "benefits" of agriculture, is that the advent of agriculture led to humans eating a predominantly carbohydrate-based diet, which in modern times has resulted in the consumption of copious quantities of chemical-laden pseudo-foods based on grains. The result is a population that is so full of toxins that they have literally, physically lost the ability to think.

This fundamental inability to think has, in more recent decades, led to a total 'coup-de-monde' by utterly corrupt individuals and groups who found it rather easy to get the world to believe in lies and illusions.

A global population immersed in illusion and ruled by corrupt leaders, more than anything else, makes the human race eligible for an extinction level event.

In short, if you act like a bunch of dumbed-down idiots, 'creation' tends to do the merciful thing and wipe the slate clean.


Sherlock

Archaeologists search for ancient Chinese ship off African coast

Chinese Ship Kenyan Coast
© Global PostWorkers clean a model of a Chinese ship sailed by Chinese explorer Zheng He. He led seven seven voyages in which he sailed from China to more than 30 countries and regions throughout the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf from 1405 to 1433

Did the Chinese come to East Africa before the Europeans? China says yes, as do a growing number of Western historians. To prove the theory, Chinese and Kenyan archaeologists are now searching the African coast for the fabled wreck of a Ming dynasty junk - an ancient Chinese sailing vessel - from the fleet of legendary 15th-century explorer Zheng He.

A new report, obtained by GlobalPost, reveals that the researchers have identified several shipwrecks of interest off the Kenyan coast near the World Heritage site of Lamu.

Despite years of excitable hype by China's state media, the underwater archaeologists involved in the search are warning that the newly discovered wrecks could be from any era or country - and even if a sunken Chinese ship is found, it may no longer be intact or even identifiable.

Some reports in the Chinese and Kenyan media have implied that the wreck of a ship from Zheng He's fleet has already been found - and by extension, irrefutable historical proof that Chinese explorers visited Kenya before the Europeans. Evidence that China had friendly trading relations with Africa before the colonialists arrived would add luster to the Asian giant's rapidly expanding presence on the continent.

Sherlock

'Incredibly exciting' rare pre-Ice Age handaxe discovered on Orkney

Rare handaxe
Discovered: The tool could potentially 'set back our known history'.

A Palaeolithic handaxe has been found by a local walker on an Orkney beach.

An "incredibly rare" pre-Ice Age handaxe which may have been used to kill woolly mammoths, has been found on an Orkney beach.

The Palaeolithic - or Old Stone Age - tool, which could be anything between 100,000 and 450,000 years old, is one of only ten ever to be found in Scotland. The axe, which was found on a stretch of shore in St Ola by a local man walking along the beach, is the oldest man-made artefact ever found in Orkney.

The stone tool, which is around five-and-a-half inches long, has been broken, and originally would have tapered to a point opposite the cutting edge, but at some point in time, the point broke off and someone reworked the flint to its present straight edge.

Orkney-based archaeologist Caroline Wickham-Jones, who has studied the axe, described its discovery as "incredibly exciting".

Ms Wickham-Jones, who a lecturer in archaeology at Aberdeen University, said: "This axe is definitely older than 100,000 years - so old it's become geology.

Document

Huge Ancient Language Dictionary Finished After 90 Years

Ancient Dictionary
© University of ChicagoMartha Roth, Editor in Charge of the Assyrian Dictionary at the University of Chicago, puts the final volume in the set of books.

An ambitious project to identify, explain and provide citations for the words written in cuneiform on clay tablets and carved in stone by Babylonians, Assyrians and others in Mesopotamia between 2500 B.C. and A.D. 100 has been completed after 90 years of labor, the University of Chicago announced June 5.

To mark the completion of the 21-volume Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, the Oriental Institute at the University, where the project was housed, held a conference on June 6, during which scholars from around the world discussed the significance of the achievement.

"I feel proud and privileged to have brought this project home," said Martha Roth, editor-in-charge of the dictionary and dean of Humanities Division at the University of Chicago, who has been working on the project since 1979. "I feel this will be a foundation for how to do more dictionary projects in the future."

"The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is one of the most important and unique contributions of the Oriental Institute to understanding the civilizations of the ancient Near East," said Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute. "The CAD is the single most impressive effort I know of to systematically record, codify and make accessible the Akkadian language that forms the heart of the textual record of civilization in the place of its birth: Mesopotamia.

Pharoah

Mysterious Spots on King Tut's Tomb Suggest Hasty Burial

Wall in Tutankhamen's Tomb
© Robert Jensen / J. Paul Getty TrustPhoto of a wall in Tutankhamen's tomb, taken in February 2009.

Mysterious brown spots covering the surfaces of King Tut's tomb have long puzzled scientists trying to identify them. Now a new study reveals ancient Egyptian microbes left these blemishes.

The spots offer insight not only into the boy king's death, but also into the haste of his burial, according to researcher Ralph Mitchell, an expert in cultural heritage microbiology at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

When the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities asked the Getty Conservation Institute to investigate whether the spots signaled the tomb's deterioration, they turned to Mitchell. Combining classical microbiology with DNA analysis, he studied the mysterious dark spots that have seeped into the tomb's paint and plaster.

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Archaeologists discover Skeleton in Doctor's Garden

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© Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of BristolA University of Bristol archaeologist uncovering the skeleton in Dr Jenner's garden
A skeleton, possibly dating from Roman times, has been unearthed by archaeologists from the University of Bristol during a dig in the garden of vaccination pioneer Dr Edward Jenner in Berkeley, Gloucestershire.

The archaeologists, led by Professor Mark Horton and Dr Stuart Prior, have been excavating part of the garden of The Chantry, the former country home of vaccination pioneer, Dr Edward Jenner (1749-1823), during a series of annual digs since 2007. They have already established that Berkeley is an important Anglo-Saxon site with a mynster of the same scale and status as Gloucester.

Sherlock

Nubian Mummies Had 'Modern' Disease

Nubian Mummy
© Dennis Van GervenOne of the Nubian mummies studied by the team led by Amber Campbell Hibbs and George Armelagos at Emory University.

A "modern" disease of humans may have been what sickened ancient Nubian cultures, research on more than 200 mummies has found. The mummies were infected by a parasitic worm associated with irrigation ditches.

The disease, called schistosomiasis, is contracted through the skin when a person comes into contact with worm-infested waters. The disease infects over 200 million people worldwide a year; once contracted, the disease causes a rash, followed by fever, chills, cough and muscle aches. If infection goes untreated, it can damage the liver, intestines, lungs and bladder.

The species of Schistosoma worm, called S. mansoni, found to be prevalent in the Nubian mummies had been thought of as a more recent agent of disease, linked to urban life and stagnant water in irrigation ditches.

"It is the one most prevalent in the delta region of Egypt now, and researchers have always assumed that it was a more recent pathogen, but now we show that goes back thousands of years," said study researcher George Armelagos of Emory University in Atlanta.

Although Armelagos and his colleagues weren't able to discern how bad the infections were in these Nubians, they said those who were infected would have felt run down - which would have affected their work (mostly farming).

Key

Ancient Iberian sanctuary uncovered in Villajoyosa

Iberian Sanctuary
© Town HallThe dig in Villajoyosa

Evidence of an ancient Iberian sanctuary dedicated to the Mother Goddess has been uncovered at a site in Villajoyosa. EFE reports that the project is sponsored by the French Foreign Ministry in collaboration with the local Town Hall.

Archaeological experts from the Town Hall and the universities of Alicante and Paris have been working at the dig at La Malladeta since 2005 and their findings are due to be presented in Madrid this summer. They have found clues hidden in the 190 archaeological strata they have investigated which suggest that the site was active as an Iberian sanctuary over the 4th-1st Centuries BC.

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Forerunner of Egyptian Pyramids found in Romania?

Tomb Romania

Archaeologists claim to have found a forerunner to the pyramids not in Egypt - but in southern Romania.

The discovery being hailed as a sensation has been dated as being over 4,500 years old after it was unearthed in Aricestii Rahtivani, in Prahova county in southern Romania.

Archaeologist Alin Franculeasa, from the History and Archeology Museum in Prahova, said: "If we take the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen - he reigned between 1333 - 1323 BC, but this tomb is even older - from a man who obviously also had great wealth and importance but who would have lived 4,500 years ago.

"There are clearly similarities between the tomb we are looking at and that of the pyramids.

Info

Human Ancestors in Eurasia Earlier Than Thought

Homo Erectus
© photolibrary.comA new find has muddied the water on the origins of Homo erectus.

Archaeologists have long thought that Homo erectus, humanity's first ancestor to spread around the world, evolved in Africa before dispersing throughout Europe and Asia. But evidence of tool-making at the border of Europe and Asia is challenging that assumption.

Reid Ferring, an anthropologist at the University of North Texas in Denton, and his colleagues excavated the Dmanisi site in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. They found stone artefacts - mostly flakes that were dropped as hominins knapped rocks to create tools for butchering animals - lying in sediments almost 1.85 million years old. Until now, anthropologists have thought that H. erectus evolved between 1.78 million and 1.65 million years ago - after the Dmanisi tools would have been made.

Furthermore, the distribution of the 122 artefacts paints a picture of long-term occupation of the area. Instead of all the finds being concentrated in one layer of sediment, which would indicate that hominins visited the site briefly on one occasion, the artefacts are spread through several layers of sediment that span the period between 1.85 million and 1.77 million years ago. The findings are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.1

"This is indeed suggestive of a sustained regional population which had successfully adapted to the temperate environments of the southern Caucasus," explains Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands.