What goes through my my mind when I read the news with my morning coffee. …Or for the Simon's Rockers in the group, this is my response journal.
The bone belonged to an ancient human who had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.
….The find is either a stunning stroke of luck or a hint that hominins interbred more often than we thought. It may even suggest that extinct groups like Neanderthals did not die out, but were absorbed by our species.
Prehistoric girl had parents belonging to different human species | New Scientist
hmmmmm
So what, exactly does the rosehip neuron do? That’s not quite clear. The cells make up about 10 percent of the neocortex, the last part of our brain to evolve which is associated with sight and hearing. Rosehip appears to be an inhibitory neuron, which regulates the flow of information to certain parts of the brain. Saplakoglu reports the rosehips seem to connect to pyramidal neurons, an “excitatory” neuron that makes up about two-thirds of the neuron cells in the neocortex.
“It has these really discrete connections with [pyramidal] neurons,” says Bakken. “It has the potential to sort of manipulate the circuit in a really targeted way, but how that influences behavior will have to come in later work,” Bakken tells Andrea Morris at Forbes.
Meet the Rosehip Neuron: A Newly Discovered Cell in the Human Brain | Smart News | Smithsonian
wild
Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s male colleagues were given a Nobel in 1974 for her discovery of radio pulsars.
…Decades ago, Bell Burnell discovered pulsars as a graduate student at the University of Cambridge as she gathered data on a new radio telescope. Anthony Hewish, who was working with Bell Burnell at the time, and Sir Martin Ryle, who was told about the discovery, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974. Hewish was credited with “his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars,” even though Bell Burnell first discovered the regular pulses of radio waves.
…She’s being given the award for her “fundamental contributions to the discovery of pulsars, and a lifetime of inspiring leadership in the scientific community,” according to a statement from the prize board.
…Women and minorities are underrepresented in astronomy and science leadership, and she’d like to change that.
“If you have a diverse group of people, it’s more robust and more successful and more flexible,” she said.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s 1967 Nobel work finally gets Breakthrough Prize
cool
Some paleoarchaeologists have hypothesized it’s possible they simply couldn’t reproduce fast enough to keep up with the modern humans moving into Europe around that time. Others suggest modern humans slaughtered any bands of Neanderthal they came across or infected them with novel diseases. And some suggest that an environmental catastrophe, like a volcanic eruption in Europe, killed off many plants and animals.
…Researchers propose a new hypothesis this week that suggests our bipedal brethren weren’t equipped to stand a cold spell that accompanied two long periods of extended climate change that took place around the time the species began its decline, Malcolm Ritter at the Associated Press reports.
…Not everyone is convinced by the research. Israel Hershkovitz, a physical anthropologist at Tel Aviv University, tells David that Neanderthals went through a lot of cold snaps before the ones 45,000 years ago and weathered them fine, so it doesn’t make sense that this one event would impact them so heavily. He also questions whether the climate record from caves in Romania can accurately represent all of Europe, saying there is evidence that other parts of the continent had a mild climate in the same period.
However, the researchers point out that the cold spells didn’t just impact Neanderthals. They continued to ice out modern humans after the Neanderthals disappeared; each time one culture of ancient humans disappeared in the face of a changing climate, another culture replaced them when the world warmed up again.
Climate Change Likely Iced Neanderthals Out Of Existence | Smart News | Smithsonian
hmmm
…Wherever Africans were enslaved in the world, there were runaways who escaped permanently and lived in free independent settlements. These people and their descendants are known as “maroons.” The term probably comes from the Spanish cimarrón, meaning feral livestock, fugitive slave or something wild and defiant.
…By downplaying American marronage, and valorizing white involvement in the Underground Railroad, historians have shown a racial bias, in Sayers’ opinion, a reluctance to acknowledge the strength of black resistance and initiative. They’ve also revealed the shortcomings of their methods: “Historians are limited to source documents. When it comes to maroons, there isn’t that much on paper. But that doesn’t mean their story should be ignored or overlooked. As archaeologists, we can read it in the ground.”
…The Dismal Swamp covered great tracts of southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina, and its vegetation was far too thick for horses or canoes. In the early 1600s, Native Americans fleeing the colonial frontier took refuge here, and they were soon joined by fugitive slaves, and probably some whites escaping indentured servitude or hiding from the law. From about 1680 to the Civil War, it appears that the swamp communities were dominated by Africans and African-Americans.
…British traveler J.F.D. Smyth, writing in 1784, gleaned this description: “Runaway negroes have resided in these places for twelve, twenty, or thirty years and upwards, subsisting themselves in the swamp upon corn, hogs, and fowls….[On higher ground] they have erected habitations, and cleared small fields around them.”
…The Great Dismal Swamp, now reduced by draining and development, is managed as a federal wildlife refuge. The once-notorious panthers are gone, but bears, birds, deer and amphibians are still abundant. So are venomous snakes and biting insects. …The swamp teems with water moccasins and rattlesnakes. The mosquitoes get so thick that they can blur the outlines of a person standing 12 feet away.
…We step onto the shore of a large, flat, sun-dappled island carpeted with fallen leaves. Walking toward its center, the underbrush disappears, and we enter a parklike clearing shaded by a few hardwoods and pines.
…Apart from some water catchment pits with fire-hardened floors, there’s not much he can show me. But Sayers is an expressive talker and gesticulator, and as he walks me around the island, he conjures up clusters of log cabins, some with raised floors and porches. He points to invisible fields and gardens in the middle distance, children playing, people fishing, small groups off hunting. Charlie, the ex-maroon interviewed in Canada, described people making furniture and musical instruments.
…Before 1660, most people at the nameless site were Native Americans. The first maroons were there within a few years of the arrival of African slaves in nearby Jamestown in 1619. After 1680, Native American materials become scarce; what he identifies as maroon artifacts begin to dominate.
…“Everything we’ve found would fit into a single shoe box,” he says. “And it makes sense. They were using organic materials from the swamp. Except for the big stuff like cabins, it decomposes without leaving a trace.”
…Sayers has evidence of a thriving community at the nameless site all the way up to the Civil War. “That’s when they came out,” he says. “We’ve found almost nothing after the Civil War. They probably worked themselves back into society as free people.”
Wild.
The Trump administration on Tuesday made public the details of its new pollution rules governing coal-burning power plants, and the fine print includes an acknowledgment that the plan would increase carbon emissions and lead to up to 1,400 premature deaths annually.
…The new proposal …would also let states relax pollution rules for power plants that need upgrades, keeping them active longer.
…Compared to the Obama-era plan, the analysis says, “implementing the proposed rule is expected to increase emissions of carbon dioxide and the level of emissions of certain pollutants in the atmosphere that adversely affect human health.”
…The [Obama era] Clean Power Plan aimed to curb planet-warming greenhouse gases by steering the energy sector away from coal and toward cleaner energy sources like wind and solar. According to its calculations, the decreased coal burning also would reduce other pollutants like sulfur dioxide, which poses respiratory risk, and nitrogen oxides that create ozone, which, in the form of smog, can damage lung tissue.
Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. also estimated that, by 2030, the Clean Power Plan would result in 180,000 fewer missed school days per year by children because of ozone-related illnesses. Asthma instances would also drop significantly, according to the analysis.
By contrast, the Trump administration analysis finds that own its plan would see 48,000 new cases of exacerbated asthma and at least 21,000 new missed days of school annually by 2030 because those pollutants would increase in the atmosphere rather than decrease.
Cost of New E.P.A. Coal Rules: Up to 1,400 More Deaths a Year – The New York Times
hmmm
The discovery suggests that future lunar expeditions might have a readily available source of water that would make it easier “to explore and even stay on the moon,” officials at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement Tuesday about the discovery.
Scientists discover water ice on moon’s surface. Here’s why that’s big news.
Wild.
According to the latest drought map, 48 percent of New Hampshire is abnormally dry, meaning there’s a fine line between being in the clear and a drought.
“We’re predicted to get more rain all the way through August, without getting dry hot conditions, which the big issue there is people using a lot of water when it’s dry and hot,” said Stacey Herbold, of the NH Drought Management Team.
Despite rain, nearly half of New Hampshire is abnormally dry
hmmm
Is the Trump Administration Allowing Asbestos Back Into the Manufacturing Industry?
in answer to that question, yes, yes he is.
Better question, what does his greedy old fat ass get out of it???!
“It’s one thing for NIH to ask people to donate their genome sequences for the higher good,” Peter Pitts, president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, told NBC News. “But when two for-profit companies enter into an agreement where the jewel in the crown is your gene sequence and you are actually paying for the privilege of participating, I think that’s upside-down.”
Typically, 23andMe uses and shares its customers’ genetic data after it has been pooled together and stripped of any information that would allow anyone to trace back its origins to a single person. But more recently, the company has also asked customers for added permission to share their individual genetic and self-reported data with outside sources for research. Though this data is said to be stripped of information that would prevent identification, such as your name or date of birth, even 23andMe has warned it cannot “provide a 100 percent guarantee that your data will be safe” in the event of a breach.
Experts have feared that data leaks from genetic testing companies such as 23andMe would allow insurance companies to screen out people with risky genes, regardless of genetic privacy laws.
23andMe Is Getting Lots of Money From Big Pharma and Sharing Your Genetic Data
Sigh…
23andMe is partnering with drug giant GlaxoSmithKline to use people’s DNA to develop medical treatments.
…If a person’s DNA is used in research, that person should be compensated, said Peter Pitts, president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.
“Are they going to offer rebates to people who opt in, so their customers aren’t paying for the privilege of 23andMe working with a for-profit company in a for-profit research project?” Pitts said to NBC.
In addition, even though 23andMe gets the consent of its customers to use their genetic data, it’s unlikley that most people are aware of this.
…The new collaboration isn’t the first time 23andMe’s vast pool of genetic data has been mined by scientists. The San Francisco startup has already published more than 100 scientific papers based on its customers’ data, according to yesterday’s blog post, by Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe’s co-founder and chief executive. In 2015, the company launched 23andMe Therapeutics, which focuses on developing “novel treatments and cures based on genetic insights from the consented 23andMe community,” Wojcicki wrote.
23andMe has more than 5 million customers worldwide who have had their DNA analyzed for ancestral data. People who would like to close their 23andMe accounts can go here, but the company notes that “any research involving your data that has already been performed or published prior to our receipt of your request will not be reversed, undone, or withdrawn.”
23andMe Is Sharing Its 5 Million Clients’ Genetic Data with Drug Giant GlaxoSmithKline
Did anyone with a brain not see this slimey corporate douchebaggery coming from miles away???!
Ice patches are similar to glaciers in that they’re long-living hunks of ice replenished by snow each winter. But they differ in that they don’t move. That means that any artifacts left on them are simply entombed in the ice rather than ground to a fine dust, which is what happens to artifacts trapped in glaciers as they slide down the mountain.
Now that climate change is causing ice to melt, those artifacts are once again seeing the light of day after thousands of frozen years. In case of Oppland, Norway, some artifacts have been dated back to 6,000 years ago.
The wealth of artifacts recovered in Oppland (or any ice patch for that matter) are delicate and after centuries of life without air, they degrade and can be destroyed by the elements in a matter of days if nobody finds them. That makes the scientists’ work equal parts detective and EMT.
…The earliest artifacts date to 6,000 years ago, which Barrett said are unique in their own right. But the artifact record that allows the scientists to spin their historical yarn begins to pick up steam in the third century.
That’s a period when agriculture and economic activity started to take hold in the valleys populated by Nordic people.
…The number of artifacts peaked in the Viking Age, which lasted from around the late eighth century until the early 10th century. During this period, exploration was the name of the game. Ships were setting out across the sea, contributing to a larger trading economy that was in part driven by natural resources brought down from the mountains.
Norway’s Melting Ice Patches Offer a New Glimpse Into History
hmmm
Crops are fading in the drought. And the unusual weather circumstances made the remarkable photos possible, Murphy explains.
“In the late Neolithic, people would have built this henge out of timber,” he says. Imagine massive posts — possibly whole tree trunks — planted in pits and postholes.
“Over time, when the monument fell out of use, the wood all rots away and the holes kind of fill up with organic material,” he said. “But they leave a sort of a fingerprint, or a footprint.” Archaeologists can see it in soil samples. And, in a drought, you can see the impact on crops.
“Those filled-in holes retain a slight amount more moisture than the surrounding soil,” Murphy says. “The crop that is growing out of those features has a very small advantage in terms of additional water and it’s very slightly healthier.”
In normal weather, the difference is undetectable — that’s why Murphy had flown drones overhead before without noticing it. And even in a drought, it’s too subtle to see from the ground.
But combine the dry spell with the aerial view, and suddenly the outline is obvious.
In Ireland, Drought And A Drone Revealed The Outline Of An Ancient Henge : NPR
Wild!
Newly discovered prehistoric Native American artifacts found in the dirt near Florence date back 16,000 years which makes them the oldest man-fashioned tools ever found in North America.
…Gault bears evidence of continuous human occupation beginning at least 16,000 years ago, and now perhaps earlier, which makes it one of a few but growing number of archaeological sites in the Americas where scientists have discovered evidence of human occupation dating to centuries before the appearance of the Clovis culture at the end of the last ice age about 13,500 years ago.
…Collins says evidence at Gault shows “cultural manifestations at least two thousand years before the appearance of Clovis.”
…For decades archaeologists have subscribed to the “land bridge” theory when considering how man got to this continent.
But what GSAR and others now suggest is this part of the world was populated far earlier than first thought and those who were here back then probably got here by boat, not land bridge.
Most who study the issue believe Clovis technology spread through the indigenous population as those “Clovis” people moved across the land, but Collins now believes “Within a wider context, this evidence suggests that Clovis technology spread across an already regionalized, indigenous population,” he wrote.
…”The site was occupied intensively during all major periods of the prehistoric era,” an article published in Texas Beyond History, says.
Artifacts from Central Texas site date back 16,000 years
Wild!
Like the ownership of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the legitimacy of archaeology in the West Bank has been constantly in question since 1967. In the last half-century, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and the Staff Officer for Archaeology of the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria (the military government that rules the West Bank outside of East Jerusalem) have conducted or licensed excavations at hundreds of sites in the West Bank. The 1954 Hague Convention severely restricts the archaeological activity that can be conducted in occupied territory, limiting it to salvage work where ancient remains are in danger, and then only to be conducted in cooperation with authorities from the occupied territory. But Israeli excavations in the West Bank — like the Museum of the Bible-funded Qumran dig — are routinely conducted unilaterally, without any Palestinian involvement. This means that all of these excavations, including the one at Qumran, are in violation of international law. There are also ethical questions about the use of archaeology, intentionally or not, to stake claim to Palestinian land and provide evidence of ancient Jewish presence there.
…It is not merely the Museum of the Bible’s funding of a West Bank excavation that is ethically dubious, however. There is also the matter of whom they are funding. Randall Price, the recipient of the grant and co-director of the excavation, is Distinguished Research Professor at Liberty University, founded by prominent televangelist and Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell. Price is the main figure profiled in a February 2013 Atlantic article entitled “The Biblical Pseudo-Archaeologists Pillaging the West Bank.” As the Atlantic piece indicated, Price (who has also taken part in an expedition to look for Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat in Turkey) and evangelicals like him might have difficulty receiving permits to dig within Israel proper, but he has been able to dig at Qumran over many years because of looser restrictions within the West Bank licensing system.
…In 2016–17 the Museum of the Bible reported a grant of $38,413 to the university to publish the Aramaic magic bowls in the Museum of the Bible’s own collection. Already by 2011, the Green Collection claimed to have the “second-largest holding of incantation bowls in the world.” However, most Aramaic incantation bowls are unprovenanced, and hundreds suddenly appeared on the market starting in the early 1990s, apparently looted in the aftermath of the Gulf War. If the Greens acquired such a large collection within a mere two years (it is widely reported that they began collecting artifacts and manuscripts in 2009), it is almost certain that they must have acquired unprovenanced items looted and smuggled out of Iraq — in violation not only of Iraq’s antiquities laws but also of a UN Security Council resolution.
…This funding arrangement may shed some light on the issue of the rumored “First Century Mark.” Starting in 2012, rumors circulated among biblical scholars of a fragment of the New Testament Gospel of Mark dating to the first century CE. This rumored First Century Mark would be significant as the earliest known version of the text, and one dating shortly after the book would have been written (it is generally dated by scholars sometime in the middle decades of the first century CE). It was thought that the Green family owned or was trying to purchase this fragment, but no firm evidence was ever put forward about this. Last month, the EES posted a note about a recently published Oxyrhynchus papyrus, confirming that this was in fact the rumored First Century Mark — except that it dated to the late second or early third century, and was owned not by the Museum of the Bible but by the EES. The publication of the fragment was edited by Dirk Obbink. The Museum of the Bible’s funding of Obbink’s Oxyrhynchus projects might have some bearing on puzzling aspects of the case, such as why it was believed that the fragment was owned by the Museum of the Bible. (If in fact the Green family is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars funding Oxyrhynchus-related research, then they may have a proprietary attitude toward that research even if they do not own the fragments themselves.)
…Why does all of this matter? The Museum of the Bible is an evangelical Christian institution. Its original mission statement, on its first Form 990 given in 2011, declared that the museum’s goal is “to bring to life the living word of God, to tell its compelling story of preservation, and to inspire confidence in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible.” While this has since been modified, and the museum is careful to check its displays with consultants to remove language of exclusivity, there is still an implicit Christian — and particularly Protestant — bias throughout the museum’s narrative. The museum and Green maintain that they want to be “nonsectarian” and “let the facts speak for themselves,” but the museum’s own exhibitions undermine these claims. In its walls the Bible is understood first and foremost as the Christian Bible; Jews are just bystanders in a Christian world, or else they are props. And the Bible is seen as historically correct, without nuance.
…The public will get a distorted view of what biblical scholarship actually does, or should do. And, through the museum’s various collaborations, its vision of the Bible is one that is increasingly endorsed, even if implicitly, by academic scholars. Then there is the museum’s willingness, even eagerness, to acquire and fund the study of unprovenanced antiquities. Most of these items are probably either forged or stolen. Their acquisition has involved the violation of the antiquities and customs laws of several countries as well as of international law. And these objects have often been looted from war zones, where their purchase funds continued violence.
If there is a battle between Museum of the Bible funding and scholarly ethics in the study of the ancient world, then it appears that the money is winning. Hands down.
An Illegal Archeological Dig in the West Bank Raises Questions About the Museum of the Bible
sigh….
The henge is thought to date from the late Neolithic period, up to possibly the Bronze Age, from about 3,000 BCE. Anthony Murphy, a journalist and researcher responsible for Mythical Ireland, a blog about Ireland’s ancient megalithic sites, is responsible for the new find, which is being hailed as a completely new and very significant discovery by archaeologists.
…The new site is part of a cluster of henges and passage tombs in the Boyne Valley – working with with LiDAR scanning, Davis has roughly doubled the number of known monuments since 2010.
The landscape is known for passage tombs (like Newgrange, or Dowth, where a tomb has just been discovered) which were built from about 3,600 until 3,100 BCE during the middle Neolithic period.
The henge would have been made out of timber with two concentric circles, which would possibly have been ‘linteled’ with horizontal supports as well. “This is a time period where they’re building particularly in timber and earth, as opposed to stone which went before,” Davis says.
…Although there are discernible entries and exits, you could in theory enter the structure at any point. “It makes it much more like a symbolic enclosure, rather than a real enclosure.”
This all points to the idea that the structure was used for ritual ceremonies that involved feasting, gathering and trading together. There is, Davis explains, lots of evidence of feasting on animals at Durrington Walls within the Stonehenge landscape in England, and these sorts of sites are sometimes referred to as passing enclosures – places people congregate at during the changing of the seasons.
“The discovery means we have the highest concentration of late neolithic henges anywhere in the world,” Murphy says. He believes there may be some astronomical alignment to unearth – at nearby Dowth Hall, alignment towards the summer solstice sunrise has been discerned.
Europe’s scorching heatwave has revealed a mysterious henge | WIRED UK
Very cool!
A pyramid in Morelos (around 40 miles south of Mexico City,) was damaged by the quake. While assessing how much the quake had messed the ancient structure up, Archaeologists discovered that, underneath the pyramid, there was an even older temple that they hadn’t known was there.
From The BBC:
The temple is nestled inside the Teopanzolco pyramid in Morelos state, 70km (43 miles) south of Mexico City.
It is thought to date back to 1150 and to belong to the Tlahuica culture, one of the Aztec peoples living in central Mexico.
The structure is dedicated to Tláloc, the Aztec rain god.
Archaeologists say it would have measured 6m by 4m (20ft by 13ft). Among the temple’s remains they also found an incense burner and ceramic shards.
Underneath ancient Mexican temple, archeologists find an even older one / Boing Boing
Wild!
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