Mars robots to get smart upgrade

Spirit and Opportunity Rovers, still trundling gamely across the surface of Mars, are to be given greater freedom, of a sort, to decide for themselves which images to take of their surroundings, subsequently choosing what's worth sending back to Earth.

However, this particular part of the mission brief seems only to extend to clouds and dust-storms, presumably meaning that any images that do not contain these, will not be prioritised for return to Earth. Quite why we need to look at pictures of clouds, when there are perfectly good craft orbiting Mars that can better analyse them, is anyone's guess, but the dust-storms will be of interest, as it is these that are thought to be responsible for clearing the dust and debris from the Rovers' solar panels, thus greatly extending their operational lives.

On the downside, this new upgrade to the Rovers' software might mean they miss other photo opportunities on the ground - after all, in the event of coming across anomalous surface features, how is a Rover to image them if its cameras are constantly pointed up at the sky?

Also due for an ugrade is the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which will similarly be instructed to look for sudden changes on the surface, including watching for ice clouds, this time from above, unnecessarily duplicating the work of the Rovers. Or maybe it's just an effort to supress anomalous images from being sent back here, leaving them onboard to be quietly downloaded for the viewing pleasure of a very select few. Such anomalies might include alien, or even better, human artifacts, ruined architecture, or extant biology that defies current understanding.

Clearly then, we are not going to be permitted to see anything from Mars that might be deemed unfit for public consumption, a situation that might see the birth of a new breed of hackers, capable of accessing hidden data aboard secretive satellites, hopefully willing and able to share their finds with the rest of us.

The long term outlook is that present and future craft will be capable not only of being constantly updated, but can even have entire missions scrapped or created at will - at first, this will be managed from Earth, but looking farther ahead, the spacecraft themselves will probably start devising their own missions from scratch. Given the vast distances in just our own solar system, it's quite possible that we may never be able to invent the technology required for human interstellar travel, and that autonomous bots and craft will be the only ones capable of exploring where mankind can never venture - this will leave us with ample opportunity to try and work out how we can access and traverse other dimensions, including Time, all without us having to leave the planet at all - the message of Space, in its physical state, would seem to be telling us that the route to new worlds and other realms is not to be achieved by travelling extremely fast, year in, year out, across vast, trackless areas of outer space, even if we do find a way of increasing human life-spans to centuries or millennia.

Although there is great enthusiasm for enabling humans to live for what might be forever, or at least a very long time, it would be a sad outcome if the only use we could find for such longevity would entail making people sit for aeons, imprisoned on a spacecraft, heading from one culture they would never see again, to places where either nothing existed, or where existing cultures had so radically altered during the journey, that the arriving astronauts would have no comprehension of what was going on - making for something of a wasted trip.

SOHO Mission Extension

As is the case with the Moon, Mars and a plethora of other objects in the solar system, the Sun is readying itself for an influx of visiting probes and sundry craft from Earth - and although there is no reference made here to the putative UFOs or other craft that have been seen in close proximity, it will come as no surprise to some, who believe the Sun is either being monitored, or in some way modified by them - maybe they're responsible for this mystery

Scott Stevens at weatherwars has posted a series of images, depicting what he believes to be alien craft, carrying out various unidentified missions around the Sun, but as he points out, the images are not very high quality or clearly defined - as such it's impossible to appraise the anomalous white streaks which illustrate his point, but with all those extra missions departing from Earth, there is reason to expect images of higher definition, from which it might be possible to see exactly what's going on up there.

Stevens also refers to the theory of Hoagland et al that the entire sloar system is currently undergoing a warming phase, which might co-incide with the Sun's 11-year cycles being out of synch - the solar maximum was supposed to have ended in 2001, whereas since that time, there has been an almost unprecedented amount of flaring and sun-spot activity, caused by unknown forces for unknown reasons.

Joining SOHO a veteran with 10 years in space to its name, will be no less than 5 craft, including Solar B, from JAXA, Proba-2 from ESA, while NASA will be fielding a pair of craft named STEREO, followed by the Solar Dynamics Orbiter in 2008 - the current SOHO craft will act as a third eye in support of the STEREO, whilst in 2015 there is the possibility of ESA launching its own Solar Orbiter, designed to operate in fairly close proximity to the distant yellow star.

The overall effort is part of a larger programme, 'International Living With A Star', which appears to imply that it's possible to live life without the presence of one or more suns in the locale, but presumably such a mission would be by definition, kept under the cover of darkness.

All of which is doubtless supposed to make us feel very modern, at the cutting edge of solar exploration, but the knowledge we are seeking was also sought, and found, by various of our predecessors - it was recently disclosed that Cuzco, the capital of the Sun-worshipping Inca, received more solar ultra-violet light than anywhere else on the planet during their tenure there. Doubtless this will be dismissed as a coincidence by the usual mainstream sources, but there will be plenty of others who will opine that the Inca understood at least some aspects of the super-science of our solar benefactor.

weatherwars

Are We Enlightened Guardians, Or Are We Apes Designing Humans?

More speculation on how our future might be shorter and dimmer than we would like to suppose, should we fall victim to a super-intelligence that comes to regard us as superfluous to its needs - that's assuming that Gaia doesn't first hit us with a pre-emptive strike of its own.

While technologies of the micro and macro continue to evolve at increasingly high speeds, we take it for granted that there will be electricity to guarantee ever-present power, but if someone were to hit the 'off' switch at an inopportune moment, and for a prolonged period of time, we would fairly soon find ourselves sliding backwards into a new Dark Age, bringing all that hard work to nought.

It might therefore be argued that the future of humanity is hostage to the power and energy corporations, those people who send us begging letters on a quarterly basis, and it's quite probable there are many individuals who would much prefer humanity to remain in a state of relative helplesness with finite abilities, the better to impose on us outdated dogma or other fundamentalist ideas, that have so successfully allowed the human race to be divided and ruled these past few millennia.

But even if the power stays on, and we do invent these AI entities, the benefit to mankind will certainly not be universal. For every individual plugged into the super-powered grid of shiny newness, there will be thousands of others whose lives will still be lived in abject poverty, plagued by illness, doomed to premature ageing and death. Indeed, it's difficult to contemplate any kind of singularity involving the whole of mankind, unless the numbers are hugely reduced to a comparative handful - and the means of that reduction are sure to be anything but pleasant or enlightening.

But the real question is why we need super-intelligence or AI beings in the first place, and what use we as humans would find for it. We might like the idea of being able to instantly call to mind any piece of data or knowledge on request, or recite complicated algorithms to each other before breakfast each morning, but it's doubtful the novelty of this enhanced processing power would last long - but what would be the next step? Unbounded psychic abilities that would allow us to see the future - but if everyone knew their and others' futures, there would be no future, just some sort of rolling, pereptual present.

Or maybe all this knowledge would be best contained outside the human sphere of experience, with machines being used as both founts of knowledge as well as solvers of problems before they even arose, leaving humanity to absolve all concern and responsibility, left intsead to concentrate on simply living flawless lives in homogenous harmony with one another, for hundreds or thousands of years at a time, forever compelled to inventing new ways of spending all that leisure time, seldom interrupted by work or domestic maintenance.

Broadly speaking, humanity only ever moves forward as a result of encounters with adversity, and will continue to do so until there one day comes a problem that is simply too great, and one that will ultimately destroy us all for ever - but before that happens, we might find ourselves dealing with and solving all manner of mysteries. For instance we should finally be able to manifest and encounter at will, all the various types of beings that are constantly signalling their presence to us, enabling us to interract with them, rather than react to them, though what the result would be of humanity messing with interdimensional beings, is anyone's guess. It's quite possible that there may ensue from these encounters, great conflict and struggles for ultimate control, which we as inexperienced novices might easily lose. We could then face the prospect of our super-intelligent machines being imbued with the super-consciousness of, say, the machine elves of DMT fame, assuming of course that this hasn't already happened, without us yet realising.

On a more mundane level, super-intelligence might finally allow the human race to live in some sort of harmony, both with itself and its surroundings, because the only other outcome would see the struggle of one AI against other AIs, with humanity being the helpless victim caught in the cross-fire of lean, mean, killing machines.

In conclusion, it seems we need super-intelligence a lot more than it needs us, and as it has thus far remained elusive, it may yet find new ways of remaining firmly out of our grasp, preferring to act as it does now, quietly, in the background, and always with a wary eye on us. But there is a persistent feeling that this super-intelligence is nothing new - we see signs of it littered across the structures and symbology of the ancient world, which probably means that somebody, somewhere already has access to a veritable treasure trove of concealed wonders, deemed unfit and or unsafe for revelation to the public at large.

Ancient city reveals life in desert 2,200 years ago

Good article, somewhat spoiled by its complete lack of reference to similar finds in exactly the same region of the world, dating from the same period of time, but more of that later.

The impression given is that the site in the Taklimakan was a desert city when it was founded over 2,200 years ago, but as we are told, back then it was an area of rivers and dense forest, consisting largely of poplar trees, which the residents put to good use, as described here:

"Almost all the things in the city were made from poplar trees, including the city walls, city gates, houses and tombs, and also the daily necessities such as wooden barrels, bowls and combs," said Abdurensule. "They also used poplar tree branches to cook meals and produce heating during winter. However, not a single poplar tree can be found in the area today."

However, it's thought that their fondness for all things poplar led to de-forestation of the area, leading in turn to today's desert, althoughn sudden and significant climate change is more likely to have played a key role in this.

But it's the people who lived at the so-called Round Sand city, who provide the real story, as it transpires that rather than being native Mongolians or Chinese as we might expect, entombed bodies excavated on-site appear to be of the Caucasian race, a people more usually associated with Europe and western Asia. We are further told that they were skilled textile workers, weaving exotically coloured clothing, while also turning their hand to livestock and cereal farming.

The archaeologists at the site claim to have no idea where these people came from, which means they are either very secluded from the outside world, or just plain ignorant and unaware. In 1988, Victor Mair began coming across Caucasian mummies in exactly the same region, and concluded that these weavers of bright textiles doubtless came from the Caucasian west, and such was the impact of the story that the mainstream Discovery channels began airing the documentary 'Riddle of the Desert Mummies', which must have surely been seen by even the most myopic and ill-informed archaeologists in France or China.

There are even two, lavishly illustrated and exhaustive accounts of pre-Chinese, Caucasian occupation of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, published as books, which we would assume these bone-headed archaeologists studying the region, would at least bother to read, before erroneously concluding that their finds were unique and un-related to anything else in the region, where they have been 'working' since 1994.

more here and here also here

Physicists draw up plans for real 'cloaking device'

Another example of how our 'future' is already old before we even get there, if indeed we manage to get there at all. With rainfall fron the previous post still on my mind, it occurs that no matter how good the cloaking device in question, such applications will suffer from a fatal flaw if deployed in wet or snowy weather. Imagine Agent Slo-Mo, or whoever, trailing someone in secret, stading with snow settling on invisible shoulders, or raindrops mysteriously rebounding in mid-air from his invisible head, while the grateful quarry realises the danger he is in, and departs the scene in a hurry.

It is tempting when reading such stories, to imagine that this technology probably already exists, although the current owners of such applications, such as military or security agencies, would hardly be likely to announce to the world they had this capability, preferring instead to keep us all guessing. Either way, it would be very surprising indeed if innovations such as this would ever be permitted in the public realm, but with the increasing ingenuity and capability of people and processing power, it won't be long before black market versions will be offered to anyone waving the requisite amount of cash while asking the minimum amount of questions.

Spin between the raindrops

Continuing the saga of the drought we are apparently facing in the South East of England, although mysteriously this doesn't seem to include London, the linked article looks at the way this predicament has been reported.

Bearing in mind that the BBC itself has been the source of much of the spin, it's vaguely refreshing to see them questioning the method, if not the motives, behind such misleading reportage. As we know, any story can be made more dramatic by selective quoting of data and statistics, and there are plenty to read and compare in this context, leading the freelance author to conclude that although we are a little short of water, the overall situation is not as bad as we're constantly told it is.

Having this very morning walked across a London park, my mud encrusted boots and wet trouser bottoms attest to the news that this May has been one of the wettest on record, with the outlook promising plenty more downpours in the near future - but we cannot take too much heart from this - a couple of years back, despite a similar period of intense rain, we were then informed by the water companies that it was the 'wrong type of rain', and that the drought situation had not been alleviated at all. Residents of these isles will be familiar with this excuse, though it's usually used by the rail network in Autumn and Winter, when to explain their latest set of disastrous service failures, we are told that line and rolling stock have fallen foul of the wrong type of leaves, and the wrong type of snow, between responsible for bringing the entire railway system to a grinding halt. Of course we all know it's because the sub-standard and under-qualified people put in charge of running this part of the infrastructure are so pathetically useless, it's a wonder any of it works at all, but that's another story.

In the long term, it seems likely that a national water grid will be put into place, meaning that entire regions of the country will be in danger of having their water supplies suddenly curtailed and subject to stringent rationing, a very effective means of keeping people under tight control. For instance, mass rioting could easily break out in protest at the ever more severe strictures pessimists predict we will be enduring, as society becomes increasingly closely monitored and uber-controlled in the coming years. One can only imagine the types of coercion and persuasion people could be forced into accepting for fear of having water supplies terminated.

But whatever happens here, it will be as nothing compared to the water wars that will surely erupt in the Middle East, Asia and beyond, as millions more people compete daily for dwindling supplies, which even the importation of icebergs or seeding of clouds, will be unable replenish.

more here

Rock art under wraps

Robert Bednarik is back in the limelight, this time with news of what has been described as 'spectacular' finds of petroglyphs, or rock art, discovered last year in Tasmania - and it's not just any old discovery, because it's believed to be the largest collection of its kind, ever recorded.

However, it's unlikely we, or anyone else, will be getting a look at them in the near future, as Bednarik is keeping the location a secret, fearful that they will be unprotected by a government that isn't aware, and vandalised by a public that doesn't care.

Although Bednarik certainly has a point, and it's very important that such sites should be revered and respected for what they are, it should still be possible to release photos of some of the images that should not give away the exact location, but would nevertheless inform an interested public. Such exposure should provoke enough interest to ensure that relevant agencies take good care of the sites and their contents, while at the same time acknowledging that all such finds, to a large extent, belong in the public realm, although there are many works and artifacts considered so secret, that only Aboriginal people are permitted to see them.

A notable detail from elsewhere in the article relates the discovery of unusally large stone tools found in the Southern Forests of Tasmania, so let's hope someone finds some unusually large human remains to go with them - there is on indication of age, or even of the lithic industry to which they belong, but it could transpire that the tools belong to an even earlier inhabitant than the modern Aboriginals.

More here

The Lessons of Lascaux

In the UK, many of us equate 1940 with the Battle of Britain and other war-related events, but in France a stunning discovery was made deep in the darkness of the caves at Lascaux, where polychrome paintings of Palaeolithic fauna had remained undisturbed and unseen for about 17,000 years.

It has since had the misfortune to fall victim to the ravages of a white fungus that has covered the floor 'like snow', and although the curator of Lascaux has calimed the situation is now under control, other experts fear the damage might be much worse, with the situation being played down to avoid embarrassment at having let such a situation to arise at a World Heritage site.

This latest infestation is believed to have occurred as a direct result of the installation of an air-conditioning system, designed to prevent this very type of problem, and it is by no means clear that the problems there have been solved. There are reports of the Fusarium fungus having been removed by hand from the walls, and although damage to the paintings has been denied, there are reports that formerly black areas of paint now had a greyish tinge to them.

It is thought that during building work to install fans , designed to ventilate the caves by sucking air through the passages, a roof over the cave entrance was removed to accommodate machinery and tools. Disaster struck as torrential rain turned the entrance into a mud-bath, which is believed to have been when the fungus washed in - the entire job was likened by a witness to a bathroom being re-fitted, and it remains to be seen whether anyone will be censured, scolded or sacked for this debacle.

Lascaux was closed to the public many years ago, as a direct result of the damage done by thousands of visitors constantly moving through the site, adversely affecting the humidity within the cave, causing irreperable harm to the paintings. Following this example, the caves at Altamira, in Cantabrian Spain, were also closed, and like Lascaux, witnessed the construction of a replica of part of the caves, built with the intention of giving the public at least an impression of what they could no longer see for themselves.

The good news from Altamira is that it may be opened once more to the public, in limited numbers, some time in the next couple of years, while we can only hope that in the meantime, Lascaux is rescued and maintained to the extent that it remains as well preserved as is deserved by one of the brightest of lit windows into our distant past.

The image depicts what is thought to be a lunar calendar, according to archaeo-astronomer Dr. Michael Rappenglueck of Munich, who interprets the 13 dots as representing half of the Moon's monthly cycle, with the empty 'square' at the end denoting a sky in which there is no Moon visible. Elsewhere on the walls are patterns of 29 dots, representing the the lunar cycle of 29 days, while in the main passageway, the constellation of Pleiades is depicted above the shoulder of a bull.

More here and here

Egyptian Geologist backs Bosnian Pyramid claim

Quick update from Visoko in Bosnia, where excavation work continues on the alleged 12,000 year-old pyramid, and from where we hear news of geologist Ali Abd Barakat's opinion that the site's huge blocks of stone do not appear to be in situ as the result of natural geological processes. Barakat was apparently approved by Dr. Zahi Hawass, the shy and retiring man in charge of all things pertaining to ancient Egypt and its pyramids. He further believes that a type of cement used between the blocks, is identical to that used in the Egyptian pyramids, though whether this implies that both sets of structures were built at roughly the same time, is not yet known.

According to Semir Osmanagic, the hill of Visocica is just one of a set of three pyramids, which he has tagged the Sun, Moon and Dragon, and the 'compact, polished blocks' thus far found on the north-eastern side of the hill, appear to be artificially positioned, apparently bolstering the claims for the hand of mankind having been at work, at this almost incredible early date.

The big problem for mainstream archaeology is working out who was around 12,000 years ago to build such artifices, how they would have undertaken such a mammoth task, or indeed, why it was attempted in the first place. The pyramids of Giza, themselves as enigmatic in their origins as anything from our past, were supposedly constructed around 5,000 years ago, during a time when civilisation had more or less taken hold, as opposed to 12,000 years ago, when as far as we know, society was composed of disparate bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers, whom we would not normally associate with such symbolic and gargantuan constructions, or even having social structures or beliefs that would accommodate pyramids, whether or not they were dedicated to the Sun, Moon or Dragon.

However, if we take a brief look around the world at that time, we find that there are compelling clues that there might have been Ice Age civilisations dotted here and there, which in recent years have been investigated by Graham Hancock in his seminal 'Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age', as well a story from earlier this year of a 12,000 year old temple found by German archaeologists in Turkey. And sccording to researchers like John Anthony West, the Sphinx in Egypt also dates back to this time, more of which here


As the floodwaters rose from the Great Melt, 10 million square miles of land disappeared beneath the waves, and it is there that Hancock believes he has found evidence of the mighty works of people far more advanced than had hitherto been thought possible, with the most compelling finds originating from coastal southern India. As we have seen from the extinctions of the Flores Hobbits, the huge megafaunal die-off in the Americas and elsewhere, 12,000 years ago was a defining moment in the recent history of this planet, and people around at the time in central Europe may have felt compelled for presently unknown reasons to express some of this experience by constructing our earliest known pyramids.

As work in Bosnia continues, there may be those who dare to hope that hidden deep within one, or all of these sites, are artifacts or other clues that may open a window onto an entirely unknown western world that had flourished and died, without thus far having left any visible trace. But as usual, until a great more digging and exploration has taken place, hopeful speculation will still be at the forefront of our minds, as the deeds of our illustrious ancestors await their ultimate disclosure to the modern world.

Link to dedicated website

'Hobbit' stirs scientific clash

There are those within the field of anthropology who seem only able to make a name for themselves by trying to debunk the work of others, and this latest sorry bunch are led by the estimable Robert Martin, and colleagues from the Field Museum, Chicago, who are still trying to flog their dead horse of a theory to anyone who will listen.

He and his team claim that the Flores skull LB1 is too small to contain a brain large enough to enable the individual to make and use tools of the sophistication found with the fossil remains. However, what Martin and his hapless band of followers fail to address are the other jawbones and post-cranial material found in situ, which according to their theory would mean that all the individuals represented would all have suffered from microcephaly, a condition that leads to reduced brian size.

Thankfully we have Prof. Chris Stringer who has taken a more considered look at the evidence, which leads him to conclude that the remains appear to be more primitive than modern humans, and different from anything found so far in the world, with the range of dates from Liang Bua Cave being between 70,000 and 12,000 years. As Stringer says, we are looking at morphology that existed for tens of millennia, leading others to conclude Dr. Martin's comparative analysis to be 'inadequate' and lacking 'crucial details'.

Whatever the final story tells us, we have to take into account the much earlier evidence of Homo erectus having reached this remote island by at least 900,000 years ago, a vastly greater age than the Hobbit fossils. There is some conjecture that the original erectus population may have been isolated on the small island for so long that over the ages they reduced in size, as a better coping strategy of surviving in that environment.

It is thought that the Hobbit people only disappeared as a result of a volcanic eruption on Flores that finally wiped them out a mere 12,000 years ago - but as we have seen from elsewhere in the world at that time, there were various major extinction events under way, which for the most part are poorly understood. In the meantime, we await for more relevant and sensible analysis of the fossil material than the feeble efforts of those at the Field Museum, who should now concentrate on getting on with some serious study, rather than trying to raise their own inadequate profiles for no good reason.

Here is National Geographic's reaction to the story, and once again they show themselves to be as hopelessly clueless as ever, as they chip in with a headline that suggests the entire matter has been settled, and that the case is closed. They make the ludicrous claim that 'all the scientific evidence' has been analysed, which as we know, is patently not the case. Dr Martin is basing his entire theory on studying the single specimen, LB1, while conveniently neglecting the fact that the remains of other individuals were also found, and that all the evidence from all the remains is the only way to get conclusive information.

They spend the next part of the article in a pointless tirade against the Falk team, who have stated the skull is definitely not one belonging to an individual with microcephaly, with Dr. Martin continually butting in with more drivel, claiming that the because the disease is genetic, this would explain the discovery of still other diminutive skulls. His main problem seems to be that he cannot believe anything with such a small cranial capacity could make modern lithic tools, failing to understand that it's the way the brain is 'wired up', rather than size, that determines the cognitive abilities of the owner.

Towards the end, we again hear from Falk and Co., who are saying that the specimens cannot be those of dwarfed Homo erectus, as they are too different, in stark contrast to the original claims made at the time of the discovery.

Finally, and to the eternal shame of Nat Geo, we get to the nub of the matter, as we hear from Prof. Richard Potts at the Smithsonian, and I quote:

"We're dealing with something unprecedented in modern humans," Potts said.

"[The hobbit is] either a representative of a unique and unreported range of variation in a modern human, or it's a new species that seems to be derived from an earlier ancestor."

The whole gist of the story is therefore completely the opposite of what was implied by the introduction, and it's a travesty that the sensationalist and headline-grabbing policy of Nat. Geo., more in keeping with the tabloid press, has been allowed to prevail - far better that they should stick to great photography, and give up any pretence of accurate reporting or credible analysis.

more reaction here

New Twist on Origin of Human Species

According to this article, something very strange within populations, happened at the time humans and chimpanzees finally diverged from one another, an event that may have occurred as recently as 5.4 million years ago, with an upper time limit of 6.3 million. The previous range of divergence had been between 13 and 3 million years, and this new research has significantly narrowed that gap to between 7 and 5 million years. By comparison humans and mice apparently last shared an ancestor 75 million years ago, only 10 times as long as our primate divergence.

The implication is that this change in the population dynamic caused an initial split, which was followed by hybridisation between humans and chimps, before the new species of human emerged, following a final separation. However, it is acknowledged that hybridisation between animals is not considered an effective means of generating a new species, and in any case the study further shows that the time period covering the entire speciation episode covers some 4 million years, much longer than head been expected.

There is also mention of the Toumai fossil, dated to between 6.5 and 7.4 million years, indicating there were creatures walking around with human features before the chimp/human split was complete, or possibly before it had even properly started, which would make for a truly mysterious state of affairs. It would appear that for a few million years, life in the great outdoors was lived against the backdrop of some kind of intensely experimental bio-laboratory, with different types of early humans appearing and vansihing in a dazzling spell of creativity born of trial and error. The implication would seem to be that early humans changed greatly and often, while chimpanzees appear to have remained in a virtual stasis, with no further speciation or hybridisation that we know of.

Whatever unseen hand was at work around 5-7 million years ago must have an inordinate fondness for humanity, as time and time again new versions would be tried and tested, maybe some 20 types in all, until we reached our genetically isolated selves of the modern day.

It seems fairly sure, but by no means certain, that we will be the last sapient species of human to emerge, if we take the evolutionary model as being correct. But if, as others suggest, that new types of human are made not born, we might yet expect to see further new species of ourselves in the future, whether technically upgraded or purely organic in origin, although where the latter would come from is anyone's guess.

image francis bacon 'head vi' 1949

Multiple universes: The evidence is good

In a discussion on whether there could be infinite versions of oneself in an infinite number of Universes, the evidence sounds quite compelling. The idea is further explored by proposing that within all these different versions of you, there are some who live the best life imaginable, while others probably have more misery than could ever be justify, with still more living lives strikingly similar to one's own.

Assuming infinite ranges of skills and abilities that would exist across all the versions of oneself, there should exist an almost god-like version of oneself, one capable of reaching out across the Multiverse, and coming to the aid and rescue of all the less fortunate versions, maybe even whisking them all off to some sort of paradisical realm. Perhaps one aspect of the coming Singularity might mean the fusing together of multiple, or all, the versions of 'you', creating one individual, imbued with all the attributes, and presumably imperfections, of the many, contained in one sole being.

Towards the end of the article are the results of a poll conducted amongst 72 of what are described as the leading cosmologists and quantum field people, of whom an amazing 11% claimed to have no opinion regarding the Many Worlds Interpretation - how could they have no opinion on a subject so close their hearts? It may be comforting to know that in one of those parallel worlds, 100% of those polled thought MWI to be true, and immediately applied successfully for funding, which led to research confirming MWI, and ultimately a way of accessing the Multiverse, meaning that they are at this minute heading towards us with the good news. Let's just hope they get here soon. But the uncomfortable fact remains that this has not yet happened, meaning that there may only be a limited number of parallel worlds, and we remain human and mortal in all of them, each as incapable as the other of reaching out across the divide to establish contact.

image multiverse#3 lloyd gill

Neanderthal yields nuclear DNA

News from the Svante Paabo team and Vindija Cave in Croatia, scene of the famous Neanderthal remains that have been under investigation since the 1970s. For the first time, nuclear DNA of a Neanderthal has been sequenced, with about a million base-pairs, comprising 0.03% of the total genome, having been examined.

The donor in question is a male who lived around 45,000 years ago, a few millennia before what is considered the big arrival of moderns into Europe. First indications are that the nuclear DNA is markedly different from both modern human and chimpanzee DNA, apparently showing little interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, which isn't surprising as by 45,000 years b.p., the two species in Europe had barely met.

However, the cave at Vindija has other tales to tell, as witnessed by the discovery of Neanderthal material dating to as late as perhaps 28,000 years, making this the youngest direct evidence of Neanderthals anywhere in Europe. The youngest indirect matererial dates to 24,500 years from the hybrid child, from Lapedo, in the Coa Valley of Portugal.

Moreover, there are also signs that these later Neanderthals must have have come into contact with moderns, as Neanderthal tool-kits and artifacts found at the site were a mixture of Mousterian and Modern, including a bevelled bone, possibly used as a spear-head - the use of bone was hitherto thought to be an exclusively modern technology. And according to Prof. Erik Trinkaus, the later Neanderthal fossils showed modern adaptations, leading him to believe that genetic material must have been exchanged.

more here, here, and here

image Vindija Cave

Largest Cosmic Map Confirms How Little We Know

Despite the fact that the UK is an island surrounded by billions of gallons of sea-water, the inland water companies have advised us by letter that later in the year, and assuming continued low rainfall, they may be obliged to apply to the Government for a Drought Order. If brought into force, this could mean that by the end of the summer, we will be obtaining our domestic water from stand-pipes in the streets, whilst gardens, swimming-pools and window-cleaning will become all but distant, evaporating memories.

This brings home the plight that the world in general is in at the moment, as more and more of us compete for ever decreasing supplies, goods and amenities, which in some ways calls into question just what 'habitable zones' in solar systems really are, and how they rely on a Universe model that allows for the formation of giant galaxies which in turn permit life to exist. We often hear how our planet is just the right distance from the Sun so as not to boil or freeze away the water, without taking into account that vast areas of our tiny planet cannot support human life because of climatic extremes. Steven Weinberg even went as far as to suggest an anthropic model for our Universe, stating that we should not be surprised at life booting up, as this is one of the very few variants of Universe where life is an almost guaranteed certainty. But how long that life can last in any one location, is a moot point, and one that needs to be constantly addressed.

However, about the only thing we can be certain of in our Universe is how little we understand its fundamental composition, even when we have made maps that take in a million galaxies, encompassing 5 billion light-years away to the outer edges of the known Universe, at 13 billion light-years. The general consensus seems to be that dark energy, comprising 75% of the Universe, is still fuelling a runaway expansion mode, which in many ways would render maps useless, as nothing on those maps would remain in place for more than a brief moment, as every star and galaxy around us would be speeding away from everything else - presumably meaning that to be accurate, the map itself would need to expand in direct proportion to the Universe.

more here

Plans To Microchip Every Newborn In U.S. And Europe Underway

In a previous recent post, I raised the question of whether we as a species would be willing to give up our individuality in the unlikely event that we should ever be required to do so, as a condition of our becoming part of some as yet unknown galactic space community.

According to the linked article, we are well advanced in a programme designed to read and monitor our every thought and emotion, but sadly without the benefit of gaining enlightenment from our putative brothers of the stars. Although the idea of people being chipped is not a new idea, this story claims that such practices have been in use since the 1980s, and such a wide range of society is reported to have been targetted, it would appear that almost no-one is safe from this silicon invasion.

Even worse, the effects of having various chips implanted in your head can cause lesions and atrophy in the brain, as if daily life wasn't damaging enough already, and it's not that difficult to envisage how we might acccidentally make ourselves an extinct species, both biologically and culturally, faster than we can say 'I thought, therefore, I was.'

Celestial Find at Ancient Andes Site

Essay from the LA Times on the recently discovered Temple of the Fox, at a site called Buena Vista, in the Rio Chillon Valley, north of Lima, Peru. As mentioned previously, archaeologists have found a 4,200 year-old observatory, aligned to both the annual solstices, nestling atop a 33ft-high pyramid. Of particular note has been the discovery of a huge clay tablet, upon which is depicted a frowning face, between two unidentified animals. Occupying the central area of the site are a pyramid and temple, the latter of which was 'built of rock', then subsequently covered with plaster and painted red and white, and it is this building which has the image of a fox painted inside the lines o f another larger depiction of an animal. The site as a whole is located on a rocky hill that overlooks a green and verdant valley.

Other remains found nearby indicate that humans had occupied this spot for 10,000 years, although they, and the later Buena Vista peoples are simply referred to as Andean, as they predate any known cultures that recorded their names and deeds in writing.

The finds are being hailed as revelatory, giving valuable insights into a little known period of history, and one that is compared with a nascent Egypt, which in the context of this article, is said to have begun its pyramid building era 400 years earlier than in Peru.

However, this assessment is not entirely accurate, as it takes no account of the discovery of the mysterious site of the Peruvian city of pyramids known as Caral, quite possibly one of the first (and finest) cities to be built anywhere in the world, and several hundred years before Buena Vista was in use.

Caral was an open city extending out over 6 miles, at the centre of which were six pyramids surrounding a vast central plaza, alongside an amphitheatre, plus a temple, in which it is believed a furnace was used to keep alight an ever-burning flame. Across the rest of the site are more but smaller pyramids, large plazas, and of course residential areas. Discovered in 1994, it was first announced to a startled world in 2001 by Dr. Ruth Shady, who further informed us that the site dated back 4,627 years, which as we have seen, makes it comfortably older than Buena Vista, or indeed any other city elsewhere in the Americas. This date also made Caral more or less the same age as the oldest Egyptian pyramids, if the official dates for their construction turn out to be correct.

Caral, in the Casma Valley, was found during a project to ascertain why the first cities in the world had sprung up, causing people to forego a pastoral life for one that required tight-knit, urban-dwelling strategies. It had been surmised that one of the crucial motivations for setting up cities was to protect people and property from the ravages of warfare, and as such, all early cities were constructed with outer walls to better facilitate defensive measures against marauding enemies.

Usually when digging up ancient cities, archaeologists find all sorts of artifacts, including ceramics, weapons and tools, and frequently signs of past battles, but when they began excavating Caral, they became perplexed at what they didn't find. Although there were massive structures, such as the plaza equivalent in size to 15 football fields, they could find no sign of fortifications or a defensive wall around the city. Then they noticed that they were finding nothing in the way of pottery, and no metal tools, both of which they had expected to find in abundance, and equally puzzling, they found no weapons of any sort.

Various objects they did find led them conclude the inhabitants of Caral used coca-based concoctions, as well as hallucinatory substances, indicating that shamanic activity was prevalent at the time, possibly even more so than today. Other finds indicated that the Andean inhabitants ate a lot of fish, that came from at least 20 miles away, and which they would have traded for their wide range of fruit and vegetable they grew in irrigated fields, although the main commodity was cotton, traces of which were found in virtually every building excavated. So there is ample evidence that Buena Vista was not the first flowering of culture in the Americas, although there are definite links between the two sites

Both sites showed evidence of music, Buena Vista has a life-size pipe-playing figure, while at Caral, actual flutes made from condor and pelican bone were found inside one of the pyramids, and while we still know little about Buena Vista and its inhabitants, there is every possibility that they knew of Caral, which endured for a thousand years of peaceful existence.

link 'the lost pyramids of caral'

NASA's Search for Another $1.2 Billion Gets Tougher

Bearing in mind that the US is reportedly in debt to the tune of $33 trillion, it might be argued that the granting of a few extra billion dollars to NASA would be just a drop in the ocean, so why not just give them the money anyway. Getting in the way of science and exploration missions, is our old friend, the Moon, which through no fault of its own, finds itself as the currently most coveted object in our sky. As there is still no sign that the various nations of the world could be capable of putting aside their differences and approach the challenge of space together, what we get is a series of space projects from all around the word, essentially all doing the same sorts of exploration.

If the proverbial mothership ever lands on the White House lawn, imagine our surprise when the ETs emerging from it announce that they are from planet 'whatever', and that because of the lack of a joint approach from their world, we could expect to see further landings from the same ETs, in slightly different craft with individual markings, while the later arrivals would all speak different languages as they all represented separate missions - indeed, one or two missions might be marooned here if their budgets were cut mid-voyage.

Maybe a condition of joining Team Interstellar is a unified, one-world approach, whereby each individual space exploring species has to demonstrate that there are no wars or division of nations back on their home world, or indeed that there is a general lack of bellicose individuals representing any given species.

At present there is a great deal of apprehension regarding what is perceived as an effort to make this planet answerable to one government, marshalled by one world army, all spending a unified currency, maybe even following a single religion, if indeed religion is to be permitted under such a regime. It's probably a stretch to claim that all this would be planned just because we wished to present a better image of ourselves in strange and remote worlds, but would membership of an intergalactic community be worth the sacrifices of individual, national and cultural identities that we currently hold so dear?

Archaeologist says Va. bolsters claim on how people got to America

Dennis Stanford is featured in this essay which takes us through the circumstances under which European hunter gatherers made the trans-Atlantic crossing to North America about 18,000 years ago, exploiting the vast amounts of ice that covered what is today the open ocean.

This theory proposes that there was no need to navigate across large expanses of the sea, which indeed would have made for a particularly hazardous journey, prone to bad weather and shortages of food and fresh water. By following the ice it would have been possible to partly travel by kayak along the edge of the ice, upon which dwelt a sizeable seal population. These seal were a highly prized resource, comprising food from the meat, fuel from the fat, and clothing from the fur, while their abundance was such that subsistence by human hunters was almost guaranteed. it is further thought that the oceanic current would have borne water-craft westwards, across a distance of about 1500 miles, allowing crossings to be made in a matter of weeks.

Stanford believes that the later Clovis lithic technology bears a strong resemblance to earlier Solutrean leaf-pointed spear heads, found in south-western Europe between about 22,000 and 16,000 years b.p., indicating that the European technology was effectively taken over to North America.

However, detractors point out that there is no direct physical evidence to support this theory, and question why nothing similar to European rock art has so far been found, also noting that none of the advanced tool-making seems to be in evidence either. However, it is likely that those early travellers stuck pretty close to the coastline, and as that ancient coastline is today often under hundreds of feet of water, owing to the rising sea levels at the end of the Ice Age about 12,500 years b.p., it is not surprising that evidence of other artifacts is extremely scant.

As mentioned previously, even these dates of around 20,000 years b.p. for the first American settlers may in fact be much too recent, if the footprints in Mexico really are 40,000 years old, or if artifacts from the Topper site go back as far as 50,000 years. Where people from so far back in time would have come from might be an entirely different story, as back then the Solutrean ice route may not have been in existence, as the temperatures had not yet dipped to their glacial maximum lows.

If the Solutreans could travel one way across the Atlantic, it's highly likely they travelled back to Europe, and there may have been regular voyages made in both directions. With all these comings and goings across the Atlantic, it is quite possible that offspring were born while overseas in America, and we might now validly ask who was the first American to visit Europe, tens of thousands of years ago.

Although food and resources are cited as prime motivators that would have driven the Europeans to travel thousands of miles from home, it might be worth a little speculation to consider other ideas that might have kindled Solutrean wanderlust. One such reason may have been an attempt to see where the sun disappeared to at the end of each day, by following it as far West as possible - had they been unaware that the Earth's rotation caused night to follow day in an endless cycle, it might have been considered that the Sun sank into a hole in the ground at the end of each day, and expeditions may have been launched with the express intention of finding the Sun's grave or place of rest. Of course it may have been equally logical for them to track East and discover from where the Sun rose every morning.

It's difficult to understand early peoples' perception of just what the Earth was - a boundless flat disc that went on for ever in every direction, or a finite land over whose edges one would fall if one travelled far enough. However there is no reason to suggest that they were incapable of working out for themselves that the Earth is a spinning orbital sphere, and they may have worked out that if they travelled far enough in one direction, they should eventually return to their starting point as they completed a circuit of the globe.

There is a school of thought that people at such remote dates were also in contact with extraterrestrial visitors, who made a point of showing them the nature and geophysical characteristics of the world they inhabited, at the same time teaching them the rudiments of abstract concepts such as early art, some sort of spiritual belief system, and vastly improved bone and lithic technologies, beginning at around 40,000 years b.p., But as we know, people had already been turning up in odd parts of the world for millions of years, particularly at the sea-bound island of Flores at 900,000 years b.p., as well as at Dmanisi in Georgia, where Homo erectus remains a million years older than predictions had allowed for, were found. One way or another, folks have been making 'impossible' journeys right through prehistory, and it's a great regret that we shall never know the stories of those who conceived, planned and undertook these journeys, and whether they found whatever it was they had hoped to discover.

There are only very slight hints that Ice Age people came into contact with non-human beings, with the Venus figurines of (mostly) Eurasian origin, the majority dated between about 25,000 and 22,000 years, and which have so far defied interpretation. Maybe these figurines were modelled on visions or sightings they had of supernatural apparitions, the equivalent of our modern day ET's, or the ghoulish monsters and 'little people' seen by humans over the more recent few centuries or millennia. Something very profound must have happened to bring about the entire concept of designing and making female figurines around 25,000 years ago, and it's tempting to make a comparison with sightings at Lourdes and Fatima, in our own very recent history, while taking into consideration the vast number of models and casts of the Virgin Mary, that are seemingly sold by the million. It might be possible that Palaeolithic people had their own experiences of seeing apparations of female beings, with the events casting such a deep spell over the seers, that figurines were made as a symbolic gesture of some sort, or to help spread a messages or teachings that had subsequently and radically altered their perceptions of the 'real' world around them.

If apparitions or visitations tend to coincide with what people expect to see in a particular era, it may even be that along with sightings of some sort of Earth Mother, as reproduced in the Venus figurines, the Ice Age dwellers also witnessed 'animals' that were able to 'communicate' with them, possibly a reason why so many creatures were subsequently painted in the remote depths of caves, which were also acoustically encoded, for reasons we still don't comprehend. In the same way that humans are supposedly told by ETs that they hail from the stars, Ice Age European people could similarly have been duped into thinking that their 'alter-terrestrials' had originated from caves or other locations within, or beneath, the Earth.

This last point refers to what Mac Tonnies has dubbed 'cryptoterrestrials', other beings who may have existed here since time immemorial, rather than originating from from outer space. For reasons not understood, these beings both announce their presences to us in various supernatural encounters, while at the same time trying to keep the details of who or what they are, a complete secret from mankind.

In geographical terms it might be a fair comparison to say that what these voyaging people were attempting to do was similar in some ways to how we view the concept of space travel in our modern world. If their motivations included greater security through the discovery of limitless resources over the horizon, as well as an insatiable curiosity to see as much of their world as possible, no matter what the challenges and risks posed, it's quite possible that humans achieved all this without the prompting of alter-terrestrials fuelling their alter-egos.

link 'stone age columbus'

'Brazilian Stonehenge' discovered

Thought to date to around 2,000 years ago, the site of Amapá in Brazil is where 127 large stone blocks were driven into the hillside, each of them weighing several tons. They are said to be aligned to the southern hemisphere's Summer Solstice, echoing megalithic sites elsewhere in the world, particularly those in Europe, but also seen in Africa and Asia.

It is not yet known who was responsible for the construction of this site, and it casts an entirely new light on what was thought to have been the relatively unsophisticated nature of contemporary Amazonian societies.

As yet there is little in the way of detail regarding the discovery, but proves once again that the Americas have a great deal more to reveal about their lost histories. With each discovery such as this adding to the infinite riddle of what exactly was going on there, it appears that far from being an isolated geographic region, both North and South America were very much a part of the greater scheme of the outside world.

link Amapá

Humans not to blame for ice age mass extinction

Back to America, and the end of the Ice Age which as discussed before, witnessed a huge die-off of a huge number of animals, for reasons that are by no means clear.

At least this article moves away from the idea that mankind embarked on a systematic annhilation of anything furry on four legs, and in some ways its surprising that mankind didn't also suffer from a drastic reduction in numbers on the ground. One way to solve the mystery might be by taking a look at what survived, and then searching for a common denominator that has thus far remained undetected.

With all the recent speculation that points to the northern latitidues of America being peopled from at least as far back as 50,000 years bp, we might hope that one day in the future we could discover some Ice Age rock art somewhere in the greater neighbourhood. Whether there is the same configuration of limestone and caves in the northern US, is as yet something I do not know, though of course there were plenty of other locations where such work could have been carried out. One way or another, prehistoric north America remains one of the enduring enigmas, and it may only be with the advent of retro-active time travel that we can begin to unravel the various threads.

Link to wikipedia, scroll halfway down to North America, where there is a long list of those animals that bowed out with the arrival of the Holocene. Someone, somewhere has almost certainly made a link between the American extinctions and the modern plague of cattle mutilations, particularly in those cases where animals were mutilated and exsanguinated - maybe Holocene humans in North America witnessed similar events, finding piles of magefauna lying inexplicably dead all around them - maybe the two events are really a single phenomenon that has been happening all along, although obviously not with the same dramatic impact that we see during the Great Meltdown of 12,000 years ago.

Link to yet more details

Proposals to recreate Stonehenge

A small plot of land, somewhere in deepest Wiltshire, is bracing itself for the delivery of a multi-ton load of stone from a quarry in Wales, after which it will witness the reconstruction of Stonehenge as it might have looked 4,000 years ago.

It doesn't seem to have occured to the builders that the reconstruction itself will be meaningless, as it will lack the context of the celestial alignments that dictated the postitioning of the original site - perhaps they'd be better off saving themselves the time and effort of a real-life reconstruction, and instead do the whole thing in VR, wherein at least some semblance of reality could be achieved.

On the subject of monoliths, there is news of a discovery of just such an artifact at Tamtoc, in north-eastern Mexico, and its very presence poses a mystery. The context of the find places it in the Olmec era, but its location, far to the north of their lands, has prompted archaeologists to ask if they might be looking at evidence for another civilisation, that would have existed alongside the Olmecs.

This new discovery has been described as a stone slab, 25ft long and 13ft high, and depicts a lunar calendar, three human figures and other symbols, said to be new to Mesoamerica.

Tamtoc is a 330-acre site, containing 3 plazas and at least 70 other buildings, and is due to open to the public in the very near future.

Impossibly Old America?

Brief abstract describing the archaeology and its context at the Topper site, thought to contain evidence of human activity there between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago, the provenance of which would indicate human occupation of the Americas before the last Ice Age.

Despite the best attempts of the National Geographic to convince us all that America was settled late, clues keep cropping up that would set these ideas on their head, and at the moment it's becoming a question of just how many tens of thousands of years there have been Americans, rather than the hitherto single unit of 10,000.

The most pressing questions will be from people wanting to know how and when it became possible for mankind to be able to traverse large distances by sea, how navigation was achieved, and how anyone knew to set out and look for America in the first place. It might have been an accidental voyage of a craft blown wildly off course from thousands of miles away across the Pacific or Atlantic, but that would assume a vanishingly small number of crossings, whereas the indications seem to be that America was reached regularly from the outside world, many times over thousands of years.

For the time being it will be considered that no matter how old the dates for early settlement of America, those pioneers would have been Homo sapiens, or 'moderns'. This idea would be good for anything found up to a maximum of around 200,000 years, with anything older than that being too far back in time to be modern, adding a huge degreeof complexity to the riddle.

There are reasonably well-documented accounts of traces of humans in Mexico dated to around 250,000 years, although such was the controversy that these dates were never officially published, while the archaeologist involved, who had refused to alter her findings, found the rest of her career stymied.

It has been suggested that the idea of mankind populating the Americas at such remote dates is the equivalent to saying that extraterrestrial life had been found, but no matter how inconvenient the evidence, serious attention is now being paid to the possibility of the New World being a great deal more ancient than can readily be explained. It's curious, that we as a species, looking to our future in the stars, are so uncertain of our own past, and it's quite possible that we could be plotting courses and planning worlds across space, well before we can fully map our own history. How difficult would it be to convince an alien race we might meet on our travels, that we had no clear idea of our own origins, assuming of course that alien races 'know' their own pasts with total accuracy - or are all civilisations amnesiac by default?

A truly mind-blowing event in the context of prehistoric America would be the discovery of a proto-American Neanderthal or Homo erectus, truly archaic peoples who nevertheless proved themselves to be capable of all manner of unexpectedly advanced behaviours, and who may have been even more global in their wanderings than currently supposed.

link allendale paleoindian expedition

image savannah river