NASA to Save Hubble, to Astronomers’ Delight

The really good news about this story is that the two upgrades described below should now be able to be deployed, because NASA have today announced that a fifth Shuttle mission to service the esteemed telescope has been given the green light. This should enable Hubble to remain operational until at least 2013, though whether any further missions will be launched to accomplish this is unknown, as the Shuttle fleet will itself be finally retired in 2010 - though it seems scarcely credible that the Shuttle replacement could not be called into servicing missions. This from New Scientist Space...

NASA's most famous observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, will get a much anticipated life extension after all. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced on Tuesday that a space shuttle will be sent to upgrade Hubble and add a few years to the lifetime of the venerable queen of the sky.

"We are going to add a shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to the shuttle's manifest to be flown before it retires [in 2010]," Griffin said to applause at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, US.

The move, though not unexpected, still had astronomers on the edge of their seats. The telescope is enormously popular and has brought back a wealth of data since its launch aboard a space shuttle in 1990.

"The Hubble Space Telescope has been the greatest telescope since Galileo invented the first one," said US Senator Barbara Mikulski, who pushed NASA to reconsider a final servicing mission.

The space shuttle Discovery could launch to Hubble as early as May 2008 with a crew of seven. Astronauts Scott Altman, Gregory Johnson, Andrew Feustel, Michael Good, John Grunsfeld, Mike Massimino and Megan McArthur were tapped to pay one more visit to Hubble. Johnson, Feustel, Good and McArthur are all rookies, while Grunsfeld will be making his third shuttle trip to Hubble.

A fifth shuttle mission to service the Hubble telescope was cancelled by former NASA chief Sean O'Keefe in 2004, citing astronaut safety following the Columbia accident (see Hubble condemned to slow death). Robotic missions to fix the telescope were considered but dropped because of the time and difficulty involved in mounting them.

In addition to the snazzy upgrades, Hubble urgently requires, and will be given, six new batteries and gyroscopes as well as a flight guidance sensor. The main obstacle to this servicing mission - the last was cancelled after the Colombia disaster of 2002 - is the fear that if something goes wrong, astronauts would be marooned on the shuttle, with adequate supplies for only 2-4 weeks, during which time a rescue Shuttle would be launched. However, such is the complexity of NASA's launch schedules, that the countdown for the rescue mission would have to be initiated before the first mission even left Earth. And if the rescue mission ran into unforeseen difficulties, there would likely be no Plan C.

Anyway, on to the upgrades, namely the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), described as being the best equipment of its type to be installed on Hubble. The WFC3 camera, which searches in the infra-red band, will be 15-20 times better at peering back into the origins of the Universe, possibly as early as 800 million years after the putative Big Bang that began it all. But its real purpose is to discover by what means early hydrogen gas was stripped of its electrons, a phenomenon that apparently made the Universe more transparent to light and enabled the formation of early galaxies.

Next up is the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, which will study intergalactic gases using the ultra-violet spectrum, and ultimately help astronomers understand star formation and development.

Bearing in mind that there are another 16 Shuttle missions slated to continue efforts to build the International Space Station, one humble Hubble mission might seem to indicate a preference to maintaining a cosmic white elephant at the expense of the finest space observatory known to mankind.

While no-one is really sure exactly what contribution the ISS will make to our ever-delayed 'conquest' of deep space, the Hubble Telescope has clearly defined objectives and missions, and has provided we lucky humans with unprecedented views out across a cosmos that continues to amaze and astound even the most jaded of us.

Cave Fossils Are Early Europeans

News from Pestera Muierii cave, Romania, where human remains first discovered in 1955, have been re-assessed and judged to have belonged to what are described as early European moderns. However, along with other similar remains also found in Romania within the last few years, these fossils indicate the strong possibility of an admixture of the two species, giving rise to hybrid moderns exhibiting distinct aspects of Neanderthal morphology.

Only a handful of modern human remains older than 28,000 years old are known from Europe.

Erik Trinkaus from Washington University in St Louis and colleagues obtained radiocarbon dates directly from the fossils and analysed their anatomical form.

The results showed that the fossils were 30,000 years old and had the diagnostic features of modern humans (Homo sapiens).

But Professor Trinkaus and his colleagues argue, controversially, that the bones also display features that were characteristic of our evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis).

Erik Trinkaus, one of the world's greatest Neanderthal apologists, has dated fossil remains to 30,000 years bp, and taking note of such features as a large occipital bun, a classic Neanderthal bulge at the back of the skull, as well as other archaic lower jaw and shoulder-blade features, implies, like Joao Zilhao, that at least some Neanderthals and moderns conceived offspring together. Although it is often claimed that our modern genome contains no trace of Neanderthal ancestry, there can be little doubt that deep down inside us, Neanderthal man still resides quietly in the background.

Clive Gamble puts a slightly different slant on this idea by saying...

"The question is whether these robust features show that they were up to no good with Neanderthal women behind boulders on the tundra, or whether they were just a very rugged population."

This comment merely reinforces the idea that Neanderthals were a bunch of callous brutes intent on having their evil way with unwilling modern human women, and takes no account that modern men may just as likely have taken Neanderthal women as mates - the assumption being that no self-respecting modern would willingly consort with a Neanderthal, and by default promotes the erroneous idea that primitive Neanderthals were wiped out by sophisticated moderns.

More here and here

Mastodon Tusks Tell of Brutal Battles

While we are beginning to hear of emotionally damaged wild elephants attacking and sometimes killing humans on an increasingly regular basis, we learn here of how their ancestors weren't the shy, retiring types they were previously thought to be. This from ABC.net...

Battle scars on male mastodon tusks show these Ice Age giants were not the peaceful creatures once thought, according to new findings.

The scars reveal they fought in brutal combat each year during seasonal phases of heightened sexual activity and aggression.

The discovery, announced at a recent Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Ontario, counters the view that now-extinct mastodons were peaceful, passive creatures that rarely engaged in battles.

It also strengthens the link between mastodon and modern elephant behaviour, since male bull elephants also fight seasonal, hormonally-charged battles to show their dominance and win desired mates.

Like warriors with different weapons, however, the two animals had distinct fighting techniques, says lead author Professor Daniel Fisher, a University of Michigan palaeontologist.

"Mastodon tusks curve upward strongly at the tips and appear to have been used in a vigorous up-thrusting motion," says Fisher.

Elephant tusks are less curved and therefore tend to be used more "in a straight thrusting move", he adds.

Fisher's analysis of mastodon tusks and skulls reveals that such ramming caused the lower part of the tusk to rotate backward, "crunching it against the back wall of the tusk socket".

He found that although the tusk continued to grow by adding layers of ivory to its base, pitted scars line up along the outside curve of the tusk base.

"It's not just one event, but a whole series of events that is preserved in this tusk record of fighting," he says.

Unlike their modern-day counterparts, the now defunct mastodon lineage probably didn't engage many humans in their hostilities, as their fights were seasonal and conducted by competing males keen to impress prospective mates mainly in spring and early summer, as would be expected. Mankind on the other hand, has developed the ability to fight in all weathers, round the year, and for a list of reasons that would bewilder even the most belligerent orthodont.

Explore Peru's Oldest City

Rather than heading for Machu Picchu next time you touch down in Peru, instead make for Lima and from there travel a few dusty hours down to the ruined city of Caral, currently the oldest known pyramid city anywhere across the Americas, dating back to approximately 4,627 years b.p. This from msnbc.msn.com...

Dotted with pyramid temples, sunken plazas, housing complexes and an amphitheater, Caral is one of 20 sites attributed to the ancient Caral-Supe culture that run almost linearly from Peru's central coast inland up the Andes.

The ruins changed history when researchers proved that a complex urban center in the Americas thrived as a contemporary to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt - 1,500 years earlier than previously believed.

But much remains to be discovered about Caral and the Caral-Supe culture that flourished here for more than a thousand years.

Although we do not know what these people called themselves - today they are simply referred to as the Caral-Supe civilisation, we do know that they had the ability to construct and maintain an un-fortified city and its attendant society in a very successful manner.

The site was first recognised in the mid 1990s by Dr. Ruth Shady, as part of a search for the first American civilisations - at the time it was supposed that all early settlements were set up partly to protect the local population from potentially hostile neighbours or other miscreants. But Caral put paid to this notion, when it was revealed that no defensive wall or other protective structures were built, indicating that this society was essentially peaceful, and was not under threat from anyone else in the region.

The image portrays the amphitheatre, an astonishing find, as these structures were much more commonly associated with the Roman empire which flourished nearly 3,000 years later and on a European continent far removed from Caral. It is further thought that a kind of 'eternal flame' was also maintained at the site, again a feature more commonly associated with later, European civilisations. It is not known, or at least acknowledged, whether there was any direct communication of these ideas across the world, or indeed what influenced the citizens of Caral to build an amphitheatre, what they did in it, or from where they got the idea of burning an eternal flame.

Work there still continues, as is the case elsewhere in the region, where further early urban developments are thought to be patiently waiting to be excavated from the mounds of dust that have been covering them these past few millennia.

Visitor numbers are increasing steadily every year, so if you're thinking of taking a look round Caral, it might be an idea to get there sooner rather than later.

Update 28/12/06 - Google video has a 12 minute documentary, in Spanish, with extensive footage of Caral, including an appearance by Dr. Ruth Shady, the site's discoverer. Well worth a look.

Soil Minerals Point to Planet-Wide Ocean on Mars

The discovery of sulphates and phosphates found in widespread areas of Martian soil has prompted researchers to speculate that the planet may in the past have been covered by oceans.

Both Spirit and Opportunity rovers have been analysing soil samples, and the fact that these chemicals have been found by both of them has been taken as tentative evidence for Mars having once been largely under water. This from New Scientist Space...

An ocean of water once wrapped around Mars, suggests the discovery of soil chemicals by NASA’s rovers. But the same chemicals also indicate that life was not widespread on the planet at the time the ocean was present.

Sulphates, which form most readily in liquid water, had already been detected by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. The minerals have been interpreted as evidence for past bodies of water on the surface. But it has not been clear how large these bodies of water might have been.

Now, a new analysis of rover data suggests that the sulphates were once dissolved in a planet-wide ocean. The study was carried out by James Greenwood of Wesleyan University and Ruth Blake of Yale University, both in Connecticut, US.

The researchers point out that phosphates, which are also linked to water, are also present at both sites. More importantly, the ratio of phosphates to sulphates is about the same at both locations. They say the most likely explanation for this is that any local variations were smoothed out by mixing in a planet-wide ocean.

However, the presence of phosphorous indicates that any ocean would have been highly acidic, an environment though not to be conducive to supporting much in the way of living organisms...

A phosphorus-rich ocean is a bad sign for past Mars life. Phosphorus is an important element for life on Earth, and is quickly extracted from the environment by organisms. If life were extensive on Mars, it would not have left so much phosphorus dissolved in the water, the researchers say.

"To a first order approximation, you couldn't have had a biosphere that was anything like the one on Earth," Greenwood says.

We are constantly being surprised at what we learn about past climates on Mars, and there will doubtless be plenty more surprises along the way.

Journal reference: Geology (vol 34, p 953)

Neanderthal Gene Study Reveals Early Split With Humans

Not only do they choose not to spell 'Neanderthal' correctly, in their headline, but National Geographic cannot resist having a dig at their expense. Describing them as 'hairy Eurasian hunters', NG once again demonstrate their biased reporting in favour of we moderns. First there is no evidence that Neanderthals were any hairier than our good selves, and second they gathered as well as hunted for their daily food. NG then compound the ignominy by telling us that some people spell 'Neanderthal' with an 'h', when they could have saved us the trouble by simply sticking to the original and correct spelling.

The story here is that research undertaken by geneticist James Noonan has shown that the last common ancestor to Neanderthals and moderns died around 400,000 years ago, which makes for something of a mystery. The earliest Neanderthals are clocked at around 350,000, and moderns a much later 196,000 years. This from National Geographic...

A new study by geneticist James Noonan at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, however, reveals that modern humans and Neandertals' most recent common ancestor probably perished about 400,000 years ago.

The research was presented earlier this month at the American Society of Human Genetics conference in New Orleans, Louisiana (get a genetics overview).

Richard Potts, director of the human origins program at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., called Noonan's work "highly significant."

"Each part of the Neandertal genome is an archive of the similarity and distinction [between Neandertals and] all people living today," he said. "Comparison to a lineage in our own family tree helps us understand which elements of the genetic code make us human."

While Neanderthals are widely held to have appeared as descendants of Homo heidelbergensis, there is no clear idea where moderns came from, or what was going on in the intervening 200,000 years after the last common ancestor had bitten the dust.

And rather than Neanderthals being some weird evolutionary off-shoot of the Homo genus, it looks increasingly likely that we Homo sapiens are the odd men out, while our country cousins were much more similar to that which a presumed Homo heidelbergensis descendant would be expected to resemble.

For example, Erik Trinkaus in a recent interview with Current Anthropology, claims that Neaderthals shared limb morhological features with earlier archaic Homo species that first appeared around 2 million years ago. He goes on to relate how much of the literature published, especially over the last 5 years, has sought to find out why Neanderthals were so different from us, when what we ought to be asking is why we moderns are so different to all those archaic humans who survived for millions of years before we were even thought of.

At one point, Trinkaus concludes:

"...you see this in the professional literature and you see this in the media--the balance is very much toward documenting and sometimes trying to explain why Neanderthals are weird. I hate to say it, but I think we're the weirdoes."

Once we take opinions like this on board, we may hope that academia might change the focus of its investigative explorations, and come up with some more plausible explanation of our brief but volatile existence on the former territories of our ancestors.

A Growing Intelligence Around Earth

While some would contend there is little in the way of intelligent life to be found on Earth, we already have a nascent intelligence looking down on us from above, in the guise of multifarious satellites that can warn us down here of sudden changes in the environment that affect the well-being of the living.

This story relates how EO-1, a satellite that has been programmed to zoom in on unexpected events like sudden volcanic activity, floods, fires and the break-up of large bodies of ice, is now being networked to other analytic satellites to gather even more data.

It already has the capability of rearranging its own priorities to concentrate on novel circumstances, and this range of decision making is considerably increased by the extra resources which it is able to exploit. These include MODIS, and infra-red spectrometer aboard satellites Terra and Aqua, as well as access to the US Geological Survey's volcanic sensing equipment, all combining with EO-1 to comprise what is being labelled a sensorweb. This from NASA...

EO-1 is a new breed of satellite that can think for itself. "We programmed it to notice things that change (like the plume of a volcano) and take appropriate action," Chien explains. EO-1 can re-organize its own priorities to study volcanic eruptions, flash-floods, forest fires, disintegrating sea-ice—in short, anything unexpected.

Is this real intelligence? "Absolutely," he says. EO-1 passes the basic test: "If you put the system in a box and look at it from the outside, without knowing how the decisions are made, would you say the system is intelligent?" Chien thinks so.

And now the intelligence is growing. "We're teaching EO-1 to use sensors on other satellites." Examples: Terra and Aqua, two NASA satellites which fly over every part of Earth twice a day. Each has a sensor onboard named MODIS. It's an infrared spectrometer able to sense heat from forest fires and volcanoes—just the sort of thing EO-1 likes to study. "We make MODIS data available to EO-1," says Chien, "so when Terra or Aqua see something interesting, EO-1 can respond."

EO-1 also taps into sensors on Earth's surface, such as "the USGS volcano observatories in Hawaii, Washington and Antarctica." Together, the ground stations and satellites form a web of sensors, or a "sensorweb," with EO-1 at the center, gathering data and taking action. It's a powerful new way to study Earth.

Chien predicts that sensorwebs are going to come in handy on other planets, too. Take Mars, for example: "We have four satellites orbiting Mars and two rovers on the ground. They could work together." Suppose one satellite notices a dust storm brewing. It could direct others to monitor the storm when they fly over the area and alert rovers or astronauts—"hunker down, a storm is coming!"

The implications for these applications being used across the solar system and the larger galactic neighbourhood are great, and already there is the basis of such a web already present at Mars, although the current rovers, Spirit and Opportunity on the ground there will need to be replaced before an effective system can be put into operation patching into the missions in Martian orbit today.

Pyramids in China

Nice page with Google Earth images of pyramids dotted across China, the existence of which were until relatively recently, unknown in the West. However, the most impressive sounding site, the so-called White Pyramid, appears to be something of an enigma. According to a description give by a US pilot in WWll:

"I banked to avoid a mountain and we came out over a level valley. Directly below was a gigantic white pyramid. It looked like something out of a fairy tale. It was encased in shimmering white. This could have been metal, or some sort of stone. It was pure white on all sides. The remarkable thing was the capstone, a huge piece of jewel-like material that could have been crystal. There was no way we could have landed, although we wanted to. We were struck by the immensity of the thing",

None of the Google images quite match up, although a 'shimmering white' pyramid would presumably show up very clearly - perhaps it has since been covered up to disguise it from cameras in the sky, or perhaps it no longer exists.

Darwin's Entire Works Go Online

While the classroom wars continue, with Creationists, ID'ers and evolutionists all competing for the hearts and minds of Generation Next, 50,000 pages of searchable text, apparently detailing everything Darwin wrote, will soon become available to anyone with an internet connection.

Included therein are thousands of images, previously as unseen as the manuscripts from which they have been collated, notebooks, diaries, his well known books, some of which will also be available as audio files. This from The Guardian...

A missing notebook clutched by a Shropshire lad who circumnavigated the globe, returned to Britain, and demolished the Victorian hubris that humans stood alone as the pinnacle of creation is published for the first time today.

The original notebook, which documents Charles Darwin's observations throughout his five-year voyage to the Amazon, Patagonia and the Pacific aboard HMS Beagle, is presumed stolen, but using a microfilm copy, Cambridge University scientists today make it available free online, along with the entire works of the scientist credited with the most important advance in science of the past 300 years.

Although still in the process of compilation, this promises to be a mighty resource, at a time when as much data and information as possible should be available to those who would shape the future of education, as well as anyone else even remotely interested in the history and study of the evolution of how the arguments surrounding the origin and progress of life on Earth have today have arisen, and where they might possibly be heading in the future.

Darwin Online

Experts Create Invisibility Cloak

So there you are, about to embark on some or other critical mission, when you get to the front door, only to find you've forgotten the invisibility cloak. So you head back down the hallway in search of the garment, and spend the next couple of hours fruitlessly searching for the damn thing, which of course, is nowhere to be seen. Then you realise, upon looking into the mirror, that you've been wearing it all along, you just hadn't noticed. This from BBC News...

The device mostly hid a small copper cylinder from microwaves in tests at Duke University, North Carolina.

It works by deflecting the microwaves around the object and restoring them on the other side, as if they had passed through empty space.

But making an object vanish before a person's eyes is still the stuff of science fiction - for now.

The cloak consists of 10 fibreglass rings covered with copper elements and is classed as a "metamaterial" - an artificial composite that can be engineered to produce a desired change in the direction of electromagnetic waves.

Like visible light waves, microwaves bounce off objects, making them apparent and creating a shadow. But at microwave frequencies, the detection has to be made by instruments rather than the naked eye.

Invisibility is all very well, but on it's own isn't always of much use. For instance, walking through the rain and snow would be out of the question, as both of these would quickly outline the human shape, even before you've had time to worry about not walking with wet feet on dry ground, or the old favourite, trying to walk across snow without leaving any footprints. Motion sensors, heat seeking gadgets and humans' sixth sense that someone else is present, even though no-one appears to be there, would all prove insurmountable obstacles for the visibility-challenged.

There are even people who claim that they had on occasion, inadvertently become invisible - one woman described her experience in a shopping mall, where people kept bumping into her, because they couldn't see her - though curiously she made no mention of whether they were surprised or shocked in any way to collide with a woman they could not see - maybe she had become more than merely transparent, in that she had in some way de-materialised as well.

Which, come to think of it, is the only way invisibility will ever work i.e. when we learn to make our bodies immaterial at the same time, enabling that rain and snow to go right through us, as well as allowing us to walk undetected through solid features like walls and closed doors. That, and the ability to slow time or even halt it, allowing us to flit here and there at will while having ample time to do whatever our mission controllers have instructed us to do.

Human Species 'May Split in Two'

Whilst I'm still trying to finish another long post on the pre-pottery Neolithic, here's something by way of a little light, or dark, relief, peering forward into the future of humans rather than casting the customary long glances back over our shoulders to the past glories of our esteemed ancestors.

According to evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry, humans as we currently know ourselves to be, will not be the humans of the future, if these bleak predictions are anything to go by. He suggests that in 100,000 years time humans will have split into genetic upper and lower classes, both effectively becoming sub-species of ourselves, as detailed here,

"The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures."

This sounds eerily similar to the emergence of a master race, similar to the Nazi/Aryan plans first kicked into action nearly 70 years ago, and it seems likely that the genetic lower class will inevitably become the slave race, indentured by the upper class to essentially do all the hard, dirty and menial work they consider it beneath them to do.

Dr. Curry sees this as a gradual process spanning a great deal of time, predicting that by the year 3,000, humans will have become as healthy and long-lived as they organically ever will be, presumably assuming that we remain relatively un-modified by technology. He cites a range of factors that will come into play, with men becoming much more masculine in stature, and women becoming more feminine, over which time racial differences will disappear, leading to what has been termed a coffee-coloured human race.

In the longer term, the outlook begins to change - he predicts that in 10,000 years time, our dependance on gadgets and technology will turn us into a domesticated, weaker version of humanity, with lives lived in virtual isolation from each other, causing a breakdown in social skills, with a concomitant loss of those emotions we so readily associate with the human condition.

Predicting the future of humanity has always been fraught with problems, as we have no idea of what unexpected developments and discoveries will be made along the way. For example, we could easily see the break-up of the human race as a species dwelling in a single world, as we head off for all manner of destinations to inner and outer space, even across as yet undiscerned dimensions of reality with the potential for all sorts of different humans to come into being, with many having little or no contact either with each other, or the original race, us, the vestiges of which might still roam the Earth in the aeons to come.

Many would further contend that with modern medicine and associated technologies, the human race is no longer susceptible to natural selection, and that there is a good chance we are more likely to re-design ourselves, rather than evolve in the organic manner ot which we have become accustomed.

The Mummies of Cladh Hallan

The Hebridean Islands in general, and South Uist in particular, located off the west coast of Scotland, have for millennia been attracting humans, who seem to have travelled to northern climes as soon as the last Ice Age had come to an end, and it's possible there were even earlier arrivals during much earlier interglacial events. One almost gets the impression that these isolated locations were chosen precisely because they were far away from the populated areas of Britain, possibly indicating people whose cultural or religious beliefs dictated that they adopt a solitary or exclusive aspect to their everyday lifestyle. Similar sites at Skara Brae, as well as much farther away at locations like Hal Tarxien in Malta seem to indicate that there were communities that were deliberately set up in relative isolation from the everyday world, in a similar way in which some religious orders retreat from society today.

However, a modern paradox of trends indicate a drastically decreasing population, as growing numbers of disillusioned people abandon life there for potentially richer and greater material rewards across the water on the mainland. But despite that, places like the Orkneys have seen an influx of outsiders, many keen to live a simpler life or pursue artistic ends, also far removed from the hubbub of urban and srburban life-styles.

A recent TV broadcast of 'Meet the Ancestors' featured an archaeological dig at Cladh Hallan, undertaken to determine whether some ancient skeletons found there really were the earliest known examples of mummies anywhere in Britain, and dating back several thousand years to a time before the earliest known Egyptian mummies, with which we are more familiar. However, they do conform to an age similar to some of the mummies found in the Tarim Basin back in the 1990s, and it's worth bearing in mind that some of the textiles on those mummies had been designed with colours and patterns similar to tartan, moreover the method of their manufacture, twill, is still in use today, particularly in the production of jeans.

However, momentous as this discovery promised to be, it was another detail that astounded researchers, and it is one that remains unexplained - several skeletons buried in the ground were found to have been put there hundreds of years after they had died, prompting questions as to how their bodies managed to stay intact for so long, and what function they had performed on behalf of the societies that dwelt there at the time.

But before going into specific details of the interred mummies, it's worth looking at the rest of the article, which contains a good history of how the site, discovered in modern times, developed from its humble beginnings around 4,000 years BP, evolved into a small, if isiolated farmers' village, to its gradual decline and eventual abandonment by the Vikings around 1300 AD.

At the time of its initial occupation, 5,000 years ago, South Uist's machair region was home to 'living' sand dunes, which probably encroached on domestic and farming land, and it is noted that it is perhaps surprising that early farmers should have been attracted to such a peculiar landscape in the first place. It was found that the first farmers there had been obliged to manufacture their own artificial soil, comprising machair shell sand mixed with ash, peat, and that old favourite, household waste, the result of which enabled them to grow barley as the staple crop.

Digging began on the site in 1989, when ancient settlement mounds, of which there are at least 19 in the locale, were excavated as they were being quarried for sand - we learn, as an aside, that stones that had been used to construct the ancient houses had been dug up by zealous builders who then re-used them to build the modern graveyard wall - so losing for all time a what might have been a reasonably well preserved site, similar to Skara Brae. We further learn that one of the nearby middens was earlier destroyed by quarrying, but there is no mention of any finds at the time - who knows what irreplaceable artifacts and remans were hurriedly tossed aside by impatient workers, ignorant of what they were digging up.

These early occupants have been identified as the enigmatic Beaker People, so named after the ceramic pottery which is found in proximity to their settlements and physical remains. So little is known about these enigmatic people that their pottery alone defines them from other cultures, until such time as anyone comes up with some startling new revelation, these farmers known as the Beaker people will keep their secrets to themselves.

The first recorded house on the site was a U-shaped construction, similar in shape to a boat, around 20ft in length and 10ft in width, and altogether, three of them have been found. They were built on a previous cremation cemetery, and surprisingly one of them was designed to incorporate one of the graves into its fireplace. It is believed that there may be a total of seven buildings in all, but until the rest of the site is dug, this can't be confirmed.

After these initial dwellings fell into disrepair, there followed a period when only a few small shacks were built, culminating in the building of a mini-roundhouse; it was this latest construction which proved to be the forerunner of a new and completely different style of dwellings, begun about 3,000 years ago, namely large roundhouses, vastly superior in scale and design to what had gone before, an upgrade which could be interpreted as the beginning of a new cycle of cultural innovation, possibly spurred by a changing belief system.

But instead of building individual roundhouses, it was decided to build a row, or terrace, of them, possibly the earliest known example of this method of construction in the British Isles, echoing the much earlier townships of places like Catal Hoyuk, thousands of miles away in Anatolia, where every dwelling was abutted to others.

The method of their construction adds weight to the idea that these Beaker people had some fairly complex beliefs, as witnessed by the line of deep pits that were aligned on a NE/SW axis. As soon as they had been dug, they were back-filled, of which one has since been found to contain a pot, another with human skull fragments and burnt bones - the reason for which is apparently unknown.

When it came to digging out the holes for the houses themselves, digging was continued until the diggers came down upon the ancient cemetery. By so doing, it appears they were trying to link themselves to the past, rather than simply building straight over the top of it, as is often the custom elsewhere.

It was the skeletons contained in those ancient burials that turned out to be the most mysterious objects so far unearthed at the site, having spent centuries above ground before being interred. This meant that to have kept their bodily shape, some or all 'connective soft tissue had remained intact', which given the damp climate, would have required some sort of mummification process, at a time before such practice was known in Egypt.

The skeletal remains included those of a 3-month-old child, that had spent 200-300 years before its burial, as well as those of a woman, whose bones still had their correct form after 300 years awaiting burial, during which time her two front incisors had been removed, with one being placed in each of the woman's hands.

The third burial comprised the bones of three separate adult males - head and neck of one, the lower jaw of another, while the rest of the body belonged to the third man. The cranial material had been exposed for 300 years, but the main skeleton belonged to someone who had died 500 years before burial. It's thought that very soon after death, the body was placed in something like a peat-bog for a year, then taken out, there to pursue its second career in whatever purpose the living deemed fit for it.

It can be imagined how these deceased individuals may have come to be regarded as founts of wisdom, conveying messages from the other side of the veil where the dead reside, imparting advice or offering insights into contemporary problems encountered by the living. Quite how such information was divined or deciphered is unknown, but for such practices to have continued for up to 500 years, indicates that their value remained stable and useful to the communities they served.

Apparently the site is open to visitors, although at the time of writing, it's claimed that 90% of the place was still unexcavated, which potentially means there will be plenty more unexpected discoveries made over the coming years. Definitely worth a visit to places like this, although that particular part of the world, whilst being visually stunning, is also known for its atrocious weather, as evidenced by the almost complete lack of trees.

Update:

The image (above) depicts the woman found buried, and bears a striking resemblance to a burial much further back in time, and half a continent away, from Kostenki in what is now Russia. The skeleton in the picture is flexed, suggesting that the body may originally have been tightly bound after mummification, in order to retain the correct body shape. The colouration of the bones further suggests the use of red ochre, although this has not been confirmed.

The Kostenki burial actually dates back to 25,000 years bp, an admittedly huge amount of time earlier, but the similarities for the between the two burials are nonetheless remarkable - again the skeleton is tightly flexed, and the bones have been treated with red ochre. Although this binding and flexing may have been purely to maintain a recognisable body form, some have opined that this may have been carried out in order to stop the dead body from getting up and walking - we can only imagine that people back then had witnessed what they believed to have been ghost, spirits or other unknown ethereal bodies, occasionally visiting the living, and in so doing causing fear and consternation.

It is suggested in 'The Quest for the Shaman' that the mummification process in this instance was aided by freeze-drying, but again there is no hard evidence for this. Moreover, there doesn't appear to be evidence for the Kostienki body having spent several centuries in the company of the living before its ultimate burial, though whether such information could be gleaned from such an ancient burial isn't known.

From this it could be concluded that the Cladh Hallan burials mark the final days of a cult or belief system that stretches back into the Upper Palaeolithic, right through to the very end of the Stone Age - though how a tradition like this could prevail for so long is something to be investigated at a later date.

Ancient Stonehenge Houses Unearthed

Two stories from Stonehenge to catch up on, one involving the discovery that the area around the early Stonehenge became residential, the other discussed the idea that the best plan for better access to, and the future preservation of the area, is essentially to leave things as they currently stand.

For the first time in recorded history, the remains of nine neolithic dwellings have been found on the site of Stonehenge site itself - hitherto, the presence of residential humans had been unsuspected, and it was assumed that the site and surroundings were kept free of everyday human activities.

Dating back to near the time of its construction, the Stonehenge houses date back to 4,600- 4,500 years bp, with the find being rather pointlessly been compared to a modern-day housing development - for a start, the Neolithic houses wouldn't have been bristling with security cameras, have graffiti daubed on their walls, or face imminent demolition prompted by structural safety fears.

Of the nine houses, two seem to have been set apart from the rest, one of which was surrounded by ringed ditches, the other by what is believed to have been a wooden fence. Mike Pitts suggested that these two buildings were either shrines, or the homes of people who enjoyed elevated social status.

All the structures were timber-framed, featuring a hearth set into the plastered floors, while nearby there have been numerous discoveries of grooved pottery and stone tools, indicating the presence of humans in large number - why people lived there for this very brief period of time is unknown, as are the reasons for their eventual departure. Here's the story as it appears at Stone Pages...

Nine Neolithic-era buildings have been excavated in the Stonehenge world heritage site, according to a report in the journal British Archaeology. The structures, which appear to have been homes, date to 2,600-2,500 BCE and were contemporary with the earliest stone settings at the site. They are the first house-like structures discovered there. Julian Thomas, who worked on the project and is chair of the archaeology department at Manchester University in England, said Stonehenge could have been a key gathering place at the Neolithic era's version of a housing development.

The buildings all had plaster floors and timber frames, and most had a central hearth. Two, including a house possibly inhabited by a community chief or priest, were enclosed by ringed ditches, the largest measuring 131 feet across. Postholes indicate a wooden fence would have surrounded the smaller of the two structures. "If the structure inside the large ditch was indeed a chief's house, this individual would have been living rather humbly like the rest of the population, since the building itself wouldn't have been elaborate," Thomas said.

Near the buildings were remnants of grooved pottery characteristic of the period, along with stone tools. The findings suggest many people lived at the site around 4,600 years ago. Thomas thinks many more residences could have once stood there. "People at that time were probably mobile and living in flimsy buildings, which would have since eroded," he explained.

Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology and a leading expert on Stonehenge, said the two isolated buildings at the site may have been shrines and not residences, but he thinks it's also possible the buildings were home to Stone Age VIP's. "Perhaps these did house chiefs, or powerful priests," said Pitts. "Work is continuing, but it is clear that at last we are starting to see the exceptional archaeology we would expect to find in a landscape that until recently was (thought to be) almost empty except, at its centre, for Stonehenge." Excavation work is expected to continue over the next three summers.

The second piece of news concerns plans for the future preservation of the Stonehenge site as a whole, and after 20 years of nothing being accomplished or even firmly planned, it now appears that the best plan on offer is simply to do nothing. Although this may sound somewhat lame or unambitious, not to say dangerous to the eroding stones themselves, some of the alternative schemes might well have damaged the site beyond repair.

For example, Professor Fowler, a expert on these matters, argues that plans to build a visitor centre, car-parks and even a small train are undesirable; instead he believes that good access to walkers, cyclists and horse-riders will encourage the public to explore the site and its surroundings as a whole, rather than focus solely on what would be the central, and only attraction, should other developments go ahead.

On a final note, there was a recent conference in London, at which it was proposed that the blue stones, assumed to have been imported from over 100 miles away in Wales, were used for their healing power, rather than just as impressive pieces of masonry to aid study of celestial bodies and their motions through the sky. The predictable hoots of derision that greeted this claim aptly indicate just how far mainstream science is away from even considering research into such areas, although the same claim has been made in the present day for some of the stones at Carnac, in western France.

First Evidence of Humans in Britain Under Microscope in Bradford

In the space of two short weeks, two researchers will examine stone tools that date back 700,000 years, in an effort to determine exactly to what use these implements were put. The finds are from Pakefield, Suffolk in eastern England, and provide evidence that humans were alive and well in these climes nearly three-quarters of a million years ago, pushing back the previous records of human habitation north of the Alps by some 200,000 years.

A number of stone tools have been recovered from the site, and the plan is to examine them under the microscope in order to determine their specific uses, and in so doing it is hoped that a more detailed picture of what these early humans were getting up to. For, example they hope to find whether certain tools were used for sharpening up their projectiles for hunting use, or instead whether they were used for processing animals for their meat, hides or other functions. This from innovations-report.de...

This collection of artefacts was discovered in Pakefield, Suffolk, last year by an excavation team led by Palaeontologist Simon Parfitt from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Since then, they have been exhibited in the Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, and are currently on loan to Bradford for two weeks of specialist analysis.

The stone tools from Pakefield represent the earliest existing evidence of human activity in the UK and Northern Europe (north of the Alps), and predate previously discovered artefacts by 200,000 years.

Adrian explains: “These tools represent a significant discovery in the understanding of the human occupation of Britain and Northern Europe. It’s an exciting opportunity to have a chance to study them and to contribute to such an important aspect of prehistoric research.

“We will be examining the stones with our microscopes at 200 times magnification to see if we can find evidence to suggest they were used as tools for activities such as stripping meat and skins from the carcasses of animals, or sharpening spears for hunting.

“What we’re actually looking for is how the stones might have been modified by humans and by nature in the burial environment after they were discarded. One of the samples has a rounded bulbous end to it, and this was probably used as a hammer. Other pieces have very sharp edges which suggest they too have been modified for use.”

Adrian and Dr Donahue have the stones on loan for two weeks until they must be returned to the Natural History Museum. Until then, the examination work will be carried out in the University’s lithic microwear research laboratory. The findings of their research will be published in 2007.

It's fairly likely that they will find a range of uses across the whole lithic assemblage, and it is hoped that this will be augmented by further finds. As yet no human remains have been found in the locale, and there aren't many high hopes elevated by expectation - as far as we know, there were no human burials around this time, and the traces they left behind are scarce. People back then seemed not occupy caves or rock shelters, instead spending their lives in one long camping expedition, and thus any traces that were left behind would have been obliterated in fairly short order.

To coincide with the current state of these investigations, Prof. Chris Stringer has just published 'Homo Britannicus", a copy of which should be winging its way to me, but which unfortunately seems to have gone astray in the post, but in the event it arrives soon, I shall endeavour to pass on some idea of what it contains.


link to pakefield article plus video of tool finds:

Bering Strait Appeared Earlier Than Believed

Compelling evidence, or indeed confirmation, of the idea that America was not first inhabited by humans crossing the so-called Beringia land-bridge - largely because it was under water 1,000 years earlier than thought, at a time when it had been previously contended that it should have been groaning under the weight of travelling humans coming in from Asia. This from msnbc.msn.com...

A land bridge between Alaska and Siberia flooded to make the Bering Strait 11,000 years ago, more than 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

This would have closed off human migration by foot across the bridge 1,000 years earlier, too, the researchers said.

A team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and the University of Massachusetts found places on the ocean floor where sediment deposits were deep enough to act as a kind of geologic clock.

Most sediment cores collected from the floor of the Arctic Ocean have been taken from places where sediment has accumulated only about a centimeter, or less than half an inch — not enough to calculate periods of just 1,000 years.

But writing in Geology magazine, Lloyd Keigwin of Woods Hole and colleagues said they examined samples from new core sites north and west of Alaska in the Chukchi Sea.

This area covers part of the continental shelf exposed when sea level fell during the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago.

"Although we have only a few cores, this is the first evidence of flooding of the Chukchi Sea by 11,000 years ago, at least 1,000 years before previously thought," Keigwin said in a statement.

"The new data are also consistent with data from other recent studies, and show potential for developing ocean and climate histories of this region."

The researchers sampled the cores to identify skeletons of animals, known as foraminifera, that can be traced to specific water and atmospheric temperatures. The samples were also radiocarbon dated.

Recent discoveries, such as the 40,000 year-old footprints found in Mexico in recent years, as well as indications from the Topper site that humans were present 50,000 years ago, had already confirmed the Clovis-first model as being hopelessly inaccurate and inadequate. It remains to be seen how long it is before the history books are re-written, or even better, we find further clues to an even earlier human presence in the Americas.

Current thinking proposes that people arrived on American soil by sea, with at least one pulse including the Solutreans of Europe, getting there by around 20,000 years bp - and although Dennis Stanford believed these were the first Americans, it now appears that these were comparatively recent arrivals.

Chandra Reviews Black Hole Musical: Epic But Off-key

Here's a couple of things I had previously thought impossible, namely that anything could escape the clutches of a supermassive black hole, or that sound could travel through the vacuum that is supposedly Space.

However, it seems things are no longer what they used to be, as confirmed by the Chandra telescope which has zeroed in on Galaxy M87, an elliptical affair residing in the Virgo cluster, and apparently home to one of the biggest supermassive black holes in the entire Universe - personally I'd feel a little more secure if it was a few million light-years further out from here, but maybe that's just me being un-neighbourly.

Although no-one to date has actually heard any of this noise, its presence has been deduced by examining by loops and rings in the hot gas that betray past explosions near the supermassive black hole.

According to astrophycisist William Forman...

"We can tell that many deep and different sounds have been rumbling through this cluster for most of the lifetime of the Universe,"

We further learn that it is the noise itself that dictates the shape of M87 - the initial eruptions that cause the din, stop the heated gases of the galaxy from cooling down, hence preventing star formation. It's estimated that were it not for these gigantic explosions, M87 might have been a 'huge spiral galaxy about 30 times brighter than the Milky Way'

All of which begs the question as to whether there was a similar amount of noise generated when the Universe went through its birth pangs some 15 billion years ago.

Pool Knowledge to Find the Origins of Language

Following on from the human genome project, and the online publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is now a proposal for a linguistic equivalent to be set up as an online database in order to better enable the world to work out what it's talking about.

The origin of language is indeed a very mysterious phenomenon, as we know neither how or why it came about, who first spoke or what it was they said. One of the great problems inherent in the dissemination of human language throughout most of prehistory is that there were so few people about, that spreading or passing down language to subsequent generations must have been well nigh impossible. This from New Scientist...

The biological basis of how people speak, listen and comprehend – and how all of this mental equipment evolved – is largely mysterious. Researchers can study animals to gain insights into many psychological abilities, but this is not possible with language as no animal communication systems are anywhere near as complex as ours.

"In short, we know it's unique to humans and it evolved quickly," says Marcus. We developed the skill after we split from our last common ancestor – shared with chimpanzees – seven million years ago. Nevertheless, he says, language probably evolved as recently as the last few hundred thousand years.

It has been difficult to gather data, but developmental studies could provide new clues, he believes. So-called knockout studies, where mice are genetically modified to lack certain genes, have helped tease out the origin of certain mental abilities and many genetic disorders.

Though such experiments are not ethically feasible in humans, detailed observational studies on people with naturally-occurring genetic mutations related to language, could provide equivalent data, says Marcus.

A systematic collection of such studies would help us understand which parts of language share an origin with other mental abilities and which parts have evolved independently.

The search isn't helped by the publication of various misleading books, and one that immediately comes to mind is 'The Singing Neanderthals' by Steven Mithen, whose main idea seems to be that as Neanderthals didn't appear to improve their tool-kit over the years, they had no spoken language - because Mithen believes that had language existed, their tool-kits and overall material culture would have been constantly changing. And the further implication here is that nobody before the Neanderthals had language either, an attribute he believes that belongs solely to we moderns.

He conveniently manages to overlook all sorts of clues that Neanderthals and peoples before them demonstrate behaviours that would have required quite complex planning and execution procedures that could not have been accomplished without language. For example, we know that Neanderthals were making a type of Stone Age superglue of heated resin at about 80,000 years ago. We also know from recent discoveries that people were using