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Whenever someone includes the phrase 'world's oldest' in a headline, the first thought to occur is to read up on it immediately, followed quickly by the second that recalls extensive lists of other 'world firsts', which invariably turn out to be nothing of the sort. And although this is undoubtedly an intriguing discovery, people across the archaic world had been observing rituals from at least as early as 300,000 years ago, whereas this site is only dated to around 70,000 years b.p.
Prof. Sheila Coulson from the `University of Oslo has been working at a site in Ngamiland in north-western Botswana, concentrating her efforts in the Tsodilo Hills, a sacred place to the modern-day San tribe, who refer to the location as 'Mountains of the Gods' and 'The Rock That Whispers'. There are no other hills for hundreds of miles in any direction, and within these hills, Coulson and her team have discovered a small cave that has become the focus of their excavations.
Inside the cave they came across a large rock, measuring roughly 20ft by 6ft, and which resembles the head of a python. They noticed that between 300 and 400 indentations had been made by humans on the snake head, and because significant erosion was noted, they surmised that the work had been carried out in the distant past.
Upon digging a pit in front of the serpent's mouth, they recovered 13,000 artifacts, among which were found stones that had been uses for pecking out the rock, but just as significant were the numerous stone spearheads and 'articles that could be connected with ritual use', a more detailed description of which would have been helpful.
"In the cave, we find only the San people's three most important animals: the python, the elephant, and the giraffe. That is unusual. This would appear to be a very special place. They did not burn the spearheads by chance. They brought them from hundreds of kilometers away and intentionally burned them. So many pieces of the puzzle fit together here. It has to represent a ritual."
However, the description of how the site may have been used is somewhat problematic, as well as the fact it implies a continuity between the original founders and the current San tribes-people, which at 70,000 years is extremely unlikely - such a link with the distant past, modern people and ritual tradition has not been seen anywhere in the world, and it's very unlikely that this is the case here either.
"The shaman, who is still a very important person in San culture, could have kept himself hidden in that secret chamber. He would have had a good view of the inside of the cave while remaining hidden himself. When he spoke from his hiding place, it could have seemed as if the voice came from the snake itself. The shaman would have been able to control everything. It was perfect. The shaman could also have disappeared' from the chamber by crawling out onto the hillside through a small shaft."
Coulson's interpretation of what she tells us were the attempts of supposedly wily shamen to fool the locals into believing in some sort of deity or spirit, are far-fetched and likely completely erroneous - implying that the public back then were simple folk easily fooled by the voice of someone hiding behind a rock and divining this that or the other. That might be true today, judging by some of those we vote into power, but somehow I think people back in prehistory probably weren't quite as gullible as we are led to believe.
There is no mention of the dating methods used to justify this 70,000 year date, and the description of the spearheads as being 'particularly beautiful' is far wide of the mark - they are crude and unsophisticated, well below standards of lithic technology that has been seen elsewhere, and from earlier dates, although the people who made them did take the trouble to import them from hundreds of miles away.
If they were indeed 'better crafted' than similar artifacts found in the locale, the competition must have been poor indeed - even the Mousterian culture, while admittedly not the most elegant of all time, was far better than this mediocre offering.
Enthusiasts of the idea that mankind has for ever been ruled by a serpent or reptilian race will take heart from this, although how they will interpret this particular site remains to be seen - expect articles on this theme to start appearing here and there in the not too distant.
N.B. Somewhat to my shock, this blog has been referenced via 'A Very Remote Period Indeed', via the ANTHRO-L list, to which I am a subscriber, if not a contributor. Anyway the point I wanted to make is that this particular post was partly influenced by some of the responses posted there, so if you're from ANTHRO-L and elements of my post seem uncannily familiar, that's why, so apologies for not mentioning this originally.
P.S. Upon further recollection, the one idea I did get from Anthro-L, which I hadn't spotted, was the point made about inferring an unbroken tradition that had lasted for 70,000 years to the present day.
Upate 03 December 06:
For further thoughts on this, please read the 'Humans Came Close to Extinction' post, which I have added today.
Having only a small collection of unfinished essays to hand, I wasn't going to post anything today, and indeed I wouldn't have, had I not come across this just as I was closing down for the day. In the context of some recent posts on dark energy and dark matter, I had been pondering whether such macro phenomena could occur in the mid-range, specifically regarding questions like human evolution, cognition and consciousness.
Right on cue, we have this from John Hawks, quoting from an essay in Science, the link to which unfortunately doesn't appear to be working at the moment, so for that reason I've quoted the quotes, at is were;
"Human functional neuroimaging, first with positron emission tomography (PET) and now largely with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), allows the brain's responses to controlled stimuli to be studied by measuring changes in brain circulation and metabolism (energy consumption). Surprisingly, these studies have revealed that the additional energy required for such brain responses is extremely small compared to the ongoing amount of energy that the brain normally and continuously expends (2). The brain apparently uses most of its energy for functions unaccounted for--dark energy, in astronomical terms. What do we know about this dark energy?"
As modern humans, we take our large brains for granted, though many of us might not realise just how energy-hungry our massive processing power actually is, so again I quote the quote,
"The adult human brain represents about 2% of the body weight, yet accounts for about 20% of the body's total energy consumption, 10 times that predicted by its weight alone. What fraction of this energy is directly related to brain function? Depending on the approach used, it is estimated that 60 to 80% of the energy budget of the brain supports communication among neurons and their supporting cells (2). The additional energy burden associated with momentary demands of the environment may be as little as 0.5 to 1.0% of the total energy budget (2). This cost-based analysis implies that intrinsic activity may be far more significant than evoked activity in terms of overall brain function."
So what is going on in our heads - I don't think it's mentioned here, but overall brain activity when we are asleep or awake is more or less the same. The author refers to what he has termed "a vivid internal life of consciousness" as a possible solution, but adds it could something entirely different, and concludes that for the time being we don't have suitable or accurate enough ways of gathering or collecting sufficient data - which for the time being is also the case with the hunt for answers that will help us detect and define the dark energy and dark matter which are estimated to constitute over 90% of the known Universe.
image
Brief story about the potential detection of a particle called the axion, apparently the current favourite to be considered as a prime candidate for dark matter. In an initial experiment in July, it was determined that the axion had reacted too strongly with matter to be dark matter, but since then they have decided that such reactions would occur so rarely that they would still be able to travel through the solar plasma.
More familiar to us are neutrinos, particles that emanate from the Sun, and that react so weakly with matter that they pass unimpeded through our own planet, which I would assume probably includes ourselves as well. However, back to the axions, which it is hoped will be participating in the following experiment.
"The team base their claim on a model of how gamma-ray photons interact with the sun's magnetic field. This showed that when gamma rays pass through the sun's outer layers, a small fraction would be transformed into axions. These particles would easily penetrate the sun and emerge on the far side, where the magnetic field would flip a small fraction of the axions back to gamma-ray photons. "If this happens, it means that even if a gamma-ray source is eclipsed by the sun, we should still be able to see it, just as if the sun is partially transparent,"
The initial observation of gamma rays happened when a quasar was eclipsed by the Sun, and it was thought, or at least hoped, that output from the quasar 3C 279 was detected, with the gamma rays coming straight through the sun. But the results were deemed inconclusive, so now there is a plan afoot to try again with the launch next year of the GLAST mission.
Because this new Gamma Ray Telescope is many times more powerful than its erstwhile counterpart, it is hoped that other gamma emitting bodies travelling behind the Sun will be more easily detected, with the added bonus of allowing astronomers to peer into the very depths of the Sun itself.
The most peculiar aspect of the axion to strike me so far is that it didn't come up in the spell-check, so somehow it's even more energetic than we thought - inserting itself unseen into the dictionaries of word-processing applications, is I contend, no mean feat. In Greek iconography, 'axion' means something like 'it is truly worthy'.
On a final note, I typed 'dark matter' into Google video, and this is what came up -
Horizon - 'Most Of Our Universe Is Missing'
Before you hit the link, a word of warning - the person who posted the video has called themselves by a name that some might find offensive - I suppose not all those interested in this subject are as polite as we'd like.
It runs for about 48 minutes, though I'm not sure how long copyright issues will allow it to remain there. But as a primer into the discovery and possible nature of dark matter, it's very informative, and contains contributions from some of those who first came up with the idea, many years ago. We also hear from others who utterly refute the idea, mainly because no-one had at the time managed to define or directly detect dark matter - but as we have seen above, the hunt is still very much in progress.
image 'Axion Esti'
There are some great palaeoanthropology sites and blogs at the moment, and today we're visiting "A Very Remote Period Indeed", (a very nice blog name indeed), which carries this story about a cave in Cantabrian Spain, which appears at first sight to have stratigraphy dating all the way from the Bronze Age way back into the Mousterian of the Upper Palaeolithic, in this instance tentatively dated to 41,000 years b.p.
Even better is the discovery of some Magdalenian art - this is a period dating to around 15 - 17,000 years b.p., and corresponds to the time when the more famous parietal, or cave-art, sites of Altamira, also in Cantabria, and Lascaux, up to the north-east in modern-day France, were created.
In this instance the art, (pictured), is incised onto bone and depicts a deer, but there is more, which although not discussed here, will hopefully be published soon, but the context is considered relevant to other sites;
"This is a motif that has been found on similar incised artifacts in other neighboring sites, and bears resemblance to parietal depictions of deer found in neighboring Magdalenian sites as well. This has enabled Straus and his colleague to hypothesize the existence of a relatively tightly bound cultural network defined, among other things, on the basis of shared iconography and stylistic conventions. 16,000 years ago. Very, very neat stuff."
The excavations appear to be at a relatively early stage, and it may be some time before the lower Mousterian levels are reached. This could prove interesting, as there is evidence from other Mousterian sites in the area at c. 44,000 years b.p., when there was a sudden and thus far unexplained innovation in lithic assemblages, believed to have occurred 4,000 years before the first moderns arrived in the locale.
Further coverage on something I'd briefly overlooked, namely a study of Neanderthal tooth growth patterns that indicate a greater similarity to those of modern humans than previously surmised, and one that has me seriously considering whether we can go on indefinitely treating these two types of human as different species, but until I get my head round what exactly constitutes a species, that will have to wait.
Good essay that begins by telling us that because the skull and teeth of fossil humans, i.e. cranial material, are so important that all other bones in the body are referred to as post-cranial. In fact, it is this cranial material that is most commonly found, because the skull and teeth contain little of edible or nutritional value to scavengers, and are therefore more likely to survive intact over ensuing millennia.
The next part goes down the familiar route of bad timing, as evidenced by the following;
"Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis, were a species of archaic humans who lived in Europe and the Middle East hundreds of thousands of years ago. They disappear from the fossil record most recently around 30,000 years ago, about the time that early modern humans, Homo sapiens, started to spread across the continent."
Once again, we get this sudden replacement model thrust upon us, whereby peaceable but essentially inferior cave-men were swept away by an incoming tide of modern humanity, complete with a sophisticated technological and symbolic culture that was better than anything that had gone before. As I seem to repeat ad infinitum to the point of ad nauseam, moderns came to Europe roughly 40,000 years ago, where they lived alongside Neanderthals for up to 15,000 years when the latter appear to disappear from the fossil record at around 24,500 years b.p.
But the important part of this study has shown that the idea that Neanderthal children reached maturity earlier than modern children to be false. Furthermore, rather than being described as being more like chimpanzees, who themselves have shortened childhoods, Neanderthals have taken a few steps back down the road to being human again.
"But the closest look yet at fossil Neanderthal teeth, reported in the current Nature, suggests that maybe Neanderthal kids grew up just as slowly as humans. The teeth came from the Neanderthal fossil site of La Chaise-de-Vouthon in France."
What's interesting is that although Neanderthal teeth are much more massive than moderns', they take the same amount of time to grow - in this particular study it was shown that the roots of modern teeth cease growing at around 9 years, while in Neanderthals, that figure averaged out at 8.7 years.
"Birth is marked in deciduous (baby) teeth and first permanent molars by an accentuated neonatal line," the study notes, allowing them to start the clock on the birthday of the baby tooth's owner and watch the daily layering. The layers they examined were only about 1/12,000th of an inch thick, but daily tracking allowed for comparison with modern human tooth growth."
The idea of an extended childhood is considered important, as it implies that there is a complex social structure present, and to be properly acquainted with its many rules, customs and mores, it is believed that a prolonged childhood is necessary for the individual to have the necessary time to able to be fully integrated into, and later to act on behalf of, that society - which in turn implies the use of complex language, another ability that has long been called into question by modern anthropology.
Click here for more detailed analysis and a slightly different interpretation from John Hawks.
A few days ago, all humans were 99.9% identical with each other, but now this astonishing fact is no more, as it transpires that we're now officially at least 10 times more different from each other than previous estimates allowed. But the really odd aspect of this story is that despite variously sensationalist headlines in the mainstream media, the anthropological domains of the blogosphere have remained puzzlingly quiet on the subject.
"Until now it was assumed that the human genome, or "book of life", is largely the same for everyone, save for a few spelling differences in some of the words. Instead, the findings suggest that the book contains entire sentences, paragraphs or even whole pages that are repeated any number of times."
The important point about this discovery is that instead of people being defined by the exact coding of their genes, it has been seen that it's the number of copies of specific genes that determine, amongst other things, an individual's susceptibility to a range of illnesses; furthermore, these numerical differences can vary greatly between even those very closely related, maybe explaining why members of the same family might for example have widely different skills, interests or even abilities, although that's not discussed here.
A great deal has been said and written over the years by people protesting against racism, and it has often been repeated that there can be no racially inherent differences between various populations because of the 99.9% genetic similarity that was then thought to exist. If this is now not the case, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Those disposed to implying racial superiority for some or other favoured groups will doubtless leap on research like this, scouring the genome for data to bolster their dubious claims.
But for the time being, the official line is that it's mainly the medical and pathological realms of the genome that exhibit differences, with an example given of a gene called CCL3L1 which is thought to improve resistance to HIV amongst populations of African descent, while another multiple copy of a gene in SE Asian people helps combat malaria.
"One can no longer consider human traits as resulting primarily from [simple DNA] changes... With all respect to Watson and Crick, many Mendelian and complex traits, as well as sporadic diseases, may indeed result from structural variation of the genome," Professor Lupski said.
But if it does transpire that there are other differences between races, it will be very difficult to explain and rationalise them, without some very heated debate between those who would like to continue with the idea of a homogenous human race in the interests of treating all people equally, no matter what their racial ancestry, and those who will correctly point out there are major differences between races, but subvert that knowledge as a means of persecuting and discriminating against those they consider to be racially inferior.
I haven't as yet worked out what the implications might be for examining the prehistoric ancestry of humans and their links to back to Neanderthals and other archaic humans, but if nothing else it should indicate that even those ancient populations had significant differences amongst themselves, meaning for instance that we might now be able to consider that Neanderthals, their antecessor forebears, as well as Homo erectus all exhibited significant racial differences between geographically defined groups.
This genetic realignment also means that we are no longer so genetically similar to the chimpanzee, now estimated at only 96% similar, down from 99%, or indeed gibbons, orangs and other primates who are in many ways just as close behaviourally to humans as the chimp ever was, but more on that another time.
In conclusion, this new information suddenly adds an entirely new dimension to the future study of genetics, medicine and anthropology in general, but it's also political dynamite - hopefully there will be none of the supremacist ideology that seems to spring up at any given opportunity, but for now the outlook for future interpretation of genetic variability must be uncertain at best.
Maybe common sense will yet prevail by stating that difference is just that - people are not virtual clones of each other, but neither are they 'better' or 'worse' than their counterparts - just a lot more different than we thought, and it is these very differences which provide the necessary diversity of physiologies and minds for the human race to progress and endure, rather than stagnate into passive homogeneity.
Nature Paper
Dienekes' Anthro Blog
related
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n.b. I've noticed the link no longer works for the full story, so here is the New Scientist report instead.
Below is a comment I posted elsewhere, concerning the nature of dark matter and dark energy. After I had commented, a couple of extra thoughts occurred to me, which have been added on to the end as a post-script, and included here rather than posting endless comments on their site.
"What is most interesting to me is that dark matter was present at the Big Bang, to be followed by dark energy kicking in several billion years later - with the Universe having been tentatively re-dated to something like 15% older than previous estimates, the lag between dark matter and the eventual appearance of dark energy at 9 billion years ago, means there could have been a gap of 7 or 8 billion years. I don’t know if that revised figure would alter the calculations of an expanding universe that would eventually have collapsed in on itself i.e was the timing of the dark energy event an exact phenomenon that could only have happened at that time to be effective, or was there a degree of leeway?
The injection of dark energy might be viewed as a solution to a problem, which poses the slightly odd question of whether the Universe ‘knew’ it had to fix the gravitational problem or die, or even if there was some external ‘knowledge’ that fixed the problem for unknown reasons - I hesitate to say so that life like us could one day flourish, but maybe one of Michio Kaku’s proposed Type 10 civilisations intervened on our, and/or others’ behalf, for reasons best known to themselves.
Some might contend that the injection of dark energy could be ascribed to a God/Creator rescue act, but I think an entity like that would, or should, be able to construct a perfect Universe from day 1, without the need for further intervention, and it is this original imperfection that to me would initially argue against such a situation.
But either way, the dark energy event has the ‘feel’ of being artificial and sentient in aspect, rather than something like a mathematical inevitability (which it may well have been, I guess). It’s just very strange that dark matter and dark energy are so far separated in Time, a clue that might indicate two separate origins for the two distinct phenomena.
I was wondering if it is known whether dark energy is a force within that pushes the Universe outward, or something outside, or on the the very periphery, that’s pulling the Universe out? And also, is the scale at which it works a constant - although the Universe itself is being pulled apart, our planets, ourselves and atoms are seemingly immune from runaway expansion - but will this always be the case, or is considerately self-regulating?
Regarding previous comments regarding black holes, I think there are some astounding discoveries to be made regarding what a black hole actually generates - could dark matter be a residual effect from black holes in other universes - it also occurred that maybe a previous universe did collpase in on itself, but instead of destroying all the matter in that Universe, some of it survived in the form of dark, or ghost matter, which eventually helped kick-start our universe, rather than Big Bang emanating from some putative zero point - after all, although it’s known that at the time suggested, the Universe did indeed go through a very hot and energetic fluid expansion, this Big Bang might have been an episode rather than a pilot show for the cosmic drama that was to unfold.
I know these are all broad generalisations, and as I have no maths, physics or astronomy I obviously can’t back any of them up, but I was wondering if any of this strikes a chord with anyone out there, or whether all or or any of these points have already been discussed or summarily dismissed?"
As a post-script to this, I was thinking about the idea that dark matter could be a residual artifact from a previous collapsed Universe, and it struck me that the injection of dark energy into the current paradigm of our current Universe was the Universe itself having some sort of 'memory' of a collapse in its previous incarnation, and somehow 'knew' how and when to prevent this from recurring by switching on the dark energy source.
As to the fate of this Universe, current predictions state that eventually it will all dissipate away to nothing, because everything will have become so far removed from everything else that new stars and galaxies will no longer be able to form - maybe in the future this dark energy might be switched off to allow gravity to once again hold sway as the dominant Universal force, and start pulling material back into itself, leading to an endless cycle of expansion and contraction, rather like mountain ranges building and sinking over millions of years, or even a gargantuan life-form breathing slowly in and out.
Formation of the Via Lactea (Milky Way) halo
source: J. Diemand, M. Kuhlen and P. Madau (UCSC)
Back from a brief foray into the real world for a couple of days, the weekend looms and ye trusty Internet beckons, and as I haven't posted anything for a while, this seems like a good place to start.
Peter Davenport is the latest guest to appear on Binnall of America's regular show, which recently took a brief hiatus via Las Vegas. I'm listening to the show as I write, so I can't comment fully, but as ever seems to be full of some great anecdotal stuff, concerning stories that have been reported to him at the National UFO Reporting Centre, and at the moment the subject is those pesky Black Triangles. Although in this instance he reports that US fighter jets were scrambled, I've been wondering whether or not these craft are part of some Black Project - but in Davenport's view they are not military, and are not specifically designed as traditional aircraft.
My take on them is that they, or similar craft might be holographic and have some part to play in a coming and dramatic event - either in an artificially staged 'alien' invasion scenario, or perhaps they're real and will somehow beam up crowds of hapless people believing they're part of some Rapture event, being taken from this apparently evil world by God, as prophesied by many, to leave behind a planet of sinners and vagrants, one of whose number will undoubtedly be myself.
However, my musings aside, Peter Davenport has plenty so say in a wide-ranging interview, especially the story he tells at the start of Part B of the download , so be sure to check it out. They go on to discuss the generally poor nature of UFO docs on the TV - which seem to be made by TV people who have little or no grasp of the subject, and they call for experts in the field to be allowed to make these shows - Davenport highlights the bizarre nature of the Press who seem to delight in over-reporting crime while ignoring an entire world of sightings, crop circles, animal mutilations and so on.
At the end, anyone who has ever seen a UFO and not reported it, is exhorted to write down what happened and send it on to NUFORC - there is even a downloadable report form for those who wish to avail themselves of such - and of course, there's a veritable treasure trove of reported sightings going back over the years.
The show is as ever is expertly handled by Tim Binnall, who basically asks good questions and then rightly leaves his guests to tell their stories, and when he's not doing that, he writes plenty of good stuff elsewhere on the site, including a good weekly report on Coast and other shows.
While some might contend that the biggest pile of junk floating in near-Earth orbit is the International Space Station, (ISS) itself, the long-term implications of littering up space could be catastrophic for future cosmonauts if they should collide with any of this debris.
"Thousands of pieces of rubbish are already in orbit around Earth, including old rockets, satellites, nuts, bolts and exhausted instruments. NASA's decision comes as a Russian cosmonaut, Mikhail Tyurin, prepares to add a golf ball to orbiting debris."
This golf-ball, if hit in the wrong direction, could theoretically end up returning to the Space Station, the force of which would be...
"equivalent to an 18-tonne truck traveling at 160 kilometres per hour"
...leading to a hole-in-one of unmitigated disaster for both craft and crew. And although none of the Shuttle missions, or indeed any other international launches, as far as we know, have encountered any of the 13,000 separate items now believed to be in orbit, sooner or later a collision will become inevitable.
Under these circumstances, there are doubtless many who would consider it more prudent, as well as plain considerate, to look at ways of reducing the amount of trash already in the skies, before making any further and unwelcome contributions to an already hazardous obstacle to the stars.
Here's a classic piece about Orwellian double-think, and concerns the US government's attitude to the torture of those in military custody they consider to be suitable candidates for what are termed "alternative" interrogation methods. This particular story refers to an inmate, Mr. Majid Khan, who having been subjected to these practices in one of the CIA's secret prisons, was earlier this year transferred to Guantanamo Bay, along with 13 others.
It now transpires that Mr. Khan and his lawyers are not permitted to reveal the type of tortures he was subjected to, because the methods employed are considered so secret by the CIA, that Mr. Khan is prohibited under US law from revealing these secrets, let alone appealing against their use. Furthermore, his legal team are also denied access to information the US government has on the case, and they would have to have their level of security clearance raised to an appropriate level, although that in itself would also mean that the investigation and due legal process would have to take place in secret.
The implications, however unfortunate for Mr. Khan, have a far wider potential consequence for anyone undergoing mistreatment or inappropriate interrogation by the military - there would be no public right of appeal or disclosure because the very malpractices perpetrated, no matter how bad or unjustified, could in any event be classified as secret, and therefore exempt from public scrutiny.
The other puzzling aspect of physical or mental torture of prisoners is that in this day and age, there should be no need for any physical or mental maltreatment, as there must by now be plenty of 'truth serums', like sodium pentathol, available to interrogators, which when properly administered would give the detainee no choice but to admit whatever was true. In turn, this means that all those who are in fact innocent can be proven to be so, more or less immediately, thus facilitating their prompt and correct release from custody - rather than be subjected indefinitely to the predations of faceless thugs and their psychopathic side-kicks.
more here
image
According to a news release last week, astronomers working with the Hubble Telescope, have surmised that Dark Energy has been present in the Universe for at least the last 9 billion years - and it is because of the repellent energy of this dimly understood force that the Universe is not only expanding, but accelerating as it does so. Had this not been the case, the Universe would have continued to expand for a while, but would eventually have collapsed in on itself as gravity took its deadly toll.
At present, the Universe is in an apparently uncontrolled expansive phase, one which if continued indefinitely would see solar systems, galaxies and eventually the whole Universe, simply fly apart, until all that would be left would be a vast cloud of irradiated dust - with precious little prospect of a new Universe sparking up from the dead fragments of its former self.
However, before going into the details of the mission, the following comment caught my eye,
"Now, about 70 percent of the Earth is water. Imagine not knowing what water was? That's the situation we're in with dark energy"
As far as I'm aware, 70% of the Earth's surface is covered with water, but I'm fairly sure that this planet's infrastructure is mostly made up of rock and iron - indeed, I'm not sure it's even possible for a planet that's made up of two thirds water to exist at all. However the human body, which is 70% water - could be used as just an effective analogy - imagine not knowing what 70% of our own physical make-up was, or where it came from.
But none of this should detract from the vision of the mission at hand - in fact this particular project involves three competing ventures, namely ADEPT, Destiny and SNAP, all of which have officially been under consideration by NASA since August of this year. The aims of the mission are described thus...
"Each mission plans to measure the magnitude of dark energy by studying special star explosions called Type Ia supernovae. A Type Ia shines at a known luminosity, like a 100-watt light bulb. So scientists use these "standard candles" to measure distances in the universe. By observing many explosions in their host galaxies, particularly distant ones, scientists can determine how fast galaxies are moving away from us. In fact, this is how dark energy was discovered in 1998."
Each of the three proposed craft would make their observations using the infra-red spectrum - hitherto, dark energy's gravitational distortions have been detected and mapped by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, while in 2007, the Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope (GLAST) will set its sights on detecting a particle of Dark Matter, which itself would mark a major first for science.
(via Centauri Dreams)
ADEPT Destiny GLAST SNAP
Just when it seemed there couldn't possibly be any more news about Neanderthals, what with all the genetic brouhaha of last week, news of the occupants of a former rock shelter in Georgia has come filtering through, albeit some 36,000 years after the last Neanderthals packed their sleeping-bags and headed off to wherever they're living today.
The sub-title of the piece, 'Why the Neanderthals Failed', follows along the traditional route that modern humans succeeded in conquering the Earth for their own partly because Neanderthals were unable to compete with their sophisticated life-style, and partly because modern anthropology has until recently regarded Neanderthals as scruffy ne'er-do-wells, too rigid to adapt to the world as it changed around them.
In this instance, the difference is judged by the amount of obsidian the two species exploited in their lithic assemblages, or stone tool-kits, and although the difference might seem minimal, it's portrayed here as marking a significant difference between the species.
"Stone outcrops in the near neighbourhood of Ortvale Klde contain fairly high quality chert; but 100 kilometers away is a source for very high quality obsidian. The Neanderthal deposits at Ortvale Klde are 99.6 percent local chert and .4 percent obsidian; while the Modern human deposits at Ortvale Klde have between 5 and 7 percent obsidian, suggesting that Modern humans had a greater (or more frequent) access to the obsidian quarry."
Bearing in mind that obsidian, (a black volcanic glass, which can be 5 times sharper than surgical steel, with the thinnest blade edges having been measured at about 5 microns), was by far the best material of its type throughout the Palaeolithic, we might find it surprising that the Neanderthals of Ortvale Kide, chose not to avail themselves more fully of its superior qualities to a greater degree. The fact that even if only 0.4% of their material was the same obsidian that came from 100 km away, it shows they were aware of its existence, and that they had access to it, but for reasons of their own - maybe they had some cultural aversion which actively discouraged them from using it - chose to leave it to one side.
However, knowing as we do from the article that although their taste in meat was different, the two species' success in hunting their prey appeared to be equal, both occupying the site on seasonal bases, (from late Autumn to early Spring) it's not clear whether the obsidian itself made any crucial difference to the daily battle for subsistence to either species.
What it does appear to indicate is a greater social network over larger areas of the countryside for the moderns - a researcher at another site, both of whose names elude me, and whom I paraphrase here, proposed that it was if Neanderthals knew all the best restaurants in town, whereas the moderns knew all the restaurants in all the towns for miles around.
It might be considered that since no fossil remains from either species seem to have been found in the shelter, that the Neanderthals may have adopted new stone technology for themselves, and it was they who continued to occupy the site - but the differences of different animal remains from the archaic sediments and the moderns seem to definitely indicate that a new culture was in evidence after 36,000 years b.p. It's possible the Neanderthals might have adopted new ways of making their stone tools, but it's more doubtful they would have thrown away the old menus and recipes as well.
And because there is no skeletal evidence, we cannot be sure if the new inhabitants of Ortvale Kide represented an admixture of the two species - evidence of such genetic flux was recently shown to have taken place in Romania, as both cranial and post-cranial material from there was shown to display both archaic and modern traits. Tool technologies nevertheless in general seemed to dispense with the Mousterian throughout this period, and it is only at remote sites like Gibraltar, as late as 24,000 years b.p. on the very periphery of Europe, that this archaic lithic style was retained.
Some additional details can be found at Antiquity by following the link below, which summarises the site thus...
"Based on our initial research at Ortvale Klde we believe that Neanderthals occupying the southern Caucasus were members of a larger prehistoric social and mating network demarcated by the Caucasus Mountains to the north and the Taurus-Zagros to the south (Adler & Tushabramishvili in press). Interactions with Neanderthal populations in the northern Caucasus are only suggested by a several finds from Mezmaiskaya Cave. It also appears that the southern Caucasus served as one of the last large territories occupied by Neanderthals. The abrupt shift from the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic at Ortvale Klde cannot be characterized as an in situ cultural transition. Instead it appears Upper Palaeolithic peoples entered the region approximately 32ka without significant, if any, overlap with Neanderthal populations."
This hints at the important point, which is echoed elsewhere, that Neanderthals were themselves regional, and as such displayed differences in morphology from other groups - and to paraphrase someone else, some Neanderthals were more Neanderthal than others, but that's for another time.
more here
Two biologists, namely Harold Morowitz and George Mason, along with physicist Eric Smith have between them announced to the world that in their opinion, Life on Earth, (and presumably elsewhere), came into existence as a direct consequence of geological stresses undergone by the planet, which having stored enormous reserves of pent up energy, released it by transforming inanimate matter into living organisms - and furthermore, they contend that this initial florescence was more or less 'inevitable'.
"In our metabolism, a series of biochemical reactions called the citric-acid cycle breaks down organic compounds from food into carbon dioxide. Horowitz and Smith say that the energy reservoirs of the young Earth could have driven a citric-acid cycle in reverse, spawning the building blocks of life while relaxing the 'energy pressure' of the environment."
Coming as it does barely a week after the 'red rain' of Kerala analysis seemed to indicate that living cells had arrived here from an extra-terrestrial origin, poses a dilemma - are we are from outer space, in the sense that we arrived here by asteroid - or are we from outer space, only in the sense that all physical matter on this, and the early Earth, is merely recycled star-dust?
Both scenarios hold that life should exist in abundance across the Universe - either as a local phenomenon, booting up on each suitable planet as and when the mix of chemicals, heat and electricity is correct - or does it travel around the (electric) Universe on asteroids, comets and other modes of transport, seeding life here and there on whatever planet is lucky enough to be be the beneficiary of such synchronicity.
Or maybe, for the sake of argument, life on this planet is both terrestrial and inter-galactic - and the mixture of the two somehow allowed unicellular life to transform into the sentient and intelligent creatures that are rumoured to be alive, if not very well, somewhere on this planet.
Either way, the linked article takes a lot on faith, and as usual, there is no clear explanation as to how rocks, metals, chemicals, minerals and water combined together in such a way they came to life - hydrothermal vents have long been a favourite candidate for spawning life, proposed here as a result of biochemical reactions being somehow 'encapsulated into cells'.
It might be worth considering that as only about 7% of the Universe is physical matter, the rest comprising a majority of dark energy with a liberal sprinkling of dark matter, that something as mysterious as (conscious) life is just as likely to have its origins in those realms as anywhere else - it's just a shame we know virtually nothing about these two major influences, and until we do, it's unlikely we're ever going to find the answers sought here through what might be considered simplistic theorising on biochemical and geothermal processes.
A few days back, Richard Hoagland posted a couple of images to his website, which in his opinion offered clear evidence of archaeological ruins on the surface of the Moon - and although I agreed that it looked like the type of structure that might be artificial, I couldn't immediately think of a comparative site on Earth - until this afternoon when browsing through Esoteric Blog, whereupon I came across a very nice satellite image of an observatory in Chaco Canyon.
The point of this is that as has been said elsewhere, if we were using Google Earth to scour our planet for unknown and ruined archaeological sites, the type of anomaly pictured on the Moon is just what would be examined - but because this feature is instead a lunar anomaly, it will not be considered for serious examination by NASA or any other publicly funded space agency.
Although I'm not sure of the exact scales involved, the basic design and shape of the two sites, lunar and terrestrial, do seem to correspond, if only superficially. As we've only left it 35 years since the last Moon landings, it should be safe to assume we'll back there within the next 35 years to go and check it out - unless of course, we do the sensible thing, as suggested by Mac Tonnies, and head straight to Mars.
In any event, the sooner we get people properly exploring our own back-yard, i.e. the Solar System, who knows what we'll find, and who we might meet, as we begin to realise just which aspects are natural, and which are artificial. However, if the recent ESA image, a digital interpretation of the Face at Cydonia, (in which they placed a protruding horn in the middle of the forehead that simply isn't there) is anything to go by, it would appear that someone out there, or rather down here, is still keen for us to remain in the dark for as long as possible.
Good post from Afarensis, explaining some key differences between modern and Neanderthal skull morphology. Although there are noticeable contrasts between the two species, it's important to note that there was also a degree of difference between discrete groups of Neanderthals geographically isolated from each other. For example, most, but not all Neanderthals had a prominence at the back of their skulls, known as the occipital bun - whereas although modern Homo sapiens does not have this feature, some archaic sapiens did exhibit this trait.
Bearing in mind that Neanderthal eye sockets were set so deeply back from the face, it might be worth asking how this affected their vision - bearing in mind that the photons would in effect be travelling along a darkened tunnel before hitting the eyeball and eventually the retina - perhaps they had reduced peripheral sight, but in compensation they may have been able to see much further into the distance, allowing them better focus on prey they might be stalking from afar, in effect giving them telescopic vision. However, as far as I know, there is no actual evidence for this.
The author also refers back to the point that modern humans, with their smaller, rounder faces and skulls, could be viewed as neotenous (baby-faced) Neanderthals, although as he admits, this isn't really an accurate assessment. It has also been noted in the past how Homo sapiens skulls, in comparison to archaic species, look as though their heads have been inflated like balloons - and there is still no word as to which external or environmental forces could have changed cranial architecture so much in such a short space of time, around 200,ooo years ago.
image Shanidar 2
I very nearly didn't check this story - after all, I reasoned, this Guardian piece would most likely just reflect what has been written elsewhere, and probably not offer any new insights. And in that assumption I was broadly correct - except for one crucial detail, salted in towards the end...
"The last Neanderthals died out nearly 40,000 years ago, as Homo sapiens migrated to, and eventually settled throughout, Europe."
In a previous post this week, I noted how odd it was that the date given for the demise of the Neanderthals pretty much depends on what you read - for example, a piece last week killed them off at 35,000 years, the BBC in a single article had them dying out at 28,000 and 24,000 years respectively - and now, to cap it all, the linked article from the Guardian wipes them out a cruelly early 40,000 years.
What gives? I think I sense a conspiracy...but who would bother with such an idea, and what purpose could it possibly serve, other than to spark pointless arguments between bickering individuals, and a secondary betting market for those inquisitive enough to care.
On a brighter note, this does provide an opportunity to post a link explaining how it's possible to extract DNA from pulverised fossil bones - it's all to do with polymerase chain reaction and associated procedures.
No matter how hard I try, I have absolutely no memory of what I was up to 9 billion years ago - but this Universe will look back to that time and remember how it was rescued from destruction by an impending and catastrophic contraction leading to a universal extinction event, tentatively billed as the Big Crunch.
Although the eventual fate of the Universe remains an unknown, it was the introduction of Dark Energy at 9 billion years that is thought to have overcome the effects of gravity, some 3-4 billion years later. This in turn caused the Universe to enter the accelerated expansion mode in which we currently find ourselves - the end of the Universe in this instance, it is believed, will see galaxies and stars slowly pulled further and further apart from each other. In time, all the stellar material will burn out, and one by one, the lights that illuminate space will all be extinguished.
An analogy to dark energy comes courtesy of Adam Reiss, who says...
"Imagine that you were having a tug of war and the other end of the rope disappears behind a curtain. Somebody else is tugging on the other end; we'll call that dark energy,"
The question that follows from this is how did this introduction of dark energy happen in the first place - was it a naturally occurring phenomenon, and one that could be predicted for all similar universes - or, was it, as some believe, an intervention or rescue attempt by a sentient entity, trying to preserve the universe in such a way that it would be able to harbour intelligent life, either here on Earth, or in other, as yet unknown locations?
As Mario Livio, of the Space Telescope Science Institute reminds us...
"Understanding the nature of dark energy is arguably the biggest problem physics is facing today"
It might be little optimistic to say that such knowledge would effectively give us the keys to the Universe, and possibly the Multiverse, but it might well propel us through some sort of gateway or portal into a threshold of hyper-dimensional reality, assuming of course that's what everyone wants.
image Orion Nebula (again)
New Scientist are this week celebrating 50 years of publication, and accordingly have sought the opinions of over 70 people who attempt to predict scientific breakthroughs they consider likely to occur within the next half-century...
"In coming decades will we: discover that we are not alone in the universe? Unravel the physiological basis for consciousness? Routinely have false memories implanted in our minds? Begin to evolve in new directions? And will physicists finally hit upon a universal theory of everything? In fact, if the revelations of the last 50 years are anything to go on - the internet and the human genome for example - we probably have not even thought up the exciting advances that lay ahead of us."
Although I haven't yet had the time to wade through them all, there promises to be plenty to think about - up to and including whether humankind will last that long - and assuming it does, I wonder in what sort of format New Scientist will itself be published in 50 years hence.
Their podcast this week may offer some clues.
more here
Unaccountably, I either missed or overlooked this story when it first appeared, and unfortunately the complete story seems only to be in Nature, whose cover price and online access charges border on the decidedly unnatural. However, Scientific American give us enough to be going on with, and set against the supposed nuclear DNA breakthrough regarding the Neanderthal genome, could scarcely be better timed.
But first to the details of a burial dating back 27,000 years to an area of Lower Austria, where the River Krems meets the mighty Danube. Two graves have been found, one last year, containing the skeletons of infants, believed to be twins, who died around the age of 10 months - the second grave contained the lone skeleton of another infant. As can be discerned from the image above, the use of red ochre is evident, a practice that was widespread throughout the Upper Palaeolithic world, and possibly dated back even further to 2- or 300,000 years ago, and was almost certainly first introduced by Neanderthals.
Furthermore, the skeletons were found below the shoulder blade of a mammoth, though whether this was part of a specific burial ritual or a practical way of protecting the bodies from scavengers isn't known, maybe it was a combination of the two. Also present with the twin burial we see that:
"...more than 30 ivory beads lay near the pelvis of one of the presumed twins. The lone skeleton contained an ivory pin, which may have held shut a leather or fur wrapping."
The ivory beads are reminiscent of the much more elaborate burials at Sungir, in modern day Russia, where thousands of man-hours were invested in the manufacture of the burial goods found there, and burials of the dead, as well as the culture of the living for this period, are referred to as belonging to the Gravettian. As Olga Soffer opines...
"The effort taken to bury and decorate the remains implies the infants or their families were held in high esteem"
There is some speculation that analysis of the skeletal remains may cast some light on the continuing debate that strongly suggests that moderns and Neanderthals mixed their genes - though skeletal analysis usually requires remains of older individuals to more easily make definitive statements as to their architecture and origin. No mention is made of when new data might be forthcoming, or for how long work will continue at the site, but there is a belief that more remains might yet be recovered.
image from Prehistoric Commission Austrian Academy of Sciences
more here
Whenever someone includes the phrase 'world's oldest' in a headline, the first thought to occur is to read up on it immediately, followed quickly by the second that recalls extensive lists of other 'world firsts', which invariably turn out to be nothing of the sort. And although this is undoubtedly an intriguing discovery, people across the archaic world had been observing rituals from at least as early as 300,000 years ago, whereas this site is only dated to around 70,000 years b.p. 
