skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I was wondering what to post for my final entry of 2006, and as time is tight today, I hope this brief note will suffice. In a nutshell, I applied a couple of weeks back to host the April 11th Four Stone Hearth edition of their blog carnival, and today I received a reply in which somewhat to my surprise they very kindly informed me that I, or rather my blog, had been accepted. Although I'm not yet soliciting for submissions, as it's still months away, if you feel like making a diary entry, please do - but don't worry, as I'll be putting out occasional reminders anyway.
However, before that date, there are plenty of interim FSHs coming up, the next of which is, I've just noticed, is on January 3rd, in this instance being hosted at Bipedal Locomotion, which also reminds me I haven't submitted anything yet - I think submissions need to be in tomorrow or the next day.
Must dash, so it just remains for me to wish everyone a very happy New Year, and all the best for 2007.
image of Callanish from here
Here's a story I picked up at Anthro-L, in which it describes the plight of US geologists who have been prohibited from estimating the age of the Canyon, for fear of upsetting the religious sensibilities of those who would believe, and exhort us to believe too, that it was created at the time of Noah's Flood.
"In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. "It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is 'no comment.'"
I'm no geologist, but I think it has been proven beyond doubt that no such Flood ever took place, nor indeed would it have been possible for such an event to have happened in the first place. And in any case, geologists have feelings too, so why should they be made to suffer the indignity of having their own work called into question by people who would certainly not respect their rights to express opinions contrary to their own.
As mentioned at Anthro-L, it isn't yet known whether this ban on ascribing geological dates to other ancient sites in the US will spread, but nevertheless, a potentially dangerous precedent has been set.
However, there is a genuine mystery regarding the ubiquity of Flood myths, that have been related down through the generations, right around the world, which indicates to many researchers that this myth can trace its roots deep into prehistory - it seems that a catastrophic episode ingrained itself into the mind-set of cultural consciousness, it's just not entirely clear what actually happened.
I don't want to go into a long tirade about the dangers of Fundamentalism, save to say that any creed that claims to 'know' all, is itself fatally flawed. And although science itself has in the past been accused of claiming to 'know' things it doesn't, at least there is a constant debate, with people within the various aspects of the profession occasionally admitting there is stuff they don't know or understand - there is still more work and learning to be done. And as science is more a dynamic set of beliefs, and in some sense, alive, I find it infinitely preferable to a canon of rigid beliefs that is immutable, incapable of comprehending change, or coping with revelation that previous thinking may have been in error.
And while we're at the Grand Canyon, here's a curious story about a skywalk that's being planned, apparently due to open in Spring 2007 - as you can see from the picture, it's going to jut out from the rock-face, although due to the porous nature of the geology, nobody is quite sure for how long the structure will remain secure. And as we see, not everyone is entirely confident it's a good idea...
'"Our people, they died right along the land there. Their blood, their bones were shattered. They blend into the ground. It's spiritual ground. This is why you're awakened," she (Dolores Honga, a 70-year-old tribal elder ) said. While many Indian tribes make money from gambling resorts, the Hualapai relies on tourism revenue but attracts only a handful of visitors compared to the 4.1 million who visit the Grand Canyon National Park 90 miles to the east.'
And while scientific minds may dismiss such sentiment as superstition, anyone who watched 'Poltergeist' way back when, might think twice before stepping out onto a platform hovering 4,000 feet in mid-air, held in place by girders driven 40 ft into land that has been 'disturbed'.
Hualapai Indian Reservation
Anthro-L Archives
US National Park Service - Grand Canyon - geology fieldnotes
image of Skywalk from here
Martin at Salto Sobrius is now Martin at Aardvarchaeology, part of the Scienceblogs network, and although his old site is still up, it is to the new one that he'll be posting in future. He covers a diverse range of topics, from his profession as an archaeologist in Sweden, to other subjects like geo-caching, and occasionally sceptical observations of our world in general - and as I learned recently, he has become a contributor to Antiquity.
And as well as wishing him all good luck and success in his new role, it's worth checking out the other sites at Scienceblogs, some of which appear on my blogroll, as they all seem to have a very good standard of writing, as well as offering insights into the areas of research and expertise covered by the contributors. Additionally, many of these sites link externally - which at the time of their discovery by me, engendered a kind of Dave Bowman "My God - it's full of Blogs!" revelatory moment, as I began to realise just how many people are out there busily writing good content.
This post refers to two earlier articles, one on the possible future for online peer review, and Caral, over which an argument has broken out and reflects the relationship between them, as well as looking at the issues involved in a slightly wider context.
The recent publication of PLOS One was the first time scientific papers have been published online, without having undergone the peer review process along the way, although I think comments can be added once the article is up.
There is now a proposal from Kris Hirst , for a general online peer-review process, which would allow a paper to be published on the Internet, along with peer reviews, as well as giving others not directly involved the chance to add their own comments, and presumably ask questions that could be directly answered by the original author, or even some of the other correspondents.
In the recent past, there has been at least one topic that would have directly benefited from having the relevant papers published publicly, as well as being reviewed by others directly in the field, in real time. In this instance, the well-documented spat between Dr. Ruth Shady Solis and the Haas/Creamer team arose partly because there was not enough direct contact between the two parties.
It seems that after her initial discovery of the Caral discovery, Shady Solis met up with husband and wife team Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer, who both hailed from US academia. The latter in turn conducted their own investigations into the area as a whole, and in due course wrote a letter to Nature, detailing some of their research.
"Shady alleges that this letter made no mention of her in the context of Caral, although they apparently quote her a source in their bibliography. If this is true, it's understandable that Shady Solis felt she had been treated unfairly, especially as the letter appeared inThe hothouse world of Peruvian archaeology is notorious for its spats, but this one has taken the vitriol to unprecedented levels--public insults, a charge of plagiarism, ethics inquiries in both countries, and complaints by Peruvian officials to the U.S. government.
Groundbreaking research into the origins of civilization in the Americas is being carried out by two groups that won't talk to each other or share information, regularly attack each other in public, and, in private interviews, make inflammatory charges about the other's allegedly shoddy work. Colleagues fear the dispute could make it harder for American archaeologists to gain permission to work in Peru."
Had the situation been different, wherein Haas and Creamer had submitted an actual paper, this, unlike a letter to Nature, would have been peer-reviewed before publication, and would presumably have been obliged to mention Shady's role in Caral directly. I haven't been able to find a response from Haas and Creamer, and it's possible that more recently, this dispute has either died down or has been otherwise resolved.
Kris Hirst, as we have seen, calls for a greater amount of online scientific papers being published, along with peer reviews that would be open for all to see, perhaps as well as allowing non-academics and professionals to add their thoughts or questions to ongoing debates. The result would be a much more transparent process, while at the same time giving access to many more online members of a public that is increasingly interested in detailed scientific research and its implications.
However, no matter how good such a peer review system might be, or indeed how much more credibility would be added to the scientific process, other types of dispute will still exist.
For example, the furore in Flores over the last two years, also arose from differences in opinion, this time as to whether or not a new species of human had been discovered. Events took a very different turn from the traditional arguments that are conducted primarily in print; in this case, the actual finds, unique human fossils dating back thousands of years, were taken by Teuku Jacob, chief palaeoanthropologist of Indonesia, who not only kept them for much longer than initially indicated, but who allegedly also (in-)directly caused, significant damage to the material, that has apparently still not been satisfactorily explained.
A huge row duly broke out, with accusations and counter-claims flying in all directions, mostly over whether the finds represented a new fossil or was merely a diseased modern, which ultimately resulted in the Liang Bua cave shut down, and closed indefinitely to those who would wish to conduct further excavations there. Crucially, it is the discovery and analysis of other fossil cranial material that will be needed to settle the argument once and for all - hopefully, common sense will prevail, and a compromise between Morewood and Jacob will duly ensue. It seems almost inconceivable that such antipathy could manifest to the extent whereby an entire line of research is simply shut down.
So although this particular investigation may in the future appear as online and peer-reviewed material, it might still be difficult to stop people in the future from similarly appropriating the evidence or prevent further research from taking place. At least with the Caral situation, work there is continuing, leaving the door open for more discoveries and related publications which will at least keep the debate over the Supe civilisation alive.
Upon their respective discoveries in the 19th century, both Neanderthal Man and the discovery of Ice Age paintings at Altamira certainly caused great controversy, though since those times, these discoveries radically altered the way in which we perceived our distant past.
Professor Mike Morwood's book on Homo floresiensis is due out sometime in April.
n.b. before clicking the link, please be advised that the person who posted this, as mentioned in an earlier post, apparently prefers to call themselves by a name that may easily cause offence. I think if you watch full-screen the name disappears, or failing that, a strategically positioned post-it note may equally suffice.
Following on from the Spanish language Caral documentaries mentioned in the post below, here's one from Lascaux, this time in French, and lasting for an hour - the picture quality is much better, and again, it's not too difficult to follow.
As far as I can tell, the footage is from inside the original site, rather than the facsimile they've had to build, following damage done to the cave interior by the impact of the respiratory effects of thousands of visitors over the years. However, as we have seen, problems still affect the paintings, in part due to a new ventilation system that was installed, coupled with leak and flood damage at the cave entrance.
As well as showing the usual horse and other fauna paintings, we also see many enhanced engravings, which combined together show that a number of different artists employing different techniques and skills decorated Lascaux at different times.
There's a section showing the paint materials used, how they were prepared, and how the ubiquitous substance of ochre is still employed in the present day - for example we see someone creating a hand stencil by blowing paint to create the effect - but rather than me describe the whole thing, now might be a good time to watch the actual video. Bon appetit.
image from here
Something of a quiet day in the news, and having just spent 8 hours resurrecting a dead system - that still doesn't quite work, even after 2 erase and installs, relevant updates etc, it might be a short while before things are up and running as per normal - or at least till my head clears sufficiently to get on with some work.
The linked documentary although not visually or audibly crystal clear is in Spanish, and runs for 12 minutes - which even of you're completely unfamiliar with, shouldn't greatly detract from a nice look round the site at close quarters - there's some footage with Dr. Ruth Shady Solis, discoverer of the site, though I haven't quite worked out everything she says yet - in part, she talks about the antiquity of the site, how it was discovered, and subsequently carbon-dated.
I've already tacked this link onto an earlier posting on Caral, but unless you were specifically searching, it might otherwise escape notice - and as it's a fairly remote place, there isn't a great deal on the web to look at yet.
It's a unique archaeological site, the earliest known city in all of the Americas, and a fairly mysterious one at that - as I mentioned in another post, it not only had an amphitheatre, but there is evidence that something like an 'eternal flame' may have featured as well - both ideas we would usually associate with the Greek and Roman civilisations that followed several millennia after the rise and demise of this Peruvian enigma.
Just spotted another 11 minute doc, (slightly) better picture quality, also in Spanish.
La ciudad de Caral en Peru Casi tan antigua como Mesopotamia
The Archaeology Channel have this audio interview with Dr. Shady Solis - and below, there's an open letter she wrote in January 2005, citing her grievances with Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer, who are conducting research over a wider area, in an attempt to discover more about the Supe civilisation, or network of towns.
Open Letter From Ruth Shady, from January 2005
For more background to the site please see 'Caral: The Earliest Civilization in the New World' at Archaeology.about.com
Here's another of those stories in the never-ending mysteries of mega-faunal extinctions, two of which have occurred, on different sides of the world, over the last 40,000 years, and it is the latter which is under the spotlight here.
Whilst Cro-Magnon, from who we are derived, stands variously accused of deliberately or accidentally wiping out the Neanderthals, as well as Australian and American mega-fauna, the case is far from proven, or indeed closed.
In this latest round of yes-they-did-oh-no-they-didn't, Gavin Prideaux of Flinders University, has been studying Australia's climate over the last 500,000 years, by examining stalagmites in the Naracoorte Caves, located in South Australia. He was attempting to ascertain whether climate had played a significant role in the demise of so many species, but as we see...
'Fossilized remains of animals that had fallen into the limestone cave system over that time — including 20 species of extinct kangaroos, marsupial lions and hippopotamus-like marsupials — were dated using two independent methods: optically stimulated luminescence at Australia's University of Wollongong and uranium-series dating at the University of Melbourne.
"Although populations fluctuated locally in concert with cyclical climatic changes — with larger species favored in wetter times — most, if not all of them survived even the driest times. Then humans arrived," Prideaux said in a statement.
"Our evidence shows that the Naracoorte giants perished under climatic conditions similar to those under which they previously thrived, which strongly implicates humans in their extinction," he added.'
However, although it is certain that humans were present in Australia at 40,000 years b.p., there is the strong possibility that people were there in numbers at 60,000 years b.p. - in which case it would mean that the extinction event occurred when people had already been around for 20,000 years.
It's a similar situation in America, where the so-called Pleistocene Overkill event was even more deadly in its manifestation - unimaginable numbers of fauna, including entire genera, simply disappeared - and the arrival of humans at about the same time has also been suggested as a driver for this event. But as we know, from Mexico, and Meadowcroft, humans could very well have been resident there since maybe 40 - 50,000 years b.p., again showing a very long human presence lasting 30,000 years or more before the extinctions kicked in.
Prideaux takes the view that if it wasn't climate, then it must have been humans, but there is little in the way of evidence to back this up. As I have mentioned before, it would have meant humans at the time would have had to be in great number and actively involved in killing virtually anything that moved, all day and all night for years at a time, wiping out far more fauna they could have eaten or otherwise utilised as resources, and here I concur with David Bowman of Charles Darwin University, who opines...
'...that Aborigines did not have the population density or — armed with spears and boomerangs — the technology to efficiently wipe out the massive mammals.
"It should be remembered that it becomes increasingly difficult to kill off a species as their population is reduced to low levels because of the extra hunting effort required to find the last remaining animals," Bowman said in a statement posted on the ABC Web site.'
That something odd occurred around those dates is beyond dispute - at the time of the 40,000 yrs b.p. Australian event, modern human symbolic activity suddenly went mainstream, especially in Eurasia, but also substantially in Australia, while at 12,000 years b.p., much of the human race living in the high latitudes of the north, was spreading itself far and wide, as the Old Stone Age, including the 20,000 year-old tradition of cave art, melted away with the receding ice and snow.
If it wasn't the climate, or humans that were directly responsible for these huge die-offs, there is an urgent need to discover the one or more unknown triggers that have so far eluded detection - because the next time round, it might be ourselves who unexpectedly disappear.
New Theory For Mass Extinctions
image - descriptive rather than specifically relevant to Australia
Article from About.com, discussing the recent news from the US Public Library of Science, who announced they are to publish a scientific journal, ONE whose content will not be subject to peer review.
Kris Hirst mentions a related essay she wrote about the Web's relationship with the scientific community...
"When I hang around the Society for American Archaeology meetings, I generally spend some time talking to several colleagues about the Internet and its potential––one old friend called me an evangelist for the World Wide Web, and I'm afraid that's not far off. What I heard, I've heard before. People––scientists especially––don't use the Internet for several reasons, some of them good, some of them bad.
Some find the web hopelessly trivial. One person told me the problem with the web is nobody ever "reads" a web site; they "check it out." Others speak of how uneasy the ease of access made them; and still others mention the innumerable terrible sites that are "out there." Some even say that the web will not be useful so long as "just anyone" can post there; and that the proliferation of bad web sites makes good web sites pointless."
On that last comment, surely it's the case that bad websites actually make the good ones better - it's the same with books, documentaries or films - they all come with a 'caveat emptor' (buyer beware) attached - we don't simply stop reading books because there are a few bad ones in print, and the same applies to online material.
Having parted company with academia several decades ago, (along the lines of "Don't think of this as goodbye - it's just that I'm never going to see you again") peer review isn't something that has seemed to directly affect me - I tend to read (too much) Internet content and (not enough) books, the latter usually written by professionals in their respective fields - although of course, these very writers have published many of their own peer-reviewed articles.
However, I recently subscribed to the electronic version of 'Current Anthropology', and was immediately impressed by the way in which they approach this subject. For example, the latest edition contains the widely reported Kuhn and Stiner paper regarding putative Neanderthal division of labour along gender lines. And whilst the paper itself was both very informative, and in a way provocative, I felt that I derived as much constructive input from the numerous comments and responses by other palaeoanthropologists, or peer reviewers, who both broadened the context and raised points not covered in the original paper.
The remainder of the essay proposes a model for Internet Peer Review, which is a way of both bringing new papers to an expanded online audience, as well as doing away with the 'blind review' process, criticised earlier in the same article. This original essay was written back in 1998, and tomorrow we are promised a review of how things have actually worked out, as well as what the future might hold.
Although I entirely agree that the Internet can do a great deal in uniting science with an increasingly sophisticated online public, I have noticed that I now find it a lot more difficult to sit down and just read a book. I started 'Homo britannicus' by Chris Stringer the other day, and got as far as the inside cover - depicted is a composite image of various fossils found around London, and within seconds I was out of my chair, and merrily clicking away to get more info. An hour or two later I'd read a comprehensive history of my neighbourhood, from its earliest days, some of the more colourful inhabitants and their contemporaneous relationship with London in its previous configurations.
My point being, is that with so much information at our fingertips, it's all too easy to be distracted by related content, which although potentially deeply fascinating, isn't always directly relevant. Maybe that has more to do with my own mental discipline, and a need to switch off from the Internet, which I hasten to add, is entirely blameless - but it's my own feeling that books and other printed, standalone media, are at an increasing disadvantage to hypertext.
Until then, for anyone interested, an annual online subscription to Current Anthropology is a very reasonable $35 - about double if you subscribe to the overseas print edition - and even though I simply don't have the time to read all the material in depth, there should be enough to grab the attention of anyone with an interest in anthropology, past or present. And if you find yourself with a surfeit of Borders vouchers, or similar, Chris Stringer's book would be a recommendation of mine.
Finally, many thinks to Kris Hirst for including this site on her Related Blogs roll, something I can safely say I never dreamed would happen when I began to tap out my first posts a couple of years back - in fact the same applies to everyone else who has linked here - once over the initial shock, it definitely makes the whole exercise seem even more worthwhile, so again, thanks to all those that have done so.
PLOS One
Current Anthropology
AHOB 2
With the imminent launch of the exo-planet seeking ESA/CNES COROT mission due to blast itself clear of terra firma sometime tomorrow, here's an article that asks whether our very own Milky Way contains a region where 'conditions for life are optimum.
"Is there a galactic habitable zone, a region within the Milky Way where conditions for life are optimum? If so, we want to know its parameters, as they would help us define the search area for living worlds. The concept has kicked around for a while, and now surfaces again in an interesting paper by Nikos Prantzos (Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris). Prantzos ponders the main variables and, while concluding that the galactic habitable zone is far from well understood, believes it conceivable that the entire galactic disk may, at this stage of its evolution, be suitable for life."
For its part in the search for possible new venues from which to blog, outside the solar system, COROT will be dissipating its energies thus...
"One of the methods for detecting exoplanets is to look for the drop in brightness they cause when they pass in front of their parent star. Such a celestial alignment is known as a planetary transit.
From Earth, both Mercury and Venus occasionally pass across the front of the Sun. When they do, they look like tiny black dots passing across the bright surface.
Such transits block a tiny fraction of the light, that the COROT mission will be able to detect."
CNES appear to be the people responsible for the lift-off in Baikonur/Kazakhstan, and it's good to see a range of Euro-nations collaborating on the project.
Europe Looks Forward to COROT Launch
Good 4 min ESA video podcast, detailing the 2 - 3 year mission. (For some reason, I can only get the video content via iTunes)
Update 27/12/06: Planet-Finding Telescope Blasts Off
(via Posthumanblues)
Very brief post, in response to the recent news that the jaw-bone of Kent's Cavern, Torquay, may be the first direct evidence we have for Neanderthals in Britain, dating back 37 - 40,000 years b.p.
"Some of the earliest evidence for the deliberate disposal of the dead was found in Pontnewydd Cave in Wales. According to Stephen Aldhouse-Green the fragmentary remains - teeth - of early Neanderthals suggest that at least five and possibly up to 15 bodies may have been deliberately placed in the dark recesses some 225,00 years ago.
Other examples of this funerary 'caching' - as opposed to burial in the strict sense - can be found in Europe at this time. For example, at the Sima de los Hueso ('Pit of the Bones') at Atapuerca in Spain, over 32 individuals of Homo heidelbergensis dating to over 200,000 years ago were found at the bottom of a deep shaft."
Although I have posted on this in the past, as well as linking to Paul Pettit's article, this is something important to remember - I commented recently that if Kent's Cavern proved to be a genuine Neanderthal site, it would prove that they were already occupying outlying areas of Europe, well before the Cro Magnon incursions beginning around 40,000 years b.p. The teeth in Wales point to a Neanderthal arrival at around 230,000 years b.p., a staggeringly early date, unless they were extremely late heidelbergensis, which seems unlikely.
The author notes the similarity of 'caching' at Pontnewydd to that at Atapuerca, in Burgos, Spain, which I think date to nearer 300,000 years b.p., and are ascribed to Homo heidelbergensis, predecessors of the Neanderthal - which raises the question of whether we are seeing inherited 'caching' activities from the heidelbergensis ancestors.
n.b. With regard to the post below, in which it is suggested that the pioneering people who first came to Britain after the Ice Age, were folks travelling up from the Basque region of the Iberian peninsular, it's tempting to see a parallel with early Neanderthals, derived from heidelbergensis, essentially making the same northward journey from approximately the same location, Burgos, albeit over 200,000 years earlier. Although the story is undoubtedly more complex, it's an intriguing possibility nevertheless.
Kent's Cavern Report on the Way?
Neanderthal Teeth From Pontnewydd Cave
Lynford Neanderthals 60,000 yrs b.p.
BBC audio - 'Unearthing Mysteries' August 5 2003, Aubrey Manning/Prof. Chris Stringer - more from Lynford (29 mins) (Real Player req'd)
image by M. Antón - all the crew - Atapuerca, c. 300,000 years b.p.
I just started reading 'Homo britannicus', Chris Stringer's new publication of earlier this year, and was surprised to read that Britain cannot trace its genetic roots back as early as even the Americas, Australia and elsewhere, with Stringer claiming that the earliest we go back is around 12,000 years. I'm not sure about that, because the main thoroughfare of Islington, namely Upper Street, is reckoned to have been a trackway dating back 15,000 years - a factoid I mention to as many people as possible when I'm walking along it - I'm constantly amazed that no-one else seems even remotely impressed at the antiquity of such a busy street in Bar-stool Britain.
However, the linked article refers to more recent times, asking from where the founding population hailed, and who was here to meet and greet when the Romans arrived on an extended visit, about 2,000 years ago - and coming up with one or two surprising conclusions.
"Everyone has heard of Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. And most of us are familiar with the idea that the English are descended from Anglo-Saxons, who invaded eastern England after the Romans left, while most of the people in the rest of the British Isles derive from indigenous Celtic ancestors with a sprinkling of Viking blood around the fringes.
Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words "Celtic" or "Anglo-Saxon." What is more, new evidence from genetic analysis (see note below) indicates that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, to the extent that they can be defined genetically, were both small immigrant minorities. Neither group had much more impact on the British Isles gene pool than the Vikings, the Normans or, indeed, immigrants of the past 50 years."
There is some discussion about the Celts, and whether they as an identified people, ever really existed - they did, but they originated in south-western France, rather than the Danubian origin ascribed them by Herodotus - he was apparently under the mistaken impression that the Danube flowed from the Pyrenees, referring to the locals as 'Keltoi', (a word which sounds more Greek than Latin).
"The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language."
We tend to think of ourselves, especially in later history, as being descended from the inhabitants of those countries nearest to us, like northern France, the flat lands skirting the North Sea, and up into Scandinavia - this can particularly discerned in the content and vocabulary of the English language - it's noted elsewhere in the article that by comparison, only about half a dozen Celtic words exist in our entire tongue.
But as soon as Britain went post-glacial, it was none of our near neighbours that came rushing in to what was then a deserted peninsular, as described here...
"So, based on the overall genetic perspective of the British, it seems that Celts, Belgians, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings and Normans were all immigrant minorities compared with the Basque pioneers, who first ventured into the empty, chilly lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets."
All of which makes me wonder why the ancient Basques took it upon themselves to travel away from the warmer south, passing other European peoples on their way up through modern-day France. Maybe they had Britain specifically in their sights as their final destination, or were merely exploring, seeing how far they could get before the land ran out.
image
Albert Budden published a book in which he claimed that visual phenomena such as seeing ghosts and UFOs, could in part be ascribed to the brain being affected by electro-magnetic influences, inducing all manner of otherwise inexplicable experiences by the individual.
And while this OpenStim project doesn't seem to offer quite the same adventures, their aim is to use pulsed magnetism through the skull as a means of 'stimulating the nervous system', in a manner described here...
"Noninvasive, safe, and effective human brain stimulation is possible via transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). TMS has been used in experimental and clinical settings to, amongst other things, alter emotion and mood, shift attention, treat depression, relieve symptoms of schizophrenia, and quell tinnitus (ringing in the ears).
TMS devices contain a coil of wire placed near a subject's head, through which large currents are rapidly injected. The resultant changing magnetic field causes induction of eddy currents in the tissue beneath the coil, and subsequent activation of the neurons in the tissue. The neurons may be peripheral (e.g., in the arms and legs) or central (e.g., in the spinal cord or cerebral cortex). TMS of the motor cortex of a human subject, for example, can cause the subject's limbs or fingers to twitch. TMS of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of a human subject can cause the subject to become happier or sadder.
Our goal is to design a simple, safe, effective TMS device for modulation of emotion, sleep, attention, and other central nervous system properties. Many commercial entities sell TMS hardware and software, often for prices exceeding $50,000. We will devise a TMS device that will be constructable by a practitioner skilled in electrical engineering, for less than $400."
The 'Open' aspect of this project is that anyone with ideas or relevant knowledge is invited along for the ride - although I'm not sure whether that includes volunteering as a test subject, which during the experimental stages of this work, is probably an opportunity I'd pass up.
via MindHacks
Wikipedia
More here
image from here
This is more a reminder that Tim Binnall has interviewed Stanton Friedman in a Christmas Special, to which I'm listening as I type. I'll try and write it up in more detail later, but in the meantime, the link to the MP3s page also contains a brief but descriptive synopsis - although as ever, it's better to just sit back and listen, and decide for yourself what to make of it all.
Whatever your take on matters ufological, Friedman is a very good speaker, full of anecdotes across a broad spectrum of enigmatic events and connected people, having been in the business, so to speak, for several decades. His background involves him having worked in nuclear rocketry, as well as being a physics lecturer, before the Roswell incident of 1947 got his attention back in the 1970s. For a look at some of the topics he covers, and discussions with others in the field, the UFO Updates mailing list, whose archives are available from Virtually Strange Network, contain plenty of lively discussion.
Previous shows with SF
Season 1
X-Conference
Stanton Friedman's site
I thought I'd drop by Spaceweather.com just to make sure we're not likely to be frazzled by any x-class flares from the Sun over the next few days, and came across this dazzling picture of an analemma, a type of composite image, in this case describing the passage of the Sun over the course of a year, beginning in July of 2005.
This is the work of Tunc Tezel, who lives down in Turkey, ably aided and abetted by his brother Cenk, who had to assume responsibility for completing the project from April to July. The truly notable detail of this is the solar eclipse, which occured at the end of March, plainly visible in what Tezel has termed,
"a "Tutulemma," a combination of analemma and tutulma (pronounced to-tool-ma), the Turkish word for eclipse."
As far as the Sun is concerned, there is a new, and apparently large sunspot - and although it's currently on a part of the Sun that's pointing away from us, its 27-day rotation will bring the sunspot into view, and us into range, over the 28th -30th December, whereupon the true nature of its properties will become apparent.
The Analemma Project
It's been a while since we had news from Seahenge, the Bronze Age wooden circle, or henge, that was at the centre of so much controversy back in 1999, when its remains were hauled from their resting place on a Norfolk beach, to spend the rest of their days being cared for in Lynn Museum, away from the erosional and human hazards that threatened to destroy it for ever.
Indeed, had this site not been relocated, it's likely we'd be seeing purported pieces of it offered for sale on eBay, but it's nevertheless a shame that it will no longer be visible or visitable in its original configuration and setting. At present, preservation and conservation efforts are concentrating on removing any remaining moisture within the wood fibres by a freeze-drying process at the Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth - site of the recovery of one of Henry Vlll's flagships which sunk unexpectedly whilst on operational duty in 1545.
It has yet to be decided, or probably even considered, if we, as part of our eventual move away from Earth, will take with us some or all of those artifacts that have defined our forgotten past, or whether we will chose to leave the majority of them back here. Portable archaeology will doubtless make it aboard some of the outbound ships heading spaceward, but what would become of say, Stonehenge, Lascaux or the Nazca lines of Peru, sites that are truly embedded into the landscape?
The Wooden 'Henge' Rescued From The Sea Off The Norfolk Coast
This story follows on from the recent coverage of the El Sidrón site in the Asturias region of Spain, from where numerous Neanderthal fossil remains dating to around 43,000 years b.p. have been found, of which some are purported to betray signs of cannibalism. Despite the sensationalised headlines at the time, the indications are that any such activity tended to be occasional, rather than the norm. I think that even today, some modern populations carry inbuilt and/or acquired defences against some of the illnesses that can occur because of cannibalism, possibly signifying that such practices were more widespread in our own past than some may care to suppose.
It would be interesting, in the event that the lab work was possible, to scan Neanderthal DNA for such immune responses, but the point is that cannibalism wasn't something specific to Neanderthals, and we only have a handful of sites, like Krapina and others, that have left the tell-tale traces. Moreover, there is no-one left to tell us what prompted cannibalism episodes in some instances, while other dead Neanderthals were intentionally buried, sometimes accompanied by red ochre and grave goods.
However, the import of this story is to re-iterate the idea that not all contemporary Neanderthals had identical looks, with this study suggesting that Neanderthals who had struck up residence in southern Spain, had somewhat broader and squatter faces than their northern counterparts. In a way, this is unexpected - we are taught that shorter, more compact (post-cranial) features tend to occur in the high northern latitudes, as a means of coping with the cold, with taller and more elevated features to the south that would presumably enable a more rapid loss of body heat to take place.
Research into this has been carried out by Dr. Markus Bastir, who...
"...first studied the facial evolution of Neanderthals while at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid. Later in the fme at HYMS, he analysed the mandibles of the El Sidrón remains, under the supervision of Professor Paul O'Higgins, using 3D geometric morphometric software and imaging facilities.
“This revealed an astonishing North-South morphological gradient and gives us an idea of typically Southern-European Neanderthal facial shape,” Dr Bastir said."
Whether these traits should also apply to cranial architecture is something I don't know, but it seems fair to assume that other factors besides climate ultimately determine the face we show to the world each day. However, this study gives the Neanderthals a slightly more dynamic, or plastic aspect, in how we might consider them; instead of their features, and more besides, being set in stone, we are starting to see, that just like us, people back then differed across the geographical landscape.
To me, not only does this imply that local populations had been settled for a long time, but that these were essentially stable, allowing for long periods of time to elapse, that are presumably required for such marked differences to manifest themselves.
I think this would also imply that 43,000 years ago, differing customs, ways of speaking, and even what people ate, would have been different in ways that we could recognise when travelling across nations and continents today - and that's even with the spread of instant culture, and physical distances that have been shrunk beyond recognition, owing to the advent of our accelerated modes of transport. Predictions state that at some point in the future, all modern humans will pretty much (physically) resemble each other, though whether this would translate into cultural homogeneity as well, isn't known, but let's hope not.
Afarensis has commented thus
While an earlier paper seems to suggest there were no regional differences between Neanderthals
Neandertales, ADN antiguo y restos fósiles de la cueva de El Sidrón (Asturias)
Some 42,000 years ago, people in East Timor knew nothing of, and cared less about some or other distant descendants, or their festive attempts to forestall the detrimental effects on mood and well-being, exacerbated by living in the high northern latitudes of Europe and beyond.
Instead, these southern dwelling people, sometime residents of the depicted cave, were turning their thoughts towards the open seas and whatever lay beyond the horizon. It's probable they knew of the existence of other islands, as well as the continent of Australia from plumes of smoke rising high into the sky, likely from wild-fires burning uncontrollably across the countryside, or in the case of islands like Flores, the after effects of minor volcanic activity.
And it is the island of Flores, home to those enigmatic exiles, Homo floresiensis, as well as what may well have been Homo erectus, themselves dating back the greater part of a million years, to which our attention is once more diverted.
Dr. Sue O'Connor, an archaeologist from the Australian National University has been excavating the limestone shelter of Jerimalai, on the island of East Timor, where she has detected signs of human dating back at least 42,000 years. But because she has so far only used radio-carbon dating, whose limit is defined by the the 42,000 year-date, it's possible that this site has been occupied for far longer.
"A cave site in East Timor where people lived more than 42,000 years ago, eating turtles, tuna and giant rats,.....Dr O'Connor also found ancient stone tools and shells used for decoration in the limestone shelter, known as Jerimalai, on the eastern tip of the island......she said her discovery could help solve the mystery of the route ancient seafarers took to get (to Australia) here from South-East Asia."
It was believed in some circles that the first Australians reached her shores by travelling in from Papua New Guinea, via Borneo and Sulawesi, but Dr. O;Connor believes her finds indicate otherwise. Furthermore, she goes on to suggest that...
"Although the Jerimalai site is at least 42,000 years old, it could be much older, Dr O'Connor said, because this was the detection limit of the radiocarbon dating method used. She said the simple stone tools unearthed in the shelter were similar to those used by the species of hobbit-sized people who lived in a cave on the nearby island of Flores until 12,000 years ago."
The surprising detail arising from this is the evidence of past food consumption, which shows that as well as eating land-based giant rats, and readily available shore food such as turtle, these people also ate tuna, a deep sea fish, that would have required people to build rafts or boats. Additionally they would have needed hooks, fabricated from an unknown source, in order to snare their catch - an ability thought to have been beyond the reach of homo floresiensis.
"The find, however, raised big questions, such as why modern humans appeared to have bypassed Flores on their way to Timor. One possibility was that the hobbits were able to repel them."
Given their diminutive stature, it's hard to imagine the hobbit people being able to repel determined invaders by force, assuming of course there weren't still some larger and fitter members of the Homo erectus species around to protect them, but more of that idea another time.
"The Mystery of the Human Hobbit" (2005) - (Google video, 40 mins)
Nova - 11 min clip
Did Early Humans First Arise in Asia, Not Africa?
Martin at Salto Sobrius, who co-incidentally contributed the Tolkien article to Four Stone Hearth, is hosting another event, as described in the headline. There appear to be 17 contributors, who between them cover Medicine, Culture and Technology, Animals, Fungi, Cell Biology and Climate, and although I don't have time to read them just now, I'll try and present something of a round-up in due course.
There's also a link to another ongoing event, this one being Carnival of the Godless, which I have as yet no knowledge, but if you have a blog and would like to get involved with these events in future, either by submitting material to one already in existence, or even starting one of your own, the upcoming holidays should provide some free time in which to consider your options.
As today is the Winter Solstice, now seems an appropriate time for me, and on behalf of my blog, to thank everyone who has visited, commented and otherwise lent support and given encouragement over the past year, all of which is very much appreciated - and of course, to wish you all the very best over the next week or two, as well as my best wishes for the New Year.
image from Megalithic Portal
This is an excellent documentary, ostensibly fronted by Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, looking surreally clerical, delivering a fascinating and insightful look into what we think of as being the ultimate reality of our own Universe, with the somewhat unsettling suggestion, from Nick Bostrom, that the entire shebang could be a type of computer sim of mind-bending proportions.
Then there's the idea that instead of our solitary Universal paradigm, it may yet transpire that we are but a mere bubble floating in a vast ocean of an effervescent Multiverse, though whether we will ever even be able to detect anything outside our own domain, let alone travel beyond it, is something that may take several millennia of accumulating more knowledge, whose very nature we can only guess at.
This was sent out by Peter Gersten in his PAG-e newsletter a week or two ago, so thanks to him for that. This can either be viewed at Google as one complete show, or, if you're keen on frequent, though not strictly necessary coffee breaks, it can be viewed in 4 chunks of about 10 mins each, as listed here.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
image 'cosmos pyramides'
Having decided to leave yesterday's blogging until today, partly so that Carl Sagan could have the day to himself, and also due to archival maintenance here at rc, it's high time I got to grips with several stories that are lurking in the minimalised sector at the nadir of my liquid crystal display.
First up is the news that the anthropology Blog Carnival we know as 'Four Stone Hearth', is up and running in its fif 
I was wondering what to post for my final entry of 2006, and as time is tight today, I hope this brief note will suffice. In a nutshell, I applied a couple of weeks back to host the April 11th Four Stone Hearth edition of their blog carnival, and today I received a reply in which somewhat to my surprise they very kindly informed me that I, or rather my blog, had been accepted. Although I'm not yet soliciting for submissions, as it's still months away, if you feel like making a diary entry, please do - but don't worry, as I'll be putting out occasional reminders anyway.
