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Based on his leaked emails, it seems a safe assumption that Colin Powell will not endorse or vote for Hillary Clinton. After Democratic megadonor Jeffrey Leeds emailed Powell on July 24, 2014, to tell him he’d gotten Rudy Giuliani to admit that President Obama is a “decent man” and that Hillary Clinton is “not stoppable” for the 2016 election, Powell confessed: “I would rather not have to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect.” He noted that she is a 70-year-old person with “long track record,” but is hampered by being “greedy, not transformational, with a husband...

Giant bull, wild boar and red deer bones left at a settlement a mile from Stonehenge prove that Amesbury is the oldest settlement in Britain and has been continually occupied since 8820 BC, according to archaeologists who say the giant monuments were built by indigenous hunters and homemakers rather than Neolithic new builders. Carbon dating of aurochs – a breed twice the size of bulls – predates the settlers responsible for the massive pine posts at Stonehenge, suggesting that people had first lived in Wiltshire around 3,000 years before the site was created in 3000 BC. Experts had previously thought...

Scientists have analysed the DNA of ancient giant European wild cattle that died out almost 400 years ago. They have determined the first mitochondrial genome sequence from aurochs (Bos primigenius) from bone found in a cave in England. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from a mother to her offspring....... One of the researchers involved, Dr Ceiridwen Edwards, has previously investigated the remains of a polar bear found in the Scottish Highlands.... The species became extinct when a female animal died in a forest in Poland in 1627. Roman general and dictator Julius Caesar was said to have been impressed...

An ancient tavern believed to be more then 2,100 years old has been found in the town of Lattes, southern France, making it the oldest Roman restaurant found in the Mediterranean. They also found evidence that while Romanization changed the locals' dining habits, it didn't do much for the cuisine. Evidently some things never change, though. The excavators in the town of Lattes found indoor gristmills and ovens for baking pita, each about one meter across. This oven, called a tabouna or taboon, is still used throughout the Middle East and Israel. In another room, across the courtyard from the...

On one tablet excavated from the area we can see a human head eating from a bowl, meaning “ration”, and a conical vessel, meaning “beer”. Scattered around are scratches recording the amount of beer for a particular worker. It’s the world’s oldest known payslip.

The ancient Canaanites living in Gath some 5,000 years ago weren't sacrificing their own livestock to appease the gods. They were importing animals from ancient Egypt, archaeologists have now proven. A donkey, as well as some sheep and goats whose remains were found in Early Bronze Age layers at Gath dating to 4900 years ago turn out to have been born and bred in the Nile valley.The discovery at the archaeological site of Tell el-Safi shows that animals were part of the extensive trading relations between the Old Kingdom of Egypt and Early Bronze Age Canaan (circa 2900-2500 BCE).... Until...

Study of 44 ancient Middle Eastern genomes supports idea of independent farming revolutions in the Fertile Crescent. Two Middle Eastern populations independently developed farming and then spread the technology to Europe, Africa and Asia, according to the genomes of 44 people who lived thousands of years ago in present-day Armenia, Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Iran. ...the research supports archaeological evidence about the multiple origins of farming, and represents the first detailed look at the ancestry of the individuals behind one of the most important periods in human history — the Neolithic revolution. Some 11,000 years ago, humans living in the...

Clemson University scientist Brian Ward and his team harvested about 145 pounds of Purple Straw seed, which was grown from less than half a pound. Credit: Scott Miller / Clemson University ================================================================================================= The first step of an ongoing-process designed to bring a valuable heirloom wheat back from the brink of extinction has been completed with flying colors. Last month, Clemson University scientist Brian Ward and his team harvested about 145 pounds of Purple Straw seed, which was grown from less than half a pound. Purple Straw is the only heirloom wheat to have been cultivated continually in the South from...

Oldest noodles unearthed in China Late Neolithic noodles: They may settle the origin debate The 50cm-long, yellow strands were found in a pot that had probably been buried during a catastrophic flood. Radiocarbon dating of the material taken from the Lajia archaeological site on the Yellow River indicates the food was about 4,000 years old. Scientists tell the journal Nature that the noodles were made using grains from millet grass - unlike modern noodles, which are made with wheat flour. The discovery goes a long way to settling the old argument over who first created the string-like food. Professor Houyuan...

Professor VD Mishra said that new researches have revealed that agricultural practices in India started in Mesolithic period (6-7,000 BC), much before the Neolithic period (4000 BC) as is generally believed. This discovery has proved that agriculture in India started simultaneously with other parts of the world. He said that Sativa rice, discovered from excavations at Chopni in Belan valley, has proved that India did not lag behind in agriculture... Joshi said that encroachments around historical monuments should be stopped because it harms our heritage. Citing an example, he said that Gwalior Fort could not be declared World Heritage due...

What an eggsperiment! A group of high school students in Japan have made an incredible discovery - they've figured out how to hatch a perfectly healthy chick from an egg without the shell. The discovery is so significant, the students' findings have been published in a scientific journal. The experiment - which was filmed and then shared on YouTube - consists of a few very simple steps and takes less than one month. By day three - the little chick's heart had formed, and by day five, the outline of its body could be seen. In just three weeks, a...

They may be man's best friend, but dogs have little to thank humans for it seems. Research suggests the domesticated pets can't solve problems as well as their wild cousins because living with us has made them 'incapable of thinking for themselves.' In tests, experts presented a 'puzzle box' containing food to a group of dogs, and a group of wolves and while the wolves were capable of breaking inside, the dogs looked to humans for help.

Dogs can copy each other's expressions in a split-second just like people, showing signs of basic empathy, according to Italian researchers. Mimicking each other's facial expressions is a human habit, which helps people to get along. Dogs do the same to bond with other dogs, scientists report in the journal, Royal Society Open Science. They think dogs may be showing a basic built-in form of empathy, enabling them to pick up on emotions. And the phenomenon may have emerged in our canine companions during the process of domestication, say scientists from the Natural History Museum, University of Pisa.

This week, millions of people around the world will no doubt experience rapid mimicry-an involuntary, split-second mirroring of another person's facial expressions-as they exchange smiles over gifts, good meals and holiday traditions. This phenomenon, observed in humans and many other primates, is considered a basic building block of our ability to feel empathy. "When your companion or friend smiles, you don't know why exactly, but you immediately react with the same smile to him or her," says Elisabetta Palagi, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pisa in Italy. "It’s an extremely important phenomenon, because through this mimicry you can...

Dogs really are man's best friend, it seems, as researchers have shown they can recognise emotions in humans by combining information from different senses. They are the only creatures outside of humans who have been observed to have that ability. -SNIP- "Our study shows that dogs have the ability to integrate two different sources of sensory information into a coherent perception of emotion in both humans and dogs. "To do so requires a system of internal categorisation of emotional states. This cognitive ability has until now only been evidenced in primates and the capacity to do this across species only...

A golden jackal (Canis anthus) from Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. Based on genomic results, the researchers suggest this animal be referred to as the African golden wolf, which is distinct from the Eurasian golden jackal (Canis aureus). Credit: D. Gordon E. Robertson ======================================================================================================================= Despite their remarkably similar appearance, the "golden jackals" of East Africa and Eurasia are actually two entirely different species. The discovery, based on DNA evidence and reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 30, increases the overall biodiversity of the Canidae—the group including dogs, wolves, foxes, and jackals—from 35 living species to 36. "This...

The genetic heritage of New Zealand's first dog, the now extinct kuri, is being unravelled by University of Otago scientists using state-of-the-art ancient DNA analysis. University of Otago PhD student Karen Greig has sequenced the complete, or near complete, mitochondrial genomes of 14 kuri represented by bones recovered from Wairau Bar, one on New Zealand's earliest and most important archaeological sites. Kuri were smallish dogs about the size of cocker spaniels and were brought to New Zealand from East Polynesia in the colonising canoes that arrived in the early fourteenth century AD. They were the only domesticated animal to be...

By Paul Rincon 20 October 2015 Dogs may have become man's best friend in Central Asia, according to the study Today's dogs can trace their origins to Central Asia, according to one of the most comprehensive genetic surveys yet. Dogs are the most diverse animal on the planet - a legacy of thousands of years of selective breeding by humans. But they derive from wild wolves that were gradually tamed and inducted into human hunting groups - perhaps near Mongolia or Nepal. The findings come from an analysis of DNA from thousands of pooches, and are published in PNAS journal....

You may think your dog has an irrational hatred of cats, but their instinct to chase felines out of their territory might be more reasonable than you think. Fossils have revealed the two species have a rocky past after the introduction of cats to the Americas had a devastating effect on the continent's species of wild dogs. In fact, it is thought that competition from cats caused up to 40 species of dog to become extinct in the region millions of years ago.

Before humans milked cows, herded goats or raised hogs, before they invented agriculture, or written language, before they had permanent homes, and most certainly before they had cats, they had dogs. Or dogs had them, depending on how you view the human-canine arrangement. But scientists are still debating exactly when and where the ancient bond originated. And a large new study being run out of the University of Oxford here, with collaborators around the world, may soon provide some answers.