Free Republic

Westerners could be genetically programmed to consume fatty foods and alcohol more than those from the east, researchers have claimed. Scientists at the University of Aberdeen say a genetic switch - DNA which turns genes on or off within cells - regulates appetite and thirst. The study suggests it is also linked to depression. Dr Alasdair MacKenzie conceded it would not stop those moving to the west adapting to its lifestyle. > "The fact that the weaker switch is found more frequently in Asians compared to Europeans suggests they are less inclined to select such options. "These results give us...

We tend to think of garden design as a relatively new vocation. The truth told by archaeological findings not only lays such thoughts to rest, it tells a tale of a rich and ancient heritage of garden design. One such finding shows a garden of Ninevah, in present-day Iraq, that dates back to 650 BC. There are date palms, trees and shrubs of many types. True, an enemy's severed head is seen hanging from one of the trees, but times were different, or are they? They did like their gardens, however. Our vision of ancient Egyptian temples is one of...

Neanderthal cavemen supped on shellfish on the Costa del Sol 150,000 years ago, punching a hole in the theory that modern humans alone ate brain-boosting seafood so long ago, a new study shows. The discovery in a cave near Torremolinos in southern Spain was about 100,000 years older than the previous earliest evidence of Neanderthals consuming seafood, scientists said. Researchers unearthed the evidence when examining stone tools and the remains of shells in the Bajondillo Cave, they said in a study published online in the Public Library of Science. There, they discovered many charred shellfish -- mostly mussel shells --...

An exceedingly well preserved juvenile mammoth carcass has been found in Siberia near the Arctic Ocean and it shows signs of having been attacked by a cave lion and then partially butchered by humans. Dubbed Yuka by the Mammuthus organization, which is studying the remains, the six foot long creature was believed to have been a year and a half to perhaps three or four years old at the time of its death. The mammoth was found by tusk hunters in Northern Siberia, who then turned it over to scientists with the Mammuthus organization. The BBC and Discovery have been...

A team of researchers has provided the first molecular evidence that Neanderthals not only ate a range of cooked plant foods, but also understood their nutritional and medicinal qualities... The researchers, led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the University of York, combined pyrolysis gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry with morphological analysis of plant microfossils to identify material trapped in dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) from five Neanderthals from the north Spanish site of El Sidrón. Their results provide another twist to the story -- the first molecular evidence for medicinal plants being used by a Neanderthal individual. According to a prepared...

Neanderthal hunters rivalled human skills 17:34 23 September 03 NewScientist.com news service Neanderthals were not driven from northern Europe by vastly superior human hunters, suggests an analysis of hunting remains. The study by Donald Grayson of the University of Washington and Francoise Delpech of the University of Bordeaux challenges a popular theory that the primitive peoples died out because they were far less skillful hunters. The pair examined the fossilised remains of butchered animals from a cave in southwest France. Neanderthals inhabited southern France from 65,000 years before the present until roughly 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. Neanderthals disappeared from...

Dr Francis Wenban-Smith discovered a site containing remains of an extinct straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) in 2003, in an area of land at Ebbsfleet in Kent, during the construction of the High Speed 1 rail link from the Channel Tunnel to London... Excavation revealed a deep sequence of deposits containing the elephant remains, along with numerous flint tools and a range of other species such as; wild aurochs, extinct forms of rhinoceros and lion, Barbary macaque, beaver, rabbit, various forms of vole and shrew, and a diverse assemblage of snails. These remains confirm that the deposits date to a warm...

In a joint study, Professor Hervé Bocherens of the University of Tübingen, Germany, together with colleagues from the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, Russia and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, Belgium have found at a cave in the Caucasus Mountains indirect hints of fish consumption by Neandertals... Bone analyses ruled out cave bears and cave lions to have consumed the fish whose remains were found at the Caucasian cave... located on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, called Kudaro 3. There, the bone fragments of large salmon, migrating from...

Researchers at Cambridge University, U.K. finds that after agriculture’s emergence in Central Europe starting around 5300 BC, bones of those living in the Danube River valley became progressively less strong, pointing to a regressive decline in human mobility and loading... Research by Alison Macintosh, a PhD candidate in Cambridge University’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, finds functional adaptation in postcranial skeletal morphology in response to prolonged cultural and behavioural change across ~6150 years of agriculture in Central Europe (~5300 cal BC to 850 AD)... Dr. Ron Pinhasi of the University College in Dublin, Ireland, notes that colonization of Europe by...

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found. The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently....

(Phys.org)—As a young archaeologist, Peter Bogucki based his groundbreaking theory on the development of Western civilization on the most ancient of human technology, pottery. But it took some of the most modern developments in biochemistry—and 30 years —finally to confirm he was right. While working as director of studies at one of Princeton University's residential colleges in the 1980s, Bogucki theorized that the development of cheese-making in Europe—a critical indicator of an agricultural revolution—occurred thousands of years earlier than scientists generally believed. His insight, based on a study of perforated potsherds that Bogucki helped recover from dig sites in Poland,...

Traces of dairy fat in ancient ceramic fragments suggest that people have been making cheese in Europe for up to 7,500 years. In the tough days before refrigerators, early dairy farmers probably devised cheese-making as a way to preserve, and get the best use out of, milk from the cattle that they had begun to herd. Peter Bogucki, an archaeologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, was in the 1980s among the first to suspect that cheese-making might have been afoot in Europe as early as 5,500 bc. He noticed that archaeologists working at ancient cattle-rearing sites in what is...

Charred grains of barley, millet and wheat deposited nearly 5,000 years ago at campsites in the high plains of Kazakhstan show that nomadic sheepherders played a surprisingly important role in the early spread of domesticated crops throughout a mountainous east-west corridor along the historic Silk Road... "Ancient wheat and broomcorn millet, recovered in nomadic campsites in Kazakhstan, show that prehistoric herders in Central Eurasia had incorporated both regional crops into their economy and rituals nearly 5,000 years ago, pushing back the chronology of interaction along the territory of the 'Silk Road' more than 2,000 years," Frachetti said... ...several strains of...

Ancient Romans Preferred Fast Food Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News June 18, 2007 — Just as a U.S. Presidential state dinner does not reflect how most Americans eat and socialize, researchers think the formal, decadent image of wining and dining in ancient Rome mostly just applied to the elite. According to archaeologist Penelope Allison of the University of Leicester, the majority of the population consumed food "on the run." Allison excavated an entire neighborhood block in Pompeii, a city frozen in time after the eruption of volcano Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Historians often extend findings from Pompeii to other parts...

TEHRAN -- Archaeologists digging in southern Iran have found a pool and pots that they believe were used some 1,800 years ago for large scale wine production, reinforcing the now-Islamic nation's status as the cradle of wine drinkers. "We have found an almost intact pool with a canal in the middle of it. This is where the juices from crushed grapes would flow and be collected later in pots for fermentation and turning into wine," said Ali Asadi, the head of the excavation team. The team, which includes a group of Polish archaeologists, is digging at a site called Tange...

TEHRAN: Archaeologists digging in southern Iran have found a pool and pots they believe were used some 1,800 years ago for large scale wine production, reinforcing the now-Islamic nation's status as the cradle of wine drinkers. "We have found an almost intact pool with a canal in the middle of it. This is where the juices from crushed grapes would flow and be collected later in pots for fermentation and turning into wine," Ali Asadi, the head of the excavation team said. The team, which includes a group of Polish archaeologists, is digging at a site called Tange Bolaghi, near...

British wine grapes are suddenly in the midst of the global warming controversy.Historic records tell us that Britain grew wine grapes 2000 years ago during the Roman Warming, and 1000 years ago during the Medieval Warming. Since 1300, however, Britain has been too cold for wine grapes. The debate: Is human-induced warming boosting British temperatures to "unnatural" levels, or is the gradual warming a repeat of previous cycles?The website English-wine.com says there are more than 400 vineyards in Britain today, and ". . . the good news about English wine [is] how good, even superb, it can be."It certainly sounds...

The French call pinot noir "the noble grape" and have long considered it a source of inspiration. Now it can also be appreciated as the reason for an extensive, localized climate record. A study found a close match between pinot noir grape harvest dates in Burgundy, sea surface temperature trends and the Western European climate. The relationship could be used to forecast harvest dates months in advance. Yves Tourre, from the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. and the French meteorological service, Meteo-France, in Toulouse, presented research on the significance of a nearly 700-year record of pinot noir grape...

For some cheese lovers, the older and stinkier the cheese, the better. Well, what about a cheese that's been aging for 3,600 years? Yellow lumps, believed to be the world's oldest cheese, were found on mummies buried in the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern China. The cheese, which was found during archaeological excavations that took place between 2002 and 2004, dates to as early as 1615 BC. The cheese was found on the necks and chests of the mummies. The multiple layers of cowhide the mummies were buried in, and the dry, salty desert helped preserve the cheese....

im Crawford was rushing to load crates of freshly picked organic tomatoes onto trucks heading for an urban farmers market when he noticed the federal agent. A tense conversation followed as the visitor to his farm — an inspector from the Food and Drug Administration — warned him that some organic-growing techniques he had honed over four decades could soon be outlawed. "This is my badge. These are the fines. This is what is hanging over your head, and we want you to know that," Crawford says the official told him. Crawford's popular farm may seem a curious place for...