Free Republic

The Jomon culture was mentioned in other news this month. The largest ever genetic study of native South Americans identified a sub-population in Ecuador with an unexpected link to eastern Asia. The study, published in PLOS Genetics, concluded that Asian genes had been introduced into South America sometime after 6,000 years ago -- the same time the Jomon culture was flourishing in Japan. Back in the 1960s, the renowned Smithsonian archaeologist Betty Meggers argued that similarities between the pottery of the contemporaneous Valdivia culture in Ecuador and Japan’s Jomon culture indicated that Japanese fishermen had “discovered” America about 5,000 years...

Hundreds of inmates have been released from California prisons since Jan. 1 as a result of a federal court agreement Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration signed the first day it came to power. At least one of the prisoners released has since been arrested on suspicion of committing a new crime - a Porterville man accused of threatening to kill a police officer. The releases took place because Schwarzenegger's administration signed an agreement in a long-contested class-action lawsuit known as the Valdivia case. It required the state to provide revocation hearings for parolees within 35 days of their reincarceration - or...