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Gods, Graves, Glyphs
Weekly Digest #414
Saturday, June 23, 2012 |
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| Multiregionalism |
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Re-Examining the "Out of Africa" Theory and the Origin of Europeoids
in Light of DNA Genealogy
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· 06/20/2012 2:19:55 PM PDT ·
· Posted by Renfield ·
· 36 replies ·
· scirp.org ·
· May 2012 ·
· Anatole A. Klyosov, Igor L. Rozhanskii · |
Seven thousand five hundred fifty-six (7556) haplotypes of 46 subclades in 17 major haplogroups were considered in terms of their base (ancestral) haplotypes and timespans to their common ancestors, for the purposes of designing of time-balanced haplogroup tree. It was found that African haplogroup A (originated 132,000 ± 12,000 years before present) is very remote time-wise from all other haplogroups, which have a separate common ancestor, named β-haplogroup, and originated 64,000 ± 6000 ybp. It includes a family of Europeoid (Caucasoid) haplogroups from F through T that originated 58,000 ± 5000 ybp. A downstream common ancestor for haplogroup A and β-haplogroup, coined the α-haplogroup emerged 160,000 ± 12,000 ybp. A territorial origin of haplogroups α- and β-remains unknown; however, the most likely origin for each of them is a vast triangle stretched from Central Europe in the west through the Russian Plain to the east and to Levant to the south. Haplogroup B is descended from β-haplogroup (and not from haplogroup A, from which it is very distant, and separated by as much as 123,000 years of "lat- eral" mutational evolution) likely migrated to Africa after 46,000 ybp. The finding that the Europeoid haplogroups did not descend from "African" haplogroups A or B is supported by the fact that bearers of the Europeoid haplogroups, as well as all non-African haplogroups do not carry either SNPs M91, P97, M31, P82, M23, M114, P262, M32, M59, P289, P291, P102, M13, M171, M118 (haplogroup A and its subclades SNPs) or M60, M181, P90 (haplogroup B), as it was shown recently in "Walk through Y" FTDNA Project (the reference is incorporated therein) on several hundred people from various haplogroups. |
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| British Isles |
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Welsh people could be most ancient in UK, DNA suggests
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· 06/20/2012 5:01:13 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 54 replies ·
· BBC ·
· Tuesday, June 19, 2012 ·
· unattributed · |
Professor Peter Donnelly, of Oxford University, said the Welsh carry DNA which could be traced back to the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. The project surveyed 2,000 people in rural areas across Britain. Participants, as well as their parents and grandparents, had to be born in those areas to be included in the study. Prof Donnelly, a professor of statistical science at Oxford University and director of the Wellcome Trust centre for human genetics, said DNA samples were analysed at about 500,000 different points. After comparing statistics, a map was compiled which showed Wales and Cornwall stood out. Prof... |
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| Agriculture & Animal Husbandry |
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Ancient North Africans got milk: Herders began dairying around 7,000 years ago
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· 06/22/2012 3:53:25 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 2 replies ·
· Science News ·
· Wednesday, June 20th, 2012 ·
· Bruce Bower · |
Animal herders living in what was a grassy part of North Africa's Sahara Desert around 7,000 years ago had a taste for cattle milk, or perhaps milk products such as butter. Researchers have identified a chemical signature of dairy fats on the inside surfaces of pottery from that time. Dairy products played a big part in the diets of these ancient Africans, even though they did not live in farming villages as the earliest European milk users did, reports a team led by biogeochemists Julie Dunne and Richard Evershed, both of the University of Bristol in England. Dairying may have... |
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| Diet & Cuisine |
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How the Chicken Conquered the World: The epic begins 10,000 years ago in an Asian jungle...
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· 06/18/2012 7:06:22 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 42 replies ·
· Smithsonian magazine ·
· June 2012 ·
· Jerry Adler and Andrew Lawler · |
The chickens that saved Western civilization were discovered, according to legend, by the side of a road in Greece in the first decade of the fifth century B.C. The Athenian general Themistocles, on his way to confront the invading Persian forces, stopped to watch two cocks fighting and summoned his troops, saying: "Behold, these do not fight for their household gods, for the monuments of their ancestors, for glory, for liberty or the safety of their children, but only because one will not give way to the other." The tale does not describe what happened to the loser, nor explain... |
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| Prehistory & Origins |
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Massive Gold Trove Sparks Archeological Dispute
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· 06/21/2012 5:36:03 PM PDT ·
· Posted by Theoria ·
· 8 replies ·
· Spiegel Online ·
· 21 June 2012 ·
· Matthias Schulz · |
A 3,300-year-old treasure trove of gold found in northern Germany has stumped German archeologists. One theory suggests that traders transported it thousands of miles from a mine in Central Asia, but other experts are skeptical. Archeologists in Germany have an unlikely new hero: former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. They have nothing but praise for the cigar-smoking veteran Social Democratic politician. Why? Because it was Schröder who, together with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, pushed through a plan to pump Russian natural gas to Western Europe. For that purpose, an embankment 440 kilometers (275 miles) long and up to 30 meters (100 feet)... |
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Archaeological Dispute Erupts over Gold Trove
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· 06/22/2012 3:50:22 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 3 replies ·
· Spiegel ·
· Solstice Day, June 21, 2012 ·
· Matthias Schulz, DPA · |
...former Chancellor Gerhard Schrˆder... pushed through a plan to pump Russian natural gas to Western Europe. For that purpose, an embankment 440 kilometers (275 miles) long and up to 30 meters (100 feet) wide had to be created from Lubmin, a coastal resort town in northeastern Germany, to Rehden in Lower Saxony near the northwestern city of Bremen. The result has been a veritable cornucopia of ancient discoveries. The most beautiful find was made in the Gessel district of Lower Saxony, where 117 pieces of gold were found stacked tightly together in a rotten linen cloth. The hidden treasure is... |
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| Megaliths & Archaeoastronomy |
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Research finds Stonehenge was monument marking unification of Britain
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· 06/22/2012 3:40:45 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 6 replies ·
· U of Sheffield ·
· Friday, June 22, 2012 ·
· Amy Stone · |
The teams, from the universities of Sheffield, Manchester, Southampton, Bournemouth and University College London, all working on the Stonehenge Riverside Project (SRP), explored not just Stonehenge and its landscape but also the wider social and economic context of the monument's main stages of construction around 3,000 BC and 2,500 BC... Previous theories have suggested the great stone circle was used as a prehistoric observatory, a sun temple, a place of healing, and a temple of the ancient druids. The Stonehenge Riverside Project's researchers have rejected all these possibilities after the largest programme of archaeological research ever mounted on this iconic... |
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| Australia & the Pacific |
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How Easter Island's statues walked
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· 06/21/2012 3:47:03 AM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 16 replies ·
· Cosmic Log ·
· Wednesday, June 20, 2012 ·
· Alan Boyle · |
Did Easter Island's famous statues rock, or roll? After doing a little rocking out themselves, researchers say they're sure the natives raised the monumental figures upright, and then rocked them back and forth to "walk" them to their positions. Their findings mesh with a scenario that casts the Polynesian island's natives in the roles of resourceful engineers working with the little that they had on hand, rather than the victims of a self-inflicted environmental catastrophe. "A lot of what people think they know about the island turns out to be not true," Carl Lipo, an archaeologist at California State University... |
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| Biology & Cryptobiology |
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Australians Find Huge Mega-Wombat Graveyard
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· 06/21/2012 7:34:41 PM PDT ·
· Posted by nickcarraway ·
· 46 replies ·
· Gulf Times ·
· 6/22/2012 · |
Australian scientists yesterday unveiled the biggest-ever graveyard of an ancient rhino-sized mega-wombat called diprotodon, with the site potentially holding valuable clues on the species' extinction. The remote fossil deposit in outback Queensland state is thought to contain up to 50 diprotodon skeletons including a huge specimen named Kenny, whose jawbone alone is 70cm long. Lead scientist on the dig, Scott Hocknull from the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, said Kenny was one of the largest diprotodons he had ever seen and one of the best preserved specimens. Pigeon-toed and with a backward-facing pouch large enough to carry an adult human, Hocknull... |
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| Geography is Destiny |
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How geography shapes cultural diversity
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· 06/11/2012 5:43:13 PM PDT ·
· Posted by Theoria ·
· 10 replies ·
· Nature ·
· 11 June 2012 ·
· ZoÃŽ Corbyn · |
Study offers evidence that long countries give better protection to languages than those that are wide. One reason that Eurasian civilizations dominated the globe is because they came from a continent that was broader in an east-west direction than north-south, claimed geographer Jared Diamond in his famous 1997 book Guns, Germs and Steel. Now, a modelling study has found evidence to support this 'continental axis theory'.Continents that span narrower bands of latitude have less variation in climate, which means a set of plants and animals that are adapted to more similar conditions. That is an advantage, says Diamond, because it means... |
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| Epidemics, Pandemics, Plagues, the Sniffles |
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Deadly bubonic plague found in Oregon: Back to the Middle Ages?
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· 06/17/2012 12:29:52 AM PDT ·
· Posted by Olog-hai ·
· 19 replies ·
· New Jersey Newsroom ·
· Saturday, 16 June 2012 11:00 ·
· Bob Holt · |
A man has been hospitalized in Oregon who is believed to be suffering from the black plague, a disease that killed about one-third of the population of Europe during the Middle Ages. The unidentified man in his 50s became ill several days after being bitten when he tried to get a mouse out of the mouth of a stray cat, according to OregonLive.com. The man was listed in critical condition in a Bend hospital on Tuesday. NZ Herald News reported that the man showed classic symptoms of the plague -- swollen lymph nodes in the groin and armpits. But doctors said he... |
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| Epigraphy & Language |
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New Indo-European Language Discovered
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· 06/21/2012 5:14:04 PM PDT ·
· Posted by Renfield ·
· 12 replies ·
· Sci-News.com ·
· 6-19-2012 ·
· John Shanks · |
A linguistics researcher at the Macquarie University in Australia has discovered that the language, known as Burushaski, which is spoken by about 90,000 people who reside in a remote area of Pakistan, is Indo-European in origin. Prof Ilija Casule's discovery, which has now been verified by a number of the world's top linguists, has excited linguistics experts around the world. An entire issue of the eminent international linguistics journal the Journal of Indo-European Studies is devoted to a discussion of his findings later this month. More than fifty eminent linguists have tried over many years to determine the genetic relationship... |
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| Navigation |
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Roman jewellery found in ancient Japan tomb
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· 06/22/2012 3:03:28 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 20 replies ·
· Nineman.com.au ·
· Friday, June 22, 2012 ·
· AFP · |
Glass jewellery believed to have been made by Roman craftsmen has been found in an ancient tomb in Japan, researchers said Friday, in a sign the empire's influence may have reached the edge of Asia. Tests have revealed three glass beads discovered in the Fifth Century "Utsukushi" burial mound in Nagaoka, near Kyoto, were probably made some time between the first and the fourth century, the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties said. The government-backed institute has recently finished analysing components of the glass beads, measuring five millimetres (0.2 inches) in diametre, with tiny fragments of gilt attached. It... |
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| The Roman Empire |
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So what have the Romans ever done for us? Ireland's links with the Roman empire
are being investigated in a new archaeological project in which science plays a large part
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· 06/20/2012 6:42:38 PM PDT ·
· Posted by SunkenCiv ·
· 40 replies ·
· Irish Times ·
· Thursday, February 16, 2012 ·
· Anthony King · |
Roman artifacts including coins, glass beads and brooches turn up in many Irish counties, especially in the east. Cahill Wilson investigated human remains... using strontium and isotope analysis and carbon dating. Remarkably, this allowed her say where they most likely spent their childhood. One burial site on a low ridge overlooking the sea in Bettystown, Co Meath, was dated to the 5th/6th century AD using radiocarbon dating. Most of the people were newcomers to the area, Cahill Wilson concluded. The clue was in their teeth. Enamel, one of the toughest substances in our body, completely mineralises around the age of... |
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| Farty Shades of Green |
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Did St. Patrick sell slaves to the Irish?
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· 03/17/2012 3:03:31 PM PDT ·
· Posted by caldera599 ·
· 35 replies ·
· 1+ views ·
· MSNBC ·
· 3/16/2012 ·
· MSNBC Staff · |
LONDON -- St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, may well have been a tax collector for the Romans who fled to Ireland where he could have traded slaves to pay his way, according to new research by a University of Cambridge academic published on Saturday. The generally accepted account of the saint's life, albeit based on scant evidence, says Patrick was abducted from western Britain as a teenager and forced into slavery in Ireland for six years during which time he developed a strong Christian faith. Afterwards, the account continues, he escaped his captors and went back to Britain before... |
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| Ancient Autopsies |
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Bones of John The Baptist Possibly Discovered
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· 06/16/2012 6:14:34 PM PDT ·
· Posted by Aliska ·
· 36 replies ·
· ABC News Online ·
· June 16, 2012 ·
· Russell Goldman · |
A team of researchers believe a knuckle bone found buried beneath a Bulgarian church may belong to John the Baptist, the New Testament prophet who heralded the ministry of Jesus. (Photo Included in article) |
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| Religion of Pieces |
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The Moslem Conquest (of India)
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· 02/14/2004 6:33:32 PM PST ·
· Posted by ml/nj ·
· 82 replies ·
· 8,838+ views ·
· Our Oriental Heritage ·
· 1936 ·
· Will Durant · |
The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within. The Hindus ... had failed to organize their forces for the protection of their frontiers and their capitals, their wealth and their freedom, from the hordes of Scythians, Huns, Afghans, and Turks hovering about India's boundaries and waiting for national weakness to let them in. For four hundred... |
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| Helix, Make Mine a Double |
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Meet Your Cousin, the First Lady: DNA gives new insights into Michelle Obama's roots
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· 06/17/2012 6:14:05 AM PDT ·
· Posted by Cronos ·
· 44 replies ·
· The New York Times ·
· 17 Jun 2012 ·
· Rachel L Swarns · |
Joan Tribble held tightly to her cane as she ventured into the overgrown cemetery where her people were buried. There lay the pioneers who once populated north Georgia's rugged frontier, where striving white men planted corn and cotton, fought for the Confederacy and owned slaves The settlers interred here were mostly forgotten over the decades as their progeny scattered across the South, embracing unassuming lives. But one line of her family took another path, heading north on a tumultuous, winding journey that ultimately led to the White House The white men and women buried here are the forebears of Mrs.... |
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Meet Your Cousin, the First Lady: A Family Story, Long Hidden [Her White Forbears]
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· 06/17/2012 10:28:28 AM PDT ·
· Posted by Steelfish ·
· 29 replies ·
· NY Times ·
· June 16, 2012 ·
· Rachel L. Swarns · |
Joan Tribble at the grave of her great-great-grandfather, Henry W. Shields, a Georgia slave owner who is also an ancestor of Michelle Obama. -- Joan Tribble held tightly to her cane as she ventured into the overgrown cemetery where her people were buried. There lay the pioneers who once populated north Georgia's rugged frontier, where striving white men planted corn and cotton, fought for the Confederacy and owned slaves. The settlers interred here were mostly forgotten over... |
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Michelle Obama's ancestors traced to Ulster slave owner
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· 06/18/2012 2:16:58 AM PDT ·
· Posted by 2ndDivisionVet ·
· 43 replies ·
· The Belfast Telegraph ·
· June 18, 2012 ·
· Paul Melia · |
US First Lady Michelle Obama's ancestry can be traced to a slave owner from what is now Northern Ireland, who emigrated to America in the 1700s. A new book claims that Andrew Shields, who fought against the British in the American War of Independence, was Mrs Obama's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather and his family were slave owners. Her great-great-great-grandmother Melvinia was a slave who had children by Charles Shields, grandson of Andrew Shields. One of those children, Dolphus Shields, born in 1859, was Michelle Obama's direct ancestor. The claims are made in American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors... |
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| Early America |
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Archives burst at seams with Maryland history
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· 06/18/2012 4:40:04 AM PDT ·
· Posted by Tolerance Sucks Rocks ·
· 14 replies ·
· The Washington Times ·
· June 17, 2012 ·
· David Hill · |
Annapolis -- The Maryland State Archives collection is among the largest in the country with nearly 400 years of history, including Colonial-era paintings, keepsakes of the state's governors, and thousands of land, court and genealogy records. With all that history, the Archives has run out of space. The agency first filled its Annapolis headquarters to capacity in 2000, then leased and filled a warehouse. It leased a second warehouse and a third before brokering a deal to store some of its property at the Baltimore City Archives. All of the facilities are now full, and state archivists have been pushing... |
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| The Revolution |
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Washingtonianism -- The Father of his Country's vision for the American Founding
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· 06/19/2012 2:54:22 PM PDT ·
· Posted by neverdem ·
· 14 replies ·
· City Journal ·
· Spring 2012 ·
· Myron Magnet · |
For we who believe that great men, not impersonal forces, make history, George Washington is Exhibit A. As the Revolution's commander in chief, president of the Constitutional Convention, and first president of the United States, he was luminously the Founding's indispensable man, in biographer James Flexner's pitch-perfect phrase. A pragmatic visionary -- that familiar American combination -- he conceived from his hard-won experience in the French and Indian War the central Founding ideas of an American union under a strong executive three decades before the Constitutional Convention, and his hardships in the Revolution led him to forge that vision into a plan. An ambitious... |
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| The General |
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James Madison Letter to General Washington
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· 06/16/2012 12:52:03 PM PDT ·
· Posted by Jacquerie ·
· 32 replies ·
· The Constitution Society ·
· April 16th 1787 ·
· James Madison · |
Two hundred and twenty five years ago, and one month before the Philadelphia Convention, aka the Constitutional Convention, Congressional delegate James Madison responded to a letter from George Washington. He offered thoughts on his new plan of government, the Virginia Plan. Compared to the Articles of Confederation it was radical, yet it was structurally close enough to the mixed governments of the States to be familiar as well. It would emerge in modified form five months later as The Constitution of the United States of America.To George Washington New York, April 16 1787 Dear Sir, I have been honoured with... |
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| The Framers |
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George Washington's U.S. Constitution up for auction [today at New York City's Christie's]
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· 06/22/2012 6:02:22 AM PDT ·
· Posted by ETL ·
· 27 replies ·
· Reuters ·
· June 13, 2012 ·
· Chris Michaud · |
(Reuters) -- A gold-embossed piece of U.S. history will go up for sale this month, when Christie's auctions off George Washington's personal copy of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. The documents, which date to 1789 and are signed and annotated by the first U.S. president, are poised to fetch from $2 million to $3 million when they hit the block on June 22, the auction house said on Wednesday. The bound papers constitute Washington's personal copy of the Acts of Congress. These include the Constitution, whose preamble promises to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our... |
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| Longer Perspectives |
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Reagan Remembers Dr. Joseph Warren, hero at Bunker Hill (June 17,1775)
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· 06/17/2012 6:10:01 PM PDT ·
· Posted by gusopol3 ·
· 18 replies ·
· revolutionarywaranimated.com · |
"On the eve of our struggle for independence a man who might have been one of the greatest among the Founding Fathers, Dr. Joseph Warren, President of the Massachusetts Congress, said to his fellow Americans, 'Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of.... On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important questions upon which rests the happiness and the liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.'" Map animation of the battle fought today, 237 years ago. |
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| The Second Amendment |
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Arms and the Greeks
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· 06/14/2012 9:13:24 AM PDT ·
· Posted by marktwain ·
· 17 replies ·
· davekopel.org ·
· August, 1999 ·
· David Kopel · |
The founders didn't conjure up the right to bear arms out of thin air. They learned its value from the founders of Western civilization. The creators of America's republican form of government did not make everything up as they went along. American political philosophy -- including the right to keep and bear arms -- was firmly grounded in historical experience and in the great works of philosophy from ancient Greece through 18th-century Britain. The Declaration of Independence was derived from what Thomas Jefferson called, "the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc." What did Aristotle -- ... |
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| Wild Wild West |
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How the Wild West REALLY looked: Gorgeous sepia-tinted pictures ...
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· 06/13/2012 12:22:33 AM PDT ·
· Posted by brityank ·
· 48 replies ·
· Daily Mail ·
· 25 May 2012 ·
· Rob Cooper · |
Gorgeous sepia-tinted pictures show the landscape as it was charted for the very first time. These remarkable 19th century sepia-tinted pictures show the American West as you have never seen it before -- as it was charted for the first time. The photos, by Timothy O'Sullivan, are the first ever taken of the rocky and barren landscape. At the time federal government officials were travelling across Arizona, Nevada, Utah and the rest of the west as they sought... |
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| World War Eleven |
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Germans recover Stuka bomber wreck from Baltic Sea
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· 06/11/2012 1:43:47 PM PDT ·
· Posted by greatdefender ·
· 45 replies ·
· AP-Yahoo! ·
· June 11, 2012 ·
· David Rising · |
Berlin (AP) -- German military divers are working to hoist the wreck of a Stuka dive bomber from the floor of the Baltic Sea, a rare example of the plane that once wreaked havoc over Europe as part of the Nazis' war machine. The single-engine monoplane carried sirens that produced a distinctive and terrifying screaming sound as it dove vertically to release its bombs or strafe targets with its machine guns. There are only two complete Stukas still around. The Stuka wreck, first discovered in the 1990s when a fisherman's nets snagged on it, lies about 10 kilometers (6 miles)... |
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| Thoroughly Modern Miscellany |
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Happy Birthday Nikola Tesla
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· 07/06/2006 7:02:41 PM PDT ·
· Posted by eleni121 ·
· 168 replies ·
· 2,380+ views ·
· NikolaTesla Memorial Society ·
· July 6, 2006 ·
· Me · |
The Nikola Tesla Monument within Queen Victoria Park, Niagara Falls (Canadian Side) will be unveiled on July 9, 2006 at 12 noon celebrating the 150th birthday of Nikola Tesla. |
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| end of digest #414 20120623 |
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