Posted on 09/15/2013 4:57:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
"We found the very first evidence for archaeological assemblages in association with the Toba ash", says Petraglia. "We found Middle Palaeolithic assemblages below and above the ash indicating the technologies being used at the time of the event. When the stone tool assemblages were analyzed from contexts above and below the ash, we found that they were very similar........We therefore concluded that the Middle Palaeolithic hominins survived the eruption and there was population continuity. This is not what would have been expected based on general theories that the Toba super-eruption decimated populations."
Moreover, similar findings published by Christine Lane, et al. in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the result of research at Lake Malawi in East Africa, have led to the supporting conclusion that "the eruption did not significantly impact the climate of East Africa and was not the cause of a human genetic bottleneck at that time".
Even more significant, although not without challenge, has been Petragias recovery of pre-Toba (before 75,000 years ago) Middle Palaeolithic stone artifacts in India that he suggests exhibit Middle Stone Age (280,000 - 50,000 years ago) industry characteristics found in Africa. These Middle Stone Age artifacts in Africa have, by general consensus, been connected to early anatomically modern humans. Thus from Petraglia's perspective, the Indian Middle Palaeolithic humans could have been Homo sapiens, and not some earlier human species, as other scholars have suggested. In other words, anatomically modern humans may have exited Africa far earlier than previously thought.
(Excerpt) Read more at popular-archaeology.com ...
lots more, including (it turns out) two or three from this year, some of which I posted. [blush]
https://www.google.com/search?q=Modern+Humans+in+India+Earlier+site:freerepublic.com
I suppose it's too late to point out that decimation means 1 in 10 dies?
You would get hysterical reactions from many Freepers who insist that the word means "general destruction" like maybe 90% because Websters Third International allows that. The problem is that Webster's Third presents a new word or redefinition as authoritative if two people can be found to have used it on the street in a drug deal. OED has degenerated also but not quite so much.
In a PC world words have no intrinsic meaning but mean whatever seems useful at the moment and can mean one thing when written and something else two days later if the writer has changed his take on something.
More of my relatives. My ancestors have been kicked out of almost every country in the world. I don’t think we’ve been kicked out of Turkazerkyrgbaziwoowoostan yet. If the Premier or whatever has a pretty daughter, then we’ll be out of there, too. We’re a good-looking, randy bunch but no money. All the males in my family have the ability to put on pants while running. It’s an old family tradition.
thanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/decimate.html
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/decimated
In a PC world words have no intrinsic meaning but mean whatever seems useful at the moment and can mean one thing when written and something else two days later if the writer has changed his take on something.
The meaning of meaning seems to be up for grabsbut only so long as self-described "liberals" remain in charge.
Educate those of us who do not know where Toba was / is located
So, our Indians are Chinese, and those Indians are Africans. African Americans must be Africans who came from America! It all makes sense now!
Would you care for a recipe for apple tarts?
To make it worse, those “African” Indians were exterminated by the present “European / Indo-Aryan” Indians, some 2000 years ago. Reparations, anyone?
Toba is in Sumatra. Roughly 75,000 years ago massive super-volcano eruption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
I do love me a precise receipt.
I understand words change over time. I just object to words with such a precise meaning being changed through sloppiness to mean their opposite.
I stop reading a piece when I come to “decimate” used to mean total destruction in an article. it indicates to me sloppy thinking and imperfect understanding of the language, and does not give me confidence that the writer is clear about his subject or anything else.
"The last glacial period was preceded by 1000 years of the coldest temperatures of the Late Pleistocene, apparently caused by the eruption of the Mount Toba volcano. The six year long volcanic winter and 1000-year-long instant Ice Age that followed Mount Toba's eruption may have decimated Modern Man's entire population. Genetic evidence suggests that Human population size fell to about 10,000 adults between 50 and 100 thousand years ago. The survivors from this global catastrophy would have found refuge in isolated tropical pockets, mainly in Equatorial Africa. Populations living in Europe and northern China would have been completely eliminated by the reduction of the summer temperatures by as much as 12 degrees centigrade."
(These low surviving population estimates have been challenged lately.)
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