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This foraging occupation of one site effectively doubles and confirms the length of Madagascar’s known occupational history and thus the time during which people exploited its environments. The rock shelter yielded a stratified assemblage with small flakes, microblades, and retouched crescentic and trapezoidal tools, probably projectile elements, made from cherts and obsidian, some brought more that 200 km. The assemblage from the top layers of the site is well dated to 1050–1350 A.D. This was achieved using carbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), as well as ceramic typology imported from the Near East and China. Below this layer is...

Around 5,000 years ago, the island of Madagascar would have resembled a Sci-Fi novel. Strange, prickly forests, gorilla-sized lemurs, pygmy hippopotamuses, horned crocodile and elephant birds whose eggs were 180 times the size of what you'd find in your fridge today, all called the African island home -- that was until the humans arrived.

Madagascar was first settled and founded by approximately 30 women, mostly of Indonesian descent, who may have sailed off course in a wayward vessel 1200 years ago. The discovery negates a prior theory that a large, planned settlement process took place on the island of Madagascar, located off the east coast of Africa. Traditionally it was thought to have been settled by Indonesian traders moving along the coasts of the Indian Ocean. Most native Madagascar people today, called Malagasy, can trace their ancestry back to the founding 30 mothers, according to an extensive new DNA study published in the latest...

A teenager hunting for birds in the jungle of a Philippine island claims to have stumbled upon a fuselage “full of skeletons” and a Malaysian flag, and authorities believe it could be from missing Flight MH370. The coastal wreckage in Tawi Tawi was under investigation by local authorities in Malaysia’s Sabah region Monday. The finding was reported by Jamil Omar of Borneo, 46, who says his nephew made the grim discovery in September, but didn’t realize what it was as he has no access to television or newspapers.

MH370 speculation has been sparked again after reports of plane wreckage containing human remains and a Malaysian flag - on the Philippines. Audio and visual technician Jamil Omar went into a police station on Saturday to lodge the report after a relative spotted wreckage on the Tawi Tawi island in the south of the country, it has been reported. The Philippines is thousands of miles east of the last known radar location of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight, which vanished in March last year. And Tawi Tawi is 4,700 miles from Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, where confirmed MH370...

It is only a matter of time before notorious Canadian nudist Emil Kaminski arrives in the clutches of police after four of his accomplices, including two women, were today served with four-day remand orders in the Kota Kinabalu Magistrates Court following their arrests yesterday. The quartet - two Candian brothers aged 22 and 23, a Dutch national and a British woman - were detained separately, three surrendered at the Kota Kinabalu District police headquarters and the other was arrested before boarding a flight at the Tawau Airport.

Perplexity in spirit comes when you question My ability to proceed in your life and it is then total surrender is not only Warranted but served for truly as your Judge and Advocate I "Declare" The Truth for your future for the past is just that. So be as Lot not his wife and take My hand into Zion for only as you believe You "Are" and I "AM" ! Habakkuk 2:2-3 Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, That he may run who reads it. 3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at...

I had a vision of a tiny Asian country being used by two large countries to attack Taiwan unless they repent Jonah 3 3 And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach and cry out to it the preaching that I tell you. 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city of three days’ journey [sixty miles in circumference]. 4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey,...

Results from research conducted by a team of scholars and scientists on the dietary lives of orangutans in tropical Borneo have given possible clues to how very early human ancestors may have adapted, survived and changed millions of years ago. In addition, the results may help scientists better understand eating disorders and obesity in human populations today. Led by evolutionary anthropologist Erin Vogel of Rutgers University (pictured below, right), the research team analyzed samples of compounds and byproducts in Orangutan urine over a 5-year period to determine the effects of protein recycling in their dietary, or eating behavior. What they...

New evidence underscores the theory of human origin that suggests humans most likely share a common ancestor with orangutans, according to research from the University of Pittsburgh and the Buffalo Museum of Science. Reporting in the June 18 edition of the Journal of Biogeography, the researchers reject as "problematic" the popular suggestion, based on DNA analysis, that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, which they maintain is not supported by fossil evidence.

Evidence for the orangutan being the closest living relative of modern humans is based on at least 35 known characters that appear to be either exclusive to humans and orangutans or largely absent in outgroups.

...for use in genetics-based population divergence studies. Abstract: The length of the human generation interval is a key parameter when using genetics to date population divergence events. However, no consensus exists regarding the generation interval length, and a wide variety of interval lengths have been used in recent studies. This makes comparison between studies difficult, and questions the accuracy of divergence date estimations. Recent genealogy-based research suggests that the male generation interval is substantially longer than the female interval, and that both are greater than the values commonly used in genetics studies. This study evaluates each of these hypotheses in...

Few scientists have ever seen the rare tufted ground squirrel (Rheithrosciurus macrotis), which hides in the hilly forests of Borneo, but it is an odd beast. It’s twice the size of most tree squirrels, and it reputedly has a taste for blood. Now, motion-controlled cameras have revealed another curious fact. The 35-centimeter-long rodent has the bushiest tail of any mammal compared with its body size. "The species is really quite bizarre," says Erik Meijaard, a conservation scientist with People and Nature Consulting International in Jakarta. Meijaard and his wife, Rona Dennis, an independent remote sensing scientist, gathered a collection of...

My augmentation is "purely" spirit led and guided every step of the way FOR MY WORD IS IN YOU , nothing lacking or missing FOR I AM THE WORD AND THE SPIRIT so do not be anxious that something is missing FOR I AM WITH YOU and will "never" forsake you and this is why I AM your Yes and Amen to all you do in and through Me! Acts 17:27-29 Amplified Bible (AMP) 27 So that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after Him and find Him, although He is not far from each...

There is a difference between Aquaintance and a Friend "True Humility

A wild cat thought to be virtually extinct has been captured on film in the wild, a Malaysian scientist said Thursday. "We have discovered a species thought extinct in Borneo," Mohd Azlan told Reuters by telephone from East Malaysia, where he led a research project for University Malaysia Sarawak and the state forest department. A Borneo bay cat (Catopuma badia), about the size of a large domestic cat though with an extra long tail, triggered a remote camera in daylight on June 27, yielding a lone image from what was a two-month monitoring period. Azlan, who previously tracked tigers in...

The mysterious bay cat, also known as the Bornean cat, is a wild cat endemic to the Indonesian island of Borneo. Adults grow as long as 50-60 cm with a 30 – 40 cm long tail, and can weigh over 3.5 kg. Until now, this species had been recorded on camera traps just a handful of times in Borneo and was only photographed in the wild for the first time in 2003. But more images of this animal have been captured than ever before, together with evidence of four other wild cat species – the Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi),...

... Although largely forgotten and dismissed as a vestige from a bygone era, Kiram's sultanate, once based in the southern province of Sulu, has sparked the biggest security crisis in Malaysia and the Philippines in decades -- early last month, he sent his younger brother with about 200 followers, dozens of them armed, by boat from southern Philippines to a village in Sabah state in neighboring Malaysia to claim the land the sultanate insists belongs to them. A stunned Malaysia, which runs the frontier resource-rich region of timberlands and palm oil plantations as its second-largest federal state, poured in elite...

Malaysian security forces on Tuesday began attacking a group of armed men from the Philippines who had clashed with police after staking a claim to a remote part of the island of Borneo, authorities said. The group of Filipino men, believed to number between 100 and 300, arrived three weeks ago on the east coast of the Malaysian state of Sabah, on Borneo, demanding to be recognized as representatives of a sultanate that used to rule the area. Malaysian authorities initially tried to persuade the men to return peacefully to their homes in the nearby southern Philippines. But the intruders...

Jais' advice questioned The five Muslim beauty contestants believe they have done nothing wrong The Sarawak Islamic Affairs Department's (Jais) move to advice five Muslims against participating in the Miss Borneo Beautiful 2011 contest has caught state Welfare, Women and Family Development Minister Datuk Fatimah Abdullah by surprise. Surprised because this was the first time JAIS had acted to stop Muslims from taking part in a beauty contest in this state. "I have to talk with (Abang) Shamsudin (Abang Seruji, state Jais director). "I am keen to know what happened and why the advice was given," she told the New...