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Around 600,000 years ago, humanity split in two. One group stayed in Africa, evolving into us. The other struck out overland, into Asia, then Europe, becoming Homo neanderthalensis - the Neanderthals. They weren't our ancestors, but a sister species, evolving in parallel.

Ecological reconstruction of Kylinxia. Credit: Huang Diying ========================================================================== The arthropods have been among the most successful animals on Earth since the Cambrian Period, about 520 million years ago. They are the most familiar and ubiquitous, and constitute nearly 80 percent of all animal species today, far more than any other animals. But how did arthropods evolve and what did their ancestors look like? These have been a major conundrum in animal evolution puzzling generations of scientists for more than a century. Now researchers from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) have discovered...

Why is Earth pulsating every 26 seconds, and why canÂ’t scientists explain it after 60 years? This is an enigma wrapped in a periodically predictable mystery motion. It could be a harmonic phenomenon, a regular seismic chirp caused by the sunÂ’s energy, or a beacon drawing scientists to its source to begin a treasure hunt. âž¡ The world is weird. We'll show you how it works. In the early 1960s, a geologist named Jack Oliver first documented the pulse, also known as a "microseism," according to Discover. Oliver, who worked at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory at the time, heard...

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — It's William Whipple's turn to be recognized. The New Hampshire merchant is one of the lesser-known signers of the Declaration of Independence. This year, there are plans for Whipple and 11 others to be honored for their place in history with a small bronze plaque at their gravesites or homes, thanks to a group of descendants of the Founding Fathers. Whipple, one of three men from New Hampshire who signed the famous document — the others were Josiah Bartlett and Matthew Thornton — had no direct descendants. His only child, a boy, died as an infant...

Poem penned by U.S. Founding Father discovered in English schoolBy Simon Caldwell Catholic News Service LONDON (CNS) -- A poem written by one of the U.S. Founding Fathers has been discovered in the archives of a Catholic high school in England. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the signers of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, wrote the poem in Latin in 1754 when he was a student in his final year of high school in Saint-Omer, France. It was found in the archives of Stonyhurst College in Clitheroe, England, by Maurice Whitehead, a professor at the University of Wales, Swansea,...

Religious Affiliation of the Signers of theDeclaration of Independence Religious Affiliation # ofsigners % ofsigners Episcopalian/Anglican 32 57.1% Congregationalist 13 23.2% Presbyterian 12 21.4% Quaker 2 3.6% Unitarian or Universalist 2 3.6% Catholic 1 1.8% TOTAL 56 100% Name of Signer State Religious Affiliation Charles Carroll Maryland Catholic Samuel Huntington Connecticut Congregationalist Roger Sherman Connecticut Congregationalist William Williams Connecticut Congregationalist Oliver Wolcott Connecticut Congregationalist Lyman Hall Georgia Congregationalist Samuel Adams Massachusetts Congregationalist John Hancock Massachusetts Congregationalist Josiah Bartlett New Hampshire Congregationalist William Whipple New Hampshire Congregationalist William Ellery Rhode Island Congregationalist John Adams Massachusetts Congregationalist; Unitarian Robert Treat Paine Massachusetts...

The American age, The American epic, The American adventure has only just begunhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q5Rsmh7s_g When President Trump took the Oath of Office, he promised an end to the empty talk of politicians and the beginning of a great national effort to rebuild our country:Today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another—but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the American People.For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.Washington flourished, but...

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776, and, through this, form a more perfect Union, it is hereby ordered as follows:Section 1.  Purpose.  The American founding envisioned a political order in harmony with the design of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” seeing the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as embodied in and sanctioned by natural law...

PROMOTING PATRIOTIC EDUCATION: President Donald J. Trump is working to better enable America’s rising generations to understand the history and principles of our Nation’s founding. Through a new Executive Order, President Trump is establishing the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, which will work to improve understanding of the history and the principles of the founding of the United States among our Nation’s rising generations. Within a year, the Commission will produce a report regarding the core principles of America’s founding and how these principles may be understood to further the blessings of liberty and promote our continuing efforts to form a...

Near 20 minutes of original film footage from the presidency of Warren G Harding, the 29th President of the United States. Mr. Harding was president from March 4, 1921 - August 1, 1923 when he died. Harding is poorly ranked by most historians, but I regard him as badly underrated. Harding's accomplishments... * Reduced taxes from 77% under Wilson to 56%. * Inaugurated the first interstate highways. * Strongly supported civil rights after the racist Wilson years. Supported a Federal anti-lynching bill that passed the GOP lead House but died under Democratic filibuster in the Senate. * Made some excellent...

People who live through traumatic experiences in childhood often suffer long-lasting consequences that affect their mental and physical health. But moreover, their children and grand-children can also be impacted as well. In this particular form of inheritance, sperm and egg cells pass on information to offspring not through their DNA sequence like classical genetic heredity, but rather via biological factors involving the epigenome that regulates genome activity. However, the big question is how the signals triggered by traumatic events become embedded in germ cells.“Our hypothesis was that circulating factors in blood play a role,” says Isabelle Mansuy, professor of neuroepigenetics...

Now, a study published Friday in the journal Science has shown that the genetic diversity in modern dogs can be traced back to the end of the last Ice Age, linking Fido and Rex to ancient canine populations. Researchers studied DNA extracted from bones from ancient dogs for clues to evolutionary changes that occurred thousands of years ago, and found that just after the Ice Age, there were at least five types of dog with distinct genetic ancestries. They found that dog lineages have "mixed and combined," and are still present in the dogs of today. ... And while modern...

Remains of the Ancrum Old Bridge, which stood during the 14th Century, has been found in the River Teviot after being hidden underwater for hundreds of years. Dating of the oak bridge timbers has confirmed a date of the mid-1300s, making the remains the oldest scientifically dated bridge ever found in its original position across one of Scotland’s rivers.

I reprint today a post on how Shakespeare can enhance your Halloween. It’s worth noting that Shakespeare’s most important audience for his late plays was James I, who was fascinated by the supernatural. There are those ghosts that Puck mentions... My fairy lord, this must be done with haste, For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger; At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all, That in crossways and floods have burial, Already to their wormy beds are gone; For fear lest day should look their shames...

The Landlady's Tale By SWORDMAKER copyright 2000 Preface The following story was told to me by the woman who rented my parents their first home in California when they moved to Sacramento in 1939. A devout Catholic (so much so that although she had been divorced by her husband, she did not consider the divorce valid and did not remarry until her husband died many years later) the landlady swore on her Bible, in front of my sister and me after she told us the story, that it was absolutely true. She was quite serious about it. In the 1970s,...

When did something like us first appear on the planet? It turns out there’s remarkably little agreement on this question. Fossils and DNA suggest people looking like us, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, evolved around 300,000 years ago. Surprisingly, archaeology—tools, artifacts, cave art—suggest that complex technology and cultures, “behavioral modernity,” evolved more recently: 50,000 to 65,000 years ago. Some scientists interpret this as suggesting the earliest Homo sapiens weren’t entirely modern. Yet the different data tracks different things. Skulls and genes tell us about brains, artifacts about culture. Our brains probably became modern before our cultures.Key physical and cultural milestones in...

Ram's horn shells are small, delicate spiral structures beachcombers can commonly find throughout the world. Yet despite their ubiquity, the original owners of these shells are extremely elusive. Until now, we've never had footage of a single one in the wild. In the twilight zone of our oceans, at the tips of sunlight's fingers, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) has now delivered the first footage of a ram's horn squid (Spirula spirula) in its natural habitat. This strange-looking cephalopod is a wee little thing barely 7 centimetres (under 3 inches) in length, with eight arms, two tentacles, a pair of...

A set of 52 previously excavated but little-studied animal bones from East Africa's Olduvai Gorge includes the world's oldest known barbed bone point, an implement probably crafted by now-extinct Homo erectus at least 800,000 years ago, researchers say. Made from a piece of a large animal's rib, the artifact features three curved barbs and a carved tip, the team reports in the November Journal of Human Evolution. Among the Olduvai bones, biological anthropologist Michael Pante of Colorado State University in Fort Collins and colleagues identified five other tools from more than 800,000 years ago as probable choppers, hammering tools or...

The U.S. government is demanding a San Francisco museum give up claims to two religious relics allegedly stolen from Thailand, the U.S. attorney’s office announced Tuesday. A civil complaint filed Monday in federal court seeks the forfeiture of two 1,500-pound hand-carved sandstone lintels the government contends were looted from ancient temples in Thailand. The lawsuit says the items illegally made their way to a private collector in the United States and were donated to the city- and county-owned collection of the Asian Art Museum. Thailand began investigating after the Thai consulate general in Los Angeles saw the lintels on display...

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” — President John F. Kennedy, 1962 Mark Twain reputedly quipped, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Whoever actually said it, the rhyming of history is nowhere better illustrated that the resonance of events during the last four years in America with the events that ushered in the final descent of the old Roman Republic into tyranny. From swamp creatures to political disruptors; from endless wars to corrupt and avaricious politicians; from politicians who go to any lengths to further their wealth, expand their power and control the...