My day job involves laser technology, so this was a nice intersection of study and work. From the New York Times:
in the dry spring season a year ago, the husband-and-wife team of Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase tried a new approach using airborne laser signals that penetrate the jungle cover and are reflected from the ground below. They yielded 3-D images of the site of ancient Caracol, in Belize, one of the great cities of the Maya lowlands.
In only four days, a twin-engine aircraft equipped with an advanced version of lidar (light detection and ranging) flew back and forth over the jungle and collected data surpassing the results of two and a half decades of on-the-ground mapping, the archaeologists said. After three weeks of laboratory processing, the almost 10 hours of laser measurements showed topographic detail over an area of 80 square miles, notably settlement patterns of grand architecture and modest house mounds, roadways and agricultural terraces.
“We were blown away,” Dr. Diane Chase said recently, recalling their first examination of the images. “We believe that lidar will help transform Maya archaeology much in the same way that radiocarbon dating did in the 1950s and interpretations of Maya hieroglyphs did in the 1980s and ’90s.”
Read the full story
Showing posts with label archaeology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label archaeology. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Pictish art may be a language
The ancestors of modern Scottish people left behind mysterious, carved stones that new research has just determined contain the written language of the Picts, an Iron Age society that existed in Scotland from 300 to 843.
The highly stylized rock engravings, found on what are known as the Pictish Stones, had once been thought to be rock art or tied to heraldry. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, instead concludes that the engravings represent the long lost language of the Picts, a confederation of Celtic tribes that lived in modern-day eastern and northern Scotland.
"We know that the Picts had a spoken language to complement the writing of the symbols, as Bede (a monk and historian who died in 735) writes that there are four languages in Britain in this time: British, Pictish, Scottish and English," lead author Rob Lee told Discovery News.
Read the story on Discovery News
Scientific American's take on the story
The highly stylized rock engravings, found on what are known as the Pictish Stones, had once been thought to be rock art or tied to heraldry. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, instead concludes that the engravings represent the long lost language of the Picts, a confederation of Celtic tribes that lived in modern-day eastern and northern Scotland.
"We know that the Picts had a spoken language to complement the writing of the symbols, as Bede (a monk and historian who died in 735) writes that there are four languages in Britain in this time: British, Pictish, Scottish and English," lead author Rob Lee told Discovery News.
Read the story on Discovery News
Scientific American's take on the story
Monday, March 1, 2010
60,000 year old Ostrich shell paintings
From Scienceblogger "Not Rocket Science" : The latest finds show that people were carvings symbolic patterns into ostrich eggs as early as 60,000 years ago. Pierre-Jean Texier from the University of Bordeaux discovered a set of 270 eggshell fragments from Howieson Poort Shelter, a South African cave that has been a rich source of archaeological finds.
From Science News: The unusually large sample of 270 engraved eggshell fragments, mostly excavated over the past several years at Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa, displays two standard design patterns. Each pattern enjoyed its own heyday between approximately 65,000 and 55,000 years ago, the investigators report in a paper to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Back to Science News: Researchers already knew that the Howiesons Poort culture, which engraved the eggshells, engaged in other symbolic practices, such as engraving designs into pieces of pigment, that were considered to have been crucial advances in human behavioral evolution. But the Diepkloof finds represent the first archaeological sample large enough to demonstrate that Stone Age people created design traditions, at least in their engravings, Texier says.
(Continue reading full Science News story... )
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
I'm on a boat!
From Wired Science and Science News:
Human ancestors that left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete indicate that an ancient Homo species — perhaps Homo erectus — had used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Thomas Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island.
Human ancestors that left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete indicate that an ancient Homo species — perhaps Homo erectus — had used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Thomas Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island.
Several hundred double-edged cutting implements discovered at nine sites in southwestern Crete date to at least 130,000 years ago and probably much earlier, Strasser reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Archaeology. Many of these finds closely resemble hand axes fashioned in Africa about 800,000 years ago by H. erectus, he says. It was around that time that H. erectus spread from Africa to parts of Asia and Europe. Until now, the oldest known human settlements on Crete dated to around 9,000 years ago. Traditional theories hold that early farming groups in southern Europe and the Middle East first navigated vessels to Crete and other Mediterranean islands at that time.
“We’re just going to have to accept that, as soon as hominids left Africa, they were long-distance seafarers and rapidly spread all over the place,” Strasser says. Other researchers have controversially suggested that H. erectus navigated rafts across short stretches of sea in Indonesia around 800,000 years ago and that Neandertals crossed the Strait of Gibraltar perhaps 60,000 years ago.
Questions remain about whether African hominids used Crete as a stepping stone to reach Europe or, in a Stone Age Gilligan’s Island scenario, accidentally ended up on Crete from time to time when close-to-shore rafts were blown out to sea, remarks archaeologist Robert Tykot of the University of South Florida in Tampa. Only in the past decade have researchers established that people reached Crete before 6,000 years ago, Tykot says.
Strasser’s team cannot yet say precisely when or for what reason hominids traveled to Crete. Large sets of hand axes found on the island suggest a fairly substantial population size, downplaying the possibility of a Gilligan Island’s scenario, in Strasser’s view.
In excavations conducted near Crete’s southwestern coast during 2008 and 2009, Strasser’s team unearthed hand axes at caves and rock shelters. Most of these sites were situated in an area called Preveli Gorge, where a river has gouged through many layers of rocky sediment.
At Preveli Gorge, Stone Age artifacts were excavated from four terraces along a rocky outcrop that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. Tectonic activity has pushed older sediment above younger sediment on Crete, so 130,000-year-old artifacts emerged from the uppermost terrace. Other terraces received age estimates of 110,000 years, 80,000 years and 45,000 years.
These minimum age estimates relied on comparisons of artifact-bearing sediment to sediment from sea cores with known ages. Geologists are now assessing whether absolute dating techniques can be applied to Crete’s Stone Age sites, Strasser says.
Intriguingly, he notes, hand axes found on Crete were made from local quartz but display a style typical of ancient African artifacts.
“Hominids adapted to whatever material was available on the island for tool making,” Strasser proposes. “There could be tools made from different types of stone in other parts of Crete.”
Strasser has conducted excavations on Crete for the past 20 years. He had been searching for relatively small implements that would have been made from chunks of chert no more than 11,000 years ago. But a current team member, archaeologist Curtis Runnels of Boston University, pointed out that Stone Age folk would likely have favored quartz for their larger implements. “Once we started looking for quartz tools, everything changed,” Strasser says.
“We’re just going to have to accept that, as soon as hominids left Africa, they were long-distance seafarers and rapidly spread all over the place,” Strasser says. Other researchers have controversially suggested that H. erectus navigated rafts across short stretches of sea in Indonesia around 800,000 years ago and that Neandertals crossed the Strait of Gibraltar perhaps 60,000 years ago.
Questions remain about whether African hominids used Crete as a stepping stone to reach Europe or, in a Stone Age Gilligan’s Island scenario, accidentally ended up on Crete from time to time when close-to-shore rafts were blown out to sea, remarks archaeologist Robert Tykot of the University of South Florida in Tampa. Only in the past decade have researchers established that people reached Crete before 6,000 years ago, Tykot says.
Strasser’s team cannot yet say precisely when or for what reason hominids traveled to Crete. Large sets of hand axes found on the island suggest a fairly substantial population size, downplaying the possibility of a Gilligan Island’s scenario, in Strasser’s view.
In excavations conducted near Crete’s southwestern coast during 2008 and 2009, Strasser’s team unearthed hand axes at caves and rock shelters. Most of these sites were situated in an area called Preveli Gorge, where a river has gouged through many layers of rocky sediment.
At Preveli Gorge, Stone Age artifacts were excavated from four terraces along a rocky outcrop that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. Tectonic activity has pushed older sediment above younger sediment on Crete, so 130,000-year-old artifacts emerged from the uppermost terrace. Other terraces received age estimates of 110,000 years, 80,000 years and 45,000 years.
These minimum age estimates relied on comparisons of artifact-bearing sediment to sediment from sea cores with known ages. Geologists are now assessing whether absolute dating techniques can be applied to Crete’s Stone Age sites, Strasser says.
Intriguingly, he notes, hand axes found on Crete were made from local quartz but display a style typical of ancient African artifacts.
“Hominids adapted to whatever material was available on the island for tool making,” Strasser proposes. “There could be tools made from different types of stone in other parts of Crete.”
Strasser has conducted excavations on Crete for the past 20 years. He had been searching for relatively small implements that would have been made from chunks of chert no more than 11,000 years ago. But a current team member, archaeologist Curtis Runnels of Boston University, pointed out that Stone Age folk would likely have favored quartz for their larger implements. “Once we started looking for quartz tools, everything changed,” Strasser says.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Neanderthal Shell Art
Newly discovered painted scallops and cockleshells in Spain are the first hard evidence that Neandertals made jewelry. These findings suggest humanity's closest extinct relatives might have been capable of symbolism, after all.
Body ornaments made of painted and pierced seashells dating back 70,000 to 120,000 years have been found in Africa and the Near East for years, and serve as evidence of symbolic thought among the earliest modern humans (Homo sapiens). The absence of similar finds in Europe at that time, when it was Neandertal territory, has supported the notion that they lacked symbolism, a potential sign of mental inferiority that might help explain why modern humans eventually replaced them.
Although hints of Neandertal art and jewelry have cropped up in recent years, such as pierced and grooved animal-tooth pendants or a decorated limestone slab on the grave of a child, these have often been shrugged off as artifacts mixed in from modern humans, imitation without understanding, or ambiguous in nature. Now archaeologist João Zilhão at the University of Bristol in England and his colleagues have found 50,000-year-old jewelry at two caves in southeastern Spain, art dating back 10,000 years before the fossil record reveals evidence of modern humans entering Europe.
Full article
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Mayan king may have been a foreigner
From Science News:
A man’s skeleton found atop a stone slab at Copán, which was the capital of an ancient Maya state, contains clues to a colonial expansion that occurred more than 1,000 years before Spanish explorers reached the Americas.
The bones come from K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’, or KYKM for short, the researchers report in an upcoming Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. KYKM was the first of 16 kings who ruled Copán and surrounding highlands of what is today northern Honduras for about 400 years, from 426 to 820, say archaeologist T. Douglas Price of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues. KYKM’s bone chemistry indicates that he grew up in the central Maya lowlands, which are several hundred kilometers northwest of Copán.
Along with inscriptions at Copán, the new evidence suggests that the site’s first king was born into a ruling family at Caracol, a powerful lowland kingdom in Belize. KYKM probably spent his young adult years as a member of the royal court at Tikal, a Maya kingdom in the central lowlands of Guatemala, before being sent to Copán to found a new dynasty at the settlement there, Price’s team proposes.
“These findings reinforce the notion that the Copán state was founded as part of a colonial expansion,” says archaeologist and study coauthor Robert Sharer of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “They also demonstrate the widespread connections maintained by Maya kings.” This line of investigation aims to unravel how Classic era Maya city-states, which dominated parts of Mexico and Central America from about 200 to 900, originated and developed.
Hieroglyphics at Copán that were deciphered more than 20 years ago refer to KYKM as a foreigner who was inaugurated as king in 426 and arrived the next year. But it has been unclear whether the inscriptions referred to an actual historical event or were a form of royal propaganda. In 2007, archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin noticed that an inscription carved on a Copán stone monument referred to KYKM by a title indicating that he was originally a Caracol lord.
Archaeologists Arlen Chase and Diane Chase of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, who direct excavations at Caracol, consider it plausible that Copán’s first king was a Caracol lord but doubt that he arrived via Tikal. No signs of a political relationship between Caracol and Tikal appear at the time that KYKM took over at Copán, Arlen Chase notes.
Instead, KYKM probably came directly from Caracol, Arlen Chase says. By the year 150, Caracol hosted numerous royal activities and had extensive ties to settlements near Copán. “It would not be surprising for Copán to have coveted a Caracol individual to become their first ruler,” he says.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Early Copán Acropolis Program, U. of Penn. Museum and Instituto Hondureno de Antropologia e Historia
Read full story
A man’s skeleton found atop a stone slab at Copán, which was the capital of an ancient Maya state, contains clues to a colonial expansion that occurred more than 1,000 years before Spanish explorers reached the Americas.The bones come from K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’, or KYKM for short, the researchers report in an upcoming Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. KYKM was the first of 16 kings who ruled Copán and surrounding highlands of what is today northern Honduras for about 400 years, from 426 to 820, say archaeologist T. Douglas Price of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues. KYKM’s bone chemistry indicates that he grew up in the central Maya lowlands, which are several hundred kilometers northwest of Copán.
Along with inscriptions at Copán, the new evidence suggests that the site’s first king was born into a ruling family at Caracol, a powerful lowland kingdom in Belize. KYKM probably spent his young adult years as a member of the royal court at Tikal, a Maya kingdom in the central lowlands of Guatemala, before being sent to Copán to found a new dynasty at the settlement there, Price’s team proposes.
“These findings reinforce the notion that the Copán state was founded as part of a colonial expansion,” says archaeologist and study coauthor Robert Sharer of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “They also demonstrate the widespread connections maintained by Maya kings.” This line of investigation aims to unravel how Classic era Maya city-states, which dominated parts of Mexico and Central America from about 200 to 900, originated and developed.
Hieroglyphics at Copán that were deciphered more than 20 years ago refer to KYKM as a foreigner who was inaugurated as king in 426 and arrived the next year. But it has been unclear whether the inscriptions referred to an actual historical event or were a form of royal propaganda. In 2007, archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin noticed that an inscription carved on a Copán stone monument referred to KYKM by a title indicating that he was originally a Caracol lord.
Archaeologists Arlen Chase and Diane Chase of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, who direct excavations at Caracol, consider it plausible that Copán’s first king was a Caracol lord but doubt that he arrived via Tikal. No signs of a political relationship between Caracol and Tikal appear at the time that KYKM took over at Copán, Arlen Chase notes.
Instead, KYKM probably came directly from Caracol, Arlen Chase says. By the year 150, Caracol hosted numerous royal activities and had extensive ties to settlements near Copán. “It would not be surprising for Copán to have coveted a Caracol individual to become their first ruler,” he says.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Early Copán Acropolis Program, U. of Penn. Museum and Instituto Hondureno de Antropologia e Historia
Read full story
Friday, November 20, 2009
Large Prehistoric fauna and you
Featured in the New York Times:
Whenever modern humans reached a new continent in the expansion from their African homeland 50,000 years ago, whether Australia, Europe or the Americas, all the large fauna quickly disappeared. [Editorial comment: Hmmm, not exactly true, but I'll go with it for now]
Whenever modern humans reached a new continent in the expansion from their African homeland 50,000 years ago, whether Australia, Europe or the Americas, all the large fauna quickly disappeared. [Editorial comment: Hmmm, not exactly true, but I'll go with it for now]
This circumstantial evidence from the fossil record suggests that people’s first accomplishment upon reaching new territory was to hunt all its all large animals to death. But apologists for the human species have invoked all manner of alternative agents, like climate change and asteroid impacts [I am not one of these, for the record, but I don't think we were that well coordinated or that large a community to hunt out all the big fauna in North America].
A careful analysis of lake deposits in New York and Wisconsin has brought new data to bear on this heated debate. A team led by Jacquelyn Gill, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, has uncovered a critical sequence of events that rules out some explanations for the extinction of the large animals and severely constrains others.
The first event documented by Ms. Gill and her colleagues is the pace of extinction in North America, known from other research to have affected all animal species over about 2,200 pounds and half of those weighing more than about 70 pounds, the weight of a large dog.
Ms. Gill found a clever proxy for these disappearances. A fungus known as Sporormiella has to pass through the digestive system to complete its life cycle, and its spores are found in animal dung. By measuring the number of spores in the lake deposits, the Wisconsin team documented the steady disappearance of large animals from 14,800 years to 13,700 years ago, they reported in Thursday’s issue of Science.
The next clue to emerge from the lake deposits was the pollen of new plants including broad-leaved trees like oak. This novel plant community seems to have emerged because it was released from being grazed by large mammals.
The third clue is a layer of fine charcoal grains, presumably from fires that followed the buildup of wood.
This sequence of events has direct bearing on the megafauna whodunit. First, it rules out as the cause an impact by an asteroid or comet that occurred 12,900 years ago — the animals were dead long before.
It also excludes the standard version of a more popular explanation, that of habitat loss due to climate change. The extinction of large animals occurred before the emergence of the new plant communities. Ms. Gill said that some other aspect of climate, like direct temperature change, could have been involved [so it WAS climate change, then?].
The third suspect to be cleared is the people of the Clovis culture [editorial comment: well, duh!!!!], which first appeared some 13,000 years ago, well after the extinction event. The Clovis people have long been considered the first inhabitants of North America, which they probably reached by trekking across the land bridge that joined Siberia and Alaska during the last Ice Age.
So, do the new data exculpate humans of the murder of the North American mammoth? Not exactly. Butchered mammoth bones some 14,500 years old have been found in Wisconsin. There were evidently pre-Clovis people in North America, and they could have hunted the large animals to death. [no, no, look at frequency, not presence/non-presence of scraping on bones. Humans are also scavengers and opportunistic meat eaters]
But Ms. Gill is not yet willing to declare people guilty. “At this stage it’s too early to completely eliminate climate change,” she said.
Nor is it clear that the pre-Clovis people had the technology to take down large game like mammoths. [you can take down mammoth by driving them off a cliff, but I'll go with this for now]. Ms. Gill plans to analyze many more lake bottoms before rendering any final verdict.
Am I just being grumpy here, or does this article sort of miss the point, or try to keep the "mystery alive" just for a good story? Interesting research, however.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Mummies had clogged arteries
A recent study of mummies found a significant number of the elite mummies (which most were) had clogged arteries, calcification of vessels, and other symptoms of heart disease and obesity.
This has been found before, but this is the largest study so far.
The BBC article I read suggested it was caused by the supposed large amounts of fatty meats being eaten by the elite.
However, as I suspected he might, Rafe said "There's currently a bit of discussion on GNXP (Gene Expression). Michael Eades, auther of Protein Power, has published in the past showing that the Egyptian elite were in fact obese quite regularly, and attributes it to a diet that was very high in grains combined with a sedentary lifestyle, not the high in meat diet proposed in the BBC article."
Quoted from Science Daily: "UC Irvine clinical professor of cardiology Dr. Gregory Thomas, a co-principal investigator on the study, said, 'The findings suggest that we may have to look beyond modern risk factors to fully understand the disease.'"
Thoughts?
This has been found before, but this is the largest study so far.
The BBC article I read suggested it was caused by the supposed large amounts of fatty meats being eaten by the elite.
However, as I suspected he might, Rafe said "There's currently a bit of discussion on GNXP (Gene Expression). Michael Eades, auther of Protein Power, has published in the past showing that the Egyptian elite were in fact obese quite regularly, and attributes it to a diet that was very high in grains combined with a sedentary lifestyle, not the high in meat diet proposed in the BBC article."
Quoted from Science Daily: "UC Irvine clinical professor of cardiology Dr. Gregory Thomas, a co-principal investigator on the study, said, 'The findings suggest that we may have to look beyond modern risk factors to fully understand the disease.'"
Thoughts?
Monday, September 28, 2009
Multi-tasking in the stone-age
Stone blades found in Sibudu Cave, near South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast, bear traces of compound adhesives that once joined them to wooden hafts to make spears or arrows.
Why is this so cool? Because by systematically replicating the ancient glues, using only Stone Age techniques and ingredients, the researchers discovered that ocher improves the bonding capacity of such natural adhesives as acacia gum. They also learned that those ingredients are highly variable in chemical composition and thus in key characteristics, such as viscosity, that affect the strength of the bond.
To make an effective glue, say the researchers, ancient artisans would have had to adjust their recipes in real time to compensate for unpredictable ingredients, staying mindful of their goal while shifting their focus back and forth among the various steps in the process.
So maybe they were just mad scientists! Mwahahaha!
Why is this so cool? Because by systematically replicating the ancient glues, using only Stone Age techniques and ingredients, the researchers discovered that ocher improves the bonding capacity of such natural adhesives as acacia gum. They also learned that those ingredients are highly variable in chemical composition and thus in key characteristics, such as viscosity, that affect the strength of the bond.
To make an effective glue, say the researchers, ancient artisans would have had to adjust their recipes in real time to compensate for unpredictable ingredients, staying mindful of their goal while shifting their focus back and forth among the various steps in the process.
So maybe they were just mad scientists! Mwahahaha!
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Latest news on female primates, of the human and non-human variety
The latest and the greatest about women primates!
1. hot climates tend to produce more girls
2. Márta Daróczi-Szabó, an archaeozoologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, recently lead an archaeological dig that found up to 10 dogs sacrificed and buried near house foundations, apparently as a way to ward off evil. Dogs protecting the home, in a somewhat odd way.
3. And finally, the slightly annoying practice of my mother-in-law constantly stealing food from her son's plate actually had an evolutionary reasoning behind it: by stealing food, female orangutans test the patience and hospitality of males to see if they'd be good mates. So all those years of stealing actually trained my husband to be a good mate. Thanks Judy!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Better tools
A troop of chimps has learned how to build a better termite trap.
Going back in time, 13,000 year old, blood-stained tools were found in a guy's back yard in Colorado.
Going back in time, 13,000 year old, blood-stained tools were found in a guy's back yard in Colorado.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Hyenas ate humans
Paleobiologists recently found a coprolite from a Hyena from 20,000 years ago. And what was in the fossilized poop? Human remains!
Was this just one poor sap who got on the menu, or was this a trend among the hyenas of old? Were we scavenged? Hunted for our delicious organs?
Was this just one poor sap who got on the menu, or was this a trend among the hyenas of old? Were we scavenged? Hunted for our delicious organs?
Friday, August 29, 2008
Today's theme: Housing
The effects of global climate change are real for one village in Africa. They have had to move their village three or more times because of rising ocean levels.
Some cool ideas about "organic" housing, or as I like to think about it a real tree house.
Archaeologists in the Amazon have found old urbanization patterns.
Some cool ideas about "organic" housing, or as I like to think about it a real tree house.
Archaeologists in the Amazon have found old urbanization patterns.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
In the good ol' days...
When I was your age, grandkids, we lived in caves, and we walked everywhere in the snow, uphill, both ways. Why, back in my day, Neolithic women had fashion sense (study from 2007), not like today. Neanderthals created tools just as good as the cro magnon's. Okay, maybe they weren't as creative in their tools, but good work, they did.
Ah, *spit* you kids these days are all weak, you don't get enough "dangerous" exercise, like chasing saber tooth cats around. Boy, those were the days.
Ah, *spit* you kids these days are all weak, you don't get enough "dangerous" exercise, like chasing saber tooth cats around. Boy, those were the days.
Friday, August 22, 2008
The outer limits...of humans
I've been collecting some weird stuff that doesn't necessarily correlate directly to humans and culture, but they all do in a roundabout, sideways, too-cool-to-not-mention sort of way.
For starters, some researchers have found evidence that humans have taste buds for calcium. I wonder if there is a difference between cultures who practically live off milk compared to those who don't.
Also, there is a cool YouTube video about parasitic worms that can actually recreate or at least mimic the genes of their host insect to the extent that they can send messages to the insect's "brain" and make the insects do what they want, including commit suicide by jumping into a body of water so the worm can escape, essentially turning the bug into a zombie. As the researcher mentions in the video, this has implications for human parasitic diseases (which I can't remember right now but if you watch the video he will explain it better).
Getting back into the traditional "Anthropology" stuff, German anthropologists have been able to genetically trace bones from the Bronze Age to a pair of men living in a village nearby the cave where the bones were found, making this the longest family tree in history.
As a cool example of the power of motherhood and how much dogs have evolved to be co-habitants of humans, a dog in Argentina rescued a newborn baby abandoned in the ghettos/favelas. The dog was a new mother herself, and after the dog's owner discovered the baby cuddled in with the pups, he alerted authorities and the baby's 14-year-old mother came forward. Unfortunately the media attention is actually freaking the dog out a bit, so leave her alone!
Also, for all you star gazers out there, a Top 10 of ancient astronomy observatories throughout the world (interestingly, the Mayan pyramids made it on there, the Egyptian pyramids did not).
Finally, for all you visual or historical anthropologists, a cool article on the history of the daguerrotype, and links to other articles about cool photographic inventions.
For starters, some researchers have found evidence that humans have taste buds for calcium. I wonder if there is a difference between cultures who practically live off milk compared to those who don't.
Also, there is a cool YouTube video about parasitic worms that can actually recreate or at least mimic the genes of their host insect to the extent that they can send messages to the insect's "brain" and make the insects do what they want, including commit suicide by jumping into a body of water so the worm can escape, essentially turning the bug into a zombie. As the researcher mentions in the video, this has implications for human parasitic diseases (which I can't remember right now but if you watch the video he will explain it better).
Getting back into the traditional "Anthropology" stuff, German anthropologists have been able to genetically trace bones from the Bronze Age to a pair of men living in a village nearby the cave where the bones were found, making this the longest family tree in history.
As a cool example of the power of motherhood and how much dogs have evolved to be co-habitants of humans, a dog in Argentina rescued a newborn baby abandoned in the ghettos/favelas. The dog was a new mother herself, and after the dog's owner discovered the baby cuddled in with the pups, he alerted authorities and the baby's 14-year-old mother came forward. Unfortunately the media attention is actually freaking the dog out a bit, so leave her alone!
Also, for all you star gazers out there, a Top 10 of ancient astronomy observatories throughout the world (interestingly, the Mayan pyramids made it on there, the Egyptian pyramids did not).
Finally, for all you visual or historical anthropologists, a cool article on the history of the daguerrotype, and links to other articles about cool photographic inventions.
Monday, August 18, 2008
News highlights from last week
Scottish penguin knighted as part of 30-year service to Norwegian military. Technically it's the third penguin to serve as the Norwegian mascot, but still, well earned I'm sure (too bad it’s not an emperor penguin).
Cemetery remains of two different cultures separated by several thousand years found in the same spot in the Sahara Desert (apparently much greener once). One woman and her two kids were buried on a bed of flowers; how sweet is that? Awww...
Mayan portal to the world of the dead FOUND! No, really.
Roman empress’ head found too ( not the actual head, just the oversized marble carving of it).
Mothering style can turn on nurturing genes in female mice. First off, who knew there were genes for nurturing?
Cemetery remains of two different cultures separated by several thousand years found in the same spot in the Sahara Desert (apparently much greener once). One woman and her two kids were buried on a bed of flowers; how sweet is that? Awww...
Mayan portal to the world of the dead FOUND! No, really.
Roman empress’ head found too ( not the actual head, just the oversized marble carving of it).
Mothering style can turn on nurturing genes in female mice. First off, who knew there were genes for nurturing?
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Bombardment of Anthro News
July has been busy and I've been storing them up, so here goes:
In 2007, thai police officers had to start wearing Hello Kitty armbands if they were caught doing something against the law. I want to know if they're still forced to do that (my suspicion is no). Anyone with the answer to that gets a brownie (point)!
Mexican mummies were stressed out too; ulcer bacteria found in mummy tummies.
90% of people can sing, really, according to this study.
If there are more male lemurs than female lemurs in a troop, female lemurs have a better chance of being the dominant leader of the whole group.
An interesting study of normal, middle-class people who live frugally, including by dumpster diving.
Archaeologists in Jerusalem and Korea have both found sites that have the tuberculosis bacterium and hope to use this ancient specimen (thousands of years old, we're talking) to help fight modern TB.
And finally, just for kicks, a study has found that guys' fertility drops off at a certain age, not just in women, so men too could be susceptible to a biological clock.
In 2007, thai police officers had to start wearing Hello Kitty armbands if they were caught doing something against the law. I want to know if they're still forced to do that (my suspicion is no). Anyone with the answer to that gets a brownie (point)!
Mexican mummies were stressed out too; ulcer bacteria found in mummy tummies.
90% of people can sing, really, according to this study.
If there are more male lemurs than female lemurs in a troop, female lemurs have a better chance of being the dominant leader of the whole group.
An interesting study of normal, middle-class people who live frugally, including by dumpster diving.
Archaeologists in Jerusalem and Korea have both found sites that have the tuberculosis bacterium and hope to use this ancient specimen (thousands of years old, we're talking) to help fight modern TB.
And finally, just for kicks, a study has found that guys' fertility drops off at a certain age, not just in women, so men too could be susceptible to a biological clock.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Noisy Caves
Man, I am on an archaeological roll! Again, also posted in my other blog:
Another article today that discusses Upper Paleolithic peoples’ understanding of acoustics, and how cave art is often placed at the exact locations where acoustics are best in a cave. Archaeologists have also found flutes in the caves and are trying to determine if the flutes were connected to the cave paintings and their placement in any way.
Iegor Reznikoff, a specialist in ancient music at the University of Paris X in Nanterre featured in the article, also points out the sound-painting connection at certain sites in Finland and France near lakes and other outdoor locations. There has also been correlation shown between Native American pictographs in California deserts and seismic fault lines (I’ll add a link as soon as I can find it again).
Another article today that discusses Upper Paleolithic peoples’ understanding of acoustics, and how cave art is often placed at the exact locations where acoustics are best in a cave. Archaeologists have also found flutes in the caves and are trying to determine if the flutes were connected to the cave paintings and their placement in any way.
Iegor Reznikoff, a specialist in ancient music at the University of Paris X in Nanterre featured in the article, also points out the sound-painting connection at certain sites in Finland and France near lakes and other outdoor locations. There has also been correlation shown between Native American pictographs in California deserts and seismic fault lines (I’ll add a link as soon as I can find it again).
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
George Washington's boyhood home found
I didn't even know it was missing, but apparently they found it ("they" being a collection of archaeologists and historians). The biggest let down: no cherry tree. They were also [for some bizarre reason] surprised that the house wasn't more rustic; from what they can deduce, it had up to 8 rooms including separate bed/storage rooms upstairs, rather quite nice for that time's standards and much more appropriate for a gentryman [again, duh!].
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Archaeology News
This was also posted in my other blog, The Art of Science:
First news item: the cave paintings at Lascaux (France) are currently being threatened by mold. One of the possible causes: bright lights. The caves have a history of threats, all directly or indirectly caused by humans. This case exemplifies the hard challenges faced with old artifacts - or just limited natural resources in general - and weighing the benefits of preservation/isolation, scientific intervention and study, and public access to knowledge and such resources.
First news item: the cave paintings at Lascaux (France) are currently being threatened by mold. One of the possible causes: bright lights. The caves have a history of threats, all directly or indirectly caused by humans. This case exemplifies the hard challenges faced with old artifacts - or just limited natural resources in general - and weighing the benefits of preservation/isolation, scientific intervention and study, and public access to knowledge and such resources.
Next up: The re-creation of musical instruments from Central America. The story discusses Roberto Velazquez, a musical historian/archaeologist/mechanical engineer who studies ancient musical instruments found in archaeological sites all over Central America and recreates them and experiments with their sounds. What is not mentioned but inferred is the spectral analysis done on these instruments in order to determine what they are made out of - clay mostly, but also feathers, reeds, frog bones? - and how to recreate them. Velazquez will also experiment with making sounds with the flutes and whistles, and some of them are really eery; there is a sound clip with samples of all the different sounds, and I was not prepared for the first sounds that they played. It was from the appropriately-named Whistle of Death, and it is creepy to put it mildly.
*Edit*: exclusive only to Complex Interplay and MSNBC: Archaeologists have determined when Odysseus finally made it home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
