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kassy

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #100 on: August 27, 2019, 11:32:16 AM »
FWIW that was during the hongerwinter. The southern parts had been liberated but operation Market Garden stalled at Arnhem. The famine was mainly in the west and north with the problem being worst in the bigger cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944
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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #101 on: August 27, 2019, 06:00:04 PM »
Greek Temple Ruins Suggest Lifting Machines In Use 1.5 Centuries Earlier Than Previously Believed
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-greek-temple-machines-centuries-earlier.html

As modern Greeks undertake to reconstruct the Parthenon, largely using stone material from the site's ruins, a question naturally arises: How did ancient Greeks construct massive temples and other buildings—lifting and placing one heavy block at a time, and up multiple rows in a wall—without modern advanced machinery?

New research by Alessandro Pierattini, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame, adds nuance to the broadly accepted view that the crane was not in use until 515 B.C. by demonstrating how forerunners to the machine were experimented with as early as 700-650 B.C



Alessandro Pierattini. Interpreting Rope Channels: Lifting, Setting And The Birth Of Greek Monumental Architecture, The Annual of the British School at Athens (2019)
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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #102 on: August 30, 2019, 01:28:43 AM »
New Artifacts Suggest People Arrived in North America Earlier Than Previously Thought
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-artifacts-people-north-america-earlier.html

Stone tools and other artifacts unearthed from an archeological dig at the Cooper's Ferry site in western Idaho suggest that people lived in the area 16,000 years ago, more than a thousand years earlier than scientists previously thought.

The findings, published today in Science, add weight to the hypothesis that initial human migration to the Americas followed a Pacific coastal route rather than through the opening of an inland ice-free corridor, said Loren Davis, a professor of anthropology at Oregon State University and the study's lead author.

"The Cooper's Ferry site is located along the Salmon River, which is a tributary of the larger Columbia River basin. Early peoples moving south along the Pacific coast would have encountered the Columbia River as the first place below the glaciers where they could easily walk and paddle in to North America," Davis said. "Essentially, the Columbia River corridor was the first off-ramp of a Pacific coast migration route.

"The timing and position of the Cooper's Ferry site is consistent with and most easily explained as the result of an early Pacific coastal migration."

... The dates from the oldest artifacts challenge the long-held "Clovis First" theory of early migration to the Americas, which suggested that people crossed from Siberia into North America and traveled down through an opening in the ice sheet near the present-day Dakotas. The ice-free corridor is hypothesized to have opened as early as 14,800 years ago, well after the date of the oldest artifacts found at Cooper's Ferry, Davis said.

"Now we have good evidence that people were in Idaho before that corridor opened," he said. "This evidence leads us to conclude that early peoples moved south of continental ice sheets along the Pacific coast."



L.G. Davis el al., "Late Upper Paleolithic occupation at Cooper's Ferry, Idaho, USA,~16,000 years ago," Science (2019)



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TerryM

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #103 on: August 30, 2019, 02:26:22 AM »
Interesting
It ties in with many earlier finds. Kennewick Man, Spirit Cave Mummy @Paleo woman Paleo child all come to mind but there are many more.
The points & core stones images add intrigue.


Found beneath a black/dark strata?


Thanks
Terry

vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #104 on: August 30, 2019, 03:38:29 AM »
Quote
... Found beneath a black/dark strata? 

Similar to an earlier post...

https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2470.msg191905.html#msg191905
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TerryM

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #105 on: August 30, 2019, 07:41:45 AM »
Quote
... Found beneath a black/dark strata? 

Similar to an earlier post...

https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2470.msg191905.html#msg191905


You Betcha!


Black mat & below = Clovis & ice age mega-fauna.


This is presented as Pre-Clovis, so unless there had been flooding or something to wash the overburden away this must be below the mat - if the dating is close to correct.


Terry

kassy

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #106 on: September 03, 2019, 05:21:22 PM »
Nice article about genomics and the mixing between us homo and neanderthals and denisovans.

One cool thing is that they can now identify homo dna in the Neanderthals which comes to 3-6%.
The denisovan dna contains traces of possibly homo erectus.  8)
 

Humans and Neanderthals Kept Breeding—and Breeding—for Ages

Modern humans and Neanderthals commingled at many points in history, raising the possibility that the ancient hominins were just another version of us.


...

“I think Africa is one of the areas that’s going to give a lot more data in the future,” said Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London and a member of the research team that studied the Greek fossil.
Siepel is also using his algorithm to look for signs of natural selection acting on these DNA sequences: Were ancient hominins any better or worse off for carrying more genes from modern ones? So far, his team has found no evidence for either positive or negative selection in the flow of genes from modern humans into Neanderthals 200,000 years ago, which indicates that “most of this gene flow … is just a signature of populations in contact,” according to Hawks.

“It suggests that maybe Neanderthals actually are us,” he said. “As different as they are, maybe they’re just another version of us.”

https://www.wired.com/story/humans-neanderthals-interbreeding/

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kassy

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #107 on: September 08, 2019, 06:34:59 PM »
'‘Natasha’s’ burial with a Xiongnu-era iPhone remains one of the most interesting at this burial site,' Pavel Leus said in a new publication summarising results of several years of recent archeological expeditions to the Ala-Tey burial site.

In fact, the discovery is a large - 18cm by 9cm - chic belt buckle made of gemstone jet with inlaid decorations of turquoise, carnelian and mother-of-pearl.

https://siberiantimes.com/science/others/news/archeologist-in-awe-at-2100-year-old-iphone-like-belt-buckle-unearthed-in-atlantis-grave-in-tuva/

Well the headline certainly grabbed my attention.  :)

The place is a real archaeological treasure trove with undisturbed graves which are rare.

Lets see what more the unearth in the future.
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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #108 on: September 10, 2019, 02:56:51 AM »
Rocks at Asteroid Impact Site Record First Day of Dinosaur Extinction
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-asteroid-impact-site-day-dinosaur.html

When the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs slammed into the planet, the impact set wildfires, triggered tsunamis and blasted so much sulfur into the atmosphere that it blocked the sun, which caused the global cooling that ultimately doomed the dinos.

That's the scenario scientists have hypothesized. Now, a new study led by The University of Texas at Austin has confirmed it by finding hard evidence in the hundreds of feet of rocks that filled the impact crater within the first 24 hours after impact.



The evidence includes bits of charcoal, jumbles of rock brought in by the tsunami's backflow and conspicuously absent sulfur. ...

Most of the material that filled the crater within hours of impact was produced at the impact site or was swept in by seawater pouring back into the crater from the surrounding Gulf of Mexico. Just one day deposited about 425 feet of material—a rate that's among the highest ever encountered in the geologic record. This breakneck rate of accumulation means that the rocks record what was happening in the environment within and around the crater in the minutes and hours after impact and give clues about the longer-lasting effects of the impact that wiped out 75% of life on the planet.

Quote
... "We fried them and then we froze them," ... "Not all the dinosaurs died that day, but many dinosaurs did."

Researchers estimate the asteroid hit with the equivalent power of 10 billion atomic bombs of the size used in World War II. The blast ignited trees and plants that were thousands of miles away and triggered a massive tsunami that reached as far inland as Illinois. Inside the crater, researchers found charcoal and a chemical biomarker associated with soil fungi within or just above layers of sand that shows signs of being deposited by resurging waters. This suggests that the charred landscape was pulled into the crater with the receding waters of the tsunami.

However, one of the most important takeaways from the research is what was missing from the core samples. The area surrounding the impact crater is full of sulfur-rich rocks. But there was no sulfur in the core.

That finding supports a theory that the asteroid impact vaporized the sulfur-bearing minerals present at the impact site and released it into the atmosphere, where it wreaked havoc on the Earth's climate, reflecting sunlight away from the planet and causing global cooling. Researchers estimate that at least 325 billion metric tons would have been released by the impact. To put that in perspective, that's about four orders of magnitude greater than the sulfur that was spewed during the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa—which cooled the Earth's climate by an average of 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit for five years.


Although the asteroid impact created mass destruction at the regional level, it was this global climate change that caused a mass extinction, killing off the dinosaurs along with most other life on the planet at the time.



Sean P. S. Gulick el al., "The first day of the Cenozoic," PNAS (2019).
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kassy

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #109 on: September 10, 2019, 10:58:47 AM »
Some short pieces:

First human ancestors breastfed for longer than contemporary relatives

summary:
By analyzing the fossilized teeth of some of our most ancient ancestors, scientists have discovered that the first humans significantly breastfed their infants for longer periods than their contemporary relatives.

...

By reconstructing the age at tooth enamel development, they show that early Homo offspring was breastfed in significant proportions until the age of around three to four years, which likely played a role in the apparition of traits that are specific to human lineage, such as the brain development.

In contrast, infants of Paranthropus robustus, that became extinct around one million years ago and were a more robust species in terms of dental anatomy, as well as infants of Australopithecus africanus, stopped drinking sizeable proportions of mother milk in the course of the first months of life.

...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190829115427.htm

and
Largest-ever ancient-DNA study illuminates millennia of South and Central Asian prehistory

Summary:
Researchers analyzed the genomes of 524 never before-studied ancient people, including the first genome of an individual from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization. Insights answer longstanding questions about the origins of farming and the source of Indo-European languages in South and Central Asia. The study increases the worldwide total of published ancient genomes by some 25 percent.

...

A second line of evidence in favor of a steppe origin is the researchers' discovery that of the 140 present-day South Asian populations analyzed in the study, a handful show a remarkable spike in ancestry from the steppe. All but one of these steppe-enriched populations are historically priestly groups, including Brahmins -- traditional custodians of texts written in the ancient Indo-European language Sanskrit.

...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190905145348.htm
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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #110 on: September 12, 2019, 05:04:06 PM »
'Game-Changing' Research Could Solve Evolution Mysteries
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-game-changing-evolution-mysteries.html

An evolution revolution has begun after scientists extracted genetic information from a 1.7 million-year-old rhino tooth—the largest and oldest genetic data to ever be recorded.

Researchers identified an almost complete set of proteins, a proteome, in the dental enamel of the rhino and the genetic information discovered is one million years older than the oldest DNA sequenced from a 700,000-year-old horse.

... "For 20 years ancient DNA has been used to address questions about the evolution of extinct species, adaptation and human migration but it has limitations. Now for the first time we have retrieved ancient genetic information which allows us to reconstruct molecular evolution way beyond the usual time limit of DNA preservation.

... Professor Cappellini added: "Dental enamel is extremely abundant and it is incredibly durable, which is why a high proportion of fossil records are teeth.

"We have been able to find a way to retrieve genetic information that is more informative and older than any other source before, and it's from a source that is abundant in the fossil records so the potential of the application of this approach is extensive."

Early Pleistocene enamel proteome from Dmanisi resolves Stephanorhinus phylogeny, Nature (2019)
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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #111 on: September 14, 2019, 03:44:32 AM »
The Enigma of Bronze Age Tin
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bronze-age-tin.html

The origin of the tin used in the Bronze Age has long been one of the greatest enigmas in archaeological research. Now researchers from Heidelberg University and the Curt Engelhorn Centre for Archaeometry in Mannheim have solved part of the puzzle. Using methods of the natural sciences, they examined the tin from the second millennium BCE found at archaeological sites in Israel, Turkey, and Greece. They were able to prove that this tin in the form of ingots does not come from Central Asia, as previously assumed, but from tin deposits in Europe. The findings are proof that even in the Bronze Age, complex and far-reaching trade routes must have existed between Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean

Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was already being produced in the Middle East, Anatolia, and the Aegean in the late fourth and third millennia BCE. Knowledge on its production spread quickly across wide swaths of the Old World. "Bronze was used to make weapons, jewellery, and all types of daily objects, justifiably bequeathing its name to an entire epoch. The origin of tin has long been an enigma in archaeological research," explains Prof. Dr. Ernst Pernicka. The Eastern Mediterranean region, where some of the objects we studied originated, had practically none of its own deposits. So the raw material in this region must have been imported," explained the researcher.

Using lead and tin isotope data as well as trace element analysis, the Heidelberg-Mannheim research team led by Prof. Pernicka and Dr. Daniel Berger examined the tin ingots found in Turkey, Israel, and Greece. This allowed them to verify that this tin really did derive from tin deposits in Europe. The tin artefacts from Israel, for example, largely match tin from Cornwall and Devon (Great Britain).



Open Access: Daniel Berger et al, Isotope systematics and chemical composition of tin ingots from Mochlos (Crete) and other Late Bronze Age sites in the eastern Mediterranean Sea: An ultimate key to tin provenance?, PLOS ONE (2019)
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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #112 on: September 14, 2019, 01:03:24 PM »
An Extreme Drought Has Revealed a 'Spanish Stonehenge,' a Mysterious Circle of Megaliths Once Hidden Beneath a Reservoir
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.es/20190822/drought-reveals-long-lost-spanish-stone-henge-in-cacares-reservoir/amp

This past summer, an extreme drought in the Extremadura area of Spain that caused the Valdecañas Reservoir’s water levels to plummet has revealed a series of megalithic stones. Previously submerged underwater, the Dolmen de Guadalperal, often called the Spanish Stonehenge, are now in plain sight.

Though the Dolmen are 7,000 years old, the last time they were seen in their entirety was around 1963, when the reservoir was built as part of Franco’s push toward modernization. Now, residents near the province of Cáceres are thrilled to witness the surreal return of the ancient site.

The approximately 100 menhirs are, like Stonehenge, hulking megalith stones—some standing up to six feet tall—that are arranged in an oval and appear oriented to filter sunlight. Evidence suggests that these stones could actually be 2,000 years older than Stonehenge.



-------------------------

Turkey Prepares to Flood 12,000-Year-Old City to Build Dam
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/sep/12/they-are-barbaric-turkey-prepares-to-flood-12000-year-old-city-to-build-dam

Hasankeyf is thought to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on Earth, dating as far back as 12,000 years and containing thousands of caves, churches and tombs.

But this jewel of human history will soon be lost; most of the settlement is about to be flooded as part of the highly controversial Ilisu dam project.

... “We’ve asked for the area to be an open-air museum but the government wouldn’t accept it,” Ayhan said. “If you dig here you will find cultures layered on top of one another.”

Only 10% of the area has been explored by archaeologists.

... The Turkish authorities’ crackdown on protests has also hindered Hasankeyf residents’fight to stop the dam.

“If we protest, they take us to prisons,” Ayhan said. “There’s no democracy here. If there was democracy, maybe we could do something.”
« Last Edit: September 14, 2019, 02:53:46 PM by vox_mundi »
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nanning

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #113 on: September 15, 2019, 07:54:07 AM »
  The bizarre social history of beds

https://phys.org/news/2019-09-bizarre-social-history-beds.html
 by Brian Fagan

 Quotes:
Groucho Marx once joked, "Anything that can't be done in bed isn't worth doing at all." You might think he was referring to sleeping and sex. But humans, at one time or another, have done just about everything in bed.

Much about our beds have remained unchanged for centuries. But one aspect of the bed has undergone a dramatic shift.

Today, we usually sleep in bedrooms with the door shut firmly behind us. They're the ultimate realm of privacy. No one else is allowed in them, aside from a spouse or lover.

it wasn't always this way.

But one thing that has changed is who has occupied the bed. For most of human history, people thought nothing of crowding family members or friends into the same bed.

The 17th-century diarist Samuel Pepys often slept with male friends and rated their conversation skills.

Travelers often slept with strangers. In China and Mongolia, kangs – heated stone platforms—were used in inns as early as 5000 B.C. Guests supplied the bedding and slept with fellow tourists.


From public to private

During the 19th century, beds and bedrooms gradually became private spheres. A major impetus was rapid urbanization during the Industrial Revolution. In cities, compact row houses were constructed with small rooms, each with a specific purpose, one of which was sleeping.

Another reason was religion. The Victorian era was a devout age, and Evangelical Christianity was pervasive by the 1830s. Such beliefs placed great emphasis on marriage, chastity, the family, and the bond between parent and child; allowing strangers or friends under the covers was no longer kosher. By 1875, Architect magazine had published an essay declaring that a bedroom used for anything other than sleeping was unwholesome and immoral.
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
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Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #114 on: September 18, 2019, 09:49:18 PM »
Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event: Asteroid Dust Cloud Sparked Explosion in Primitive Life on Earth
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-giant-asteroid-ancient-ice-age.html



About 466 million years ago, long before the age of the dinosaurs, the Earth froze. The seas began to ice over at the Earth's poles, and the new range of temperatures around the planet set the stage for a boom of new species evolving. The cause of this ice age was a mystery, until now: a new study in Science Advances argues that the ice age was caused by global cooling, triggered by extra dust in the atmosphere from a giant asteroid collision in outer space.

When the 93-mile-wide asteroid between Mars and Jupiter broke apart 466 million years ago, it created way more dust than usual. "Normally, Earth gains about 40,000 tons of extraterrestrial material every year," says Philipp Heck, a curator at the Field Museum, associate professor at the University of Chicago, and one of the paper's authors. "Imagine multiplying that by a factor of a thousand or ten thousand." To contextualize that, in a typical year, one thousand semi trucks' worth of interplanetary dust fall to Earth. In the couple million years following the collision, it'd be more like ten million semis.

The levels stayed high for 2m-4m years. “The grains come with the dust so when you see an increase in these, you know there’s been an increase in the dust,” said Schmitz.

Further tests on the ancient limestone revealed a similar spike in levels of an isotope of helium that streams out of the sun in the surge of particles known as the solar wind. The researchers believe that the helium was brought to Earth when it became embedded in the finer space dust particles as they travelled through the solar system.



Open Access: B. Schmitz el al., "An extraterrestrial trigger for the Mid-Ordovician ice age: Dust from the breakup of the L-chondrite parent body," Science Advances (2019)
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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #115 on: October 01, 2019, 11:51:39 PM »
Medieval Skeleton Puts a Face on Accounts of Torture and Violence
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/archaeologists-unearth-the-remains-of-a-medieval-torture-victim/



What’s a little strange is how little archaeological evidence of torture in the past has been found so far. Archaeologists have found evidence of violence between humans dating back to the Paleolithic, but the Milanese wheel victim is one of very few clear cases of actual torture, despite how often torture is mentioned in historical records beginning in ancient times.

Executed for the crime of being different?

... Six-hundred years later, we have no way of knowing who the unfortunate young man was or why he was executed, but historical records and his own skeleton may offer a reasonable line of speculation. In medieval Northern Italy, the wheel was mostly a tool for public executions, especially for men accused of spreading the plague. Based on the details of the wheel victim’s skeleton, his appearance might have caused his medieval neighbors to view him with suspicion, especially if they were already fearful of a plague outbreak.

He was shorter than the average man in medieval northern Italy by about 11cm (4.3 inches). Despite his small stature, he sported an extra thoracic vertebra and an extra rib on each side. The unusual thickening of his frontal bone (the forehead) suggests that he probably had a hormonal disorder. In the sutures between the bones of his skull, archaeologists found several small bits of what are called Wormian bones, which often show up along with a congenital disease. He had a noticeable gap between his upper front teeth, and his upper incisors are turned at an odd angle.

Based on bones and teeth alone, there’s no way of knowing what condition (or conditions) the man had or how else they might have impacted his appearance or his behavior. No single condition could account for everything Mazzarelli and her colleagues observed in the skeleton. But they suggest that he “could have been considered as ‘different’ by his contemporaries, and possibly this discrimination may have been the cause of his final conviction, as he could have been sacrificed, for being a ‘freak,’ by an angry crowd, as a plague spreader.

Quote
... It’s a grim story, but it illustrates one reason that studying violence in the past is relevant today; the tools have changed, but basic patterns of human behavior are still the same.



Holy Inquisitor: Now, how do you plead?

The Condemned: We're innocent.

Holy Inquisitor: We'll soon change your mind about that!
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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #116 on: October 02, 2019, 07:10:40 PM »
Add this to the pile Terry ...

New Research Supports Hypothesis that Asteroid Contributed to Mass Extinction During the Younger Dryas
https://phys.org/news/2019-10-hypothesis-asteroid-contributed-mass-extinction.html



A team of scientists from South Africa has discovered evidence partially supporting a hypothesis that Earth was struck by a meteorite or asteroid 12 800 years ago, leading to global consequences including climate change, and contributing to the extinction of many species of large animals at the time of an episode called the Younger Dryas.

The team, led by Professor Francis Thackeray of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, discovered evidence of a remarkable "platinum spike" at a site called Wonderkrater in the Limpopo Province, north of Pretoria in South Africa. Working with researcher Philip Pieterse from the University of Johannesburg and Professor Louis Scott of the University of the Free State, Thackeray discovered this evidence from a core drilled in a peat deposit, notably in a sample about 12 800 years old. This research was published in Palaeontologia Africana.

Noting that meteorites are rich in platinum, Thackeray said "Our finding at least partially supports the highly controversial Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH).

... Human populations may have been indirectly affected at the time in question. In North America there is a dramatic termination of the stone tool technology of Clovis people. Remarkably, archaeologists in South Africa have detected an almost simultaneous termination of the Robberg stone artifact industry associated with people in some parts of the country, including the area around Boomplaas near the Cango Caves in the southern Cape, close to the town of Oudshoorn.

... "We cannot be certain, but a cosmic impact could have affected humans as a result of local changes in environment and the availability of food resources, associated with sudden climate change."

At Wonderkrater, the team has evidence from pollen to show that about 12 800 years ago there was temporary cooling, associated with the "Younger Dryas" drop in temperature that is well documented in the northern hemisphere, and now also in South Africa. According to some scientists, this cooling in widespread areas could at least potentially have been associated with the global dispersal of platinum-rich atmospheric dust.

This is the first evidence in Africa for a platinum spike preceding climate change. Younger Dryas spikes in platinum have also been found in Greenland, Eurasia, North America, Mexico and recently also at Pilauco in Chile. Wonderkrater is the 30th site in the world for such evidence.

A large crater 31 kilometers in diameter has been discovered in northern Greenland beneath the Hiawatha Glacier. "There is some evidence to support the view that it might possibly have been the very place where a large meteorite struck the planet earth 12 800 years ago."



Open Access: Thackeray, J. Francis; Scott, Louis; Pieterse, P, The Younger Dryas interval at Wonderkrater (South Africa) in the context of a platinum anomaly, Palaeontologia Africana 2019-10-02
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TerryM

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #117 on: October 02, 2019, 10:05:56 PM »
^^
Thanks Vox
Just as with Continental Drift, or the astronomic solution to the dying off of dinosaurs, we'll have to wait until most of the doubters have died off before the new Younger Dryas Asteroid theory finds acceptance. In the meantime the evidence just keeps building.


We might get our heads around the idea that Paleo Hunters killed the last Mammoth, but imagining people with spears killing the last pride of Saber Toothed Cats, or the last pack of Dire Wolves, takes a fevered imagination.


Terry - hoping I outlive the doubters. ;)

Sebastian Jones

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #118 on: October 03, 2019, 07:35:17 AM »
^^
Thanks Vox
Just as with Continental Drift, or the astronomic solution to the dying off of dinosaurs, we'll have to wait until most of the doubters have died off before the new Younger Dryas Asteroid theory finds acceptance. In the meantime the evidence just keeps building.


We might get our heads around the idea that Paleo Hunters killed the last Mammoth, but imagining people with spears killing the last pride of Saber Toothed Cats, or the last pack of Dire Wolves, takes a fevered imagination.


Terry - hoping I outlive the doubters. ;)

Asteroid impacts coincident with the Younger Dryas event do not have to supersede the conventional theory that a mass outflow of fresh water from the already collapsing Laurentide ice sheet drove the temperature change.They could however have exacerbated the effect. Further, it is much more likely that the end of the Clovis culture was driven by the anthropogenic extinction of ice age mega fauna than by an asteroid- unless it was awfully, awfully big. And, mega predators did not have to be hunted or killed by humans to go extinct once their prey had been killed off. In my not entirely uneducated opinion, the denialism that resists the idea that humans caused the mass extinctions at the end of the last glaciation is similar in nature to that which resists the idea that human caused carbon emissions are changing the climate today.

sidd

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #119 on: October 03, 2019, 08:43:54 AM »
Jeremy Jackson seems convinced we ate the big ocean creatures first. So why not on land ? I have heard him express the same opinion of the disappearance of land megafauna.

I am inclined to the same. We are quite a rapacious species.

sidd

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #120 on: October 03, 2019, 03:31:35 PM »
Today we have the 72 oz. challenge.  [I ate there once, but didn't attempt the challenge.]  Back in the day (Pleistocene), that was nothing!  :o
Arctic ice is healthy for children and other living things because "we cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice"

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #121 on: October 03, 2019, 03:34:15 PM »
Sebastian & sidd


Prior to the birth of the Black Mat theory it was known by everyone from paleontologists and anthropologists to weekend potters, arrowhead collectors and rockhounds that in the Mojave and Sonora Deserts there is a black to grey layer of strata that separates Megafauna deposits from modern, and Clovis from Fremont and more recent deposits.


If horse or camel tracks are found, you can be sure that if there is any overburden, it begins with a relatively narrow band of black deposits, often with a slightly organic odor.
When the original Clovis site, where a Clovis Point was found embedded in a mammoth rib proved beyond doubt that Clovis and Mammoths were contemporaries, the find was at the appropriately named "Blackwater Draw".


Outside Las Vegas, near Floyd Lamb State Park, a Clovis/Mammoth kill site was being excavated when remains of a supposed campfire were detected. After removing tons of overburden the outer boundary of the fire couldn't be found. Finally, after hiring a bulldozer they discovered that the ash layer extended for miles in all directions. They hadn't discovered a campfire, rather they'd dug into the Black Mat and assumed it was ashes from large campfire.


At the time it wasn't known that the mat contained iridium, micro diamonds, or other indications of it's extraterrestrial origin. All we knew then was that it lay like a shroud over Clovis and Rancholabrean finds.


The above is a short, sketchy overview of what was known prior to Firestone's Black Mat theory.
The Murray Springs Site in Southern Arizona was a Clovis/Mammoth kill site, then ~1,500 yrs later the site of a Folsom/Buffalo kill. Lots of bones and a scattering of worked stone from both cultures - all properly separated by a very visible Black Mat. The Clovis hammerstones and a bone spear straightener are enough to make it a very interesting site even without it being the location that first peaked Firestone's interest in the mat.


When arguing against the impact theory, I think some other mechanism explaining the dark strata and its relationship to Rancholabrean finds needs to be included.
Terry

kassy

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #122 on: October 03, 2019, 08:21:23 PM »
Ramen.  ;)

This is just starting but it will be interesting to see what they find:

A team of researchers is carrying out the first in-depth archaeological survey of part of Saudi Arabia, in a bid to shed light on a mysterious civilisation that once lived there. The Nabataean culture left behind sophisticated stone monuments, but many sites remain unexplored.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49424036
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oren

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #123 on: October 04, 2019, 12:38:48 AM »
Quote
When arguing against the impact theory, I think some other mechanism explaining the dark strata and its relationship to Rancholabrean finds needs to be included.
Terry

From Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis

Quote
Research published in 2012 has shown that the so-called "black mats" are easily explained by typical earth processes in wetland environments.[15] The study of black mats, that are common in prehistorical wetland deposits which represent shallow marshlands, that were from 6000 to 40,000 years ago in the southwestern USA and Atacama Desert in Chile, showed elevated concentrations of iridium and magnetic sediments, magnetic spherules and titanomagnetite grains. It was suggested that because these markers are found within or at the base of black mats, irrespective of age or location, suggests that these markers arise from processes common to wetland systems, and probably not as a result of catastrophic bolide impacts.[15]

vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #124 on: October 04, 2019, 01:28:25 AM »
Oren - The study you cited is from 2012 - not that that's a bad thing. Since then, however, over 18 other sites have been discovered and dated to ~12,800 BCE.

Most of these sites are NOT wetlands.

The study you cited: Accumulation of impact markers in desert wetlands and implications for the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis
https://www.pnas.org/content/109/19/7208

From it's Discussion Section:

... To be clear, the results of our study do not allow us to dismiss the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis outright, nor do they address the origin or significance of the remaining markers of Firestone et al. (e.g. platinum 'spike')

... They point out that Rare Earth Elements (REEs) are approximately two orders of magnitude more common in terrestrial (crustal) rocks than in chondrites and, presumably, cosmic dust ... but they don't mention the concentration in metallic meteors - which the impact crater in Hiawatha Glacier, Greenland appears to be.

Quote
Hiawatha Glacier, Greenland impact site: ... From an interpretation of the crystalline nature of the underlying rock, together with chemical analysis of sediment washed from the crater, the impactor was argued to be a metallic asteroid with a diameter in the order of 1.5 kilometres (0.9 mi).

Before the crater was discovered, the Inuit had found iron meteorites in the region. In 1957 an American surveyor found a 48-kilogram (106 lb) meteorite, and in 1963 Vagn F. Buchwald found the 20-ton Agpalilik meteorite (a fragment of the Cape York meteorite) on a nunatak near Moltke Glacier

It has been suggested that the Cape York meteorite is part of the main object responsible for creating the Hiawatha crater. Estimates of the Hiawatha impact's age (which is still being studied), along with other indicators, suggest that the crater may be connected with the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis.
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kassy

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #125 on: October 06, 2019, 07:26:28 PM »
Ancient sippy cup may hold clues about agriculture’s spread in Europe

A recent study found that prehistoric babies drank milk from ceramic sippy cups, including some with cute animal motifs. Lest you be overwhelmed by the cuteness, there's a heartbreaking side to that discovery: Bronze and Iron Age parents buried their dead infants with their clay sippy cups.

A team of archaeologists found microscopic traces of livestock milk in three of the containers: two from Iron Age graves in Germany dating between 800 and 450 BCE, and a broken one from a much earlier Bronze Age grave nearby. The results suggest that feeding babies milk from livestock may have helped early European farming populations grow and expand.

...

“This paper is important as it is the first direct evidence for animal milk being contained in these bottles for feeding to babies,” Halcrow told Ars. Since the Iron Age baby bottles from Bavaria look so similar to the ones being used thousands of years earlier during the Neolithic, it’s reasonable to speculate that the practice may have been much older, but archaeologists will need to study those earlier vessels directly to say for sure.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/ancient-sippy-cup-may-hold-clues-about-agricultures-spread-in-europe/

Nice article.

The last time i was in an archaeological museum was in the old Athens museum.

They had a nice collection of prehistoric stuff. Much of it familiar...although the style was of course very old school.  ::)
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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #126 on: October 06, 2019, 08:12:44 PM »
Israeli Archaeologists Claim to Discover Ancient City
https://phys.org/news/2019-10-israeli-archaeologists-ancient-city.html

Israel's Antiquities Authority on Sunday said that researchers have discovered the remains of a large, 5,000-year-old city that sheds new light on experts' understanding of the period.

Calling it a "cosmopolitan and planned city," the authority said the early Bronze Age settlement covered 65 hectares (160 acres) and was home to about 6,000 people.

... Among the discoveries was an unusual ritual temple, burnt animal bones—evidence of sacrificial offerings—and a figurine of a human head. There also were millions of pottery fragments, flint tools and stone vessels.

"The remains of residential buildings, diverse facilities and the public buildings are an indication of the organized society and the social hierarchy that existed at the time," the researchers said.

... The Antiquities Authority said that during the dig, archaeologists also found evidence of an earlier settlement dating back 7,000 years underneath the city's houses.
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kassy

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #127 on: October 10, 2019, 01:56:54 PM »
Israel cave bones: Early humans 'conserved food to eat later'

Scientists in Israel say they have found evidence that prehistoric humans deliberately stored bones from animals to eat the fatty marrow later. ....  hey identified cut marks on most of the bone surfaces - consistent with preservation and delayed consumption.

The researchers suggest the marks came about because the early humans had to make greater effort to remove skin which had dried on bones which had been kept longer.

The cut marks were found on 78% of the more than 80,000 animal bone specimens analysed.

...

"We found that the deer leg bones, specifically the metapodials, exhibited unique chopping marks on the shafts, which are not characteristic of the marks left from stripping fresh skin to fracture the bone and extract the marrow," he said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49998934
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kassy

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #128 on: October 15, 2019, 02:44:21 PM »
3000-year-old toolkit suggests skilled warriors crossed Europe to fight an epic battle

...

The battle raged in a narrow, swampy valley that runs along the Tollense River, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 160 kilometers north of Berlin. Many of the artifacts sank below the water and so were preserved in pristine condition. Since the site was discovered in 1996, archaeologists have uncovered metal and wooden weaponry and more than 12,000 pieces of human bone.

The new find, unearthed in 2016, includes cylindrical fragments of bronze, along with a bronze knife, awl, and small chisel. The jumble of tools and scrap metal resemble someone’s personal effects, rather than a ritual deposit or hoard. Archaeologists say the tools were likely in a bag or box that decayed. But the contents were held in place by the thick mud of the riverbed—until divers found them some 3000 years later.

For details and a photo of the objects:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/3000-year-old-toolkit-suggests-skilled-warriors-crossed-europe-fight-epic-battle

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TerryM

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #129 on: October 15, 2019, 03:03:38 PM »
^^
The chisel design appears unchanged over the last 3k yrs. An amazing find!
Terry

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #130 on: October 16, 2019, 01:11:54 AM »
Aerial Laser Scans Uncover Hidden Early Capital of the Khmer Empire
https://gizmodo.com/aerial-laser-scans-uncover-hidden-early-capital-of-the-1839061686

Archaeologists in Cambodia have used jungle-penetrating laser to confirm the location and layout of an ancient capital city associated with the early stages of the Khmer Empire.

Researchers from the French Institute of Asian Studies and APSARA, Cambodia’s management authority for Angkor Archaeological Park, have used LIDAR to pinpoint the exact location of Mahendraparvata—an early Angkorian city and one of the first capital cities associated with the Khmer Empire. The ancient city, which dates back to the 8th and 9th century CE, was spotted in the dense jungles of Cambodia’s Phnom Kulen mountains. Details of the discovery were published today in the science journal Antiquity.

The Khmer Empire dominated much of southeast Asia from the 9th to 15th century CE, establishing the foundations of modern Cambodia. Among its many achievements, the Khmer Empire is famous for Angkor Wat—an elaborate temple complex located in the ancient city of Angkor in northwest Cambodia. Mahendraparvata was built before Angkor, and it’s very possibly the first large-scale, centrally designed, grid-plan city built by the Khmer Empire, according to the new research.



Inscriptions and other archaeological evidence had pointed to the Phnom Kulen mountain as the likely location of Mahendraparvata, but scientists were only able to uncover small and apparently isolated shrines. The city remained largely undetected owing to dense vegetation growing at the site, and because of the presence of Khmer Rouge guerillas who stayed in the area until the 1990s; the jungle remains littered with landmines and unexploded ordnance, making it an unsafe space for archaeologists.



Near Mahendraparvata, the researchers also found 366 individual mounds arranged in geometric patterns and built in groups of 15. The purpose of these mounds is unclear, but the lack of associated archaeological evidence suggests they weren’t funeral structures, former habitats, or architectural foundations. It will take further work to discern the purpose of these strange mounds as well as similar formations found elsewhere in Cambodia



Open Access: Mahendraparvata: an early Angkor-period capital defined through airborne laser scanning at Phnom Kulen
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/mahendraparvata-an-early-angkorperiod-capital-defined-through-airborne-laser-scanning-at-phnom-kulen/CAC3E93D6046CC27D862C1E333FD0713/core-reader
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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #131 on: October 16, 2019, 05:11:03 AM »
Lee Berger gets a hat trick.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2219742-lee-berger-we-have-made-another-major-discovery-about-early-humans/

Lee Berger: We have made another major discovery about early humans

Humanity’s ancient family tree is set to be shaken up by fossil skeletons found embedded in rock at a site near Johannesburg, South Africa. They could be from another long lost human cousin. “We have another major hominin discovery,” said Lee Berger at New Scientist Live on Saturday.

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #132 on: October 22, 2019, 01:58:30 PM »
More research on the Younger Drias impact hypothesis:

New evidence that an extraterrestrial collision 12,800 years ago triggered an abrupt climate change for Earth

...

So in 2016, my colleagues and I extracted sediment from the bottom of White Pond. Using 4-meter-long tubes, we were able to preserve the order and integrity of the many sediment layers that have accumulated over the eons.

Based on preserved seeds and wood charcoal that we radiocarbon dated, my team determined there was about a 10-centimeter thick layer that dated to the Younger Dryas Boundary, from between 12,835 and 12,735 years ago. That is where we concentrated our hunt for evidence of an extraterrestrial impact.

...

In the White Pond samples, we did indeed find high levels of platinum. The sediments also had an unusual ratio of platinum to palladium.

Both of these rare earth elements occur naturally in very small quantities. The fact that there was so much more platinum than palladium suggests that the extra platinum came from an outside source, such as atmospheric fallout in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial impact.

My team also found a large increase in soot, indicative of large-scale regional wildfires. Additionally, the amount of fungal spores that are usually associated with the dung of large herbivores decreased in this layer compared to previous time periods, suggesting a sudden decline in ice-age megafauna in the region at this time.

https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-that-an-extraterrestrial-collision-12-800-years-ago-triggered-an-abrupt-climate-change-for-earth-118244
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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #133 on: October 22, 2019, 06:00:40 PM »
Quote
suggesting a sudden decline in ice-age megafauna in the region at this time.

An impact of an extraterrestrial object.
That would mean that It is likely that it was not just humans responsible for the megafauna extinction.
Thanks kassy, interesting.
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TerryM

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #134 on: October 23, 2019, 12:09:42 AM »
The evidence just keeps building.


In the deserts of the American Southwest the "Black Mat" is easy to identify, but it's significance will not be officially recognised until professors of my generation have died out.


It's the way science advances, unfortunately.
Terry

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #135 on: October 23, 2019, 07:37:44 PM »
I think it is gaining traction. The Chixilub impact was controversial for a time and then it wasn´t. Some of them might live to see it.

One of my first internet buddies in 2005 or so was obsessed with this period. Both the see saw mechanism between the hemispheres and the cause.

We know a lot more now. Pity he did not get to see this.

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kassy

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #136 on: October 25, 2019, 02:10:21 PM »
Some really cool finds from after the inpact:

Astonishing Fossil Site Reveals Mammal's Recovery After The Last Great Mass Extinction

An extraordinary fossil location has revealed the speed of evolution after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Within 100,000 years the number of mammalian species represented at a Colorado site more than doubled, and larger-bodied creatures appeared over the next million years. No previous site has recorded the aftermath of a mass extinction in anything like such detail.

...

At Corral Bluffs, just outside Colorado Springs, a single outcrop reveals the last hundred thousand years of the Cretaceous (K) and first million years of the Paleogene  (Pg) era without the discontinuities seen elsewhere. Thousands of fossils outstandingly presevered within egg-shaped structures called concretions have already been recovered. Moreover, the site is layered with volcanic ash that can be accurately dated, giving us precise measurements on when its 150 stratigraphic layers were deposited.

The age of the rocks had led fossil hunters to search Corral Bluffs before, but without success. It was only when Lyson was visiting South African colleagues, who look out for concretions rather than bits of weathered bone, that he realized the problem. Within a week of his return, he was finding a skull every 15 minutes. (international cooperation is a great thing, K  8) )
...

“Large bodied mammals disappear at the K-Pg boundary but returned to near KPgE levels within 100,000 years,” the paper reports. Judging by the teeth, herbivores, including some nut eaters, appeared where once mammals had been omnivorous or fed largely on insects. Thereafter Lyson found two intervals around 300,000 and 700,000 years after the extinction where even bigger mammals emerged, no longer having to look out for large dinosaurs.

...

Similarly, leaf mass per area and diversity of large plants took just 300,000 years to recover from the disaster. Among the fossils Lyson and co-authors report is the oldest known member of the bean family, dated to 65.35 million years ago, contradicting the theory legumes appeared in South America soon after the collision but took 7 million years to reach North America.

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/astonishing-fossil-site-reveals-mammals-recovery-after-the-last-great-mass-extinction/

It´s cool to have a timeline and we also know more about beans now.  :)

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #137 on: October 25, 2019, 06:40:08 PM »
Thanks kassy, interesting :).
I love beans. Right now I am having beans every day for more than a week. The sperzie variant ;).
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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #138 on: October 28, 2019, 06:13:52 PM »
The Homeland of Modern Humans
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencenews.org/article/humans-oldest-maternal-ancestors-may-have-arisen-southern-africa/amp
https://phys.org/news/2019-10-homeland-modern-humans.html

A study has concluded that the earliest ancestors of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) emerged in a southern African 'homeland' and thrived there for 70 thousand years.

"It has been clear for some time that anatomically modern humans appeared in Africa roughly 200 thousand years ago. What has been long debated is the exact location of this emergence and subsequent dispersal of our earliest ancestors."

... "We merged 198 new, rare mitogenomes to the current database of modern human's earliest known population, the L0 lineage. This allowed us to refine the evolutionary tree of our earliest ancestral branches better than ever before," says first author Dr. Eva Chan from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, who led the phylogenetic analyses.

... By combining the L0 lineage timeline with the linguistic, cultural and geographic distributions of different sub-lineages, the study authors revealed that 200 thousand years ago, the first Homo sapiens sapiens maternal lineage emerged in a 'homeland' south of the Greater Zambezi River Basin region, which includes the entire expanse of northern Botswana into Namibia to the west and Zimbabwe to the east.

Investigating existing geological, archeological and fossil evidence, geologist Dr. Andy Moore, from Rhodes University, revealed that the homeland region once held Africa's largest ever lake system, Lake Makgadikgadi.

"Prior to modern human emergence, the lake had begun to drain due to shifts in underlying tectonic plates. This would have created, a vast wetland, which is known to be one of the most productive ecosystems for sustaining life," says Dr. Moore.

The authors' new evolutionary timelines suggest that the ancient wetland ecosystem provided a stable ecological environment for modern humans' first ancestors to thrive for 70 thousand years.



... "We observed significant genetic divergence in the modern humans' earliest maternal sub-lineages, that indicates our ancestors migrated out of the homeland between 130 and 110 thousand years ago," explains Professor Hayes. "The first migrants ventured northeast, followed by a second wave of migrants who travelled southwest. A third population remained in the homeland until today."

The authors propose that changes in Africa's climate triggered the first human explorations, which initiated the development of humans' genetic, ethnic and cultural diversity. ... The authors speculate that the success of this migration was most likely a result of adaptation to marine foraging, which is further supported by extensive archaeological evidence along the southern tip of Africa.

Human origins in a southern African palaeowetland and first migrations, Nature (2019)



------------------

I thought this was all settled in the last episode of BattleStar Galactica!
« Last Edit: October 30, 2019, 05:06:28 PM by vox_mundi »
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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #139 on: October 30, 2019, 12:21:38 AM »
This Mysterious Arctic Tree Stump Could Reveal Ancient Secrets
https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/this-mysterious-arctic-tree-stump-could-reveal-ancient-secrets/amp/

A hunting party in Nunavut stumbled upon a rare sight: a tree stump poking out of the permafrost. However it got there, the wood will likely tell scientists secrets of the distant past

... “In my estimation, it’s a pretty amazing discovery,” said Hakongak. “You find something like that once in your lifetime up here.”

... Located on Victoria Island, Cambridge Bay is roughly 600 km above the treeline, the latitudes above which the climate is too cold for trees to survive.



... Forests covered many parts of the Arctic millions of years ago, and pieces of fossilized wood have been found in Nunavut, on Bylot Island, Ellesmere Island and Axel Heiberg Island, that date back 45 million years.

If the stump was part of an ancient forest, Blanchette speculates, it was likely buried or frozen by a catastrophic event, like a landslide, then exposed due to erosion and melting permafrost. (The wood from the frozen forest he studied on Ellesmere was between two and 10 million years old.)

As the planet warms, still-rare finds of ancient wood like this may become more common, adds Marie-Eve LaRocque, a spokesperson for Polar Knowledge Canada, the federal organization that operates the Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay.

The research station plans to get a sample from the stump and send it for analysis to scientists at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. The first step is to have the wood radiocarbon dated; the technique is reliable for dating items less than 50,000 years old, and the results would tell scientists if the wood is more recent jetsam or something far older.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

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TerryM

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #140 on: October 30, 2019, 06:33:14 AM »
^^
Some additional forests on Ellesmere Island that had been frozen, not fossilized, 2 to 8 MM yrs ago.


https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ellesmere-island-mummified-forest


Earlier today on a different thread mention was made of ongoing coal mining at Spitzenburg. Spitzenburg was a coaling station in the early days of steam. I wonder how long ago those swamps turned to coal, and how the trees and ferns survived the 6 months of darkness.


Another article today featured huge coal deposits in Alaska, again above the polar circle & I recall a large coal seam in the NWT that has been burning ever since it came in contact with a seam of sulfur some millenia ago. Again, how could these plants have survived and flourished with no insolation for 6 months, and how old are they.


Terry

vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #141 on: October 30, 2019, 07:02:09 AM »
^
I think most of the coal comes from deposits over 300 million years old. The position of.Spitzenburg and other northern coal seams was much further south at that point in time. More light and warmer.

Continents are still moving. This is what Earth will look like 250 million years from now. Another Pangea?

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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #142 on: November 05, 2019, 03:15:00 AM »
Project Silica: The Case for Storing Humanity's Most Important Data on Glass Drink Coasters
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-silica/
https://gizmodo.com/the-case-for-storing-humanitys-most-important-data-on-g-1839615098



Microsoft just revealed a proof of concept. It’s a thin square of glass that’s been laser-etched with microscopic geometric shapes called “voxels” that contain a combined 75.6 gigabytes of data, which contains the 1978 film Superman in its entirety. The announcement is a publicity stunt, sure, but the idea of storing our most important data on slices of glass is undeniably poignant—and practical.

Microsoft calls this new glass storage system Project Silica. According to the company’s press release, these little glass coasters could help Warner Bros. transition its archives from vulnerable 35-millimeter film onto a medium that could last centuries.

“Glass has a very, very long lifetime,” Microsoft Research principal researcher Ant Rowstron told Variety. His team says it tried baking the glass in ultra-hot ovens, submerging them in boiling water, microwaving it, scratching it with steel wool, but still the data remained uncorrupted. “If you take a hammer to it, you can smash glass,” Rowstron added. So, ultimately, glass can break.

When you think about it, though, a cold storage method like this holds lots of promise. The term “cold storage” refers to the process of storing data that doesn’t need to be accessed daily, weekly, or even annually but rather preserved for the long haul. Many of the commonly used physical data storage techniques like tape, film, or compact disk are subject to deterioration over time. Storing data on hard drives or servers ultimately leaves it vulnerable to deletion, and in the case of cloud computing, the final call of what gets deleted or kept might lie in the hands of care-nothing overlords rather than users who ought to own that data.

Beats clay tablets...

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wili

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #143 on: November 05, 2019, 04:36:04 AM »
"Beats clay tablets..."

Really? Wouldn't we need to wait 5-6000 years to know if that's true?

Clay tablets are at once immediately accessible (assuming you know the script and the language...which...we're all up on our cuneiform and Sumerian grammar, right?), and yet also has proven to be extremely durable (unless crushed into dust by the US stupidly and needlessly launching multiple invasions of the areas where these ancient civilizations evolved).

But yeah, you can fit a lot of useless, stupid movies on the glass versions...whether distant future generations will be impressed by this we will never know, but I have my doubts.
"A force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve; on les dit; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir." Choderlos de Laclos "You struggle to come up with some valid reasons, then cling to them, not because they're good, but just to not back down."

vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #144 on: November 07, 2019, 06:05:02 PM »
Huge Trove of Mammoth Skeletons Found in Mexico
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-huge-trove-mammoth-skeletons-mexico.html

Archaeologists said Wednesday they have made the largest-ever discovery of mammoth remains: a trove of 800 bones from at least 14 of the extinct giants found in central Mexico.

Moreover, they believe they have made the first-ever find of a mammoth trap set by humans, who would have used it to capture the huge herbivores more than 14,000 years ago, said Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

The skeletal remains were found in Tultepec, near the site where President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's government is building a new airport for Mexico City.

Some bore signs that the animals had been hunted, leading experts to conclude that they had found "the world's first mammoth trap," it said.



https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50330717

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #145 on: November 08, 2019, 05:54:26 PM »
Scientists Link Neanderthal Extinction to Human Diseases
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-scientists-link-neanderthal-extinction-human.html



In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, Greenbaum and his colleagues propose that complex disease transmission patterns can explain not only how modern humans were able to wipe out Neanderthals in Europe and Asia in just a few thousand years but also, perhaps more puzzling, why the end didn't come sooner.

... To understand why modern humans replaced Neanderthals and not the other way around, the researchers modeled what would happen if the suite of tropical diseases our ancestors harbored were deadlier or more numerous than those carried by Neanderthals.

"The hypothesis is that the disease burden of the tropics was larger than the disease burden in temperate regions. An asymmetry of disease burden in the contact zone might have favored modern humans, who arrived there from the tropics," said study co-author Noah Rosenberg, the Stanford Professor of Population Genetics and Society in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

According to the models, even small differences in disease burden between the two groups at the outset would grow over time, eventually giving our ancestors the edge. "It could be that by the time modern humans were almost entirely released from the added burden of Neanderthal diseases, Neanderthals were still very much vulnerable to modern human diseases," Greenbaum said. "Moreover, as modern humans expanded deeper into Eurasia, they would have encountered Neanderthal populations that did not receive any protective immune genes via hybridization."

The researchers note that the scenario they are proposing is similar to what happened when Europeans arrived in the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries and decimated indigenous populations with their more potent diseases.

-------------------------------

Newly Discovered Motifs in Rock Art in Tumlehed Shows Seafaring in the Stone Age
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-newly-motifs-art-tumlehed-seafaring.html

South-west Sweden's best preserved rock painting has now been dated—it is from the late Stone Age. With the aid of new technologies, researchers at the University of Gothenburg have been able to reveal a number of previously unknown motifs that are no longer visible to the naked eye. The most important of these newly discovered motifs are boats with elk-head stems. This is the first time that these kinds of boats have been documented in southern or western Scandinavia and these motifs provide further evidence of the long-distance sea voyages undertaken by Stone Age maritime hunters.

... This technology has made it possible for the first time to date the rock painting in Tumlehed. It is from the late Stone Age and was painted some time between 4200-2500 years BCE by mobile hunters who had come by boat to the west coast of Sweden to hunt seal and whales.

The new technologies used on the Tumlehed rock painting included the digital image enhancing program Dstretch, which was originally developed by NASA and is being increasingly used in rock art research. It was used to digitally enhance symbols that are no longer visible to the naked eye.

Using portable X-ray fluorescence (PXRF) spectroscopy, the basic chemical composition of the pigment used in the motifs was also determined, and this gave the researchers data which revealed that different batches of paint had been used for some of the motifs. This suggests at least two separate episodes of producing the rock painting.

"Elk-head boats are often associated with hunting and fishing scenes, and we have interpreted the motifs in Tumlehed as three elk-head boats related to a small whale, a seal and four fish," says Bettina Schulz Paulsson.

The Tumlehed rock painting indicates similar maritime voyages during the Stone Age that are culturally connected to the peoples of eastern and northern Fennoscandia, an area that covers Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Kola Peninsula and Russian Karelia.

Bettina Schulz Paulsson et al. Elk Heads at Sea: Maritime Hunters and Long‐Distance Boat Journeys in Late Stone Age Fennoscandia, Oxford Journal of Archaeology (2019)
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kassy

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #146 on: November 08, 2019, 10:29:37 PM »
"The hypothesis is that the disease burden of the tropics was larger than the disease burden in temperate regions. An asymmetry of disease burden in the contact zone might have favored modern humans, who arrived there from the tropics,"

A whole bunch of tropical diseases are also just tropical. Immunity to something does not matter if the vector does not live where you are.

I think immunity becomes much more of an issue when society changed after people settled and we lived with domesticated animals.

Old versions of the plague (of a version which did not yet transmit via fleas) have been found in Siberia but population density for both humans and fleas was to low to change the disease to a highly contagious one.

They draw a parallel to Europeans arriving in South America but that is a totally different situation. We lived with the pigs they didn´t.

This was not an issue at that time because no one was farming.

I think the neanderthal groups were smaller over all and their smaller groups were spread more thinly. The newer wave just had more people and was also more succesful because of good timing and they basically took over population wise so they just assimilated the pockets of neanderthals.

The article states:
Within this narrow contact zone, which was centered in the Levant where first contact took place, Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted in an uneasy equilibrium that lasted tens of millennia.

Ironically, what may have broken the stalemate and ultimately allowed our ancestors to supplant Neanderthals was the coming together of our two species through interbreeding.


This is BS. How do you know the equilibrium was uneasy. Its not like they had issues over tar pits or whatever you project.   

And there was no stalemate. If you could have done an accurate headcount at the time you would probably see more sapiens over time.

an uneasy equilibrium that lasted tens of millennia. or you don´t have enough data which does not matter if you do not care what you are writing about.

I am pretty sure general population dynamics is more important then immunity to pathogen packages. Their case would be more compelling if they showed pathogens that moved along the same time frames into the same regions but that is just not likely.


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vox_mundi

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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #147 on: November 09, 2019, 12:20:19 AM »
^

So how would the presence of a Paleolithic version of a virus (... with characteristics like HIV as an example), but unique to each species, human and neanderthal, play out in your scenario?

What if each species had partial immunity to their own variation of the disease and no immunity to the other's disease?

You seem to insist that there has to be a vector, but, in the case of HIV, humans ARE the vector. It goes where they go and it is not limited to the tropics.

Other viruses may have come and gone with similar characteristics.

Quote
... This is BS. How do you know the equilibrium was uneasy. ...

How do you know that it wasn't?

Quote
... ... And there was no stalemate. If you could have done an accurate headcount at the time you would probably see more sapiens over time.

Could you share your data source that supports such an absolute certainty of conclusion.

Conclusion are generally not supported by 'ifs' and 'probablys'.

Remember, this hypothesis is based on a model. Just a model.  :)
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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #148 on: November 09, 2019, 08:04:30 PM »
HIV is not a good example here. It is a retrovirus and we don´t generally have immunity to it. We know that the two species interbred so if either of them had it the other would get it too.

Basically i did not like the way the article was written but that is also interpretation on my part of course. And i did not read the research itself. Or the whole article. Note to self etc.

The short version you posted basically omitted the part about a 100000 year standoff in the Levant.

I was thinking about contact in Europe but that was the next phase.

The paper itself:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12862-7

The uneasy equilibrium can be read in many ways and maybe it was an easy equilibrium?

I am going to read a bunch of the links from that article on what they know about the situation.
Still not sold on the idea but maybe they already ruled out land changes in north Africa leading to extra migration or things like that.

Thanks for the interesting article vox.  :)
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Re: Archaeology/Paleontology news
« Reply #149 on: November 13, 2019, 01:47:05 PM »
Modern Apes Smarter Than Pre-Humans
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-modern-apes-smarter-pre-humans.html

New research from the University of Adelaide suggests living great apes are smarter than our pre-human ancestor Australopithecus, a group that included the famous "Lucy."

The new research measured the rate of blood flow to the cognitive part of the brain, based on the size of the holes in the skull that passed the supply arteries. This technique was calibrated in humans and other mammals and applied to 96 great ape skulls and 11 Australopithecus fossil skulls.

Research lead Professor Roger Seymour from the University of Adelaide's School of Biological Sciences said the study revealed a higher rate of blood flow to the cognitive part of the brain of living great apes compared to Australopithecus.

"The results were unexpected by anthropologists because it has been generally assumed that intelligence is directly related to the size of the brain,"' Professor Seymour said. ...

Open Access: Roger S. Seymour et al. Cerebral blood flow rates in recent great apes are greater than in Australopithecus species that had equal or larger brains, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2019)
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late