Clipmarks | invictus's Anthropology collection

Little arrow that rewrites history books

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:25:15 GMT

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Two researchers from Wits University believe that what they have discovered is a 60 000-year-old arrow that was fired from the earliest known bow. Their discovery has pushed back the origins of bow-and-arrow technology by 20 000 years.

The bow, probably made of wood and long since decayed, was used at a time when Neanderthals in Europe were using large spears in duels with woolly mammoths and other large prehistoric game.

The bone arrow, just 5cm long, was excavated by Wadley at the Sibudu cave, near the coastal town of Ballito in KwaZulu Natal, two years ago.

It's mystery who the people were who fashioned the arrow.

Also at this time, humankind was leaving an ever-increasing archaeological record of the first inklings of modern human behaviour. They were burying the dead, using coloured pigments and wearing jewellery.

"This at a time a few thousand years before they walked out of Africa, to become the ancestors of all humans," said Backwell.

Tags: archaeology, anthropology, south africa, prehistory, arrow, science

Is Monogamy Natural?

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:45:12 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

"Lots of animals," Quirk says, "have the 'marriage' instinct: penguins, parrots, swans, gibbons, seahorses, humans. ... What do all these animals have in common? Long childhoods. Who has the longest childhood in the animal kingdom? Humans."

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Is Monogamy Natural?

Vaunted in the mainstream media, two new reports from the Pew Research Center report and the National Survey of Families and Households indicate that couples become bored and unhappy sooner than was previously thought: more like three years into their togetherness than seven.

For species whose slow-growing offspring statistically stand better chances of survival with two parents providing double-sustenance, double-vigilance, double-protection and double-support, monogamy makes scientific sense. But because it's so difficult "to live in the same nest for fifteen years," as Quirk puts it, "love is an instinct coded into our genes."

Fool yourself all you want about free will.

"We inherited the desire to fall in love," Quirk insists, because that soul-baring, die-for-you devotion helped our ancestors "raise babies on the dangerous Pleistocene savanna."

Tags: anthropology, genetics, humans, marriage, monogamy, instincts

Out of Africa, Not Once But Twice

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:36:14 GMT

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Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Modern humans are known to have left Africa in a wave of migration around 50,000 years ago, but another, smaller group -- possibly a different subspecies -- left the continent 50,000 years earlier, suggests a new study.

While all humans today are related to the second "out of Africa" group, it's likely that some populations native to Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia retain genetic vestiges of the earlier migrants, according to the paper's author, Michael Schillaci.

Schillaci, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Toronto, also found the earlier group of emigrants had some genetic similarity to Neanderthals, a hominid that left Africa much earlier, settling in Europe and parts of western and central Asia.

Tags: anthropology, humans, migration, africa, neanderthal, prehistory, science

Human line 'nearly split in two'

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:24:48 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Ancient humans started down the path of evolving into two separate species before merging back into a single population, a genetic study suggests.

The genetic split in Africa resulted in distinct populations that lived in isolation for as much as 100,000 years, the scientists say.

This could have been caused by arid conditions driving a wedge between humans in eastern and southern Africa.

Details have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

It would be the longest period for which modern human populations have been isolated from one another.

Tags: anthropology, humans, science

Language might have evolved from gestures

Mon, 07 May 2007 17:58:52 GMT

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Clip Source: www.stonepages.com

Language might have evolved from gestures

Researchers speculate about how prehuman species developed the capacity for complex language. One theory suggests that humans' apelike ancestors first communicated through gestures. Once the neural circuits for gesture-based language had evolved, those same brain areas could have switched over to verbal communication. Indeed, research has shown that modern apes use the same area of the brain to interpret hand signals as humans use to process spoken language.

Working at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Frans B.M. de Waal and Amy S. Pollick observed communications among 34 captive chimpanzees and among 13 captive bonobos, also known as pygmy chimpanzees. The researchers logged every hand gesture, facial expression, and vocal cry that one animal directed at another. They also noted the social context—playing, grooming, fighting, having sex, eating, and so on—in which each signal occurred.

Tags: anthropology, evolution, human brain, language, humans

Rise of man theory ‘out by 400,000 years’

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:16:04 GMT

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clipper's remarks: A very controversial, unorthodox and exciting new theory on the history of humanity. Professor Helmut Ziegert from Germany, a very experienced and bright archaeologist, comes up with new findings that could shake all we know about the distant past of homo sapiens and the starting point of the Neolitic Age, which was the beginning of our civilization.

Sean Kingsley, an archaeologist and the managing editor of Minerva, said: “This research is nothing less than a quantum leap in our understanding of Man’s intellectual and social history. For archaeology it’s as radical as finding life on Mars.

“As a veteran of over 81 archaeological surveys and excavations . . . Ziegert is nothing if not scientifically cautious, which makes the current revelation all the more exciting.”

Clip Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

Rise of man theory ‘out by 400,000 years’

Our earliest ancestors gave up hunter-gathering and took to a settled life up to 400,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to controversial research.

The accepted timescale of Man’s evolution is being challenged by a German archaeologist who claims to have found evidence that Homo erectus — mankind’s early ancestor, who migrated from Africa to Asia and Europe — began living in settled communities long before the accepted time of 10,000 years ago.

The point at which settlement actually took place is the first critical stage in humanity’s cultural development.

Helmut Ziegert, of the Institute of Archaeology at Hamburg University, says that the evidence can be found at excavated sites in North and East Africa, in the remains of stone huts and tools created by upright man for fishing and butchery.

Tags: archaeology, anthropology, civilization, humanity, neolitic age, helmut ziegert, science

Climate changes caused the Neanderthal extinction?

Mon, 07 May 2007 18:03:31 GMT

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Clip Source: www.stonepages.com

Climate – and not modern humans – was the cause of the Neanderthal extinction in the Iberian Peninsula. Such is the conclusion of the University of Granada research group RNM 179, headed by professor Miguel Ortega Huertas. Together with other scientists from the Gibraltar Museum, Stanford University and the Japan Marine Science & Technology Center (JAMSTEC), the Spanish scientists published their innovative work in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

The conclusions point out that Neanderthal populations did suffer fluctuations related to climate changes before the first Homo Sapiens arrived in the Iberian Peninsula. Cold, arid and highly variable climate was the least favourable weather for Neanderthals and 24,000 years ago they had to face the worst weather conditions in the last 250,000 years.

Tags: climate change, neanderthals, extinction, anthropology, science

Neanderthal Genome Map Possible

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:28:49 GMT

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Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Study: Neanderthal Genome Map Possible

Researchers studying Neanderthal DNA say it should be possible to construct a complete genome of the ancient hominid despite the degradation of the DNA over time.

There is also hope for reconstructing the genome of the mammoth and cave bear, according to a research team led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Their findings are published in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Tags: archaeology, anthropology, genetics, neanderthal, science

Clues Boost 'Out of Africa' Theory

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:48:20 GMT

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Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Clues Boost 'Out of Africa' Theory

July 18, 2007 — Twenty years after it was popularized, the "Out of Africa" theory, which posits that modern humans originally came from Africa before spreading out in a global conquest, has received an emphatic boost, scientists said on Wednesday.

Rival theories about the rise of Homo sapiens sapiens, as anatomically modern man is called, say humans either came from a single point in Africa or among different populations in different parts around the world, who evolved independently from a forebear, Homo erectus.

The "Out of Africa" scenario has been underpinned since 1987 by genetic studies based mainly on the rate of mutations in mitochondrial DNA, a genetic material inherited from the maternal line of ancestry.

The "multiple origins" school, meanwhile, points out that human skulls from around the world have clearly different characteristics, and argues that this proves our species evolved in slightly different forms more or less simultaneously.

Tags: anthropology, mitochondrial dna, africa, homo sapiens, science

'First European' is 1.2 million years old

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:17:18 GMT

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clipper's remarks: Very important new data that could change the history textbooks.

Clip Source: www.stonepages.com

An analysis of an ancient jaw containing teeth has confirmed that humans reached Western Europe well over a million years ago, far earlier than previously thought. The prehistoric fossil was excavated last June at Atapuerca in northern Spain, along with a previously reported tooth and stone tools used for butchering meat.

The new study of the jaw confirms that the 'first Europeans' arrived well over a million years ago, reports the archaeological team — led by Eudald Carbonell of the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain — in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

The research opens an interesting new chapter in the story of European colonization, the study authors say. The earliest known human fossils found outside of Africa are from Dmanisi in the modern-day Republic of Georgia. The Georgian hominins lived some 1.7 million years ago and represent an early expansion of humans outside Africa.

Tags: archaeology, anthropology, humans, europe

Modern humans reached India early

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:37:38 GMT

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Clip Source: www.thehindu.com

Modern humans reached India early

Evidence found in excavations by international team of scientists at Jwalapuram in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In the course of archaeological excavations at Jwalapuram in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh, an international team of scientists has found evidence that anatomically modern humans are likely to have reached India before a massive volcanic eruption in what is today Indonesia occurred tens of thousands of years ago.

The “super-eruption” of the Toba volcano in Sumatra some 74,000 years ago was the largest volcanic event to have occurred in the last two million years and the ash thrown up high into the atmosphere by that cataclysmic explosion reached India too, said Ravi Korisettar of the Department of History and Archaeology at Karnatak University in Dharwad, Karnataka.

Tags: archaeology, anthropology, prehistory, india

Ancient Texts Library

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 15:48:12 GMT

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clipper's remarks: You can find the Gilgamesh Epic, Enuma Elish, Sephir Yetzirah, Book of Dead, Celtic texts, Plato's dialogues or Rubaiyat of Omar Hayyam here.

Clip Source: www.ancienttexts.org

Library contents by culture, country, or religion

An almost complete index is here.

African
Buddhist
Celtic
Mary Jones
Celtic Literature Collective

English

Irish
Manx
Scottish
Welsh
Chinese
Christian
Egyptian
Ethiopian
Gnostic
Greek
Indian
Indian

Indonesian
Irish
Japanese
Jewish
Mesopotamian
The Latin Library
Scandinavian
Swedish

Norwegian

Finnish

Danish
Persian
Roman
Russian

Tags: ancient texts, mythology, culture, religion

Early humans followed the coast

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 22:55:16 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

Shifting sea levels since the last Ice Age, combined with coastal erosion, would have erased many traces of a maritime past, Professor Erlandson explained.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Early humans followed the coast

Coastlines were rich in resources for early humans

Learning how to live off the sea may have played a key role in the expansion of early humans around the globe.

After leaving Africa, human groups probably followed coastal routes to the Americas and South-East Asia.

Professor Jon Erlandson says the maritime capabilities of ancient humans have been greatly underestimated.

He has found evidence that early peoples in California pursued a sophisticated seafaring lifestyle 10,000 years ago.

Tags: anthropology, humans, civilization, seafare, history, science

Extracting Neanderthal DNA sample

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 04:45:13 GMT

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Clip Source: news.scotsman.com

Scientists bid to take Neanderthal DNA sample

SCIENTISTS are attempting to extract DNA for the first time from the fossilised bones thought to be of a Neanderthal man who roamed Britain 35,000 years ago.

Experts plan to use a tooth from an upper jaw to establish whether the closest relative of modern humans lived on the British Isles later than it was once thought.

The director of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project said: "Neanderthal DNA is very distinct and would show up clearly in tests. It is a critical test as this could be the first late Neanderthal fossil on mainline Britain.

"But it is also historic if there is modern human DNA as this would prove they were here earlier than previously thought.

"Neanderthals are so close to us in time, living 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, and a closely related species. We have lots of Neanderthal tools but no fossils. The team is excited about the tests, but we need a bit of luck as the DNA may not have survived."

Tags: neanderthals, anthropology, dna, britain

Colourful beginning for humanity

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 00:33:08 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

"Colour symbolism is an abstraction and we cannot work this abstraction without language; so this is a proxy for trying to find in the archaeological record real echoes for the emergence of language," Dr Barham told the British Association's Science Festival.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Colourful beginning for humanity

This ochre has a groove where the powder has been rubbed out

Evidence is emerging from Africa that colours were being used in a symbolic way perhaps 200,000 years ago, a UK scientist working in the region claims.

Lawrence Barham has been studying tools and other artefacts left by ancient humans at a site in Zambia.

He says the range of mineral pigments, or ochres, found there hints at the use of paint, perhaps to mark the body.

If correct, it would push back the earliest known example of abstract thinking by at least 100,000 years.

Being able to conceptualise - the ability to let one thing represent another - was a giant leap in human evolution.

It was the mental activity that would eventually permit the development of sophisticated language and maths.

Tags: color symbolism, prehistory, anthropology, africa, abstract thinking, archaeology, human evolution