"Where did we come from? Spencer Wells, a 33 year old population geneticist, has closed the door on his laboratory and is embarking on the biggest adventure of his life. His mission to retrace the most extraordinary journey of all time, a journey that involves every man, woman and child alive today. He offers his thoughts on this puzzling question, employing the latest in DNA research and technology to track the migration of humanity across the globe.
By collecting blood samples from thousands of men living in isolated tribes around the world and analyzing their DNA, Spencer and his colleagues discovered that all humans alive today can be traced back to a small tribe of hunter-gatherers who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago. Following this genetic trail, Spencer has charted the ancient journey of our ancestors as they populated the planet.
Spencer scours the world for indigenous people with deep roots in one place, asking for samples of DNA to test, in order to piece together our "big family" genetic tree. In Indiana Jones mode, Wells tacks down common ancestors and comes up with some surprising candidates. He shows with DNA results the diverse ways in which people and tribes react to the news of what science says about their arrival and relations. View this as adventure travel or as a painless way to begin your genetic literacy."
"One language dies every 14 days. By the next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will likely disappear, as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish. What is lost when a language goes silent?
...Within the next century, linguists think, nearly half of the world’s current stock of languages may disappear. More than a thousand are listed as critically or severely endangered—teetering on the edge of oblivion.
...Does each language have boxed up within it some irreplaceable beneficial knowledge? Are there aspects of cultures that won’t survive if they are translated into a dominant language? What unexpected insights are being lost to the world with the collapse of its linguistic variety? ....."
"Mysterious fossils of what may be a previously unknown type of human have been uncovered in caves in China, ones that possess a highly unusual mix of bygone and modern human features, scientists reveal.
Surprisingly, the fossils are only between 11,500 and 14,500 years old. That means they would have shared the landscape with modern humans when China's earliest farmers were first appearing.
"These new fossils might be of a previously unknown species, one that survived until the very end of the ice age around 11,000 years ago," said researcher Darren Curnoe, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
"Alternatively, they might represent a very early and previously unknown migration of modern humans out of Africa, a population who may not have contributed genetically to living people," Curnoe added. . . . "
Recently watched the documentary 'The Linguists' on the BBC channel about David Harrison's linguistic work around the world.
"Informative conversation with K. David Harrison, assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia and the author of the new book "When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge". He is the Director of Research at the Living Tongues Institute and was recently featured in the documentary called "The Linguists" which followed hands-on linguistic field work in countries around the world. In this fascinating interview, Harrison discusses the critical importance of the world's many threatened languages and the vital knowledge that each language uniquely packages and holds for all of us. Harrison also discusses the need for more trained linguistic personnel to go out into some of the remotest parts of the world to document these nearly extinct languages before they are lost to humanity forever."
"In 1959 paleontologist Mary Leakey pulled a bone fragment from a gully in Tanzania. The find turned out to be one small piece of Paranthropus boisei, an evolutionary cousin who went extinct some 1.5 million years ago. His strong jaw, flat molars, and bony spine on top of the skull led paleontologists to believe he ate nuts and seeds, earning him the nickname Nutcracker Man.
But last May, University of Utah geochemist Thure Cerling revealed that P. boisei had unexpected dining habits. Analyzing carbon isotopes from the tooth enamel of 22 P. boisei individuals, Cerling found traces not of nuts but mostly grasses and grasslike plants. About 80 percent of their food came from the fields, where they grazed alongside gazelles, horses, and elephants.
That diet is markedly different from those of other primates. Chimps and gorillas find their food in forests. Direct human ancestors ate plants and meat. “It’s long been thought that primate digestive physiology was not that adaptable, but clearly grass was an available resource and P. boisei took advantage of it,” Cerling says. “Even though it’s no longer around, P. boisei’s line lasted half a million years—twice as long as modern humans so far.”
".....In 1929 a teenager named Ridgely Whiteman wrote to the Smithsonian Institution about what he called warheads that he had been finding near Clovis, New Mexico. The spearpoints were elegantly chipped to sharpness on both edges and finished off with a groove, or flute, down the center of each side. Eventually such fluted points turned up in the oldest archaeological excavations elsewhere in North America.
Stone can't be carbon-dated, but the dating of organic material found with the tools showed that the people who used them were in America no earlier than about 13,500 years ago." . . . . . .
STOP, STOP, STOP.
At this point we have just lost all the literalist Bible Bangers who contend, contrary to all scientific evidence, that Jehovah created the earth 6,000 years ago, made the garden of Eden, populated with two white folk [Adam and Eve] and an evil talking Snake. After the Snake has screwed things up royally, he slithered off into the bushes, A & E did a considerable amount of fornicating, and produced the human race. And everyone is now permanently scared because of the Snake [according to Christians].
Wankers, each and every one. I really abhor stupidity, which is probably why I do not live in the U.S. But to continue with the narrative. . .
"The story most archaeologists built on these ancient tools was of a people they nicknamed Clovis, who came into North America via Siberia, moved south through the ice-free corridor, then dispersed, their descendants occupying North and South America within a thousand years. Since their tools were often found with the bones of mammoths and other large creatures, scientists usually described the Clovis people as big-game hunters.
For decades attempts to find proof of earlier people failed the rigorous tests of archaeological science. As late as 1996 a prominent archaeologist, Frederick Hadleigh West, could state in a major book that "Clovis is taken to be the basal, the founding, population for the Americas." But in the past decade that certainty has been dramatically shaken.
The most straightforward challenge to the old story is the matter of time. The era in which the Clovis people lived is limited by a time barrier that stops about 13,500 years ago. Two things create that barrier: the dates of organic material found with the tools and geologic evidence that the ice-free corridor would not have been open much before then.
But in 1997 a blue-ribbon panel of archaeologists visited a site in Chile called Monte Verde and agreed that people had lived there at least 14,500 years ago, about 1,000 years before the first sign of Clovis people in North America. Acceptance of the Monte Verde date not only broke the time barrier but focused new interest on other sites with early dates. . . . . . "
It would appear that some charlatans will do absolutely anything to establish the validiity and historicity of Christianity, well, religion in general. The 'Jordanian Codices' episode began in March of this year. But by September it had been established that the 'Jordanian Codices' were undoubtedly fakes, not even very well produced fakes, and David Elkington's proposed book deal was in the process of collapsing.
Fascinating trail of deception, somewhat like a contemporary detective story. This involved story all began with a press release, passed though the hallowed halls of academia and scientific investigation, naturally was touted on Facebook, and eventually found its way to YouTube:
"One of the biggest and best preserved hoards of ancient sealed books, which had been secretly hidden for centuries, has been discovered in Jordan. Early indications are that some of the books could date from the first century CE/ADand may be among the earliest Christian documents, predating the writings of St Paul. Leading academics consider that the find might be as pivotal as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.The hoard consists of up to 70 ring-bound books (codices) made of lead and copper. Many of them are sealed on all sides. Scrolls, tablets and other artefacts, including an incense bowl, were also found at the same site. Some of the lead pages are written in a form of archaic Hebrew script with ancient messianic symbols. Some of the writing appears to be in a form of code.There is likely to be considerable academic and political debate about the collection’s authenticity, meaning and interpretation. But now there is also a race against time to safeguard the collection’s future. Having been originally discovered some 5 years ago in a remote cave within a militarized zone by Jordanian Bedouin, the hoard was subsequently acquired by an Israeli Bedouin, who illegally smuggled them across the Border into Israel, wheret hey remain hidden under his protection.However, legal advice has confirmed that the find qualifies as treasure troveunder Jordanian law, and is rightly the property of the Kingdom of Jordan. TheJordanian Government is now working at the highest levels to repatriate and safeguard the collection. The British team leading the work on the discovery fears that the present Israeli ‘keeper’ may be looking to sell some of the books on to the black market, or worse - destroy them.The collection appears to be of mixed provenance. But initial metallurgical tests indicate that some of the books made of lead could date from the firstcentury CE/AD, based on the form of corrosion which has taken place, which experts believe would be impossible to achieve artificially. Sealed books were used by early Christian writers as a code for secret teaching; they were heavily persecuted and needed to protect their knowledge. Until now, no such book has ever been found. The codices were discovered in an area to which Christian refugees are known to have fled after the fall of Jerusalem in 70CE/AD, and where important documents from the same period have previously been found. The existence of a significant, hidden collection of sealed codices is mentioned in the Christian Bible’s Book of Revelation and in other biblical books."
"The current consensus amongst expert bloggers in the fields of Religion, Archaeology and Linguistics is that the Jordinian Lead Codices are in – all probability – not authentic." [many links]
"More scandalous is the complete lack of journalistic integrity, honest research, and thorough fact-checking. These codices might never have been heard of if the authors of the reports for BBC and Fox News (among others) had just checked with the academic community before publishing the “find”. At the very least, the journalists might have used less authoritative language, expressed more caution, and exposed the controversy rather than simply stating, as if doing so made it fact, that these codices were “the earliest Christian texts” and that they held “early images of Jesus. . . . . .”
But my favortite report is from the sensationalist Daily Mail [with lots of lovely photos and is a must see/read]. This British tabloid is always good for a few chuckles.
"Seventy metal books found in cave in Jordan could change our view of Biblical history. For scholars of faith and history, it is a treasure trove too precious for price. This ancient collection of 70 tiny books, their lead pages bound with wire, could unlock some of the secrets of the earliest days of Christianity. . . . . "
By now nearly everyone has heard about how the end of the Mayan calendar on 21 December 2012 is a sign of doom and destruction for the world. But how much of what has been written is actually based on facts?
In the vast Mesoamerican region which comprised northern Mexico to central America, there were two major groups of people, those who lived in the Aztec region and those who lived in the Mayan area. They had very differiing historical antecedents and cultural mythologies.
Mayan / Aztec Civilizations Mayans
The first clearly Maya settlements were established around 1800 BC in the Soconusco region of the Pacific Coast [southern Mexico]. The Maya centers of the southern lowlands went into decline during the 8th and 9th centuries and were abandoned shortly thereafter. This decline was coupled with a cessation of monumental inscriptions and large-scale architectural construction.There is no universally accepted theory to explain this collapse and the disappearaance of millions of people.
During the succeeding 'Postclassic period' [from the 10th to the early 16th century], development in the northern centers in Yucatan persisted. The Maya cities of the northern lowlands in Yucatán continued to exist until the Spanish colonization in the 16th century. The arrival of the Spanish marked the end of the Mayan civilization.
Aztecs
The true origin of the Mexicas [who would become the Aztecs] is uncertain. According to their legends, the Mexica tribe place of origin was 'Aztlán'. It is generally thought that Aztlán was somewhere to the north of the Valley of Mexico; the Mexicas eventually arrived on a small swampy island in Lake Texcoco where they founded their capital city of Tenochtitlan in 1325.
The Aztecs would, in the next 100 years, come to dominate the Valley of Mexico and extend its power to both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific shore. Over this period, Tenochtitlan gradually became the dominant power of central Mexico.
In the spring of 1521 Hernan Cortes and his Spanish troops lay siege to Tenochtitlan, a battle that ended on August 13 with the destruction of the city, and the eventual collapse of the Aztec empire.
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Now that the brief history lesson is over, time for a few facts about the '2012 Mayan Calendar Doomsday Scenario'. Google '2012' and you will come up with millions of sites to sift through. Very few of them have any authentic information, since the majority are little more than uninformed, sensationalist nonsense. And nearly all will have a photo of the 'Aztec Calendar Stone' [pictured below, and which is NOT Mayan and has nothing to do with the Mayans] and just might be your first clue that the owners of the site don't know what they are talking about.
A notable exception is the site of Mark Van Stone, a Mayan epigrapher.
The Maya Cosmic Prophecy: From Sensation to Sensibility
"Maya Scholars, in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and North America, have been watching with amusement and dismay as self-styled experts proclaim that ancient Maya prophets foretold an earth-shattering happening to occur December 21, 2012. This predicted phenomenon gets described in contradictory but often cataclysmic fashion--as an ecological collapse, a sunspot storm, a rare cosmic conjunction of the earth, sun, and the galactic center, a new and awesome stage of our evolution, and even a sudden reversal of the Earth's magnetic field which will erase all our computer drives. One even predicts the earth's initiation into a Galactic Federation, whose elders have been accelerating our evolution with a "galactic beam" for the last 5000 years. In sum, the world as we know it will suddenly come to a screeching halt.
These predictions are alleged to be prophecies by so-called "Ancient Mayans" whose "astronomically precise" calendar supposedly terminates on that date. According to such accounts, these mysterious Maya geniuses appeared suddenly, built an extraordinary civilization, designed in it clues for us, and then suddenly, inexplicably, vanished, as if they had completed their terrestrial mission. These same experts claim special credibility for the Maya prophecies by asserting that these historic sages, with their possible extraterrestrial origins, had tapped into an astonishing esoteric wisdom. . . . . . "
Is the world really going to end? Did the Maya really believe the world would end?
There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012. The notion of a "Great Cycle" coming to an end is completely a modern invention. "
David Morrison: Surviving 2012 and Other Cosmic Disasters
"What underlies the incredible diversity of life on Earth? How have complex life forms evolved? The journey from water to land, the return of land mammals to the sea, and the emergence of humans all suggest that creatures past and present are members of a single tree of life.
Evolution determines who lives, who dies, and who passes traits on to the next generation. The process plays a critical role in our daily lives, yet it is one of the most overlooked -- and misunderstood -- concepts ever described."
The Evolution series' goals are to heighten public understanding of evolution and how it works, to dispel common misunderstandings about the process, and to illuminate why it is relevant to all of us."
Where would we be today if it weren't for the scientists of the past? From the miniature world of genetics to the vast expanse of space, review the greatest discoveries of all time across eight different scientific categories in this multi-part series. Join host Bill Nye as he recounts the 100 most important discoveries and explains how each one has had a hand in shaping the modern world. Watch his lively and dramatic accounts and learn how the great discoveries were made, how they impacted the development of scientific knowledge and how they touch our lives today. From the discovery of the dinosaur-killing KT asteroid to Carl Linnaeus' still-used life form classification system to the groundbreaking theories of Charles Darwin. Learn how intelligent life began on earth.
