The news page

[marduk]

Hawass now has his wall
someone needs to point out to him the success such engineering projects have had in the past though
like at
Greenham Common
Scotland
China

we all now know impenetrable they all were

[Beagle]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/scien ... ref=slogin

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.

I'm surprised that this adaptation began only 3,000 years ago. I wonder if this date will change over time.

[Starflower]

http://www.payvand.com/news/06/dec/1103.html
This is a version of an article in the news page but it has a picture.

"The eye belonged to a large woman who died when she was 25 to 30 year old and was buried in Grave 6705," team director Mansur Sajjadi said on Sunday.

"Initial studies show traces of an abscess in the upper arch of the eye, and tracks made by the eyelid are visible on the lower part of the artificial eye," he added.

"It is still not clear what material was used to construct the eye, but it seems that it has been made of natural tar mixed with animal fat.

"The thinnest capillaries on the eyeball have been made with golden wires with a thickness of less than one millimeter.

"The pupil of the eye has been placed in the center of the eyeball and some parallel lines forming an almond pattern are seen around the pupil. The eyeball has two holes in its two sides, which were used for fixing the eye to the eye socket.

[Beagle]

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stor ... 809514.htm

Clendon says the continent, known as Sahul, was relatively densely populated on the land bridge connecting northern Australia to New Guinea, now separated by the Arafura Sea.

The other populated area was along what is now Australia's eastern seaboard.

It seems a bit odd that the language is as new as it is, since Australia has been occupied for over 50,000 yrs.

[Minimalist]

The "evidence" in support of this hypothesis seems a mite thin at the moment.

[Digit]

Hi Beag! I noticed a slot in your post about HSN being cannibals, again.
I find it difficult to believe that people would turn to eating their own kind unless it was simply because they enjoyed it.
Even at their most prolific, HSN weren't exactly standing on each others shoulders, so logically they would have moved to another area, I know of no hunter gatherer groups starving if they could range freely. Any thoughts?

[Beagle]

I agree.

There's not a lot of news around the net this week though.

[Beagle]

http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/2006/nzmammal.html

"This amazing find suggests that other mammals are waiting to be found there, and that New Zealand belonged to the birds only in more recent times," says Mr Worthy.
"It also suggests that New Zealand was not completely submerged, as some scientists thought, when sea levels were high about 25 to 30 million years ago."
The team believes that more mammal specimens may emerge, perhaps even other species that predate the split between pouched marsupials and live-bearing placental mammals.

I love it when textbooks have to be re-written.

[Cognito]

Hi Beag! I noticed a slot in your post about HSN being cannibals, again.
I find it difficult to believe that people would turn to eating their own kind unless it was simply because they enjoyed it.
Even at their most prolific, HSN weren't exactly standing on each others shoulders, so logically they would have moved to another area, I know of no hunter gatherer groups starving if they could range freely. Any thoughts?

Cannibalism amongst the Neanderthals really doesn't make any sense. In all of the excavations so far there is no hint of warfare and their population density was apparently quite low. Wouldn't the practice of cannibalism wipe them out quickly since they were already living on the edge? Maybe there was some opportunistic postmortem cooking going on in groups that were living near starvation, but even that seems unlikely due to the latest information that has come to light dealing with Neanderthal burial rituals. Where does cannibalism fit it?

[Digit]

There are only 3 reasons, hunger, ritual, and pleasure.
Certain Pacific islanders routinely ate human fleash simply because they like the taste.
Ritual. Certain peoples routinely defleshed corpses, Columbus was so treated, what then do you do with the flesh? Eating it conserves valuable protein and can be seen as honouring the dead. 'Eat, this is my flesh etc'.
Corpses so treated could not be distinguished from the first view.
Hunger. Where hunger is the reason the known cases, as in Egypt, normally started with the children, which as a survival tactic makes sense.

[Beagle]

Hi Beag! I noticed a slot in your post about HSN being cannibals, again.
I find it difficult to believe that people would turn to eating their own kind unless it was simply because they enjoyed it.
Even at their most prolific, HSN weren't exactly standing on each others shoulders, so logically they would have moved to another area, I know of no hunter gatherer groups starving if they could range freely. Any thoughts?

Cannibalism amongst the Neanderthals really doesn't make any sense. In all of the excavations so far there is no hint of warfare and their population density was apparently quite low. Wouldn't the practice of cannibalism wipe them out quickly since they were already living on the edge? Maybe there was some opportunistic postmortem cooking going on in groups that were living near starvation, but even that seems unlikely due to the latest information that has come to light dealing with Neanderthal burial rituals. Where does cannibalism fit it?

Pardon me Digit for missing your post, and thank you Cogs for quoting him. The Christmas season has gobbled all my time.

To me, it's not too surprising to see evidence of cannabalism but it seems to be an isolated instance. HS has indulged in cannabalism when faced with starvation. I agree with Cognito that it was probably post mortem in this case with HN.

The English navy in the 18th and 19th century - when lost at sea - had a system of drawing lots to determine who was killed and cannabalized.
What a gruesome topic, huh?

[stan]

Cannibalism seems a little more plausible to me now than it did
a few years ago.
Aside from becoming aware of some examples of it here and there,
I learned recently how common it has been at times to eat uncooked
meat, organs, and fish. I read the memoirs of Captain Bly of the Bounty, and I read The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway (fiction, yes).
And then there are various people who drink camel and horse blood from live animals.
Maybe this seems strange to some of you, but someone accustomed to eating raw meat would certainly be tempted in extreme cases to
take a few bites of another person in order to survive. Maybe I'm just saying that people of olden times weren't as squeamish as we are today.
Captain Bly and his non-mutinous crew members survived for several months in an open boat before being rescued. THey were not successful in catching fish, but they were able to catch certain seabirds, which were eaten raw (all parts) after having been cut into 20 parts by the good captain. One fellow was so hungry that on one foraging expedition he ate
9 birds.

[Minimalist]

They have smilies for everything!

[Digit]

Alan Moorhead's book the Blue Nile contains reports by the early explorers searching for the source of the Nile that the Ethiopians ate their meat salted and peppered and uncooked as the normal way.

[marduk]

we still eat a wide range of uncooked meats and fish
Ham is one of the most commonly uncooked meas on our tables
in england its commonly called parma ham but in the U.S. iirc its known as country ham