Nobody Cares about Pre-History

[Beebo Brink]

Huh. I found this re-estimation of early Neolithic populations to be really interesting.

One of the world’s earliest farming villages housed surprisingly few people (sciencenews.org)

Prior population estimates have typically, and mistakenly, assumed that Çatalhöyük buildings crowded closely together were constructed at the same time, with all dwellings simultaneously occupied over at least several generations, the researchers contend. In other words, a big archaeological site retaining remnants of lots of buildings must have housed a big crowd.

“That’s like assuming all airport hotels are always filled up and every airport hotel over the past 50 years coexisted,” Kuijt says. “Scholars have systematically inflated population levels of Near Eastern farming villages.”

 

[Beebo Brink]

Scientists have discovered a 50,000-year-old herpes virus – and perhaps how modern humans came to rule the world (msn.com)

The discovery of the 50,000-year-old viruses points to an alternative explanation for Neanderthals’ demise: deadly infectious diseases carried by Homo sapiens. Having been separated for more than half a million years, the two species would have evolved immunity to different infectious diseases. When they encountered one another during Homo sapiens’ migration out of Africa, pathogens that caused innocuous symptoms in one species would have been deadly to the other, and vice versa.

The reason that Homo sapiens survived while Neanderthals disappeared is simple. Our ancestors lived closer to the equator. As more of the sun’s energy reaches the Earth, plant life is more abundant there. This provides a habitat for more dense and varied animal life, which in turn supports more microbes that are capable of jumping the species barrier and infecting humans. Consequently, Palaeolithic Homo sapiens would have carried more deadly pathogens than Neanderthals.

 

[Lexxi]

Wisconsin Historical Society Announces Cache of Ancient Canoes Discove | Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Society Announces Cache of Ancient Canoes Discovered in Madison Lake

www.wisconsinhistory.org

Wisconsin Historical Society Announces Cache of Ancient Canoes Discovered in Madison Lake

• Findings and ongoing research provide additional evidence of a submerged village site beneath Lake Mendota (Tee Waksikhominak)
• Up to 11 canoes identified by archaeologists
• Earliest canoe in cache approximately 4,500 years old, oldest in the Great Lakes region
• Findings and ongoing research provide additional evidence of a submerged village site beneath Lake Mendota (Tee Waksikhominak)
• Up to 11 canoes identified by archaeologists
• Earliest canoe in cache approximately 4,500 years old, oldest in the Great Lakes region

 

[Beebo Brink]

Origins of modern horses traced to breeding revolution 4200 years ago | New Scientist

A genetic analysis of ancient horses reveals that breeding techniques developed by people in the Pontic-Caspian steppes enabled the rapid spread of horse-powered travel

 

[Free]

Pretty interesting (imo).

 

[Beebo Brink]

Fossil of Neanderthal child with Down’s syndrome hints at early humans’ compassion | Neanderthals | The Guardian

 

[Beebo Brink]

Are Neanderthals and Homo sapiens the same species? (msn.com)

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

The "can they breed" definition of a species is pretty obsolete. Most dolphin species, including the false killer whale, can breed and hybrids happen in the wild.

 

[Beebo Brink]

"Species" is a human construct trying to make order out of the messiness that is Nature.

 

[Isabeau]

What An 18,000-Year-Old Wolf Puppy Teaches Us About Survival Through The Ice Age

“Dogor” translates to “friend” in the Yakut language. It’s what we named an ancient, well-preserved puppy and also happens to be a play on words—dog “or” wolf?

www.forbes.com

The study revealed that both early and modern dogs are genetically closer to ancient wolves in Asia than those in Europe, suggesting a domestication event somewhere in the east. Early dogs from northeastern Europe, Siberia and the Americas appear to have a single, shared origin from this eastern source.

However, early dogs from the Middle East, Africa and southern Europe show ancestry from another source related to wolves in the Middle East, indicating possible multiple domestication events or significant interbreeding with local wolf populations.

 

[Isabeau]

He stumbled onto a large tusk in a Mississippi creek. It turned out to be a first-of-its-kind discovery

Phillips confirmed the tusk belonged to a Columbian mammoth, a distant relative of the woolly mammoth. Columbian mammoths lived during the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, making the fossil anywhere from about 11,700 to 75,000 years old, Phillips said.

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

"Species" is a human construct trying to make order out of the messiness that is Nature.

LOL, next you'll say Race isn't real either

 

[Free]

LOL, next you'll say Race isn't real either

It's very real in the Olympics.

 

[Beebo Brink]

We Now Know Exactly Where In The World Humans And Neanderthals Hooked Up | IFLScience

Scientists took a close look at the geographical distribution of both species in Southwest Asia and Southeast Europe around the time we know they hooked up during the Late Pleistocene.

This revealed a clear location where the two human species overlapped with each other and likely interbred: the Zagros Mountains, a long mountain range on the Persian Plateau that stretches across the modern-day borders of Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Discovery of 5,000-year-old farming society in Morocco fills a major gap in history – north-west Africa was a central player in trade and culture (theconversation.com)

A new discovery of an ancient farming society at Oued Beht in Morocco fills a centuries-old gap in history. It reveals that, 5,000 years ago, the Maghreb (north-west Africa) was far from a backwater. Rather, it was an integral part of life in the Mediterranean, a region nestled between north Africa, south-western Asia and southern Europe.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Strange 5,000-Year-Old Underground Structure Discovered In Neolithic Dwelling In Denmark | IFLScience

 

[Beebo Brink]

New DNA evidence finds that Neanderthals didn't go extinct - The Brighter Side of News

Our ancestors split from the Neanderthal family tree around 600,000 years ago and developed modern characteristics about 250,000 years ago

 

[Free]

New DNA evidence finds that Neanderthals didn't go extinct - The Brighter Side of News

I'd make a joke referencing Trump, but it would be a horrible insult to Neanderthals bordering on racism.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Scientists Discovered a New Human Species That Defies Conventional Wisdom

Now, anthropologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Hawai’i are illustrating a previously unknown—or, rather, uncategorized—chapter of that story with the introduction of a new human species, H. juluensis. The researchers published the details of this new species in the journals Nature Communications and PaleoAnthropology.

 

[Beebo Brink]

We continue to significantly underestimate just how clever hominids (not even just humans) have been for a VERY long time.

Zambia find shows humans have built with wood for 476,000 years | Reuters

Along the banks of the Kalambo River in Zambia near Africa's second-highest waterfall, archaeologists have excavated two logs of the large-fruited bushwillow tree that were notched, shaped and joined nearly half a million years ago.

These artifacts, researchers said on Wednesday, represent the oldest-known example of humans - in this case a species that preceded our own - building wooden structures, a milestone in technological achievement that indicates that our forerunners displayed more ingenuity than previously thought.