New Human Species

Scientists have discovered a new human species.

Only one species of hominin exists on the planet today, and that’s Homo sapiens. But throughout more geologically recent Earth history, the human family was a complex tableaux of members. Over the years, scientists have tried to get a clearer picture of that prehistoric story by excavating ancient human sites around the world.

Now anthropologists are illustrating a previously unknown chapter of that story with the introduction of a formerly uncatalogued human species, Homo juluensis.

Homo juluensis means “big head”. This species thrived in eastern Asia from about 300,000 years ago to around 50,000 years ago but then died out. According to the researchers, they likely hunted wild horses, fashioned stone tools, and processed animal hides to survive frigid winters. The breakthrough for discovering this possibly new species came when a team began devising a new system for organizing fossil evidence. They did not expect to propose a new human ancestor species and then to organize hominin fossils from Asia into different groups. But their study clarifies a hominin fossil record that has tended to include anything that could not easily be assigned to Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, or Homo sapiens.

One possible member of the Homo juluensis species isn’t exactly a newcomer. Denisovans were first identified in 2010 by way of DNA extracted from a young girl’s fingerbone found in Siberia, but have not been given a species classification. They could belong to this new species.

Homo juluensis may also solve another mystery of the Xujiayao hominin fossils. These fossils have long perplexed researchers, as the remains display a mix of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens features. These remains have been confused for a variety of taxonomic representations, but scientists note that differences in the (big) cranium, the teeth, jaws, and a few other features indicate a new species. These fossil remains include Penghu 1 (jawbone), Xiahe (mandible), Xuchang (partial crania), and a variety of Denisova fossils.

Although this is a convincing argument that these particular specimens belong to a previously unknown human species, more research is needed. But since these fossils still defy any other species classification, it may only be a matter of time before the human tribe increases by at least one species.

 

Ancient Crime

Archaeologists have discovered that crime - particularly fraud and counterfeiting - are not new types of human activity. They can now prove that these underhanded dealings have been happening for millennium.

The evidence comes from 2 archeological sites in Spain; La Molina cave and the Cova del Gegant cave. At La Molina, 10 people were buried with goods that included pottery, bone awls, objects carved from ivory and amber beads. This site dates back to the 3rd millennium BC.

At the Cova del Gegant, an estimated 19 people were buried, dating from the 2nd millennium BC. These people were accompanied by pottery and ornamental beads made of lignite, coral, amber, shell and gold.

The amber beads tricked many archaeologists, but tests revealed that not all of them were real amber. Some of the ‘amber’ beads found at Cova del Gegant were found to be pieces of mollusk shell core coated with pine resin, and these were mixed in with real amber beads. The fake amber beads from La Molina were seeds coated with resin. Apparently this type of surface coating effectively emulated the translucence, shine and color of amber. In fact, similar methods of imitating turquoise in the Levant have been identified from the 6th millennium BC.

People started to trade commodities thousands of years ago in Europe. Amber was highly valuable and was used by leaders to cultivate an image of power and wealth. Some amber was brought to Spain from the Baltic Sea, but another trade route was through Sicily, which also supplied ivory, Alpine jade and cinnabar.

So why create fake amber beads? Perhaps there wasn’t enough real amber to fill the demand for it. Perhaps the traders - or their suppliers - saw a way to make ‘a fast buck’. And although the exotic goods buried with these people showed that they could afford the real thing, perhaps their survivors saw no reason to waste all the real, expensive stuff by burying it forever.

I heard it said once that ‘counterfeiting’ was the oldest profession, save one. At the time, I thought that was an overstatement. Maybe I was wrong.

https://www.newsweek.com/5000-year-old-fake-amber-beads-found-spanish-burial-sites-first-example-1406723

Where is Calukmul?

The original paragraph I saw about Calakmul consisted of 39 words, but something caught my attention. Usually, I might find 3 or 4 articles on the subject, each 1-2 pages long, and each repeating (or possibly contradicting) information in the other articles.

Calukmul’s different. The wikipedia article must be over 20 pages, and I don’t rely solely on wikipedia. So, let’s start, keeping in mind that I may have to boil things down drastically.

Calakmul (AKA Kalakmul) was a large and powerful Mayan city in what is now the Mexican state of Campeche, deep in the jungles of the Yucatan greater Peten Basin, 35 km (22 miles) from the Guatemalan border. During the Classic Period, Calakmul administered a large domain known as the Kingdom of the Snake. This region was marked by the emblem glyph of the snake head, read as ‘Kaan’. It is believed that the city existed from 550 BC to 900 AD. It held ‘powerhouse’ status from 500 AD to 800 AD.

Some of the major buildings can be traced back to at least 350 AD, with a 40-foot tall monument built sometime between 400 and 200 BC. This city’s long life gave plenty of time to create huge structures, following the Maya tradition of enlarging existing buildings by adding new layers and extending the lower floors. The earliest dated inscription found there is from 431 AD.

During the height of Calukmul’s existance, the city is believed to have had a population of 50,000, and 6,750 structures have been found there. Structure 2, their great pyramid, is the largest structure, standing over 45 m (148 ft), and contains 4 tombs. As explained in the previous paragraph, in MesoAmerica, the pyramid was increased in size by building upon the existing temple. Calakmul’s central monumental architecture covers about 2 sq km (0.77 sq miles), and the entire city - mostly covered with dense residential structures - is 20 sq km (7.7 sq miles).

Calukmul was linked to allied cities by causeway. It sits on a rise some 115 ft above and east of a large seasonal swamp, which was an important source of water. This seasonal swamp was linked to a sophisticated water-control system that encircled an 8.5 square mile area, considered the inner city. The swamp also provided fertile soil along its edge and access to abundant flint nodules. The rise was a limestone dome which the Maya had leveled. Homes began along the edge of the swamp, but during the Classic period, they were also built on high ground and small islands in the swamp.

But the swamp was not the only source of water, for Calakmul had an extensive system of at least 13 reservoirs, including the largest one found in the Maya world. Together, these held enough water to serve 50,000 to 100,000 people. There’s no sign that these reservoirs were used to irrigate crops, which were apparently dependant on the seasonal swamp, as mentioned before.

From 1 to 1000 AD, this area received regular rainfall, which would have made it fairly easy to support the city’s population of 50,000. Growing up in small towns, this sounds huge to me. But I also spent a large portion of my adult life living in Kansas City and Omaha, either one of which would dwarf Calukmul. When you look at the entire Snake kingdom, there were also 20 secondary cities, tertiary and quaternary sites, and rural areas. The total population of this 5,000 sq mile kingdom is estimated to have reached 1.75 million during the late Classic period. However, during the Terminal Class period, Calukmul’s population dramatically declined, and the rural population plummeted.

Throughout the Classic Period, Calukmul had an intense rivalry with the city of Tikal, which lay 100 km (62 miles) southeast. At one point, Calukmul and its allies defeated Tikal, but 150 years later, Tikal rose up anew, and ultimately, Calukmul not only lost its powerhouse status, but ceased to exist at all. Calukmul’s recorded history ends abruptly in 909 AD, about 200 years after Tikal defeated its king and sapped its power.

The great rivalry between Calukmul and Tikel could have been more than trying to prove which city could grab the most resources. Tikel was a powerful city before Calukmul. Tikal was strongly influenced by the central Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan, and its rulers were male only. Calukmul, on the other hand, seems derived from the city of El Mirador, and both a king and queen often ruled together. However, for whatever reason, when I came across a (partial) list of Calukmul rulers, it assumed all the names were kings, with no explanation of why no queens’ names were included.

The long abandoned Calukmul was rediscovered by air on December 29, 1931. Its current name is Mayan for ‘two adjacent pyramids’. In ancient times, it was Ox Te’ Tuun, which means ‘Three Stones.’ It was visited in 1932-1938, and a map was begun of the city, but work then ceased until 1982-1994. It is now a UNESCO site, contained within a UNESCO biodiversity reserve, and is the subject of a large-scale project of the National Institute of Anthropology and History. Unfortunately, the city was built with a soft limestone, so it is suffering from severe erosion, and many of the earlier inscriptions cannot be made out.

I’m very taken by this information, which was fairly uniform over all 3 articles I chose. In fact, after reading the Wikipedia article, the other 2 I chose were... monotonously uniform with it, although not nearly as heavy with intimate history of battles and the names of warring kings. But given these facts as I’ve gathered them, I can almost picture Calukmul, from start to finish, but particularly during its hey-day. Of course, that doesn’t mean it actually looked like anything I’ve dreamt up, but it’s more than what I’ve gotten from the few Maya ruins I’ve actually visited. What about you? Do you see anything more here than armies at war?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calakmul

https://www.locogringo.com/mexico/ways-to-play/mayan-ruins-archaeological-sites/calakmul-ruins/

http://mayanruins.info/mexico/calakmul-mexico/

Swords - Fantasy or Fact?

A Guest Entry by Ta’Yant bilora vi Grrrck (of Floya 4 - There are other Ta’Yant bilora vi Grrrcks, but they aren’t from Floya 4!)

A common occurrence in the genre ‘high fantasy’ or ‘epic fantasy’ is the use of swords, some of which had or are said to have had magical powers. Since many of these stories appear to be set on Old Earth and include other items that also appear in ancient Earth myths and legends - such as elves, dwarves, dragons, magic and the like, I decided to search the ancient texts from the Home Planet to determine how much of the legend of ‘swords’ might be purely imaginary.

First, let me say that it is very difficult to discern whether a particular text is truly factual. So many texts either gave no references or referred to texts that are no longer part of what records we still have, so cannot be verified. Since the chances of finding additional texts seems impossible, with Earth (and indeed, that entire system) in their current inhospitable state, I can only present what I found as a series of supposed truths, with the understanding that it might be completely contaminated with ‘facts’ that are nothing more than ‘beliefs’ of the time.

One source text came to be a wealth of knowledge to me, or would have, if the links to its sources had been intact, or if I had been able to verify anything it said from some other source. Even the title of this reference text was incomplete, consisting of “...ikipedia.org/wiki/Spath...”. Ancient historians (meaning those who study ancient history, who or may or may not be ancient in their own right) believe this title places it in the ‘wikipedia’ reference source of the 22nd century, which is either famous for being so large and all-inclusive, or infamous for having no basis in fact, depending on which historian is speaking. This article stated that a spatha was a long, straight sword, originally used by the ‘germanic’ people against the ‘romans’, who started with swords that were shorter. The ‘romans’, however, adopted the longer version so that they could stab opponents from a longer distance.

So, if this information is correct, swords were real, and came in different lengths. In my efforts to double-check everything, I could not find ‘germanic’ or ‘romans’ on any maps within the available wikipedia texts. I did find a map (circa 2100) that showed an area called Germany, and somewhat south of that, a city called Rome. If these are the areas of the peoples referenced, further study of even more texts indicate that Germany was a source of many huge wars involving the entire planet, and that the highly religious Rome people were led by a Grand Priest, alternately referred to as ‘The Pope’ and ‘Ceasar’. I personally have trouble with the thought of a ‘deeply religious’ people who carried and used weapons, but I am not versed in all types of religion. Perhaps their religion called on them to dominate others. In that case, I can not be surprised that they eventually came to blows with the war-faring germanics.

I ran across 2 ‘news articles’ from 2015 and 2016. As ‘news stories’, they had no links to any reference materials, but I include them here because I found them so interesting. In 2015, a ‘hiker’(?) found an ‘ancient viking’ sword on the side of the road in Norway, and a specialist from a local museum (?) stated the sword was from 750 AD, approximately 1200 years before it was found. (I can’t make any sense of their calendar! I thought these dates were in the same calendar era, but 750 plus 1200 equals 1950, not 2015!) The specialist went on to say that if given a new handle, the sword could be used ‘today’ (meaning 2015). 

In 2016, a local ‘couple’ found an ‘amazingly preserved’ sword in a ‘field’ near their home in Denmark. This sword, a museum representative stated, was 3,000 years old. Apparently, swords were in use for more than 3000 years, since one of these was that old, and the other only needed some minor repairs before it could be used again! And yes, Norway and Denmark were both on that map, Norway north of Denmark, with a strip of water between them. But research indicated that Norway was colonized by Denmark, so why would they be at war with each other?

My head is spinning, just trying to keep all these ‘facts’ straight and get them presented in a logical sequence. And I’ve just barely begun telling you all that I found in those old replicas! My time for this entry is up, but as soon as I can pick up two thoughts and put them together, I’ll see about writing another entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatha

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3284415/1-200-year-old-Viking-sword-lying-road-Norway-s-good-condition-used-today.html

archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2016/09/3000-year-old-sword-found-in-denmark.html#fykqDcC4bOGEvIbd.97

Science Quiz

For 7 years, I’ve tried to ‘update my science [knowledge].’ I’ve always wanted to write science fiction, but my last science class was a quarter century ago, the one before that in 1970. I’d been busy working full time, raising kids, and so on. So when I retired and started writing science fiction, I found the vast research I did – and the results produced – shot huge holes in my time, the story background, and the plot I had picked.

Therefore, I subscribed to magazines, watched science and history documentaries, did other ‘educational’ things. I love to learn but… have I caught up? Am I ready to write science fiction?

Last week, I received the Jan/Feb 2017 issue of Discover. It includes a list of the ‘Top 100 Stories of 2016’. As I read through some of this list and the entry for each article, I realized I was not familiar with everything listed. Have I failed?

I decided to keep track of which stories I had and had not already heard about. Now, I don’t get to read a magazine in one sitting, so as of today, I’ve only gotten to #40. Don’t worry, I will finish this issue, but in the meantime, how many of these 40 items had I already learned about before this issue?

First, the ones I had no knowledge of:

#4. Oldest Human DNA Revises Our Family Tree (I’d heard of Neanderthals & Denisovans, but not this particular story)

#5. Biologists Create Organism with Smallest Genome

#9. New Particle Fizzles, Leaving Physicists to Soul Search

#10. Did Lucy Fall and Not Get Up? (I knew about Lucy, but this was a new hypothesis that she died by falling out of a tree.)

#11. Bangladesh Sits Atop Potential Major Quake Zone

#12. Big Data May Lead to Earlier Alzheimer’s Diagnosis

#18. Electrons ‘Split’ in New Form of Matter

#19. Science in a Post-Brexit World

#22. NIH Proposes Lifting ‘Chimera’ Research Ban

#23. Picky Primes (Prime numbers are not as random as believed.)

#24. Finding China’s Great Flood

#27. Battle for Access (Should scientific papers be available to all, or only those who can afford to subscribe to scientific journals?)

#28. A Bone to Pick about Philistines

#29. Go, Go AlphaGo (Computer learns game, beats human champion.)

#31. Pushing the Limits of Life in the Lab

#32. Disrupting Dopamine Dogma

#35. Mathematicians Find the Answers (I was unaware of this question.)

#36. T. Rex Evolution: Smarts First, Size Second

#37. The Rise and Fall of Theranos (Fake medicine exposed)

#39. Plenty of Room at the Bottom (Saving data with chlorine and copper)

#40. Pluto’s Hidden Ocean (I knew it had one, but this article is about how it’s freezing, breaking Pluto apart.)

And the ones I was familiar with:

#1. Einstein’s Ripples in Space-Time

#2. Earth’s Surprise Neighbor Hints at Exoplanet Abundance (planets of Proxima Centauri)

#3. A New Enemy Emerges (zika and mosquitoes)

#6. The Pace – and Problems – of Climate Change Accelerate

#7. Can America Avoid Another Flint?

#8. Looking for Planet Nine

#13. Persistent Heat Decimates Coral Reefs

#14. The Ozone Hole is Finally Healing (Still has a long way to go.)

#15. More Hobbitses, Prescious! (More remains of hobbit-sized hominids found.)

#16. We Are All Africans

#17. The Falcon Has Landed, Now SpaceX is Eyeing Mars

#20. Ceres Hosts an Ice Volcano

#21. Regulating the Brave New World of Human Gene Editing

#25. The End of the Periodic Table? (How many more elements can scientists make?)

#26. Drug Couriers for Brain Injuries

#30. Crowdsourced Study Pinpoints Depression Genes

#33. Planets of the Milky Way

#34. Superbug Arrives in the US (Bacteria not deterred by any known medicine.)

#38. A Sharp Find (Ancient sword found in Denmark)

How did I shape up? Hmm, 21 stories I did not know; 19 I was semi-familiar with. If I were in school, that would be less than 50%, a solid F. But, I can’t know everything, so I don’t feel bad. Besides, some of these articles have hinted at background knowledge or even a story plot. I am stoked!

What have you learned in the past 7 years? I bet it’s a lot, whether science or not.

Oldest People in England

Anthropologists theorize that the human family tree began in Africa, and at some point, various versions of our ancestors spread into the Arabian peninsula, Europe, Asia, Australia… and eventually the Americas. Lucy and the skeletons of many other almost-humans have been found scattered across Africa. Besides the skeletons and various stone tools, scientists have also discovered footprints, most notably some that are 3.75 million years old in Tanzania, and others left 1.5 million years ago in Kenya.

Long ago, I read that footprints were not a common find in the world of paleontology and anthropology; the footprint had to be made in a type of soil soft enough to take an impression, but firm enough to retain it, then covered and filled in by something else that would not disturb the impression. After all, a footprint is not a body that can be fossilized; it’s an impression that needs to be retained without being squashed.

But lately, I wandered across an article concerning ancient footprints discovered in England. These are the oldest footprints discovered (so far) outside Africa.

In May of 2013 (reported in February of 2014), about 50 footprints were discovered in Happisburgh, in Norwich. Previous footprints found in England were only 7,500 years old, but the Happisburgh prints were 900,000 years old, made by members of the extinct homo antecessor branch. (You remember Aunty Cessor, don’t you? No? Perhaps she was a bit before your time.) The prints came to light on the beach through erosion, and unfortunately, they disappeared the same way. Scientists got them measured and photographed, but only lifted a mold from one before they were gone.

These prints were made by 5 individuals, both adult and children, walking across the wet silt of an ancient estuary. They are the oldest direct evidence of humanoids in all of Europe, let alone England. The next oldest evidence in Europe is a 780,000 year old skull fragment found in southern Spain. Before this discovery, England had some 700,000 year old stone tools to indicate a human presence.

How did people get across the Channel to trek to the west side of the island? At 1,000,000 years ago, there was no channel; England was connected by land to the mainland, and that could have been the case for another 100,000 years. Maybe a geologist could tell you when the channel became a water-way, but the Happisburgh footprints were made just as the ice age was beginning, so the water level was lower.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/the-million-year-old-family-human-footprints-found-in-britain-are-oldest-ever-seen-outside-of-africa-9114151.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10623660/900000-year-old-footprints-of-earliest-northern-Europeans-discovered.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26025763