What happened on Easter Island (Rapa Nui); a lesson for global overpopulation

'The demographic declines of the Rapa Nui are linked to the long-term effects of climate change on the island's capacity for the production of food... 

'We did not find traces of an idyllic equilibrium with nature, and we did not find traces of a huge collapse. Instead, we found traces of interactions between three factors: Climate change, human population size, and changes in the ecosystem. The climate change manifests itself as a long-term pattern of changes in rainfall over some 400 years. The population grew during this same period, and the islanders also increased and changed their use of natural resources and agricultural methods...

'The islanders were not only aware of the changes, but they were also able to change the way the lived on the island. They gradually changed from the quite complex society that raised the marvelous moai statues, to a later and simpler agrarian society with reduced family sizes and a new way of producing food in stone gardens...

'These three factors affected the population on Rapa Nui, and they are also important on a global scale. We studied Rapa Nui and its history because we are trying to understand what is happening with the planet. Everybody talks about climate change and the resulting problems, but very few people are talking about the rising global population and the problems it causes.'

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-growth-decline-rapa-nui-population.html

NEWS: EARTHQUAKE WARNING - WESTERN PACIFIC REGION

A large earthquake deep below the Earth's surface will result in a cluster of quakes in the Pacific region, warns 'Dutchinse' (Michael Janitch) - see video below.

This may possibly be related to a recent solar storm, which some theorise interacts with the Earth's magnetic field to deliver a jolt to the iron core of the planet and translates into movements in the crust.
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2020/07/do-solar-storms-cause-earthquakes.html

MADAGASCAR: Ancient site threatened by climate change

The Conversation reports the threat to African heritage sites posed by climate change:
https://theconversation.com/these-african-world-heritage-sites-are-under-threat-from-climate-change-144140

'Villages and towns associated with the historic Swahili Indian Ocean trading networks are all forecast to suffer significant loss from sea-level rise and coastal erosion in the coming decades...

'A host of unique heritage locations are built on coral, sand or mud – all at elevations less than 10 metres above sea level.'

Among these sites is Mahilaka, the first major urban center and trading port in Madagascar, which was settled by Austronesians in the first millennium CE. Mahilaka is on the northwest coast. Archaelogical evidence is in the form of human artefacts, but also crop species not native to Africa, and maybe even linguistic traces in the Bantu language. There are indications that the neighbouring Comoros islands may have shared some of this Pacific (among others) immigration history.
https://www.pnas.org/content/113/24/6635

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overview-of-the-inferred-history-of-Madagascar-Descriptions-and-dates-are-given-in-A-D_fig6_318500759

AUSTRALIA: Ancient aboriginal land management

Civilised people (i.e. from the culture of towns and cities) came to Australia, America etc and saw wilderness. They didn't see a managed environment; but it was there.

One aspect of aboriginal land management was and is 'cool burning' - the periodic deliberate starting of grass fires to clear away flammable debris and so prevent the kind of mega-blazes we saw recently in Australia, which killed perhaps 3 billion animals.



This has also been an ancient practice among Native Americans:



Similarly, in both countries there are sacred areas, some of which would seem to the ignorant eye to be simply wild places, missing the point that they are carefully kept that way:

https://theculturetrip.com/pacific/australia/articles/the-11-most-sacred-places-in-indigenous-australian-folklore/

https://www.indian-affairs.org/sacred-sites.html

There is the archaeology of relics, but there is also the archaeology of the human mind and its cultures. How old, for example, are the stories of the Dream Time?

As Yeats said:

'I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.'

Having said that, an archaeological dig in the Torres Strait has recently found concrete evidence of cultivation of bananas 2,000 years ago:

'Lead researcher Robert Williams said... the Torres Strait had been historically viewed as a "separating line" between Indigenous groups in New Guinea - now part of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea - who practiced agriculture, and those in Australia who were labelled "hunter gatherers".

'But the findings show that the strait was "more of a bridge or a filter" for horticultural practices across both regions.'

ORIGINS: Another unknown ancestor in the human bloodline?

New human genetic research has found traces of a mystery hominin that mated with homo sapiens in Africa a million years ago, long before the first wave of our species left for Europe.
https://www.livescience.com/mystery-ancestor-mated-with-humans.html

It's also thought that our ancestors mated with Neanderthals before that first wave of emigrants, which then either died out or returned to Africa; then some of the second wave (c. 50,000 years ago) also mingled with Neanderthals; and later, in Southeast Asia, also mated with 'Denisovans' and another unknown species, possibly more.

'History is made in bed,' as they say.

See also:

https://www.voanews.com/science-health/new-study-shows-human-ancestors-had-complicated-love-life

JAPAN: Remembering Hiroshima

A version of the post below is also published today on The Conservative Woman:
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/8-14am-august-16-1945-the-bomb-that-changed-the-world/
___________________________________________________________________________

Father John A. Simes was starting his day at Hiroshima when it happened, at about quarter past eight on 6 August 1945 http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Hiroshima/Hiroshima_Siemes.shtml . He was up in the hills with the Jesuit Mission that had relocated there after the gigantic fire-bombing of Tokyo in March by hundreds of American planes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#Operation_Meetinghouse . This time, incredibly, to inflict similar damage only needed a single bomb, a weapon so different that it took Father Simes some time to piece together what had happened. Conventional air raids in World War Two – yet how is napalming civilians conventional? – claimed perhaps twice as many lives in Japan as Hiroshima’s and Nagasaki’s victims combined; but ever since that day 75 years ago, warfare’s potential has been on a new, even ghastlier level.

The British people’s reaction to the radio news, first relayed on the Home Service at 6 p.m., was not unmixed rejoicing, according to sources quoted by David Kynaston in his ‘Austerity Britain’ (pp. 82-86). https://www.amazon.co.uk/Austerity-Britain-1945-1951-Tales-Jerusalem/dp/0747599238 The nine o’clock edition gave more details of the Bomb and its effects – still hard to discern through the ‘pall of smoke and dust’ - on what had been a Japanese ‘army base’ at six but three hours later was ‘a city of once over 300,000 inhabitants.’ There was ‘elation’ at the prospect of peace, but ‘terror’ at the scale of destruction; the novelist Ursula Bloom and her husband were speechless with horror; the Dean of Oriel College abandoned any belief in a Just War; J R R Tolkien wrote to his son deploring ‘the utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes; calmly plotting the destruction of the world’, especially while mankind’s ‘moral and intellectual status is declining.’ A London schoolteacher noted the hypocrisy of cheering the ‘Atomic bomb’ yet hating the Germans for their air raids on us; a housewife in Cumbria worried whether Japan had the Bomb, too, and was merely biding its time; a Scots engineer wrote in his diary, ‘There is no hope in man… The end is near – perhaps some years only.’

Out East, the morale of the ‘Forgotten Army’ had been low: they had learned of Victory in Europe, but had been expecting perhaps another ten years of fighting the Japanese to the last ditch. Instead, to their great relief, the conflict was to end in a few days. What, however, did they make of the Bomb?

There are three books that taken together serve as a trilogy describing the war in Burma at first hand and at every level. The first, ‘Defeat Into Victory’ (1956) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Defeat-into-Victory-William-Slim/dp/0330509977 , is by the Fourteenth Army’s commander, Lieutenant General (later Field Marshal and Viscount) William ‘Bill’ Slim. In the final chapter ‘Afterthoughts’ he saw that future armies, facing enemies in possession of battlefield nuclear weapons that could wipe out whole units at a stroke, would have to fight in a dispersed, semi-autonomous fashion in order to complete their campaigns.

The second, John Masters’ ‘The Road Past Mandalay’ (1961) https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/the-road-past-mandalay/author/masters-john/ , is by one of Slim’s military planners who for a time took command of a Gurkha Brigade dropped behind the Japanese lines, initiating a ferocious battle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Masters#Life and ultimately forced to retreat. When he returned to HQ he resumed the heavy burden of intricate planning and towards the conclusion of the Burmese campaign became so exhausted that he was in danger of making fatal errors. Granted leave, he set off to walk the Himalayas with his new wife. Near the end, they came to the Rest House in Joshimath where the resident priest remarked that he was glad the fighting was over. This made no sense until His Holiness showed him a newspaper over two weeks old, with the splash headline ‘ATOMIC BOMB DROPPED ON JAPAN.’ The couple had started on their mountain journey, cut off from communication with the outside world, on the morning of 6 August.

‘I believed with instant conviction that there could be no more war. No more tactics, no more strategy, only total destruction – or peace. The training and experience of a lifetime had vanished into the thin Himalayan air, and I was happy.

‘I took my wife in my arms and kissed her. His Holiness said, in Hindi, ‘May God bless you, in peace.’

1992 saw the appearance of ‘Quartered Safe Out Here’ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quartered-Safe-George-MacDonald-Fraser/dp/0007105932 , George MacDonald Fraser’s celebrated vivid account of his part in the Burma Campaign, serving as a private in Cumbria’s Border Regiment. Many years after the war, he argued with a man who was denouncing the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as obscene, monstrous and barbarous. Fraser reflected on what other and how many more lives would have been lost had the war continued; possibly his own, in which case his three children and six grandchildren would never have been born:

‘And that, I’m afraid, is where all discussion of pros and cons evaporates and becomes meaningless, because for those nine lives I would pull the plug on the whole Japanese nation and never even blink. And so, I dare suggest, would you. And if you wouldn’t, you may be nearer to the divine than I am but you sure as hell aren’t fit to be parents or grandparents.’

Here we are now, with these horrors sitting in their silos and launch tubes, plus chemical weapons and vile diseases carefully crafted by laboratory white-coats. Which of the above witnesses are right? Among the military, the tactician, the idealist, the balance-of-terror-ist? For the civilians, the elated, the horrified, the triumphant, the bleak pessimist?

How can we get rid of such dark toys? For surely, we’re not fit to play with them.

______________________________
Suggested further reading:

John Pilger on the risks of another nuclear war:
http://johnpilger.com/articles/another-hiroshima-is-coming-unless-we-stop-it-now

Professor Francis Boyle argues that atomic weapons are illegal:
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/04/atomic-bombings-at-75-the-illegality-of-nuclear-weapons/

TAIWAN, bridge to the Pacific islands; and the multiple impacts of climate change

Aside from archaeological finds, there are several other threads connecting prehistoric Taiwan with the spread of humans through the Pacific island chains.

One is the paper mulberry tree, native to Taiwan and Japan, which the Austronesian migrants took with them because they used its fibrous bark to make their cloth. A 2015 study of its genes supports the hypothesis that the species in Oceania are descended from those in Asia.
  https://raskisimani.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/broussonetia-paper-mulberry.pdf
  https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?post=26541&unit=20%2C29%2C35&unitname=Taiwan-Review&postname=Austronesian-Roots&fbclid=IwAR0rEsePB0aR71MtPstwKguoqx-ZFsHNlw9r5JM0N0h1PbGW1kfIk849PF4

Another is linguistics. Professor Robert Blust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Blust sorts the many languages of Taiwan into ten groups, only one of which (Malayo-Polynesian) developed into the Austronesian family of tongues.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_languages#Blust_(1999)
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayo-Polynesian_languages#Major_languages

A third is the study of human genes. A 2014 study of mitochondrial DNA from a c. 8,000-year-old skeleton unearthed on an island off the Chinese mainland links China to Taiwan and Austronesia.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951936/

Figure 1: The Liangdao Man Skeleton (picture from here)

The same study suggests a prehistoric migration route as illustrated below, from an area where foxtail millet began to be cultivated (around what is now modern Beijing), to the region where rice was domesticated (surrounding modern Shanghai), to what is now Fuzhou on the mainland (1), on to Liangdao island (2), across to Taiwan (3) and then down to the Philippines (4) and beyond:

(Ibid., adapted from Figure 5)

How did these humans cross over from the mainland? At its narrowest, the Taiwan Strait is about 130 kilometres (80 miles) between Fujian and Taiwan.

Things were different in the last Ice Age. The Strait is now some 100 metres deep, but:
'Pleistocene glaciations lowered [the] sea level 140m in the East China Sea 15,000 years ago, forming a land bridge between Taiwan and the mainland, with Palaeolithic artifacts on both sides. In the initial Holocene 10,000 years ago, melting ice raised the East China Sea 100m, quickly forming the Taiwan Strait.' 
- from 'The Neolithic Taiwan Strait', by Kuang-chih Chang (1989)
https://web.archive.org/web/20120418153210/http://http-server.carleton.ca/~bgordon/Rice/papers/App.18ChangKC89.pdf

'Permafrost covered Asia as far south as Beijing,' says Wikipedia, so perhaps early humans were motivated to go further south, and some willing and able to walk over the exposed land between China and Taiwan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum#Asia

The end of the Ice Age saw rising sea levels: 'After the last ice age about 20,000 years ago, sea level initially rose due to the melting of the glaciers. That peaked around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago,' says geologist Chip Fletcher in this 2017 interview:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-seas-rise-tropical-pacific-islands-face-a-perfect-storm

One might think that this flooding was a spur to the development of boats, but although the earliest found by archaeological excavation date back 7,000 - 10,000 years, other evidence suggests that they existed tens of thousands of years earlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat#History
Indeed, recent finds in Central America suggest that homo sapiens may have arrived by sea 20,000 - 30,000 years ago and spread north and south from there, rather than coming though the Alaskan/Canadian ice corridor as previously thought:
http://polynesiantimes.blogspot.com/2020/07/origins-americas-first-colonised-in.html

Contrary to what one might assume, the post-glacial flooding was not uniform in all times and places. As the vast weight of ice was lifted from the land the continental plates started to shift about and rise up further from the Earth's mantle, like a ship being emptied of cargo. 'At the same time that Polynesians were undergoing their journeys of exploration and discovery, 1,000 to 3,000 years ago, sea level was falling and exposing coastal plains that then became habitable, where previously the sea was up against clay banks or cliffs,' says Fletcher. 'In the Pacific region [after c. 4,000-5,000 years ago], sea level started to fall until a few centuries ago. And now global warming is causing sea levels to rise again.'
https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-seas-rise-tropical-pacific-islands-face-a-perfect-storm

Although falling sea levels may have made it easier to land boats, 'around AD 1300 there was rapid global cooling, which was followed shortly by rapid sea-level fall – perhaps as much as 50-70 cm within 100 years in the Pacific [...]
   'In almost every island group in the Pacific - from Solomon Islands and Fiji in the west to Rapa and Easter Island in the east – the first signs of collapse appear around AD 1300 with almost all hill forts beginning to be occupied around AD 1400. [...] 
   'Rapid sea-level fall along Pacific island coasts would have lowered coastal water tables, slowed water circulation within lagoons and killed (through exposure) the most productive parts of coral reefs. A food crisis would have resulted for coastal dwellers. Conflict followed. So people fled inland where they stayed, more or less, for several hundred years.'
https://theconversation.com/rise-and-fall-social-collapse-linked-to-sea-level-in-the-pacific-56268

So the interaction between geography, climate and human history is unexpectedly complex.

PALAU: US justice on trial

UPDATE (April 2021): All charges dropped, no retrial. At last, at long, long last:

https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/crime/article250441866.html

___________________________________________________________

UPDATE: A GoFundMe page has been set up for Ashley Debelbot, who was released on bail from Muskogee County Jail on 2 July. The purpose is to help with Ashley's expenses to restart her life:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/Ashley-Debelbot
_________________________________________________________________________________

A Palauan man and his wife are to be re-tried more than 10 years after being found guilty of the murder of their newborn child, McKenzy. Their original trial and their first unsuccessful appeal raise questions about the quality of the justice system and its preparedness to address its own possible errors.

Born in hospital on 29 May 2008, the baby was taken home May 31 and died early the morning after. The couple, Albert and Ashley Debelbot, were convicted of malice murder in 2009, but eventually had their appeal heard in 2017, in which they claimed that their respective attorneys had not defended them effectively.

There are concerns about the conduct not only of the original trial but also of the appeal, which was denied. A further appeal to Georgia's Supreme Court succeeded and the convictions were 'vacated' on 28 February 2020 and a new trial ordered.
https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/crime/article240737036.html

'Their conviction was based on a testimony of the State assistant medical examiner whose opinion is based on an autopsy report.  The State gave no evidence tying the couple to their daughter’s death and the couple’s lawyer did not offer any alternative explanation or evidence or witnesses on how the baby died,' reports the Island Times. The defence attorneys at the original trial had offered no alternative explanation of the child's injuries, even though the hospital had recorded the birth as a 'rough, atypical delivery.' 
https://islandtimes.org/palauan-man-imprisoned-unjustly-for-12-years-in-us/

At the 2017 appeal four medical experts giving evidence for the defence 'opined that the trauma of the birthing process caused the additional and more acute fracturing to the left side of McKenzy’s skull, and denied that post-birth trauma caused McKenzy’s injuries' but 'the court concluded in one  sentence that all the Debelbots’witnesses, expert and otherwise, were not credible' and went on further to rule out their evidence as not legally admissible.
https://law.justia.com/cases/georgia/supreme-court/2019/she defence18a1073.html

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the 2009 trial was the way that the Assistant District Attorney chose to define the 'reasonable doubt' in the presumption of innocence that a jury should extend to defendants:

   In explaining the concept of “reasonable doubt,” which in a juror’s mind would justify a vote to acquit, Assistant District Attorney Sadhana Dailey said it “does not mean beyond all doubt,” and added:
   “It does not mean to a mathematical certainty. Which means we don’t have to prove that 90 percent. You don’t have to be 90 percent sure. You don’t have to be 80 percent sure. You don’t have to be 51 percent sure.”
https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/crime/article240737036.html

It seems reasonable to interpret that last sentence as implying that if it's down to tossing a coin, it's okay to find the defendant guilty. As the Supreme Court said, 'We cannot conceive of any good reason that a competent criminal defense attorney could have to fail to object to such an egregious misstatement of the law.'

The Island Times article cited above says '.. the DA for Muscogee County has announced that she will retry the case despite Georgia Supreme Court saying the government evidence is very thin. Debelbot will be represented in the new trial pro bono by the top rated Civil Defense and Criminal Defense New York Attorney Earl Ward.'

If that Ward is the 'Earl S. Ward' described here, the prosecution will have a fight on its hands; and if Ward succeeds, his pro bono work may be followed by a big compensation fight - he 'secured a $6.7 million settlement for the widow of Israel Vasquez, who was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for more than 12 years for a 1995 homicide he did not commit.' Twelve years: the same period Debelbot has spent in jail, so far; twelve of his wife's child-bearing years, of their potential family life together.
https://ecbawm.com/our-people/earl-s-ward/

Let's turn our eyes away from money and consider a legal system that negligently sics a jury onto the defendants with a wildly wrong definition of reasonable doubt, lets them be found guilty of murder on the basis of an autopsy and accompanying assertions of a single expert (that did not directly connect the alleged offence with the defendants), and brushes away expert witnesses for the defence at appeal.

Not everyone would expect to receive such sub-standard service from the justice system. Is money, or the lack of it, a factor? Any other factors?

NEANDERTHALS: Fact sheet, genetic contribution to melanesians

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1315924/archaeology-history-news-ancient-humans-science-news-paleolithic-france-spt

The graphic above is from a recent article in the Daily Express, reporting on Old Stone Age humanoid remains and cave art found in central France:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1315924/archaeology-history-news-ancient-humans-science-news-paleolithic-france-spt

The illustrated geographical range obviously leaves gaps to be filled in, and there seems to be evidence of interbreeding during the upper Palaeolithic between Neanderthals, homo sapiens and 'Denisovans' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans:

So to some extent the genes of Homo Neanderthalensis' descendants are also represented in the Pacific region:

'Some recent studies suggest that all humans outside of Africa have inherited some genes from Neanderthals, and that Melanesians are the only known modern humans whose prehistoric ancestors interbred with the Denisova hominin, sharing 4%–6% of their genome with this ancient cousin of the Neanderthal,' says Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanesians.

RAPA NUI: Tattooed torsos of the ancient 'heads'

In Rapa Nui aka Easter Island, archaeologists have uncovered the buried torsos of the ancient stone 'moai', revealing carvings (petroglyphs) representing Polynesian canoes:

Source: Daily Express
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1314641/archaeology-news-easter-island-head-statues-bodies-found-moai-rano-raraku-spt

It's theorised that the moai were funerary headstones for members of different tribes on the island, as there are human remains found around these statues.

Story: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1314641/archaeology-news-easter-island-head-statues-bodies-found-moai-rano-raraku-spt

CHINA: Overfishing the world

A study published a few days ago* reports large-scale illegal fishing in North Korean waters by Chinese ships that harvested more than 160,000 tons of Pacific flying squid in 2017 and 2018.

* https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/study-chinese-dark-fleets-illegally-defying-sanctions-by-fishing-in-north-korean-waters/ -
- referencing Science Magazine's article here:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/30/eabb1197

According to the article, squid hauls have dropped since 2003 in South Korea and Japan, and 'unable to compete with the more technologically advanced Chinese vessels, which use powerful lights and other technologies to maximize the size of their catch, some North Koreans have resorted to fishing illegally in faraway Russian waters.' International cooperation in managing fish stocks is breaking down.

This reminds us of comments made on Youtube five months ago by a South African-born businessman and vlogger who has worked and lived in China for years. 'Serpentza' (Winston Sterzel) says (starting 6:56 in the video below):

"China has completely outfished the waters off the coast of China and so their fishing trawlers must seek alternatives and the alternatives are: the rest of the entire world. 

"Clandestine Chinese fishing has decimated the fish stocks off the coast of South Africa, my country, and most of the African coast, where corrupt leaders are easily bribed to turn a blind eye while local fishermen and communities suffer greatly [...]

"There is no catch-and-release or sustainable fishing in the modern Chinese mentality. As a nation who recently experienced devastating famine, it's a 'take now before it's all gone' mentality."

He also talks about Chinese economic activity that damages the environment, wildlife (e.g. by unrestricted hunting in Africa*) and people's health, while Chinese officialdom has great difficulty in enforcing laws that could prevent this.



A couple of months later he was on Instagram, reporting : "Chinese fishing ships off the coast of South Africa are illegally stripping the ocean of fish at an alarming rate yet nothing is being done, many people speculate that the South African government has been paid to turn a blind eye the same as what happened in Namibia":

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_k-Dm0DoRw/?igshid=20yb86pv34st

A report last month on Maritime Executive says that China plans two closed seasons on squid fishing in the Pacific and Atlantic, to help stocks recover:

"The closed seasons cover what are believed to be the main spawning grounds of the Humboldt squid, in waters to the west of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, from July to September, and of the Argentine shortfin squid, off Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, from September to November."

We shall see whether this is enforceable, and what other measures need to be and will be taken. The magazine also links to a site called 'China Dialogue Ocean', saying 'China Dialogue Ocean (https://chinadialogueocean.net) is dedicated to illuminating, analyzing and helping to resolve our ocean crisis.' We hope this is more than merely PR in these difficult times for international diplomacy.
_______________________________________________________________________________
*Not to mention the involvement of China (among other nations) in the illegal wildlife trade in the Amazon:
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/brazilian-amazon-drained-of-millions-of-wild-animals-by-criminal-networks-report/

ORIGINS: Americas first colonised in Central America, NOT across the Bering Strait?

Recent archaeological discoveries in Mexico and Brazil put the arrival of humans there back to 20,000 - 30,000 years ago, when the land corridor through what is now Alaska/Canada was blocked by ice https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02137-3 :

Image from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02137-3

In a book published last year, British writer on ancient mysteries Graham Hancock theorises that the history goes back much further, by around another 100,000 years:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/america-before-the-key-to-earths-lost-civilization/graham-hancock/9781473660588

Perhaps Thor Heyerdahl was on the right track when he built Ra and Ra II to show that a papyrus boat could sail from Africa to the Americas - though why not a Polynesian type outrigger?

TAIWAN: Pacific migration and the paperbark tree

'New evidence gleaned from the study of a common plant species lends further credence to the theory that Taiwan is the ancestral homeland of the Austronesian-speaking peoples,' says this 2015 article in Taiwan Today reporting on research that links Taiwan to a tree now found across the Pacific, the paper mulberry, used to make tapa cloth.



So on their skilled and dangerous voyages across the ocean, the Austronesian migrants must have taken not just food, tools and domestic animals but seeds and cuttings of the precious tree.

Photo taken from https://raskisimani.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/broussonetia-paper-mulberry.pdf

An interesting article on the tree, its history and uses can be found here:
https://raskisimani.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/broussonetia-paper-mulberry.pdf

PHILIPPINES: 709,000-year-old evidence of hominin activity found in Luzon

Archaeological evidence found in Luzon, Philippines suggest that a species of human came to the island long before homo sapiens left Africa:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/ancient-humans-settled-philippines-700000-years-ago-new-fossils-reveal

The evidence is the fossilised remains of a butchered rhinoceros, though no humanoid skeleton has yet been found there.

"So who were these ancient people? They couldn’t have been our own species, Homo sapiens, which evolved in Africa hundreds of thousands of years later. The most likely bet is H. erectus, an archaic human species that first evolved nearly 2 million years ago and may have been the first member of our genus to expand out of Africa. [...]

"Like most researchers, Antón isn’t convinced that ancient humans were deliberately crossing Southeast Asian seas so long ago. More likely, they were carried to distant islands by tsunami waves, or arrived there via floating islands of land and debris detached during typhoons."

The original article in Nature (£) is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0072-8

NEW ZEALAND: an animated history from 1200 AD onwards

"See the history of Māori arrivals from 1200, European arrivals from 1642 and the  signing of He Whakaputanga from 1835 to 1839.

This animation is from the map table at the He Tohu exhibition.
The map table is a 3D canvas that stories are projected onto from above. Find out more at https://natlib.govt.nz/he-tohu

He Tohu is presented by Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga and the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, both of which are part of the Department of Internal Affairs."

On Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w0zjqA3hUI

TAIWAN: Headhunters display their latest victim

Found here

This photograph appeared on the Facebook page 'Philippine and world's indigenous tribes news and history' (20 March 2016) and at first glance the hunters celebrating behind the surprised and disappointed head might seem to be fist-bumping; instead it looks as though they are sharing something, or disguising their faces.

The accompanying text reads:

"HEADHUNTERS OF TAIWAN

Between 1903 and 1908 there were seventy advancements made to the guard lines by the Japanese, but indigenous men in search of heads often came over or under the barrier at nightfall to lay waiting in ambush for unsuspecting victims. Headhunting, the primary ritual component of the Atayal, Paiwan, Saiset, and other groups, not only served to maintain the prosperity of society by ensuring agricultural and community fertility through the propitiation of the deities and ancestors, it also ensured that a man would meet with success in finding a wife while at the same time guaranteeing his safe passage to the afterlife. Thus, the custom was considered indispensable to life and existence itself.

Among the Atayal, success met on the headhunt was deliberately marked upon the chins of warriors with tattoos. And those headhunters who acquired more than five heads using old weapons, like a curved machete-like knife, might also have their chests tattooed or the backs of their hands. Among the Paiwan, it was believed that the spirits of ancestors dwelled in these beheading knives, which were held in the possession of the tribe for several generations. However, the Paiwan were not necessarily tattooed after having taken a head; instead, the successful warrior was also denoted by the wearing of a certain kind of cap which was made by women of the tribe.

More generally, tattooing could also be administered to the foreheads of unmarried Atayal boys and girls in their teens. Apart from the tattooed foreheads of women, only those who were skillful in weaving could tattoo their cheeks and other parts of their bodies.

Besides the beautiful cloths they wove on the loom, Atayal women also manufactured net bags that headhunting husbands used to carry severed human heads. Next to his beheading knife, these bags were his most treasured possession.

It is not surprising, then, that the Atayal believed that only those women who were proficient in weaving (hence tattooed), and those men who were successful headhunters (also tattooed) could pass safely into the afterlife."

- but is taken from a longer - and interesting - post here that does not include the image above:

https://www.larskrutak.com/loosing-your-head-among-the-tattooed-headhunters-of-taiwan/

MADAGASCAR: How (why) did Austronesians come to Madagascar?

The eastward migration - taking place around the year 500, it is thought - is a mystery:

'One can only assume that the island of Madagascar played an important role in trade, particularly that of spice trade (especially the cinnamon) and timber between Southeast Asia and Middle East, directly or through the African coast and Madagascar.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Madagascar#First_inhabitants_and_settlements_(500_BCE%E2%80%93700_CE)

Source: Wikipedia

MARQUESAS ISLANDS: A tattooed warrior

Not yet finished but still impressive - fearsome:

http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/tattoo_museum/polynesian_tattoo_images.html

'The German explorer and ethnologist Karl von den Steinen, who visited the isles in 1891, listed over one-hundred and seventy individually named tattooing motifs which is remarkable since the tradition was "banned" by French officials approximately fifty years before that time.'
- http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/tattoo_museum/marquesas_tattoos.html

The same site shows some striking female tattoos also - it's intriguing to see what parts were not decorated. http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/tattoo_museum/marquesas_tattoo_images.html

A Nuku Hiva warrior, complete (1813):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Nuku_Hiva_warrior_1813.jpg

SAMOA: A wedding in Samoa (1920s film archive)

FRENCH POLYNESIA: C13th Polynesians migrated east, Colombians west, met in French Polynesia?

'After a detailed DNA analysis of the genomes of more than 800 Polynesians and Native Americans, both modern and prehistoric, researchers have found evidence of contact between the two groups as far back as 1200 CE...

"Our analyses suggest strongly that a single contact event occurred in eastern Polynesia, before the settlement of Rapa Nui, between Polynesian individuals and a Native American group most closely related to the indigenous inhabitants of present-day Colombia," the researchers explain in their paper.

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-evidence-shows-prehistoric-contact-between-native-americans-and-polynesians

See also this article from 2017, reporting a study supporting the theory that the Native American / Polynesian interbreeding occurred before the colonisation of Rapa Nui:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/did-early-easter-islanders-sail-south-america-europeans

AUSTRALIA: Flooded pre-Ice Age aboriginal sites discovered in NW Australia

So much history yet to be learned:

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-aboriginal-artifacts-reveal-ancient-underwater.html

ORIGINS: Neanderthal builders in France...

... 176,000 years ago: https://bigthink.com/robby-berman/a-cave-in-france-changes-what-we-thought-we-knew-about-neanderthals

Taken from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/the-astonishing-age-of-a-neanderthal-cave-construction-site/484070/

which was based on
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18291

and also reported by
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/05/neanderthals-caves-rings-building-france-archaeology/

Bruniquel Cave is in south-west France, more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruniquel_Cave

Related:

The common ancestors of the humanoids known as Neanderthals and Denisovans spread across Europe and Asia over half a million years ago, and split into the two branches, with fossils of Neanderthals found in western countries and of Denisovans in the East. What is thought to have been the first wave of Homo Sapiens came from Africa c. 270,000 years ago and some may have mated with Neanderthals.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/science/neanderthals-dna-homo-sapiens-human-evolution.html

ORIGINS: DNA evidence points to another unknown hominid population in Africa

https://theconversation.com/early-humans-in-africa-may-have-interbred-with-a-mysterious-extinct-species-new-research-131699

'A 2017 study of ancient DNA from southern Africa investigated 16 ancient genomes from people alive over the last 10,000 years. This showed that the history of African populations was complex. There wasn’t just a single group of humans around in Africa when they expanded out 100,000 years ago.

It’s a result that was supported earlier this year by a paper examining ancient DNA from four individuals from what is now Cameroon. Taken together, this research suggests there were geographically diverse groups in Africa well before the main expansion out of the continent. And many of these groups will have contributed to the ancestry of people alive in Africa today. [...]

The new paper provides evidence that there may also have been gene-flow into the ancestors of West Africans directly from a mysterious archaic hominin. [...]

Interestingly, they suggest that 6%-7% of the genomes of West Africans is archaic in origin. But this archaic ancestry wasn’t Neanderthal or Denisovan. Their model suggested the additional ancestry came from an archaic population for which we don’t currently have a genome.

This ghost population likely split from the ancestors of humans and Neanderthals between 360,000 and 1.02 million years ago. That was well before the gene-flow event that brought Neanderthal DNA back into West Africa around 43,000 years ago – although the value of this could be anywhere between 0 and 124,000 years ago.'