Ancient news roundup

Africa (Olduvai Gorge):

Research suggests that early man (c. 2 million years ago) was able to manage in a changing environment for 200,000 years. 

https://www.shh.mpg.de/1935810/petraglia-oldupai-gorge 

'The findings uncovered at Oldupai Gorge and across eastern Africa indicate that early human movements across and out of Africa were possible by 2 million years ago, as hominins possessed the behavioural ability to expand into novel ecosystems.' 

Part of this may be due to the use of stone tools, technology which (it is speculated) may have been employed by other hominin species such as australopithecines:

'... we know that the genus Paranthropus was present in Oldupai Gorge at this time.'

Tibet:

DNA from the hominin species knows as Denisovans has been found in sediment in Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan plateau - the first such find outside Siberia. The specimens date from c. 100,000 years ago, again from 60,000 years ago, and possibly also 50k-30k ya; in the latter case that may have overlapped with the arrival of modern humans and interbreeding there or elsewhere could explain why 'present-day Tibetans carry a gene variant that aids high-altitude survival'.

• https://www.sciencenews.org/article/first-denisovan-dna-outside-siberia-found-tibetan-plateau-cave
• https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/dna-tracks-mysterious-denisovans-chinese-cave-just-modern-humans-arrived-nearby
• https://theconversation.com/how-midnight-digs-at-a-holy-tibetan-cave-opened-a-window-to-prehistoric-humans-living-on-the-roof-of-the-world-148927
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baishiya_Karst_Cave

https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B026'53.0%22N+102%C2%B034'17.0%22E/@32.0753123,90.6411118,4.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d35.448056!4d102.571389?hl=en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan#/media/File:Early_migrations_mercator.svg

Conflict between Homo Sapiens and the Neanderthals

An academic at Bath University suggests there was a 100,000-year war between the two species that pitched modern humans against the Neanderthals that had preceded them out of Africa and were already thriving in Europe and Asia:

• https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1355432/archaeology-news-human-history-neanderthals-earth-evg
• https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201102-did-neanderthals-go-to-war-with-our-ancestors
• https://theconversation.com/when-did-humans-first-go-to-war-149637
• a revised view of Neanderthals: https://time.com/5904203/neanderthals-myths/

South Africa

Article on early man in southern South Africa 200,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower - the hunting grounds since partially inundated following the end of the Ice Age:

• https://eos.org/features/a-lost-haven-for-early-modern-humans
• https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/05/drowned-paleo-agulhas-plain-was-an-eden-for-early-humans/129190

Peru

It seems prehistoric women could be hunters, as well as gatherers:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/11/prehistoric-female-hunter-discovery-upends-gender-role-assumptions/

Dogs and humans

Parallel DNA research into human and canine genomes is sketching an 11,000-year-long (or more) history of their relationship. The five separate dog genomes have expanded to 32:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/how-dogs-tracked-their-humans-across-ancient-world

Dingoes, on the other hand, seem to have arrived in western Australia some 3,500 years ago - far later than humans - and although some were recorded living with aboriginals in 1788 they don't feature much in ancient rock art; perhaps for roving hunter-gatherers dingoes were an unaffordable luxury?

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

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

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?

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

ORIGINS: Walking protohumans started in Europe?

According to research published in Nature, the first bipedal ancestor of modern humans may have come from southern Europe. Dubbed Danuvius Guggenmosi, the remains were found in Bavaria and date from c. 11.5 million years ago.

Only a few weeks before this discovery, another research team speculated that a 10-million-year-old pelvis belonging to another species called Rudapithecus Hungaricus may have enabled it to walk upright, too.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03418-2

Before now, says the Daily Mail's report, the earliest evidence of two-legged hominids came from Kenya - the 6 million-year-old remains of Orrorin Tugenensis -  and some fossilised footprints on the island of Crete.

"The discovery of Danuvius may shatter the prevailing notion of how bipedalism evolved: that perhaps 6 million years ago in East Africa a chimpanzee-like ancestor started to walk on two legs after environmental changes created open landscapes and savannahs where forests once dominated."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-7658067/Prehistoric-ape-Germany-pioneer-two-legged-walking.html

So rather than coming from Africa, it's possible that some of humanity's ancestors may have gone there before re-migrating northwards.

ORIGINS: Homo Sapiens interbred with four other hominid races, two as yet unknown

"Of these hominins, only Neanderthals and Denisovans are currently known; the others remain unnamed and have only been detected as traces of DNA surviving in different modern populations."

http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/anthropology/humans-hominin-introgression-07438.html

NEWS: Okay, okay, be evil - Google embarks on information suppression in China

Google is not only tailoring a biased version of its search engine for Communist China, but blocking its own employees' access to the relevant documents:

https://theintercept.com/2018/08/03/google-search-engine-china-censorship-backlash/

But that's OK, because it's no longer committed to fighting evil:

https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393

NEWS: China extending its influence in Australia and the West

British website The Conservative Woman reviews a new book by Canberra academic Clive Hamilton: "Silent Invasion: China's influence in Australia."

Apparently, last year Chinese parties nearly defenestrated an Australian MP in a key Sidney constituency, which could have wiped out the wafer-thin Parliamentary majority of the current Liberal government.

Elsewhere, Chinese individuals abroad may still be kept under close surveillance:

"Stalking of expat dissidents is facilitated by digital technology. Activity on Facebook (a website blocked in China) is monitored, but it doesn’t stop there. Western governments have shown unbelievable lack of caution in giving contracts to Chinese firms for sensitive work such as surveillance systems. Advanced internet-linked CCTV cameras with face-tracking capacity in use on the London Underground and Gatwick Airport are supplied by Hangzhou Hikvision, a company under Chinese state control. Potentially the data may be sent to Chinese servers, allowing agents to track people wherever they go, recording them visiting church or holding a copy of Epoch Times."

HAWAII NEWS: Volcanic eruption, evacuation

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-hawaii-volcano-eruption-20180503-story.html

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/04/us/kilauea-volcano-hawaii-earthquakes/index.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/05/03/hawaii-volcano-eruption-evacuations-kilauea/579856002/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/04/hawaii-evacuations-ordered-as-kilauea-volcano-erupts

See Youtube for comments from earthquake-watcher/predictor "Dutchinse":

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHE92x768p8h-fMrqhsnE1Q

AUSTRALIA: Could humanoids have been in Australia before Europe?

New archaeological research in Madjedbebe in northern Australia's Arnhem Land suggests it's possible humans could have reached there 20,000 years before they came to Europe:

https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/reimagining-history-human-migration-65000-year-old-find

NEWS: Pacific weather weirding and geopolitical manoeuvering

Papua continues to suffer from the worst drought since the late 1990s; so do Micronesia and the Marshall Islands; a number of Pacific nations have declared a state of emergency.

As the United Nations' OCHA explains, this is related to an El Niño event in the eastern Pacific - warming of surface ocean waters leading to changes in weather patterns across the world. While some areas become drier, others will experience higher rainfall leading to flooding and higher sea levels, the latter especially trying for low-lying islands.

But is it proof of "global warming"?

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has historic data of ocean temperature variations in the El Niño-prone region going back to 1950 (1). The 3-month period from last December to February 2016 saw the highest positive variation from mean, ever (2.2 degrees C).

However, sceptics could say (a) there are always difficulties with methodology in measurements like these and (b) 65 years is not long in geological terms.

It also depends on how you sample and present the information. Typically, the highest average surface ocean temperatures are found in the September-November period:

The pattern is similar to that in the first graph, but what happens if we start looking at years, rather than rolling quarter-years?

This year still looks exceptionally warm. Yet take 5-year averages and the picture changes significantly:

On that basis the current El Niño is merely returning us to the average point. And look at the pattern for rolling 10-year averages:

Taken as a whole, the last decade has actually been cooler! In fact, since the decade 1992-2001 the rolling 10-yearly averages have all been on or below the mean. If reversion to the mean is to be expected, we should be anticipating some more years of above-average temperatures as a correction.

This doesn't at all help the nations now in crisis; but help is coming, and as ever it has political implications. In a Radio New Zealand interview on Friday, Mark Adams of the International Organization for Migration stressed the logistical difficulties of assistance from the Philippines and the USA's west coast; yet a couple of weeks ago the Federated States of Micronesia issued a press release reporting a visit by the Chinese Ambassador, who announced a "10 million RMB worth of equipment specifically to address and mitigate the effects of the drought."

It has been said that the Chinese ideogram for "crisis" is a combination of elements representing "danger" and "opportunity". Even if its meaning is more correctly explained as "critical point," the notion may have relevance for Western geopolitical analysts looking at the Pacific region.
______________________________

(1) http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

ORIGINS: Melanesians carry Neanderthal and Denisovan genes

"Scientists at Binghamton University in New York sequenced the genomes of 35 residents of the remote equatorial islands of Melanesia and compared them to DNA extracted from ancient remains of Denisovans and Neanderthals... The genetic overlap of between the ancient hominids and modern Melanesians measured between 1.9 and 3.4 percent... The latest evidence suggests modern humans and early human relatives interbred on at least three separate occasions."

Via UPI - http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/03/17/Ancient-DNA-fragments-found-in-modern-humans/7591458241503/?spt=mps&or=5&sn=sn

Full paper in Science Magazine:  http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/03/16/science.aad9416.full

AUSTRALIA / NEWS: Auckland's South Pacific celebrations this week

Last weekend saw Auckland's annual Pasifika bash:

Image: http://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/cookislands-maori/en/content/countdown-pasifika-festival

Programme here: http://www.aucklandnz.com/pasifika/sunday

- and this coming Wednesday through to Saturday is the ASB Polyfest (http://www.asbpolyfest.co.nz/).

The Polyfest celebrated its 40th year in 2015 and included some impressive haka dances:

SCIENCE: 2016 solar eclipse, from Woleai

Recording of last week's (8 March 2016) total solar eclipse, seen live from a coral island in Micronesia:

Location:

Woleai (aka Oleai), eastern Caroline Islands, Federal States of Micronesia
Images: Google Maps / NASA

See Wikipedia on Woleai: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woleai

FRENCH POLYNESIA / NEWS - Tahiti: new biohazard laboratory opened

Friday, 4 March 2016: Tahiti News announces the opening of a new high-biosafety laboratory at the Malardé Institute in Pape'ete.(1)

This is to help deal with the increased risk of infectious diseases that have spread to and from the Pacific region, such as Chikungunya (2), Zika (3) - which was first discovered in Uganda in 1947 (4), dengue (5), H1N1 influenza (6).

An earlier article from FranceTV (7) explains that highly dangerous diseases need to be handled in very safe facilities, which up till now did not exist in French Polynesia. Previously samples would have had to be sent to other laboratories abroad, which cost precious time.

The new lab on Tahiti is equipped to NSB3 containment standard. This is not the highest category - level 4 is for very high risk pathogens such Ebola, Lassa, Marburg etc and "other agents with unknown risks of pathogenicity and transmission" (8).

The top biosafety rating includes germ warfare research facilities such as the UK's Porton Down, listed on Wikipedia (9). One obvious reason why the "space suit" level 4 isn't appropriate for Tahiti is the risk of destructive tropical storms like the Category 5 Cyclone Winston that crashed into Fiji last month, killing 43 people (10). French Polynesia is 2,100 miles further east but is still not immune: in 2010 Cyclone Oli hit Tahiti with gusts up to 120 mph (11), and in 1997 Cyclone Osea wrecked 95% of the infrastructure of Maupiti, 200 miles NW of the main island (12).

So we needn't worry about an Andromeda Strain-type (13) accidental plague weapon release: it's not that kind of operation.
___________________________________

(1)  http://www.tahitinews.co/inauguration-dun-laboratoire-de-haute-securite-biologique/
(2) http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/geo/ - very widespread globally
(3) http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/ - also spreading via  mosquito in Samoa and Tonga, for example
(4) https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/03/03/zika-connection-microcephaly-guillain-barre-hard-prove/
(5) http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2016/infectious-diseases-related-to-travel/dengue - throughout S E Asia and the western Pacific
(6) http://www.gleamviz.org/2009/09/ - spread around the world by air travel in months
(7) http://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/polynesie/tahiti/installation-d-un-laboratoire-de-haute-securite-biologique-l-institut-malarde-197064.html - dateline 9 Oct 2014, updated 25 Feb 2016
(8) http://www.labmanager.com/lab-health-and-safety/2010/12/biosafety-levels-1-2-3-4?fw1pk=2#.VtrtvX2LSt9
(9) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_level_4
(10) http://fijione.tv/43-dead-after-tc-winston/
(11) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Oli#Tahiti_2
(13) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain