A new species is evolving right before our eyes — an ultra-successful mix of wolves, coyotes and dogs

Eastern coyote (Wikipedia Commons)

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A new species combining wolves, coyotes and dogs is evolving before scientists’ eyes in the eastern United States.

Wolves faced with a diminishing number of potential mates are lowering their standards and mating with other, similar species, reported The Economist.

The interbreeding began up to 200 years ago, as European settlers pushed into southern Ontario and cleared the animal’s habitat for farming and killed a large number of the wolves that lived there.

That also allowed coyotes to spread from the prairies, and the white farmers brought dogs into the region.....http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/a-new-species-is-evolving-right-before-our-eyes-an-ultra-successful-mix-of-wolves-coyotes-and-dogs/

A new species is evolving right before our eyes — an ultra-successful mix of wolves, coyotes and dogs

Are we sleep-deprived or just darkness-deprived?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) state that insufficient sleep is a serious public health concern, because it can lead to many immediate dangers such as car crashes as well as long-term health problems like diabetes. The blame for sleep deprivation is often pinned on our fast-paced, 24/7 lifestyle, made possible by electric lighting at all times of day and night.

But are we really getting too little sleep?

http://theconversation.com/are-we-sleep-deprived-or-just-darkness-deprived-49412

Are we sleep-deprived or just darkness-deprived?

Frozen Cave Lion Cubs from the Ice Age Found in Siberia

Russian researchers have announced the discovery of cave lion cubs found in the Ice Age permafrost of Yakutia, Siberia. The frozen cats are the first of their kind ever found in such a well-preserved state.

At least one of the cats, seen in a photo released with the announcement, is so delicately preserved that even its fur is intact. The kitten has been frozen this way for at least 10,000 years, although the initial report notes that they could be even older.

“As far as I know, there has never been a prehistoric cat found with this level of preservation,” Des Moines University fossil felid expert Julie Meachen says, “so this is truly an extraordinary find.”

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151028-cave-lion-frozen-permafrost-science/

Frozen Cave Lion Cubs from the Ice Age Found in Siberia

Incredibly Preserved Frozen Cave Lions Found In Siberia

n remote and icy Siberia, bodies of long extinct ancient animals are often found preserved within the thick permafrost, from woolly mammoths to ancient horses. These carcasses have been so well preserved, that some reports suggest that the meat is often fresh enough to eat, and can even contain liquid blood. In another stunning find, The Siberian Times reports the “sensational” discovery of two almost perfectly preserved cave lion cubs.

Thought to be at least 10,000 years old, the lions were found earlier this summer in the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic of Siberia, famed for many other striking discoveries of ice age animals. The creatures lived during the Pleistocene, when the world was gripped by repeated ice ages as glaciers expanded and retracted. All that had been previously found of cave lions in the area were some skulls and fragments of teeth and bones.

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/best-preserved-cave-lions-ever-discovered-found-siberian-permifrost

Incredibly Preserved Frozen Cave Lions Found In Siberia

These 12 Photos of American Indians Are Beautiful, Surreal, and Haunting

These 12 Photos of American Indians Are Beautiful, Surreal, and Haunting

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151019-edward-curtis-photo-picture-native-american-indian/#/



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151019-edward-curtis-photo-picture-native-american-indian/#/04curtis.ngsversion.1445286608675.jpg

These 12 Photos of American Indians Are Beautiful, Surreal, and Haunting

Going underground: The massive European network of Stone Age tunnels that weaves from Scotland to Turkey Read more:

Stone Age man created a massive network of underground tunnels criss-crossing Europe from Scotland to Turkey, a new book on the ancient superhighways has claimed.

German archaeologist Dr Heinrich Kusch said evidence of the tunnels has been found under hundreds of Neolithic settlements all over the continent.

In his book - Secrets Of The Underground Door To An Ancient World - he claims the fact that so many have survived after 12,000 years shows that the original tunnel network must have been enormous.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2022322/The-massive-European-network-Stone-Age-tunnels-weaves-Scotland-Turkey.html#ixzz3pgbwv9PS Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

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Going underground: The massive European network of Stone Age tunnels that weaves from Scotland to Turkey Read more:

Map of Middle-Earth Annotated by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

Back in April, we highlighted for you a trove of 110 illustrations by J.R.R. Tolkien, offering a rare glimpse of the author’s artistic talents. Tolkien didn’t just like to write books, as we saw. He also liked to draw illustrations for these books, which helped him to conceptualize the fantasy worlds he was creating.

Just this month, Houghton Mifflin released a new book called The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, which brings together more than 180 drawings, inscriptions, maps, and plans–all drawn by Tolkien as part of his worldbuilding creative process. Most were never published until now.

More here: Link

Map of Middle-Earth Annotated by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

Amazon Tribe Creates 500-Page Remarkable Natural Medicine Encyclopedia

In one of the great tragedies of our age, indigenous traditions, stories, cultures and knowledge are winking out across the world. Whole languages and mythologies are vanishing, and in some cases even entire indigenous groups are falling into extinction. This is what makes the news that a tribe in the Amazon—the Matsés peoples of Brazil and Peru—have created a 500-page encyclopedia of their traditional medicine all the more remarkable. The encyclopedia, compiled by five shamans with assistance from conservation group Acaté, details every plant used by Matsés medicine to cure a massive variety of ailments.

http://soulsurfing.website/index.php/2015/07/20/amazon-tribe-creates-500-page-remarkable-natural-medicine-encyclopedia/

Amazon Tribe Creates 500-Page Remarkable Natural Medicine Encyclopedia

Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, say physicists

Quantum mechanics, though firmly tested, is so weird and anti-intuitive that famed physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." Attempts to explain some of the bizarre consequences of quantum theory have led to some mind-bending ideas, such as theCopenhagen interpretation and the many-worlds interpretation...



http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/parallel-worlds-exist-and-interact-with-our-world-say

Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, say physicists

UK Scientists: Aliens May Have Sent Space Seeds To Create Life On Earth

Scientists in the U.K. have examined a tiny metal circular object, and are suggesting it might be a micro-organism deliberately sent by extraterrestrials to create life on Earth.

Don't be fooled by the size of the object in the microscopic image above. It may appear to look like a planet-sized globe, but in fact, it's no bigger than the width of a human hair.

The University of Buckingham reports that the minuscule metal globe was discovered by astrobiologist Milton Wainwright and a team of researchers who examined dust and minute matter gathered by a high-flying balloon in Earth's stratosphere....

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

UK Scientists: Aliens May Have Sent Space Seeds To Create Life On Earth

The village where a curse protects the forest

Two hundred families live in Mungku Baru. Most are farmers, many have rubber plantations, some scour the forest for honey and traditional medicines.

“We also grow dry-land rice,” Anton, one of the villagers, told Mongabay. “We plant in October and harvest in March. It’s all organic. We don’t use chemical fertilizers.”

The most prized aspect of the village, however, is its rare ironwood forest. Known locally as ulin, Eusideroxylon zwageri is a high-value timber species and is often the first targeted by loggers. Its slow growth rate produces a tight grain that resists rot and termites. Ironwood buildings last for hundreds of years in the harsh wood-devouring climate of Indonesia.

The ironwood forest is located upriver of the village, besieged by PT Taiyoung Engreen, a timber company that is clear-cutting the surrounding forest. The company has, so far, respected the villagers’ rights to the land, leaving it untouched.

“The company has never disturbed our ironwood forest,” said Redie, one of the forest’s caretakers. “Therefore it is still in good condition.”...

http://news.mongabay.com/2015/10/the-village-where-a-curse-protects-the-forest/

The village where a curse protects the forest

Early Human Evolution in the Western Palaearctic: Ecological Scenarios

This review presents the themes of a special issue dealing with environmental scenarios of human evolution during the Early Pleistocene (2.6–0.78 Ma; MIS 103-MIS 19) and early Middle Pleistocene (0.78–0.47 Ma; MIS 19-base of MIS 12) within the western Palaearctic. This period is one of dramatic changes in the climates and the distribution of Palaearctic biota. These changes have played their role in generating adaptive and phyletic patterns within the human ancestry, involving several species such as Homo habilis, “Homo georgicus”, Homo erectus, Homo antecessor and Homo heidelbergensis. In the archaeological record, these species include the Oldowan (Mode 1) and Acheulian (Mode 2) lithic technologies. Taphonomic considerations of palaeoecological research in hominin-bearing sites are provided and evaluated. Syntheses are provided for north Africa, western Asia, the Mediterranean Basin, Britain, and continental Europe. Palaeoenvironmental reconstructions based on multidisciplinary data are given for Ain Boucherit, Ain Hanech and El-Kherba in Algeria, Dmanisi in Georgia, Atapuerca, Cueva Negra, and the Orce Basin in Spain, Monte Poggiolo and Pirro Nord in Italy, Pont-de-Lavaud in France, and Mauer in Germany. The state of the art with the Out of Africa 1 dispersal model is reviewed. A source-sink dynamics model for Palaeolithic Europe is described to explain the morphological disparity of H. heidelbergensis (we will sometimes use the informal name “Heidelbergs”) and early Neanderthals. Other aspects debated here are the selective value of habitat mosaics including reconstructions based on mammal and avian databases, and the role of geological instability combined with topographic complexity. This review is completed by addressing the question of whether the appearance of evolutionary trends within hominins is concentrated in regions of highest worldwide biological diversity (biodiversity hotspots). It is concluded that the keys for the activation of evolutionary change in hominins may have been geological instabilities, and a shifting physiographical heterogeneity combined with high biodiversity and ecological interaction.
Early Human Evolution in the Western Palaearctic: Ecological Scenarios. Available from: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/229308964_Early_Human_Evolution_in_the_Western_Palaearctic_Ecological_Scenarios [accessed Oct 10, 2015].

Early Human Evolution in the Western Palaearctic: Ecological Scenarios

East African climate pulses and early human evolution

Current evidence suggests that all of the major events in hominin evolution have occurred in East Africa. Over the last two decades, there has been intensive work undertaken to understand African palaeoclimate and tectonics in order to put together a coherent picture of how the environment of East Africa has varied in the past. The landscape of East Africa has altered dramatically over the last 10 million years. It has changed from a relatively flat, homogenous region covered with mixed tropical forest, to a varied and heterogeneous environment, with mountains over 4 km high and vegetation ranging from desert to cloud forest. The progressive rifting of East Africa has also generated numerous lake basins, which are highly sensitive to changes in the local precipitation-evaporation regime. There is now evidence that the presence of precession-driven, ephemeral deep-water lakes in East Africa were concurrent with major events in hominin evolution. It seems the unusual geology and climate of East Africa created periods of highly variable local climate, which, it has been suggested could have driven hominin speciation, encephalisation and dispersal out of Africa. One example is the significant hominin speciation and brain expansion event at ∼1.8 Ma that seems to have been coeval with the occurrence of highly variable, extensive, deep-water lakes. This complex, climatically very variable setting inspired first the variability selection hypothesis, which was then the basis for the pulsed climate variability hypothesis. The newer of the two suggests that the long-term drying trend in East Africa was punctuated by episodes of short, alternating periods of extreme humidity and aridity. Both hypotheses, together with other key theories of climate-evolution linkages, are discussed in this paper. Though useful the actual evolution mechanisms, which led to early hominins are still unclear and continue to be debated. However, it is clear that an understanding of East African lakes and their palaeoclimate history is required to understand the context within which humans evolved and eventually left East Africa.
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East African climate pulses and early human evolution

Neolithic conflicts more violent than previously thought

From the «got a big ass-kicking comin your way, bro» department: 
Title: Massacres, Torture and Mutilation: Extreme Violence in Neolithic Conflicts 
Author: cmn32480 
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2015 23:31:00 -0400 
Link: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/08/19/188251&from=rss 

Phoenix666[1] writes: 

Violent conflicts in Neolithic Europe were held more brutally[2] than has 
been known so far. This emerges from a recent anthropological analysis of the 
roughly 7000-year-old mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten by researcher of 
the Universities of Basel and Mainz. The findings, published in the journal 
PNAS, show that victims were murdered and deliberately mutilated. 

It was during the time when Europeans first began to farm. To what degree 
conflicts and wars featured in the early Neolithic (5600 to 4900 B.C.), and 
especially in the so-called Linear Pottery culture (in German, 
Linearbandkeramik, LBK), is a disputed theme in research. It is particularly 
unclear whether social tensions were responsible for the termination of this 
era. So far two mass graves from this period were known to stem from armed 
conflicts (Talheim, Germany, and Asparn/Schletz, Austria). 
... 
Besides various types of (bone) injuries caused by arrows, they also found 
many cases of massive damage to the head, face and teeth, some inflicted on 
the victims shorty before or after their death. In addition, the attackers 
systematically broke their victims' legs, pointing to torture and deliberate 
mutilation. Only few female remains were found, which further indicates that 
women were not actively involved in the fighting and that they were possibly 
abducted by the attackers. 

The abstract from the original study can be found at pnas.org[3]. 

From Schöneck-Kilianstädten to Rwanda, it seems like humanity hasn't come very 
far. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

Original Submission[4] 

Read more of this story[5] at SoylentNews. 

Links: 
[1]: http://soylentnews.org/~Phoenix666/ (link) 
[2]: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150818090254.htm (link) 
[3]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/08/12/1504365112 (link) 
[4]: http://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=9042 (link) 
[5]: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/08/19/188251&from=rss (link) 

Neolithic conflicts more violent than previously thought

Joe's New Album with Dr. Dan Matrazzo

For those of you interested in my music as well as my writing and research, here is the latest video from our new album "Dr. Dan Matrazzo and the Looters."

You can hear more samples on amazon.com:
The Looters on Amazon

Joe's New Album with Dr. Dan Matrazzo

Newly discovered mammal species survived dinosaur extinction

Scientists have discovered a species of ancient mammal that survived the event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The remains of this large, rodent-like creature give clues about how mammals "took over" when dinosaurs died out.

Kimbetopsalis simmonsae, as the newly discovered species has been named, was a plant-eating creature that resembled a beaver.

The news is published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Dr Stephen Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh, lead researcher on the study, explained how a student on his team called Carissa Raymond found the fossil while prospecting at a site in New Mexico, US.

"We realised pretty quickly that this was a to

Source

Newly discovered mammal species survived dinosaur extinction

Iraqi Museum Discovers Missing Lines From the Epic of Gilgamesh

It's not unusual for fantasy epics to endure for years. (Right, Game of Thrones fans?) But even George R.R. Martin would be shocked to learn about the century-and-a-half wait for a new chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world's oldest written stories. The Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraq has discovered 20 new lines to the ancient Babylonian poem, writes Ted Mills for Open Culture. 

The Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates back to 18th century B.C., was pieced together from fragments that tell the story of a Sumerian king who travels with a wild companion named Enkidu. As Mills explains, scholars were well aware that new fragments of the poem could possibly turn up — modern readers are most familiar with a version discovered in Nineveh in 1853 — and during the war in Iraq, as looters pillaged ancient sites, they finally did. The Sulaymaniah Museum acquired the tablet in 2011, as part of a collection purchased from a smuggler, according to Osama S.M. Amin at Ancient History Et Cetera:

The collection was composed of 80-90 tablets of different shapes, contents and

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/epic-of-gilgamesh-new-verses-discovered-worlds-oldest-story-180956844/#lQ1gAWV7ktYsAvhr.99
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Iraqi Museum Discovers Missing Lines From the Epic of Gilgamesh

Indian River Water Has Reduced For The First Time In History And The Secret Hidden Inside Them...

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For the conspiracy theorist looking for something to get their teeth into that is relatively new to the world, The recently reduced river in Karnataka has been showing strange rock formations that have been leading many people to flow to its edges and stare in wonder.  Part of the reason is the fact that these have historical meaning to the Hindu population.  Commonly known as Shiva Ling, the symbols and rock formations that are becoming noticeable are said to be hints that long along aliens walked amongst us. There is plenty of conspiracies over the symbols and what their “true” meaning is.  In modern culture, they are meant as strength and power, but many believe that it could be a sign that aliens have come long ago before humans, and these are signs that they are going to return.  Whatever you believe, they’re a sight to see...

Indian River Water Has Reduced For The First Time In History And The Secret Hidden Inside Them...