Friday, July 29, 2016
Mystery ancient human ancestor found in Australasian family tree
Mystery ancient human ancestor found in Australasian family tree: A genome analysis suggests that Asian and Pacific human populations share a single origin and their ancestors might have bred with Homo erectus
Prehistoric Fiction Novella "The Man from Parkho Khatune Bears Favor" Chapter I
The Boy from Parkho Khatune
The woman had a horn growing out of her forehead. It looked something like that of a rhino, but of course much smaller and darker in hue. It protruded about the length of a man's pinky finger, about half that length above her left eye. The boy had never seen a person with a horn before. There was discoloration on a small bump above her right eye as well, in roughly the same place. Was it the start of a second horn?
She sat cross-legged on the fox-skin rug with her eyes closed, gathered up the dragon bones, and chanted into closed fists. The woman almost seemed to pulsate with light, like the small brazier behind her, as she worked her spells.
He had heard of ogres and dragons with horns, and once his grandmother had told him that wise old sorcerers sometimes grew horns after they'd aged a century or so. This woman looked human enough. She was not much older than his grandmother, who'd been the oldest lady in Parkho Khatune when she'd died. The woman with the horn had his grandmother's eyes. He had seen more gray eyes like hers among the highlanders of Fandrin Village in the one month he'd been among them than he'd seen his whole life behind the walls of Parkho Khatune. That wasn't many. Just like in his home village, most eyes here were brown. And even here there was no one else with amber eyes like his.
She rolled the dragon bones for the second time and squinted over them, then marked a tally in the sand in front of the rug. He caught a glimpse of the horn's tip as she bent her head, noticed three short hairs growing out of it, and averted his gaze just as she looked up from her work.
"On the morrow you will climb for a better view of the world, boy. So doing makes one vulnerable to those who watch from below. Mind that. Mind it well."
She reached out with a bony finger and tapped him on the temple.
"Along the way, you will find the guard-posts of those who have gone before. You must light them as beacons, that they may become guideposts for those who follow. These things were told to me of the bones."
She gathered them up again with her left hand and with her right splayed a row of six amulets on the floor beside the tally. There was a fold of skin partially covering one side of the horn's edge and he could see tiny blue veins just beneath the surface, but he kept his eye on the amulets.
"Take the one that's yours, boy."
The boy's eyes were drawn to one of the amulets in particular, a round red disc of bone embellished with a faded black half-moon. To his eyes, there seemed to be a slight disturbance in the air along the edges of the amulet, as if some strange power emanated from within. He reached out and took it slowly, almost fearful that it might burn him with its touch. When he brought it to his eye, the amulet looked completely normal. It felt warm, as if he'd taken it from someone's chest rather than from the sand.
The old sorceress' eyes grew wide for only an instant before her countenance became stern again. "Very well. Your choice requires further tests, young supplicant. Allow this ritual to provide your cleansing, so that you may enter the home of the Ancestors an empty vase, and expand your influence as you expand your awareness."
The old lady rose with uncomplaining difficulty and walked to the door of her hut, pulling back the flap to allow him to exit. The sun was brighter than his eyes expected, but by its position he could tell that it was now late afternoon. He saw teams of peasants working on the terraces in the valley below, and the Snowmelt rushing from the mountains in the east to meet the River of Sorrows. On its banks sat the village of Fandrin, where the valley opened up to the west. Grand Mother Arine motioned to her right, where the terraces gave way to tall cliffs that rose before blue Eastern mountains. There were three cave openings in the cliff wall nearest them, and the sorceress motioned for the boy to enter the closest one. He wondered if he should be relieved that he was not entering the middle one again, where he'd spent the previous night amid the stench of rotting corpses, or be wary of some greater trial ahead. Walking forward toward the nearest cave mouth, he told himself that it mattered little compared to the will of the Ancestors and that of Mah Kam-Ur, the Great Bear Mother who chose life or death for the People of the Language. She had always been the chooser, and even Grand Mother Arine and the Ancestors only messengers of her will.
***
The cave he had entered the night before had been small, long and narrow, so that he had been forced to crawl to reach the flame-lit room deep beneath the rock. The cave he entered now was immense, its mouth yawning high above his head. The light of the sun showed well into its interior, but the chamber inside was so vast that it was not entirely illuminated. He felt the cold expanse as he stepped inside and heard the faint drips of unseen water resounding in the depths. The echoes gave him a sense of smallness within the chamber's void. The ceiling was lost above in darkness, and the only part of the far wall he could make out was where it shown with the light of a small fire. There he saw the shapes of men, but if they spoke he was too far away to hear. He made his way toward them through the darkness between the light.
When he reached the fire a man the boy recognized as Sapa of the Rik-Sika stood to greet him.. Renowned hunters and warriors of Bai moiety, the Rik-Sika were chosen from among young men of the thirteen villages. The boy had been under the tutelage of both the Rik-Sika and several other orders since he'd arrived in Fandrin, but had not expected to actually be chosen by them. He felt his heart beat faster as he realized that his tests were far from over. Sapa Mainu looked down to the boy's right hand. It still held the amulet Grand Mother Arine had given him, unnoticed since he'd walked into the cave. The Sapa regarded him with a sideways cock of the head, squinting, then took the amulet and tossed it to one of the other men seated by the fire.
"Ahem...so it is...so it is....welcome young son of the Phoenix. It seems that you have passed the tests to become a member of our lodge. Have a seat at our fire. We are just now discussing tomorrow's journey. Seems that it will be a long one." Sapa Mainu sat down on the wooden bench beside the man he'd handed the amulet to, a gaunt fur-clad Rik-Sika with the feathered crests of a Bonpo.
"A long one, he says, and it will take longer to get there than just the morrow."
The Bonpo were the people's sorcerers, knowledgeable in healing spells as well as the removal and administration of curses and blessings on persons, places, and possessions. The boy recognized the gaunt man as Master Resak, spiritual leader of the Rik-Sika.
"Brothers, we are heading upland!"
There were a few grunts around the campfire, and a few of the men said something about a place called High Home, but Sapa Mainu spoke again and the commotion ended.
"Hear me, my brothers. In the morning, you must be prepared for a week long journey. We will leave at first light, and spend tomorrow night among the Zhul at the Highland Gathering Ring. If the She-Bear be merciful, we will return to Fandrin with a new member of our order. Tonight, let us drink wine and welcome him!"
The Rik-Sika stomped the ground and shouted their welcomes in unison.
One of the Rik-Sika's eyes widened in mock concern as he passed the wine-skin to the boy.
“And may the Kami save his soul,” he said, as his head shook in the negative.
The others laughed loudly at the jest. All except for Mainu, who only smiled as he contemplated the flames.
“Aye, Varma,” the Sapa murmured, “May they save us all.”
The boy took a long drought from the wine-skin and passed it to the next man on the bench. As the skin made its rounds the boy studied each of the faces in turn. They were the faces of his new brothers, who he'd be spending the next week with on the trail. He wondered if any of them had been behind the masks last night, in the middle cave of corpses. There were twelve men in all, including the Sapa and Bonpo. All were wearing amulets similar to the one that Grand Mother Arine had given him. Most had long beards or mustaches, and bright red plumes hung from their hair.
The Bonpo began to thread a necklace for the boy's amulet as he shared a tale. It was the story of an ancestral hero of Bai moiety, the kinship line to which the boy, Grand Mother Arine, and the Rik-Sika belonged. The hero was known as Shentak and had died nearly five generations past, sacrificing his life to defend the Phoenix tribe from invasion. Ogres had come down from the high mountain passes to rape, steal, and eat the flesh of the civilized. The boy had heard the tale before, but never with such drama and flamboyance as that of Master Resak. Perhaps the strong wine made the story even more exciting- he was too young to have had much experience with strong drink. Resak even acted out the battle scene with the great ogre chief, who in defeat dealt Shentak a fatal blow. When the Bonpo mimed the hero's burial and the placing of the Heart Blade upon his chest, it was done with such reverence that the boy's eyes watered and nearly teared.
"...and tomorrow we journey to the final resting place of Shentak the Steadfast, Marver the Protector, and of the Mountain Queens." He cocked one eye and scanned the faces gathered around the fire. "It is a sight that only few of you have seen." The Bonpo's face relaxed. He held both hands open and smiled. "But tonight there is celebration in the valley. Let us put these concerns away until morning. It seems the drums have already begun."
Some of the men voiced their approval of the Bonpo's performance as they took their leave of the fire, and clasped his shoulder in gratitude as they passed. Only Sapa Mainu lingered, stirring the embers in silence.
***
The boy followed his new-found brothers from the cave. The sun was gone and darkness was already falling. Grand Mother Arine's hut sat silent, nestled in the rocky crags beside the cave opening. The old sorceress was nowhere to be seen. They took the rocky path down the terraces toward the light of a bonfire in the center of the festival grounds. As they walked the winding path to the assembly, he could hear the drum rhythms that called the villagers to the celebration. Tonight's feast had been provided by Grand Mother Tulu of White Tiger moiety, who shared the rule of Fandrin with Grand Mother Arine and High Priestess Arteq. It marked the beginning of winter's thaw and the coming of spring. The talk was that she had ordered the slaughter of six hogs to go with the last of the stores of salted salmon, ama cakes, and beer so strictly rationed during winter. As the boy entered the gathering place, he could also see the flank of an elk being roasted on a spit. A group of young girls were rolling out dumplings on a plank near the cook-fires. Villagers milled and chatted of the day's events, or helped the women prepare Grand Mother Tulu's feast. In front of the bonfire, a group of four drummers sat thumping out festive rhythms, and small children and dogs played chase, wrestled, or darted in and out of the crowd.
As more villagers filed in, pleasantries were exchanged and beer was passed out to the guests by Master Lugen, the head brewer of Tulu moiety. The brewer gave the boy a suspicious but well-natured look when his turn came up in line, but filled the cup for him just the same. The boy gave his elder a thankful nod and found a seat before the drum clearing where the youth had gathered to view the upcoming performance. The simple-minded villager known as "Scout" also sat among them, though twice as old as any of his other peers. The people called him "Scout" because he'd never earned a name, and had spent his entire life inside the village, terrified of the world outside.
The boy drank several more cups of the heady beverage that night. The next was after the Bonpos had sacrificed a yak to the Spirit of Spring and a fowl to the Spirit of Winter, another after he'd eaten his fill of the tasty fair that Grand-Mother Tulu's daughters brought out in huge trenchers, and still another during the Dance of the Nereid. That last was performed in unison by acolytes of Mah Kam-Ur to the beat of the drums and the melodies of flute, song-bow, and horn.
Each time the boy returned to have his cup refilled by the brewer, he was given the same playful look. The brewer must have taken great pride at the boy's complimentary patronage, because each time he returned to the seat with a cup spilling over the brim. By the time of the last performance, the boy was good and dizzy.
After a mime which told the story of Borgar of the White Tiger Clan and his union to First Mother Bai, the gathering became more informal. Some of the townsfolk began to dance by the fire, the musicians began to follow a more light-hearted motif, and many in the crowd took up the singing of old familiar songs. "Scout" laughed and clapped his hands but could not keep up with the beat, despite his enthusiasm. Master Resak led a group of ecstatic dancers in a trance circle, some of them Rik-Sika, but most young women of the Bai and Tulu noble families.
One of the men who had been at the cave gathering was sitting on the ground a stone's toss away from the boy, whispering in a pretty brown-haired woman's ear, which by the smile on her face she must have thought amusing. He thought it probable that he and the other nameless boys would have the dugong all to themselves this evening. Women did not invite the nameless to their chambers at night, though they often invited grown warriors of the Rik-Sika.
Stumbling back to the dugong through the shadows he miss-stepped often and took the wrong turn twice. Even so, none of the people seemed to notice him or even look in his direction. This is how it had always been since the boy had been a child. Rarely had he been noticed or acknowledged, even in his own village, and had often been able to sneak away unseen without his mother or uncles having the least inkling that he was gone. Sometimes, when provisions were shared among the people, the host would skip him over entirely. He rarely said anything, so as not to embarrass the host. But when he had received no name at the Naming Ceremony, he had thought that his propensity to be overlooked had finally caused him real harm. Now he wondered if this seeming invisibility was what had led him to be chosen by the Rik-Sika. In the old stories, one of their most impressive powers was to walk among the shadows completely unseen. In fact, the only lesson that Master Resak had given him and the other initiate boys was a spell for moving silently, after which they had all played a game of hide-and-seek. It had been the Bonpo who found him after all of the initiates had given up.
***
When the boy from Parkho Khatune finally reached the dugong, he climbed the ladder to the common room to find it empty and dark. Drunk as he was, he made it blindly to his furs as the world spun out of control. The darkness seemed to flash and whirl, but he faded blissfully into a dream.
In the dream, he rose above his own sleeping body in spirit form. A huge amber Heart Blade lay upon the chest of his material self below, as if he were dead. His bed looked the same, but they were in a cave which seemed to have no exits, all of its walls painted with scenes of the hunt and the legends of the Ancestors. A great hulking She-Bear slumbered in the corner, an incarnation of Mah Kam-Ur herself, and in the center was a small pool of water with a red-trunked tree growing on its rocky bank. Though the cave was well lit, there was no light source to be seen. He moved rapidly through what looked like a stony tunnel beneath the earth, floating through an endless maze of side corridors, branches, and even sheer drops straight into the bowels of the Earth. There did not seem to be such thing as falling in the dream-world, and he could float up or down effortlessly as well as forwards and backward. Only he didn't seem to be choosing his own path. Some other consciousness was trying all of the pathways for him in succession. Even the tunnel itself began to spin as his vision blurred.
He was back in the middle cave from the night before. He and the other boys were led into a macabre circle of blood-soaked, headless animals. Flies buzzed over the intertwined bodies as the boys stared out from the center, their eyes stretched open and unblinking.
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Joe Lyon Layden is a prehistoric fiction author and primitive musician. To receive a free copy of this entire novella as well as three free songs and monthly updates, freebies, and discounts on Joe's ongoing work, please sign up for the newsletter below.
Mysterious New Whale Species Discovered in Alaska
It's just so exciting to think that in 2016 we're still discovering things in our world—even mammals that are more than 20 feet long."
Joe Lyon Layden is a prehistoric fiction author and primitive musician. To receive a free copy of this entire novella "The Man from Parkho Khatune Bears Favor," as well as three free songs and monthly updates, freebies, and discounts on Joe's ongoing work, please sign up for the newsletter below.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/new-whale-species/
Joe Lyon Layden is a prehistoric fiction author and primitive musician. To receive a free copy of this entire novella "The Man from Parkho Khatune Bears Favor," as well as three free songs and monthly updates, freebies, and discounts on Joe's ongoing work, please sign up for the newsletter below.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/new-whale-species/
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Savannah Wildlife Refuge: The Waring Site
Joe Lyon Layden is a prehistoric fiction author and primitive musician. To receive a free copy of this entire novella "The Man from Parkho Khatune Bears Favor," as well as three free songs and monthly updates, freebies, and discounts on Joe's ongoing work, please sign up for the newsletter below.
Updating the @CENNATHIS Blog on the Proof of Ancient Giants (with Charles T.G. Clarke)
4 thoughts on “Meganthropus palaeojavanicus – The Early Years of Palaeoanthropological Research (1942 – 1955)”
Here is the original article that this post is a discussion of:
https://cennathis.com/2015/02/06/meganthropus-palaeojavanicus-the-early-years-of-palaeoanthropological-research-1942-1955/comment-page-1/#comment-322
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
JULY 11, 2016 AT 6:42 PM
First you say that Meganthropus is only used in modern times by Creationists, then you say that Arjuna 9 was described by scientists. So are these scientists creationists?
I think not.
From the description you have provided alone anyone with common sense can tell that a large, basal subspecies or “ethnic” group of homo erectus must have lived on Java between 1.6 million and 700 k ago.
And you don’t even bother to mention the double sagittal crests on several of the specimens or the tooth size, which is only rivaled by Denisovans and the Red deer Cave people.
No one believes Creationist, not even the majority of Christians. Why do people tell lies that hurt science in an effort to debunk them?
There were species of Heidelberg that were 7 foot tall on average. there were probably species of homo erectus that were really big too.
It’s a fact.
Don’t try to change it just because you don’t like that some people call them Nephilim.
The world is still a lot older than 5000 years and the process of evolution is still evident in the fossil record.
REPLY
Charles T.G. Clarke
JULY 11, 2016 AT 9:03 PM
Hello Joseph. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your constructive criticism. I will now respond. Please note, that I leave the modern usage of the term to the end of the article. The majority of the article is about how the term came into existence and it’s torturous use to the present day. I do feel you are unnecessarily jumping to conclusions. Early palaeoanthropologists had a habit of naming anything they saw. Today, palaeoanthropologists spend less time arguing over names and more time on more important questions. Nowhere, do I suggest von-Keonigswald was a creationist. I have not investigated his personally held beliefs, so I’m not qualified to comment. The idea of subspecies in hominin evolution is not a generally accepted position. The last time a new hominin subspecies was proposed scientifically in 2003 by Timothy D. White’s team – Homo sapiens idaltu – but we have barely seen this in the scientific literature since then. That’s a sure sign, so self-respecting palaeoanthropologist would accept such a taxonomic appellation.
The “Red Deer People” was first described in 1979 and Darren Curnoe of the University of New South Wales headed a re-analysis of the specimens . To start, the majority of palaeoanthropologists find Curnoe very odd. In 2010, he published a paper in an obscure journal claiming that one of the South African skulls is a new species of human – Homo gautengensis – in conversations with skilled palaeoanthropologists in the aftermath of the publication, I got the impression that, that paper hurt the reliability of Curnoe. So, he is a troublesome character. He attempted and failed to give a new species status to the Red Deer People, so he resorted to using public media to his advantage, by ensuring that the catchy “Red Deer People” would flood broadsheets and tabloids. It worked and unfortunately confused many of my friends who did not know the nuances of the paper published.
With regard to Denisova, all we have is are two teeth and a phalanx. This is why we do not have Homo denisova. Archaeogenetics is powerful, but not powerful enough to name a new species. No palaeoanthropologist would think it worthwhile to compare Denisova, the RD people and the javan hominins to eachother. Where do I start here…………….Dating. They all date to different points in the Pleistocene. Not to mention the sites from which these fossils came are notoriously difficult to date.
You make a slight error, saying Sagittal crests, you mean sagittal keels. The double sagittal keel was first described in 1991 (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02435533#page-1) and applied to Sangiran 31. There was no evidence of double sagittal keeling on any of the other hominins. Not that it makes much difference, in the long run, due to the fact this is mere human variation.
It is very unfair to characterise my article as lies that hurt science. This article for starters is not a mega-hit, written by a pulitzer prize winning author. It is a public science article that hopefully enlighens about the world of palaeoanthropology.
I was horrified to read the Wikipedia article on Meganthropus to find it poorly written and confusing and unscientific. This article was an attempt to counter that.
No palaeoanthropologist would ever suggest that the Mauer Mandible came from a 7ft tall human. You cannot gauge body size by mandible’s alone. As far as speculation is concerned, the Mauer Mandible (often attributed to Homo heidelbergensis) belonged to your average sized human around 5ft 6″.
Homo erectus IS a species. There is no such thing as species of Homo erectus. I recommend this book (http://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/the-complete-world-of-human-evolution-softcover-second-edition) to help you refresh and update your flawed understanding of hominin evolution.
Some historians suggest that the Nephilim was inspired by the fossil record. So, fossil mammoth have been found all over the world. These finds may have inspired the Cyclops and the Nephilim. Using religion was a handy yet flawed method to explain these discoveries away.
After reading your entire comment, it appears you need to read a little deeper, but I find the last few lines comforting.
Thanks ever so much for offering your constructive criticism to this article. I hope I have given you an adequate response. Please do follow and don’t forget to share this article as far as you can. Thanks again. Your contribution is always appreciated.
REPLY
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
JULY 28, 2016 AT 6:49 AM
Charles, I appreciate your very thorough explanation. . However, I disagree that my view is flawed. I understand that it is no longer academic or politically correct to put hominids in a subspecies, and that is a major problem for the field. There are many subspecies of white tailed deer, subspecies of zebra with varying chromosome numbers. But no subspecies for hominids, despite how different we are from idaltu? Why do humans get special pleading?
There is absolutely no way that Red Deer Cave people came solely from homo sapien sapiens. There is absolutely no way that anything less than an archaic hominid with several several hundred thousand years of evolution separate from our own could have evolved those archaic traits. Floresiensis can not have evolved from anything else but a very early member of homo, along a separate lineage from our own. Only gorillas, Bili apes, and Paranthropus have sagittal keel. If two specimens in Java have sagittal keels and all the rest of homo doesn’t, it most likely means that those Javan specimens evolved straight from an advanced austro and not erectus, which don’t have sagittal keels. The “meganthropus” skull we’re discussing is bigger than a paranthropus, bigger than a human, bigger than a Bili ape, and bigger than a gorilla and if he was no taller than them then he had the biggest head of any primate known to science. We only have teeth and jaws of Giganthopithecus, but it’s prerfectly acceptable for scientists to agree on him being 10 to 12 feet tall. But meganthropus is a human and it might excite the dumb creationists so let’s not apply the same science to it. Several prominent scientists have said that there were populations of heidelberg that avergaed near 7 foot tall, and I cannot imagine what you would find so fantastic about that. The chinese have recently reported a find of the ancestors of the Qang avergaing 7 feet tall, and there’s good evidence that the Anaste in America were that tall too. No big deal and totally expected by anyone with common sense who realizes that height between separate genomes varied widely before the melting pot of the agricultural revolution, when 90% of Y haplogroups were exterminated or went extinct due to environmental pressures (and the genetic evidence suggests the former).
The idea that mammoths and elephants inspired legends of giants is devoid of common sense, because man has been killing and skinning elephants since the Upper Paleolithic and knew very well what their bones looked like.
One laughable thing I recently read was that the Tutsi were once reported to be 7 foot tall, but a more scientific assessment was done AFTER THE BANTU INVASION that found that they were only around 6 foot on average. Well duh. Don’t scientists know that Bantu were short? Don’t they know what happens when one tribe takes over another? The colonists of georgia claimed that the Yamacraw stood 6’6 on average, and that Tomochichi was over 7 foot, while the women averaged 5’2. There’s only one way that kind of sexual dimporphism can exists in a population of homo sapiens- you kill the short Yuchi men and keep the short yuchi women after a few generations they would have returned to normal man/woman height ratios. The reason I think some attitudes hurt science is because 50% of people believe in ancient aliens, and it’s not their fault. We see elongated skulls, red deer cave skulls, massive cro-magnon bones, little people with austro/ardi wrists who lived only 50k ago. Palu hominids who look even stranger…but scientists try to tell us that they are all just HSS from an African mother 180k ago. You might be able to create a theory for Palau hominids reverting back to suite of erectus, soloensis, and floresiensis traits in only 2000 years while Andaman Islanders stayed the same for 20 to 60 thousand, but only book worms will believe you- those with common sense and street smarts with experience observing things in the real world are going to reject it on instinct and probability and look for answers elsewhere that make some kind of sense. We have found one chimp fossil in what, 3 to 6 million years of chimp evolution?
It’s a partial tooth.
It stands to reason, then, that we have very little of the puzzle.
I can’t think of any other reason for academics to claim that Palau is from HSS alone... except for their insistence that only HSS was around by 5000 years ago.
What gives them the omniscience to think this? Of course more hominids were around for a lot longer than we have bones for! That’s just common sense.
It's also common sense that last tall cro-magnon bones weren't the last of their race, and that some tall, robust hunter gatherers were still around after the agriculturalist underwent the thousand-year shrink that comes with agriculture. We even have evidence that they did...it's just not PC to take their average measurements into account anymore....unless you live in China.
To clarify about the elongated skulls I mentioned. If you read what most scientists say about them, you get the impression that people woke up one day all over the world 5,500 years ago and said “Hey! Let’s warp our babies’ heads today for no good reason!” I guess they communicated it to each other by way of psychic powers or Sheldrake’s morphic field? And now they’ve found one in that shape in Korea with no signs whatever of artificial elongating. Well…we’ve got plenty of dolicephalic skulls in the fossil record they could have been partially descended from and who they might have been emulating. The Shanidar neanderthals were even once thought to have practiced head-binding, but now we know they were naturally like that. No surprise, because India seems to exude long skulled hybrids through most of the paleolithic.. We know that a hominid that split off from our line 1.2 million years ago was assimilated by homo sapiens in SE Asia 37 thousand years and has since spread microcephalin d to 70% of the planet, and that SE Asian hominids had elongated skulls. Where you see elongated skulls 5500 years ago after the last rapid sea rise, you also find a suite of common lithics, according to Oppenheimer, Wilhelm, and Paul Kekai Manansala. How could it be any easier to connect the dots?
Instead, the mainstream says, “Nothing to see here, move along,” and so the public flips on Ancient Aliens because they have the common sense to know that there is an answer somewhere. I find it frustrating, because they find the wrong one.
josephlayden
JULY 11, 2016 AT 6:53 PM
Are you claiming that The Journal of Human Evolution is a creationist organization? They used the term Meganthropus to describe a species in Java separate from “classic” erectus, so I guess you are:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248483801262
REPLY
Charles T.G. Clarke
JULY 11, 2016 AT 8:08 PM
Hello Joseph, thanks for your constructive criticism. I would like to respond. Any scientific journal, does not support one hypothesis over another. Think of a peer-reviewed journal as a regulated platform to get your hypothesis out into the scientific sphere. While the Journal of Human Evolution did publish your above mentioned article in December of 1983, not only is the article 33 years old and it’s subject, a rarity, but the Journal did not support or reject it. Thanks for commenting. Please do follow and share my articles with your friends and colleagues. Your support is greatly appreciated.
REPLY
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
JULY 28, 2016 AT 8:01 AM
I understand, but would like to say that 33 years is only out of date if a follow up study has been done that destroys the findings utterly. It looks to me very much like the skull has been ignored since then.
To clarify about the 7 foot heidelbergs, it wasn’t a comment on a single skull. “According to Lee R. Berger of the University of Witwatersrand, numerous fossil bones indicate some populations of heidelbergensis were “giants” routinely over 2.13 m (7 ft) tall and inhabited South Africa between 500,000 and 300,000 years ago.” This can be found in these three papers
Burger, Lee (November 2007). “Our Story: Human Ancestor Fossils”. The Naked Scientists.
^ Jump up to: a b “Homo heidelbergensis essay”. Institute of Human Origins. Retrieved October 29, 2015.
Jump up ^ “Scientists Determine Height of Homo Heidelbergensis”. Sci-News. June 6, 2012. Retrieved November 29, 2015.
As far as there being no “species” of homo erectus…the terminology has been so jumbled up it’s hard to communicate with.
If I say “species of homo” then I’m including Homo habilis, rudolphensis, gautengensis, flores, archaics, neanderthals, sapiens (and austro garhi according to some). I mean only hominids that have been called erectus and ergaster in the past, without glaring austro traits like those of habilis, modjokertensis, meganthropus, georgicus and the hobbit, and I think those populations made up more than two distinct genomic populations and possessed very different traits from one another. They possessed the second OAS1 brain gene duplication and not just the first, may have possessed the third already, and we find their traces in a part of the Denisovan genome, in Denisovan-like introgression in Papuans, in the Denisovan-like genes of homo antecessor, in Microcephalin D, and in African archaic introgression…all of these point to a split 1.2 million years ago. That was when the various subspecies of advanced erectus were assimilating the subspecies of early homo. I think it’s important to differentiate them, but the PC police have screwed that up so you that you can only refer to single fossil specimens by numbers and letters that are impossible to remember.
Maybe we won’t hurt any extinct hominids feelings now, or anyone who might have their introgression.
A simpler way to put all this:
Scientist must understand that if the NBA were isolated with the NWBA for a period of several thousand years in a place of moderate temperature and terrain, then it would likely create an ethnic group that was well above 6 foot tall on average. In 500,000 years and lots of population isolation, the laws of probability grant that tall people must have been stuck together at least once. Early cro-magnons were several inches taller on average than late cro-magnons, and some populations of african “heidelberg” were taller than even they were. So why do scientists think that any population with an average height that’s higher than modern is some kind of fantasy? 70% of Y haplogroups went extinct during the agricultural revolution. That’s when the many took over the few and killed their men. They took over all kinds of forest people, the tall tribes and the short tribes, and then staple food malnutrition shrank them down some more, and we’re only now recovering due to modern tech. Over the past 3 million years, there have always been two types of hominids in every ecological zone- a gracile one and a robust one, a short one and a tall one, one with big canines and one with flatter teeth, each presumably exploiting a slightly different niche. The only thing that changed that was the abandonment of those niches somewhere at the end of the ice age..
One last comment on this subject…if I were a 5’4 natufian tending my garden with my rotten teeth and my frail wheat-sick bones, and a group of robust 6’6 hunter gatherers rolled up on me and took my wife…I’d call that a giant attack.
The Chinese are claiming 7 1/2 feet tall on average for their recent Sichuan finds dated to less than 5k ago, and there were groups in China at that time that averaged 5’4 among males..
Joe Lyon Layden is a prehistoric fiction author and primitive musician. To receive a free copy of this entire novella "The Man from Parkho Khatune Bears Favor," as well as three free songs and monthly updates, freebies, and discounts on Joe's ongoing work, please sign up for the newsletter below.
Here is the original article that this post is a discussion of:
https://cennathis.com/2015/02/06/meganthropus-palaeojavanicus-the-early-years-of-palaeoanthropological-research-1942-1955/comment-page-1/#comment-322
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
JULY 11, 2016 AT 6:42 PM
First you say that Meganthropus is only used in modern times by Creationists, then you say that Arjuna 9 was described by scientists. So are these scientists creationists?
I think not.
From the description you have provided alone anyone with common sense can tell that a large, basal subspecies or “ethnic” group of homo erectus must have lived on Java between 1.6 million and 700 k ago.
And you don’t even bother to mention the double sagittal crests on several of the specimens or the tooth size, which is only rivaled by Denisovans and the Red deer Cave people.
No one believes Creationist, not even the majority of Christians. Why do people tell lies that hurt science in an effort to debunk them?
There were species of Heidelberg that were 7 foot tall on average. there were probably species of homo erectus that were really big too.
It’s a fact.
Don’t try to change it just because you don’t like that some people call them Nephilim.
The world is still a lot older than 5000 years and the process of evolution is still evident in the fossil record.
REPLY
Charles T.G. Clarke
JULY 11, 2016 AT 9:03 PM
Hello Joseph. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your constructive criticism. I will now respond. Please note, that I leave the modern usage of the term to the end of the article. The majority of the article is about how the term came into existence and it’s torturous use to the present day. I do feel you are unnecessarily jumping to conclusions. Early palaeoanthropologists had a habit of naming anything they saw. Today, palaeoanthropologists spend less time arguing over names and more time on more important questions. Nowhere, do I suggest von-Keonigswald was a creationist. I have not investigated his personally held beliefs, so I’m not qualified to comment. The idea of subspecies in hominin evolution is not a generally accepted position. The last time a new hominin subspecies was proposed scientifically in 2003 by Timothy D. White’s team – Homo sapiens idaltu – but we have barely seen this in the scientific literature since then. That’s a sure sign, so self-respecting palaeoanthropologist would accept such a taxonomic appellation.
The “Red Deer People” was first described in 1979 and Darren Curnoe of the University of New South Wales headed a re-analysis of the specimens . To start, the majority of palaeoanthropologists find Curnoe very odd. In 2010, he published a paper in an obscure journal claiming that one of the South African skulls is a new species of human – Homo gautengensis – in conversations with skilled palaeoanthropologists in the aftermath of the publication, I got the impression that, that paper hurt the reliability of Curnoe. So, he is a troublesome character. He attempted and failed to give a new species status to the Red Deer People, so he resorted to using public media to his advantage, by ensuring that the catchy “Red Deer People” would flood broadsheets and tabloids. It worked and unfortunately confused many of my friends who did not know the nuances of the paper published.
With regard to Denisova, all we have is are two teeth and a phalanx. This is why we do not have Homo denisova. Archaeogenetics is powerful, but not powerful enough to name a new species. No palaeoanthropologist would think it worthwhile to compare Denisova, the RD people and the javan hominins to eachother. Where do I start here…………….Dating. They all date to different points in the Pleistocene. Not to mention the sites from which these fossils came are notoriously difficult to date.
You make a slight error, saying Sagittal crests, you mean sagittal keels. The double sagittal keel was first described in 1991 (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02435533#page-1) and applied to Sangiran 31. There was no evidence of double sagittal keeling on any of the other hominins. Not that it makes much difference, in the long run, due to the fact this is mere human variation.
It is very unfair to characterise my article as lies that hurt science. This article for starters is not a mega-hit, written by a pulitzer prize winning author. It is a public science article that hopefully enlighens about the world of palaeoanthropology.
I was horrified to read the Wikipedia article on Meganthropus to find it poorly written and confusing and unscientific. This article was an attempt to counter that.
No palaeoanthropologist would ever suggest that the Mauer Mandible came from a 7ft tall human. You cannot gauge body size by mandible’s alone. As far as speculation is concerned, the Mauer Mandible (often attributed to Homo heidelbergensis) belonged to your average sized human around 5ft 6″.
Homo erectus IS a species. There is no such thing as species of Homo erectus. I recommend this book (http://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/the-complete-world-of-human-evolution-softcover-second-edition) to help you refresh and update your flawed understanding of hominin evolution.
Some historians suggest that the Nephilim was inspired by the fossil record. So, fossil mammoth have been found all over the world. These finds may have inspired the Cyclops and the Nephilim. Using religion was a handy yet flawed method to explain these discoveries away.
After reading your entire comment, it appears you need to read a little deeper, but I find the last few lines comforting.
Thanks ever so much for offering your constructive criticism to this article. I hope I have given you an adequate response. Please do follow and don’t forget to share this article as far as you can. Thanks again. Your contribution is always appreciated.
REPLY
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
JULY 28, 2016 AT 6:49 AM
Charles, I appreciate your very thorough explanation. . However, I disagree that my view is flawed. I understand that it is no longer academic or politically correct to put hominids in a subspecies, and that is a major problem for the field. There are many subspecies of white tailed deer, subspecies of zebra with varying chromosome numbers. But no subspecies for hominids, despite how different we are from idaltu? Why do humans get special pleading?
There is absolutely no way that Red Deer Cave people came solely from homo sapien sapiens. There is absolutely no way that anything less than an archaic hominid with several several hundred thousand years of evolution separate from our own could have evolved those archaic traits. Floresiensis can not have evolved from anything else but a very early member of homo, along a separate lineage from our own. Only gorillas, Bili apes, and Paranthropus have sagittal keel. If two specimens in Java have sagittal keels and all the rest of homo doesn’t, it most likely means that those Javan specimens evolved straight from an advanced austro and not erectus, which don’t have sagittal keels. The “meganthropus” skull we’re discussing is bigger than a paranthropus, bigger than a human, bigger than a Bili ape, and bigger than a gorilla and if he was no taller than them then he had the biggest head of any primate known to science. We only have teeth and jaws of Giganthopithecus, but it’s prerfectly acceptable for scientists to agree on him being 10 to 12 feet tall. But meganthropus is a human and it might excite the dumb creationists so let’s not apply the same science to it. Several prominent scientists have said that there were populations of heidelberg that avergaed near 7 foot tall, and I cannot imagine what you would find so fantastic about that. The chinese have recently reported a find of the ancestors of the Qang avergaing 7 feet tall, and there’s good evidence that the Anaste in America were that tall too. No big deal and totally expected by anyone with common sense who realizes that height between separate genomes varied widely before the melting pot of the agricultural revolution, when 90% of Y haplogroups were exterminated or went extinct due to environmental pressures (and the genetic evidence suggests the former).
The idea that mammoths and elephants inspired legends of giants is devoid of common sense, because man has been killing and skinning elephants since the Upper Paleolithic and knew very well what their bones looked like.
One laughable thing I recently read was that the Tutsi were once reported to be 7 foot tall, but a more scientific assessment was done AFTER THE BANTU INVASION that found that they were only around 6 foot on average. Well duh. Don’t scientists know that Bantu were short? Don’t they know what happens when one tribe takes over another? The colonists of georgia claimed that the Yamacraw stood 6’6 on average, and that Tomochichi was over 7 foot, while the women averaged 5’2. There’s only one way that kind of sexual dimporphism can exists in a population of homo sapiens- you kill the short Yuchi men and keep the short yuchi women after a few generations they would have returned to normal man/woman height ratios. The reason I think some attitudes hurt science is because 50% of people believe in ancient aliens, and it’s not their fault. We see elongated skulls, red deer cave skulls, massive cro-magnon bones, little people with austro/ardi wrists who lived only 50k ago. Palu hominids who look even stranger…but scientists try to tell us that they are all just HSS from an African mother 180k ago. You might be able to create a theory for Palau hominids reverting back to suite of erectus, soloensis, and floresiensis traits in only 2000 years while Andaman Islanders stayed the same for 20 to 60 thousand, but only book worms will believe you- those with common sense and street smarts with experience observing things in the real world are going to reject it on instinct and probability and look for answers elsewhere that make some kind of sense. We have found one chimp fossil in what, 3 to 6 million years of chimp evolution?
It’s a partial tooth.
It stands to reason, then, that we have very little of the puzzle.
I can’t think of any other reason for academics to claim that Palau is from HSS alone... except for their insistence that only HSS was around by 5000 years ago.
What gives them the omniscience to think this? Of course more hominids were around for a lot longer than we have bones for! That’s just common sense.
It's also common sense that last tall cro-magnon bones weren't the last of their race, and that some tall, robust hunter gatherers were still around after the agriculturalist underwent the thousand-year shrink that comes with agriculture. We even have evidence that they did...it's just not PC to take their average measurements into account anymore....unless you live in China.
To clarify about the elongated skulls I mentioned. If you read what most scientists say about them, you get the impression that people woke up one day all over the world 5,500 years ago and said “Hey! Let’s warp our babies’ heads today for no good reason!” I guess they communicated it to each other by way of psychic powers or Sheldrake’s morphic field? And now they’ve found one in that shape in Korea with no signs whatever of artificial elongating. Well…we’ve got plenty of dolicephalic skulls in the fossil record they could have been partially descended from and who they might have been emulating. The Shanidar neanderthals were even once thought to have practiced head-binding, but now we know they were naturally like that. No surprise, because India seems to exude long skulled hybrids through most of the paleolithic.. We know that a hominid that split off from our line 1.2 million years ago was assimilated by homo sapiens in SE Asia 37 thousand years and has since spread microcephalin d to 70% of the planet, and that SE Asian hominids had elongated skulls. Where you see elongated skulls 5500 years ago after the last rapid sea rise, you also find a suite of common lithics, according to Oppenheimer, Wilhelm, and Paul Kekai Manansala. How could it be any easier to connect the dots?
Instead, the mainstream says, “Nothing to see here, move along,” and so the public flips on Ancient Aliens because they have the common sense to know that there is an answer somewhere. I find it frustrating, because they find the wrong one.
josephlayden
JULY 11, 2016 AT 6:53 PM
Are you claiming that The Journal of Human Evolution is a creationist organization? They used the term Meganthropus to describe a species in Java separate from “classic” erectus, so I guess you are:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248483801262
REPLY
Charles T.G. Clarke
JULY 11, 2016 AT 8:08 PM
Hello Joseph, thanks for your constructive criticism. I would like to respond. Any scientific journal, does not support one hypothesis over another. Think of a peer-reviewed journal as a regulated platform to get your hypothesis out into the scientific sphere. While the Journal of Human Evolution did publish your above mentioned article in December of 1983, not only is the article 33 years old and it’s subject, a rarity, but the Journal did not support or reject it. Thanks for commenting. Please do follow and share my articles with your friends and colleagues. Your support is greatly appreciated.
REPLY
Prehistoric Fiction Writer (josephlayden)
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
JULY 28, 2016 AT 8:01 AM
I understand, but would like to say that 33 years is only out of date if a follow up study has been done that destroys the findings utterly. It looks to me very much like the skull has been ignored since then.
To clarify about the 7 foot heidelbergs, it wasn’t a comment on a single skull. “According to Lee R. Berger of the University of Witwatersrand, numerous fossil bones indicate some populations of heidelbergensis were “giants” routinely over 2.13 m (7 ft) tall and inhabited South Africa between 500,000 and 300,000 years ago.” This can be found in these three papers
Burger, Lee (November 2007). “Our Story: Human Ancestor Fossils”. The Naked Scientists.
^ Jump up to: a b “Homo heidelbergensis essay”. Institute of Human Origins. Retrieved October 29, 2015.
Jump up ^ “Scientists Determine Height of Homo Heidelbergensis”. Sci-News. June 6, 2012. Retrieved November 29, 2015.
As far as there being no “species” of homo erectus…the terminology has been so jumbled up it’s hard to communicate with.
If I say “species of homo” then I’m including Homo habilis, rudolphensis, gautengensis, flores, archaics, neanderthals, sapiens (and austro garhi according to some). I mean only hominids that have been called erectus and ergaster in the past, without glaring austro traits like those of habilis, modjokertensis, meganthropus, georgicus and the hobbit, and I think those populations made up more than two distinct genomic populations and possessed very different traits from one another. They possessed the second OAS1 brain gene duplication and not just the first, may have possessed the third already, and we find their traces in a part of the Denisovan genome, in Denisovan-like introgression in Papuans, in the Denisovan-like genes of homo antecessor, in Microcephalin D, and in African archaic introgression…all of these point to a split 1.2 million years ago. That was when the various subspecies of advanced erectus were assimilating the subspecies of early homo. I think it’s important to differentiate them, but the PC police have screwed that up so you that you can only refer to single fossil specimens by numbers and letters that are impossible to remember.
Maybe we won’t hurt any extinct hominids feelings now, or anyone who might have their introgression.
A simpler way to put all this:
Scientist must understand that if the NBA were isolated with the NWBA for a period of several thousand years in a place of moderate temperature and terrain, then it would likely create an ethnic group that was well above 6 foot tall on average. In 500,000 years and lots of population isolation, the laws of probability grant that tall people must have been stuck together at least once. Early cro-magnons were several inches taller on average than late cro-magnons, and some populations of african “heidelberg” were taller than even they were. So why do scientists think that any population with an average height that’s higher than modern is some kind of fantasy? 70% of Y haplogroups went extinct during the agricultural revolution. That’s when the many took over the few and killed their men. They took over all kinds of forest people, the tall tribes and the short tribes, and then staple food malnutrition shrank them down some more, and we’re only now recovering due to modern tech. Over the past 3 million years, there have always been two types of hominids in every ecological zone- a gracile one and a robust one, a short one and a tall one, one with big canines and one with flatter teeth, each presumably exploiting a slightly different niche. The only thing that changed that was the abandonment of those niches somewhere at the end of the ice age..
One last comment on this subject…if I were a 5’4 natufian tending my garden with my rotten teeth and my frail wheat-sick bones, and a group of robust 6’6 hunter gatherers rolled up on me and took my wife…I’d call that a giant attack.
The Chinese are claiming 7 1/2 feet tall on average for their recent Sichuan finds dated to less than 5k ago, and there were groups in China at that time that averaged 5’4 among males..
Joe Lyon Layden is a prehistoric fiction author and primitive musician. To receive a free copy of this entire novella "The Man from Parkho Khatune Bears Favor," as well as three free songs and monthly updates, freebies, and discounts on Joe's ongoing work, please sign up for the newsletter below.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
How to become a citizen archaeologist tracking Stone-Age Britons
How to become a citizen archaeologist tracking Stone-Age Britons: On England’s cold shores, citizen archaeologists spot artefacts before tides sweep them away forever. Join in and you might change history, finds Joshua Howgego
Monday, July 25, 2016
Researchers discover how rope was made 40,000 years ago
Prof. Nicholas Conard and members of his team, present the discovery of a tool used to make rope in today‘s edition of the journal: Archäologische Ausgrabungen Baden-Württemberg.
Rope and twine are critical components in the technology of mobile hunters and gatherers. In exceptional cases impressions of string have been found in fired clay and on rare occasions string was depicted in the contexts of Ice Age art, but on the whole almost nothing is known about string, rope and textiles form the Paleolithic.
Extra Fingers and Toes Were Revered in Ancient Culture
In the great houses of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, having an extra toe was one way to garner a lot of respect.
A unique prehistoric Pueblo culture thrived in the high desert of Chaco Canyon about a thousand years ago. Scientists have known aboutpolydactyly among these people for years, based on images and skeletal remains showing extremities with extra fingers and toes. But past research revealed only hints about its importance to the ancient culture.
Initially intrigued by the divine powers attributed to polydactyls among the Maya, researchers led by anthropologist Patricia Crown of theUniversity of New Mexico conducted a comprehensive review of evidence for the condition at the canyon’s sacred Pueblo Bonito site.
The findings, published today in American Antiquity, indicate that the society did not view six-toed individuals as supernatural, but this form of polydactyly did grant them exalted status in life and in death.
“We found that people with six toes, especially, were common and seemed to be associated with important ritual structures and high-status objects like turquoise,” says Crown, who is also a past National Geographic grantee.
On the Right Foot
To determine how common polydactyly was among the Chacos, the researchers conducted an analysis of 96 skeletons excavated from Pueblo Bonito during prior expeditions. The team analyzed full skeletons that were painstakingly reassembled over many years by co-author Kerriann Marden, a biological anthropologist at Eastern New Mexico University.
The anthropologists found three polydactyl individuals among the 96 skeletons, all with a sixth toe on the little toe-side of the right foot.
That may not sound like a lot, but at 3.1 percent of the Chaco population, it represents a much higher rate of polydactyly than what’s seen in modern Native Americans: Today only 0.2 percent of them are affected. More broadly, in the United States just 0.13 percent of Caucasians and 1.4 percent of African Americans are reported to have extra digits, though scientists suspect many cases may go unreported...
The Prehistoric Metal Age and the Origins of Copper and Tin Smelting
The scholarly aversion to speaking of hyper-diffusion in contexts other than the Old Stone Age and Africa is understandable; during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries diffusionist ideas were used for nationalism, racism, fringe science, and plain old bad archaeology. Also, many diffusionist models which seemed to fit the archaeological record of the time failed to stand up new discoveries in the late 20th and 21st centuries, a chain of events that might make any respectable scholar a bit gun shy about diffusionist theories.
For instance, the upper Paleolithic was once thought to be mostly the brainchild of Europe, and to have spread from there via the Cro-Magnon people. This idea was used for eurocentric racism, and has long since been disproven; there were Advanced Stone Age cultures in Africa and Asia at least as early as the time of the so-called Cro-Magnons. Likewise, the advent of agriculture, once thought to have begun in the Fertile Crescent, quickly proved to have equal dates along the Tigres and Euphates, and later yielded even earlier dates in East Asia.
In the past 50-100 years,changing dates and locations for the earliest smelting and alloy production have spoiled many a textbook's diffusionist model for the spread of Chalcolithic and Bronze Age technologies.
Because of the resulting change in academic thought, many have turned instead to the idea of parallel thinking.
In the case of metalworking, this means that anatomically modern homo sapiens sapiens were almost completely uninterested in the craft for 170 to 190 thousand years. Then between about 11,000 and 10,000 years ago, people suddenly became interested in beating copper and other cold-malleable ores into beads and pendants in several unrelated regions in both the Old and New World.
The history of copper use is at least 11,000 years old, estimated to have begun in 9000 BC in the Middle East;
-"CSA – Discovery Guides, A Brief History of Copper". Csa.com. Retrieved 12 September 2008.
Copper was shaped via cold hammering into objects from very early dates (Archaic period in the Great Lakes region: 8000–1000 BCE). There is also evidence of actual mining of copper veins (Old Copper Complex), but disagreement exists as to the dates.
-Martin, S.R. (1999). Wonderful Power: The Story of Ancient Copper Working in the Lake Superior Basin. Great Lakes Books Series. Wayne State University Press.
Metalworking was being carried out by the South Asian inhabitants of Mehrgarh between 7000–3300 BCE.
- Possehl, Gregory L. (1996). Mehrgarh in Oxford Companion to Archaeology, Brian Fagan (Ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507618-4
The oldest archaeological evidence of copper mining and working was the discovery of a copper pendant in northern Iraq from 8,700 BCE.
- Hesse, Rayner, W. (2007). Jewelrymaking through History: an Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 56. ISBN 0-313-33507-9.
Timna Valley contains evidence of copper mining 9,000 to 7,000 years ago.
-Chalcolithic, wikipedia
5th millennium BCE copper artifacts start to appear in East Asia, such as Jiangzhai and Hongshan culture, but those metal artifacts were not widely used.
-Chalcolithic, wikipedia
Around 7000 years ago, completely independently and without contact between one another, cultures in Europe, China, the Middle East, South Asia, began heat-extracting and smelting the copper they'd been mining for millenia.
The first evidence of (this) extractive metallurgy dates from the 5th and 6th millennium BC[6]and was found in the archaeological sites of Majdanpek, Yarmovac and Plocnik, all three in Serbia.
- Miljana Radivojevic, Thilo Rehren, Ernst Pernicka, Dušan Šljivar, Michael Brauns, Dušan Boric, On the Origins of Extractive Metallurgy: New Evidence from Europe, Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 37, Issue 11, November 2010, Pages 2775-2787.
To date, the earliest evidence of copper smelting is found at the Belovode site, including a copper axe from 5500 BC belonging to the Vinca culture.
-Neolithic Vinca was a metallurgical culture Stonepages from news sources November 2007
...there is also evidence of copper smelting in Tal-i-Iblis, southeastern Iran, which dates back to around the the 6th millenium B.C.
REPORT ON THE FIRST IRANIAN PREHISTORIC SLAG WORKSHOP. C.P. Thornton and Th. Rehren, Iran , Vol. 45, (2007), pp. 315-318.
Investment casting of copper was invented in 4500–4000 BC in Southeast Asia
"CSA – Discovery Guides, A Brief History of Copper". Csa.com. Retrieved 12 September 2008.
North Americans, though not smelting, began working copper at the same time with a possibly comparable or transitional technique.
The earliest substantiated and dated evidence of metalworking in the Americas was the processing of copper in Wisconsin, near Lake Michigan. Copper was hammered until brittle then heated so it could be worked some more. This technology is dated to about 4000–5000 BCE.
- Emory Dean Keoke; Kay Marie Porterfield (2002). Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations. Infobase Publishing. pp. 14–. ISBN 978-1-4381-0990-9. Retrieved 8 July 2012.
Some diffusion is allowed for the advent of the Bronze Age proper, shortly after 7000 years ago in Western Eurasia, as there is evidence for trade between all of the aforementioned copper smelting cultures except China and North America previous to its inception. Arsenic bronze seems to precede true tin bronze everywhere save Serbia and Southeats Asia, hwere tin is not rare. But there are early sites for Bronze use in Africa and China with comparable dates that have no clear evidence of previous contact with copper or bronze making cultures.
Societies using arsenical bronze include the Akkadians, those of Ur, and the Amorites, all based around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and centres of the trade networks which spread arsenical bronze across the Middle East during the Bronze Age.
-De Ryck, I.; Adriens, A.; Adams, F. (2005). "An overview of Mesopotamian bronze metallurgy during the 3rd millennium BC" (PDF). Journal of Cultural Heritage 6 (6):
...isolated examples of copper-zinc alloys are known in China from as early as the 5th Millennium BC.
- Zhou Weirong (2001). "The Emergence and Development of Brass Smelting Techniques in China". Bulletin of the Metals Museum of the Japan Institute of Metals 34: 87–98.
Although arsenical bronze occurs in the archaeological record across the globe, the earliest artifacts so far known have been found on the Iranian plateau in the 5th millennium BCE.
-Thornton, C.P.; Lamberg-Karlovsky, C.C.; Liezers, M.; Young, S.M.M. (2002). "On pins and needles: tracing the evolution of copper-based alloying at Tepe Yahya, Iran, via ICP-MS analysis of Common-place items.". Journal of Archaeological Science. 29 If a great deal of oxygen is dissolved (29): 1451–1460. doi:10.1006/jasc.2002.0809.
Tin bronze was superior to arsenic bronze in that the alloying process could be more easily controlled, and the resulting alloy was stronger and easier to cast. Also, unlike arsenic, metallic tin and fumes from tin refining are not toxic. The earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to 4500 BCE in a Vinca culture site in Plocnik (Serbia).[9] Other early examples date to the late 4th millennium BC in Africa,[10] Susa (Iran) and some ancient sites in China, Luristan (Iran) and Mesopotamia (Iraq).
-Bronze, wikipedia
According to mainstream academia, unrelated people in several different parts of the world suddenly took an interst in metals within a few hundred years of one another, independently invented smelting within a few hundred years of one another, and then independently invented alloys (once again within a few hundred years of one another) via the power of "parallel thinking."
However, though little is given in the way of a cause or reason for this "parallel thinking," most of the same scholars who champion it would scoff at the idea of "psychic powers," "the universal mind," or Sheldrake's "Morphic Field." Rather, if they explain parallel thinking at all, they point to the Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution or the invention of fired pottery as a cause that necessarily leads to metalworking and metallurgy. There are big problems with this chain of reasoning, however.
The Neolithic is poorly defined, and though it is usually given a start date of 12,500 years ago in the Middle East, it too is thought to have started at widely different times in various places, as independently from one another as the following metal ages. Microliths and polished stone tools once defined the Neolithic, but at sites in East Asia and South Asia yield dates in excess of 20 thousand years. There are site in the Solomon Islands that might push the dawn of agriculture back to 26,000 B.C. or earlier. Fired pottery in China goes back 20,000 years, and may go back that far in Southeast Asia too, and yet metalworking seems to have no earlier start in those places than the Western Eurasia, when did not start making pottery until nearly 8000 years later.
No matter when agriculture, pottery, or the Neolithic began for these innovative cultures, they supposedly started working copper at about the same time. No matter when the first smelting cultures started farming, potting, or even working with copper, they all started smelting at roughly the same time. No matter when the first independent inventors of alloy began copper smelting, they all had the idea to add tin or arsenic to it at about the same time. And yet this is supposedly a case of parralel thinking and not diffusion. After at least 10 to 20 thousand years of having the proposed prerequisites to do begin metalworking, if not the whole of his 200 thousand year previous existence, the idea to start heating up ores popped into the heads of separate people in separate cultures speaking separate languages who had no contact or connection with each other.
Some might say that the end of the Ice Age and changing climate sparked the need for metal working, but this position is hard to defend at best. Neanderthals actually worked gold 40,000 years ago in Spain. Ivory and shell jewelry has been in vogue since at least that time, used by Denisovan and Homo sapien sapiens as well.
Small amounts of natural gold have been found in Spanish caves used during the late Paleolithic period, c. 40,000 B.C.
-"History of Gold". Gold Digest. Retrieved 2007-02-04.
From a purely logical and rational point of view, it would make more sense if homo sapien's love of metal working began in one place and then spread to the others, just like the aforementioned Phase 1 and Phase 2 lithic technologies. Unlike the Upper Plaeolithic, which is thought to have several "centers of diffusion," metal working is a specific action using a specific material that had never been used before. Each center of Paleolithic innovation is responsible for an entirely different form of technology. For instance, Paleo-Europe is known for innovations such as the atlatl, clothes, and cave art, whereas Paleo-Africa is known for the mining of pigments, works in desert glass, and possibly the first bows, Paleo- South Asia is known for its microliths, and Paleo- South East Asia is known for deep sea fishing and agriculture, or at least horticulture. It may even be the synthesis of these various technologies as they spread and met in Eurasia that led to the neolithic itself.
Metalworking and metallurgy are a more specific interest, and if discovered independently should have been discovered at widely disparate dates by the separate centers over the past 20 thousand years. It is the coinciding independent dates that should give us a clue that things may not be exactly as they seem.
A more plausible explanation for the dawn of metal working, or at least metallurgy, as it has evolved into the present day would require a single point of origin that has either not yet discovered or is now under water and therefore currently undiscoverable. It just so happens that the most likely places have been under the sea since 11,000 years ago, precisely when metalworking is thought to have begun.
Silver, copper, tin and meteoric iron can also be found in native form, allowing a limited amount of metalworking in early cultures.
-E. Photos, E. (2010). "The Question of Meteoritic versus Smelted Nickel-Rich Iron: Archaeological Evidence and Experimental Results" (PDF). World Archaeology 20 (3): 403.doi:10.1080/00438243.1989.9980081. JSTOR 124562.
It may be that the cold hammering of malleable metals is far older than 11,000 years, but trinkets more ancient than that have little to no chance of surviving into the present. Whether this be the case or not, it doesn't explain the independent and near-simulataneous decision and breakthrough that led to copper smelting in seperate parts of the world at nearly the same time.
Evidence for copper smelting appears during the sixth millennium BC in many locations from Serbia to China, but the earliest evidence dates from the 7th millennium BC in Anatolia. However, while knowledge of copper metallurgy in most of these places follows progress through four stages of production techniques, all of these stages appear at once in Anatolia at the very beginning of the neolithic, suggesting that the technology was brought to the copper source from a location or culture where these four techniques had already been developed.
The history of copper metallurgy is thought to follow this sequence: 1) cold working of native copper, 2) annealing, 3) smelting, and 4) the lost wax casting. In southeastern Anatolia, all four of these techniques appear more or less simultaneously at the beginning of the Neolithic c. 7500 B.C.
Renfrew, Colin (1990). Before civilization: the radiocarbon revolution and prehistoric Europe. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-013642-5. Retrieved21 December 2011.
The earlier date needed for such a mother culture coincides well with the spread of Y haplogroup T and the genes ASPM D and Microcephalin D, the latter of which is now present in 70,000 of people. It also coincides with the appearance of some of the earliest megaliths in Eurasia, as well as the timing of the spread of the Nusantao Maritime Culture to the coasts and river systems of Eurasia and Africa through the newly opened Straight of Malacca from South East Asia.
Other signs of early metals are found from the third millennium BC in places like Palmela (Portugal), Los Millares(Spain), and Stonehenge (United Kingdom). However, the ultimate beginnings cannot be clearly ascertained and new discoveries are both continuous and ongoing.
The Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Cultures in the ancient Near East (often called, one of "the cradles of civilization") practiced intensive year-round agriculture, developed a writing system, invented the potter's wheel, created a centralized government, law codes, and empires, and introduced social stratification, slavery, and organized warfare. Societies in the region laid the foundations forastronomy and mathematics.
Bronze Age, Wikipedia
Arsenic bronze appears in Iran and China by the fifth millennium BC, but the first dates for true tin bronze appear around 4800 B.C. in Serbia. There are equal dates to this in Thailand, but those have been contested.
"Southeast Asian metallurgy has been a source of controversy since the early dating of metal technology in places like Ban Chiang and Non Nok Tha in Thailand.
Thermoluminescence dating of pottery associated with eight bronze bracelets discovered by N. Suthiragsa revealed dates between 5000 and 4500 BCE. Radiocarbon dating of separately excavated bronzes uncovered by C.F. Gorman and P. Charoenwongsa gave dates of about 3600 BCE.
Such early datings for bronze technology exceeded that found elsewhere in the world and caused much commotion when first revealed. Joyce White who worked on Gorman's sites after the latter's death, found that the early dates were not "archaeologically meaningful." Her "re-analysis" of the radiocarbon findings pushed the date forward to 2100 BCE, based on the explanation that the bronzes may have been 'cut down' to lower levels than their true age.
However, it must be said that prior to the startling early data, the excavators apparently saw no problem with the strata and approved tests. Also, White's reanalysis can only apply to the radiocarbon dates and not to the direct thermoluminescence findings."
-http://sambali.blogspot.com/2006/03/metallurgy-southeast-asian-glossary.html
The second oldest dates for true tin bronze come from Mesopotamia, where the bronze age seems to begin at that time in earnest, but there are dates within a century of these in both Europe and the Phillipines.
Recent discoveries at Balobok Rockshelter in the southern Philippines have unearthed early Neolithic tools dated to 5340 BCE and a bronze adze from a layer at 3190 BCE.
-http://sambali.blogspot.com/2006/03/metallurgy-southeast-asian-glossary.html
So Southeast Asia is either tied at first or second place for the world's earliest tin Bronze. Since Serbia and Southeast Asia are the only places in the world where tin and bronze appear in abundance withing the same caves and even veins, this should come as no surprise.
The only places on the planet where tin and copper occur together naturally are Turkey in the Middle East and Thailand in Southeast Asia, and in these two places a mistake led to the first bronze simultaneously around 4500 B.C.
-Breaking Away from the Textbook: Prehistory to 1600
By Ron H. Pahl
It would be almost impossible for a smelting culture to avoid making bronze while extracting copper in these places. Furthermore, it has long been a mystery as to where the Near East and Middle East obtained so much copper and tin to fuel their bronze age. Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer and Paul kekai manansala have both laid out convincing arguments for a Nusantao influence on these bronze making cultures, not least because of the fact that a trading network with a base in South East Asia would have ready access to tin;the largest vein in the world runs through China and through Malaysia to the sea, where there was dry land less than 9000 years ago. Nearby Sumatra has been known since prehistory as "the Isle of Gold," an ore also used in early alloys with tin, silver, and copper, some of which may predate the Bronze Age itself.
Unfortunately, Malaysia and Indonesia are among the least archaeologically explored countries in the world, despite their massive importance to the understanding of human history.
Eastern Asia has a number of small cassiterite deposits along the Yellow River which were exploited by the earliest Chinese Bronze Age culture of Erlitou and the Shang Dynasty (2500 to 1800 BCE). However, the richest deposits for the region, and indeed the world, lie inSoutheastern Asia, stretching from Yunnan in China to the Malay Peninsula. The deposits in Yunnan were not mined until around 700 BCE, but by the Han Dynasty had become the main source of tin in China according to historical texts of the Han, Jin, Tang, and Song dynasties (Murowchick 1991, pp. 76–77). Other cultures of Southeast Asia exploited the abundant cassiterite resources sometime between second and third millennia BCE, but due to the lack of archaeological work in the region little else is known about tin exploitation during ancient times in that part of the world.
-Tin sources and trade in ancient times, wikipedia
It may that there is no evidence for metalworking in Southeast Asia previous to the Bronze Age simply because advanced cultures there did not move into the highlands until around 4500 BC, when sea levels were temporarily about 5 meters higher than they are today, and all that remains in modern times are the highlands.
Short of dredging the seafloor and hoping that it hasn't all washed and eroded away, some researchers have pointed out circumstantial evidence from the Austronesian languages that hint towards an ancient knowledge of metallurgy in Southeast Asia:
"Probably even more controversial than the archaeological evidence is the suggestion by Robert Blust in 1976 that Proto-Austronesiansdating from the period 5000 to 3000 BCE had a "knowledge of iron."
He states "the probability is small that a collection of unrelated bypotheses will provide a more plausible explanation of these facts than the single hypothesis that iron was known and worked at an early date, perhaps as early as Proto-Austronesian times." Although Blust in 1999 notes that words for metal do not necessarily require knowledge of metallurgy, we cannot dismiss the idea simply due to the negative archaeological evidence.
Iron was reconstructed as *bariS and further reconstructions were given for words such as "blacksmithing" and "anvil," the latter two terms restricted to Western Malayo-Polynesian. Using Solheim's chronology at least, this could fit well with the evidence of bronze at Balobok by 3190 BCE.
http://sambali.blogspot.com/2006/03/metallurgy-southeast-asian-glossary.html
Although the Mundaic languages come from the root branches all the Austro Asiatic tree, they still share cognates (words of the same origin) connected with rice growing with the Mon-Kmer branch of the Austro Asiatic tongues in indochina. Such words include husked rice, bamboo and bamboo shoots, pestle and mortar, cow and chicken and, most intriguing, copper bronze. Charles Higham has suggested that the ancestors all these austroasiatic of these Austro-Asiatic Mundaic-speaking people, "who grew rice and knew of metallurgy, may well have expanded in a Westerly Direction from the austro Asiatic heartland Inn southeast Asia (to India) dMV prehistoric past."
-Oppenheimer, Eden in the East
Recent controversial discoveries at the site of Gunung Padang on the Island of Java, however, may push the dawn of metalworking and metallurgy in SouthEast Asia, as well as the entire planet, by several millenia:
"The Geologist team and also the center coaches of Indonesian Association of Geologists center, DR. Andang Bachtiar, find more surprising facts. The Cement material has a primary composition of 45% of iron mineral and 41% of mineral silica. The rest is 14% clay minerals and there is also the carbon element. "This is a good composition for strong cement adhesive, perhaps combining between the concepts of resin or modern strong adhesive made from silica materials and the use of concentration of the iron element which become as brick amplifiers," said Danny H. Natawidjaja.
The high content of silica indicates that the cement is not the result of weathering of colum andesite rocks which is surrounded by a poor of silica. Then, the levels of iron in nature, even in the rocks at the ore mineral mining, generally the content of iron is not more than 5%, so iron levels in "Gunung Padang cement" is many times higher than natural conditions. Therefore it can be concluded that material which is lied between the columns andesite stones are man-made grout.
So the technology of that time seems to have known metallurgy. One common technique to obtain a high concentration of iron is to carry out the combustion process from the broken rocks with very high temperatures. Similar to the making of bricks, which burn caolinite and illite clays to produce a high concentration of iron on the brick, explain Andang.
Indications of ancient metallurgical technology is more strengthened by the findings of a lump of metal materials sized 10 inches by the team of Ali Akbar at the depth of 1 meter on the eastern slopes of Mount Padang. The rusty metal material possessed a rough surface hollow-small cavity on the surface. Presumably this material is a metal dough residue ("slug") that is mixed with carbon material which has become its combustor materials, can be from wood, coal or other. Cavities are likely to occur due to the release of CO2 when burning. The team will conduct further laboratorium analysis to investigate.
The results of radiometric analysis of the content of the carbon element in some samples of cement in drill core from the depth of 5-15 meters which was conducted in 2012 at the prestigious Laboratory, BETALAB, Miami, USA in the mid-2012 shows its age with a range between 13,000 and 23,000 years ago.
Previously, the results of carbon dating which carried out in the BATAN laboratory, the dominant quartz sand that fills the voids between the columns of andesite at the depth of 8-10 meters below the terrace of five also showed the same age range is about 13,000 years ago."
-Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, leader of the Gunung Padang excavation team
Joe Lyon Layden is a prehistoric fiction author and primitive musician. To receive a free copy of this entire novella "The Man from Parkho Khatune Bears Favor," as well as three free songs and monthly updates, freebies, and discounts on Joe's ongoing work, please sign up for the newsletter below.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Why are Ethiopian Monkeys Domesticating Wild Wolves?
(Jeffrey Kerby. Research funded in part by National Geographic.) An Ethiopian wolf mingling with gelada monkeys in Guassa Plateau.
Peaceful interactions rarely occur between a predator and prey. But researchers in Ethiopia caught wild wolves and monkeys called geladas intermixing without agression.http://www.ethiopianforeignpolicy.com/why-are-ethiopian-monkeys-domesticating-wild-wolves/
Scientists find woman who sees 99 million more colors than others
Newcastle University neuroscientist Dr. Gabriele Jordan, recently announced that she has identified a woman who is a "tetrachromat," that is, a woman with the ability to see much greater color depth than the ordinary person.
Friday, July 22, 2016
Possible Resurrection of the Mammoth as early as 2018
https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2016/07/22/possible-resurrection-of-the-mammoth-as-early-as-2018/
Thanks to
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Thursday, July 21, 2016
Spidey on Crack - Dr. Dan Matrazzo & The Looters
Joe Lyon Layden is a prehistoric fiction author and primitive musician. To receive a free copy of this entire novella "The Man from Parkho Khatune Bears Favor," as well as three free songs and monthly updates, freebies, and discounts on Joe's ongoing work, please sign up for the newsletter below.
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Founders of Western civilization were prehistoric dope dealers
Founders of Western civilisation were prehistoric dope dealers: The ancient tribes of the Eurasian steppes that helped lay the foundations of Europe might have initiated a cross-continental trade in cannabis
Monday, July 18, 2016
Female chimps more inclined to use tools when hunting
Female chimps more inclined to use tools when hunting: Anthropologists have been observing savanna chimps using tools to hunt prey. After observing more than 300 tool-assisted hunts they found female chimps hunt with tools more than males.
16,000-Year-Old Tools Discovered in Texas, Among the Oldest Found in the West
Archaeologists in Texas thought they’d made an important discovery in the 1990s, when they unearthed a trove of stone tools dating back 13,000 years, revealing traces of the oldest widespread culture on the continent.
But then, years later, they made an even more powerful find in the same place — another layer of artifacts that were older still.
About a half-hour north of Austin and a meter deep in water-logged silty clay, researchers have uncovered evidence of human occupation dating back as much as 16,700 years, including fragments of human teeth and more than 90 stone tools.
In addition to being some of the oldest yet found in the American West, the artifacts are rare traces of a culture that predated the culture known as Clovis, whose distinctively shaped stone tools found across North America have consistently been dated to about 13,000 years ago.
http://westerndigs.org/16000-year-old-tools-discovered-in-texas-among-the-oldest-yet-found-in-the-west/
But then, years later, they made an even more powerful find in the same place — another layer of artifacts that were older still.
About a half-hour north of Austin and a meter deep in water-logged silty clay, researchers have uncovered evidence of human occupation dating back as much as 16,700 years, including fragments of human teeth and more than 90 stone tools.
In addition to being some of the oldest yet found in the American West, the artifacts are rare traces of a culture that predated the culture known as Clovis, whose distinctively shaped stone tools found across North America have consistently been dated to about 13,000 years ago.
http://westerndigs.org/16000-year-old-tools-discovered-in-texas-among-the-oldest-yet-found-in-the-west/
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Where should a newbie begin exploring alien/UFO "evidence?"
cudambercam13asked on Reddit:
I believe in aliens, spirits, paranormal and the lot, but I'm also EXTREMELY skeptical. You see a UFO, I see space rock. (I know it's called a meteor but space rock sounds cool.) You see an unidentifiable creature in the woods and I'll assume it's an animal. You hear the floor creak, I hear the house settling.
Is there a post here with a long list of links with possible evidence of aliens/UFOs? I like lists and it would be very helpful to have that instead of having to figure out which posts here are worth looking into.
Also, sorry if this is the wrong place to post. There's so many subs dedicated to this sort of thing that I didn't know where to go!You should start with one of the Ancient Aliens Debunk blogs. They go through each season and tell you why each fact has a much better explanation that is already known. http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/blog/ Next is the lottery slim probability of intelligent aliens having found Earth and giving a shit about it:http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread509897/pg1http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/11/stephen-hawkings-wager-we-have-been-overlooked-by-advanced-et-civilizations.html Now, that still leaves the possibility of UFOs in modern times. There are definitely Unidentified Flying Objects around today, the problem is that we don't know if they are being driven by aliens. The government is a more likely choice, and in light of the probability factor described above, it is even more probable that they are a secret high tech population of Neanderthals or Denisovans living in secret than it is that they are visitors from another star system. Even the "partially hollow Earth" scenario is more probable than ETs being intelligent, finding us, wanting to visit us, and surviving light speed and the thousand year or more journey. However, Dr. Huang has come up with a possibility of being visited in modern times. Life forms could likely not survive long enough to "seek out new life" on other planets, but one day, self-replicating robots might. It would still take millions of years, even at light speed, to thoroughly check every Goldilox planet. However, the robots could replicate and send sensors to the moons of Goldilox planets, that could be tripped if any intelligent life form evolves to the poit where it makes it to the moon, therefore alerting the aliens that we are worth visiting. They might send robots then, but living beings would take a couple thousand years to get here, most likely. Though I have seen no proof whatsoever of Ancient Aliens, though I've watched every episode of Ancient Aliens, some of the modern reports from Government officials are more convincing. The problem is that witnessess are only circumstantial evidence- they could be lying or having mental difficulties. And though some modern photos and films seem convincing, we have photoshop and CGI these days. So it's kind of a toss-up.
Joe Lyon Layden is a prehistoric fiction author and primitive musician. To receive a free copy of this entire novella "The Man from Parkho Khatune Bears Favor," as well as three free songs and monthly updates, freebies, and discounts on Joe's ongoing work, please sign up for the newsletter below.
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