Random Headlines and my Smart Ass Comments

Nothing will replace Mr. Don's masterful hand at Goddesschess' Random Round-up, but I thought I'd throw something quick together in memory of our dear, gone but not forgotten Goddesschess website.  I think I was having hot flashes - or was that flash backs? - about the Friday Night Miscellany posts I used to do here.  I've no intention of resurrecting them, but every now and then there are titles to articles that are just begging for some smart ass commentary...

Like this one that I saw this evening:

WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO BE A MAN IN THE MIDDLE AGES?

Well, darlings, let me tell you - a hell of a lot better than it was to be a woman in the Middle Ages (unless one was a Queen, but even then, eeeeeuuuuuuwwwwww, what you had to go to bed with in order to achieve Queendom - yechy!) 

This was posted at Past Horizons today, and if I didn't know better, I'd think it was actually an April Fools' joke.  Maybe it is actually an April Fool' joke, but the author fell asleep for several months or something.  Just take a look at the graphic accompanying the article/post and you'll see why I came to my "jokely" conclusion:

Portrait of St Mark the Evangelist from the Book of Dimma folio 30v (Dublin, Trinity College, MS.A.IV.23).
Wikimedia Commons

According to the description, this is supposed to be St. Mark - the Evanglist (was there another St. Mark???)  Well, darlings, he looks rather bewildered and bemused to me, maybe even downright sad.  Now why would that be?  Because St. Mark actually was an Eye Goddess at one time - that's why!  Aha!  A sex change occurred.  I mean - of course this is an Eye Goddess - LOOK AT HER FRIGGING EYES.    And She is sitting on a bird-crowed chair, to boot.  Birds and Eye Goddesses go hand and hand, all the way back to about 35,000 BCE or so. 

Well!  No wonder She looks so befuddled.  She was turned into a he without Her consent!

As was so often the case back in the day, all the religious authorities did was change the sex of the Goddess, make She into a he, but they kept the golden curly hair (yeah, right, some Hebrew he was, heh?), the same eyes (Eye Goddess eyes), the same ancient symbols of chair (THRONE) with the royal birds (eagles, phoenixes, vultures, hawks) flanking, and called Her a he and a saint.  Ahem.  People weren't fooled back then, of course, not for a long time, even though they were illiterate (kept that way on purpose -- hmmmm, there are religious fundamentalists of all persuasions today who want to do the same thing all around the world.  Sadly, things haven't changed very much...).  That was because women told stories to each other, and to their children, sometimes whispered to each other in fear, but nonetheless passed on through the generations.  By the time the Celts arrived in England and then spread to Ireland, the men had pretty much appropriated the "official" role of story-teller/history keeper; but mothers continued the tradition of keeping the ancient legends alive, whispering tales to their children at night, as they went to sleep.


Oh, this one was rich, LOL!

WHO IS THE MOST POWERFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD?
By Lily Kuo | Reuters – 10 hrs ago

Trust me on this one - not the women mentioned, for sure!  It's some Chinese chick with western-style dental implants who has multiple allegedly Communist leaders by their - ahem - male parts.  Securely.  Very securely.  I don't think I need draw you a picture...


How about this - nearly peed my pants laughing on this one:

'Baywatch' Star Abandons Search for Noah's Ark Fearing Abduction
By Benjamin Radford, LiveScience Contributor | LiveScience.com – Tue, Aug 21, 2012

I quote:  The Ark story is scientifically implausible; there simply wouldn't be enough space on the boat to accommodate two of every living animal (including dinosaurs), along with the food and water necessary to keep them alive.

Oh come on, practically even all of the most die-hard Christian fundies out there acknowledge that the dinosaurs were probably already croaked by the time of Noah and the Ark.  Nobody really believes that "six literal 24-hours days" stuff - not even the ones who say they do.  So Noah and his family didn't have to mess around with dinosaurs.  Probably a good thing, judging from their behavior in Jurassic Park...  I mean the humans, of course.

The actual story is - WHO IS THIS WOMAN ANYWAY?  (Donna D'Errico) Never heard of her.  Baywatch?  As in the show from like 30 years ago?  Oh, excuse me, from like 20 years ago?  She's not Pamela Anderson, so who cares?

Donna D'Ericco and Nikki Six.
FLYNET (circa 2006)

Hmmmm, do you think Pamela Anderson bears some resemblance to the "St. Mark the Evanglist" pic above?  Just give Her - him - Her -- longer hair...  And big fake boobs.

Speaking of which, here is a photo of Donna D'Errico and ex-husband someone Sixx (are you kidding me?) from circa 2006 before she kicked his sorry butt to the curb for being (1) a DRUG ADDICT and (2) a SERIAL FORNICATOR WITH WOMEN TO WHOM HE WAS NOT MARRIED.

Yeah, it's perfectly logical to me how Ms. D'Ericco would go from being a "Baywatch Babe" to looking for Noah's Ark.  I thought Turkey wasn't allowing folks to climb all over their mountains anymore.  You know, security and all that (BRIBES).  Guess if you're blonde and have big fake boobs and are now a member of an evangical group you can get a special pass.  But watch out for those Muslims who want to "marry" you, Western White Woman with Big Boobs and Blonde Hair.  Hmmm, come to think of it, maybe Ms. D'Ericco looks like St. Mark the Evanglist too...  Okay, I'm not even going to go there. 

Transform A Craig's List Find Into a Chess/Checkers Table

In my other life, I have lent a hand decorating numerous friends' and relatives' apartments and homes over the year, as well as decorating probably 20 apartments before I purchased my first home.  Then the House and Gardens phase started :) 

I'm not exactly sure when this interest in interior decorating first arose; perhaps it is an offshoot of a thwarted artist; my parents did not see the value in me taking art lessons when a second grade teacher told them I had talent; and in 3rd or 4th grade, I won a blue ribbon in a city-wide competition for a painting I did of two cardinals on a branch.  That was the end of my painting career, alas.  My parents were proud of that blue ribbon, of course, but I distinctly remember an element of faint disapproval, too, or maybe it was fear -- like, where on earth did that come from?  We're just hard working plain folks...

By the time I got to junior high school and took art class (the schools back then still offered art and music classes back then, before the days of endless rounds of child-punishing budget cuts and bashing teachers for the unmotivated, uninterested students that resulted) drawing was no longer the passion it had been when I was younger; I was good, but not good enough to pull A's with no effort.  I tried a few projects and when the A's didn't come I said the equivalent of "meh" in 1960's terminology and skated through the rest of the class with my B level drawing.  At that age, I was getting interested in boys in a shy sort of way, and I also fell in love with all things history.  However, I think that interest/talent -- whatever it was -- just went underground.

Anyway, these days I read lots of DIY and decorating blogs.  In the days before blogs I read (and still read) Traditional Home and House Beautiful; and who hasn't had a subscription at one time or other to Architectural Digest???  Would also routinely devour any articles in Women's Day, Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, etc. etc. etc.  When specialty magazines came out, I would buy them -- on decorating.

Now, with so many wonderful things available online, my magazine subscriptions have been cut down, but not my interest.

So, it is a balancing act between my love for and interest in things chessly, archaeology, and writing (e.g., maintaining the blogs) and my interest in all things housely -- sewing, gardening, and especially decorating. 

This neat little remake of a table found on Craig's List caught my eye - simple but elegant :)

Before

After refinishing.

All of the details are at Pondered Primed Perfected {P3}from Sherry's August 17th post:

FREE TABLE TRANSFORMED TO GAME TABLE~ IC#12

(IC is for Inspiration Cafe, a neat feature of P3

From CNN

Girl held in Pakistan, accused of burning Quran pages

By Katie Hunt and Nasir Habib, CNN

updated 5:39 PM EDT, Mon August 20, 2012

CNN) -- An 11-year-old Christian girl has been arrested after being accused of blasphemy by burning pages of the Quran in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

According to a statement released by the president's office Sunday, the girl, identified as Ramsha, was accused by a local resident of burning pages of the Muslim holy text after she gathered paper as fuel for cooking.

Local media reports said the girl has Down syndrome. CNN was unable to confirm these reports, and a local police official said they are not true. Qasim Niazi, the police officer in charge of the station near where the incident took place, said the girl does not have a mental disorder but is illiterate and has not attended school.

The accused girl had told him she had no idea there were pages of the Quran inside the documents she burned, he added. Niazi said that 150 people had gathered on Friday where the neighborhood's Christian population lives and threatened to burn down their houses.

"The mob wanted to burn the girl to give her a lesson," he told CNN. Other Christian families living in the area have fled fearing a backlash, he added.

The statement from President Asif Ali Zardari said he has called for an urgent report on the incident and added that vulnerable sections of society must be protected "from any misuse of the blasphemy law."

"Blasphemy by anyone cannot be condoned but no one will be allowed to misuse blasphemy law for settling personal scores," said the president's spokesman, Farhatullah Babar.

Critics of the controversial law say it is being used to persecute religious minorities.

Politician and former international cricketer Imran Khan tweeted: "Shameful! Sending an 11yr old girl to prison is against the very spirit of Islam which is all about being Just and Compassionate.

"Poor child is already suffering from Down Syndrome. State should care for its children not torment them. We demand her immed release," said Khan, who now leads the political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.

The legislation makes it a crime punishable by death to insult Islam, the Quran or the Prophet Mohammed.

Pakistan is home to about 2 million Christians, who make up more than 1% of Islamic nation's population, according to government statistics. [Soon, there will be none.]

Another Mystery Human Shows Up in Fossil Record

Interesting, very interesting...  Of course, scientists persist in their stereotyping use of the term "archaic" when speaking of certain humans.  Really?  This is like the white supremicist discovering he has black Africans in his ancestry.  Oops.  Yeah, there is a River Called De-Nile...

I may have already reported on this and if so, sorry for the duplication.
Genetic Data and Fossil Evidence Tell Differing Tales of Human Origins
By NICHOLAS WADE

Published: July 26, 2012

After decades of digging, paleoanthropologists looking for fossilized human bones have established a reasonably clear picture: Modern humans arose in Africa some 200,000 years ago and all archaic species of humans then disappeared, surviving only outside Africa, as did the Neanderthals in Europe. Geneticists studying DNA now say that, to the contrary, a previously unknown archaic species of human, a cousin of the Neanderthals, may have lingered in Africa until perhaps 25,000 years ago, coexisting with the modern humans and on occasion interbreeding with them.

The geneticists reached this conclusion, reported on Thursday in the journal Cell, after decoding the entire genome of three isolated hunter-gatherer peoples in Africa, hoping to cast light on the origins of modern human evolution. But the finding is regarded skeptically by some paleoanthropologists because of the absence in the fossil record of anything that would support the geneticists’ statistical calculations.
      

Two of the hunter-gatherers in the study, the Hadza and Sandawe of Tanzania, speak click languages and carry ancient DNA lineages that trace to the earliest branchings of the human family tree. The third group is that of the forest-dwelling pygmies of Cameroon, who also have ancient lineages and unusual blood types.

      

The geneticists, led by Joseph Lachance and Sarah A. Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania, decoded the entire genomes of five men from each of these groups. The costs of whole-genome sequencing have fallen so much that the technique can now be applied to populations for the first time, said Dr. Tishkoff, who paid the company Complete Genomics around $10,000 for each of the 15 genomes.

      

Among the DNA sequences special to pygmies, Dr. Tishkoff and colleagues found a variant of the usual gene that controls development of the pituitary gland, the source of the hormones that control reproduction and growth. This could be the cause of the pygmies’ short stature and early age of reproduction, the researchers say.

      

The genomes of the pygmies and the Hadza and Sandawe click-speakers contained many short stretches of DNA with highly unusual sequences. Through mutation, the genomes of species that once had a common ancestor grow increasingly unlike one another. Dr. Tishkoff’s team interprets these divergent DNA sequences as genetic remnants of an interbreeding with an archaic species of human. Genetic calculations suggest the interbreeding took place between 20,000 and 80,000 years ago.

      

From calculations of the amount of divergence in the DNA, the geneticists estimate that the archaic species split from the ancestors of modern humans about 1.2 million years ago, about the same time as did the ancestors of the Neanderthals, who dominated Europe during the end of the last ice age.

But the archaic species has a different DNA sequence from that of Neanderthals, whose genome has been reconstructed from DNA surviving in ancient bones, and so may be a sister species, the geneticists say.

      

Inquiries into human origins are on strong ground when genetic data and fossil evidence point in the same direction, but at present geneticists and paleoanthropologists have somewhat different stories to tell. All human fossil remains in Africa for the last 100,000 years, and probably the last 200,000 years, are of modern humans, providing no support for a coexistent archaic species. Another team of geneticists reported in 2010 the finding that Neanderthals had interbred 100,000 years ago with Europeans and Asians, but not Africans. This, too, conflicted with the fossil evidence in implying that modern humans left Africa 100,000 years ago, some 55,000 years before the earliest known fossil evidence of this exodus.

      

In a report still under review, a third group of geneticists says there are signs of Neanderthals having interbred with Asians and East Africans. But Neanderthals were a cold-adapted species that never reached East Africa.

These three claims of interbreeding have opened up a serious discordance between geneticists and paleoanthropologists. For digesting the geneticists’ claims, “sup with a long spoon,” advised Bernard Wood, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University.

Richard Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford University, said the new claim of archaic and modern human interbreeding “is a further example of the tendency for geneticists to ignore fossil and archaeological evidence, perhaps because they think it can always be molded to fit the genetics after the fact.”

      

Dr. Klein said the claims of interbreeding could be “a methodological artifact” in the statistical assumptions on which the geneticists’ calculations are based. The flaw may come to light when enough inconsistent claims are published. “Meanwhile, I think it’s important to regard such claims skeptically when they are so clearly at odds with the fossil and archaeological records,” he said.

Dr. Tishkoff said that she agreed on the need for caution in making statistical inferences, and that there are other events besides interbreeding, like a piece of DNA getting flipped around the wrong way, that can make a single DNA sequence look ancient. “But when you see it at a genomewide level, it’s harder to explain away,” she said.

      

A co-author, Joshua M. Akey of the University of Washington in Seattle, said he was “reasonably confident that what we are seeing in Africa does represent archaic introgression.” The archaic sequences make up only 2.5 percent of the genomes of the living hunter-gatherers, and there is no evidence that they are being favored by natural selection. They may, therefore, have no effect on a person’s physical form, which could explain why the fossils show little sign of them, Dr. Akey said.

Although all known African fossils are of modern humans, a 13,000-year-old skull from the Iwo Eleru site in Nigeria has certain primitive features. “This might have indicated interbreeding with archaics,” said Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. “For half of Africa we really have no fossil record to speak of, so I think it’s quite likely there were surviving archaic forms living alongside modern humans.”

      

Paleoanthropologists like Dr. Klein consider it “irresponsible” of the geneticists to publish genetic findings about human origins without even trying to show how they may fit in with the existing fossil and archaeological evidence. [Why assume they "fit" in?  What if the existing assumptions about what the fossil record allegedly shows is WRONG?] Dr. Akey said he agreed that genetics can provide only part of the story. “But hopefully this is just a period when new discoveries are being made and there hasn’t been enough incubation time to synthesize all the disparities,” he said.

Proud of Triple Honor Killing

A sick religion, an even sicker culture that condones this behavior.

From CNN

'Honor' murderer boasts of triple killing

By Reza Sayah, CNN

updated 4:35 PM EDT, Mon August 20, 2012

Kot Chutta, Pakistan (CNN) -- From behind the steel bars of his jail cell, Muhammad Ismail described with uncanny ease how he shot and killed his wife, his mother-in-law, and sister-in-law.

"The first shot hit the side of her body," Ismail said. "I left her there and went next door and killed my wife's mother and sister. I made sure they were all dead. Then I locked the door and left the house."

Without any apparent regret, Ismail said he would do it again. "I am proud of what I did. That's why I turned myself over to the police."

Ismail's confession to the triple-murder that took place last February in a village in central Pakistan is a rare and chilling first-hand account of a so-called 'honor' killing -- the murder of women who are usually accused of dishonoring their families by being unfaithful or disobedient.

Ismail accused his wife of eight months of repeatedly flirting with other men and spending long hours away from home.

"My wife never made me happy," said the 20-year-old who played drums in a traditional Pakistani wedding band before his arrest. "She was like a prostitute. She never took care of me."

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported 943 women were "killed in the name of honor" in Pakistan last year, an increase of more than 100 from 2010.

Rights groups blame the increase in 'honor' murders partly on what they call an ineffective justice system in Pakistan that too often allows killers to go unpunished.

Despite his videotaped confession to CNN and an earlier confession to police, prosecutors say Ismail can soon be a free man if his victims' family agrees to accept compensation for the killings. Receiving blood money is an option for victims in many conservative Muslim societies under the Islamic principal that mercy is more noble than revenge. But women's rights activists complain that in patriarchal societies like Pakistan, 'honor' killers regularly bully and threaten the female victim's family into accepting blood money.

"When it comes to the crime we have a natural reaction of shock and horror, but when we see the justice system not work, our heart breaks," said legal advisor and rights activist Bushra Syed.

According to human rights lawyer Zia Ahmed Awan, victims' families in Pakistan are also at a disadvantage because 'honor' killings often take place in male-dominated communities where women are often viewed as property with few rights to defend themselves and little access to legal aid.

"In parts of the country there is hardly any legal help for women," Awan said. "This crime is growing because the courts and laws are not responding to the cries for help."

Awan said police, lawmakers and judges in these communities are too often either corrupt or lack the proper resources and power to investigate and prosecute crimes. Instead they regularly defer to a traditional system of justice where powerful tribal leaders and male heads of families rule on disputes, he said. [In other words, Sharia justice is NO JUSTICE.  And they have the gall to point their fingers at the West and call us corrupt?  Remove the beam from your own eye, Islam, before accusing us of having a mote in ours.]

In 1999 Awan set up Pakistan's first hotline for female victims of abuse and families who lost loved ones to 'honor' murders. He called it the Madadgar Help Center. Today Awan has help centers in four cities, providing thousands of victims and families shelter, legal advice, and medical care, often free of charge.

Hamida Bibi called Awan's help center in Karachi after her newlywed daughter's husband allegedly killed her for having an affair.

"Somebody told us to come here because they could help us," Bibi said. "They said they would listen."

Awan said the fight against "murders for honor" is slowly paying off; that police are making more arrests, the courts are prosecuting more cases, and the media is paying attention.

But rights groups agree the steady increase in such deaths and the possibility that confessed killers like Muhammad Ismail are often set free are stark signs that the fight is far from over.

Facekinis?

HOLYGODDESS!  What next?

Actually, I think these women are hiding their identities -- well, if you looked like that in a swim suit, wouldn't YOU?

REUTERS/Aly Song.

So, they want to keep nice tan-free faces but don't care how dark the rest of their skin gets.  Yeah, that makes absolute sense - NOT.

China's "Jackie Kennedy" Gets Away With Murder

A rigged verdict - you knew this was coming, didn't you?   What a joke.  Hey China, can you hear the world laughing right now?  Enough money, enough power, you can get away with murder.  No different there than here, where money and influence are everything - the only thing.  And the so-called Communists are so proud to hold up their "justice" system as a model of efficiency and "true" justice.  What a joke!

If it has been some "peasant" who killed Heywood, he/she would have been dead by now. This particular show trial, closed to the press and even the British "observers" were not allowed to take notes, was a disgusting sham.  The emphasis by the "court" on the woman's mental instability and addiction to drugs - oh, really? And the plea "I only killed him because he was trying to blackmail my son for $22 million dollars we'd promised him."  Oh, Poor Mommy Dearest.  The protective mommy line of bullshit was spoon fed to the Chinese press and the Chinese public. I wonder what they really think about all this?  Of course, they won't be allowed to tell us.

As reported at The New York Times:

By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: August 20, 2012

China Defers Death Penalty for Disgraced Official’s Wife

BEIJING — A Chinese court on Monday handed Gu Kailai, the wife of a disgraced Communist Party leader, a suspended death sentence for killing a British business associate who she reportedly feared was plotting to harm her son. In the Chinese legal system, such a sentence is tantamount to life in prison.

Ms. Gu could have been executed soon after the guilty verdict was announced, although most analysts had thought such a punishment unlikely. The sentence was announced with a two-year reprieve, meaning that the threat of execution would be lifted after two years, contingent upon her good behavior. Some legal experts said she could ultimately serve fewer than a dozen years. 
      

In news footage televised Monday afternoon by the state broadcaster, China Central Television, Ms. Gu stood in the dock and calmly praised the verdict. “The sentence is just and shows immense respect for the law, reality and life,” she said.

      

The verdict and sentence appear to wrap up one of the more lurid chapters of a sweeping scandal that brought down Ms. Gu’s husband, Bo Xilai, and challenged the Communist Party during a politically delicate, once-a-decade leadership transition that is set to culminate in the fall.

      

Ms. Gu’s main accomplice, Zhang Xiaojun, a household employee, was sentenced to nine years in prison for what was said to be his limited role in helping Ms. Gu murder the Briton, Neil Heywood, with a cyanide-based poison.

      

Shortly after the verdict, Tang Yigan, deputy director of the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court in Anhui Province, told reporters that the court had weighed Ms. Gu’s confession, her testimony implicating others and the litany of psychological problems she is reported to have suffered. In the end, however, he said Mr. Heywood’s threats in no way justified her crimes.

      

He added that the defendants had agreed to not appeal their sentences. [Well of course they did - they're still alive!  I expect that some "accident will befall the minion at some point.  We all know that's coming.]

      

He Zhengsheng, the lawyer for Mr. Heywood’s family, told reporters outside the courthouse that he did not object to the sentence. In a statement, the British Embassy said it welcomed “the fact that the Chinese authorities have investigated the death of Neil Heywood, and tried those they identified as responsible,” adding that it had made clear to Chinese officials that it did not want the death penalty to be applied.

      

Although few questioned Ms. Gu’s role in the murder, rights advocates criticized her prosecution as driven more by politics than by exacting legal procedure. Relatives say she was forced to accept government-appointed lawyers, who did not have access to case files before the trial began.

      

Communist Party leaders will now turn their attention to Mr. Bo, once an aspirant to the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee and the former party boss of the southwestern municipality of Chongqing.

      

Mr. Bo incurred the wrath of many prominent leaders who were unnerved by his brash, populist style and his revival of revolutionary songs and sloganeering during his time in Chongqing. He was deposed last spring after a trusted aide, Wang Lijun, entered the United States Consulate in a nearby city and reportedly revealed details of the murder and subsequent cover-up to American officials.

Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang have been detained and are awaiting their fate. Also on Monday, four Chongqing police officials who confessed to helping cover up the murder were sentenced to jail terms of 5 to 11 years.

      

Legal analysts and political experts said Ms. Gu’s suspended death sentence was most likely calibrated to satisfy the Chinese public and the British government, along with supporters of Mr. Bo. He remains a darling among leftists and certain factions of the leadership who admired his zealous campaign against organized crime and his efforts to address some of the economic disparities that have accompanied three decades of free-market reform.

      

Although China’s propaganda officials have restricted news media coverage of the case, the murder of Mr. Heywood and prosecution of Ms. Gu have riveted a nation unaccustomed to seeing members of the political elite so publicly exposed. Some historians have likened Ms. Gu’s downfall to that of Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong who was accused of counterrevolutionary crimes after his death but whose televised show trial in 1980 was far more accessible to the Chinese people.

Ms. Gu’s trial on Aug. 9 was declared “public,” although foreign reporters were blocked from attending. Two British diplomats were allowed in the courtroom, but barred from recording the proceedings or taking notes.

On Monday, nearly all the courtroom seats were filled by government workers who had been dispatched to the hearing, according to one attendee who said she was from the local public security bureau.

      

The daughter of a revolutionary luminary, Ms. Gu, 53, was among the first generation of lawyers educated after the Cultural Revolution, the decade of social chaos during which schools were closed. As her husband rose through the party hierarchy, she ran a successful law practice and wrote a book on the foibles of American courts — and what she described as the ruthless efficiency of China’s legal system.

      

More recently, the state news media have portrayed her as a mentally unstable woman addled by antidepressants and “sedative hypnotic drugs.” According to the official Xinhua news agency, the murder plot was hatched after Mr. Heywood threatened Ms. Gu’s son, Bo Guagua, and demanded the return of $22 million he claimed was owed to him after a real estate venture failed.

      

The official accounts of the crime also sought to place some of the blame on the victim, painting him as a craven businessman who at one point “detained” the son at a residence in Britain, although it provided no details.

      

Bo Guagua, 24, a recent graduate of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government who is still in the United States, declined to comment on the verdict.

      

After Mr. Heywood’s threats were revealed, reportedly in an e-mail he sent to the family, Ms. Gu devised a scheme to kill him with animal poison procured from a public market, according to an account of the trial issued by Xinhua. In November, Mr. Heywood, 41, was lured to a hotel room in Chongqing, where Ms. Gu plied him with whiskey and tea.

      

When he became drunk and began to vomit, Mr. Zhang, the family employee, helped him into bed, prosecutors said. Ms. Gu then took the deadly concoction that Mr. Zhang had been carrying and dripped it into Mr. Heywood’s mouth after he asked for water. She then scattered pills around the room to make it appear that Mr. Heywood had died of a drug overdose.

      

Two days later, workers at the Lucky Holiday Hotel discovered Mr. Heywood’s body; the police quickly ruled his death the result of excessive drinking and cremated his remains.

      

Mr. Zhang’s relatively light sentence reflected his limited role; prosecutors said he had participated in the scheme, after initially declining, because of his loyalty to a family that had employed him since 2005.

      

Both defendants reportedly confessed. According to the account provided by Xinhua and confirmed by several people who sat through the trial, Ms. Gu apologized to the court, saying she had caused “great losses to the party and the country, for which I ought to shoulder the responsibility.” She also described the case as “a huge stone weighing on me for more than half a year.”

      

Even if it emphasized her psychological troubles, the court did not absolve her, saying she managed to meticulously orchestrate a murder and then planned an elaborate cover-up. He Weifang, a legal scholar, said a suspended death sentence with two-year reprieve was rooted in imperial law. “A suspended death penalty is something that only exists in China,” he said. “Mao thought it was a good idea and wrote it into China’s modern criminal law in the 1950s because he believed that anyone can be educated and reformed.”

*********************************************************************

Let me see, she "meticulously" orchestrated a cold-blooded murder and then "planned an elaborate cover-up."  But she gets a suspended death penalty and - maybe - 12 years in prison.  Meanwhile, the Brits have to pretend to be satisfied with this travesty?  For the sake of business as usual?  Does anyone else out there feel like puking?

I don't even think Jackie Kennedy would have been treated so well.

Scots DNA Shockers, tee hee hee...

Scottish people's DNA study could 'rewrite nation's history'

Evidence of African, Arabian, south-east Asian and Siberian ancestry in Scotland, says author of book tracing genetic journey

Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 August 2012 20.24 EDT

A large scale study of Scottish people's DNA is threatening to "rewrite the nation's history", according to author Alistair Moffat.

Scotland, he told the Edinburgh international book festival, despite a long-held belief that its ethnic make-up was largely Scots, Celtic, Viking and Irish, was in fact "one of the most diverse nations on earth".

"The explanation is simple. We are a people on the edge of beyond; on the end of a massive continent. Peoples were migrating northwest; and they couldn't get any further. We have collected them."

He and his colleagues have found West African, Arabian, south-east Asian and Siberian ancestry in Scotland. "The West African ancestry mostly originates in the 18th century, so it is almost certainly to do with the slave trade," he said.

David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, whose immediate ancestors are from the Caribbean, also revealed at the festival this week that DNA analysis had shown he has Orcadian ancestry – also likely to relate to British involvement in the Atlantic slave trade.

One per cent of all Scottish men, said Moffat, have Berber ancestry – why, he says, remains a mystery, though he believes that the penetration of people from the medieval caliphate of Cordoba "must have been immensely important". Moffat said his colleagues had also discovered DNA originating from Roman-period Illyria, the area occupied by modern Croatia, which may relate to Roman occupation of lowland Scotland.

Many of Moffat and Wilson's findings are laid out in their book The Scots: A Genetic Journey. But research continues apace, and most recent finding suggests that porridge has been a crucial factor in the nation's early history, Moffat said.

Until recently, he said, it had been believed that farming arrived incrementally in Scotland, around 3,000 years ago, by a process of slow and gradual adoption, by women, of new techniques. But their recent DNA research suggests something quite different, he said: that it arrived quickly via young male immigrants from what is now Germany.

These young men, he said, brought brand-new techniques with them, planting grass-derived crops that could be turned into porridge and fed to young children. This new improved food production reduced the period, argued Moffat, that the hunter-gatherer mothers had to devote to breast-feeding, and thus increased their fertility. This led to a population explosion, he said, laying the seeds of a recognisable society in northern Britain. "It is a revelation. Porridge, and I'm not joking about this, is absolutely crucial to our history."

Not every analysis of DNA has delivered welcome results. DNA analysis on Moffat himself – a proud Scottish Borders man – showed that his ancestry was English. "We don't offer counselling for that," he said.

Hales Corners Challenge XVI!

Yes, darlings, October will be here sooner than we think and with it comes the Hales Corners Challenge! 

Goddesschess is once again sponsoring prizes for the chess femmes for Challenge XVI: 

Open:  Win - $40; Draw - $20; 

Reserve:  Win - $20; Draw - $10. 

In addition, the female winners from the Open and Reserve Sections in Challenge XV are entitled to free entry should they choose to play, courtesy of Goddesschess.  Same deal for Challenge XVI. 

Registration form.

The playing venue is once again the Wyndham Milwaukee Airport Hotel, on South Howell Avenue (very close to Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport), a few blocks south of East Layton Avenue.  It's comfortable and convenient.  There are restaurants on premises in addition to several fast food places within easy walking distance for lunch or, if you play like me, with long waits in between games, a visit for a shake, or some fries... :)

Of course the question on everyone's mind is - will SHE be playing again.

Ahem.

We'll see...

We're planning some special things for THIS Challenge, by the way. We've been sponsoring since Challenge VIII -- about time, doncha think???

Political Appointee Rapes Collection at Italian Library

From The New York Times

At Root of Italy Library’s Plunder, a Tale of Entrenched Practices

By ISABETTA POVOLEDO Published: August 11, 2012

NAPLES, Italy — For months now, the alarm has been resounding throughout the insular and competitive world of antiquarian books: beware of volumes bearing the stamp of the storied Girolamini Library in Naples. They could be hot.

The library’s former director, Marino Massimo De Caro, was arrested in May, accused of systematically despoiling the library he had been charged with keeping safe, stealing books and selling them on the open market or directly to collectors. And sharp sleuthing on the part of a professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta has raised questions about Mr. De Caro and the sale of other, possibly forged, books.

The unraveling of Mr. De Caro was precipitated by a chance visit to the library in March by Tomaso Montanari, a professor of art history at the University of Naples and a regular contributor to the daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. What he saw there — books piled haphazardly throughout and empty shelves, soda cans and garbage strewed about — immediately went into print, and that prompted a petition signed by hundreds of Italian intellectuals questioning Mr. De Caro’s appointment as director.

More important, Italian prosecutors took note and weeks later Mr. De Caro was in prison, accused of — but not yet formally charged with — embezzlement and conspiracy. Prosecutors say that in the 11 months during which he managed the library, Mr. De Caro stole hundreds of its volumes.

Investigators found boxes of valuable books, many with the library’s stamp, in garages and private homes in several cities as well as in auction houses abroad. Four people said to have conspired with Mr. De Caro were also jailed.

“So far, we’ve tracked down some 3,000 books,” including some blocked at auction, said Giovanni Melillo, the Naples prosecutor handling the Girolamini investigation, in an interview. He said that Mr. De Caro was the head of a criminal gang created to despoil the library, which had been off limits to the public — with few exceptions — for decades. “There was a lucidly conceived plan behind it all,” Mr. Melillo said.

Prosecutors say that Mr. De Caro has admitted to taking some books with the intent to sell them, but solely to pay for the restoration of the underfinanced library and its precious volumes. Mr. De Caro’s lawyers declined to comment while investigators were still at work.

The question of how Mr. De Caro ever became the director of such a renowned library sheds light on some of the entrenched practices that continue to bedevil the Italian economy.

In April 2011, Giancarlo Galan, then the culture minister, named Mr. De Caro as his special consultant, and he was reappointed in December by the current minister, Lorenzo Ornaghi. In June 2011, the Culture Ministry ratified his appointment to the library.

“It was like putting a fox in a chicken coop,” Mr. Melillo said dryly.

Mr. De Caro may not have had a degree in library sciences, but he had other credentials. “De Caro is the quintessential Italian fixer. In a country where the political class still controls a significant part of the national economy, he connects politics with business, and vice versa,” said Claudio Gatti, a co-author of a new book, “Il Sottobosco” (“The Underworld”).

“People like him exist all over the world, but here we have a twist,” Mr. Gatti wrote. Mr. De Caro “can count on relationships with both the right and the left.”

“Only in Italy can you have someone like him,” he concluded.

One serious problem facing investigators here is that they do not know the exact number of books that may have been stolen. Only half of the 170,000 or so books in the collection were ever cataloged, according to Mauro Giancaspro, the director of the National Library of Naples.

After Mr. De Caro took over last summer he began to move books from their shelves and between rooms, to preserve the books and rid the shelves of wood worms, he told investigators. Instead, prosecutors believe, the books were rearranged and index cards were destroyed to make it difficult to track missing volumes.

The investigation, Mr. Melillo said recently, has taken an “international bent,” and his team is following new leads.

Mr. De Caro, whose résumé boasts a colorful employment history, had at least one academic credential under his belt: he had published a two-volume study of Galileo. That is one connection to the Georgia State professor, Nick Wilding, a Galileo expert who is currently investigating the authenticity of several books by the Pisan astronomer.

One in particular, a copy of “Sidereus Nuncius,” Galileo’s novel observations of the cosmos first published in Venice in 1610 and now owned by a New York rare-book dealer, is clearly a forgery, Mr. Wilding says.

The book in question — supposedly containing an inscription by Galileo, along with five of his watercolors — was presented with much fanfare (and some doubts about its authenticity) in Padua five years ago. A two-volume study published last year concluded that it was Galileo’s autographed proof copy.

“It all seemed very convincing,” Mr. Wilding said. “The paper appeared genuine, the binding seemed convincing.” But there were “minor details that made me question the entire account,” he said in a phone interview. He decided to look more carefully at the book.

The breakthrough came when he discovered photographs of a copy of “Sidereus Nuncius” published in a 2005 catalog from Sotheby’s. Looking at the photograph of the title page, he noticed that what should have been random ink blots were identical to deeply impressed marks in the New York “Sidereus Nuncius.”

In addition, one letter in both copies had the same blotch on its foot. This blotch was not in any genuine copy, but was to be found in a facsimile edition published in 1964. The facsimile used a copy that had a brown mark on the paper next to the letter. The black-and-white photograph transformed it into a printed blotch, proving to Mr. Wilding that the New York and Sotheby’s copies were both forgeries based on the 1964 facsimile.

“If they hadn’t been greedy enough to make two copies, I wouldn’t have been able to prove the forgery,” he said.

The quality of the books, in any case, has amazed the experts.

“We’ve seen missing pages replaced in facsimile, but no one dreamed that an entire book could be forged, something that is now more easily possible because of modern technology,” said Owen Gingerich, professor emeritus of astronomy and the history of science at Harvard and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

Mr. De Caro, Mr. Gingerich said, brought the “Sidereus Nuncius” with the forged watercolors to his office in 2005, when he was trying to sell the book. “I told him that the watercolors could not have been made by Galileo because of an astronomical blunder in one of the drawings,” he said.

Mr. Gingerich and Frank Mowery, of the Folger Library, have detected what Mr. Gingerich said were other forged titles, including three copies of another Galileo book, “Le Operazioni del Compasso Geometrico e Militare,” from 1606. At least one of these passed through Mr. De Caro’s hands, Mr. Gingerich said.

“I don’t know if he commissioned them, or manufactured them, bought them repeatedly or was just unlucky,” Mr. Wilding said of Mr. De Caro. “I am worried that these are not the only ones in circulation.”

Arnoud Gerits, president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, recently issued a statement warning members about the theft of books from the Girolamini Library, along with Mr. Wilding’s findings of what he has called forged Galileo materials that “appear to trace back” to Mr. De Caro. “It seems clear that this is a major case of both theft and forgeries of important material,” the statement read.

“Dealers don’t want to blow the whistle,” said Mr. Wilding, who nonetheless welcomed the association’s alerts. “But one dealer also quipped that any rare book that’s worth selling has been stolen at least once in its life, hopefully not recently.”

Buddha Statues Uncovered in Pond Muck

This seems a rather strange story to me.  The pond was recently dug.  So no artefacts were uncovered during the construction of the pond?  Hmmmm.....

Reported at The Huffington Post

Cambodia Ancient Buddha Statues Found By Bathing Children

AP | Posted: 08/17/2012 7:51 am Updated: 08/17/2012 9:52 am

Associated Press
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Authorities in Cambodia say children bathing in a newly dug pond accidentally unearthed six ancient Buddhist statues believed to be around 1,000 years old.

Provincial Culture Department official Prak Sakhon says the statues were found Wednesday in Khleng Por, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of capital Phnom Penh.

Sakhon says the statues are believed to be from the ninth to the 12th centuries, with the biggest just over a half-meter (half-yard) tall and weighing about nine kilograms (20 pounds).

She said Friday the statues have been moved to a provincial museum while authorities investigate.
The pond had been dug recently and the statues were found buried in mud close to its banks.

Cambodia is home to a plethora of archaeological sites including the famed Angkor Wat temple complex.

Woman Buried with Six Horses, Gold, Bronze, and Cannabis

From news.com.au

Amazing tattoos covered ancient Siberian princess

August 15, 20121:31PM

The elaborate tattoo of a deer with a griffons beak and Capricorn antlers found on the body of a Polosmak 'princess'. Picture: Siberian Times

TATTOOS as complex and abstract as any modern design have been found on the body of Siberian princess buried in the permafrost for more than 2500 years. 

  

A reconstruction of the female "Princess Ukok" who died and was buried in c. 400 BCE.

Natalia Polosmak, the scientist who found the remains of Princess Ukok high in mountains close to Russia's border with Mongolia and China, said she was struck by how little has changed in the past two millennia.

Tattoos of mythological creatures and complex patterns are believed to have been status symbols for the ancient nomadic Pazyryk people first described by the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century BC.

A striking tattoo of a deer with a griffon's beak and Capricorn antlers was found on the left shoulder of the ancient 'princess', who died about age 25. The antlers are decorated with the heads of griffons. And the same griffon's head is shown on the back of the animal. She also has a dear's head on her wrist, with big antlers.

"Our young woman - the 'princess' - has only her two arms tattooed," Dr Polosmak told the Siberian Times. "So they signified both age and status."

Buried with the 'princess' were six saddled-and-bridled horses, bronze and gold ornaments - and a small canister of cannabis.  She is not known to be a 'princess', as her name implies. Experts are divided over whether she was a poet, healer or holy woman.

Two warriors recovered from the same burial site in the permafrost of the Ukok Plateau were similar fantastical creatures. One had an image reaching across his right shoulder from his chest to his back.

The reconstructed tattoos were released to mark the moving of the remains of the princess to a permanent display in the National Museum in Gorno-Altaisk where she will be put on display.

"Tattoos were used as a mean of personal identification - like a passport now, if you like," said Dr Polosmak. "I think we have not moved far from Pazyryks in how the tattoos are made.

"We can say that most likely there was - and is - one place on the body for everyone to start putting the tattoos on, and it was a left shoulder. I can assume so because all the mummies we found with just one tattoo had it on their left shoulders.

"And nowadays this is the same place where people try to put the tattoos on, thousands of years on. I think its linked to the body composition - as the left shoulder is the place where it is noticeable most, where it looks the most beautiful."

Another similarity is how the number of tattoos is linked to age. Dr Polosmak related the analogy of Greek tourist operators assessing the age of British tourists by the number of tattoos on their body.
But there the similarities end.

The tattoos used by the Pazyryk nomads were intended to help members of the tribe identify each other in the afterlife.

****************************************************************************

Unfortunately, the article above neglected to mention that the "princess'" body was discovered 19 years ago!  The two males excavated near her burial are thought to be guards.  Were they sacrificed to accompany her?  You can find more details, and several interesting photographs and drawings, incluidng a reconstruction of whart the "princess" may have looked like, in this article at The Mail Online. 

Strange But True: Flinders Petrie's Head Was Lost in a Basement...

Paying homage to pioneering archaeologist who lost his head

Scholars and curiosity seekers marked the 70th anniversary of the death of Flinders Petrie, the father of modern archaeology, whose headless body is buried in Jerusalem.

By Nir Hasson | Aug.08, 2012 | 1:26 AM

Flinders Petrie, Jerusalem c. late 1930s.
From Wikipedia.

On Monday of last week the Israeli Antiquities Authority conducted an unusual memorial service, to mark the 70th anniversary of the death of the British archaeologist and Egyptologist Flinders Petrie. Only one of the people who attended the ceremony at the Protestant Cemetery on Jerusalem's Mount Zion, Israeli archaeologist Shimon Gibson, had ever met the deceased - or at least his head. In 1989, while Gibson was working at the Palestine Exploration Fund in London, he was contacted by the Royal College of Surgeons. "They asked me," Gibson said at the ceremony, "to help identify a head preserved in a jar. They weren't sure it belonged to Petrie," Gibson related.
    
"I arrived armed with photographs of him," Gibson said. "A laboratory technician brought me the head, took it out of the jar and put it on a plate in front of me. I was a bit embarrassed. I think [the technician] was a little strange because he asked me if I wanted to see the cut. We archaeologists love to see [such things] but not this type exactly. He showed it to me and opened Petrie's eyes. They were bright blue."

Petrie was born in England in 1853 and died in Jerusalem in 1942. His headless body was buried in the Protestant Cemetery on Mount Zion. He is widely regarded as the progenitor of modern archaeology. He laid the foundations for Egyptology, the study of ancient Egypt, and was the first biblical archaeologist in Palestine.
    
Petrie made a number of thrilling discoveries, including Egyptian mummies and the Pharaonic-era Merneptah Stele, which contained the earliest mention of the name "Israel" in the archaeological record. But the real significance of Petrie's work was in his smaller discoveries; things that most of his colleagues would not have bothered to pick up from the ground. Petrie developed a method for dating the layers of a site according to the pottery and ceramics found in them that became the cornerstone of the archaeological dating process. He came to recognize that just as modern dish patterns change so did the pottery styles in the ancient world. Working intensively, he classified clay fragments to create a catalog that could be used to date archaeological sites.
    
Stories about Petrie's life and genius abound. Archaeologist Gabriel Barkai told a few at the ceremony. "People say that he knew the exact distance between his eye and the tip of his finger and therefore could measure distances with great precision. He built a camera out of biscuit tins, and in order to save time, he drew his findings with both hands at the same time, wielding a pencil in each." It is also said that Petrie dug pharaonic graves in the nude, but ate his lunch in proper Victorian fashion - in a tent, dressed in an elegant suit.
    
Petrie thought well of his own professional judgment. In 1917, after the British conquered Palestine, Petrie suggested demolishing all the structures in the Old City of Jerusalem so that its hidden parts could be excavation [sic]. Fortunately, his suggestion was rejected. Flinders stipulated that after his death his head should be studied, a condition that was presumably influenced by his belief in theories about race, evolution and skull shape and size.
    
But it was Petrie's bad luck to die at the height of World War II. By the time his head reached London's Royal College of Surgeons, after the war, these theories had fallen out of favor and were associated with racism and Nazism. Petrie's head was lost in the college basement. Apparently the label on the jar fell off and no one was sure the head belonged to Petrie. One problem was that the hair on the head was black, while Petrie's had been white at the time of his death. Another issue was the shape of the nose. But Gibson was able to identify the head by virtue of a scar on the forehead. He believes the preserving liquid may have changed the hair's color, while the misshapen nose may have resulted from its being pressed against the side of the jar for decades.
    
The memorial, organized by Shahar Poni of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, was attended by no less than 150 people, including archaeologists, historians, representatives from Jerusalem churches and curiosity seekers.
    
"Memorials for great people are an accepted thing," Poni said. "But they are usually for politicians; scientists are neglected. Petrie was a world class scientist who invented a whole new area of science. We thought it offered an opportunity to organize a cultural-anthropological event." Pony admits that he was surprised by the large number of people who attended the memorial. "I have no doubt that the story of his head exerted an influence."

7100 Year Old Turkish Site Threatened by Dam

Güvercinkaya excavation site sheds light on Anatolian life

AKSARAY - Anatolia News Agency

The latest excavation at the 7,000 year old Güvercinkaya tumulus in Aksaray Province has discovered the fossilized remains of such animals as lions and panthers

An excavation at the 7,000 year old Güvercinkaya tumulus in Aksaray Province has discovered the fossilized remains of such animals as lions, panthers and two species of horses, indicating that these species once lived in Cappadocia. [When???]

Güvercinkaya tumulus was discovered near the planned site of the Mamasun Dam when surface research for the dam was underway in 1993, said Dr. Sevil Gülçur, who heads the Güvercinkaya excavation and is the head of the archaeology department at Istanbul University. Because the tumulus was located near the dam, the excavation was begun urgently. “In order to save the area, we started excavation work in 1996 and excavated the damaged areas firstly,” Gülçur said.

“We worked on an area 3,000 meters square, found some very significant structures at the peak of the tumulus. The use of the tumulus dates back approximately 5,220 to 4,750 B.C. We came across the gate of a castle, which is probably it is the oldest example of its kind in Anatolia,” Gülçur said, “The tumulus is divided into two fragments, an upper settlement and a lower settlement. The whole architecture was developed by design. It is not a random settlement; they designed the settlement to comply with the natural structure of the rocks. The one-roomed houses have storage and furnaces.
Their means of livelihood was based on agriculture and livestock.”

Food remains at the site have revealed a great deal of information about ancient Cappadocia, including the fact that two species of horses once existed there.

“Two [species of] horse existed; one of them is bigger than the other. When the Persians invaded Anatolia, they saw the great number of horses and called the land ‘Cappadocia’ which means ‘land of beautiful horses,’ and the Romans continued to use the name. In addition to horses, there were a lot of deer in the region. We also detected the presence of some predators, including lions and panthers. The Cappadocia region had the raw material prehistoric humans needed to survive. For example, we found a leg bone and claw that belonged to a lioness. It is hard to say whether people in those times ate lion meat, but they did benefit from lions’ bones and skins.”

Excavation site threatened by dam

The excavation work continues to try to save the area from possible damage created by the dam, Gülçur said. “A very frightening thing happened in Güvercinkaya when the level of the water in the dam rose and covered the whole area in 2011. The dam damaged the areas we had excavated, and now we are working to reach the old layer and clean the excavation site. This year we are determined to find older layers and document the layers and structures we have already excavated with photos, in order not lose the information if the water rises again,” she said.

August/13/2012

********************************************************************************

I am interested in knowing exactly how old these horse fossils are.  Were the horses hunted for food?  Has any evidence been uncovered that might suggest domestication of the horses and if so, at what date?  Were these horses indigenous to Anatolia, different from other species of equine beyond the Caucasus Mountains in the steppe regions to the northeast and the regions to the south where, at an early date, the Sumerians had onagers pulling wagons? 

Egypt's Old Kingdom Done in by Massive Drought

Who do you blame if, year after year, the Gods and Goddesses refuse to send the life-giving floods down the Nile River from the highlands to the delta?  If, after years of unanswered prayers and supplications and who knows what kind of sacrifices, the waters still do not come, did people lose faith in their Gods, Goddesses, and the rulers who were supposed to be Gods themselves?

How are we in the 21st century going to deal with rains that don't come when we need them, tornadoes and hurricanes of force we have yet to see, and rising oceans that cannot be held back no matter what we build...  Will Africa starve when America cannot produce enough food to even feed it's own people?  What about China?  India?  Australia?

Unless I discover the Fountain of Youth in my backyard I won't be alive to see the worst effects of the climate changes we are currently beginning to undergo.  They are not reversible; regardless of whether you believe what we're experiencing and will continue to experience to a greater and greater degree in the coming years is man-made or just a natural cycle of the Earth/Universe, they are coming and they will get worse, and for a long long time, before things start to get better.  We're not ready for it, of course.  We're still pissing and moaning about causes rather than ramping up population relocation away from coastal areas and vunerable low-lying lands and river valleys; who wants to leave Manhattan, after all?  But Manhattan will be under water 100 years from now.  Think about that.  And stashing away food -- why aren't we doing that?  Our ability to feed ourselves may decrease by 75% in less than 50 years.  And we're doing - zilch.  Certain political groups think that by trying to force the world back to the mores of the 19th century we will somehow save ourselves.  What a joke.  Unfortunately, a deadly joke for future generations.

There is a reason for the saying that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.  The lessons of the past are all around us, and our clueless leaders wold rather argue about more tax cuts for the rich (who will also die, they'll just last longer than the poor and the average joes who will quickly run out of resources) than face the hard realities of what is coming, indeed, what is happening right now, all around us.

Climate and drought lessons from ancient Egypt

August 16, 2012

Ancient pollen and charcoal preserved in deeply buried sediments in Egypt's Nile Delta document the region's ancient droughts and fires, including a huge drought 4,200 years ago associated with the demise of Egypt's Old Kingdom, the era known as the pyramid-building time. 
    
"Humans have a long history of having to deal with climate change," said Christopher Bernhardt, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Along with other research, this study geologically reveals that the evolution of societies is sometimes tied to climate variability at all scales – whether decadal or millennial."

Bernhardt conducted this research as part of his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, along with Benjamin Horton, an associate professor in Penn's Department of Earth and Environmental Science. Jean-Daniel Stanley at the Smithsonian Institution also participated in the study, published in July's edition of Geology.

"Even the mighty builders of the ancient pyramids more than 4,000 years ago fell victim when they were unable to respond to a changing climate," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. "This study illustrates that water availability was the climate-change Achilles Heel then for Egypt, as it may well be now, for a planet topping seven billion thirsty people."

The researchers used pollen and charcoal preserved in a Nile Delta sediment core dating from 7,000 years ago to the present to help resolve the physical mechanisms underlying critical events in ancient Egyptian history.

They wanted to see if changes in pollen assemblages would reflect ancient Egyptian and Middle East droughts recorded in archaeological and historical records. The researchers also examined the presence and amount of charcoal because fire frequency often increases during times of drought, and fires are recorded as charcoal in the geological record. The scientists suspected that the proportion of wetland pollen would decline during times of drought and the amount of charcoal would increase.

And their suspicions were right.

Large decreases in the proportion of wetland pollen and increases in microscopic charcoal occurred in the core during four different times between 3,000 and 6,000 years ago. One of those events was the abrupt and global mega-drought of around 4,200 years ago, a drought that had serious societal repercussions, including famines, and which probably played a role in the end of Egypt's Old Kingdom and affected other Mediterranean cultures as well.

"Our pollen record appears very sensitive to the decrease in precipitation that occurred in the mega-drought of 4,200 years ago," Bernhardt said. "The vegetation response lasted much longer compared with other geologic proxy records of this drought, possibly indicating a sustained effect on delta and Nile basin vegetation."

Similarly, pollen and charcoal evidence recorded two other large droughts: one that occurred some 5,000 to 5,500 years ago and another that occurred around 3,000 years ago.

These events are also recorded in human history – the first one started some 5,000 years ago when the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt occurred and the Uruk Kingdom in modern Iraq collapsed. The second event, some 3,000 years ago, took place in the eastern Mediterranean and is associated with the fall of the Ugarit Kingdom and famines in the Babylonian and Syrian Kingdoms.

"The study geologically demonstrates that when deciphering past climates, pollen and other micro-organisms, such as charcoal, can augment or verify written or archaeological records – or they can serve as the record itself if other information doesn't exist or is not continuous," said Horton.                               

More information: The study, Nile delta response to Holocene climate variability, was published in the July edition of Geology.

Journal reference: Geology Provided by United States Geological Survey

*******************************************************************************

The comments at the end of the article (online at website) are very interesting.  I excerpted one, below:

Shelgeyr Aug 16, 2012
Rank: not rated yet

There are (largely undocumented, possibly neolithic) ruins in Egypt located too far south to really be considered part of the known ancient Kharga/Baris/Khysis area, and yet they occur within vast portions of the western desert, even away from the caravan routes.

The Kharga Aquifer used to underlay this entire region.Examples (use Google Maps/Earth and zoom in):

24.518203,30.704738 (ancient well next to ruins)
24.523928,30.704624 (only the outlines remain)
24.484776,30.706138
24.476984,30.704746
24.455565,30.692710

These remnants are by no means exclusive; ruins run all throughout this region.


Hmmm...  Perhaps the Egyptians called the west the Land of the Dead because it did become, indeed, the land of many dead after the drought of 4,200 years ago -- thus, an actual allusion to an historical memory, not just a metaphorical or religious reference! 
 

Wait a minute -- they did mate after all...

Now, the latest latest study indicates that so-called Neanderthal and so-called modern humans did mate after all, and the timing is consistent with what the prior prior study hypothesized, contrary to the latest prior study that was published in PNAS recently but is actually over 2 years old, evidently.  All very confusing, to be sure!  Suffice to say this is not the last on the topic; so far there are two studies that favor the "mating" theory and one that says nope, it wasn't mating at all, it was a common ancestor whose genetic material somehow only made it into some of the "modern" humans in Africa, but not others.  Okaaaaayyyy...  Please explain to me in plain English how this could happen. That makes no sense to me at all, but then, how does it make sense to say that the farther away in time we get from our ancestors the less diverse our populations become?  What?  But that's the line of thought these days.  Totally counter-intuitive, heh? 

At Smithsonian.com

August 15, 2012

Neanderthal and Human Matings Get a Date

Two years ago the analysis of the Neanderthal genome revealed modern humans carry Neanderthal DNA, implying our ancestors mated with Neanderthals at some point in the past. Scientists only found genetic traces of Neanderthals in non-African people, leading to the conclusion that Neanderthal-human matings must have occurred as modern humans left Africa and populated the rest of the world. A new paper (PDF) posted on arXiv.org puts a date on those matings: 47,000 to 65,000 years ago—a time that does indeed correspond with human migrations out of Africa.

Sriram Sankararaman of Harvard Medical School and colleagues—including Svante Pääbo of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Harvard’s David Reich—investigated the timing of the matings in part to verify that the trysts even happened at all. That’s because there’s an alternative explanation for why up to 4 percent of non-African human DNA looks like Neanderthal DNA. It’s possible, the researchers explain, that the ancestral species that gave rise to both humans and Neanderthals had a genetically subdivided population—in other words, genetic variation wasn’t evenly distributed across the species. Under that scenario, Neanderthals and the modern humans that left Africa might have independently inherited similar DNA from a part of the divided ancestral population that didn’t contribute genetic material to modern African populations. (Another paper published this week, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, considers this scenario.)

To determine what really happened, Sankararaman’s team looked at rates of genetic change to estimate when Neanderthals and humans last exchanged genes. If the shared DNA was due to interbreeding, the team expected to find a date less than 100,000 years ago—some time after humans left Africa. But if it was the result of sharing a common ancestor, they expected a date older than 230,000 years ago, approximately when Neanderthals and modern humans split from each other. The team’s findings support the interbreeding scenario: 47,000 to 65,000 years ago.

Neanderthals aren’t the only archaic species that may have contributed to the modern human gene pool. Denisovans, known from only a tooth and a finger bone, left a genetic mark in people living in Melanesia and Southeast Asia. And recent genetic evidence suggests that some ancient African populations mated with an unidentified, now-extinct hominid species that lived in Africa.

So far, our knowledge of Neanderthal and Denisovan genetics comes from only a few individuals, so our understanding of interspecies mating is likely to change as more Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA is analyzed.
(H/T John Hawks)

Posted By: Erin Wayman — Africa,Homo,Interbreeding,Migrations,Modern Humans,Neanderthals,Pleistocene